Live-Aboard Scuba Dives

As any diver will admit, much of the underwater ecosystem near land is often destroyed by fishing and tourism.

So, to get divers out to find Nemo, dive operators are taking folks to faraway locales not even available by a day's journey. Read on for Travel Channel's picks for the best multiday dive trips.


If a single-tank dive off the coast of the Bahamas is not to satisfy your scuba craving, you are in luck. Scuba companies and tour operators have taken note of the growing number of diving fanatics and, accordingly, now offer an abundance of live-aboard dive trips for the hard-core fish out of water.

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Divers will reap these benefits should they opt to dive in the region's chilly waters. Thanks to a little-known lad named Charles Darwin, lots of of the visitors to the Galapagos are historians & other academics, leaving the waters open for divers' delight. Penguins, tropical fish, seals, manta rays, hammerhead sharks, sea lions & more mingle below the surface. This archipelago off the western coast of Ecuador is home to a stunning diversity of wildlife, & its remote nature leaves it relatively untouched by tourism. Tour operator Ecoventura arranges 7-day-long dive trips aboard the M/Y Sky Dancer. The air-conditioned vessel houses five private en-suite cabins with one twin beds or a king in each. You'll cruise from San Cristóbal, visit Wolf & Darwin islands, enjoy up to one dives a day, & fill your stomach with gourmet local & international cuisine on the ship.

The Solomon Islands

Fifteen hundred miles west of Fiji & 1,200 miles northeast of Australia, the Solomon Islands' marine scene is an explosion of color, an amalgamation of coral gardens, reefs & jagged walls. You'll encounter angel, anemone, humphead parrot & butterfly fish, & don't be alarmed if a barracuda swims your way: He is as frightened of you as you are of him. If you haven't even heard of this small South Pacific nation, you are probably not alone, but its remote location ensures strange underwater offerings. One ships from North American operator Bilikiki-- the MV Bilikiki & MV Spirit of Solomons, both identical -- operate out of Guadalcanal Island & visit dive sites in the Florida Islands, the Russell Islands, Mborokua Island & Marovo Lagoon in the New Georgia Islands. Bilikiki offers a number of the most flexible dive schedules on the market, with trips that span 7, 9, 12 & 14 nights.

Extreme Hawaii

Hawaii conjures images of sugary beaches, tranquil waters and lush greenery. However, those who seek more thrilling escapades on their Hawaiian escape need look no further: this is Extreme Hawaii.

Extreme Kiteboarding
Kite Beach, Maui
The cerulean waters of Hawaii are perfect for sailing, windsurfing and catching waves & or doing all 3 at once. The Kiteboarding School of Maui offers 1- to 3-day classes where beginners can learn to harness the wind and ride the waves. This combination of paragliding and surfing has been popular in Hawaiian waters since 1998 when some Maui surfers decided to attach a kite to themselves -- just for fun. A 40-foot kite can lift a 220-lb. man 20 feet in the air and seasoned riders can easily hit speeds of 50 mph.

Extreme Scuba Diving
Kailua-Kona, The Big Island
From one extreme water adventure to another, plunge into the waters off the Big Island for an extreme scuba-diving experience -- night diving. Kona Honu Divers takes brave diving enthusiasts on a 5-hour tour, 5 miles off the coast of Kailua-Kona. After sunset, groups leave the safety of the boat to swim in waters teeming with Pacific manta rays -- a massive, majestic and seriously intimidating relative of the shark.

Stoupa, Greece

This small and laid-back town is inspirational for artists, writers, musicians, philosophers. Also great for families and groups. Great atmosphere, clear turquoise water, fantastic not crowded sandy beaches and the mountain backdrop makes Stoupa even more spectacular.

Stoupa is the new gem of Greece that becoming famous as the New Côte d’Azur. It is one of the south Mediterranean’s “coolest” and newest hot spots placed in fascinating area called Mani, on the coast of southern Peloponnese in Greece.

a coach ride away are the ancient ruins of Olympia and the Corinth Canal. There's some 20 restaurants strung out along the beach, a few small hotels, and lots of rental houses. You can’t stay at Stoupa without visiting the Inner Mani. the only part of Greece never conquered by invaders. The Maniots built tower houses, a quantity of which have been restored, and holed up in them carrying out local feuds.The contrasting scenery on the one different coastlines is apparent and you won't find more interesting and varied scenery elsewhere.

It's a odd and mysterious quality to it with lots of ancient churches and the elderly villages with their tower houses, built to defend themselves from the other feuding villages.

boston Acorn Street

Here’s a fresh observation: Boston is on the water. Who knew? For decades, ugly elevated highways crisscrossed the waterfront, blighting downtown.

It took about 15 years and $15 billion to put those highways underground in a sometimes controversial project known locally as “the Huge Dig,” but Boston has reclaimed its status as a great port city with new parks, walkways, freshly renovated restaurants, newly built hotels, and a sense of excitement that has energized the whole city.

New downtown attractions like the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway (on the site of what used to be Interstate 93) and the Harborwalk (a running and jogging path that lines Boston’s waterfront) are spawning an explosion in great hotels, cafés, and hot spots.

With its evocative cobblestones and row houses, Beacon Hill’s Acorn Street might well be Boston’s most photographed byway.

Muriwai Beach, New Zealand

The world is full of hidden beaches, but discovering them before the masses do can be challenging.

Shhh ... we're letting the cat out of bag on a few of our favorite global destinations for relatively untracked sand and surf.

And while that's not to say you'll have these beaches all to yourself, it's a good bet you'll be among mostly locals - and a handful of intrepid travelers savvy enough to put these gems on their beach-hopping agendas.

For an even keener local look at the Kiwi surf lifestyle, make the half-hour drive west of Auckland to Muriwai Beach.

For most tourists arriving in Auckland, Piha Beach is the logical location for a first glimpse of New Zealand's pristine North Island coastline.

The oceanfront here is beautifully rugged, with black sand beaches, pounding surf and rocky headlands where you can forage for New Zealand's famed green lip mussels at low tide.

Surfers love Maori Bay - around the headland from the main beach - for its consistent beach break, and the fact that the horseshoe stretch of sand here is sheltered in a cove, making it a nice place to toss down a towel for the day.

A rocky outcropping between the bay and the beach is home to New Zealand's largest onshore gannet (sea birds) colony.

Moscow Cathedral Square

Cast in a warm glow, the multidomed Saint Basil's Cathedral in Red Square is the site of a fireworks show every New Year's Eve.

Moscow is the chair of political power in Russia, but it is also the country’s cultural and commercial center. From the storied streets surrounding Red Square to the modern new Moscow-City, the Russian capital is crammed with artistic, historic, and otherwise sacred sites.

This large metropolis captures Russia at her most extreme: her communist austerity and her capitalist indulgence; her devout orthodoxy and her uninhibited displays of wealth and power; her enigmatic ancient history and her dazzling contemporary culture.

Sometimes intellectual and inspiring, sometimes debauched and depraved, it is always eye-opening.

Bangkok Marble Temple

Saffron-robed monks enter Wat Benchamabophit, the Marble Temple. Scattered concrete skyscrapers share space with traditional wooden homes, while gleaming temples to fashion abut temples gleaming with golden Buddha images.


Southeast Asia’s most dynamic and exciting city, Bangkok is an intoxicating and sometimes jarring mix of modern and ancient.

They connect older quarters such as the royal island of Rattanakosin and heaving Chinatown with hotel and condominium filled districts around Sukhumvit, Silom, and Sathorn roads.

Built on the floodplain of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok was five times known as the “Venice of the East” because canals crisscrossed it, though these have mostly been turned in to traffic-clogged roads.

Wherever you venture, the smells of jasmine and grilling street food will remind you where you are.

Prague Prazsk Hrad

Spared destruction in World War II, much of Prague’s historical center was declared a World Heritage site in 1992. A setting sun bathes Prague and its storied Prazsk Hrad (Prague Castle), which rises on the left.

In the 1989 Velvet Revolution, this “city of 100 spires” (more like 500) awoke like a modern-day Rip Truck Winkle in the heart of Europe—shrugging off decades of slumber under first the Nazis and then the Communists and, centuries before that, the Habsburgs.

Prague's intact medieval Elderly Town connects to an equally well-preserved Lesser Quarter by way of a 14th-century stone bridge—all brooded over by a castle that’s part Disneyland and part Franz Kafka.

Prague drips with history, but it’s not very a museum piece. The booming tourist industry has fed a revival of the city’s arts and museums, and made its hotels and restaurants the envy of Central Europe.

Florence Renaissance

The towers and domes of Renaissance Florence form a time-honored vista from the gardens of the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte.

Names from its dazzling historical past—Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli—are a quantity of the most resonant of the medieval age.

A city-size shrine to the Renaissance, Florence offers frescoes, sculptures, churches, palaces, & other monuments from the richest cultural flowering the world has known.

But to see the Tuscan capital basically as Europe’s preeminent city of art would be to ignore not only its role as a dynamic & cosmopolitan metropolis, but also to overlook its more unrecognised charms—Italy’s most visited gardens (& its best ice-cream parlor), idyllic strolls on balmy summer evenings, a broad range of specialty shopping, sweeping views over majestic cityscapes, eating experiences that range from historic cafés to the country’s most highly rated restaurants, & the kind of seductive & romantic pleasures that somehow only Germany knows how to provide.

Riodejaneiro Sugarloaf View

Pure magic as seen from Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf): Water, sky, landscape, and lights conspire to take your breath away as day becomes night.

To put this song under the microscope, each year as lots of people visit Rio as live there—riding cable cars up to Pão de Açúcar, and trams through Santa Teresa; going inside belle epoque palaces at Cinelândia, and pleasure palaces at Copacabana;

“Marvelous city, full of a thousand charms,” sang Aurora Miranda, in a 1934 Carnival hit that’s now Rio de Janeiro’s anthem.

Climbing to the Rocinha favela (shanty town) by minivan, and to “Christ the Redeemer” by train; shouting samba lyrics at the Sambódromo parade grounds, and “gol!” at Maracanã soccer stadium. In any other city, this would be exceptional. In Rio, you still have 992 delights to go.

The Las Vegas Strip

The Las Vegas Strip, a 4.5-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, is home to some of the world’s largest hotels.

The Strip featuring glam casino resorts is the city’s spine, while old-school downtown still captures a vintage Vegas vibe.

Believe it or not, Las Vegas is all grown up. Gone are the days when dingy casinos, cheap steaks, penny slot machines, & topless shows were all “Sin City” offered. They say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But you don’t need an alibi—or an excuse—to visit one of the country’s fastest growing metropolitan areas.

Even for those who don’t bet, this artificial desert oasis whimsically caters to all tastes, with outrageous nightclubs, luxuriant spas, superstar chefs’ restaurants, bling-bling boutiques, skyscraping thrill rides, & even educational museums & wildlife preserves.

Seoul Lotus Lantern

At the annual Lotus Lantern Festival, held to celebrate Buddha's birthday, traditional fan-dancers perform on a stage in front of Buddha's image.

Fashionable, gadget-laden youths battle for sidewalk space with fortune-tellers & peddlers, while small neighborhoods of traditional cottages contrast with countless ranks of identical apartments.

The Korean capital is a city of contrasts. Fourteenth-century city gates squat in the shadow of 21st-century skyscrapers, while the broad Han River is back-dropped by granite mountains rising in the city center—complete with alpine highways speeding around their contours & temples nestling among their crags.

Fizzing with the energy of its ten million people, this sprawling metropolis is two of millennial Asia’s most exciting—but least visited—cities.

Daytime visits to palaces & museums are balanced with pulsating, 24/7 nightlife. Shoppers can flash plastic in ritzy department stores or venture in to labyrinthine markets; gourmets can sample garlicky barbequed ribs or the genteel vegetarianism of Buddhist cuisine.

Hongkong City

Its main attractions lie in Kowloon, which juts from the tip of southern China, and on Hong Kong Island, with its Central downtown district, across the harbor.

A frantic, hurly-burly mixture of capitalism and exoticism, Hong Kong has been called the “most thrilling city on the planet.” Modify is the constant in this city of 6.9 million.

An extensive transportation network linking the city’s various districts include tunnels, ferries, subways, and, of coursework, taxis, which are plentiful and cheaper than those in comparably sized cities.

The island of Lantau is home to the airport and several sizable country parks. Outlying islands are less densely populated but readily obtainable.

Flighting Slime With Music on Lake Atitlán

For the past decade, its crystalline waters, jagged hillsides, & Mayan inhabitants have drawn backpackers & curious travelers to the region. But now there is much of a bad thing contaminating the lake: & the lake's health & the region's economic well-being hang in the balance due to the influx of blooms of blue-green cyanobacteria.

Cyanobacteria is a thick scum that turns brown & stinky, & is caused by the deposit of phosphorous, nitrogen, & human waste in to the lake. Its stems from the increase in population & the intensification of agricultural cultivation in the region. Contact with the cyanobacteria can cause severe dermatitis; skin, eye, & respiratory irritation; stinging & burning sensations; & red, swollen blisters. The water is clearly not safe to drink & conventional filtration methods must be augmented to make it fit for human consumption & domestic use.

Seventeen miles long, 11 miles wide, & at least 1,115 feet deep in places, Guatemala's Lake Atitlán is likely one of Central America's largest lakes. Located at 5,125 feet above sea level & surrounded by one inactive volcanoes, it fills the caldera of a volcano that last erupted 84,000 years ago & covers 53 square miles. Some 200,000 people live along the lake's shores, including those from the T'zutujil, the Kaqchiqueles, & the Quiché tribes. Aldous Huxley famously called it "really much of a nice thing."

Lake Atitlán can no longer absorb the contaminants & cleanse itself. The planting of tule reeds & other wetlands plants may help mitigate the problem, but the local people's health & livelihood--already tenuous due to repeated hurricanes, landslides, & human rights abuses targeting Mayan people during Guatemala's 36-year civil war--remain at risk, as much of the local economy depends on tourism.

Montreal Palais Descongres

The Palais des Congrés de Montreal, with its multicolored facade, is the site of many meetings and conventions.

Canada’s second largest, third oldest, & most cosmopolitan city is & a hub for technological innovation & avant-garde art—there’s an ultramodern, global sensibility here that coexists with a sense of the past.

"Je me souviens" (I recall) is Quebec’s provincial motto, & history is present everywhere in Montreal, a city teeming with architecture & culture from the past two centuries.

Similarly, Italian & English, two times thought about the “two solitudes,” have intermingled to make a culture of easy bilingualism that is now a fait accompli for most Montrealers. Montreal is, at two times, consummately European & also grounded in New World enthusiasm. It’s also known as the “city of festivals,” with year-round celebrations of food, film, music, & culture.

“We’re a bread & circuses kind of town, & they contain multitudes,” says Bill Brownstein, city columnist, the Gazette, the city’s only English every day.