Travel

Air-taxi startup Beta Technologies debuted its new aircraft Friday with a dramatic helicopter airlift of the sleek white model across Lake Champlain from Burlington, Vermont, to Plattsburgh, New York. Code-named Alia, the electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) airplane is the successor to Ava, a smaller prototype the company used to experiment with propulsion strategies and learn about the tricky aerodynamics of small, electrified, vertical-lift flight.
According to company founder Kyle Clark, Alia’s striking configuration and elegant shape owes a debt to the longest-migrating bird in the world, the Arctic tern. This includes a twin-tail assembly supported by angled trusses, dramatically arched wings, and arcing, tapered wingtips. The tern’s tail configuration and wing stance “proved a great baseline to start from,” Clark says.
For the tern, those features enable ultraefficient, long range flights. Beta hopes for similar performance. Its primary client, United Therapeutics, is developing man-made organs for human transplant and intends to use Beta’s aircraft as an efficient, environmentally friendly distribution system.

Sometimes, you need to travel solo for an array of reasons. It could be because you are traveling for business, or you want some alone time so that you can reflect on various aspects surrounding your life.

Regardless of your reasons, traveling alone can be a liberating and eye-opening experience. Throughout your journey, you can learn new cultures, gain new experiences, meet exciting people, attend fabulous events such as the Kentucky Derby, and acquire the motivation to achieve life and business goals.

Despite riding along with limitless benefits mentioned above, solo traveling also comes with its fair share of challenges. It can be daunting, especially for those doing it for the first time.

This doesn’t, however, mean that you should stay at home since you have an inner feeling that traveling alone will not be fun. Below are a few tips that might go a long way in boosting your confidence.

• Don’t compromise your safety

Before you even choose to travel to a particular destination, make sure you do some prior research and ensure it’s actually safe.

Even if the place you want to visit has been rated as the safest in the world, you need to remember the fact that you will be alone all the time. Therefore, it won’t hurt to invest in your safety.

Enhancing your safety when traveling solo could be as simple as buying a good travel door lock to use in your hotel. Also, it could be having travel insurance, which provides you with cover in case of a mishap. 

Keep your friends and family on the loop on your whereabouts throughout your journey. Call them as regularly as you can, or use a tracking app where necessary.

The number of tourists heading to South Africa is expected to climb from under 15 million to almost 20 million in the decade between 2013 and 2023. More people are visiting South Africa every year.
Why is South Africa getting more popular all the time? Let’s look at 5 of the top things to do in South Africa to see why.
1. Kruger National Park
Kruger National Park is the largest, and oldest, national park in South Africa. It covers over 7,500 square miles, extending 220 miles north-to-south and 40 miles east-to-west. Expect to spend two to three days exploring the park to see everything it has to offer.
You’ll find hundreds of animal species in Kruger National Park, most notably all the “Big 5” species: