Plan Your Next Adventure With This Canadian Company
· 6 min. read
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To me, travel has always been about adventure. I love seeing new places, trying new foods, and having my beliefs and traditions challenged. But, I have never gone through a travel agency. I've gone with travel companies before, like Contiki, G Adventures, Chernobyl X, Remote Year, etc but not through an agency.
However, I have worked at a travel agency. It was much less fun that I expected, and they didn't offer the kind of travel experienes I enjoy. Their bread and butter was corporate flights between Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg and Toronto. The same people, the same hotels, the same schedule. Sometimes we had people book last-minute trips to Mexican or Jamaican resorts, but those were about as exotic as they got. I like those, and often try to promote Cuba instead, even though I was supposed to warn people it wasn't was nice as the other tropical destinations.
But about a year or so ago I discovered Finisterra Travel, based out of Vancouver. This company shares my love of travel and focuses their tours around culture, food, education, local sights and women-only travel (not applicable to me). These are things that my blog has always been about, and I absolutely love what they are doing.
Run by co-owners Keri Montgomery and Nicola Wilson (aka the Worldly Girlies), Roxane Seguy, and long-time friend and award winning Saskatchewan-based travel blogger Jenn Smith Nelson, the company works hard to curate and "design" the perfect trip for you.
They even have scheduled trips throughout the year where you can just join them for an exotic adventure, and not worry about organizing anything -- such as their trip to Japan this November. If you've ever wanted to visit the Land of the Rising Sun, but you don't speak Japanese, this would be perfect for you. Another group tour is a writing retreat in Morocco, a location that many people probably don't have on their list but looks absolutely incredible. Maybe I could join that and finally finish my book I've been working on for six years.
Finisterra Travel also helps arrange trips for honeymoons, group trips, student travel and educational tours, family holidays and cruises. Everybody has unique wants and needs, and they know there is no one-size-fits-all travel plan. This is something the travel agency I worked at didn't do. You got a seat on a plane, a room in a hotel, and maybe a shuttle service in between.
Another reason that I really like Finisterra Travel is that the members of the company actually visit the countries they promote. I've been in talks with Keri and Nicola for the past few months and they've emailed me from Italy, Japan, Panama, and a few different countries across Africa. They not only sell travel, they love traveling, and they personally join group tours to make sure everything goes according to plan.
I also like that they are 100% Canadian. It seems so much of the travel industry in Canada is dominated by American businesses, but these are four Canadian women who want to share their love of travel with others, and who want to inspire a new generation of responsible traveling too. The world seems to always be changing, so it's nice to know that you can call somebody domestically to hear their thoughts on recent developments too.
With so many popular destinations being overrun by over tourism, Finisterra Travel takes special care in arranging trips that highlight places that need a little more love, like The Michinoku Coastal Trail near Fukushima, Japan. This area is still trying to recover following the devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident. This area is safe for people to visit, but many tourists shy away from it, which leads to less money for the struggling community, and heavier tourism elsewhere.
If you're looking to travel domestically instead, they can help with that too, with trips to BC's famous Great Bear Lodge, food trips through Montreal, group trips to Churchill, Manitoba to see polar bears and the Northern Lights, trips to the Yukon, or escape the city at the traditional Klahoose Nation territory. I'm not sure of any other Canadian company that promotes Canadian destinations like this.
I don't travel as much as I once did, but I still have a deep love and passion for it. If you want to travel, but not sure where to go, what to see, how how to prepare for it, may it be a honeymoon, a friend's trip, or you're traveling to see the hometown of a long-distant relative, I recommend Finisterra Travel.
And, for the record, this article is not sponsored by them either, I just love what they do, and think you would too.
All images belong to Finisterra Travel.
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Categories: British Columbia, Canada, Travel Tips
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