Top 10 Best Winter Trips 2012 #Part1

Winter doesn't have to mean long months indoors. Our editors have chosen ten trips that will have you gearing up for adventure or joining in local festivities—warm- and cold-weather travel that's sure to cure the winter blues. Do you have a favorite winter destination? Share it with fellow travelers below.

1. Petra and Wadi Rum, Jordan

Photograph by Gabriele Croppi, SIME

Built by nomadic Nabataeans two millennia ago, rose-red Petra is a “lost” city well worth finding. The ancient commercial crossroads chiseled from bedrock cliffs is situated between the Red and Dead Seas, about a hundred miles north of King Hussein International Airport. Follow the 3,300-foot-long, serpentine entry path—the Siq—through towering sandstone walls to Al-Khazne (the Treasury). The elaborately carved, 13-story tomb served as the final resting place of the Holy Grail in the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Explore empty caves, visit the archeological and Nabataean museums, and hike 800 steps up to the top of Al-Dier (the Monastery). From Petra, head south to Wadi Rum (“Valley of the Moon”), the desert valley setting for Lawrence of Arabia, where local Bedouin guides lead rock-climbing treks, canyon hikes, jeep tours, and horseback and camel rides. Highlights include the Red Sand Dunes and the spectacular Seven Pillars of Wisdom rock formation, the latter named for T.E. Lawrence’s autobiography. End the day sleeping under the stars at one of the area’s Bedouin-style desert tourist camps.

2. Lake Placid, New York

Photograph by Dave Schmidt Photography

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics are two years away, but the games are on—and accessible to all ages and fitness levels—at the Olympic venues in New York’s world-renowned Adirondack resort village. Host of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, Lake Placid offers visitors the opportunity to zip down an icy bobsled run with a professional driver and brakeman, blend cross-country skiing and riflery skills in a “Be a Biathlete” lesson, and speed skate on the same Olympic Oval where legendary U.S. Olympian Eric Heiden won an unprecedented five gold medals in 1980. Parents and kids can experience what it’s like to be an Olympic athlete in the Gold Medal Games Family Edition. The friendly competition begins with a torch run and ends with a medal ceremony. Events include a skiing/snowboarding race at Whiteface Mountain, curling and hockey slap shot contests at the Olympic Center, and biathlon target shooting at the Olympic Sports Complex. From February 18 to 26, watch the fastest athletes on ice compete in the 2012 Bobsled and Skeleton World Championships.

3. Cuba

Photograph by The New York Times/Redux

A 2011 Treasury Department travel policy change gives United States citizens participating in government-sanctioned “people-to-people” group tours the chance to once again watch the torcedores, or cigar rollers, at Havana’s legendary Partagás cigar factory; stroll the Parisian-style boulevards of Cienfuegos; and tour Cojímar, the seaside setting for Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Old Man and the Sea. Only specially licensed operators, including National Geographic, can lead cultural exchange excursions from the U.S. to Cuba. Previous visits to the communist island nation were limited by U.S. embargo to those with family members in Cuba. People-to-people trips don’t require family ties, but do entail a daily slate of educational activities (no lounging poolside at luxury villas) such as touring the baroque Catedral de San Cristóbal de La Habana and exploring the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Old Havana and Trinidad and the Valley de los Ingenios with local preservationists. Tours often are tailored to fit specific educational interest areas, such as Afro-Cuban culture and cuisine, photography and film, or music and dance.

4. Namibian Coast

Photograph by George Steinmetz, National Geographic

Shifting dunes, eerie shipwrecks, and a diverse array of migratory and seabirds draw ornithologists and adventure seekers to Namibia’s rugged 976-mile South Atlantic coast. November to April is summer here, where the ancient Namib Desert meets the cool Benguela current. Days are cool, damp, and foggy, but mainly dry. From the seaside tourist hub Swakopmund, take a fly-in safari to view sand-encased shipwrecks and whale skeletons along remote Skeleton Coast National Park, or join a guided tour of Sandwich Harbour lagoon, an isolated marine sanctuary sheltered by towering sand dunes. Easy day trips include sand boarding in the dunes and visiting Walvis Bay lagoon, home to thousands of greater and lesser flamingos. From the bay, kayak out among the dolphins to the seal colonies at Pelican Point. Namibia’s newest—and largely inaccessible—national park, Sperrgebiet (“forbidden territory”) encompasses 5.4 million acres of the southern Diamond Coast including the famous De Beers diamond-mining lease. Limited, permit-only guided tours are available to specific park sites like the dramatic, 180-foot-tall rock arch at Bogenfels.

5. Chiapas, Mexico

Photograph by Michael and Jennifer Lewis, National Geographic

Hidden within Mexico’s southernmost state are mist-shrouded jungles, volcanic mountains, thriving indigenous communities, and spectacular Maya ruins. Chiapas is home to the Pre-Hispanic City and National Park of Palenque, built by the Maya between A.D. 200 and 600. Highlights of the World Heritage site include the rambling Palace—Palenque’s largest complex—and the Temple of the Inscriptions pyramid, housing the crypt of Pakal the Great. In Chiapas’ cultural capital, Spanish colonial San Cristóbal de las Casas, stroll the narrow cobblestone streets and book a guided tour of neighboring Maya-speaking Tzotzil Indian villages, including San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán, famous for traditional woolen garments woven on rustic back-strap looms. Winter ushers in the dry season and annual coffee bean harvest. Several organic coffee farms along the La Ruta del Café, a geotourism project in southwestern Chiapas, offer tours, hands-on activities, and lodging. Join the harvest at family-run Argovia Finca Resort, located under the jungle canopy near the Guatemalan border. Source Article

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