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From the Titanic wreck to a lava lake: why the world's wealthiest travellers are going to extremes
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The investor and explorer Victor Vescovo achieved a bittersweet milestone this week. After plunging nearly 6.8 miles (35,853 feet/10,928 metres) to a point in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, he was commended for successfully completing the deepest dive ever made by a human inside a submersible.
His elation was tempered, however, when he discovered plastic waste on the seabed. Human contamination had reached even this most inaccessible terrain.
The news is yet another distressing reminder of the devastating impact plastics are having on our oceans’ health, but it also provoked another query: what was Mr Vescovo doing down there in the first place?
The wealthy adventurer is currently engaged in the Five Deeps Expedition, a collaboration between undersea-technology company Caladan Oceanic, specialist tour operator Eyos Expeditions and Triton Submarines that aims to send a submersible manned solely by Vescovo to the five deepest points below the surface of the Earth’s oceans.
He has so far ventured to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, as well as the deepest points in the Atlantic, Southern and Indian Oceans. Though two descents had previously ventured to the Mariana Trench (one in 1960 and another, by director James Cameron, in 2012), neither had gone quite as deep. Vescovo was the first person ever to reach the Indian Ocean’s Java Trench; the Southern Ocean’s South Sandwich Trench; and the Atlantic Ocean’s Puerto Rico Trench.
Vescovo has form when it comes to extreme adventures, having already climbed the world’s seven highest mountain peaks and trekked to the North and South Poles, but he is just one of an increasing number of exceptionally wealthy traveller shunning traditional luxury resorts for far more adventurous, challenging trips.
Specialising in journeys to the world’s wildest regions and providing support for production companies working in extreme environments, Secret Compass is one of the companies profiting from the trend. Managing director Tom Bodkin believes the extreme comfort his clients enjoy in their everyday lives has sparked a thirst for adventure:
“People today live such sedentary lifestyles full of instant gratification and ease, they rarely have to push themselves beyond their comfort zone. Travellers who…are willing to experience a little adversity can fulfill their desires for truly authentic experiences, which are seldom likely to be repeated by anyone else.”
In practice this might mean trekking through Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor or abseiling Venezuela’s Angel Falls. While group tours can start from about £3,500 per person, the traditional luxury tropes are absent. Clients sleep in tents, hammocks or basic guesthouses and rely on basic local food and ration packs for sustenance. Bespoke trips cost from £10,000 to £100,000.
Other ultra-premium tour operators are expanding their offerings to allow for more extreme experiences. Based on a True Story is particularly well known for facilitating lavish honeymoons, often incorporating superyachts and private jets and with a minimum starting price of £500,000. A number of its clients are sufficiently well off to fund unprecedented holiday experiences, as a recent trip to the island nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean illustrates.
On this occasion the client wanted to complete the first descent into the crater of an active volcano. The 3,000ft-tall peak is apparently one of just five volcanoes worldwide with a relatively stable lava lake in its hollow, but the trip still carried tremendous risk. After a number of aborted attempts to descend, the client and his companion became the only people to ever descend into the crater. The ultimate price of the trip was “north of £250,000.”
Launched 18 months ago by two former soldiers, tour operator Pelorus specialises in similarly ambitious and potentially risky trips - prices tend to start from £25,000 but, says the team, “the sky’s the limit”. Their clients are young thrill-seekers who want “the ultimate bragging rights.”
In practice that might mean arranging an outlandish treasure hunt in Angola to facilitating a glamping expedition on deserted islands in Eritrea. Survival and navigational skills developed by the Pelorus team during their army days often comes in useful when ensuring the trips go without a hitch.
Submersibles are again at the fore of an experience offered by Blue Marble Private. In July it will work with submersible developer OceanGate to provide clients with the opportunity to explore the Titanic wreck. Each person will pay $105,129 for the privilege - the present-day equivalent of the $4,350 first-class passengers paid to board that doomed voyage in 1912. Should all go well with this summer’s departures, further descents are likely to take place in 2020.
The company is also sending clients to fly MiG fighter jets with Russian cosmonauts at Russia’s Star City scientific base, by no means the only outfit providing the super-rich with the opportunity to venture to the edge of space.
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is due to launch commercial flights to space, potentially over the next year, at a cost of $250,000 per head. Over 700 people are believed to have signed up so far, Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber among them. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are supporting other space-exploration endeavours, through the Blue Origin and Space X projects respectively.
Back on Earth, other opportunities for extreme exploration abound. Canadian tour operator Weber Arctic recently facilitated the first heliskiing trips in Baffin Island. At almost 196,000 square miles it is the world’s fifth largest island, but has a population of just 11,000. Paying about £12,500 per head, the company’s clients were the first to ski some of northern Canada’s most remote and treacherous mountains, and as such they had the honour of christening the runs they tackled.
Others are embracing the cold with trips to the North and South Poles, a trend that Scott Dunn’s Jules Maury says is due to clients increasingly chasing “the exhilarating feeling of conquering something and testing their limits.” Costing £70,000, the company’s eight-day Ultimate Antarctica itinerary allows them to do just that, with ice climbing, kite-skiing and abseiling all on offer before they make their way to the South Pole.
Antarctica expeditions are also offered by Eyos Expeditions, the company that has helped to facilitate Vescovo’s Five Deeps endeavour. The company specialises in organising superyacht voyages to the world’s most remote and challenging waters.
I had the opportunity to experience their expertise firsthand last year on a seven-day voyage around the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the superyacht Legend. Ordinarily costing £430,000 per week, plus expenses, to charter, the vessel is a retrofitted Russian ice-breaker that features many of the bells and whistles - such as a grand piano, cinema and spa - found aboard the sleeker superyachts that sail along the Med and Caribbean each summer and winter.
But those amenities are largely ignored by clients who explore these more extreme environments, distracted as they are by the sight of vast penguin colonies, breaching whales and colossal icebergs - sights that they are able to enjoy entirely on their own.
For Eyos Expeditions CEO Ben Lyons it makes sense that the most privileged travellers, who already own every object they could possibly desire, have to go further to find truly meaningful pleasure: “I think many clients have worked out that happiness is not necessarily another car, jet or home. Real joy, pure joy is often found in experiences [and by] immersing oneself in a new culture or a new activity in some of the most beautiful and pristine places on Earth.
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