Jacada Travel: For Those Luxurious Bucket List Adventures

Jacada Travel will help you get close up to a zebra on a luxury African safari.

I wasn’t too familiar with Jacada Travel, a London, England-based company that specializes in luxury private guided tours in Latin America and Africa, but a new Gold Award from Travel Weekly in their 2013 Magellan Awards made me take notice.

Jacada Travel was named a “Best Overall” tour operator by a panel of travel industry leaders and insiders.

The company is just five years old and promises to deliver personalized travel experiences, which they’ll design for you based on your wants, needs, desires, and, no doubt, a few whims.

If cost is no object — or at least not the defining object — in your pursuit of bucket list safaris in Africa or Amazon tribal encounters in Peru, Jacada Travel will make it happen.

Baby boomers (as well as other travelers such as honeymooners, to be sure) can view the great migration in East Africa’s Serengeti, explore Chile’s Atacama Desert, visit Botswana’s Okavango Delta, tour Tierra del Fuego, stay on a private island in Mozambique — all with first-class accommodations, local guides and attentive service throughout.

You can tell a lot about Jacada Travel’s sensibilities from its website. In a word, it’s gorgeous, with striking photos of animals, landscapes, beaches, and landmarks. They practically leap out at you and shout: “Why aren’t you here, right now?” That’s impressive.

Yet unlike so many sites that seem to fall in love with design over function, Jacada’s website is also simple to navigate and gather necessary information.

Within minutes I was able to understand what the company is about, some approximate costs (depending on your wants, needs and whims, of course), what is particularly enticing about each possible destination, and to start dreaming of my own future adventures still on my bucket list.

As I’ve written about many times in this blog, baby boomers are especially fond of tours that offer personalized experiences, flexibility and independence — and that offer good value even if the cost is higher than more mundane tours.

Jacada Travel seems to fill all those requirements, so I congratulate them on their award and their approach to travel.

I’m always glad to hear from readers who have had direct experience with the travel companies I write about. Please feel free to let me know if you agree or disagree with my assessments, and I’ll be sure to publish your comments (anonymously if you wish). Thanks!