Audley Travel has announced new itineraries for 2023 focusing on Indigenous experiences and local culture, besides tours that offer travelers an opportunity to spot wildlife. Here are a few highlights.
Travelers can enjoy a three-day private tour in British Columbia, Canada. The wolf-focused, Indigenous experience offers two nights of camping in the territory of the Tlatlasikwala First Nation in British Columbia. Guests travel with their Indigenous guides, looking for sea (or coastal) wolves by boat and on land. Smaller than their grey wolf cousins and with noticeably red-tinted coats, these wolves are only found between the coastlines and islands of Southwestern Alaska and Vancouver Island, and have adapted to a diet of around 90 percent seafood.
Guests can fall asleep or wake to the sound of howls between pack members, spot their tracks across the beaches, and wait for them to slip out from the dense forest to forage along the beaches. The experience, designed to be intimate with room for only six guests and two guides, can be booked on select dates in May through to August 2023.
Also new for Audley is The Bush Camp in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Sister property to Elephant Hills in Khao Sak, The Bush Camp overlooks the Ping River and offers accommodation in solar-powered tented camp. Guests stay for one night, visiting the free-roaming and chain-free elephant park to feed and interact with the animals, watch the morning elephant wash and learn about how the camp cares for the animals. The itinerary also includes cultural interaction experiences, such as learning about the daily life of the local families working in the camp, seeing how the mahouts interact with the elephant, sampling local cuisine and helping local families make paper from elephant dung.
Setting sail from August 2023, guests can enjoy a cruise along the upper Mekong River on Heritage Line’s Anouvong, a new luxury, boutique ship that explores remote areas of Laos. Excursions include kayaking on the Nam Ou River, meeting a local “medicine man” at Pak Ou Caves and trekking through the jungle with an expert guide. Guests visit local villages and towns, see an organic garden and its vegetable harvest, visit a sustainably managed elephant sanctuary and enjoy the views from a hilltop temple.
Audley also continues to expand its accommodation portfolio with a focus on properties with a strong ESG stance. Here are a few examples.
The 36 private villas at Avana Retreat, Vietnam, have been inspired by the traditional stilt houses of the region and are on a jungle hillside, surrounded by rice terraces in northern Vietnam. On-site activities include cultural excursions to meet Indigenous tribes, watching tribal performances, children’s craft activities and adventurous experiences including kayaking, jeep rides and jungle treks.
The property serves food made from ingredients either sourced locally or grown on-site. The hotel supports the community with the majority of the staff employed from the surrounding villages.
Opening in 2023, Loapi in South Africa is a new safari camp with six sustainably designed individual tents surrounded by savannah grasslands. Guests enjoy personal butler service; all meals are prepared by a private chef in the interactive kitchen. Each group is guaranteed a private safari vehicle, guide and tracker.
Montemar offers two eco-luxury, fully sustainable villas on 43 acres of private land on the island of Santa Cruz, Galapagos. The land is part of The Galapagos Giant Tortoises Territory, which covers the animals’ natural migration path, and guests can often see them roaming the grounds. The site also offers an organic coffee plantation and plenty of activities for guests, besides the sight of wild horses. The property produces most of its energy, harvests rainwater, supplies from its organic farm, and has the lowest environmental footprint on the islands. The land has been reclaimed to recover native and endemic vegetation that sustain the giant tortoises.
All prices are on twin-sharing basis and include transfers, accommodation and excursions.
For more information, visit www.audleytravel.com.
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