Walking Travel

Even the most casual walker can step out the door of a luxury hotel onto a palm-lined beach to search for conch shells and hermit crabs, pass through the center of a busy and historically-rich port town, then enter a cactus and boulder-strewn landscape. From there, you can walk among stalks of sugarcane, or up the slopes of a lush volcanic mountain to discover crashing waterfalls and thousands of tropical flowers. All of these delights can be experienced in less than an hour's walk from major towns and tourist spots.

Crater Lake National Park is a rare place of ineffable, distracting beauty. Its lake - Crater Lake - is remarkable. It is the deepest lake in the United States and the deepest volcanic lake in the world. The lake formed when Mount Mazama (one of the many ancient volcanic peaks that dot the landscape like a string of pearls stretching from British Columbia to Northern California) exploded in a violent eruption about 7,700 years ago.