ECO & WILDLIFE TRAVEL · WORLDWIDE
The wild places, and the gentle way in.
Reviews of the best eco and wildlife tours on earth: clear-kayak mornings with manatees, mangrove paddles and rainforest trails, penguin parades and manta-ray nights. Small groups, light footprints, the kind of trip that leaves a place better than it found it.
Worth the airfare
Three wildlife encounters that happen in one place on earth.
You can watch animals almost anywhere. But swimming beside a manatee at Crystal River, the dusk penguin parade on Phillip Island, and the night the manta rays come to the lights off Kona belong to these places and nowhere else.
Crystal River, Florida
Mornings with the Manatees
Every winter, hundreds of manatees drift into the warm spring water of Three Sisters Springs, and Crystal River is the one place in the United States you can legally swim near them. You slip into the gin-clear water or float above it in a see-through kayak, and a gentle, whiskered giant rises to look you over. A guide keeps the distance respectful and the animals calm. Nowhere else lets you this close, this kindly.
- 1 Clear Kayak Manatee Ecotour of Crystal River
- 2 Three Sisters Springs Kayak And Swim Eco-Tour Crystal River
- 3 Crystal River: Three Sisters Springs Eco Tour by Clear Kayak
Phillip Island, Victoria
The Phillip Island Penguin Parade
At dusk on Phillip Island, the world’s smallest penguins ride the surf ashore and waddle up the beach to their burrows in the dunes, a few hundred at a time. A boardwalk and a naturalist keep visitors back while the colony streams past in the half-light. Pair it with koalas in the gum trees and seals on the rocks, an easy day from Melbourne that ends with one of the gentlest wildlife spectacles on earth.
- 1 Great Ocean Road Small-Group Eco Tour from Melbourne
- 2 Penguin Parade, & Wildlife Encounters Eco Tour from Melbourne
- 3 From Melbourne: Phillip Island Penguin Parade Eco Tour
Kona, Hawaii
A Night Snorkel with Manta Rays
After dark off the Kona coast, dive lights are dropped into the water to gather plankton, and giant manta rays, some four metres wing-tip to wing-tip, arrive to feed in slow, looping barrel rolls inches beneath you. You float at the surface holding a lit board while they wheel and somersault through the glow. It is one of the most reliable, and most astonishing, big-animal encounters anywhere in the Pacific.
- 1 Manta Magic: Small-Group Manta Ray Night Snorkel in Kailua Kona
- 2 Private Tour: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Eco Tour
The one everyone books
If you only do one wild thing.
More travellers reach for this one than any other on the site. A safe, low-impact first booking when you are still getting to know a place.
The classics
The World’s Most Popular Eco Tours
Manatee springs, mangrove kayaks, rainforest national parks, penguin and manta nights. The wildlife trips travellers reach for first, in the places they most want to see.
Where to go
Pick a wild country.
The United States for manatee springs and the Everglades. Australia for penguins and the Great Ocean Road. Thailand for cloud forest, Portugal for lagoon wildlife, Italy for dolphins, Spain for marine reserves. Each country, with the wild days it does best.
Which kind of day
How to spend a day in the wild.
The kind of trip matters as much as the place. Three ways to spend a day outdoors, depending on the time you have and how deep into nature you want to get.
Wild Florida
Florida is wilder than it looks.
Past the beaches and the theme parks lies one of the great wildlife coasts: the spring-fed rivers where manatees gather in winter, the mangrove tunnels and tidal creeks of the Everglades, the dolphins and shelling islands off Naples and Marco, the backcountry flats of the Keys. Clear kayaks, small boats and naturalist guides get you in close without leaving a mark.
See the best eco tours in the USA →Australia
Australia, met up close.
From Melbourne, the little penguins of Phillip Island come ashore at dusk and koalas doze in the gum trees. Off the west coast at Ningaloo, you swim over a fringing reef thick with turtles. Up in the tropical north, rainforest meets the sea. Small-group days and guides who know the animals make it some of the most rewarding, low-impact wildlife travel on earth.
See the best eco tours in Australia →Why it matters
The best trips leave a place better.
A good wild day is never just the view. It is the small group instead of the crowd, the guide whose living depends on the forest staying standing and the animals staying wild, the rule that keeps you a respectful distance back. You come home having seen something extraordinary, and having helped, in a small way, to keep it there.
Browse every eco tour →Thailand’s green heart
The north is all forest and waterfalls.
Up around Chiang Mai the land climbs into cloud forest: the high trails and waterfalls of Doi Inthanon, the country’s tallest peak, and the ethical elephant sanctuaries where rescued animals roam instead of perform. These are slower, greener days, framed by jungle and rice terraces, led by guides who know how to tread lightly through hill-tribe country.
- 1 Chiang Mai: Doi Inthanon National Park Eco-Friendly Tour
- 2 Phuket: Phuket Elephant Care Sanctuary ECO Tour
- 3 Doi Inthanon National Park Eco-Friendly Full Day Tour
By how deep you go
How far into the wild do you want to get?
Some days you want a gentle paddle and an animal up close before lunch. Some days you want a naturalist and half a day in the wetlands. And some days you want the whole day under the forest canopy. Pick the day, we will point you at the trip.
A couple of hours
Get out on the water with the wildlife.A clear-bottomed kayak over a spring, a slow dolphin cruise, a paddle through a mangrove tunnel: a gentle morning close to wild animals, back on dry land before lunch.
Half a day
Go deep into the wetlands.Kayak the mangrove tunnels and tidal creeks with a naturalist who reads the water: roseate spoonbills, a manatee surfacing, an alligator sliding off the bank, the river of grass opening up around you.
A full day in the wild
Give a whole day to the rainforest.Cloud forest and waterfalls in a national park, an elephant sanctuary, a hill-tribe village and a long lunch: the kind of day in the wild you plan a whole trip around.
The Algarve’s quiet side
Portugal’s coast is a living lagoon.
Behind the Algarve’s famous cliffs lies the Ria Formosa, a maze of tidal lagoons, salt marsh and barrier islands that is one of Europe’s great bird habitats. Glide through it on a near-silent solar boat with a marine biologist: flamingos, spoonbills and seahorses, then on to the Benagil sea caves. Slow, quiet, low-wake travel that lets the wildlife carry on as if you were not there.
See all 7 eco tours in Portugal →By place
Pick a wild corner.
Crystal River for the manatee springs. The Everglades for mangrove tunnels and wading birds. Naples and Marco for dolphins and clear kayaks. Melbourne for penguins and koalas. Key West for backcountry paddles. The Algarve for lagoon wildlife and sea caves.
By country
Every country worth a day in the wild.
From the springs and wetlands of the United States to the reefs and forests of Australia, the cloud forest of Thailand to the lagoons of Portugal. Browse by the country whose wild places you want to walk into.
Dawn to dusk
A perfect day in the wild.
First trip and want a full day outdoors? Here is how it flows, from a still dawn paddle to a wildlife spectacle as the light goes.
Just added