Ticket to Novelty

The reliable old grand tour of Europe is passe for many American travelers; they demand more variety or excitement than is offered by the Tower of London or the Louvre. To satisfy the growing market for novelty, travel agents, airlines and ship lines are packaging an extraordinary assortment of excursions designed for hobbyists, sportsmen, intellectuals, health addicts and a host of other categories. Consider such esoterica as a journey to Dracula's lands in Rumania for those fascinated by the supernatural or the upcoming Pacific excursion led by California scientists that will track and observe schools of whales in Baja California's Scammons Lagoon.

For any sky watcher who cannot bear to wait another 100 years, a dozen groups are offering tours to the best spots from which to observe a total eclipse of the sun in June; there will not be a longer blackout until 2150. One airline will fly 250 customers to Kenya's Lake Rudolf, where they will stay in a special safari camp complete with guides, hunters, scientists and lectures on astronomy. A Boston group will fly from New York City to Casablanca, board the S.S. Masalia for a cruise along the path of the eclipse in the South Atlantic and hear a series of lectures on the phenomenon en route.

Environmentalists are being offered an assortment of offbeat tours. Among the possibilities is a trip to Micronesia that includes scuba diving in the giant Truk Lagoon, which is littered with the hulks of Japanese warships sunk in World War II. Other groups will visit the headwaters of the Amazon, the Ruwenzori (Mountains of the Moon) Range between Uganda and the Republic of Zaire, the New Zealand and New Guinea highlands and Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Two New York firms are aiming at the homosexual market, one with a series of nine-day junkets to Isla de Oro, in Panama's San Bias Islands, where the men sleep in hammocks in palm-thatched huts. A magazine aimed at homosexuals is offering a brace of two-week trips to Europe. "It's not a sexual trip," says one of the excursion's sponsors, "but a cultural one, intended for people interested in meeting those with similar interests."

A sampling of other tours:

> An eight-day trip to the Canary Islands, with the emphasis on learning Spanish. Customers get a twelve-lesson crash language course before they go, seminars on arrival.

> Visits to the famous spas of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Israel, Italy and Spain, designed for sufferers from arthritis, rheumatism, gastric disorders and respiratory ailments.

> A ten-day music festival aboard the S.S. Rotterdam, featuring such artists as Roberta Peters, Itzhak Perlman, Jan Peerce and Misha Dichter. It is scheduled for April 18 to 28.

> A true cook's tour of Paris that includes 15 hours of instruction from the chef of the Trianon Palace (no stars, alas, in the Guide Michelin).

> A 10-day gourmet tour of Europe's better restaurants, including Lasserre in Paris, Hosteria de Orso in Rome and the Jockey Club in Madrid. "Travellers bring their own Alka-Seltzer," says the agent.

> A soccer tour of Britain, including tickets to league games, instruction in the subtleties of the sport, and even coaching in kicking, passing and other fine points.

> A magical mystery trip aboard the France that ends at the International Congress of Magic in Paris July 4 to 8. Both amateur and professional enchanters are welcome. Will new magicians be taught old tricks? Says Travel Agent Gus Rosegren: "Macy's doesn't tell Gimbels, you know."

> A ten-day art tour of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, featuring Artist-Lecturer Robert Carlow and offering participants daily workshops in painting techniques.

> A bird-watching expedition ending in the Galapagos Islands in the Southeastern Pacific, organized by Nature Expeditions International and led by ornithologists.

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