THESE TWO LUXURY JOURNEYS BRING TRAVELERS DEEP INTO THE WILDERNESS

Everyone is talking about Hell’s Gate. Skimming the western side of Fraser Canyon, roughly 140 miles east of Vancouver, I stand and lean across the aisle of the coach to get a clearer view down into the ravine.

There, upriver, the rock faces suddenly choke inward, squeezing the mint green water like a craggy corset. The river spits and churns in the narrow passage; above, a fire red footbridge stretches across the rocks. Against the enormous canyon walls, the bridge appears almost dainty, as if I could pluck it between thumb and forefinger.

In his journal 19th-century explorer Simon Fraser characterized the rapids as “a place where no human being should venture.” Following his advice and the historic rail line charting our journey, we don’t stop.

We are on Rocky Mountaineer’s First Passage to the West, charging down the Canadian Pacific Railway that in 1885 linked eastern and western Canada—a watershed moment, not just for securing British Columbia’s place in the union (and out of America’s grasp) but also for luring well-heeled travelers from all over the world into a new western frontier. Steamer trunks in tow, they headed into the clean air and glacier-fed lakes of the Rockies, often stopping for months at summer playgrounds that cropped up in its wake before resuming their journeys across the country.

It will take us two days to get from Vancouver to Banff. In glass-domed coaches that trade drapery-heavy opulence for unfettered views into the wild, it’s a journey of simple refinement—think the leather-clad comfort of private jet travel. Our only stops are to sleep (in the ranching city of Kamloops) and an entirely unscheduled halt somewhere deep in Glacier National Park (more on that in a moment).

Everything else we see is fleeting: old prospector towns, rain stampedes across shallow creeks, grizzlies, cell service. I begin to measure time and distance in color. Expanses of emerald farmland in the Fraser valley give way to the reddish, striated rock and yellow sagebrush of the arid Thompson Plateau. We roll through taupe-sand lake towns and midnight flashes of tunnels.

Deep green forests of Douglas fir, cedar-hemlock, and spruce climb hillsides, their texture so full and vibrant that I imagine skimming my palm over the tops of them. But it’s along Kicking Horse Canyon that the landscape turns electric: Yellow aspens rise from brilliant teal water snaking along beside us (its eye-popping color, our onboard host, Patrycia, tells us, comes from rock flour, glacier sediment that creates an intense light refraction).

It’s late in the second day when we reach the mammoth grey Rockies. In the tilting afternoon light, they appear as towering, silver-haired statesmen ushering us across the Continental Divide. A hush descends over our car as everything that came before is dwarfed by the Giants. I imagine it’s a mere slice of what the rail pioneers felt when they arrived. The tunnels built to the west, Patrycia reminds us, were relatively flat, so when the builders got to the Rockies, previous designs proved worthless. (A passage known as the Big Hill, for instance, is a 4.5 percent grade, more than twice the legal incline; the first train to go down it derailed.)

It was assistant chief engineer John Edward Schwitzer who thought to look farther afield: Swiss engineers, he learned, had come up with a system of tunnels that twists through Alpine inclines like a cursive L, tempering the grade. So in 1907 Schwitzer and his team began blasting through Mounts Ogden and Cathedral at opposite ends to replicate the design. When they met in the middle, they were off by two inches.

A little after nine o’clock in the evening, we right-turn our way through Schwitzer’s Spiral Tunnels. When we emerge, having wound through an elevation change of 600 feet from the top of the first tunnel to the bottom of the second, we are about 60 miles from Banff. It’s dark and we are considerably off schedule. Around noon, as we were descending into the first-floor dining car for lunch, the train slowed to a halt and didn’t move again for an hour and a half. Rail work blocked our path.

And as I dined in a cozy four-person booth with fellow travelers, tables dressed in pretty white linen, the towering cedars and spruces and fallen timbers around us became perfectly still. Over plates of crispy local steelhead and Alberta striploin steak, one of my lunch mates commented it was rather like a wilderness picnic. And before long, in the silence of this remote forest along the Illecillewaet River, we began to make up stories. They were outlandish and funny and continued out on the train platform after dessert. I wonder now how often those trees had heard it all before. —EM

Book Your Own Adventure

Rocky Mountaineer’s First Passage to the West rail journeys run from mid-April through mid-October. Rates for GoldLeaf service start at $2,452 per adult; rockymountaineer.com.

It’s just the komodo dragon…and me. Yes, there are seven other people in the inflatable skiff. But I’m in the bow as we carefully drift into the shallows of the broad, sandy cove. We’re within six feet of shore—as far as we dare go—when one, then two more of the world’s largest and most lethal lizards emerge from the scrub fringing the beach.

If there’s a collective breath that can be held, we hold ours, stock-still. So this is how the hunted feel, I think, as one of the dragons detects us and lumbers down the beach straight for us. It stops at the waterline, fixed, and flicks its long yellow ribbon of a forked tongue at us. This is not a greeting; it’s an assessment. We are prey.

My modern life slides from my shoulders. The prehistoric takes its place. But isn’t this why we edge into the wild? To glimpse exquisite, often rare, animals roaming free in their rightful habitat but also to surrender to something deeper, bigger than us? This is the promise of spending a week aboard the expedition yacht Aqua Blu, plying the waters surrounding Komodo National Park in central Indonesia. And what a promise fulfilled.

Our intentionally slow, meandering navigation from the gateway island of Flores in the east, around the three main islands and 26 islets within the park (protected since 1980 and designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991), is as much a painter’s dream as a naturalist’s. Whether in motion or moored, we are surrounded by the high visual drama wrought by the archipelago’s geothermal tumult: jagged volcanic ridgelines, steep faces painted with the sun-bleached ochre of savannah and emerald of monsoon forest; pale pink sands and lapis lazuli waters. A week never budging from one of Aqua Blu’s teak deck loungers, I imagine, might be journey enough.

But into the diorama we venture. We meet Komodo dragons again—this time by stepping from a fenced-in observation station with the protection of rangers, who remind us that these creatures can—and have—killed people as recently as 2009. On other days we roam ashore where the dragons don’t: up a steep ridgeline above arabesques of coves far below; into the rainforest to swim beneath a waterfall. We kayak mercury-still waters at sunrise; another afternoon we drift-snorkel over a Technicolor abundance of coral. One morning at dawn we skim across still-dark seas to find, and join underwater, a gentle fray of leviathan whale sharks feeding off fishermen’s bycatch.

And always we return to our feathered maritime nest, where we gladly reshoulder a mantle of modern adventuring. A refitted 1960s British coastal survey vessel (originally named, marvelously, the HMS Beagle), the Aqua Blu is a triumph of layering luxuries into legacy seaworthiness. Now we linger in 15 sunlit suites dressed in tailored neutrals with rainfall showers.

We gather in the sleek, yacht-style dining salon and lounge for remarkable meals, plus briefings, films, and even a high-spirited cooking class. (After days of raving about our food—from fresh-caught fish in spice-rich broths to fragrant sorbets of mandarin and coconut— the chef graciously tours us through his lilliputian kitchen. Our ardor and acclaim only intensify from there.) We pester our gregarious and knowledgeable trio of guides for natural and cultural history. We share photos, stories, and laughs.

And every evening as the sun returns to the sea, we migrate to the top deck for toasts and the day’s final chance to peer into the wild world in which we sail. To imagine, as night falls, the dragons digging back down into their burrows to sleep. To perhaps even dream—as we do—of what the rising sun will bring. —TM

Book Your Own Adventure

Aqua Blu’s seven-night Komodo National Park itineraries run from early May to late August. Rates start at $9,415 per adult; aquaexpeditions.com.

Featured in our May/June 2024 issue.

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