Tag Archives | Adventure

Explorer Rory Nugent on The DisinfoCast with Matt Staggs

By on June 27, 2012 in News, Podcasts 2

Rory Nugent | The DisinfoCast with Matt Staggs: Episode 13

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It’s Lucky Episode 13 for The DisinfoCast, and to bring a little perspective to what it means to have “bad luck,” adventurer and writer Rory Nugent opens up the show with his true account of being lost at sea for five days with nothing but a couple of candy bars and his own urine to drink. After an experience like that no one would have blamed Nugent if he never left his home again, but instead he took off for India in search for a rare pink-headed duck and then to the Congo to find Mokele-Mbembe, the legendary last dinosaur. After you’re done with the show, visit Rory and learn more about his books (The Search for the Pink Headed Dinosaur, Drums Along the Congo, Down at the Docks) at www.rorynugent.com.

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Theme Park Offers Experience Of An Illegal Border Crossing

By on June 14, 2012 in News 1

The undisputed highlight of Parque EcoAlberto, a nature and water park located in formerly sleepy El Alberto, Mexico, is an immersive experience called the “Caminata Nocturna” simulating the clandestine crossing of the U.S. border. The grueling adventure lasts up to eight hours and involves a journey through “mud, tunnels, canyons, poisonous plants, snakes, and spiders”, with actors appearing as “coyote” human traffickers and U.S. border patrol agents. EcoAlberto has been accused of belittling the deadly perils faced by actual migrants, but perhaps deserve credit for offering a window into this world:

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Vice’s Hamilton Morris Interviewed on Hallucinogenic Fish

By on April 28, 2012 in News 6

Shiny FishVia Technoccult:

In 2006 two men cooked and ate a fish which they had caught in the Western Mediterranean. Minutes after ingesting the fish frightening visual and auditory hallucinations began to overcome them. These intense visions lasted 36 hours. The fish they had caught was a Sarpa Salpa. A species of Sea Bream which is commonly found off the coast of South Africa and Malta and can induce icthyoallyeinotoxism, a condition also known as hallucinogenic fish poisoning.

I recently learned that Vice columnist Hamilton Morris is assembling a team to capture and analyze a live sample of Sarpa Salpa. Morris is a writer and filmmaker and expert in anything psychoactive. In his column for Vice, Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, he mixes his subjective experiences with insights into pharmacology, neurology and chemistry. In one column he traveled to the Amazonian jungle to have the secretions of a “shamanic” frog burnt into his arm.

… Read the rest

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Cryptotourism: On The Trail Of A 40-Foot Anaconda

By on March 1, 2011 in News 2
A common anaconda. Photo: he (CC)

A common (non-giant) anaconda. Photo: he (CC)

Joshua Foer of Slate.com reports:

PACAYA SAMIRIA, Peru—Of all the crazy mythical creatures that starry-eyed monster hunters have gone in search of—the Yeti, Sasquatch, Nessie, the chupacabra—South America’s giant anaconda would seem to be the least implausible. None of the Amazon’s early explorers dared emerge from the forest without a harrowing tale of a face-to-face encounter with a humongous snake. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was practically a requirement of the jungle adventure genre. English explorer Percy Fawcett (of Lost City of Z fame) reportedly shot a 62-foot anaconda in 1907 while on a surveying mission in western Brazil. Cândido Rondon, who led Teddy Roosevelt’s famous journey down the River of Doubt, claimed to have measured a 38-footer “in the flesh.” In 1933, a 100-foot serpent was said to have been machine-gunned by officials from the Brazil-Colombia Boundary Commission. According to witnesses, four men together couldn’t lift its head.

… Read the rest

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