Travel Blog

As difficult as it may be to wrap your head around this – the 2018 holiday season is nearly upon us. Hey, I’m just the messenger. Remember back in the heat of July, you toyed with the idea of a delightful winter escape for you and your family? But then […]

As a newly appointed FTA board member, I was excited to hear the great feedback when Big Five Brand Manager Deborah Kilcollins returned from Family Travel Association Summit 2018 in Bermuda. She met Erin Kirkland, who is all about family travel. Erin is an Alaska author, journalist and mother of […]

Africa at the turn of the 20th century was a bit like our Wild West and offered quite the adventure for the Danish Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (aka Isak Dinesen). She arrived in Kenya in 1913 to start a coffee plantation with her soon-to-be husband, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke. She […]

Whether or not you believe in the concept of destiny, it certainly seems there are times in life when we are directed, overtly or subtly, to go someplace or be in some location. We may not always even understand why at the time. Where we travel is often dictated by our […]

Once my sister and I landed at Cairo’s airport and saw our names on the Big Five board, our faces brightened. We met Amir, a tall dark Egyptian with eyes like Omar Shariff. He took our passports while we sat and talked about how happy we were to finally be […]

If you know Big Five’s fearless leader, Ashish, then you likely know that he adores all things mechanical that move. New or vintage, two wheels or four… you can’t slow him down. Cars, boats, mountain bikes, go carts, and even a two-wheeled personal vehicle like a Segway – as long […]

What tells a story but is not a book, a play or a song? What grows but doesn’t change? What challenges but never wearies? What started as 161 x 400, and now totals some 81,600?   No, Silly, of course, we are not going to tell you…. Not just yet. […]

Las Vegas, 110°, New York City, 92°, Washington D.C., 91°, Windsor, Ontario, 78°… Even the North Pole is a toasty 60°. Death Valley just had the world’s hottest month ever recorded for July with an average temperature of 108.1° Fahrenheit. Oh, doesn’t 51 degrees sound lovely? That is the temperature in […]

The temperature of lava ranges from 1,292 degrees to 2,282 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s pretty warm… Consider, water boils at 212 Fahrenheit, and a pizza oven is generally 500 to 600 degrees F. Sounds dramatic, right? Well, it is, especially in the infamous Ring of Fire, a major area in the […]

“Pictures cannot do it justice. Your friend’s first-hand descriptions of her fabulous vacation do not make it real. Only an up-close, one-on-one encounter will convince you that the true wonder and superb beauty… wasn’t made up in some storyteller’s mind. This is what you see in a James Bond flick.” […]