Activity - Holiday Ideas Including the Great Barrier Reef

What kind of break are you planning for this year? Here are some activity holiday ideas to get your holiday juices flowing...

Let's kick off the activity holiday ideas list with water sports. How about snorkelling or sailing on the Great Barrier Reef, diving the Great Blue Hole in Belize, or diving with sharks in the Grand Bahamas? What about surfing Pipeline, Hawaii or doing a spot of windsurfing or kite surfing in Egypt. The Red Sea is recommended to all vacationers by more than one of our travel experts because you can dive, snorkel, windsurf or kite surf - so it's a multi- activity holiday idea!

Winter sports is the other big one when it comes to activity holiday ideas. Go skiing in Whistler, Queenstown, New Zealand or in Zermatt, or go snowboarding at Kicking Horse, Folgaria and Jurassik Snowboarding Park or in Ste Foy - how's that for a few ideas doe starters? Les Arcs, Meribel and Hirafu shouldn't be omitted from the list of winter sports activities either.

The activities involving adventure travel are also popular: lots of people fancy themselves spending their two week break from work rafting the Grand Canyon, paddling the Zambezi, camping with Saharan Nomads or paragliding around Oludeniz, Turkey. One of the most adventurous ideas for those holidaying is still Everest. Even if you're not up to attempting the summit, this could take you up to base camp.

If those ideas are too adventurous there are some soft adventure activity holiday ideas to try on for size. Fancy trekking New Zealand's Southern Alps via the Milford Track, or Chile's Torres del Paine, going on a cruise up the Nile or down the Ganges, driving the Alaskan Highway or exploring the Zambezi? These are all challenging activities that don't require years of fitness preparation.

These days another kind of activity is popular - volunteering or learning activity holiday ideas. Attend Genghis Khan Warrior Training in Mongolia, volunteer to help care for the Orang utans at Sepilok, Malaysia, work with AIDS orphans in South Africa, study wildlife photography in Tanzania, or just learn to hula in Hawaii - all of these activities can be expanded into a whole idea for your vacation. And once you start talking animals some people know they're looking for a wildlife based activity - something where they'll get to meet some of the world's furrier, scalier, or toothy inhabitants. What about taking on a flying safari along the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, or following in the hoof-steps of the Serengeti Wildebeest Migration? Walking with leopards and floating with hippos in South Lauangwa or birdwatching in the Okavango River Delta?