CANOEING
If you want to get well away from roads, vehicles, the combustion engine in general, rivers are one of the best transport routes to follow. With a good strong flow helping you along you also don't need to be frantically paddling the whole time. You're there to steer a good course, take in the scenery and wildlife around you and before you know it you'll have travelled 6 or 7 miles in a morning with relative ease.
It's surprising how close you can get to birdlife (and bigger mammals) when you become part of the river flow. Kingfishers, egrets, bee-eaters on the banks of the Zambezi remain perched on branches as you drift past just yards from them. Those pioneers of the 'great outdoors' and the people who put their name to the open canoe design, the Canadians, don't believe you've explored their vast wilderness country until you've spent a few days paddling down the Mackenzie, Skeena or Clearwater rivers.
With some of the world's top river guides to lead you down the world's spectacular waterways you'll be safe hands whenever you come across fast water rapids, pods of hippo or filling you in with local river folklore.
At the end of a days paddling, there are few more rewarding feelings than sitting on the banks of the river with a cold beer, looking at a local map of the river course you've negotiated that day, feeling healthy, exercised and well deserving of a good steak on the camp fire - you could be in Africa, North America or Australia..... it doesn't really matter - you're on the river, that's what counts.