The Danielses are vacation nibblers. They and others in a growing segment of overbooked, overworked holidaymakers are cramming two weeks’ worth of adventure–hiking, kayaking, cowpoking–into trips that typically last three to five days. Nibblers, according to the Travel Industry Association of America, currently make up the majority of U.S. holiday travelers.
Now tour operators are starting to cash in. “People are so busy these days,” says Randy Johnson of Getaway Adventures, who organized the Danielses’ trip. “Kids have baseball practice, soccer practice, rehearsals. Pulling out for six days is tough. It upsets lives too much.” Johnson offers customized cycling trips through the Napa Valley, taking care of everything from soup to lug nuts. “People can just shut off their right brain and let us do it all,” he says. “That way, their senses open up.”
So do their wallets. Johnson’s three-day trips start at $1,125 per person, double occupancy, without air fare. That’s about what you could spend for a comfortable week on Maui, or a month in Mexico on a shoestring. But for many travelers, that misses the point. “Timing is more a factor than price,” says Rita Gilmore of the American Society of Travel Agents. Vacation nibblers seem willing to shell out more than $1,000 for a special weekend, provided someone else makes the plans.
Julie McCormack got the idea for her travel company, Worldwide Escapes, while she was on the road herself. During extensive business travel in Asia, she noticed her fellow road warriors spending their weekends clinging to the safety of the hotel pool. Two years ago McCormack began to offer two-day trips to exotic places–like Phuket, the Thai resort island–that are within striking distance of Asian gateways like Hong Kong and Singapore. One recent customer, Linda Orandi, a Silicon Valley high-tech marketing manager, enjoyed the break, which costs $699 from Bangkok. “I didn’t have to think about or plan anything, and that was value-added for me,” she says.
“Our clients want intense action for short periods when they escape,” says Tucker Comstock, whose Serendipity Travels began offering “extreme” four-day trips to Costa Rica about a year and a half ago. Its Cabecar Trail through the remote mountain lands of Costa Rica’s indigenous Cabecar Indians packs a week’s worth of all-out rugged jungle adventure into four humid days. Kim and Damien White, each with just a one-week annual vacation, flew to Costa Rica from Costa Mesa, Calif., lured by a frenetic schedule that included biking, hiking, horseback riding and rafting, on each of four consecutive days. They didn’t count on a fifth activity: circling above San Jose’s airport in a holding pattern, waiting for the weather to clear so they could land. “I wasn’t that excited about bike riding anyway,” Kim rationalizes about the missed portion of her vacation.
Most of the heli-hikers on Canadian Mountain Holidays’ three-day trips to the pristine Columbia Mountains in British Columbia are busy U.S. professionals. CMH zips workaholics from the airport in Calgary by bus to an upcountry vista of trees, mountains and rocks. Once there, helicopters take over, dropping hikers at sky-high ridges and leaving them to the wilderness, their wits and–at least until dinnertime–experienced guides. Some people might prefer a two-day trip, but the company’s Marty Von Neudegg says: “Day three is when everything happens.” By “everything” he means a connection to the great outdoors–and a disconnect from hectic lifestyles.
“You’re totally transported in time and place,” says Catherine Ettlinger, a media consultant who was working 12-hour days as a magazine editor when she broke away for her brief heli-hike. And forget about lugging along the laptop. “Even if they did bring them, they couldn’t hook them up,” Von Neudegg says. The company decided to eliminate phones, faxes and what Von Neudegg calls “worldly garbage” from its remote lodges.
If you must see a whale and renting “Free Willy” won’t do it, pop up north for Alaska Discovery’s three-day kayak trips out of Juneau for a chance to glimpse humpbacks on Glacier Bay. Though the company started out running lengthy hard-core canoe-ing trips in the ’70s, five years ago it trimmed some itineraries to three days.
Harried landlubbers can travel more than 100 years back in time in less than a week on Jeff Warburton’s three-night Teton Wagon Train. He says leisurely rides of about 20 miles a day to the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming from the Targhee National Forest offer “a taste for what our forefathers went through.” But not too unpleasant a taste; the Conestoga wagons have rubber tires. Warburton says they make the ride a lot more comfortable than the authentic wooden-spoked wheels.
A more robust experience is available at the spartan Historic Pines Ranch Cow Camp in the mountains outside Colorado Springs, Colo. Owner Casey Rusk says her three-day cattle drive is “a good experience” for soft-handed urban folk. As if in a remake of “City Slickers,” vacationers pay $675 for the privilege of cooking their own meals and helping with such chores as mending fences and tending the horses, all at an altitude of 10,000 feet. Billy Crystal would feel right at home–and three days later, he would be.
