Adrenaline-pumping activities and stars who love 'em

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12 FEBRUARY 2004
The celebrity world is filled with adventure-seekers when it comes to getting away from it all. Julia Roberts famously roughed it as she explored orangutan territory in Indonesia, while royal brothers Prince William and Prince Harry are abseiling and bungee fans.

Last year, Keanu Reeves splashed out £200,000 on a ten-day retreat for 30 famous friends – including Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore and celeb couple Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston – who spent ten-days white water rafting, Harley motorcycle trekking and parachuting off the coast of Australia.

Are you, like these celebs, seeking a new challenge rather than a suntan and want to see new places and meet new faces? You may not be up for tackling Everest or crossing the Sahara on a camel, but there's a host of "soft" adventures out there which you won't even have to sacrifice your creature comforts for in order to enjoy.

Desert Adrenaline
If you're heading for Sossusvlei in Namibia, don't bother with your bucket and spade – take your camera instead. Part of the oldest and driest desert in the world, the great sand mountains of the Namib, with their surrealistic shapes, shadows and ever-changing colours, are a photographer 's dream.

They're also a playground for skydivers – Tom Cruise and Orlando Bloom, avid fans of extreme sports, might be interested – as well as quad bikers and sandboarders, who swap snow for sand to take an exhilarating ride down the dunes. Sunvil Africa's "Maximum Adrenaline" tour offers all these sports, plus whale-watching and animal tracking. And if that sounds too much like hard work, why not drift with the winds over oceans of sand in a balloon? Or find your own dune and play master of all you survey.

Active in the Andes
Fans of horse riding as well as luxury living – such as Lucy Liu – might be able to imagine themselves in the shadow of active volcanoes, riding horses across the pampas, climbing the ice-floes of Glacier Grey – then sinking into a hot bath and a soft mattress. High-adrenaline pursuits without the hair shirt is the idea behind Pura Adventure's holidays in the Andes.

The scenery isn't bad, either. Stretching nearly 2,700 miles from the desert to the glaciers of Patagonia in the south, Chile boasts some of the world's most varied and stunning landscapes. The Torres del Paine National Park is reason enough to visit Chile – with its amazing range of micro-climates you can experience four seasons in one day. It also contains 15 peaks over 6,500ft high, six major glaciers and is home to parrots, pumas, eagles, condors and flamingos.

An absolute highlight is Chile's Salar de Atacama. A vast area of saltpans, lagoons and weird and wonderful rock formations, this desert is so arid in parts that weather stations have never recorded rainfall. Visitors can walk, ride, or bike through this adventurer's dream. With so many amazing sights, the memories will last a lifetime.