With its indigenous species of macaques flying through the forest, its snowy mountains and cedar forests, Yakushima island is like something out of a dream of Eden. The island is located a short distance from the southern tip of Japan and has a population of about 13,000 that's outnumbered by the deer and monkeys that live there. A fifth of the island is registered as a natural heritage site, and in 1993 the interior of the island was listed on...

Docastaway offers unique vacation experiences in remote islands, where travelers have the opportunity to live 'like castaways.' With the company's 'Adventure Mode' vacations, travelers have no guides, and need to fish for their food and build their own shelter. (Courtesy of Alvaro Cerezo/Docastaway) When a luxury resort is not enough to "get away from it all," a travel company is offering the ultimate vacation on a remote island with no hotels and no guides — and where you have to...

Isla Mujeres, Mexico, Jan. 2010. (Jeff Friesen) Canadian photographer Jeff Friesen had to battle the “unimaginable” environment of Nova Scotia to capture the beautiful seascapes that comprise his “Beyond Here” series. “The weather changes so frequently [in Nova Scotia], it’s often hard to tell what season it is,” Friesen told weather.com. “The good thing about the volatile weather is that the sky is always interesting… an unchanging clear blue day is almost unknown here.” In his “Beyond Here” series these...

A passenger uses his mobile phone before a check-in counter of Italian airline Alitalia at Narita International Airport, in suburban Tokyo on April 19, 2010. (YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images) WASHINGTON -- Just because it's safe to use cellphones on a plane, it doesn't mean that passengers should call just to say hello. That argument played out across Washington Thursday as one government agency moved a step closer to removing its prohibition of in-flight calls while another considered a new ban of...

This photo captures a breathtaking waterfall falling through crystal clear ice caves at the edge of Vatnajokulll National park in South-East Iceland, Oct. 31, 2013. (Alex Bradbury/Caters News Agency) When photographer Alex Bradbury walked over a glacier to reach a remote location in Southern Iceland he didn’t expect to discover a rarely-seen natural phenomenon hidden 30 feet under solid ice — crystal-clear caverns with a waterfall crashing through them. “The trek to reach the cave was very tiring and the...

GeoGuessr A geographer employed by the Farquhar company at Philadelphia at work on a four dimensional world, circa 1955. (Three Lions/Getty Images) With the world changing at a faster rate than ever, threatened by everything from climate change to political revolutions and terrorist attacks, understanding geography is critical to our future. Harm de Blij, a geographer and former editor of National Geographic, says geography is a distressingly underrepresented field of study and in misunderstanding it, we're prone to errors of...

This bathroom has been dubbed the most extreme toilet in the world perched on a cliff 8,530 feet above sea level in Siberia. (Alex Bradbury/Caters News Agency) Eight thousand five hundred and thirty feet above sea level in Siberia, perched on a cliff in the Altai Mountains, is a bathroom that has been dubbed the world’s most extreme toilet. So who exactly needs to use this toilet located in the middle of nowhere? The remote bathroom serves a team of...

Ground crew personnel service Delta planes at the Salt Lake City international Airport on November 27, 2013 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (George Frey/Getty Images) MINNEAPOLIS -- Delta Air Lines won't allow passengers to make voice calls from its planes. Right now, federal rules prohibit voice calls on planes. But the government is indicating that it might loosen those rules. If that happens, it could be up to airlines to set their own policies. On Wednesday, Delta went ahead and...

La Fete de Creppisage - the annual festival of the replastering of the central mosque in Djenne, Mali. Winner of the Cutty Sark Award for Travel Photographer of the Year 2013. (Timothy Allen/www.tpoty.com) From a group of young skateboarders in India to a mud mosque festival in Mali, the winning photos from the 2013 Travel Photographer of the Year competition capture the vast and awe-inspiring range of experiences on planet Earth. With entrants coming from nearly 100 countries to compete...

King Arthur Pendragon, a senior Druid, poses for a photograph as he begins a protest march from the old Stonehenge visitor center to the new one in protest at English Heritage display of ancient human remains on Dec. 18, 2013 in Wiltshire, England. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images) The mysterious monument of Stonehenge has stood without assistance for more than a millennium. It finally received a modern renovation — and the druids aren't happy about it. The £27 million ($44 million) renovations...

Elf houses near Strandakirkja in south Iceland. (Christian Bickel ) REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- In this land of fire and ice, where the fog-shrouded lava fields offer a spooky landscape in which anything might lurk, stories abound of the "hidden folk" - thousands of elves, making their homes in Iceland's wilderness. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before 21st-century elves got political representation. Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission...

Some Delta fliers caught a lucky break Thursday. (Getty Images) NEW YORK – Some lucky fliers capitalized on a computer glitch Thursday and scored some really cheap flights on Delta Air Lines. From about 10 a.m. to noon ET, certain Delta fares on the airline's own website and other airfare booking sites were showing up incorrectly, offering some savvy bargain hunters incredible deals. A roundtrip flight between Cincinnati and Minneapolis for February was being sold for just $25.05 and a...