Mrs. Martian and I generally like to travel on our own. We’ve rented cars and driven around Britain, Ireland, Germany and Spain with Rick Steves guides. However, we have used travel agents for more “exotic” (for our definition of exotic) - Tikal in Guatemala for example. A decade or so ago we took an REI tour in northern China and loved it. Unfortunately REI stopped doing travel during the pandemic and so far has only started up domestic US travel. We are looking at a go-to agency for places like Patagonia, Machu Picchu, etc. where we wouldn’t be comfortable rolling our own. If REI still did international trips we’d be set.
Browsing around it seems like Smithsonian Journeys and National Geographic offer the type of small group trips we are interested in. Has anyone here had experience with either organization or can make other suggestions? For reference, our nightmare is anything like a large cruise ship. If a ship is involved it better be small and going someplace only accessible by water.
While I haven’t used either of those, I do have a friend who is a Smithsonian tour guide and have heard some talks by a former local man who worked with National Geographic cruises. Both of them are smart people who I had learned from in different contexts and I imagine that they do a similarly nice job for those companies. Everyone I know loves Road Scholar, and everyone I know loves Rick Steves tours. You might look at both of those.
I took a National Geographic tour of The Great Migration in Tanzania at the end of January. I talked about it a bit in this thread.
Brief summary - about 15 people in the version I took. Very well organized. Handful of interesting lectures as an educational component. Expensive but worth it for something you really need local expertise to do right, and you don’t know who the right players are.