On the 31st December 2005, the Norwegian expedition Team Inge manage to reach the Geographical South Pole too. It took them 38 days to make it. In history only 13 Norwegiand have managed to reach the South Pole from the "coast", unsupported! So it is a very special list they have joined. And it starts with the famous Norwegian Roal Amundsen! The wellknown Norwegian tour operator Hvitserk is organising this and another expedition to the South Pole. The other expedition reached the South Pole 27 December this year (2005).

It`s called the biggest party in the world. The Rio Carnival 2006 starts on 25 February and ends 4 days later, so be ready for the big show! During this time the city will explode in joy and music. There are hundreds of street festivities and bands everywhere. Especially be aware of the gigantic party at the sambodrome parade. Nothing compares!

Reports about a Bigfoot being viewed in Kota Tinggi has attracted the attention of both locals as well as the media. Three workers who were building a fishpond in Kampung Mawai claimed they saw a huge furry creature, standing almost 2,5 metres tall. Malaysia Nature Society (MNS) Johor branch member Vincent Chow said an MNS member who happened to be there, found a huge footprint, between 40 cm and 50 cm long, in the mud.

It`s a popular myth that Eskimos have several hundred of words for snow. The more correct name on this people is Inuits, as they would like to be called. Everybody would like to believe this amazing story, but it`s not true according to the researchers Laura Martin. This is well documented in Geoffrey Pullum`s book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. The idea that Eskimos have so many words for snow has its origin from that people believed Eskimos viewed snow very differently than people with other cultural background.

It`s an around the world race earlier known as the Whitbread race, but has now become the Volvo Ocean Race. The winner of the Volvo Ocean Race will be the team on the boat with most points when they finnish in Gothenburg after circa 6 months from today. For the first time in its long history, the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 starts from Spain in the province Galicia. There are 9 legs to sail: Leg 1 to Cape Town, leg 2 to Melbourne, leg 3 To Wellington, leg 4 to Rio de Janeiro, leg 5 to Baltimore, leg 6 to New York, leg 7 to Portsmouth, leg 8 to Rotterdam, and leg 9 to Gothenburg. It`s long way to sail and many challenges to deal with! Today Monday 2nd January starts the second leg.....

Which countries and regions are most risky? How can travellers deal with in today's travel environment? Which precautions should be taken? In the previous years there has been several disasters around the world as the threat of avian flu, Ebola, AIDS, wars, violent demonstrations, a massive earthquake in Sumatra, Indonesia, the Haitang typhoon in Southeast China and Taiwan, Hurricanes in America, bomb attacks in London, Bali and Amman, and the devastating earthquake in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. So many dramatic incidents have happened in a short time that it seems that travellers should be prepared for dealing with unexpectable situations. That`s the life of travelling today. The only things which is normal is the unexpectable!

"Happy New Year!" to you all around the world. That greeting will be said and heard for the first weeks as the new year gets under way. Especially we want to thank our readers and business partners for the old year, and wish the new year welcome. Regarding travelling we in Travel Explorations wish the best for adventure travellers and hope they will be able to achieve new unique experiences in the new year. Hopefully the environment will be safer and more predictable in the coming year. Our New Year's Resolution for 2006 is something we want share with others.

We in Travel Explorations wish you all a Merry Christmas. Christmas is celebrated in different ways around the world. The Christmas Day is a time for relaxing and fun. Merry Christmas is expressed different around the world. Some examples are: Afrikaans: Gesëende Kersfees, Arabic: Milad Majid, Argentine: Feliz Navidad, Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo, Chinese Cantonese: Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun, Chinese Mandarin: Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan, Columbia: Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo, Czech: Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce a stastny Novy Rok, Danish: Glædelig Jul, Eskimo: (inupik) Jutdlime pivdluarit ukiortame pivdluaritlo, Farsi: Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad, Finnish: Hyvaa joulua, French: Joyeux Noel, German: Froehliche Weihnachten, Icelandic: Gledileg Jol, Norwegian: God Jul, or Gledelig Jul, Peru: Feliz Navidad y un Venturoso Año Nuevo, Sami: Buorrit Juovllat, Spanish: Feliz Navidad, Swedish: God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt År! Independent of how "Merry Christmas" it`s said, it means happiness. So in this way we hope Christmas can bring people closer together, and be helpful for those people who need it most.

Finally the snow has come and the Christmas atmosphere in the Norwegian capital Oslo raise to great heights. What would a Christmas be in Oslo without snow? Few capitals have longer winter than Oslo. It's surrounded by forest, mountains and the fjord. Some of Norway's great winter sites are Voss, Beitostølen, Gålå, Wadahl, Geilo, Hemsedal, Kvitfjell, Hafjell, Lillehammer, Lofoten and Tromsø, but in the outskirts of Oslo city centre there are great opportunities for skiing too. Our photos today show the winter wonderland of Oslo in the Christmas preseason. Famous sites and building as Akershus Fortress, Aker Brygge waterfront, the City Council, the main street Karl Johans Gate, the Nobel Peace Prize Institute and the Royal Palace, look all mysterious in the magic sun light.

After marching for nearly a month the Team Rolf-Cecilie finally reached the Geographical South Pole! The wellknown Norwegian tour operator Hvitserk is organising this expedition. Nobody has ever gone to the South Pole using this route and the area is totally unexplored. There are no maps and no good satellite pictures of this area. The Norwegian lady climber Cecilie Skog has now reached another milestone in her life: reaching the South Pole, but this is not the end of her journey. Cecilie`s aim is also to reach the top of Mount Vinson before she returns to Norway in the end of January. This mountain is one of the Seven Summits. It's the tallest in Antarctic and for Cecilie it will be her sixth of the 7 Summits.

The World Tourism Organization forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 percent. By 2020 Europe will remain the most popular destination, but its share will drop from 60 percent in 1995 to 46 percent. Long-haul will grow slightly faster than intraregional travel and by 2020 its share will increase from 18 percent in 1995 to 24 percent.

Kerala in India is the land of red flags and neat school uniforms! Out of the mountain mist march tea workers, one waving a red flag, like a 1960s Chinese poster, except they are dressed in dhobis and head scarves and this is India 2005. Here in the highlands of Kerala, where neatly manicured tea bushes cover the hillsides in brilliant green, the hammer and sickle can be seen everywhere.

Reported by National Geographic, archaeologists uncovered 13 December 2005 the final section of the earliest known Maya mural ever found. The painting on the wall dates to 100 B.C. In addition to the mural, they found the oldest known Maya royal burial, dating to 150 B.C. The leader of this excavation project called San Bartolo is William Saturno. He is an archaeologist with the University of New Hampshire and the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The research has been supported by the National Geographic Society and is conducted with the Guatemalan Institute of Anthropology and History. What new brings the find to the Maya Indian`s history?

Hwo are the best national parks in USA and Canada? How are the famous national parks rated as Denali National Park & Preserve, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Redwood National and State Parks, Rocky Mountains National park and Grand Canyon National Park? As National Geographic writes on it`s website: If you visit a national park, you'll often spend plenty of time just outside the park, too—eating, sleeping, parking, shopping, sightseeing—in the town or region that geographers call the gateway. A park and its gateway are really a single destination, with similar history, scenery, and climate. The way park and gateway interact can make all the difference in the quality of your trip and in the sustainability of the destination. Read about the rating at National Geographic Traveller`s scoreboard! The winner is.....

It`s so fantastic standing on the top of the world - Mount Everest. It`s also fantastic viewing the mountains around, but as written about in an earlier article on our website, it`s also a big risk climbing this mountain. In the previous years around 500 climbers yearly have challenged Everest, including high altitude sherpas, and of course those climbers and sherpas need oxygen. In the article Oxygen on Everest - The highest death lab in the world, website ExplorersWeb writes about "sudden deaths" caused by lack of Oxygen. ExplorersWeb warns about the risk and give advise how to take precautions.