Tailor-Made Travel I thought I would give you some insight into just what our Tailor-Made department can do, so I asked the marvellous Mark, what is it you do? He replied “We create unique, fully guided and fully customisable tours to pretty much any part of the world. Asia is a particular area of speciality for us. Each client is assigned a personal travel expert, who will deal with their request from start to finish. Go where you want, when you want and by whatever means you desire! We don’t organise accommodation/flight only packages as the customers can usually make the arrangements themselves for cheaper. Due to the specialist and work intensive nature of the Tailor Made product it invariably is not a cheap option and not suited to those on a tight budget. If you are looking for a cheap deal then it’s best to check out our scheduled tours.” Meet the marvellous Mark for all inquiries (unless you are from Aus or NZ) mark@kumuka.com Mark became interested in travel from a very early age, perhaps a symptom of living in rural Cornwall where even a simple trip to the local shop to buy a fizzy cola, meant a long adventure through winding lanes, dense forests and fields that went on forever, not to mention the ever exciting and slightly dangerous sprint across the field home in avoidance of Daisy, the world’s most badly tempered cow. At the age of 12, bored of camping holidays to France, he managed to convince his parents to try somewhere new. They agreed on the condition that he planned the whole trip himself. Several weeks later they were somewhat surprised to see that he had planned a 3 week, multi leg trip to Thailand. The trip left him intoxicated and he instantly feel in love with both Thailand and travel. Fortunately for him, he now fulfils his passion on a daily basis, creating exciting itineraries to all corners of the globe. The only down side is that he doesn’t get to go on all the tours he produces!   Meet the lovely Lisa for Australia or New Zealand Clients lisa@kumuka.com With her mother finding out she was pregnant while travelling around Egypt, the travel bug had been injected into Lisa before she was even born. She dreamed of being a travel agent and selling the world to people, wanting them to experience what she had from such a young age. Having already explored many of the South Pacific Islands as well as Bali and Malaysia, Lisa set off on her first overseas stint at the age of 21 for a year of backpacking in Tunisia, being in a mock wedding in Morocco, discovering the jewels of Western and Eastern Europe, lazing on a felucca in Egypt, eating way to much baklava in Turkey and serving as a bar maid in the UK. From there, she spent 2 years travelling the Rockies in Canada, Las Vegas, Iceland and her Northern lights, travelling independently and mixing with the locals through a vast region of the Middle East, celebrating a White Christmas in the Bavarian Alps, seeing tigers in the wild in India, throwing tomatoes at La Tomatina, clanking steins at Oktoberfest, exploring the mystical Baltic’s and finishing off with an amazing 2 month overland trip through Africa where she trekked with the Gorillas in Uganda and jumped out of a plane in Namibia! For more information about Tailor-Made Travel please contact Mark or Lisa or visit the Tailor-Made section of our website. back to top

Pride of Africa

I had the best two months of my life and I owe it all to our tour leader Georgette and Peter the driver. They both took care of everyone so well I never could have dreamed of things going as well. I have told all my friends about the tour and they all want to do it now. Thanks so much to everyone involved. You guys have given me the most memorable and best two months of my life. I made lots of life-time friends and I would advise anybody that’s thinking about doing a Kumuka tour in Africa to STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND GO FOR IT! It will blow you away.

Padraig Smith Danaher

Padraig travelled to Africa on The Pride of Africa tour 

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You Tube

Want to get a virtual tour of some of the trips we have, please check out Kumuka on You Tube

Double Departures in Egypt

Due to popular demand, we have added in 2 additional departures for the Egypt Discovered and Highlights of Egypt for departure dates 22nd January and 16th April 2011. So if on our website it says that these tours are full contact us for availability on the double departures.

New 2011-12 Brochures

The 2011-2012 ebrochures now out, you can view/download them here. The printed versions are due to be out shortly.

New tour

Another Exciting New Tour - The AUNZ15 Reverse Traverse has just been released.

Soak up the best of Kiwi on this great journey from South to North. This trip takes in some of the most diverse and dramatic scenery in the World. You will visit the best National Parks, exploring glaciers, fiords, golden beaches, turquoise waters, rugged coastlines and dramatic mountain formations. Add in a superb selection of activities, hikes and bike rides and you have the perfect recipe for the trip of a lifetime.

This is a pooled service on board the Flying Kiwi camping / jump on jump off tours in the same style as the New Zealand tours we have been offering for the last few years. (AUNZ10/11/12/13/14) It is 14 days in duration and starts in Queenstown and Finishes in Auckland.

There is also an option to add on a transfer from Christchurch to Queenstown for the start of the tour – this is a bus service which can be arranged for any number of days before the tour start date in Queenstown. Therefore allowing you to spend as many days in Queenstown as you wish.

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Travel Tip of The Month

Back up Your Photos

Back up your photos every couple of days, or after you have just been to one of the biggest highlights in the trip.

I can’t tell you how heart wrenching it was to have passengers come to me crying, distraught because they lost their memory stick and all their precious photos!

It’s so easy to get caught up in the trip, and loose all sense of admin things, so I would set a reminder in your phone, or some other form of remembrance to do so.

Also if you are getting an internet cafe to download your photos, stand there whilst they do it. I had one client that left her camera with the people in the cafe, and when she came back she realised half her photos were missing from the cds they had made, and to her dismay they had already deleted everything off her camera! Pictures of her once in a lifetime walk with lions! If you are there you can supervise what they do and make sure they don’t delete the photos off the camera until you are sure they have been copied onto a disk/memory stick.

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Brendan's Blog

Chan Chan and Huaca de la Luna by Brendan Van Son

Most people visit Peru to see Machu Pichu, and rightfully so, Machu Picchu is one of the most impressive sites in the entire world. The usual route of travel for exploring Peru, while highlighting Machu Picchu, is to travel from Lima to La Paz. However, those who explore this well beaten route of travelers will miss out on two of the most impressive sites in all of Peru: the Chan Chan ruins, and the Huaca de la Luna Temple.

The dry Chan Chan ruins are the largest adobe city in the whole of South America. They sit contrastingly alongside the crashing waves of the pacific ocean in between the city of Trujillo and the beach resort town of Huanchaco. The site encompasses an area of around 20 square kilometres, and, to be quite honest, in many sections looks like nothing more than pills of insignificant orange sand. However, the most well preserved temple, one of the youngest temples, has been well preserved and restored tastefully.

The outer temple walls tower in an A-shape figure to heights of 10-15 meters, and are impressive in themselves. However, the truly impressive features are found after passing through the one single entrance to the temple.

To read the rest of this article please click here

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LATE DEALS

Check out the fantastic late deals on the following departures:

ME4R Cairo to Amman Express
14 Days - Departs: 21 Nov 10
Countries Visited: Egypt - Jordan - Syria

ME6R Middle East Revealed
28 Days - Departs: 07 Nov 10
Countries Visited: Egypt - Jordan - Syria

SA011 Andes to Coast
21 Days - Departs: 30 Jan 11
Countries Visited: Bolivia - Peru

SA22 Coastal Express
14 Days - Departs: 30 Dec 10
Countries Visited: Bolivia - Chile

SA5 Essence of The Andes
35 Days - Departs: 09 Dec 10
Countries Visited: Peru - Bolivia - Chile

SA3 Inca Heights
21 Days - Departs: 09 Dec 10
Countries Visited: Peru - Bolivia

SA010 Latin Explorer
56 Days - Departs: 16 Jan 11
Countries Visited: Chile - Bolivia - Peru - Ecuador

SA013 Northern Adventure
42 Days - Departs: 30 Jan 11
Countries Visited: Bolivia - Peru - Ecuador

SA29N Patagonia High Road with 4 Day Navimag Cruise
51 Days - Departs: 09 Jan 11
Countries Visited: Chile - Argentina - Uruguay - Brazil

SA030 Patagonian Horizons
21 Days - Departs: 13 Dec 10
Countries Visited: Argentina - Chile

SA25N Pure Patagonia with 4 day Navimag Cruise
30 Days - Departs: 09 Jan 11
Countries Visited: Chile - Argentina

ASB6 Borneo Encompassed
15 Days - Departs: 13 Nov 10
Countries Visited: Borneo

ASB5 Sabah Highlights
7 Days - Departs: 21 Nov 10
Countries Visited: Borneo

ASB4 Sarawak Explored
9 Days - Departs: 13 Nov 10
Countries Visited: Borneo

AF10 Livingstone's Africa
28 Days - Departs: 14 Nov 10
Countries Visited: Kenya - Tanzania - Malawi - Zambia - Zimbabwe

For more great special offers and late deals click here >

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The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing'

Daniel J. Boorstin - American historian and writer

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Contact Us:

email: adventuretours@kumuka.com website: www.kumuka.com