Fly Through Human Powered Sky Bike at Mashpi Lodge in Quito, Ecuador

Sky Bike is tucked away amongst the cloud forest in the protected 3,212-acre Mashpi Rainforest Biodiversity Reserve, around 3 hours northwest of Quito, in Ecuador, is Mashpi Lodge and a classy and contemporary lodge. You can described as a “luxury cocoon in the clouds”, Mashpi Lodge is perched 900 meters above sea level surrounded by magnificence rainforest crisscrossed with waterfalls between dramatic, verdant hills, and a profusion of plant species, from ferns and bromeliads to hundreds of orchid species, visible through its floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The Lodge, built with the latest techniques in sustainable building, is designed to blend beautifully with its surroundings that are inhabited by a staggering 500 species of bird, hundreds of amphibian and reptilian species, and animals such as monkeys, peccaries and even puma.

The slow pace bike let take the peoples to much more than you’d have streaming by on a zip line or bouncing along on the suspension bridges common to most canopy walks. But then pedaling up the last bit of the parabola reminding the powering the craft after all.  The wonders of sky bike will delight the worldliest nature lover surrounded by a profusion of plant species, from ferns and bromeliads to hundreds of orchid species, several newly-discovered. A staggering more than five hundred species of bird including some 36 endemics are likely to inhabit the forest, fluttering through the canopy.

It is situated close to the lodge is a Sky Bike that permits visitors to explore the beauty of forest canopy from above and through. The sky bike is dangled from a 656-foot cable car and it is stretched between two points in the forest crossing a gorge above a river at an insane height of 196 feet. Sky bike has the capacity of two people and one of them uses the pedal the push the bike along at leisure. The Sky Bike at Mashpi Lodge is similar to the Sky Cycle a pedal-powered roller coaster located in Washuzan Highland Amusement Park in Okayama city in Japan. The Sky Bike also lets tourists to view the wildlife up close on their terms. Animals are often less afraid and appear more tame when humans appear in unexpected places, which Masphi guests have been doing on the Sky Bike since 2012.

The current bike is the result of five prototypes inspired by an article in Popular Mechanics. One of the special things about the Sky Bike is that you control the pace of your excursion and can zoom through the forest for an exciting ride or take a more leisurely approach and admire the sights. With an offering like the Sky Bike, it’s no uncertainty that the Mashpi Lodge is itself a distinctive place. National Geographic even considers the glass-walled getaway.

The Kirstenbosch Centenary Tree Canopy Walkway in South Africa

Kirstenbosch is a world popular botanical garden and a special jewel for Capetonians and nature lovers alike. The stunning views, of flora and fauna, the paths and facilities are all of great quality and enjoyment. However, this is possible now to walk above the trees? The Kirstenbosch Centenary Tree Canopy Walkway in Cape Town is a raised walkway that allows visitors to view the forest and the trees the way a bird or a monkey might.

The canopy elegantly snakes its way along the treetops in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa. The striking walkway spreads a maximum height of 12 meters from the ground and only touches the ground twice. It has more than a few observation points from which visitors can relish the surrounding view, but it also descends among the tree canopy in a some places so that they can relish the foliage as well. Kirstenbosch is lovely and worth a visit. The "boomslang" is great, because it is unusual vantage point and the rather surreal feeling that comes with standing atop tree crowns that’s surely the raised boulevard’s greatest drawcard.

Well, you can look out for labels on the trees that document their family and common names as well as information boards along the path that provide details about the birds, animals and mountain peaks visible from the boardwalk. The good looking 427 feet walkway is open now and involves no extra charge, so if you’re ever in South Africa or plant to visit Cape town, then you should definitely consider paying the park a visit! Therefore the Botanical Society of SA has supported the project from the start. A number of similar projects were researched in other renowned botanical gardens such as Kew in London and Kings Park in Perth.

This project construction costs is almost R5 m are met entirely from bequests from many benefactors - in particular, R1m from the late Mary Mullins. The planning of the walkway started in 2012, and foundations were laid down in June 2013 and it was completed on 16 May and opened to the public on 17 May 2014.

Explore the World Largest Cave (Hang Son Doong)

Experience the world’s largest cave, Vitenam’s Hang Son Doong, from a quadcopter’s POV. The video was filmed by Ryan Deboodt near the entrance and the first and second dolines (skylights), which are 2.5 and 3.5 km inside the cave respectively. Ryan Deboodt used the following stuff: Canon 6D, Canon 16-35mm f4, DJI Phantom 2, GoPro Hero 4 Black. If you are really passionate about to learn more about the cave, there’s a great feature by National Geographic from 2011. In fact this is epic effort, and I’m sure you’d really enjoyed this video. Amazingly beautiful shot, our mother nature is extremely beautiful.  Thank you for your work!.

Hang Son Doong from Ryan Deboodt on Vimeo.

Blue Lagoon Galapagos Islands in Ecuador

The Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, around 906 kilometers (563 miles) west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part. The Galápagos Islands and their surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a biological marine reserve. The islands have a population of more over 25,000, and their main language is Spanish. These attractive islands are so popular for their huge number of endemic species and were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His deep observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

These impressively beautiful islands are found at the coordinate’s 1°40'N – 1°36'S, 89°16' – 92°01'W. Because straddling the equator, islands in the chain are situated in both the northern and southern hemispheres, with Volcán Wolf and Volcán Ecuador on Isla Isabela being directly on the equator. Española Island, the southernmost islet of the archipelago, and Darwin Island, the northernmost one, are range more than a distance of 220 kilometers. The IHO (International Hydrographic Organization) considers them wholly within the South Pacific Ocean, however. The Galápagos Archipelago consists of 7,880 kilometers of land spread over 45,000 kilometers of ocean. Moreover the largest of the islands, Isabela, measures 2,250 sq mi/5,827 kilometers and makes up close to three quarters of the total land area of the Galápagos. Volcán Wolf on Isabela is the highest point, with an elevation of 1,707 meters above sea level.

Moreover the group consists of 18 main islands, 3 smaller islands, and 107 rocks and islets. And these islands are located at the Galapagos Triple Junction. The archipelago is located on the Nazca Plate, which is moving east/southeast, diving under the South American Plate at a rate of about 2.5 inches per year. It is also atop the Galapagos hotspot, a place where the Earth's crust is being melted from below by a mantle plume, making volcanoes. It is projected that the first islands formed here at least 8 million and perhaps up to 90 million years ago. Though the older islands have disappeared below the sea as they’ve moved away from the mantle plume, the youngest islands, Isabela and Fernandina, are still being formed, with the most recent volcanic eruption in April 2009 where lava from the volcanic island Fernandina started flowing both towards the island's shoreline and into the center caldera.

The history tell us, that the first recorded visit to these islands occurred by chance in 1535, when the Bishop of Panamá Fray Tomás de Berlanga went to Peru to arbitrate in a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. De Berlanga was blown off course; however he ultimately returned to the Spanish Empire and described the conditions of the islands and the animals that inhabited them. Therefore the group of lovely islands was shown and named in Abraham Ortelius's atlas published in 1570. The first crude map of the islands was made in 1684 by the buccaneer Ambrose Cowley, who named the individual islands after some of his fellow pirates or after British royalty and noblemen. Though these names were used in the authoritative navigation charts of the islands organized during the Beagle survey under Captain Robert Fitzroy, and in Darwin's widespread book The Voyage of the Beagle. As the time passes, the new Republic of Ecuador took the islands from Spanish ownership in 1832, and afterward gave them official Spanish names. The older names remained in use in English language publications, including Herman Melville's The Encantadas of 1854.