Welcome!

25 Years of Specialty Travel, Helping People Follow Their Passions

by George Duffy, Independent Consultant

What's Trending? People and Places

Today I hear from a lot of people, older and younger, who are reaching beyond their beach vacation packages. They want to make more contact with people who live in the destinations they visit. They want to be more active and interactive. They want to experience life and follow their passions be they food or photography, cycling or hiking, architecture or ancestry. The world is wide.

This is our specialty. We have over 25 years of making travel experiences personal. (Photo below is of me making hot cocoa from bean to cup at a real (not fake) Mayan village in Mexico.

making cocoa in the tradtional Mayan way.

There's no prescription, no limits. Maybe you're stretching a little out of the ordinary like this woman in the video below who ventured to the Galapagos Islands and fulfilled a life long dream. Keep reading on this website for great suggestions.

Maybe A Deeper Dive

Some people may want to skip the beach altogether and go even deeper with incredible full length tours: food, culture, wildlife, active (cycling, hiking, walking, diving) and more. We are the tour experts with the broadest selection of tour choices and our own style of independent travel - unbundled, but not unplanned.

1 to 1 Travel Experiences: For Independent Explorers

I've arranged many independent self guided and privately guided tours (families, workshops, birding, photography, wildlife, music, educational, culture, history, food, agritours, active) and custom vacations.

Unbundled travel can cost less than set date group tours, depending on the trip and your interests. Read more here

1 to 1 Travel Experiences: For Groups

Affinity groups and special interest groups are now often taking trips together. Alumni, chambers of commerce, natural history clubs, photography, business groups, agricultural tours, sustainable tourism, walking, hiking and cycling.

Planning Your Own Trip? A Second Opinion Never Hurts

Planning a trip is almost as much fun as the actual travel but travel is an experience, not a commodity. Travel is also business and organisation and budgets and details. Things to go right and things that go south.

For this, it's always good to have someone on your team who you can call. It's why travel advisors and consultants are still in business after all the years of the internet. Here's some tips on what is involved in travel today.

Logistics:

The devil is in the details. Is it better to take the train from Rome to Naples, catch a bus to visit the ruins of Herculaneum, and retrace steps back to Rome, or hire a guide and car, or take an organized group day tour? Maybe it's better to stay the night and come back. Or continue?

It's a lot of moving parts. Flight routes and times, airport transfers, trains, car rentals, hotels, ferries, buses. These form the chain of events that typically govern a trip from start to finish.

Procurement:

Here are the things that you need to consider as you hand over your credit card number online or cash to a local company or vendor.

Is the service a good price? How is their after sales service? What is the procedure if there's a problem? Do they have good hiring and training practises? Are they ethical employers and do they have good environmental practises? Are people of all genders, races, ethnic backgrounds, and ages treated with the same (hopefully high) standards?

Security:

Are you safe with the the operator? Is your money safe? What kind of equipment do they use? Is their equipment adequately maintained? Do they operate with all the locally required permits and licenses? Do they carry any kind of liability insurance? Do they have emergency plans and employees that are trained to deal with them?

Value:

If you are at the early stages of travel planning, reach out. If you've done a lot of research already, a second opinion never hurts and costs you nothing up front.

Add a higher level of financial certainty to your trip and get the best value. I will give you a transparent, complete, comparative view of the options, without having to commit any money until it looks good to go to the next stage.

CPBC #2790 I TICO#50016384 I OPC#702971

1 to 1 Travel Experiences

Welcome!

Welcome!

25 Years of Specialty Travel, Helping People Follow Their Passions

by George Duffy, Independent Consultant

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Planning Your Own Trip? A Second Opinion Never Hurts

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