Wanderland Travel

Not For Profit

Wanderland Travel is a non-profit organization made of up people from all walks of life and expertise coming together with the goal of providing a new model of sustainable educational travel and voluntourism. We provide opportunities to experience unique cultures and geographies through an experiential education model that gives more than it takes.

Small Group Education and School Group Experiential Travel

Wanderland offers educational experiences for all ages.  We are dedicated to sharing the world’s rich geographic heritage and history.  From High School Study Tours to Lifelong Learning Courses and Family Study Vacations, look for Wanderland.  You will find our trained interpretive guides, our step-on lecturers, and of course our hosts to be extremely well informed on flora, fauna, landforms, and human cultural history wherever it is that you study and travel with us.

We do our best to provide our students with a rich interpretive experience and a significant ’study’ of the uniqueness of each destination.  Wanderland Travel insures only the lightest impact on our destinations through our small-group-only focus. Our belief is that your individual attention, learning curve, and potential level of experiences are all improved when we keep our numbers low and our daily excursions light and lively.

Educational Model

We operate under an educational approach that blends the interpretive arts and experiential learning.  Our trip leaders will be sure to give you an excellent primer on the regions that you will be traveling through.  Then we let the wonders of the road and trail put on the final, colorful finishing touches.  You are always encouraged to be curious and questioning.  Our educational outlook is always positive.  Yes, sometimes you will be confronted with inconvenient realities out there on the road but we hope always to turn these situations into opportunities for learning and for finding solutions.  You as the educated traveler may bring just the key suggestion that solves small and large challenges in the communities you visit.

Sustainable Travel and Fair Trade Travel

At Wanderland we are dedicated to tourism with a purpose.  All of our treks seek to promote regionally sustainable tourism.  This is our commitment to designing adventures that have a low impact on the environment and positive impact on local cultures.  The aim of sustainable tourism is to ensure that development is a beneficial experience for local people, tourism companies and tourists themselves. Your vacation with Wanderland will always be helping to generate income and employment for local people in the places where you travel.  This is the essence of Fair Trade Travel.

Fair Trade Travel:  We design field education modules for you that specifically support local economies.  Working with trusted families and small professional outfitters that are local to the areas where we travel you can be assured that the resources stay in the very same locations where your course of study takes place.  This is the essence of Fair Trade tourism.  In this way your travel dollars stimulate a sustainable local travel industry.It is our aim to be the first Educational Travel School to be awarded Fair Trade Certification.

Assured Quality Destinations

Wanderland follows ‘The Bubble‘, a wondrous place of ideal weather and conditions.  This window of opportunity moves throughout our travel area and our course dates track it.  We want you to see these places at the height of their splendor, at their times of highest significance, at their times of direst need.  Follow The Bubble with us and you won’t have to worry about crappy weather so much.

Another key and unique aspect of our field study modules is that we have made most of our explorations lodge-based.  Our desire to keep our students off the ground and refreshed for the AM class has occasioned us to find some interesting and comfortable lodgings, even in the most out-of-the way locations.  Whenever possible we will design adventure travel programs that both take you through amazing and far-flung destination and also have a delightful place indoors for a recuperative night’s rest.

Wanderland and UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Our dedication to travel with a purpose and educational travel goes hand in hand with the UNESCO educational mission that has given the world, to date, hundreds of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  UNESCO – The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization is dedicated to the overarching goal “To build peace in the minds of men.”  By fomenting Education, Social and Natural Science, and Communication among its 194 member states, UNESCO provides us a bold standard to follow.  At the Wanderland Travel Organization we align ourselves with these same goals and share in the responsibility by assisting recognition and sustainability of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage Sites program.

While you could travel anywhere, that’s not the point, is it?  You’ve studied the glossy menus of the choicest travel destinations.  Where to start?  A good first recognition is that there are places that draw your attention and there are places that need your attention.  Interestingly, where these desires overlap we are finding UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

While we could take you anywhere, Wanderland destinations are chosen to feature and raise awareness about UNESCO and other projects that preserve land and heritage and their mission to identify, study, and protect the genius and patrimony of our species and of all creatures.

The Authentic Experience

“The world in the palm of your hand” has become a sort of Catch 22 for the traveler.  The world’s great destinations can be viewed easily on numerous websites, magazines, television shows, phones, even Uncle Stewart’s slideshows.   It is becoming harder and harder to find the ‘authentic experience’, to see places for themselves and not in comparison with the brochure pictures.  When the reality of the place doesn’t match the expectation created by the advertising, then you are headed down the trail to disappointment. The lands we choose to take you will be out of the ordinary and your experiences there authentic, important, and novel to the extreme.  These will be experiences that are uniquely your own and that in no way resemble a flat, glossy brochure.

YOU, there at the computer, get out and see these places for yourself!!!!

Taking Travel To The Next Level

• Wanderland fosters environmental responsibility through education and involvement, and by following the principles of ecological travel.
• We promote health and wellness in travel through active travel vacations and a focus on local foods and hearty cuisine.
• Our programs attempt to feature both national and private parks and preserves and to advance the cause of land conservancy and biome protection.
• We are success-oriented, you’ll arrive home  better understanding the triumphs than the failures, and how you are helping rather than hurting, giving and not just taking…
• Each of our programs is dedicated to a specific cause.  Through our philanthropy we support land conservancy, indigenous peoples, environmental education, and species rights.

Interpretive Guides, Teachers, and Local Hosts

Our staff are all hand-picked capable group leaders as well as natural historians and geographers.  We of course employ local professionals on every one of our trips, insuring that capital stays in the local economy.  The love these locals have for their lands will permeate your experience. Our hope is that your experiences with Wanderland Travel will warm both the heart and the mind long after the trip has finished.

Your time traveling abroad, whether it is to common or exotic locations, is always limited.  Our intention is that your time be charged with novelty and gravid experiences.  We employ only the finest interpretive naturalists, historians, and travel educators as our hosts so that you receive depth and meaning to the vistas that the common traveler would just let pass by.  This is what we refer to as ‘maximum time aloft’.  You will be immersed in local foods and cultures,  languages and toponymy,  geography and biology.  All gauged to your level of interest.