Got a penchant for adventure but not sure where to look? Adventure tour operators could well be the answer. Companies like Contiki Holidays, Eyes on Africa and Gap Adventures can take you into the Serengeti on animal safaris, through Europe’s top cities, New Zealand’s wildest places and even as far and remote as the Galapagos Islands.
While some offer real out-of-the-way, once-in-a-lifetime destinations, this doesn’t mean your wearing gumboots and hanging off ice shelves – although you can probably do this too is you wish. Rest assured the operators have been there and done it all before and are both fantastically well organized and offer luxurious accommodations despite their oft-remote locations. Other tours are to more well-visited locations but may provide a more intimate look at cities and regions you may have hardly noted, while also taking care of your transportation, accommodation and other travel needs – particularly good if it’s your first time traveling or you would just rather someone else handle all those things.
Not only are tours a great way to get access to places you couldn’t or wouldn’t go on your own, but you’ll meet and travel with like-minded travelers and if you choose a small, intimate group tour you may well feel like you’re simply traveling with friends. The smaller the group the more individualized the itinerary becomes and the quicker it is to get around so there are other benefits as well. Tour guides are also incredibly knowledgeable and can fill you in on the wildlife, geography and history of the area. So there are a lot of pluses to joining a group.
When it comes to actually selecting a tour and a company, there is a huge amount of choice out there which can be difficult to wade through. This top 10 list however, should not only give you a taste of who and what is out there, but it should also provide options for every kind of traveler.
If you’re young and seek fun, nightlife and party action, the 18-35 year-old tours of Contiki Holidays dashing through Europe to numerous cities are probably more your thing. Those seeking an array of small-group adventure tours and there are a lot – 1000 in 100 countries – may wish to browse Gap Adventure’s exotic choices from Egypt to Japan or Costa Rica. Senior travelers or just those with a bit more cash or discernment will want to indulge in the luxury sailing or remote options offered through Geographic Expeditions such as sailing to the Galapagos. While honeymooners may find the notion of an African safari with Eyes on Africa very romantically suitable, although wildlife enthusiasts and photographers will equally enjoy the dunes, mountain ranges, beaches and vast plains.
Depending on how active you are too, there’s something for every kind of physical need should that be reclining on a deck chair aboard a ship, hiking through forests, zooming around on a tundra buggy or bumping about in a 4wd.
And finally we’re happy to say that many of these operators have great local connections in the places they visit, whether that be through employing locals, being environmentally friendly or giving back to the community in some way.
Even if you’re not holidaying or planning a trip anytime soon, this list is bound to get your appetite for adventure started.
Contiki Holidays has been a leading adventure-of-a-lifetime tour company for young travellers for almost half a century. The philosophy is simple – lots of holiday, tons of fun, less hassle and more free time. Its tours in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada are for 18-35 year olds only, which keeps the mood and atmosphere vibrant, like-minded and enjoyable. Contiki is a fabulous choice for young people who might be travelling for the first time, travelling solo and wanting to meet up with others, or who just don’t want the hassle of carting backpacks around the world and finding their own accommodation. Basically, Contiki takes care of everything so you can spend your time enjoying yourself.
A little over two decades ago, Bruce Poon Tip had a fledging passion for sustainable travel, a craving for authentic experiences and two credit cards. With this unlikely tool kit, he founded Gap Adventures and managed to inspire an entire generation of travelers. Before Gap Adventures came on the scene, world travel was synonymous with cruises, hopping resorts and traveling in motor-coach caravans. By the late 1980s, globetrotting and backpacking was becoming a rite of passage for twenty-somethings from Europe and North America. Tip set out with a $50-per-day budget on a grassroots tour of Asia, and his experiences inspired a new wave of post-backpacker travel. Today, Gap Adventures offers more than 1,000 distinct tours in 100 countries and on every continent.
There was a time when travelers took the slow train and dressed the part, when they weren’t afraid to see the world on their own terms and to carry a slice of home into far-off places. That’s precisely the kind of old-world paradigm that Eyes on Africa evokes with its scheduled and tailor-made safaris. Eyes on Africa offers the quintessential African safari experience minus the crowds and predictable lodging. Travelers can choose from regularly scheduled tours, or they can branch out and customize their own special getaway. Regardless of how it’s put together, each safari delivers big-game sightings, spectacular scenery and a high degree of privacy.
THE GREAT WEST ADVENTURE COMPANY
Based in Sedona, Arizona, the Great West Adventure Co. has been touring the Grand Canyon and the south-west USA’s most spectacular sights for the best part of a decade. Great West knows when it’s on to a good thing and is dedicated to preserving the environment and natural beauty of the surrounding area, with a dedication to “safety, preservation, education and fun”. There is an excellent range of tours on offer that take in the Grand Canyon, seen from just about every angle possible; the culture and history of the local Native Americans; scenic tours of Sedona; and Colorado River rafting adventures. Great West also arrange custom-made tours that take in a bit of everything.
GEOGRAPHIC EXPEDITIONS
If you want to explore the nether reaches by overland tours, treks or expeditionary voyages consider this award-winning adventure travel firm. With feature destinations such as the Galapagos Islands, Machu Picchu and Africa, Geographic Expeditions offers travel to out of the way places in complete luxury with choice accommodation along the way. And the small, intimate group sizes allow for almost individualized itineraries. Their self-proclaimed most “beguiling” tour option is to sail on one of their gulet, dahabeya or dhows to an array of enchanting destinations – Turkey’s Aegean Coast, the Chilean Fjords, the bustling Mekong, the Nile, Galapagos or even Antarctica. These venerated, distant and exotic destinations in such unique transport are journeys to remember.
EXOTISSIMO
If it’s Asia that stirs your fancy look no further than the options with Exotissimo. Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Indonesia feature amongst their destinations. Each tour is designed to capture the buzz, essence, culture or food of the region it visits allowing you to really get to grips with a particular area. For example you may wish to indulge in a culinary tour of Vietnam, wander the nation’s watery deltas or sample some of the hill country life and tribes of the north. While their Vietnam tours are particularly good, they first established themselves in Ho Chi Minh City, the beauty of their tours are not only are they expatriates living in Asia, but they also employ local staff. This means they know what foreign tourists want when they visit Asia, plus they can give you a lot of local flavour – it’s the perfect balance.
Active New Zealand is a tour operator that has been operating for 14 years exploring all the nooks and crannies of the Kiwi backcountry. While Active New Zealand’s tours include anything from kayaking to hiking and biking, you don’t need to be super fit but you’ll sleep well at the end of the day. The tours include rest days and always end somewhere with showers, meals and a comfortable bed. The tour group sizes are kept small for maximum flexibility and also permit you to head out and explore alone if you wish. Active New Zealand also tries to minimize the travel time on the road so there’s more opportunities to enjoy the activities.
NATURAL HABITAT ADVENTURES
Known as the “nature people”, Natural Habitat Adventures takes its guests on some of the world’s best, and often remotest, nature expeditions. And they really do have the globe covered, visiting all the major wilderness areas of the world from the north and south polar regions to Africa, America, the Galapagos, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. On these tours you could meet a polar bear, see a gray whale breach the waves, become part of a family of gorillas or hang out with Emperor Penguins. A real feature are their world class polar bear tours to Churchill, Manitoba. You can actually prepare for what you’ll see by reading a daily blog about what it is like to spend a season with the bears, then journey out there to glimpse them yourself. All tours are accompanied by naturalist guides and World Wildlife Fund has selected Natural Habitat as their official Conservation Travel Provider for the work they do in protecting an preserving natural assets and wildlife.
NORTH FRONTIERS ADVENTURE
The Frontiers North team love showing off their own backyard and in this case it’s Canada’s northern regions. Not only are they from the region, but the tours are kept small and designed for the specific interests of travellers be that photography, culture or adventure, making the experience both amazing and intimate. And the experienes really are unique. You could take in the northern lights, visit the grizzly bears on the central coast of British Columbia, see black and white polar bears, take a tundra buggy cross country, sail Hudson Bay on an expedition ship, meet the Beluga whales of Churchill River and they even promise you’ll get close enough to see how bad the breath of a walrus is. A feature tour, that has also been selected as one of National Geographic Traveler magazine’s 50 Tours of a Lifetime in 2009, is the trip to Elu Inlet Lodge. The area is rich in Inuit history and culture, has archaeological sites and arctic mammals such as the caribou and grizzly bear.
TIME UNLIMITED TOURS
If you want to uncover the real essence of New Zealand’s stunning Auckland region, Time Unlimited offer some unparalleled small group experiences with a variety of natural and cultural tour options. They also keep their tour groups to a maximum number of six so your experience is really personalized, and there is also the option of having a local Maori guide with you on some of the tours so you can better understand the local indigenous culture. Some of their options include Auckland sightseeing or walking tours, kayak adventures, kayak fishing and kite fishing – a noted world first, or private Auckland and New Zealand tours. Time Unlimited also won a Qualmark Enviro GOLD Award as one of New Zealand’s most environmentally-friendly tourism businesses.
