Travel Tortoise #1
James, the human behind TTT, has been on holiday to Benidorm, Magaluf AND Tenerife. Aside from that, he has also lived & worked for extended periods in Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, the U.K and Austria. He speaks four languages and has most recently founded a moderately successful outdoor activities & tour company in Vienna. He founded the Travel Tortoise as penance for all the air miles he accrued in a previous life. He chose a tortoise as the mascot for his travel blog as they share numerous characteristics, including lethargy, extended bouts of foraging and eating, and a mutual love of slow movements. As a keen and interested member of the animal kingdom, he enjoys learning about higher species, mostly primates, but he is not of fan of turtles, as in his words “they steal all the limelight.”
What does the Travel Tortoise know about slow travel?
Some of the most exciting, rewarding and happy moments of my life were on the road as it was then that I felt most connected to the world. Travel is exciting and travelers are generally upbeat and happy, so what better people to work for? Thus the idea of establishing an outdoor activities company came from a determination to enjoy my work, and a need to stay plugged in to nature, to other people and to myself. We focus only on developing sustainable tours and really unique off-the-beaten-path itineraries. A lot of people claim these things, but there’s nothing behind it. We are different.
And what about wine?
As part of TTT’s sister company, Venture Vienna, I developed wine tours & experiences that connect visitors to a region by combining outdoor activities and intimate wine tastings. Indeed, it was in Austria that I developed a love for wine, and here, much of modern-day wine production is organic, or damn well close to it – it’s the spiritual home of ‘slow wine’. I understand what it means to ‘get’ the ‘terroir’ of a region, and we bring people right into the heart of it to create lasting positive associations between a wine and its origin. We do slow wine travel, I guess.
At the heart of it, we know travel & wine and we love to learn and write about them too. Furthermore, wine-related experiences tend to make up a large part of the Tortoise’s personal travel itineraries, so we’ve picked up lots of expertise along the way that we want to share and exchange with our readers.