About badams TRAVEL
How We Got Started
Byron Adams, badams TRAVEL curator, caught the travel bug in 1975 when as a 13-year-old, he traveled with his family on a five-week trip to Kotzebue, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle. As a high-school senior, he spent three weeks in Geneva, Switzerland, on an exchange program experiencing Roman rocks, European culture and art, and Swiss cooking.
He returned to Europe in 1987, traveling through Switzerland, Italy, France, and ending in Ireland for the Dublin Theatre Festival. After traveling around the U.S. in the 1990s, in 2003, he began traveling regularly to Mexico and Central America.
In 2014, he began organizing tours for a small group of friends and launched badams TRAVEL in 2017, focusing initially on Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
His focus is on sharing a particular area’s culture, history, and nature with a small group of travelers through an immersive experience encompassing small, family-owned hotels and restaurants and local guides (indigenous wherever possible).
Our Calling
We offer unique travel opportunities for people who travel for adventure, relaxation, fun, education, and mind-stretching.
Our tours usually go to places off the beaten path. Although that sounds like a cliche, we really do try for places that the crowds haven’t discovered or aren’t interested in. If we do go somewhere popular with the traveling public, we try to look at it from a different perspective.
For example, for our Mexico tours that are currently in development, we’re not going to the beaches. We’re working to create several tours that will focus on Maya ruins, pre-Columbian history, and the struggles of the indigenous peoples today.
Our Experiences
Our groups are small, typically between five and nine guests. We do our best to curate a truly personal experience that supports native business owners and has as minimal impact on our environment as possible.
Local Guides
Local guides know our destinations best. The best sites to see. The hot spring down the river. The sunsets from Cerro de la Muerte. The best restaurants to go to for authentic local cuisine. The best way to get there. Local guides have the relationships with their friends, colleagues, and families in the area that make their guiding of our time with them uniquely personal and immersive.
Traditional Cooking
When we travel, we want to experience the cuisine of the place we are visiting; not the same food that we could get back home. So meals that are included in your trip are the types of meals that the locals are eating. On many of our trips, we’ll be happy to arrange for you to get a local cooking lesson. And we do stray occasionally, getting a Costa Rican perspective on Chinese food or a Guatemalan take on lasagna (made with chayote squash instead of pasta).
Family Owned
We choose accommodations, restaurants, guides, and transfer services carefully, preferring to give our business to small, family-owned establishments whenever we can. We do our best to support indigenous communities, entrepreneurs getting a start, and locals in general believing that how we spend our money should help to create the change we want to see in the world.
Environmental Sensitivity
Travel takes a heavy toll on the environment. We purchase carbon offsets to account for vehicle travel in our destinations; offsets that support environmental efforts in those destinations. We encourage you to purchase offsets for your flights. We try to use “green” accommodations wherever possible. We encourage you to limit your use of single use plastics and to be sure to pick up after yourselves. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem
Check out our Destinations!
We’re excited to share with you the trips we have planned for the next eighteen months.
We’re all eager to get out and explore after a year and a half of staying mostly at home. Come and see some unique destinations with us as we explore the less-traveled path.
Mexico: Celestun Beach Escape
Take a break from your daily routine and spend five nights relaxing at the beach in Celestun on Mexico's stunning Gulf Coast. Explore...
Mexico: The Western Yucatan
w Delve into the mysteries of the Maya of the Western Yucatán Peninsula, explore thriving Mérida , and relax at the beach in Celestún on Mexico's...
Azores: Terceira & the Triangle Islands
Mother Nature has created nine islands full of natural beauty, ready to be explored, in the blue immensity of the Atlantic Ocean: The Azores! Join...
Advent in the Azores
On this eight-day tour, you'll see natural beauty, enjoy great food, meet amazing people, and see beautiful holiday decorations. Explore the...
The Azores: Sao Miguel, the Green Island
Mother Nature has created nine islands full of natural beauty, ready to be explored, in the blue immensity of the Atlantic Ocean: The Azores! Join...
Mexico: The Maya of the Northwest Yucatan
Delve into the mysteries of the Maya of the Northwest Yucatan Peninsula, explore thriving Merida, and relax at the beach in Celestun on...