We've come to the End of the Road...

Summertime is time to park the Tumi in the closet - for awhile! As we begin the glorious summer season at our Minnesota lake place, it's time to stay off airplanes for a few months. In the past several months, I and my wife have enjoyed some marvelous trips - Panama & Costa Rica, Riviera Maya, New Orleans and South Florida. But, now it's time for summer weekends at our lake place in northern Minnesota and to catch up on the golf game! For those of you fellow Minnesotans (and Wisconsinites), you know that there is no greater place to be during the summer than home!!!

So until our next trip to Europe (a Silversea Cruise through the Adriatic Region from Venice in September) our Tumi luggage resides in deep storage!

Speaking of Cruises in Europe, we are seeing the biggest season ever for selling European Cruises at our travel agency - both Ocean cruises and River Cruises. There are more ships in Europe than ever before - and they are largely sold out already. The cruise lines have already opened booking for 2015 - the earliest that the industry has ever come out with future sailings.

Take a look at my previous post on River Cruising… this is a segment of tourism that is white-hot these days! Of particular interest is sailing the Rhine and Danube during the Holiday Markets season throughout Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.

If you are interested in explanations for this phenomenon, go to Cruise News at www.gatewayexpress.com.

Cheers,
Dick

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Cruises for People who (think they) Hate Cruises

At our travel agency, when we ask people who say they won't consider a cruise vacation, the reason most commonly sited is that they don't like the "regimentation" that goes along with being two of 3,600 passengers. I couldn't agree more! It's unfortunate that these super tankers in the cruise industry get all the attention, thus distorting many people's image of cruising.

How about spending a week or more on a ship that carries fewer than 200 passengers and has a crew to passenger ratio of almost1-to-1?

We took our first-ever "expedition cruise" aboard Silversea Expeditions' 120 passenger Silver Explorer a few months ago… and absolutely loved it!  For more on our  "Jungles & Rain Forests of Panama and Costa Rica" adventure, scroll back to my post of December 31st.       

In addition to Expedition Cruising, there are two other "new" ways of seeing the world that are rapidly gaining popularity… River Cruising and Adventure Cruising.

 River Cruising is totally different from Ocean Cruising. The 5 leading river cruise lines have built over 130 new vessels just in the last 5 years - and their average size is about 140 passengers. This is the quintessential experience for people who hate cruises!!!!!  I talked about our first river cruise in this post.

 Adventure Cruising is lovingly referred to as the "Un-Cruise"! If you really want to get "close to nature" and see Alaska, Hawaii or the Sea of Cortez off the Baja Peninsula in a way very few have ever experienced these areas, this is an idea for you.  You'll love active adventures on Zodiacs combined with extraordinary comforts aboard 60-passenger ships. This is different than anything you've done before. Here are some details of a typical Alaska Adventure.

Any of these three adventure segments will change your view of "cruise vacations"!!!

Cheers,

Dick

Silversea Expeditions are Spectacular!

After many cruise vacations in Europe (mostly Mediterranean), we wanted to see what all the buzz over Adventure Travel was.  Our favorite cruise line, Silversea, launched their new Expedition Cruise division a year ago so a vacation with Silversea Expeditions was an easy choice for us.

Still, we had to decide what kind of adventure sounded good. After combing through the itineraries, we settled upon "The Jungles & Rain Forests" of Panama and Costa Rica. And, in retrospect, we made a perfect decision! The experience was spectacular!

In mid-October, we boarded the Silver Explorer in Colon, Panama for our passage through the Panama Canal from the Caribbean side to the Pacific side where we would spend the next 7 days venturing into the jungles, reefs and rain forests of Panama and Costa Rica. For our entire week, the ship would anchor offshore in small bays and we would go ashore ashore via Zodiacs.

Our first excursion was into the Darien Jungle... by far, the most exotic experience of our whole trip! Our Zodiacs took us far up the Chucunaque River to an Embera tribal village that is only visited by a handful of small expedition groups each year. Because this journey can only be made during high tide, we couldn’t venture out until mid-afternoon... which meant that our Zodiac ride back to the ship was after dark in a tropical downpour and fairly rough seas. We were soaked - but that seemed to be perfectly fitting for a tropical jungle adventure! (Being soaked isn’t so bad when it’s 83 degrees!) On this evening, we particularly enjoyed our cocktail hour and our gourmet dinner!

We spent the ensuing days hiking through various rain forests where we were treated to up-close views of dozens of species of tropical birds including the colorful Macaws and Toucans. We were particularly fascinated with the 3 species of monkeys that we encountered - Spider, Capuchin and Howler Monkeys.  

The best part of traveling is to meet people who lead unbelievably different lives. In addition to visiting that remote tribal village, we spent a couple fascinating hours with a woman who runs an animal rescue facility deep within a Costa Rican rainforest. Adding to our visit, an injured sloth was brought in while we were there. 

As mentioned above, elegant cocktail hours and gourmet dinners are especially enjoyable after being “hosed down” in the mud room upon returning to the ship from the day’s expedition! (I exaggerate - slightly!) Having enjoyed the luxury of traditional Silversea cruises in the past, we wondered how the ruggedness of exploration cruising would mesh with the elegance for which Silversea is known. No problem!!!! The two elements complimented one-another perfectly. Nice job, Silversea!

We’ll definitely do another expedition trip in the future.

Happy Traveling!

Dick