 Looking for Expedition Travel info
In article <9428c6a7.0411302358.93c14d9@com> ,
Quiet Voice <voice_of_reason@australia.edu> wrote:
>> UREP:
>> University of California, University Research Expeditions Program.
>> And others.
>>
>> Try better searching.
>
>Okay, so what keywords did you use....and which search engine?
Well for you, to find their web page search on UREP.
That's a reasonably unique acronym.
I mostly use google, but that's a work issue (I also used it at
Stanford when it there as a research project which I was assigned to
watch from a distance and was also called backrub). But I knew about
UREP quite some time ago (long before search engines in the early 80s).
Other engines should work.
I've heard Earth watch also does similar funding and work.
>> >The organization I'm looking for is one that apparently matches
>> >applicants with colleges or other groups that are planning
>> >archeologicial, palentological, botanical and other such research
>> >expeditions. You sign on as essentially "unskilled labor" to help out
>> >the group.
>>
>> On the high end, it's largely friends and word of mouth.
>> The greater the technical requirement the less likely you will hear of
>> the requirements.
>
>Guess I'm not sure what you mean by "on the high end...."
Well let's see, I've been on one 3 month Antarctic drilling expedition,
4 seasons on the arctic slope picking weeds on an LTER experiment.
I am training co-workers for their potential future Antarctic trips
as well as Arctic trips. Next year, I have options on data collection
and sampling trips to Kili in Africa, the highest lake on the
Bol./Chilean border, as well as the usual North Slope trip.
>What I had heard of was an actual commercial organization that placed
>people onto expeditions as a form of vacation travel. But it wasn't
>the set-up "adventure tourism" of the sites that I've found so far
>(which thus far have all been essentially "tour" packages that
>pretended to be expeditions).
Well collecting strangers yields mixed results.
It's generally not a good idea due to a lack of skill mix.
In my case whereas I didn't start out knowing much glaciology or
botany, I did have outdoor experiences with my friends for them to
invite me on ther research trips. When your name gets circulated
as a reliable person to invite you won't have to worry.
Read the UREP brouchure. The money the people who attend funds the
expedition's basic research. I've not yet convinced my friends
(they remain skeptical) to use UREP volunteers, but my friends grab
recent grads (between undergrad and grad) volunteers (paid)
and they have no shortage. So many different programs exist out there,
you have to ask about (between) the competition.
Pelton's dangerous place's travel guide has a section on expeditions.
My copy is home. But expeditions tend to be assembled by people who
have some experience with each other to see how people hold up under
pressure and stress (it's not all gravy).
Boyd Everett, before he was killed in Nepal a few decades ago, also
wrote a book on big climbing expeditions, so references are out there.
But a lot of it is about self-sufficiency and rolling your own
(a polite way to say "If you have to ask, ...").
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