Fabric of Life in Navajo Rugs

Aventura Artistica is offering a four-day tour to New Mexico June 21, which will include a stop at a Navajo rug auction in Crownpoint on the first night. The auction offers an opportunity to purchase Native American rugs, contemporary or antique, at below gallery prices. A Navajo weaving expert will accompany the group. The second part of the tour includes a morning in Taos to watch the ceremonial corn dances. Between the auction and the dances, guests will participate in a Spanish folk art class. Participants will also visit the International Folk Art Museum, shop in Santa Fe, and try the cuisine of New Mexico’s chefs.

Cost: $957 per person, double occupancy, including round-trip air fare to Albuquerque from Los Angeles, San Diego or San Francisco, ground transportation, driver and guides, lodging, four meals, folk art class instruction and supplies, and the Folk Art Museum entrance fee.

Contact: Aventura Artistica, 3143 Garrison St., San Diego, CA 92106; telephone (800) 808-7352.

Virgin Islands Sailing

Women in the Wilderness is hosting a sailing trip for women in the Virgin Islands March 5-12 in cooperation with the Blue Waters Sailing School of Minnesota. Novices and experienced sailors are welcome. Sailing instruction is included, along with opportunities for snorkeling, fishing, sightseeing and relaxing. Skippered 35-foot boats will sail from Red Hook, St. Thomas, into Virgin Islands National Park on St. John and the British Virgin Islands.

Cost: $1,200 per person including on-board accommodations and all meals. Not included: air fare to St. Thomas. Contact: Women in the Wilderness, 566 Ottawa Ave., St. Paul, MN 55107; tel. (612) 227-2284.

Inca History

Machu Picchu, the pyramid tombs of Sipan and Chan Chan, the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas, are among the destinations of UCLA Extension’s travel study tour, Peru: Land of the Inca, June 17 for 14 days. The itinerary emphasizes Inca and pre-Inca archeological sites and colonial architecture, and includes lectures by Andean archeologists, who will take participants to their active research sites.

The tour begins with a day in Lima to visit the Museo de la Nacion and the Gold Museum, which houses treasures of Inca and pre-Inca civilizations. Then it’s on to Chiclayo in the Lambayeque Valley, where the Moche people flourished from the 1st to the 8th centuries. A highlight is a visit to the pyramid complex of Sipan, site of tombs that have yielded some of the richest treasures in the Americas, most notably the multilevel tombs of the Lords of Sipan.

On the way to Trujillo, participants visit ongoing archeological excavations at El Brujo and another sites. Once in Trujillo, they visit pyramids built by the Moche and explore the nearby site of Chan Chan, capital of the Chimu Empire in 1300. A visit to sites around Cuzco includes the amphitheater, the spring shrine of Tambo Machay, and the great fortress of Sacsayhuaman, where stones weighing about 200 tons were used to construct the walls around the Sanctuary of the Sun.

Machu Picchu is the great city abandoned by the Inca, reclaimed by the jungle and hidden from view until its rediscovery in 1911. An overnight stay gives participants the opportunity to explore the altars, temples, fountains, staircases and terraced gardens.

Cost: $4,030 per person, double occupancy, including air fare to and from Los Angeles, transportation within Peru, accommodations, entrance fees, most meals and tuition. Contact: Peru Tour, Department of Humanities, UCLA Extension, 10995 Le Conte Ave., Suite 711, Los Angeles, CA 90024; tel. (310) 825-2272.

Antique Trails

Search for rare treasures on a nine-day antique-hunting tour of London beginning March 25. Participants will visit out-of-the-way antique shops and receive professional advice on the antiques. Time is also available for sightseeing in London.

Cost: $1,399 per person, including hotels, ground transportation and airport transfers, daily continental breakfast, hotel taxes, service charges and gratuities, a one-week underground rail pass. Not included: air fare to England. Contact: Phyllis Ross at Golden Galaxy Travel, 353 California Drive, Burlingame, CA 94010; tel. (800) 359-2922.

Think Cold

An 11-day Alaska tour June 6 is timed for spring bird migration and breeding. The group of 14 participants will explore coastal Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula and take a daylong boat excursion in Kenai Fjords National Park to see glaciers and thousands of seabirds. Four nights are spent in Nome to view the abundance of migrating and breeding birds and to visit with the native people and observe the open tundra.

The group then moves to Denali National Park and Preserve to see its geology, Arctic wildflowers and mammals. The group will stay at the North Face Lodge, located 90 miles into the park in the wilderness.

Cost: $2,995 per person, double occupancy, including hotels, meals and touring. Contact: Massachusetts Audubon Society Center for Biological Conservation, 208 S. Great Road, Lincoln, MA 01773; tel. (617) 259-9500.

Art and Italy

Artist-lecturer Judith Corona of Otis College of Art and Design leads a 14-day art study tour of Italy, March 23-April 5. This tour is open to all, but would be especially interesting to artists, designers and architects.

The guided tour to ltaly’s important historic sites and museums will focus on Roman, medieval and Renaissance art. Included are overnight stays in Rome to visit the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel and the Borghese Galleries. From Rome the group will visit Pompeii and stay in Sorrento. In Florence members will examine the works of Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Raphael to study the techniques and iconography of the masters. Guided tours of the Uffizi gallery, the Pitti Palace, Santa Croceand Piazza del Duomo are planned. In Assisi, a highlight is a visit to the Basilica of San Francesco to see the frescoes of Giotto di Bondone and Cenno dei Pepi Cimabue. There will be lunches and visits to craftsmen’s studios in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside. A wine tasting is planned at the Badia a Coltibuono, the 11th-century abbey, farm and cooking school of Lorenza de Medici. The tour concludes in Venice, with visits to the Doge’s Palace, Basilica San Marco and the Galleria dell’Accademia.

Cost: $3,090 per person, double occupancy, including air fare, hotels, daily breakfast, several lunches and dinners, museum entrances and transportation while on tour.

Contact: Art Adventures International, 18139 Coastline Drive, Suite 2, Malibu, CA 90265; tel. (310) 230-9299.

St. Patrick’s Ireland

A nine-day tour to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland departs March 11 and 14 from Los Angeles. Participants fly to Dublin, where they are met by the tour director and transferred to their hotel. A day of leisure in Dublin is followed by a get-acquainted dinner at the Abbey Tavern, complete with turf fires and Irish music.

On the agenda is a sightseeing tour of Dublin with an Irish guide, attendance at the Lord Mayor’s St. Patrick Day Ball, a visit to the Powerscourt House with its aristocratic gardens, statuary and iron works and in Kilkenny County a visit to impressive ruins of the castle and cathedral from which the kings of Munster ruled for centuries and where St. Patrick picked the shamrock to explain the Trinity. At Blarney Castle, tour members may climb the tower and kiss the famous stone, or browse the galleries of the Blarney Wollen Mills. After an overnight in Killarney, the group will travel around the Ring of Kerry, one of Europe’s most scenic drives.

Cost: $1,815 per person, double occupancy, including hotels, some meals, airport transfers, tour director and baggage handling. Not included: air fare to Dublin. Contact: Bonar Travel, 24 Whitewater Drive, Corona del Mar, CA 92625; tel. (714) 640-7402.

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