Kilimanjaro

February 12, 2012

Family Travel: Not Just for Kids

Traveling with the Graduates

With my third and last child up and off to college I find myself rethinking the definition of “Family Travel”. Of course we’re still a family even if we don’t have dinner together every night, if we don’t all live under the same roof, and even if my kids are more grown up than I ‘m ready for them to be. And we still love to travel together – none of us are too grown up to discover new places, thank goodness.

But when we call it Family Travel – it might seem too young for what you are really after. How about: Graduate Adventures.

Your children graduate from high school, or from college. Maybe even from graduate school. And you are graduating from a full house of responsibilities to spare time for thinking about what comes next. Just like dinnertime used to be the time to catch up on the day, now your Graduate Adventure can be the place to reconnect with your busy kids. A time to continue to grow together.

When your kids graduate from high school, college or graduate school you don’t stop wanting to travel together – you just want more sophisticated opportunities. Welcome to our Graduate Adventures. Full of history, mystery, and discovery. Great activities to challenge yourself AND your ‘kids’ (won’t we call them that forever??)

It makes sense that we began with 6 year olds 15 years ago, and now have families with 20-someting year old kids traveling with us. So give us a call and see what opportunities there might be for your graduated family. Turkey, Thailand, Tanzania, Peru, Costa Rica – we have older groups going almost everywhere!



June 22, 2011

Haiku and Kilimanjaro

A view of Mt Kilimanjaro

A View of Mt. Kilimanjaro

Last week we invited  our friends to submit a haiku in return for a $200 credit toward climbing the great mountain this summer. With 5 syllables, Kilimanjaro simply *invites* haiku, (you know, 5/7/5) and we had gotten a bit silly around the office thinking about it ourselves (more on that later).

We started with my colleague Bryan’s version: Going back to school? // Need one more adventure first? // Kilimanjaro!

Frankly I was downright astounded at the fabulous response we received – even from those with apparently no interest in the summit! Allow me to share…

These 3 are from Jessica in CA, who traveled on  Thomson adventure to China with her family a few years ago when she was but a child.

Stark, soaring majesty
above vast, wild savannah
Kilimanjaro
***
Imposing mount
rising above the wildlife
alone, together
***
The trail winds higher
breathlessly ascending
to vistas of Eden

Then, from April Dunn:

Kilimanjaro
Now my Haiku is complete
That is a long word!

And an awesome submission from Michael Katz:

Geez, it’s so damn high
But still, I’d like to see it
Time to pack my bags

Feel inspired? Send us your own Haiku, and thanks for playing!