G Adventures Announces New Destinations For 2013

Adventure travel company G Adventures has announced that starting in January of next year it will begin offering options to visit 12 new countries and expand its popular Local Living tours to more destinations as well. These additions to the G Adventures catalog will provide a host of new and unique experiences for travelers of all types.

Perhaps the most exciting news is that with its new expanded line-up, G Adventures will now be offering options to visit all seven continents. Over the past 22 years, the company has been providing amazing travel experiences across the globe, but until now they haven’t offered any tours to Australia or New Zealand. That changes in 2013 with new overland trips from Sydney to Cairns and Melbourne to Darwin in Australia, and exciting excursions to both the North and South Islands in New Zealand. Travelers will have the option to go spearfishing, soak up the culture in an Aboriginal community, visit a working cattle ranch or sail some of the most beautiful islands on the planet. Tours will range from three to 21 days in length and can be customized to fit schedules and budgets.

Besides Australia and New Zealand, ten other countries are new to the G Adventures roster next year. Those countries include Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Croatia, Iceland, Scotland, Montenegro, Sweden, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Albania and Serbia. These new destinations will expand the company’s offerings to over 730 different tours.Also expanding in 2013 will be the Local Living tours, which have been carefully crafted to give travelers the opportunity to experience specific destinations like a local. While there, guests actually stay in one place and can really delve deep into the history and culture of that single location by becoming embedded into day-to-day life there. The Local Living option was first introduced with tours to the Amalfi Coast and Southern Tuscany, but starting next year 23 different tours will be offered to such places as Iceland, Mongolia, Croatia, Morocco and more.

With so many options in its catalog, I think it is safe to say that G Adventures has a little something for everyone. Whether you enjoy a hardcore adventure or a more relaxed cultural experience, they can provide the kind of trip you’re looking for and they’ll do so at an affordable price.

Northern Iceland: A Locavore Tour

The locavore turn seems to be everywhere in evidence. An intensified interest in local food products, the rediscovery of forgotten local food traditions and creative attempts to merge various culinary heritages with modern preparation techniques all fuel this turn.

One side effect of this movement is the increased prominence, in many places, of local food products – on menus, in markets and in the profusion of food tours.

In August, I took a fantastic locavore tour in the form of a northern Iceland culinary tour, put together by Akureyri‘s Saga Travel. Iceland, despite its northerly position, is no agricultural wasteland. The country is self-sufficient in fish, meat and dairy and also produces vegetables.

The entire tour is worthwhile, though its first three stops are especially compelling. First up on the tour’s August incarnation: Hrísey, a quiet island to the north of Akureyri whose surrounding waters are used to farm beautiful fat, organic blue mussels. We boarded a fishing vessel and checked out submerged ropes used to farm the mussels before motoring on to the island itself. Here, we sat down to a simple and delicious lunch of mussels served with a garlic sauce and bread. These orange-hued mussels are richly flavorful, a real revelation after years of soggy, near-tasteless mussels.

Next up on the tour was a stop at Kaldi, Iceland’s first microbrewery, in the small town of Árskógssandur. Beer was actually banned in Iceland from 1915 until 1989. Perhaps it’s not a surprise then that the microbrewery explosion present in many locations has been slow to develop here.

Kaldi’s founders hired a Czech brewmaster to get the brewery off the ground. Today, demand for the company’s brews is so high that the company doesn’t yet see the need to export. (An Icelandic resident abroad told me that the seasonal Christmas brew sells out so quickly that he has to ask his parents to buy it so that he will be able to enjoy it when he returns for Christmas.) Kaldi beer is not pasteurized, nor does it contain preservatives. It is also delicious.

There is one jokey part of the tour, a stop at the Ekta factory to sample hákarl, the rotten shark for which Iceland is notorious. Our sample was provided by the company’s hilarious manager, Elvar Reykjalin, who also graciously facilitated passage of the stinking flesh down our convulsed throats with a shot of bright red liqueur. Hákarl, with its aggressive ammonia aftertaste, might be the worst thing I have ever tasted. A nice light meal followed, centered around Ekta’s very good salted cod.

Subsequent stops included Kaffi Kú for beef carpaccio and Holtsel for ice cream. The local food tour is offered year-round, with the itinerary varying from season to season. Pricing is not cheap, at 24,500 Icelandic kronur ($200), though in the context of Iceland’s high cost index, it seems relatively reasonable.

[Images: Alex Robertson Textor]

Northern Lights Just One Reason To Visit Iceland

The northern lights are a natural light display that occurs in the high latitude regions of our planet. Alaska is one of the best places to see the northern lights, especially in September and March when skies are dark and temperatures mild for comfortable viewing. Iceland is also a good place to view the display and offers some unique advantages.

One of several astronomical phenomena called “polar lights” (aurora polaris), northern lights, (Aurora Borealis) are caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere. Iceland is located directly under the main concentration of the northern lights annulus, the so-called Great Belt, an oval cosmic light that goes around earth off-axis.In Iceland, located midway between Europe and North America, and with direct flight routes from both continents, northern lights can be viewed from October through March in a number of ways.

Self-drive tours, winter Jeep expeditions and organized group excursions are popular and offered by a variety of tour operators.

But northern lights are a natural phenomenon and sightings can never be guaranteed, so having a backup plan when visiting is a good idea. Actually, for many travelers, the backup plan is their main focus and viewing the northern lights is icing on the cake.

The Golden Circle is a popular tourist route in south Iceland, looping from Reykjavík into central Iceland and back over about 300 kilometers.

Stops on the route, any one alone worth a visit, include Þingvellir national park, the Gullfoss waterfall, and the geothermally active valley of Haukadalur as well as the Kerið volcano crater/lake, Hveragerði greenhouse village, Skálholt church, and the Nesjavellir geothermal power plant.

Can’t make it to Alaska or Iceland? NorthernLightsIceland.com has a webcam set up and will broadcast the northern lights live when they happen. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter then watch for a post or tweet when their UStream feed is active.

In this time-lapse video we see a number of attractions in Iceland from Iceland Explorer Travel Guide that also has an iPhone app for exploring.


[Flickr photos by Gunnsi]

Kulusuk: Sneaking Into Greenland

Over the last decade, Greenland has opened up to increasing numbers of tourists. The Danish territory, with new powers of political autonomy as of 2009, inspires adventurous travelers with its extreme weather and dramatic geographies. Greenland is also incredibly expensive to visit, as there are no roads connecting towns and settlements along the coast. To get from town to town, one must either fly very pricey Air Greenland or travel by boat.

The easiest and least expensive way to visit Greenland is to book a day tour from Iceland to the Eastern Greenlandic island of Kulusuk, which is a 110-minute flight from Reykjavík‘s domestic airport. The day trip is not cheap. It runs €533 ($654) though August 20, and from August 21 through September 8 it is priced at €477 ($585). The day trip gives participants a guide-accompanied walking tour from the airport to the village, about an hour of free time wandering around the village, a tour of the village church, a brief discussion of Greenland and a viewing of a folk dance performed by a Greenlandic man, translated by the guide. The tour itself lasts around five hours.

The tour finishes up with a boat ride through an iceberg-laden bay back to a bit of shoreline adjacent to the airport. This boat ride, an inarguable highlight, costs an extra 150 DKK ($25).

The tour guide is an Icelandic man who’s lived in Greenland on and off for years. At the start of the tour, he gestured toward the glaciers and peaks across from the airport and told us that there were countless mountains and lakes in Greenland that had neither name nor number. Greenland is the world’s 12th largest territory, and the guide’s teaser of an introduction hit home just how vast a place Greenland is. The guide also provided information about Greenlandic life and culture. To my neophyte ears, his summaries struck me from time to time as a bit too absolute for inclusion in such a brief tour.

We made our way slowly to the village of Kulusuk. With around 300 inhabitants, the village is a small yet frankly fascinating place. There are brightly colored houses, a supermarket stocked with Danish goods, a post office and a church. The terrain is rocky. A picnic table at the top of a hill within the village permits a gorgeous panorama, which includes views of enormous icebergs. There is also a souvenir shop on the island, manned during my visit by the son of the tour guide. Villagers mostly leave visitors alone, though a few salutations were exchanged.

The tour is offered from early June through early September through Air Iceland. Though expensive, I found it to be worthwhile as a very basic introduction to Greenland. At the same time, I concluded the tour wanting more information about Greenlandic life and culture and craving more opportunities for exposure and immersion. By the time the Air Iceland plane had landed back in Reykjavík I had already plotted a visit to capital Nuuk for a blast of “urban” Greenlandic life.

For passport stamp collectors, this day trip is a special joy. Though there is no official passport control between Iceland and Greenland, vanity entry and exit stamps are offered free of charge to passengers.

[Images: Alex Robertson Textor]

Photo Of The Day: Flying To Iceland


Today’s Photo of the Day may seem a bit pedestrian: it’s a cup of (likely) mediocre airplane coffee. But the napkin comes with a fun fact about Icelandic settler Ingólfur Arnarson, whose trip from Norway took four days, and there were no napkins. Too bad he couldn’t fly Iceland Air, like Flickr user shapes of dreams, who snapped this on her way to Reykjavik. Bonus points for her stylish nail color, which she dubs Blue Lagoon. It’s a fun way to learn a little about your destination while enjoying one of air travel‘s last freebies.

Know any other clever airlines? Share your favorite travel photos with us in the Gadling Flickr pool for a future Photo of the Day.