The Explora Journal

Asia rewards travellers who arrive expecting it, and a 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.

Yet travelling through the Greek islands on EXPLORA II, James Massoud found himself drawn less to the ruins than to what had quietly persisted alongside them, in a fascinating exploration through centuries of enduring, core ingredients.

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.

From Arctic fjords veiled in mist to warm Caribbean bays where mothers nurse their calves, the ocean's greatest travellers reveal themselves differently depending on where and when, you look.