For travelers seeking to give something back to nature and experience an adventure all rolled into one, the mountainous countryside of Slovakia provides a remarkable backdrop for the holiday of a lifetime.
The Tatras Mountains in Slovakia are an inescapably beautiful sight, and they provide a perfect natural habitat for some of the last remaining brown bears in Europe, not to mention other critically endangered species like the famous Tatra Chamois (mountain goat).
The tourist industry hasn’t exactly been kind to the animal inhabitants of the Tatras, but times are changing, and tour operators are coming to realize that the future of their businesses depends on the local wildlife’s well-being at the destinations they are trying to promote.
One of the more forward thinking tour operators in the Tatras, Hands Up Holidays, have not only come to embrace the region’s animal attractions, but they’ve taken things even further. They’re now offering eco-tourists and animal lovers the chance to combine an exotic holiday with the opportunity to play a part in the preservation of some of Europe’s most magnificent wild animals.
Hands Up Holidays invites its guests deep into the forests of the Tatras to join in the search for its last surviving bears, chamois and wolves. This is a hiking holiday with a difference, for tourists are playing a crucial role in monitoring the local populations of these animals, encouraged by conservationists to keep tabs on all signs of wildlife they come across.
The Hands Up Hiking holiday also invites its guests to visit the Tatras Foundation, a charity-funded organization that tried to promote awareness of conservation and environmental issues in the region.
Following a day spent trekking through Slovakia’s immense wilderness, guests get to kick off those hiking boots and relax those achy bones at the world’s only solar-powered swimming pool complex, AquaCity, before crashing out at their luxurious, eco-friendly hotel which is run entirely on geothermal power.