Page 14 - AAA Every Day – AAA Hudson Valley – January/February 2020

The 100-guest luxury mega yacht, Celebrity Flora, offers the first-ever glamping experience at sea, a science lab, new dining venues, an open-air stargazing platform, expert-led ecological seminars and custom-designed Novurania yacht tenders, which create a seamless sea- to-shore experience.
Located 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, this archipelago of unspoiled, isolated islands will welcome you with its rugged charms and evolutionary wonders. Consisting of 19 islands and 42 islets
that all rose from the sea as the product of volcanic eruptions, these islands are between 3 million and 4 million years old.
Entirely oceanic — meaning they’ve never been connected to the mainland — the Galapagos Islands are indeed a world apart. Settlers have carved out their lives on the lava rocks, pirates have profited and scientists have explored. The history of the Galapagos is rich and diverse, with tales of basic survival and extraordinary discovery. For almost any modern adventurer, a journey through time to the Galapagos Islands is a dream vacation.
The animals of the Galapagos are unlike any others
on earth. Apart from having no natural fear of humans, they evolved in unique manners, which are on full display daily for you to see. This includes enormous 100-year-old Galapagos giant tortoises, free-diving marine iguanas, the beautiful and animated blue-footed boobies and a host of other exotic fauna found nowhere else on earth.
Celebrity Flora has the highest ratio of Certified Naturalists per guest (1:9) in the Galapagos, who will
offer travelers an in-depth experience with certification by the Galapagos National Park, recognizing their extensive educational training and commitment to maintaining the pristine nature of these islands.
Celebrity Flora will house a Lab, another first in the Galapagos Islands. The Lab is Celebrity
Flora’s center of information and discovery. The Lab provides guests an enriching space because discovering more about the islands and their inhabitants before seeing them up-close will help make your time ashore even more memorable.
Celebrity had the opportunity to blend exploration and research by making Celebrity
Flora the first vessel in the Galapagos to be equipped with cutting-edge oceanographic research equipment, known as Oceanscope. The program builds on a more than 20- year relationship with the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science that benefits from a cruise ship’s consistent itinerary to create a perfect and cost-effective way for scientists to gather and measure ocean circulation dynamics. The system will track and map the region while measuring sea surface temperatures and collecting data critical to the research prediction of El Niño and La Niña. All findings gathered by Celebrity Flora will become open-source data – globally accessible to research – a first for scientists around the world and anyone with a passion for this information.
The Galapagos Islands are a once-in-a-lifetime type
of vacation. Celebrity Flora not only offers the most luxurious vacations, but it provides unique experiences as well. On Celebrity Flora, you’ll have every opportunity to get close to nature — even at night. Galapagos Glamping is the first sunset-to-sunrise experience of its kind in the Galapagos Islands. Enjoy dinner followed by a naturalist- guided stargazing session under the constellations. Sleep under the stars in a cabana and wake up to the sunrise and a private breakfast before you leave for your daily island adventures.
The natural beauty of the islands, the diversity and uniqueness of the species that it harbors earned this archipelago the reputation of being a living laboratory of
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