Who’s Up for a 357-Day Tour of the Seven Continents?

Thank God, the 0.1% have a new way to see the world

October 20, 2016 9:00 am

Ridiculously over-the-top travel experiences are great for tour companies and travel brands: Headlines about six-figure private jet tours may stoke class warfare in some corners, but in other, better-upholstered ones, they grab eyeballs and credit cards. Luxury tours don’t need millions of people to sign on to be profitable; they need just enough people, a process made easier when millions of them slow down their web browsing long enough to gawk at how the 0.1% vacation.

Those headlines, meanwhile, bring in the 1% traffic that, while they might not go for the $106K Four Seasons tour du monde, might actually spring for a birthday weekend at the closest Four Seasons hotel. Everybody wins (including the smug backpacker reading about these idiocies from his $10-a-night hostel in Hanoi, who’s financing his travel by designing websites back home for five hours a week).

The latest entry to this well-worn game: Mundy Cruising’s $155,000 357-day tour of the the seven continents. Get to Miami this January and you, too, can set sail for Rio, up the Amazon toward Machu Picchu. Next: From Athens, you’ll roam the Mediterranean, make your way to the North Sea and then through the Baltic, finishing in Russia. You’ll go from Vancouver to Alaska, from Central America to New England and Quebec, all around Africa, and then to Antarctica, Singapore, China, and Indonesia.

The tour concludes in May 2018. If you’re saying to yourself: That’s way more than 357 days, you have done the math correctly. The trip is broken into legs; your tour cost conveniently covers biz-class flights back home between them. Or, you know, you could hang out in each destination between legs, and meet people who actually live in the places you’re traveling to.

Alternatively, plan the trip on your own for a fraction of the price. Travel, as Mark Twain said, should be fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness. It helps if you make an effort to meet people outside your own tax bracket while doing so. 

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