Hiking up a Guatemalan volcano to roast marshmallows on the radiant heat from flowing lava? I’d say that’s pretty adventurous.

Four-wheel driving across the Atacama Desert, sleeping in minus twenty degree temperatures, and coming close to death at the El Tatio Geysers (by nearly slipping into a geyser)? Yep, adventure would be a good description (okay, there may have been a bit of plain old stupidity at play there too).

Hiking the southern circuit of Cathedral Range, wearing a school dress and pigtails… If that’s not adventure, I don’t know what is.

Then there’s the whole experience of hiking with the kidlets, even when it’s a hike you’ve done a bunch of times before. The opportunity to see the natural world through their eyes, and the inherent unpredictability of kids, makes for a very adventurous time.

The thing is, adventure is all in the way you choose to look at things…

You can stay at home where it’s safe and watch TV. Or you can explore, find what lies outside your comfort zone and see where it takes you.

You can be a loner, or you can build close relationships and take the risk of getting burned.

You can wake up every morning and think “here we go again”, or you can be filled with wonder as to what the day will bring.

Life is an adventure, if you make it one.

 

This is an entry for Southern Cross Travel Insurance’s photo competition for bloggers. The challenge is to create a collage of 3 to 10 photos and write 200 to 250 words on the subject of “What does adventure mean to you?”, then nominate two other bloggers who might like to take part, and share the competition page. I’m nominating Greg from Hiking Fiasco, and Linda from Eco Traveller.

 

So what does adventure mean to you? Let us know in the comments section below, and feel free to post a collage of your own (unless you’ve got a blog, in which case you should probably enter the competition).