Wellness Mart LLC
Wellness Travels
We have organized small groups and traveled, taught, and practiced qigong in different parts of the world since 2006. Our group sizes range from four to sixteen people. 2018 and 2019 were spectacular travel years for us. In 2018, we traced the journeys of adventurer Marco Polo and Bodhidharma, the father of Shaolin qigong, along the Fabled Silk Road in Central Asia. Practicing Shaolin qigong along the same foot path and in the same sacred ground where the founder of Shaolin qigong himself performed his art centuries ago was a powerful and transformative healing experience. We embarked on four exciting adventures in the summer and early fall in 2019. We visited great energy centers in Ireland, Scotland and Iceland in June and July. We also continued to follow Marco Polo's travels and visited Mongolia in August. We finished recreating Bodhidharma's journey in China, Tibet, and Japan in September, 2019. We canceled our adventures in 2020 due to the Corona virus pandemic. We resumed travels in 2021. 2021 took us to America's last frontier, Alaska, which we visited by rail in June and to the Adriatic coast in October. We sailed on a riverboat from Amsterdam to Basel in September 2022 and did a land tour of Poland and Czechoslovakia to follow the composer Chopin's early career. We ended 2022 with a trip to Ethiopia and Madagascar in November and December. 2023 will take us to Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia, the Amazon, Bolivia and Columbia. 2024 promises to be an exciting year with a visit to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and possibly Laos and the Philippines,an expedition to Antarctica to see the emperor penguins, and a visit to Morocco, and Western Africa.
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Fly from your gateway city in the USA to Singapore and join in on the Lunar New Year celebrations in Singapore on January 22. Board your luxury small 77-cabin ocean vessel, the brand new Ocean Odyssey, as she sets sail to Indonesia on January 24. Circumnavigate Indonesia from January 24 to February 15 enjoying many ports of call which include Belitung Island where you will enjoy pearly sand beaches and snorkeling in turquoise waters, Borneo where you will visit the orangutan conservation program, Arut River, and the Yellow Palace, Java where you will enjoy a private island as well as Borobodur, a 9th century Buddhist temple with spectacular Buddhist monuments, beautiful Bali, the epitome of paradise, Komodo National Park to look for its "dragons", Sumba with its magnificent beaches and wild horses, Ende, with its mountain and its three crater lakes, Alor, the "Island of a Thousand Mokos", and the island of Kisar with its sacred freshwater springs. Disembark the Ocean Odyssey in Darwin, Australia on February 15, and enjoy a tour of the city of Darwin. Spend a full day at Kakadu National Park, home to thousands of species of animals and plants, on February 16. Fly home on February 17. Sold Out.
Amazon Adventure
March 10-25, 2023
Join us as we sail the Amazon River aboard the Ocean Explorer, a small expedition vessel. Start with a two day visit to Rio de Janeiro before you travel to Belem, on March 13 from where you will embark to Ocean Explorer on March 14. Enjoy a wonderful week as your expedition cruise begins. The Amazon is home to thousands of wildlife species, black rivers, floating villages, and more, and you’ll encounter them all alongside your knowledgeable Expedition Team comprised of naturalists, ornithologists, and wildlife experts. Encounter the world’s most biodiverse ecosystem in an intimate and enthralling way when you step aboard a Zodiac boat and make your way to the banks of the Amazon River. Daily shoreside landings allow you to get right into the heart of the lush Amazon rainforest, giving you a front row seat to the wildlife, nature, and cultures of the Indigenous communities that call this region home. Disembark the Ocean Explorer in Manaus on March 22 and enjoy a visit to the Mercado Municipal Adolpho Lisboa, the city's oldest market where produce from the surrounding countryside and fish from the river are delivered every morning. Enjoy a tour of Manaus on March 23 and fly home on March 24. Contact us as soon as possible to book this trip. Space is still available but very limited.
Bolivia and Columbia: Adventures in Coffee
October 13-31, 2023
Fly to La Paz, Bolivia, the world's highest airport at 12,000 feet. Explore La Paz, whose southside is known as the Valley of the Moon, with an expert English-speaking guide. Immerse yourself in the art of Bolivian textiles at the Textiles Museum.Visit Mario Sarabia's pottery workshop, which showcases this local artist's unique ceramic designs. Next, we depart La Paz for the village of Copacabana, set on the broad, blue banks of Lake Titicaca. We'll drive to the site of Bolivia's most important archaeological site: Tiwanaku, a ceremonial location on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca used by a pre-Inca civilization reaching back to 600 BC. We fly to Bogota, Columbia where we begin our discovery of Colombia's Colonial Jewels & the Coffee Triangle. After our visits to Bogota and Medellin, we fly to Pereira. Pereira is one of three towns that comprise Colombia's “coffee triangle.” Along with Manizales and Armenia, Pereira is a key player in the Colombian coffee-making tradition that is known world-wide. The top-quality Arabica beans grown in this region are harvested, washed on local plantations, dried, and exported all over the world. We will stay at a finca (estate) hotel and coffee plantation. We will also visit the coffee town of Montenegro. The final turn in our triangle is the region around Armenia, once a way station on the march of Simón Bolivar. We visit Salento, a 19th-century village perched on a plateau over the Quindío River, where we'll learn about the process of roasting coffee. We will fly to Cartagena, our last stop in Columbia. The city is a Unesco World Heritage site. From Cartagena, we fly back to the USA on October 31. Price, excluding international airfare, is $6495 per person based on double occupancy.
Planned Adventures for 2024
Asia and Australia from Singapore to Darwin
January 20- February 17, 2023
We are currentlly working with tour company partners around the globe on an Antarctic expedition in February 2024 that will start in New Zealand and go as far as possible into the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic interior to see the Emperor penguins and other unique penguins not regularly seen on common Antarctic voyages that start in Ushuaia, Argentina. Other 2024 trips in the planning and exploratory stages are a visit to Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines and a journey to Morocco and West Africa. Contact us and revisit this website often if you are interested in any of these voyages. We will post itineraries and prices as soon as we finish our negotiations with our vendors. We expect spaces on these trips to fill quickly.
