Studying abroad doesn’t have to mean old-world libraries. Get credits, a suntan, and survival skills with these programs in the great outdoors.

You can study abroad, and you can adventure abroad, but are you aware that you can study adventure abroad? Challenges like whitewater kayaking and elephant riding add another layer of perspective on journeys to places you couldn’t have imagined, with characters you couldn’t have made up. Below are five nods for specialized outdoor education, ranging from one-week jaunts to full-semester journeys. All offer some form of academic credit, either through an associated university or through a student’s own institution. (Check with an academic counselor to make sure your school accepts the credits.)

Chilean Adventures
Adventure junkies flock to Chile for the slap-you-across-the-face beauty of Patagonia, with its pristine, glacially sculpted rock, ancient forests, and cascading whitewater. The rivers of South America’s longest, thinnest country lure whitewater kayakers the world over, but most paddlers focus on the south rather than on central Chile, the country’s orchard, vineyard, and breadbasket, its economic and political heart, and the home where its cowboys roam. Based about 90 miles south of Santiago in Los Queñes, a village at the confluence of the orchard-watering Teno and Claro rivers, Chilean Adventures offers intense outdoor instruction with customized Spanish-language study and gap-year programs at a Chilean university or institute. The owners/educators, American Todd Ericson and Chilean Eduardo Doerr, specialize in whitewater kayaking and offer guided kayak vacations on Central Chile’s most spectacular rivers, surf-kayak safaris on the Pacific Coast, horse packing, trekking, and rafting expeditions. In 2006, they added to their schedule the first commercial raft descent of the Rio Colorado, a technical, small-volume river with red basalt columns towering above Aegean-colored waters. If you sign on, don’t forget a cup and spurs, because the trip cooler’s full of local wine and your shuttle’s a horse.

Where: Central Chile
When: Their summer (our winter)
Credit: Should be custom-tailored between the program and your study abroad adviser.
More info: chileanadventures.com
ST TIP: Outdoor gear is super-expensive in Chile. Bring your own—if you kayak, take paddling gear, minus boat, and an outfitting kit, including duct tape and foam for padding out your adopted ride’s seat.

NOLS
National Outdoor Leadership School For 40 years, the National Outdoor Leadership School has focused on the extended expedition as a means to learn necessary wilderness skills and earn academic credit. Its courses range from two weeks’ backcountry snowboarding in Idaho to a semester of backpacking, sailing, and sea kayaking in Baja to a year of fjord-kayaking, peak-bagging, and rock-climbing in Patagonia. Alumni status entitles NOLS grads to special trips, such as trekking in the Indian Himalayas or Yukon canoeing, and bring family and friends along to share the NOLS experience in a less intense atmosphere. The courses are far from cakewalks, but any grad will tell you they’ve gained bankable outdoor skills that have served them just as well in the urban jungle.

Where: Alaska, Yukon, Baffin Island, the western U.S., Mexico, Amazon, Patagonia, Australia, New Zealand, India
When: Depends on program
Credit: Full and partial credit available
More info: nols.edu
ST TIP: If you’re forced to share a tent/snowcave/bivy with a former U.S. Marine/NOLS alumni who knows everything about everything and insists his way is always the right way, just agree with him until his attention is diverted by someone else doing something “all wrong.”

Outward Bound International
Outward Bound was first in the field to use adventure activities for educational purposes. Created in Wales in 1941, and now with schools in more than 30 countries, the program focuses on “using adventure as something that’s going to make a difference in your life, rather than just for fun” or vocational training, says Outward Bound International’s executive director, Ian Wade. (Wade adds that if Martians came to Earth, the little green guys would grok that NOLS students were learning technical skills, while OB students were learning life skills.) Most of OB’s programs are tailored for natives of each particular country, but a few international courses offer open enrollment, including those in the Czech Republic, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. Costa Rica Rainforest Outward Bound participants, for example, climb trees, rappel down waterfalls, captain a raft, complete a service project, spend 48 hours alone in the rainforest, and explore neighboring Nicaragua and Panama during the 85-day Tri-Country Semester.

Where: Australia, Baja California, Chile, Czech Republic, Costa Rica, English Lake District, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales. Check the below Web site for locations and open enrollment opportunities.
When: Depends on program; Costa Rica programs feature fall, winter, spring, and summer semesters, as well as shorter courses
Credit: Full and partial credit available
More info: outwardbound.net/locations
ST TIP: At the Costa Rica school, students should be prepared to stay with families, perhaps sleeping on the floor, cutting cane to make their own sugar, and milking a cow to get fresh milk. “Trekking across the entire country—from the Caribbean coast through rainforest, over mountains, across gorges, finally emerging at the Pacific—is more rewarding than it is exhausting,” says CRROBS communications director Richard Tuck. “Plus, you make friends really easily doing it, especially if you are the one carrying the food.”

W.I.L.D. Whitewater Intensive Leadership Development
There’s nothing quite like a boat-flipping hydraulic to keep your attention on the lesson at hand. That’s why rivers, with their untamed canyons for classrooms, make such great teachers, providing endless challenges and rewards, and instilling confidence on and off the water. Based in Davidson, Quebec, on the Ottawa River, Esprit Rafting’s Whitewater Intensive Leadership Development school is a complete whitewater guide-training program for anyone 18 or older. At least half of the 15-to-20-person groups tend to be completely new to whitewater. That changes rapidly as the 90-day fall semester progresses. Spanning Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, the program combines courses in whitewater kayaking, rafting, canoeing, riverboarding, river rescue, and wilderness first aid. Graduates come away with internationally recognized certifications from Whitewater Ontario, Canadian Recreational Canoeing Association, Canadian Rivers Council, Ontario Recreational Canoeing Association, Rescue 3 International, and Wilderness Medical Associates. Off the water, participants might meet the First Nations chief of a Quebec village, homestay with a Mexican family, or wake pre-dawn at the base of an 80-foot waterfall and greet the day with thousands of cave swallows rising in a spectral tornado.

Where: Eastern Canada, U.S., Mexico
When: Fall
Credit: Not so much academic credit as a raftload of certifications and immediately marketable outdoor skills.
More info: espritrafting.com/aboutwild.html
ST Tip: “Never stop pushing yourself in your travels, because you could end up with the best day of your life,” advises WILD graduate Amy Flexman, adding, “Last one in the van sits next to the stinkiest feet.”

Pacific Challenge
Whether they’re headed to Southeast Asia, the Ukraine, Peru, or Down Under, students develop a strong identity with Pacific Challenge—some even tattoo their group name onto an arm or leg. (Although that’s not something the 17-year-old organization encourages.) With offices in Oregon and Minnesota, PC focuses on experiential travel as a means of inspiring skilled, confident, and culturally and ecologically responsible people. Channeling Outward Bound and NOLS-esque adventure/challenge/personal-growth experiences, PC then blends those elements with optional college classes in international settings. The New Zealand–Australia program offers the greatest range of adventure activities, while most culturally challenging is the Southeast Asia program, on which participants learn four new languages, sample hundreds of new foods, and stay in the homes of local people. Meanwhile, they raft in wildlife sanctuaries, hitch elephant rides to remote hill-tribe villages, cruise the Mekong Delta, sea-kayak Ha Long Bay, and climb rocks in southern Thailand.

Where: Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Nepal, Peru, Ukraine
When: Year-round
Credit: Credit is primarily available in conjunction with Winona State University, Minnesota. For some programs, however, credit is also offered at the University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin La Crosse, and Seattle Central Community College.
More info: pacificchallenge.org
ST Tip: According to PC’s Rachel Sanson, “Students always find a bond or common ground, no matter where they come from.” Shared experiences, adventures, and moments of adversity—such as eating steamed wasp larvae at a Lao village chief’s home—seem to bring people closer.