surfing the south pacific

If you were as cool as me this past weekend you would have been staying in on Saturday night, sprawled on the sofa doing a bit of channel surfing on the TV. And if you were blessed with the luck I have, you would have stumbled across a repeat of BBC’s nature documentary on the South Pacific. Whilst it was lacking the ever crucial narration by David Attenborough, the content of this documentary was simply amazing and the camera shots were just out of this world. Similar to Planet Earth, South Pacific focuses on everything and anything to do with, well, the South Pacific Ocean and the episode I caught took me to all those tiny islands I could never find on the map giving an insight to tribal life, animals and sea life. Absolutely brilliant.

Check out this amazing super slow motion clip of surfing the south pacific

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skywalker

We at Black Tomato consider ourselves fearless in terms of finding new experiences to make your travel plans a bit more exciting. However, after watching Daredevils on Channel 4 last night we’re all suffering from a bit of vertigo today.

If you didn’t manage to catch the programme, it followed Dean Potter and his attempt to walk across a slack-line, unaided over a 3,000 feet drop in Yosemite National Park (imagine a huge length of rope tied between two rocks and you get the picture). Dean is one of the most famous extreme slack-liners in the world, and the only one to attempt to cross these ropes at such a high altitude without a pole (used for balance) or any kind of safety equipment.

There are echoes of Man on Wire with this breathtaking feat. Dean doesn’t have the Gallic flair of the enigmatic Frenchman, Philippe Petit, who crossed the twin towers of the World Trade Centre on a high wire, but he has an inherent likeability stemming from his quiet and understated nature on camera.

What really sets his crossing apart from the Frenchman’s is the mental strength he exhibits in attempting to carry out the walk totally unaided. That, combined with amazing views of the valley floor, over 3,000 feet below him make this an unmissable spectacle (to put this into perspective the drop would fit both of the former World Trade Centre twin towers stacked on top of each other with room to spare).

If you want to follow in Dean’s footsteps we can recommend our Heavenly Landscapes trip to Patagonia, Chile. Dean was himself the first ever climber to free solo climb (without ropes or assistance) two of the most challenging routes in Patagonia, and you can explore the area from the truly unique and wonderful Hotel Remota in Puerto Natales, the geographical and cultural heart of Chilean Patagonia. The Hotel Remota is 93 miles from the Torres del Paine national park and must rank as one of the most striking locations of any hotel in the world.

You can catch a replay of Skywalker in full on 4oD and we wholeheartedly recommend it (but not for the faint hearted though).

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