Inspiration

One day you’re watching giant tortoises mate in swirling mists, then you’re nose-to-nose with a seafaring marine iguana, or snorkelling with a group of penguins.  The Galápagos Islands is a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. It’s considered one of the world’s foremost destinations for wildlife-viewing. A province of Ecuador, it lies about 1,000km off its coast. Its isolated terrain shelters a diversity of plant and animal species, many found nowhere else.

There’s no need to don your diving gear – just bring a mask and snorkel, immerse yourself in the shallow lagoon and wait for a graceful giant to glide silently by. While you’re exploring this underwater garden. The best Bora Bora snorkelling offers amazing biodiversity and scattered coral head formations.  snorkelling in Bora Bora is well-known for it calm conditions. The waters here host some of the most diverse marine life on earth.

Madagascar is the oldest island on earth, and its flora and fauna have evolved in isolation over tens of millions of years. As a result of the island’s long isolation from neighbouring continents, Madagascar is home to an abundance of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Approximately 90 percent of all plant and animal species found in Madagascar are totally endemic including the Lemurs, the carnivorous Fossa and many birds. This distinctive ecology has led some ecologists to refer to Madagascar as the “eighth continent”,and the island has been classified by Conservational International as a biodiversity hotspot

Explore your surroundings in more detail with Zodiac® outings accompanied by a team of experienced naturalist guides. Join an elite group who have crossed the Antarctic Polar Circle and experienced the magical wonders of this majestic practice. Witness incredible wildlife in their natural habitat including black-browed albatrosses, Gentoo penguins, humpback whales, and leopard seals.

Stromboli is the most active volcano on earth where you can watch a volcanic eruption literally every 15 minutes. The climb up takes two to three hours, moving through fig-trees, oleander and broom at the base to sparse shrubs further up and finally nothing but black volcanic rock. There is a viewing gallery where you spend an hour ooh-ing and ahh-ing as magma bubbles through the volcano’s vents.

In the dry season these vast expanses appear as an endless patchwork of hexagonal shapes, white as the Arctic; in the rainy season (December to April) the area becomes a 9,000 sq. km. mirror, giving the sensation of travelling across the sky. Drive out over the plains in a jeep and stay in a hotel made out of salt – beds, chairs, tables, the lot.

Deep in the Jordanian desert, hemmed in by sandstone crags and approached along a slither of a canyon, suddenly an ancient facade looms out of the rock. And not a weathered outline: a crisply-defined colossus, six mighty pillars guarding the entrance. The Nabateans built them two millennia ago.

Traditionally carved from a tree trunk, the mokoro was the common means of transport of the Bavei tribe. Today, fiber glass is increasingly common, rather than wood, but these canoes are still the best ways to explore the channels and waterways of the largest delta in the world.