Someone wise once said that life is measured in emotions, not hours. That’s why we travel — so that our life is full, switching between the everyday and the extraordinary. For many people, a sailing yacht becomes a kind of bridge from familiar routine to a romantic world of adventures that inspire and add new flavors to life.

And in this context, trips to far-off exotic destinations take on special significance — places that differ from the Europe we’re used to not only in nature, but also in climate, culture, cuisine, and the everyday habits of local people.

Shall We Dive Into the Exotic?! 🙂

Right now you can choose from:

Let us briefly tell you about the most special and unusual things we remember from each destination.

THAILAND

• Culture. Vibrant statues, palaces, music, and aromas (in Bangkok, Cambodia, and Northern Thailand, which we usually add to the sailing part of the trip)
• Cuisine. Famous Thai cuisine. Popular all over the world, but authentic and unmatched only in Thailand.
• Massage. Every type of massage is special, but after a day of walking, a professional foot massage gives you so much energy you’ll feel like you could walk just as much again!
• Islands. Unlike islands in any other region. Like in “Avatar” — narrow and undercut by water at the base, widening into overhanging “balconies” and “stalactites” up top. With grottos and caves, passages into inner lagoons, where you feel like you’re in a lost world from the Jurassic period.
• Swimming among the stars. And there’s also incredibly bright glowing plankton when you swim at night.
• Fish. On past trips we’ve caught garfish, tuna, and wahoo, and we constantly bought delicious shrimp from local fishermen in their colorful “long-tail boats.” On the islands, we enjoyed sandy beaches, hid our bags and phones from monkeys, watched Muay Thai, drank mai tais, and treated ourselves to a unique “Siam Sunray.”

SEYCHELLES

• Fishing. Number one. Yes, out of all the trips we’ve done. Tuna, king mackerel, sailfish, wahoo, barracuda. So delicious when freshly caught!
• Beaches and cliffs. While sand can be found in other countries, cliffs this beautiful, carved by the wind, exist only here. Similar ones can be found in Sardinia, made of pink granite. And the warm ocean? It’s so wonderful to rock on the ocean waves along the long sandy beach of La Digue Island!
• Tortoises. Giant land tortoises accustomed to people, like in the Galápagos. You’ll find yourself running along the beach looking for “just one more tasty leaf” to treat these giants!

There are also huge, unique coco de mer nuts that resemble a certain body part, thickets of lemongrass you can pick and brew into tea or add to cocktails, a delicious local rum, plenty of fruit, and enormous jackfruit.

BORA BORA (FRENCH POLYNESIA, TAHITI)

• Unique nature. Truly unique, because here you have mountains, tropical forests, and lagoons sheltered from ocean waves with that almost Photoshopped “turquoise” water.
• Coral reefs. Vibrant, with a huge number of fish, like an aquarium. The Coral River, half a kilometer long on Taha’a Island, gives you an amazing feeling as you float on the water in a snorkel mask while a slow current carries you through the channel over corals and fish.
• Manta rays. Nowadays you can rarely spot these giants, which look like creatures from outer space.
• Fresh fish. I asked the locals — what’s your national dish? Fresh fish, they answered. Sometimes quite literally — tuna sashimi, ceviche, and tartare are an essential part of the local cuisine.

There’s also a distinctive culture you may have glimpsed a bit of in the movie Moana — with traditional tattoos, towering people who play tiny ukulele guitars, and races between catamarans and small colorful canoes.

NEW CALEDONIA

• This really is the edge of the world 🙂 It’s one thing to be on a small island that’s part of a barrier reef, and a completely different feeling when that small island stands alone, with nothing but the vastness of the Pacific Ocean beyond it.
• Whales and fish. There’s a huge variety of fish here. And when a whale surfaces near you, it looks like a submarine.
• Relict plants. Fern trees and araucarias, twice or three times taller than any other trees — it all immerses you in ancient, prehistoric times.

We also visited abandoned gemstone mines there, picked mushrooms on the island (and ate them!), competed in sea turtle photo hunts, and set up evening lounge bars in the shallows, where the water was so warm it was comfortable to just sit on the sand, waist-deep in water, sipping cocktails and watching the sunset.

CARIBBEAN

• Breaking the stereotype. It’s not just postcard-perfect beaches, like in the photo. There are mountains, tropical forests, volcanoes, banana plantations, and rum distilleries.
• Confirming the stereotype. The postcard beaches are there too! Sandy islands with palm trees, where iguanas sit, and beneath which local fishermen put on a lobster feast for us.
• Reggae style, with Rastafarians and dreadlocks. And this isn’t for show — it’s a genuine part of unique Caribbean culture!

On many islands, you can also rent a car and drive around the island, visit local rum distilleries and botanical gardens. And on many islands, you can still find leftover sets from the filming of “Pirates of the Caribbean”!

CUBA

• Havana. Vintage cars, old architecture, daiquiris at Hemingway’s bar, and whatever music is playing in the bars — it’s always lively dancing!
• Almost no people. Huge beaches in the Cayo Largo archipelago, where there’s only one or two yachts for several kilometers.
• Fishing and lobster. There’s so much lobster that by the end of the trip everyone’s tired of it, and we bring the next barracuda we catch to a local restaurant to have it cooked instead.
• Rum and cigars. We’ve never had rum this good anywhere else — maybe it’s just the atmosphere 🙂

In Cuba, we also had beach picnics with bonfires, barbecues, and jumping over the flames, fed iguanas on the islands with little sausages on sticks and mint from our mojitos, and danced salsa under the stars.

MEXICO

• Cacti and pelicans. The landscape is striking — like another planet, with red cliffs, yellow sand, and blue water. Cacti 10–15 meters tall stand like sentries on the cliffs. And from the sky, pelicans dive for fish like missiles into the water, looking like pterodactyls.
• Luxury offline. We’ll spend several days completely without signal. It’s such a healthy “diet”! A reset, just like at the trendiest wellness retreats.
• Fish. Along with Cuba, Mexico ranks second after the Seychelles. Tuna, mahi-mahi, garfish, mackerel, plus plenty of fish you can catch right at anchor.
• Pyramids. In trips like this, it’s almost always worth combining the sailing portion with an on-land program. And in Mexico, that always means the Pyramids and the legacy of the Maya and Aztecs.
• Whales. The Sea of Cortez is home to about ten different whale species! And in the La Paz area, where we’ll be sailing, you can encounter gray, humpback, and blue whales, as well as the whale shark — harmless, since it feeds on plankton, but reaching 10–20 meters in