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Pack This
Sound Advice
Silence is golden, but the right mood music is priceless. The Logic3 iStation 7 ($80; www.logic3usa.com) is a compact, portable speaker system and recharger dock for your iPod or MP3 player. If you're off the grid, ditch the AC adapter in favor of four AA batteries. Perk: The included remote control means you don't have to get out of bed to get your groove on or off.
—George Quraishi
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The Age of Romance:
Ages 25 to 45
Lagoons and Luxury
Island Escape in French Polynesia
At Hotel Kia Ora on the French Polynesian atoll of Rangiroa, slipping into something a little more comfortable means sliding out of bed, ambling down a wooden staircase, and easing into the 80-degree (27-degree Celsius) turquoise lagoon that surrounds your over-water, thatch-roof bungalow ($2,145 for five nights, including airfare from Los Angeles and one night in Tahiti; www.hotelkiaora.com). Rangiroa is a slender sliver of sugary sand surrounding the lagoon, where, along with idleness, diving is the big attraction. Two passages join the Pacific with the lagoon, and a drift dive or snorkel with Kia Ora's on-site operator puts you among angelfish, butterflyfish, and curious black-tip sharks. Between dives, relax in hammocks, eat fresh fish, and watch outrageously scarlet sunsets and sunrises. Slow the pace down even more with a night at Kia Ora Sauvage (an additional $110 for the round-trip boat transfer), on a tiny motu (islet) 20 miles (31 kilometers) across the lagoon, where there's no electricity. Your hosts, a resident couple, cook you fresh dinners, and light comes from the glow of lanterns and an astounding canopy of stars.
Vino and Private Villas
An Umbrian Idyll in Italy
Lying on the Umbrian cusp of Tuscany and the intersection of the 15th and 21st centuries, Borgo Bastia Creti ($1,345 a week; www.regencyvillas.com) is a self-sufficient little hamlet of half a dozen stone villas set among rolling hills dotted with small towns where there's little to do but sip espresso in the sun. The onetime fortress is run by an avuncular Italian couple who will cook for you, take you shopping for the night's dinner in the local markets, steer you to the best wines and cheeses, and, if you wish, give culinary lessons. The secluded six-acre (two-hectare) estate consists of an Assisi-stone farmhouse and five outlying cottages, all beautifully restored with oak-beam ceilings, terra-cotta floors, a fireplace, and full kitchen. You can join fellow guests for dinner in the farmhouse or cook for yourself. Your hosts will set you up with mountain bikes for pedaling singletrack trails that lace the hills or quiet roads that lead to medieval towns such as Cortona and Gubbio. Perugia, Umbria's capital city, is a short drive away. When you return, there likely will be fresh flowers or a carafe of Chianti in your cottage. It all boils down to the basics: good food, fine wine, and great bike rides.
Nomads and Night Sky
Sahara Caravan in Niger
If you and your mate would like an exotic adventure together, try the Niger Sahara, where camel caravans still traverse barren sweeps of wind-sculpted dunes, trade with villagers in sleepy oases, barter textiles for salt, and water their beasts for the long trip home. International Expeditions ($4,648, airfare not included; departs November 10; www.internationalexpeditions.com) uses 4WD vehicles to make the trek a tad less arduous but provides little else in the way of luxuries: This is an 18-day camping trip with simple food and no showers. The landscape, the nomads, and the stars are the attractions. After exploring the camel market in Agadez, you'll set off across the roadless Ténéré Desert, tracing routes of ancient and modern camel caravans. After a few sand-blasted days, you reach the Djado Plateau, where sandstone forms take mesmerizing rococo shapes. You'll hike among rock art depicting giraffes and elephants that obviously dates to moister times. Then it's into a region called Rien du Rien ("nothing of nothing"), where there's only vastness until you reach the amazing blue-marble mountains of Izouzadene. If romance means transcending the ordinary, togetherness in the desert will do it.
Guidelines: "A journey through the Sahara in Niger transports you beyond any ordinary experience." —Ralph Hammelbacher, International Expeditions
Anxiety | Conquest | Enlightenment | Innocence | Reason |
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