LONG ISLAND, NY (Newsday), May 28, 2005:
Mature travelers in search of adventure and international understanding are finding a burgeoning selection of tours to guide them
Grace Bushholz has ridden elephants in India and Thailand, crossed a river on a swinging bridge in New Zealand, teetered on an open platform high above a Peruvian jungle and grappled with a tapir that grabbed her shorts and tried to dissuade her from entering an Amazon lodge.
Recently surfing the Web before heading off to Turkey, Bushholz, 74, of Bay Ridge, came upon a tour to a place she's never been: Antarctica. She booked it. "There's a beautiful world out there," she says.
Barbara Beresford, 70, and her husband, Richard, 77, of Setauket, fell in love with Africa on a recent tour. They're returning in the fall. Africa, says Barbara Beresford, "touches your heart."
Only a violent insurgency in Nepal is keeping Sally Wendkos Olds from returning to the tiny Himalayan village where her heart is. Olds, 71, of Port Washington, has been to Nepal seven times. The people, she says, "are remarkably sweet, cheerful and hospitable, in spite of their poverty and hard lives."
These intrepid New Yorkers may not be your average older tourists, but they are not unusual in their passion for journeying to distant places under rugged conditions, say experts who cater to the burgeoning senior travel market.
Rising tide
Mark Frevert, chief architect for Overseas Adventure Travel, which transports older adults to places such as Kenya and the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania, says participation has zoomed from 3,000 in 1995 to almost 40,000 last year. Grand Circle Travel, Overseas Adventure's parent company, moves 150,000 people a year.
Not only are Americans living longer, healthier and, in many cases, wealthier lives, but the world has shrunk in the 80 years since Arthur Tauck Sr., a traveling salesman, packed seven passengers into his 1925 Studebaker for an escorted tour of New England. Nowadays, Tauck World Discovery, the company he founded, will helicopter senior travelers to hiking trails on the peaks of the Canadian Rockies. Others splurge on 5-star hotels in Vietnam, India or Tibet, entertained and protected by English-speaking escorts, who, as one traveler put it, "leave nothing to chance."
Goodbye, pink umbrella
Today's mature travelers tend to eschew the traditional tour with the tour guide holding up a pink umbrella as she shepherds her flock to the Eiffel Tower. And not all seek deluxe accommodations.
"We go where Americans don't go, and we don't stay in the tourist hotels," Frevert says. Overseas Adventure Travel groups, limited to 16, put up in smaller inns that reflect the local culture, he says. "When you wake up in the morning, you know it's not Kansas City."
In China, the Beresfords of Setauket stayed overnight in a private home, sleeping on hard pillows. "I would rather have the adventure than be comfortable," Barbara Beresford says.
Moving beyond terror
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, though a severe jolt to the travel industry in general, caused only a brief blip in the senior trade. Some seniors canceled plans; others were inspired to travel farther.
"We had our best year ever in 2002," Frevert says. "We never stopped going to the hot spots of the world: India, Kenya, Egypt, Israel...." And seniors continued to fill the planes.
Gary Murtagh, who founded ElderTreks in 1992, says crises such as the terrorist attacks and the Iraq war slow senior travel "for only about six months, then it bounces back." Business is booming this year, he says, to both poles and to unpronounceable places, such as Uyghu, Tajik and Kyrgyz.
"After 9/11, we can't afford not to travel," says Karel Rose, a Great Neck grandmother of eight. "We can't put ourselves in a cocoon. We have to look beyond our own personal world." Rose, who teaches women's studies and philosophy at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, says her farflung travels help her to connect with her students, who come from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Travel, she says, "takes you out of the confines of who you are." While experiencing lifestyles very different from Western culture, she says, "you recognize our essential humanity."
While Rose, like Bushholz and the Beresfords, prefers the convenience of a group tour, she cautions older folk that a trip won't always go smoothly. Some eye-popping examples: Rose fell out of a boat on a crocodile-viewing cruise in Costa Rica, got lost in Tibet and was frightened by an elephant in Zimbabwe when her party's open Jeep accidentally separated a mother from her calf. "She glared into our windshield and could have turned over the Jeep," Rose recalls.
Still, the planned group tour clearly has some advantages, says Madonna Starr, 57, a Manhattan attorney who travels with Overseas Adventure Travel. "You can do Paris on your own, but when you're doing exotic places, it's nice to have everything taken care of; you do things that you wouldn't do on your own, such as visiting a family or a school. You want to experience a different culture, not just get there and shop."
Most seniors travel for the joy of it or to see the world while they're still able.
But sometimes, a journey begun for pleasure evolves into a passion and a mission. Seniors who take a group tour to a Third World country may return later on their own, their luggage stuffed with toys, books, food, toiletries and perhaps a grandchild's outgrown baby clothes.
Serendipitous sidekicks
Olds, a writer, first went trekking in Nepal in 1987 with her husband, Mark, fulfilling his boyhood dream. The couple returned to Nepal in 1991. After that, Mark's knee gave out and he was through trekking. At this point Sally was serendipitously introduced to artist Margaret Roche, an Evanston, Ill., grandmother who shared her passion for Nepal. Roche, 74, began traveling at 54 when her six children were safely out of the nest. "I felt so free," she says of her first journey to Nepal, with the Sierra Club. (She's been back 11 times.)
The two women travel frequently to a remote hill village that has no electricity, no stores, no hotels, no doctors, no indoor plumbing, no roads. (It's a three-day walk from the nearest air strip.) The women funded a library for the village, and Olds has raised $7,000 more to create a simple sanitation system. Its completion awaits the end of an insurgency that has closed off the area.
Olds has written a book, illustrated by Roche, called "A Balcony in Nepal: Glimpses of a Himalayan Village" (ASJA Press). She also gives slide talks on Nepal and on her travels to China and Vietnam.
In her book she explains the yearning to visit distant shores "despite our joy in our families, our past achievements in our work, our comfortable circumstances, and our considerable good fortune.... We wanted to reach across cultural boundaries to understand people in a vastly different place, almost of another time, so that we could better understand ourselves."
Yearning to learn
The desire to travel with a purpose has given rise to numerous educational and service travel organizations targeting the older population. Started 30 years ago with summer classes on a New Hampshire campus, Elderhostel now provides "learning adventures" for nearly 200,000 older adults every year in 10,000 programs worldwide.
Elderhostel has devotees who have logged 40 programs or more. More typically, Helen Zingale, 76, of Melville, and Muriel Sternberg, 85, of Manhattan, inveterate travelers who met in the Canadian Rockies on a Tauck helicopter hiking tour, have booked an Elderhostel tour to the GlimmerGlass Opera at Cooperstown, N.Y., this summer.
Another nonprofit, Global Volunteers, offers "service adventures" for adults willing to pay a fee to go abroad to help others.
More than two-thirds of the volunteers are 65 or older. "They're mostly retirees who have the time, and many talents, to share," says spokeswoman Barbara DeGroot. For example, a retiree would pay a three-week program fee of $2,520 to teach English in a high school in China.
But China and Nepal are not for everyone.
Cookie Eyester, 65, organizes shorter excursions for residents of the Glenwood Village retirement community in Riverhead. Her travels with the Bellport-based Prime Time Travel Club may go no farther than the Amish country in Lancaster County, Pa., but make up in frequency what they lack in distance.
Recruiting is no problem in the senior village, she says. More than 30 residents quickly signed up for a trip to Ireland two years ago.
Similarly, Dolores and Tony Genovese of Massapequa travel frequently with Prime Time. The tours may be as close as the Thimble Islands off the coast of Connecticut or as far as Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
But whom you go with is as important as where you go, according to Dolores Genovese, 72, a retired teacher. The couple has made close friends along the way, she says. Next year, they plan to visit Sicily. "If not now, when?" she asks.
Travel 'takes you out of the confines of who you are ... you recognize our essential humanity.' - KAREL ROSE OF GREAT NECK
'You can do Paris on your own, but when you're doing exotic places, it's nice to have everything taken care of.' - MADONNA STARR OF
MANHATTAN
'We wanted to reach across cultural boundaries to understand people in a vastly different place, almost of another time, so that we could better understand ourselves.' - SALLY WENDKOS OLDS OF PORT WASHINGTON, in her book, 'A Balcony in Nepal: Glimpses of a Himalayan Village'
Some jumping-off points for adventure
As seniors become hardier, savvier and more adventuresome travelers, tour agencies expand to meet the need. Here are some that offer adventurous journeys:
Overseas Adventure Travel. (A division of Grand Circle Travel) Groups of 10 to 16, tours to Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America. 800-248-3737; www.gct.com.
ElderTreks. Small group adventure trips by land and sea to 60 countries, including North and South Poles. 800-741-7956; www.eldertreks.com
Collette Vacations. Pairs with Smithsonian Journeys Travel Adventures to offer educational adventures. 800- 528-8147; www.collettevacations.com.
Tauck World Discovery. Not exclusively for older adults, but many participate in helicopter-hiking packages and other adventurous trips. 800-788-7885; www.tauck.com.
Elderhostel. Nonprofit organization offering learning adventures in 90 countries for adults 55 and older. www.elderhostel.org.
Global Volunteers. "People-to-people" volunteer opportunities in 19 countries; two-thirds of participants are 65 or older.www.globalvolunteers.org.
By Rhoda Amon
Prime Time Travel Club. Bellport-based organization offering escorted trips for adults over 50, not necessarily adventuresome. www.primetimetravel.com.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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