ABSTRACT
Most of us in the developed world live in urban areas. Mountains, lakes, oceans, jungles, desert islands, and other wild places represent escape locations that offer excitement, stimulation, and potential adventure. This dislocation of self from the ordinary to the extraordinary appears to provide a pleasurable experience that is central to tourism (Rojek and Urry, 1997). Adventure tourism offers adventure holidays. Clients are tourists in so much as they buy an experience that is usually packaged for maximum efficiency. Existing tourist theory purports to explain tourist behavior in relation to mass tourism (MacCannell, 1976; Urry 1990; Rojek and Urry, 1997), leaving the contemporary adventure tourist scene underresearched and therefore underrepresented in academic terms.
