How WAI Began

Walking Adventures International had its beginnings over thirty years ago when my father George Friesen, a high school history and foreign language teacher, started organizing and directing tours to Europe. In 1988, he began to base all his tours upon the winning combination of travel and walking. This concept grew in popularity, and in 1992, I joined my Dad and helped expand Walking Adventures International to new areas of our fascinating planet.

Viewing the world from a walker's perspective, you get the true essence – all the sights, sounds, smells… Imagine yourself strolling along the tropical beaches and investigating the volcanoes of Hawaii, enjoying the fantastic scenery of our national parks and the blazing fall colors of New England, experiencing the fjords and waterfalls of Norway, Europe's smorgasbord of history and the Alpine panoramas, walking atop China’s Great Wall or encountering Cambodia’s magnificent Angkor Wat temples, connecting with the community in Africa’s rural Zululand, taking in the Down Under hospitality of Australia and New Zealand, or hiking to the rim of Penguin Island’s volcano in Antarctica, at the bottom of the world! Walking Adventures International offers an up-close and personal style of travel to all 50 states of the USA, and in 58 countries on all 7 continents!

Travel has enriched my life immeasurably and I invite you to peruse our website and imagine yourself walking the trails of the world with Walking Adventures. We welcome you to join us for more than just a walking tour!

Dan Friesen, President
Walking Adventures Int'l

What is a Walking Adventure?

Walking Adventures - Discover the joy of travel on a walking and sightseeing program that exposes you to the history, culture, and scenery of our planet in an authentic, safe, fun, and meaningful way. The flagship of our travel experiences is a fast-paced overview of a country or region, providing maximum value for travelers interested in experiencing as much as possible.

Walking & Motorcoach touring ... Jerry & Dean, peaches & cream, Lewis & Clark, salt & pepper, Abbot & Costello, bread & butter,... walking & motorcoach travel!! Motorcoach travel offers the greatest flexibility to maximize your most precious travel commodity ... time! Our coach takes you efficiently from point to point with little wasted time, but walking lets you get off the bus, stretch your legs, and explore the "must see" highlights and off-the-beaten-track wonders. We also use ships, trains, vans, rickshaws, or dugout canoes - depending on the situation, but the motorcoach is our preferred method of transport.

Our guide teams ... Our Adventures are designed by our own team of professionals and led by our own team of conscientious, good-natured, and upbeat WAI guides. One of our guide teams will be with you from start to finish. WAI guides will provide a light historical component combining 5-10 minute orientation talks with tours of relevant historical sites and monuments, short tours by local step-on guides, and audio & video presentations as appropriate. The hallmark of our guide staff, however, is personal service - caring about you and helping to maximize your travel experience.

Walking with the locals ... In addition to nature trails, WAI offers walks that explore attractions of the world's great cities, showcasing must-see sites and out of the way gems in places such as Copenhagen, Boston, London, Savannah, and Paris. The most memorable element of our walks, however, is the priceless opportunity to connect with the locals, members of local walking clubs who come out to walk simply for the joy of camaraderie along the trail!

What makes a WAI Experience Unique?

Most travel experiences are developed for the "mass market". Packages are purchased for the consumer from the tourism equivalent of the assembly line. The assembly line principle brings prices down through specialization, and through the production of massive amounts of "travel" to serve massive amounts of travel consumers.

WAI services cannot be found on the shelves of mass-market travel retailers. Each Adventure represents the culmination of hours of in-office planning, and our programs are unique in that:

• Every tour is customized from scratch. Usually only one or two departures to a given destination are offered in a given year.
• The primary criteria for the selection of hotels, restaurants, and excursions is authenticity, not how efficiently and inexpensively they can serve large numbers of groups.
• WAI walk routes, when not offered in partnership with local walk clubs, are planned to capture the essence of a site while avoiding dangerous and overly strenuous routing.
• Itineraries are aggressive and are crafted to pack as much value into your valuable time as possible.
• Travelers often have the privilege of walking with local walkers who host our walks.
• Two WAI guides accompany each group, and on international Adventures, work in partnership with foreign guides throughout the program. Most travel companies rely only on the foreign guide.
• These programs attract an active, upbeat kind of traveler, who keeps coming back. Most groups are 60 to 80% repeat travelers and we’ve had several that are 100% alumni.

This is a sampling of what you are purchasing when you decide to join us for a Walking Adventure – this is what makes WAI unique!

Feel free to contact Debbie or Dani with any questions at 800.779.0353 or fun@walkingadventures.com.

Why We Walk

How traveling on foot enhances the journey!

Walking and travel are a natural combination! Until relatively recently, humanity has trod the highways and byways of the planet almost entirely on foot. Although there are clearly faster ways to get from point to point, walking gifts the wanderer with a unique connection to our world completely beyond the scope of other modes of transport. For over 20 years, our Walking Adventures International team has been offering walking programs around the world! Here are just a few of the ways you'll rediscover this ancient dimension of travel with WAI:

A pathway through the heartbeat of a great city. Most of the historic centers of the world’s cities are small enough to survey in a morning walk. However, our trail through Paris is an all-day event that starts at the Notre Dame Cathedral and finishes at our hotel by the Eiffel Tower. In between we make a head-spinning visit to the Louvre, climb the majestic Arc de Triumph, stroll along fashionable Champs-Élysées, and consider an elevator ride up the Eiffel Tower!

A connection with another culture. Walking forces you out of the confining tourist bubbles – hotels, tour coaches, pedestrian malls, etc. – designed for foreigners, and allows you to experience local patterns of life that may be intriguingly different from your own. Case in point: a memorable walk in South Africa’s Zululand that starts at Siphosadabletshe High School in the rural bush lands of Nompondo, adjacent to the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve. We first visit with the teachers and students (looking sharp in their uniforms!), then walk through sweeping African panoramas past farmsteads where the way of life has changed little since the dawn of time.

A ticket to experiencing the monuments of the world. Many of mankind’s greatest achievements are best explored on foot. Hidden in the mountains of Peru, Machu Picchu can only be explored by wandering on foot over its ancient stone steps and through its amazing stone architecture. Likewise, China’s Great Wall offers an incomparable walking experience once you’re away from the main tourist access points. We begin with a fascinating stroll through rural villages, leading to an unrestored portion of the Wall at Gubeikou, where several kilometers of walking atop the Wall provide breathtaking panoramas little changed since the Wall was constructed hundreds of years ago.

A window of interaction with local walkers. Participating in an organized walking event can open different cultural windows than exploring a destination on your own. Our walks through the tiny wineproducing village of Mörbisch, Austria are fondly remembered for the warmth and generosity of our hosts, and the glasses of their own vintages we’ve shared. In addition, Italian walking clubs have delighted us with their enthusiastic welcomes, with events that sometimes culminate in singing and dancing after lunch!

A moving postcard through nature’s wonderland. Certainly, the wonders of creation are also best appreciated up close and on foot! Examples abound: walking among the geysers and hot pools of Yellowstone National Park, trekking along the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and hiking with the guanacos through the amazing vistas of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park. Few nature trails can compare, however, with the walk from Kleine Scheidegg to Wengen in the Swiss Alps. Swiss brown cows are grazing, bells a’tinkling, wildflowers outdo one another with colorful displays, and looming over all are the massive, sheer, glacier-bedecked cliffs of the Eiger, Mönsch, and Jungfrau mountains!

Whether you join a walking club, attend an organized event, follow a marked trail, or just strike out on your own – consider weaving the magic of walking into your travel plans. You’ll discover an entirely new dimension to our world!