Do these vacation ideas exist? Looking for a different vacation.

[Quasimodal]

I’m planning for my February break. I’ll have a week off, and I’d like to go on vacation but do something different. I’d like to do something where I am a participant, or some sort of retreat. Any ideas? Here are some possibilities I brainstormed. I don’t even know if these exist, but I’m curious.

1. Meditation Holiday: Are there any places that offer something like this? Especially for beginners?
2. Yoga Holiday: Similar to the above.
3. A Volunteer holiday. It seems like Habitat for Humanity gigs are two weeks long, and hence out of my week timespan. Other ideas?
   4.Something active: Hiking, etc.

Any other ideas? I feel like getting out of my comfort zone and trying something new.

[even_sven]

Look at the Green Tortoise- lots of participatory adventure travel trips. There are tons of yoga and meditation retreats. How far are you willing to travel?

[Maastricht]

How about a silent retreat? No talking, reading, or internet. Just your oen thoughts, chores around the retreat/convent and the silent company of others doing the same thing. A co worker did it for a week this year, she said it was very intense. I’d like to try it, too.

[Quasimodal]

I think I’d be willing to fly within North America or further if it wasn’t too expensive. I also have a big trip in the bank for this summer (Lots of travel points saved up) when I can leave for about a month.

[Enkel]

Here is a 3 day expedition with EarthWatch for whale research, they may still have openings in Feb: http://www.earthwatch.org/exped/megill_short.html

If you look around their expeditions, they have some shorter ones that are only 7 days, but not sure if any are in your exact time frame.

This one seems to have Feb openings: “You’ll help monitor Common Loons on the Louisiana coast to help assess the health of the population. How have they fared since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010” http://www.earthwatch.org/exped/paruk.html

[Hello_Again]

I went to surf camp in Nosara, Costa Rica, where the Nosara Yoga Institute is also located. They have regular retreat programs:
http://www.nosarayoga.com/retreats/retreats

You can also check with your local yoga schools to see if they have an upcoming retreat planned.

Surf camp is also great, if you like active vacations. You can still take yoga classes at the Institute or any of the several studios in town.

[Athena]

Shambhala Mountain Center outside of Boulder, CO has several different flavors of retreats in the style you mention. I’ve met one guy who runs some of their programs, and he really is pretty amazing. Not sure how the retreats themselves are, but if the guy I know is any indication, it could be pretty cool

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

I’ve surfed Costa Rica in February. The surf wasn’t cooperating but the weather was great.

[Senegoid]

Buddhist organizations commonly have beginning meditation classes and they run retreats of various durations. They may have retreats for beginners. Do some web searching to see if there are any you could attend.

Earthwatch was already mentioned above. Here’s an overview from their Wikipedia page:

Earthwatch Institute is an international non-profit organization that was founded in 1971 near Boston (USA) to promote action and understanding necessary to sustain the Natural environment. The Earthwatch supports scientific field research and education by offering volunteers the opportunity to join research teams around the world to collect field data in the areas such as wildlife conservation, rainforest ecology, marine science and archaeology.

By paying to spend time (ranging from a few days to several weeks) working with scientists on their projects, people support the work financially and with their manpower to gain first hand experience of conservation issues.

If you want to go hiking, just go hiking. Any place there’s a mountain is probably a good place to hike. In California, in the immediate vicinity of the San Francisco Bay Area, there are plenty of mountains with a million miles of public hiking trails.