July 2018

Mazel Pernell of Rockville, Maryland, wrote, “I’ve enjoyed international travel with group tours. In planning my sixth trip to Africa for the fall of 2018, I didn’t find a set tour that I liked, so I’m working directly with a Ghana-based company to customize a 3-week guided tour that includes Ghana, Benin and Togo. I will be going solo.”

“I would appreciate hearing from any traveler who has been on an extended solo tour. Specifically, did you eat all or some meals with the chaperone/driver/guide? Did you pay for his or her meals? What would be a reasonable amount to tip the chaperone for a tour of nearly three weeks? (If a percentage of the total tour cost, what percentage? If a set amount per day of touring, how much? Another option?) What else do I need to consider?”

We printed a couple of subscribers’ responses last month. Here are a few more.

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In my opinion, custom travel requires more responsibility and specificity on your part. You have to be totally honest up front about your interests and the things you want nothing to do with, and you must be realistic and forthcoming about your physical abilities and limitations, including foot problems, your tiny bladder and food preferences and allergies.

Subscribers were invited to write in about places, outside of the US, where they’ve had rewarding sightings of birds. (We cannot accept more submissions.)

In addition to their providing details about the types of birds they saw, we asked travelers to each tell us where they were (including any contact info) and the year, time of year and even time of day of each sighting. We also wanted to know how difficult it was to reach an area, what equipment would be recommended and what the weather was like.

We printed a few letters last month and are continuing with locations in Latin America.

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We took a private, customized tour to Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and Trinidad & Tobago in March 2014 arranged by Jim Turner at Amazing Peru ...