A daring journey began with the visit of Gullah Gech

According to Matt Berna Intrepid Travel’s most popular tour for international travelers to the US is a multi-day Southwest exploration. And who can blame them? Our red rocks and wide gaps are amazing – the backdrops of dreams and old movies. The locals are full of culture, community and art. Plus, we make a hell of a cowboy steak. Less incomprehensible is their enjoyment of visiting Walmart, but to each their own.

Taking multi-day tours in a country outside of your own home is what Intrepid and similar operators like G Adventures, Contiki and others – are known for. They work especially well for solo travelers, and depending on the provider and the price point, they can cater to your specific needs, whether it’s food, adventure, history, or old-time train travel. Along the way, you’ll meet like-minded travelers, experience new experiences, and best of all, you won’t have to make plans.

Brave was started in 1988 by two adventurous and bearded Australians, Darrell Wade and Geoff Manchester. Today, the company offers more than 1,000 itineraries in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, the Middle East, Australia, and both the Arctic and Antarctica. Their specialty is immersion – or creation. BraveIf you want – travel itineraries for groups of no more than 10, focusing mainly on the outdoors: hiking Kilimanjaro or the Patagonian wilderness, including both frontcountry and backcountry tours in US national parks such as Acadia and Yosemite. They are often paired with local guides, drawing on their expertise. Programs are flexible, and committed to supporting small, often family-run businesses.

But while many people may consider booking a multi-day group tour when planning a trip to an unfamiliar and remote area, it’s less common to book one in your own country. Burn, you think this is wrong. “There’s a very rich culture here in the States that is often completely ignored,” he asserts. With 40 new American domestic tours, Intrepid is hoping to encourage curious Americans to explore their own backyards.

“International travelers have a lot of time to spend—two, maybe three weeks—and they want to hit three to five states in one trip,” Berna says. “Local programs are really about traveling in depth and scale.” The new adventures are very localized, short-lived (unfortunately, we Statesiders have less PTO than our European counterparts). With many, there’s a signature eye for exploration and pampering, while others, like cycling in Washington’s San Juan Islands, are designed to get the blood flowing.

“There’s been a dramatic trend toward more active holidays, especially in North America, I think because of the pandemic,” Berna said. “People are buying bikes and getting out and walking more. Reservations for our walking programs are off the charts.

The company’s future involves shining a light on underrepresented areas of tourism. Although they have a great tour list, they admit that they have neglected one big area of ​​interest, and now they hope to fix it, is BIPOC’s legacy in America. Gifts are typically piecemeal, such as a hands-on cooking class at Delightful Roux Culinary School, New Orleans’ only African American woman-owned culinary school, as part of the Tennessee Music Tour to New Orleans. Or join a local Blackfeet guide for a half-day hike in the Badger Two-Medicine Wilderness, part of Montana’s Best Tour. But starting this October, they’ll go all in, as guests are invited to spend six days discovering the past, present, and future of the Southeastern US’s Gullah Giche Corridor.

Cultural conservation work

The Gullah Gitche Corridor includes the coastal and offshore islands of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and is the region where enslaved people, many from the rice cultures of West and Central Africa, were brought to work in the Americas. Rice, indigo and cotton plantations. Due to its geographical location, the enslaved local people were able to preserve many of their ancestral traditions, and today’s Gullah Geez descendants continue to preserve their traditions in art, cuisine, music and language. Fast forward to 2006, and the Gullah Gitche Corridor was designated a National Heritage Site by Congress.

For this new tour, Intrepid has partnered with Stephanie M. Jones, CEO of the Heritage Alliance for Tourism, to explore the black American experience beyond the civil rights movement. Jones is the founder of Blacks in Travel Tourism, and her tours are built on the ground pounding in-depth research, identifying black-owned partnerships for her travel programs. “She had very interesting activities,” says Berna. “For example, a shop where women get haircuts and men get pedicures – they have the opportunity to sit in a very immersive environment and talk to someone about their community.”

To her advantage, Jones uses the support of the world’s largest small group of tour guides. She shared that after the pandemic took a toll on the travel industry, especially black-owned travel agencies, and her peers saw their incomes stagnate. Identity Journal of the Importance of Using Smart Partnerships. Black Heritage Tours will host the Gullah Geche Tour on the ground, partnering with Intrepid for itinerary details, promotion and marketing. “This partnership was incredibly important because my mission has always been to highlight black businesses, black history and our amazing culture,” Jones said. Identity.

The South’s oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in 1817 (also the site of a horrific racial massacre of 2015), such as Mother Emanuel AMA Church in Charleston, on a Gullah Ghee tour of South Carolina’s James, Johns and St. Helena Islands, and the Gullah Pioneer Robert Smalls Memorial in the American South They have laid the groundwork for understanding the dark roots that are often overlooked. The six-day trip in Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah covers Lowcountry boils, sweetgrass basket-making workshops, church tours, dance lessons, heritage museums, and hiking trails.

And if it goes well, Intrepid hopes to use the Gullah Geach venture as a template for them and other tour operators to add more cultural offerings like this in the future. “We want to see these types of cultural tours in the state as a regular part of everyone’s travel portfolio,” he says. But, given the country’s deeply divided climate of late, he knows that’s no short order.

“It’s a lot to contend with,” he admits. “We have to be really strict about how we do it.”

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