Adventure travel company GeoEx is one of the best in the business when it comes to organizing unique excursions to the far corners of the globe. For more than 30 years they’ve been planning trips to some of our planet’s more off-the-beaten-path locations, giving travelers experiences that simply can’t be found elsewhere. In fact, we recently shared five new destinations that the company is adding to its catalog for 2013, expanding their already impressive line-up even further.
While it is commonly known that the company caters to the experienced adventure traveler, not everyone is aware that they also offer a number of fantastic options for families. The GeoEx Family Adventures are designed for travelers of all ages, providing fun and adventurous options for everyone. These trips move at a bit more of a leisurely pace, allowing small children and older members of the family to stay together at all times. They also feature accommodations and activities that are geared for a wide range of ages, making it much easier for a multi-generational clan to enjoy traveling with one another.
Just because these trips are focused on the entire family doesn’t mean that they’ve dialed back on the adventure, however. Options include a hiking, biking and rafting excursion to Costa Rica’s rainforest, a trekking expedition to the Himalaya kingdom of Bhutan and family safaris to both Kenya and South Africa. In short, these are full-blown adventure travel experiences, complete with culture, history and wildlife, that just so happen to also be well tailored for both young and old. And just so parents can rest a little easier on these trips, GeoEx has a 24/7 safety network standing by to lend assistance should the need arise.
If you’re starting to plan options for family travel in 2013, the GeoEx Family Adventures are a great option. Check out the full list of available itineraries by clicking here.
Leave it to the fun-loving Panamanians to know how to show their passengers a damn good time. I had some United miles burning a hole in my pocket this winter and wanted to use them for a trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The only routing available for my preferred time window was on Panama’s national airline, Copa Airlines, a Star-Alliance member I’d never heard of before.
If I’m flying solo, I’m willing to board just about any aircraft with a logo and a couple of wings on it, but since this was a family trip I thought I’d do my due diligence and Google Copa before booking the flights. At the risk of coming off like a hopeless xenophobe, I should admit right here that I do not associate Panama with here-take-our-lives-in-your-hands-competence and efficiency.
If I was looking for someone who could get three outs in the ninth inning, I might turn to a Panamanian. But for an airline? I had no idea. But I was impressed to learn that Copa has been around for decades and has crashed just once, and that was way back in 1992. Sure, there was another incident when one of their pilots veered off the runway and wrecked one of their planes, but hey, no one died, so no harm no foul.
I also liked the fact that they have a really pretty girl named Ana who provides nuggets of valuable information on their website’s top ten questions page. For example, in response to the apparently very popular question, “Do you speak Spanish?” Ana assures us that sí, the Panamanian staff does indeed speak Spanish. (Now who would have guessed that?)
But we got off to a less than promising start with Copa at O’hare airport on Valentine’s Day.
“You will have to be very patient with us,” warned a clipboard-carrying Copa staffer who was directing travelers into two lines at their counter. “Our computers are broken, so we are doing everything by hand today.”
We arrived at 6 A.M. for an 8.09 flight and by 6:45 we’d barely moved in the line when we noticed that the young woman was directing several late arriving passengers into their business class line, which had been empty. I ducked out of the coach line and complained that people who arrived after us were getting served before us and the woman apologized, opened up a brand new line just for us and assured us that we would be next. I felt moderately embarrassed by the rock star treatment but I was secretly delighted.
After we boarded the plane, I brought my sons, ages 3 and 5, up for a peek in the cockpit and the Copa pilots seemed oddly delighted to meet them. They both doffed their pilot hats, put them on my sons and let them touch a few random buttons before suggesting I go fetch my camera for a few shots. After the photo opp, they suggested I bring the boys back again after the flight was over for a “flight lesson.” Huh?
The aircraft was ice cold and didn’t warm up even an hour into the flight. I’m the kind of person who is always hot, not cold, and I had on a polo shirt and a light jacket and was wrapped to the neck, mummy style, in a Copa blanket but was still freezing. I asked a beautiful Copa stewardess with coffee colored skin and high heels that were like stilts why it was so cold and she looked at me like I was crazy.
“You’re cold? That’s funny because I am perfectly comfortable,” she said with a smile before walking away.
Well, so long as she was comfortable and, let’s face it, so darn cute, that was good enough. A few minutes later, her colleague, a beefy, handsome Panamanian steward in a tight uninform who looked like he would have fit in nicely on Jersey Shore, came by with foil covered plastic tins of enchiladas. For breakfast.
“What’s in the enchiladas?” I asked.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he admitted, seemingly fielding this question for the first time. “Why don’t you try them and find out?”
My wife did just that and reported that they were very edible. (And filled with ham and cheese, let the record show) Around 11 A.M. they came around with a drink cart and I noticed that several passengers- in coach, mind you- were ordering cocktails. I assumed they paid for them and wrote them off as nervous fliers or incorrigible alcoholics.
We arrived on time, and on the way out, the pilots insisted that my sons come back into the cockpit to sit in their seats and horse around. (see video) An hour later, we caught a connecting Copa flight in Panama City bound for San Jose, Costa Rica, and, once again, noticed that quite a few passengers were enjoying cocktails in coach. (Cocktails in Coach- wouldn’t that be a great motto for this or any other airline?)
I didn’t even want one- after having risen at zero-dark thirty, I was shattered but curious. My wife ordered a rum and coke and I asked the stewardess to confirm that it was free.
“Of course it’s free,” she said, as though I’d just asked her a profoundly stupid question.
“And is alcohol ALWAYS free on Copa airline?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “For us, alcohol is always free.”
Now that, my friends, is what I call a damn good airline.
Mandatory insurance. Those are two words that I hate to hear when I’m renting a car outside the U.S. On Thursday night, I spent an hour and a half in a Thrifty Rent a Car location near the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica, trying to understand how an eight-day rental that I expected to pay $394 for was somehow going to cost me either $786 or $946. I’m an experienced traveler and I should have known better. Here’s how I got scammed and how you can avoid the same fate.
I spent a huge amount of time shopping around for a deal on a rental car for an eight-day trip to Costa Rica and the best price I found was through Thrifty, which quoted me a price of $394 for an automatic transmission SUV. By American standards, this was no bargain, but in Costa Rica during the high season it was the best deal I could find.
I received a confirmation email from Thrifty that listed my estimated “mandatory charges” (base rental price, one-way drop off surcharge, vehicle license fee) plus optional charges (booster seat for child), and then the “estimated grand total” price. Two days before we arrived in country, the local branch also confirmed the reservation and the price via email. Even in the fine print of both emails there is no mention of any additional charges or mandatory insurance costs.We arrived at the Thrifty location near the San Jose airport on Thursday night and, despite the fact that there was only one person in front of us in line, we waited 40 minutes to find out that our $394 rental car was actually going to cost $786 if we opted for the lowest possible level of insurance or $946 if we chose the more comprehensive coverage. We spent nearly another hour unsuccessfully trying to untangle the mess and it quickly became clear why we’d waited so long to get to the counter in the first place: everyone was arguing with them about the same issue as they were shocked to find double the rates they expected.
I thought it was a scam because the agent was jotting down all these prices on a scrap of paper as though he was making it up as he went along. I’ve been hit up for mandatory insurance in other countries before but those costs were more an annoyance than the budget buster this was. So I walked out and tried two other rental car places, both of which quoted similar rates.
Rather than pay nearly $100 per day to rent the car, we took a cab to our hotel and I studied the confirmation email from Thrifty. Even in the fine print and “terms and conditions” of the confirmation email there was no mention of the mandatory insurance. I called Thrifty to complain and all they could manage was their contention that my rate was only an “estimated grand total” and not an “actual grand total.”
I went back to Thrifty’s website and tried to make a new reservation, this time studying all the fine print in the terms and conditions section and still couldn’t find any mention of the huge mandatory insurance cost.
I also checked the section on car rentals in my guidebook (Frommer’s) and there is no explicit warning about the exorbitant mandatory insurance, only a boilerplate sentence about checking to see if your existing insurance in the U.S. will cover you in Costa Rica.
I’m sure that Thrifty isn’t the only company guilty of this sort of bait-and-switch pricing, and as an experienced traveler, who has rented cars in a variety of countries, I should have clarified that their “grand total” estimate really was going to be the grand total. But I took the term “grand total” at face value. Next time I’ll know better and you should too. In the meantime, which way to the San Jose bus station?
The Gadling crew is one of the most diverse groups of travelers on the web. But different as we are, we’re united in our thirst for adventure and our hunger for the open road. You read about our adventures here. Now, we’d like to invite you to travel with us in real-time – on Instagram at @GadlingTravel.
Each month, a member of our team will take over the @GadlingTravel Instagram feed for one week and post images from his or her travels with the hashtag #ontheroad. This week, I’m posting photos from my current trip to sunny Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s one of the most artistic and culturally vibrant places on the planet; I’m excited to be your eyes and ears while here.
We’re also excited to open up Instagram as a platform for submitting original mobile photos into the running for Gadling’s Photo of the Day. Just mention @GadlingTravel AND use hashtag #gadling in your image post, and we’ll consider it along with photos submitted in our Gadling Pool on Flickr.
Travel writers have been hyping Nicaragua as the next big tropical paradise for years. The New York Timeslisted it as one of 46 places to go in 2013. A host of travel magazines have promoted it as a cheaper Costa Rica without the crowds. And CBS brought some of Nicaragua’s natural beauty into American homes three years ago by filming a season of “Survivor” in the country.
But an article in the Wall Street Journal last week about the challenges of trying to pitch Nicaragua to high-end travelers highlighted the reality that the country is still more of a haven for backpackers than the well heeled. In 2011, visitors to Nicaragua spent an average of just $43 per day, compared to $118 in neighboring Costa Rica. But is Nicaragua in danger of losing the cool, off-the-radar status it once enjoyed?
Fifteen years ago, Amber Dobrzensky boarded a Greyhound bus in New York City and eventually washed up in Matagalpa, Nicaragua’s Central Northern Highlands, where she helped build a medical clinic and taught English.
“The country had a profound impact on how I viewed the world,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave Nicaragua.”
The Vancouver native eventually did leave, but she returned in 2008 and has lived there ever since. She edits a cultural magazine called Hecho and is the author of the “Moon Guide to Nicaragua,” which just came out last week. We spoke to Amber to find out if Nicaragua’s still the next big thing or if it’s already arrived.
Where do you live?
I live in Managua, which is an unlikely place for expats. I’ve always intended to migrate toward the beach, but I haven’t been able to decide which stretch of beach I want to land in. I love both coasts.
Travel writers have been hyping Nicaragua for years. But it’s still not overrun by gringos, is it?
Compared to Costa Rica, it’s still pretty quiet. It’s also still relatively inexpensive; it’s definitely cheaper than Costa Rica or Panama. It has great diving on the Caribbean coast and great surfing and whale spotting on the Pacific side. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about the challenge of pitching Nicaragua as the next paradise.
They’ve just opened the country’s first luxury five-star resort – it’s called Mukul – and they invited a lot of travel agents to promote it but I think a lot of people were scratching their heads. People were saying, ‘This place is fantastic but it might be hard to pitch it.’ Nicaragua is still a bit raw and unvarnished, especially the rest of the country, so it’ll be interesting to see where the trend leads.
Invariably, when a place that used to be very under-the-radar starts to attract more attention, the old guard gets antsy and starts worrying the place will be ruined, right?
There was just an interesting article about this question in the Nicaraguan Dispatch called “Has Nicaragua Gone Mainstream?” The truth is that chaotic things still happen here. It’s a fun place. There’s a very telling phrase here – mañana no existe – which means tomorrow doesn’t exist. This mentality really resonates here. Schedules don’t stick but you just shrug your shoulders and move on, but tourists don’t really like that. So it’s definitely more of a country for travelers, rather than tourists.
I came here for the first time to work for an NGO in 1998 and the difference between then and when I returned in 2008 to live here has been huge. In ’98, I think I saw six travelers in eight months.
Have Nicaraguans benefited much from the increase in tourism?
There are benefits but they are just starting to be seen. I think there were 1.2 million tourists last year. Roads have improved and, while that may have been done for tourism, everyone benefits from that. There are a lot of foreign owned businesses but Nicas are also now getting into the act.
So for travelers who plan to base themselves in the country’s two most popular places, the colonial city of Granada and San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific, are there some excursions you recommend to get off the beaten path?
Ometepe Island can be done as a day trip from San Juan del Sur, but you might prefer to stay for a couple days. It’s an island made up of twin volcanoes that’s in the center of a lake. There are volcano hikes and the views are fantastic and the nature and wildlife are amazing. One of the volcanoes is active and it’s often smoking into the skyline. It’s pretty spectacular.
There are also beaches to the south that, because the road access isn’t very good, aren’t crowded and you can often see turtles coming ashore to lay eggs.
Is it easy to get away from the crowds in San Juan del Sur?
Absolutely. There are at least 5-6 beaches within a half hour of San Juan. But in the rainy season, you need a 4 x 4 to get to them. You can have a non-touristy experience very close to a tourist center.
There are some great excursions from Granada as well. You can tour the isletas; there are several hundred tiny little islands at the foot of the Mombacho volcano in the lake. Some of them are just big enough for a house. You can mountain bike on Mombacho or do hiking tours. The Laguna de Apoyo swimming hole is another great trip from Granada. It’s a beautiful, extinct volcano crater and there are a few small hotels and an eco-resort there. It’s very peaceful and quiet and it’s only about a half hour from Granada.
Do most travelers need a rental car?
It depends on the aim of your travels. You can get everywhere on buses and there are also shuttles to get you to places like Leon, Granada and San Juan in an air-conditioned mini-van, which is a step up from the chicken buses you hear about. To get to the major cities and towns, you will have a choice between chicken buses or other buses or collectivos, which are shared minivans that leave from bus stations once they are full.
In the book, you recommend a two-week, best of Nicaragua itinerary that takes travelers to Granada, Masaya, Ometepe, San Juan del Sur, San Ramon and Big Corn Island. Is that very ambitious for two weeks?
It’s ambitious but it depends how much time you want at each place. If you’re into beaches, you might want to spend more time around San Juan. If you’re into culture you might spend more time in Granada, Masaya or Leon.
For travelers who want a relaxing beach holiday and they have time for just the Caribbean or the Pacific coast, how should they decide where to go?
Once you get to the Corn Islands, there’s great diving and snorkeling and fishing but there are no volcanoes, no hustle and bustle, no crafts. There’s more diversity of things to do on the Pacific side.
What are some must-do experiences in Nicaragua?
Volcano boarding at Cerro Negro, near Leon is really unique to Nicaragua. You can sit down and do like a sled type of volcano boarding or you can do it on a modified snowboard. But to ride down the ash and grit and rock of the crater of an active volcano is pretty memorable. There’s no other country where you can slide down an active volcano, so that’s a huge draw. It’s about three hours from Granada, but it’s near Leon and Leon is a great alternative to Granada. You have the same colonial charm but it’s slightly younger and less trafficked.
So Leon is an alternative to busier Granada. What’s a good alternative to San Juan del Sur?
From Leon, there are two nice beach communities, Poneloya and Las Peñitas, which are less popular with surfers but they are very lovely beaches.
What about food and drinks in Nicaragua?
The thing that most people want to try and also bring home with them is Flor de Caña rum. I wasn’t a rum drinker but it’s incredibly drinkable. It’s world-class rum. Everyone leaves with a few bottles of it. Rum is cheaper than water. A half-liter goes for $7 roughly. A cocktail at a bar could be $3; $4 would be a stretch actually.
Beer is also cheap in Nicaragua, right?
It’s very cheap. There are three primary national brands. It’s about $1 per beer at a bar.
What about food?
Everyone should try gallo pinto, which is refried beans with rice mixed together and eaten with a chili hot sauce. And there is a lot of vigoron, and fried and stewed porks, often served with yucca or cabbage. There is also a breakfast food that is like a tamale called nacatamal, traditionally eaten on weekends, where people throw in all kinds of ingredients left over from the week.
In the book you wrote about the tensions between the gringo community and locals in San Juan del Sur, and how that came to a boil in 2007 when an American, Eric Volz, was imprisoned on pretty flimsy grounds for allegedly murdering his ex-girlfriend. (He was later released.) There was some ugly anti-American sentiment at that time, has that died down?
That’s history. I think Nicaraguans mostly see the benefits of having foreigners here. There are elements of tourism that people here enjoy and other elements that trouble people. Anti-gringo sentiment isn’t unique to San Juan or Nicaragua. The doors are open to foreigners here, no matter where they are from.
Nicaraguans boast that it’s the safest country in Central America. Is that a fact?
It’s hard to say. In general the crime here is opportunistic, and petty, not violent crime. I’m a solo female traveler and I’ve lived here for five years. Incidents can happen anywhere in the world.
Do you worry that too many gringos will discover Nicaragua?
It’s an unpredictable country and I think a lot of travelers will fall in love with the place and spread the word. Tourism will continue to grow, but I don’t see it ruining what is special about Nicaragua or the authenticity of the experience here. Most tourists are going to stick to the most popular destinations, so you’ll always be able to go to the cowboy central lowlands and highlands of the country and not see a single tourist. Nicaragua will continue to keep its doors wide open and I don’t think it’s going to change much.