{"id":15178,"date":"2008-08-12T02:48:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T02:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/cruise-weekly-comment-kamchatka-2\/"},"modified":"2008-08-12T02:48:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T02:48:00","slug":"cruise-weekly-comment-kamchatka-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2008\/08\/cruise-weekly-comment-kamchatka-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruise Weekly Comment: Kamchatka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cruiseweekly.com.au\/App_Themes\/cruiseweekly\/images\/logo.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cruiseweekly.com.au\/App_Themes\/cruiseweekly\/images\/logo.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/cruiseweekly.com.au\/\">Cruise Weekly<\/a> \u2013 Comment by Roderick Eime<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.auroraexpeditions.com.au\/images\/exp_kuril_kamchatka.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.auroraexpeditions.com.au\/images\/exp_kuril_kamchatka.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a>Expedition cruising has evolved somewhat from the hard-core voyages that rekindled this travel sector in the 1960s and \u201870s. Today, some \u2018adventure cruises\u2019 are simply hedonistic boutique yachts with champagne on tap, but just last week I was reminded that the core product is still alive and well.<\/p>\n<p>At a recent industry function I caught up with travel doyen, John Borthwick, and asked him about his recent trip to Kamchatka aboard Aurora Expeditions\u2019s 100-berth Marina Svetaeva, a trusty former Russian survey vessel of the type that helped springboard Antarctic and Artic tourism after the fall of the USSR.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s not much out there?\u201d I inquired, recalling my own visions of bleak Siberian plains. John nearly choked on his entr\u00e9e.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell,\u201d he spluttered indignantly, \u201cif you overlook the volcanoes, grizzly bears, walruses, sea otters, reindeer and Koryak shaman!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>John then proceeded to enthrall the table with dizzying accounts of vast stampeding herds of reindeer, packs of marauding brown bears and the graceful antics of the sea otters.<\/p>\n<p>The Kamchatka Peninsula, asserts John, is Russia\u2019s Alaska or Kimberley without a tourist in sight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s at the extreme of remote wilderness beauty, totally unpopulated and bursting with wildlife,\u201d he finished, leaving us agog.<\/p>\n<p>This was Aurora\u2019s first Kamchatka expedition and NZ\u2019s Heritage Expeditions is also exploiting the region, but the seasonal window is narrow and access complicated, so it will remain, for the time being at least, a niche destination to be savoured by a fortunate few.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cruise Weekly \u2013 Comment by Roderick Eime Expedition cruising has evolved somewhat from the hard-core voyages that rekindled this travel sector in the 1960s and \u201870s. Today, some \u2018adventure cruises\u2019 are simply hedonistic boutique yachts with champagne on tap, but just last week I was reminded that the core product is still alive and well. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[336,332],"class_list":["post-15178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aurora-expeditions","tag-heritage-expeditions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}