Tackling our big rocks: boat edition
Is a picture of us climbing big rocks at Red Rock Canyon too on the nose?
A working post as we lock in our marquee travel destinations
Maybe it’s because I worked in startup world but I use the phrase “Big Rocks” a lot, so naturally, I labeled the next step in our sabbatical planning as tackling our “Big Rocks” instead of what Marshall wanted to label it… “Trips” 😓.
(So far) this post is focused on how we booked the “cruise” portions of our travel. Originally I thought it was going to be regularly updated as we work through locking in bigger travels — trips that are likely to be fixed dates for travel, more niche, multi-steps or dependent on a single vendor. They also tend to be more expensive. It still is but we ran into a big …mountain.. (?) that is planning safaris in Africa. As we did our rough schedule, we highlighted our Big Rocks as the following but this blog post will be focused on our (somewhat fast) journey in locking down Antarctica, Galapagos, and Raja Ampat.
| Intended Month | Big Rock | Status |
|---|---|---|
| October | African Safari | Active (has taken > 3+ weeks to lock down) |
| December (Actually January) | Patagonia | Post July TMB trip if we want to use the same hiking vendor |
| December | Antarctica | Booked (!) with Lindblad Expeditions |
| January (Actually December) | Galapagos | Booked (!) with Ecoventura Cruises |
| February | Raja Ampat | Booked (!) with Dive Damai and Brooke Pyke |
| March | Bhutan | Upcoming |
| April | Dolomites hiking | Post July TMB trip if we want to use the same hiking vendor |
Here’s an overview of the Big Rocks that we planned (or are planning):
Antarctica Cruise
African Safari
Raja Ampat Liveaboard
Planning Antarctica 🐧 🇦🇶
Probably from osmosis or maybe just common sense, we thought Antarctica was going to be the pickiest, most annoying logistically, and most expensive to book so we wanted to get that solidified first. Thankfully, because going to Antarctica is a pretty niche travel destination, there were only a handful of vendors that we considered.
Did you know: You can fly directly to Antarctica ($$$$$$$) but most people go on an expedition cruise from the southern tip of South America or Africa. South America is more common than Africa.
Our friends also mentioned that reading reviews for these cruises was critical because they’ve heard horror stories of people getting seriously injured because it’s extremely brutal to cross the Drake Passage in a ship.
We were thinking about the following cruise vendors:
Lindblad - National Geographic related. Most photography leaning/ conservationist. ~ 150 people per boat.
G Adventures - was randomly mentioned on Reddit as positive but hard to find more consistent reviews
Quark - most budget friendly out of our options. 140-175 people on each ship.
Seabourne - luxury vibes. Reviews read like more old people on this brand. 264 suites (not guests) so maybe 500 people.
Silversea - luxury vibes. Reviews read like a lot of old people on this brand too. 220-275 guests.
Hurtigurten - really navigable website compared to others. Luxury but not obvious skewing old. Capacity was ~ 500 people.
Most of these cruises ranged from 6 day cruises to 20+ day cruises depending on if you wanted to go just to Antarctica vs South Georgia Island vs Falkland islands. We decided a 10-14 day cruise was probably our sweet spot and didn’t want to go beyond because of the opportunity cost to explore other places in the world. I did fomo about these adorable antarctic fur seals and king penguins that we would miss out on by not stopping in South Georgia. We decided ultimately on Lindblad because we wanted a boat that had
fewer people (only 100 guests can be on land at a time) to maximize the amount of time on land
not “old people vibes” — younger guests on Seaborne and Silversea said older guests had mobility issues that slowed down the onboarding and offboarding each day
had a schedule that was at the end of December/beginning of January which fit our ideal schedule — spending Jan 1st 2025 in Antarctica!
Also here’s a random New Yorker article by Jonathan Franzen that Marshall read to “get hyped” about Antarctica.
Planning Raja Ampat 🤿🪸🐬
As we were looking at Africa, we simultaneously researched Raja Ampat. Raja Ampat has been on our list for quite some time. When we first started learning how to scuba dive, we learned that Raja Ampat has crazy amounts of marine biodiversity. In fact these islands have 75% of all coral species in the world! We also knew that it was really difficult to get to and the best way to go there for scuba diving was on a liveaboard ship —> a perfect candidate for a Big Rock during our sabbatical.
Marshall looked at a couple of different operators (Arenui, Damai, Dewi, Coralia, Blue Manta) and we ultimately went with Dive Damai. The main decision-making we encountered here was whether or not we wanted the longer trip that included Triton Bay (12 days vs 8 or 10 for just Raja Ampat). I ultimately decided I wanted to do Triton Bay because
We could see whale sharks (I think Marshall gives off whale shark vibes anyway).
I’ve always loved scuba diving, and I don’t think I’ll be too tired or over it on the incremental more days. I literally have regular dreams of scuba diving with dolphins which I hope I’ll get to during this sabbatical!
A small roadblock was that the trip we wanted to do (Raja Ampat + Triton Bay in late Jan/early Feb) was “fully booked” in the manner of a weekend. We learned that a photographer, Brooke Pyke, tentatively booked it entirely as a charter trip, so instead of booking directly through Damai, we could book it through Brooke. After some back-and-forth emailing, we learned it was the same Damai crew and dive guides and that Brooke + some others would teach about underwater photography and marine conservation. We aren’t that into underwater photography besides for our own consumption so I wasn’t sure the activities would be appropriate for us but they said that another couple who already committed also were non-photographers. Overall, it was a little bit more expensive than the plain Dive Damai excursion but we decided it was worth it to be able to go to Triton Bay during the time of the season we wanted to.
Planning Galapagos 🏝️🐢
Now that we solidified Antarctica and Raja Ampat, there weren’t that many slots available that would align with our schedule for Galapagos. We were pretty set on doing it with Ecoventura and leaning toward Itinerary B with the volcanoes instead of Itinerary A with the beaches. Itinerary B was only available in December — the January dates were in conflict with our Antarctica cruise — so we decided to flip-flop our original Patagonia trip with Galapagos. Fortunately, because we’re booking before April 30th, Ecoventura had a 10% discount for us for the 7 night/ 8 day cruise.
We also booked with a travel advisor that my friend Pam normally uses. It’s the same price for us out of pocket to go through the travel advisor versus direct so why not help him with some commission fares that he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten? (more on this later…a separate blog post probably)
