The Explora Journal

Weather in Alaska rarely commits to a single mood for long, and that fact should shape every entry on your Alaska cruise packing list.

Asia rewards travellers who arrive expecting it, and an ocean Journey is arguably the most natural way to meet it: one check-in, then a sequence of entirely different worlds delivered by sea.

Rainforest reserves climb behind the coastline in St Lucia and Grenada. Coral gardens shelter off Tobago Cays and Curaçao. Humpback whales move through Samaná Bay each winter, and sea turtles graze in waters that few ocean travellers think to ask about.

History often remembers the empires and rulers that shaped the Mediterranean, each leaving behind monuments intended to endure through the ages. Yet some of the region's most enduring legacies are not found in its ruins, but in the timeless ingredients and traditions that have quietly persisted for centuries.

Winter travel tends to split into two moods: the sun-warmed hush of the Caribbean and Central America, and a serene Mediterranean most travellers have never seen before.

Having first earned his four gold stripes in 2008, Captain Pietro Sinisi is one of the most experienced Masters in the Explora Journeys fleet.

Slip beneath the surface almost anywhere in the Caribbean and the same rule holds: the water rewards those who look closely. Off five islands in particular, it rewards them more than most.

Ask most people what lives at the bottom of the ocean, and the picture stops at darkness and cold. Descend roughly 200 metres below the hull of your Explora Journeys Home at Sea, roughly 200 metres and there's more to it than that.

Ask travellers what comes to mind when they picture the Caribbean, and most will reach for the beach. But the region's deeper character lives elsewhere.

Some places reveal themselves through landmarks and others through history. Northern Europe, however, has the extraordinary power to tell its story through a harvest that barely lasts three months.