chicago city pass

24 Şubat 2013 Pazar

Girl's Arizona Adventure: Fish Pedicure?

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Adventure girls who love to fish are trying something new this angling season: pedicures done by small, finned friends. Yes, stick your phalanges in the pedicure bath and LIVE fish eat away the dead skin between your toes, around your toenails or on your heels.

You won't be able to angle these fish from your local lake or reservoir. Nope, these tiny fish -- Garra Ruffa to be specific -- are imported from Turkey and look similar to the small fish you would see in your dentist's aquarium. Friendly, kind and persistent dry skin eaters. Yum!

Clients enjoy the relaxing "lip" massage and one adventure girl reported that even her husband commented on her soft feet after a Spa Fish Treatment.

Now we adventure girls have a new meaning to the sign posted "Gone Fishin'" on our office door.

Girls' Adventure Guide tip: In the Phoenix, AZ area, fisher women can get the specialty treatment and an Arizona Adventure all rolled into one at Spa Fish. Check out their monthly pedicure specials at Coupons.

Spa Fish / La Vie Nails & Spa
(NW Corner Ray & Val Vista Behind Discount Tire)
Mon. – Sat. 9:30AM - 7:00PM
Sunday 10AM – 5PM
1534 E. Ray Rd. Suite 117 , Gilbert, AZ 85296
(480) 899-9889
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Girls' Adventure Guide gives adventure travel tips and free travel advice to women of all ages. Don't miss your next girls adventure guide tip by subscribing or following this blog. Why wait? It's free, and only take 90 seconds. Faster than a fish pedicure...

Grand Canyon's only one-day whitewater trip

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One-day rafting trip in Grand Canyon of the Colorado River.

Most people don't know that a one-day whitewater trip is available in the Grand Canyon. Typically a Grand Canyon River trip is thought of as a seven-to-ten-day adventure available only to the rich and famous. However, the Hualapai Nation has opened access across tribal lands for those who would like to experience the wonder of rafting through the Grand Canyon but don't have the time ... or the moolah.

Hiking at Travertine Falls

The adventure includes ground transportation from the Hualapai Lodge in Peach Springs, Arizona -- located on Historic Route 66, whitewater raft trip to trail head for hike up to Travertine Falls, more rafting, lunch at a sandy beach and a helicopter ride out of the canyon to your connection with ground transportation that takes you back to Peach Springs.

Another girl's adventure! Out of the canyon by whirly bird!

I loved the remote canyon experience -- just look at the attached photos! Rafting available from March October. Make reservations at www.grandcanyonwest.com/rafting.php

Follow the only road to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the first leg of the adventure.

Brain Injury Association's YouTube Channel

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Visit the Brain Injury Association of Illinois channel on YouTube. You can find our channel at www.youtube.com/braininjuryhelp

You can view our educational film, "You Are Not Alone". This film is directed to the person who has been recently injured and to his family.

You can also view our camp film, "Making Headway with Brain Injury". This film features the song, "It's My Brain" written by Martin Bautista with input from all of our campers and support group members.

Our public service announcements, "The Bully" and "Crying Mia" can be seen on the channel.

23 Şubat 2013 Cumartesi

Tribes of the Amazon struggle to survive

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When Carl Marx and Fredrick Engels were writing on the proletariat they were dealing with people who had left the country side to work in cities. The workers spent too much time in the city to move back to the country side and try to etch out a living off the land, if they could get any. Once in a factory, they seemed welded to their machines, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.However there have been Native American Indian tribes in the Amazon, who never left their land. They live as if they are part of it and they live WITH nature. Large numbers of these people, still survive, preserving their culture. They never left their land for factories or any other slave labor that is so common to most people in Latin America today. They have often paid a high price for such resistance to the international corporate culture. Hundreds of thousands of these people have been killed off. Many have been run off their land by greedy loggers and others who strip the Amazon Jungle for its resources. Many of these Indians have been forcibly assimilated and dispersed in recent years. Some have been forced into slave labor such as working for the rubber companies.A recent article; “The Lost Tribes of the Amazon,” By Joshua Hammer for Smithsonian Magazine and reprinted in Yahoo! News, takes a hard look at the recent and present conditions of these traditional tribes. The article explains some of this by giving some history of these tribes mistreatment;“Then, around 1900, came the rubber boom. Based in the port of Iquitos, a Peruvian company, Casa Arana, controlled much of what is now the Colombian Amazon region. Company representatives operating along the Putumayo press-ganged tens of thousands of Indians to gather rubber, or caucho, and flogged, starved and murdered those who resisted. Before the trade died out completely in the 1930s, the Uitoto tribe’s population fell from 40,000 to 10,000; the Andoke Indians dropped from 10,000 to 300. Other groups simply ceased to exist.”This kind of treatment is not surprising since brutality and enslavement have been standard practice of the Latin American ruling class since the times of Spanish rule.The articles said that, in the last few decades, governments around the Amazon have set aside land and refuges for those Indians who remain. The article also said it they are not without problems;
“The reality, however, has fallen short of the promises. Conservation groups have criticized Peru for winking at “ecotourism” companies that take visitors to gape at isolated Indians. Last year, timber companies working illegally inside ManÃº National Park drove a group of isolated Mashco-Piro Indians from their forest sanctuary.

A dozen tourists sat on benches, while three elderly Indian women in traditional costume put on a desultory dance. “You have to sell yourself, make an exhibition of yourself. It’s not good,” (Franco, Danie)l Matapi—(an activist from Colombia’s Matapi and Yukuna tribes), muttered. Ticuna vendors beckoned us to tables covered with necklaces and other trinkets. In the 1960s, Colombia began luring the Ticuna from the jungle with schools and health clinics thrown up along the Amazon. But the population proved too large to sustain its subsistence agriculture-based economy. For far too many Amazon Indians, however, assimilation has brought only poverty, alcoholism, unemployment or utter dependence on tourism.”

This is not really surprising. The countries of Latin America have capitalist-feudalist economies which rely on rigidly controlled intensive labor. The Native American Indians have subsistence economies that are totally self sufficient. Latin America has been run by oligarchies that rely on slave and wage slave labor for their economies for the last few centuries. The Indians are completely outside the mainstream economy and they neither rely on nor contribute to it. This goes against the nature of any capitalist-feudalist government.This is not that different from the colonial era in Africa where Native Africans were enslaved by Europeans, forced to shed their cultures and forced to abandon subsistence farming. They had to learn to work for profit. Africans were often punished for not keeping up the work pace Europeans expected. Some were tortured. Some had their hands cut off for not working hard or fast enough. So the idea of corporate leaders tolerating people who are not enslaved to the ruling classes is hard for some of them to swallow. So far some of these Indians have survived and saved their cultures. With enough pressure, many give up and assimilate into the mainstream. Once they leave their knowledge about jungle life, their languages and any medical secrets they know are lost permanently. This is the situation that early Marxists did not have to deal with. But Mao Zedong and other anti-imperialist leaders did. Modern Maoists, such as the Communist Party of India Maoist, work with tribal groups and defends their rights. - ážŸáž�ិážœ áž¢áž�ុ

All-Gals River Trip Insider's Tips

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Last week while in Phoenix and Scottsdale for a fantastic Girls Getaway, I asked one of our hosts, Seth Heald of ARIZONA OUTBACK ADVENTURES for some insider secrets for a great Grand Canyon river trip. Seth, president of AOA is a veteran river runner.

"Do you want to know the REAL advice? Even if it is a bit gross?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, I want it all. Give it to me," I challenged.
"OK then. You are going to be sitting on a plastic seat for seven days. You're going to be wet most of the time," he said alluding to ailments that might affect the bottom side. I think he said get a C-cream. "You might not need it, but if you do, you'll be happy you brought it along."

"I should have written it down," I thought as I perused the huge pharmacy aisle. In preparation for our upcoming river trip, I went into Flagstaff, AZ today to procure "butt balm" and waterproof band-aids."Should I get PreparationH?" I couldn't find any C-cream. Or was it Sea-Cream?
I was hoping that no one would come and ask if I needed help.I finally found Cortisone cream. It was half the price of the H-cream, so that settled it for me.

Band-Aid now makes a clear, WATER BLOCK PLUS bandage. They're supposed to give 100% waterproof protection. I guess we'll find out as we float down the river next week.

Girls Adventure Guide Tip: For extended river trips, bring along cortisone cream for any rash that might appear on your bottom side. It will also work on cracked heels if the sun and water do a number on your feet.

There is still room available on the 9-9-9 All "Girls" river trip. Call Joy or Cheryl at Canyoneers at 928-526-0924.
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Girls Adventure Guide offers adventure travel tips and Girls Getaway ideas for increasing your travel fun quotient.

Sedona's Seven Secrets

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Sedona, AZ -- Enter the Red Rock country of Sedona and you will feel a sense of adventure radiating from those terra-cotta colored walls. Walk along paths that are wearing into sandstone ledges and you know you are experiencing a place that has long been inhabited.

Natural light and cool breezes make this secret place a natural respite from the hot Arizona desert.

Yesterday photographer Charles Bame and I spent several hours photographing and writing about one of Sedona's secret places. Do you recognize it in the photo above? Probably not, since it is hidden away inside thick sandstone walls. It is not a far hike from downtown Sedona. Leave a comment below if you know this secret place.

Canyon Adventure
Watch for all seven secrets to be revealed on Girls' Adventure Guide website, and soon in a new book that you can order online. Don't forget to subscribe to this website in the right-hand column.
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Girls' Adventure Guide is written by Arizona travel writer Stacey Wittig. Share your own girls adventure travels by leaving comments. Follow Girls' Adventure Guide for free adventure travel tips and travel deals.

Girl's Arizona Adventure: Fish Pedicure?

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