SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL

Story Time in Canada

Listening to traditional stories and weaving cedar at an Indigenous-owned wilderness resort in British Columbia. Gazing at galaxies on a torchlit canoe ride in remote Québec. Meeting a gold miner in the Yukon, a cattle and white-bison rancher in Alberta, and cod fishers in Newfoundland. These quintessentially Canadian experiences are part of Virtuoso on-site tour connection Entrée Canada’s new Stories of Canada collection, 20 journeys that will eventually span all 13 of the country’s provinces and territories. Six-day tours connect visitors with Canada’s people and land in some off-the-tourist-radar destinations while also providing access to its First Nations communities, so that guides, elders, and knowledge keepers can share their history and heritage.

In Alberta’s boreal forests, for instance, a Cree guide leads a plant-medicine journey, and in the Northwest Territories, a Dene elder hosts a traditional land- and fire-feeding ceremony. “Along with economic boosts to Indigenous communities, core benefits for these guides and hosts revolve around the sharing of their stories,” says Marc Telio, Entrée Canada’s founder and president. “Indigenous culture is typically shared through storytelling by knowledge keepers and elders, and when it happens, it’s both captivating and connective.” From $3,370.

Canadian cool: A Newfoundland vista.

LIVING BLACK HISTORY

Long isolated on barrier islands and in coastal communities of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, the Gullah Geechee people – descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans – developed a distinct culture that still thrives in their music, arts, foodways, and African creole language. A new six-day Intrepid Travel tour homes in on Gullah Geechee traditions while traveling from Charleston to Beaufort, South Carolina, before concluding in Savannah. Visitors learn from locals – and help support local economies – while weaving sweetgrass baskets, digging in at a seafood boil, joining an interactive music and dance performance, and exploring Savannah’s Gullah Geechee-focused Pin Point Heritage Museum. Black history also comes alive at Charleston’s new International African American Museum and Beaufort’s Penn Center (the site of one of the first schools in the U.S. for the formerly enslaved), and on a guided tour of Savannah that examines the city’s history of slavery. Departures: Multiple dates, October 4, 2022, through March 21, 2023; from $3,295.

Sweetgrass basket weaving.

(BASKET WEAVING) RICHARD ELLIS/ALAMY, (VILLA SANT’ANDREA) TYSON SADLO

Sicilian seaside: Villa Sant’Andrea.

Sailor’s Delight

In Sicily’s seaside village of Aci Trezza, the Rodolico family has crafted traditional wooden fishing boats since 1908. Guests of Taormina Mare’s 71-room Villa Sant’Andrea, a Belmond Hotel can sail to the village to meet Giovanni Rodolico – the family’s fourth-generation boatbuilder and the last of his kind in the region – to learn how he’s helping preserve Sicily’s maritime heritage. Also worth its salt water: the eight-hour sailing excursion’s visit to Catania’s fish market and lunch with Rosalba Cutore, former neighbor to the Trewhella family, who built Villa Sant’Andrea in 1919. Doubles from $610, including breakfast daily and a $100 dining credit. Excursion, $1,300 for two.