The Ultimate Sea Safari Will Take You to Remote Islands, With a Butler Onboard
The five-day, four-night charter excursion in the Hebrides is geared toward guests looking for a luxury sea adventure, complete with glamping.
Tell your friends you’re going on safari, and it conjures up a very specific, albeit very colonial image in their minds. The general consensus is that the safari-goer dons tan clothing, usually a large hat, and always an excessive number of pockets, perhaps like Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. They hold tightly to that hat as they bump across grasslands in an open top jeep, seeking lions and jaguars and splotchy giraffes. There’s rustic accommodation involved, or exorbitantly expensive accommodation made to look rustic. But no matter what, it happens on land.
But in truth, to go on safari no land need be involved in your excursion. The word safari is Swahili in origin and means journey, or trip. (Go further back in lineage and the Arabic safar has the same meaning.) In East African Swahili-speaking countries, the phrase safari njema just means “Have a nice trip!” You could just as easily say it to a buddy heading back to college after vacation.
But still, the two words “sea” and “safari” seemed like an odd combination when I read it in an email about the Glenapp Castle luxury hotel’s sea safari excursion in the Sea of the Hebrides, in the North Atlantic ocean off the west coast of Scotland. A marine protected area, the sea’s two archipelagos—the inner and outer Hebrides islands— are abundant in history and tales of conquerors. Now hotel guests can trod where the Vikings once did, but in much, much softer accommodations.
The 150-year-old gothic Glenapp Castle (rates from $500/night) is the sort of luxury hotel that boasts a walled garden and an original Victorian Mackenzie and Moncur glasshouse. But since 2015 the hotel’s mission has pivoted from being a place of slow leisure to a destination for adventure. Guests can try their hand at traditional Scottish activities like hunting, fishing, and falconry, and explore the South Ayrshire coastline through “coasteering” (swimming and scrambling through rocky coastal zones).
They can embrace their primal instinct and learn survival skills with wilderness instruction. Or, they can go all in and and give themselves fully to the wild, with a five-day, four-night sea safari, glamping on a remote island in the Sea of the Hebrides.
Of course, wildlife cruises are nothing new. Through them you can get within sea spray length of humpback whales in Alaska or marine lizards in the Galapagos. Sea safaris, however, tend to be overnight, super high-end versions of these educational excursions, with a very limited number of clientele on board. Indonesia is home to a few—The Celestia Yacht, for example, accommodates just 14 people and shuttles them within Indonesia’s Coral Triangle, taking them at-will to the jungle-covered archipelago Raja Ampat, or Komodo National Park, originally established to conserve the Komodo dragon.
The five day, four night Hebridean Sea Safari package is $20,879 for two guests; the idea was inspired by Glenapp Castle’s location in southwest Scotland, near the island of Ailsa Craig. To the unfamiliar, the island is a volcanic plug and is the original source—and still one of only two sources—of the rare quartz-free granite used to make curling stones for the Olympics. Once a sanctuary for Roman Catholics during the Scottish Reformation, today it is uninhabited, save for a lighthouse and a bird sanctuary. While the island is well known to those living in Scotland, few have ever been there.
“Paul [Szkiler, the owner of Glenapp Castle] decided to buy a boat, and initially we started with charters just going back and forth,” says Jill Chalmers, managing director of the castle. “Then he came up with the idea to do a Hebridean Sea Safari. He thought we could become the gateway to these islands on the west coast of Scotland.”
A new 12-seater transportation vessel was purchased for the endeavor, plus glamping tents, and the first sea safari tour of its kind in the region was born. Think African safari, but with tents set up on a remote patch of island. Previously, the only option for inner Hebridean Sea island exploration was through day trips of up to 100 people on board. With this option, guests have more opportunities to see otters, puffins, basking sharks and more. There are also options to take the boat around the islands to locations like an ancient monastery, archaeological sites, and hidden castle gardens. Plus, there’s also a personal chef, a marine biologist, and a butler onboard.
And guests run all ages. “The youngest guest has been two, and the oldest guest has been 82,” says Chalmers. “Many go for the wildlife. Many go just to explore these islands. If they're into walking the beaches, they're like Caribbean beaches, with rain. Often the beaches are absolutely deserted.” The itinerary is up to those who have booked the trip. “What they do at sea very much depends on what the guests' interests are. If they were interested in nature or wildlife, we would then create the itinerary to go where eagles are nesting, or we know where the dolphins could be playing that day.”
And as this is Scotland, there are also plenty of opportunities to sample whisky, as the Inner Hebrides is home to several distilleries. And that includes the island where the glamping tents are erected, a private section on the famous whisky island of Jura, where deer outnumber humans 30 to one. Literature fans might recognize it as the island where George Orwell wrote 1984; he described it as “an extremely un-get-atable place.” But though there’s just a single road and 200 inhabitants, it’s not that un-get-able. Here, on this sea safari where jaguars and elephants are replaced with humpback whales and breaching dolphins, it’s all part of the journey.