Top five cult road trip holidays
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
It is 40 years since Easy Rider hit the silver screen, capturing the
spirit of American counterculture and inspiring a new generation of
road trip movies.
Marking this anniversary, travelbite.co.uk has selected its top five
cult road trips both fictional and real with details on how
travellers can follow in their tyre tracks.
First up is Easy Rider.
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play two bikers who set off from Los
Angeles to reach New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras, stopping along
the way to spend a few days in a commune.
Travellers can swap the Harley Davidsons for a minibus and follow the
bikers' route on TrekAmerica's Cross Country BLT trip, which passes
through many locations used to film Easy Rider.
These include Los Angeles, Flagstaff, Monument Valley, New Orleans
and Taos, New Mexico, which will be marking Easy Rider's anniversary
in its Summer of Love this year from May to September.
This annual festival is inspired by the ethos of the film with some
events fronted by part-time resident of Taos, Dennis Hopper.
The 21-day Cross Country BLT starts from £1,479 per person excluding flights.
Or how about following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac with a
reenactment of Beat classic On the Road?
Kerouac's semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of Sal Paradise
who travels across the USA from the east to the west coast during the
late 1940s. The novel, published in 1957, became a definitive work of
the Beat Generation and a film version is currently in pre-production.
Sal Paradise's cross-country route begins in New York and travels
west through the northern USA states towards Los Angeles. Travellers
on the Northern Trail will find themselves on a similar route to Sal,
stopping in Chicago then passing through Iowa, Wyoming and Nevada
before travelling south through California from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
The 21-day Northern Trail starts from £1,199 per person excluding flights.
For something a little less austere, how about The Adventures of
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? Hugo Weaving, Terence Stamp and Guy
Pearce play three drag queens driving across the Australian outback
from Sydney to Alice Springs in a bus nicknamed Priscilla.
The film had its debut at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and has now
been transformed into a successful musical, opening in London in March 2009.
OzXposure offers bus and van tours across the whole of Australia.
Southern Xposure is a 15-day trip following the Priscilla route in
reverse, beginning with the incredible outback landscapes of Kings
Canyon, Uluru and Coober Pedy and ending with the iconic sights of
Sydney Harbour.
High heels and feathered head-dresses are optional!
The 15-day Southern Xposure tour costs from £938 per person excluding flights.
The film The Motorcycle Diaries - based on the journals of Che
Guevara also made a huge impression on the public consciousness
following its 2004 release. Recounting a road trip the he took with
his friend Alberto Granado across South America in the early 1950s,
it attempted to explain the roots of the future revolutionary.
Finding eight spare months to travel as Che did will be difficult for
most, but Footloose's South American Adventure captures the essence
of the expedition, touring four countries in 25-days. The trip takes
a horseshoe route from Santiago in Chile to Buenos Aires in
Argentina, via Bolivia and Brazil.
Footloose's trip includes a few days exploring the Atacama Desert as
Che himself did. The 25-day South American Adventure costs from
£1,699 per person excluding flights.
Or finally, perhaps the most iconic of road movies, Thelma and Louise.
Two Arkansas women break free from their lives to take a weekend road
trip, but after killing a man, they find themselves in a bid to reach
Mexico. Reluctant to drive through Texas, their route takes them west
through Oklahoma and eventually to the Grand Canyon.
The Americana Road Trip follows the route of the female fugitives,
stopping for a dip in Hot Springs, Arkansas, before crossing into
Oklahoma where Route 66 was born.
The canyon landscapes of Utah and Nevada are another highlight of
this trip, although the group's van will be parked safely away from
the Grand Canyon rim.
The 21-day Americana Road Trip costs from £1,439 per person excluding flights.
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