Six regions · under four hundred journeys a year
Journeys designed one at a time
Marivela is a small travel house planning private, slow and deeply researched trips across six regions of the world. Every itinerary is written by the advisor who knows the ground.
Where we go
Six regions, properly
We turn down everything else, including work we would like to have. A house that sells forty countries knows forty countries the way a brochure does.
Italy
The Aeolian Coast
Seven volcanic islands and the Tyrrhenian shore below them, where the ferries still set the pace of the day.
Japan
Kyoto and the Nakasendo
A city of workshops and a post road through the cedar mountains, walked in the order the old travellers walked it.
Norway
Lofoten
Granite walls dropping straight into cold green water, fishing villages on stilts, and light that behaves like nowhere else.
Kenya
Laikipia
Conservancies north of Mount Kenya where the land is worked with wildlife rather than fenced away from it.
Chile
Atacama and the Altiplano
The driest desert on earth, at altitude, with salt flats, geyser fields and the clearest night sky you will ever stand under.
Indonesia
Sumba
An hour east of Bali and a world away: limestone cliffs, empty surf, and villages where the old rituals are still the calendar.
Designed trips
Where we would send you first
Thirteen journeys, each of them a starting point. Roughly four in five of the trips we actually run are altered versions of one of these.
9 days · Private
The Aeolian Slow Coast
Salina, Lipari, Panarea and a night crossing to Stromboli, planned around the evening light rather than a list of sights.
Coast and islandsCulture and craft€4,850from, per person
7 days · Private
Lofoten Winter Light
Rorbuer on a working harbour, a cod boat at first light, and six hours of blue twilight a day to spend outside in it.
Winter and northern lightCoast and islands€4,300from, per person
10 days · Private
Laikipia Conservancy Weeks
Two conservancies, three nights each minimum, with walking safaris and night drives that the national parks do not permit.
Wildlife and conservation€8,900from, per person
Days worth flying for
The reasons people remember a week
Not sights. Appointments: a harvest morning, a loom, a boat below a volcano, a night under the clearest sky on earth.
Food and wine
Malvasia harvest on Salina
Pick with the family that has worked these terraces for four generations, then eat with them.
A morning, then lunch
On the water
Stromboli by night boat
Out at dusk, then sitting offshore below the Sciara del Fuoco while the volcano works.
An evening, five hours
Food and wine
Capers, salt and the Lipari kitchen
A kitchen morning built around three ingredients the islands actually live on.
Half a day
Craft and makers
The Nishijin looms
A working obi weaver's studio in the textile district, with interpreting.
Two and a half hours
Craft and makers
An hour with a knife sharpener
A third-generation sharpener, six grades of stone, and your own knife if you bring one.
An hour
Walking
The Kiso post road on foot
Tsumago to Magome and beyond, uphill, on stone-paved sections of the old highway.
Three days
Private planning
Twenty-six hours goes into a trip
That is the average. It is why there is a ceiling on how many journeys a house of eleven people can plan well, and why we would rather hit it than grow past it.
An advisor takes the journey closest to what you want and rebuilds it: different dates, a different pace, an extra week, the anniversary in the middle. Then they stay with it while you travel.
- Journeys planned each year
- Under 400
- Average planning time per trip
- 26 hours
- Regions we actually cover
- Six
- Travellers who return
- 61%
How you like to travel
Start from the shape of the week
Most people know how they want to travel long before they know where. These are the eight shapes our journeys come in.
Where you wake up
Twelve places, and why each one
A short list rather than an inventory. Each entry says what we like about it and the one thing worth knowing before you commit.
House · Six rooms
Casa Pollara
A restored caper farmer's house above the west-facing bay on Salina, with the terrace that runs the week.
Cabin · Nine cabins
Ballstad Rorbuer
Fishermen's cabins on the water in a working harbour, with a wood stove and a drying rack outside.
Lodge · Five rooms
Ol Sirai House
A five-room house on a conservancy escarpment, run as a private home with guiding attached.
Who plans it
Five people, six regions
Each advisor works one or two regions and goes back to them every year. That is the difference between a current itinerary and a well-formatted one.
The journal
Field notes, and a few arguments
Why we walk the Nakasendo uphill, what a conservancy bed night actually pays for, and the hour the Aeolian islands turn gold.
field note · 4 min
The hour the islands turn gold
On Salina the light does something at about seven in the evening, and we have built a whole week around it.
essay · 5 min
Why we walk the Nakasendo uphill
Almost everyone walks the Kiso section downhill. It is an hour easier and a considerably worse day.
field note · 3 min
The card on the table
Every traveller in Lofoten gets a piece of paper on arrival with today's plan and what happens instead.
Tell us the two things you would be sorry to miss
That is a better place to start than a list of fourteen. Use the planner, or write to an advisor directly.