Tours in Review

Bolivia was the only South American country my wife, Virginia, and I hadn’t visited, so we contacted Cecilia at Sol International (Kodak, TN; 800/765-5657, http://solintl.com) and she arranged an 8-day/7-night trip for us for March 6-13, 2008.

Wanting to give ourselves a chance to become accustomed to the altitude, we chose to fly into Santa Cruz (1,365 feet). Our overnight at Hotel Cortez gave us time to recuperate. The next morning we flew to Sucre (9,000 feet), the judicial capital of Bolivia, where we stayed at a converted town home in the city center, Hotel de su Merced.

Our family of four took a 10-day trip to Egypt, Nov. 16-27, 2006. We booked it with Prem Sharma of Somak Safaris (2700 East Imperial Highway, Ste. N, Brea, CA 92821; 714/985-3456, www.somaksafaris.com). (We had also traveled through Somak in 2004, to Tanzania.)

The cost of $3,060 per person included round-trip airfare from Los Angeles to Cairo (via Frankfurt), three nights in Cairo (including the sound-and-light show at the pyramids), the flight to Luxor, four nights and five days on the Nile cruise ending in Aswan, two nights in Aswan, an optional trip to Abu Simbel, the return...

As my husband, Manley, and I are somewhat limited physically, we wanted to see as much of Bhutan as possible but without a lot of physical demands. For a 15-day tour that we took with a friend, April 21-May 6, 2007, we used the superb services of Blue Poppy Tours & Treks (24 Lonsdale Sq., London N1 1EN, U.K.; phone 020 7700 3084 or fax 7609 2029… and Box 1296, Thimphu, Bhutan; phone 00 975 2 333540, fax 333541, www.bluepoppybhutan.com).

Blue Poppy is co-owned by Mr. Choki Dorji, who lives most of the year in London, and Mr. Karma Wangdi, a resident of Bhutan. Choki, who is...