Private Adventures: For Friends, Birthdays and Families
A father and his son did the Philippines together in April. Another father and son went into the Okavango in July. That same month four of one family flew in from Australia for Tonga, and three more from another family have got the Maldives booked for November.
None of that is what we designed these trips for. It’s just what keeps happening.
And it isn’t only families. We’ve run private trips for groups of friends too, some with a big birthday on the horizon who’d rather mark it on a beach they’ve had to earn than at another long lunch. Some have been talking about the trip they’ve promised themselves for longer than they’d like to admit, and have finally run out of road.
What they have in common is that none of them want to share the island with eleven strangers.
What Is a Private Adventure, and Who Is It For?
A private adventure is a survival expedition built for your group alone. The island, the instructors and the whole schedule belong to you, and nobody else is there. Our scheduled departures are for over-18s, with younger guests considered from sixteen, and put you in with other guests, which is half the fun for some people and exactly the problem for others. Private trips are priced on request, for your group only, and they suit milestone birthdays, friends taking on the trip they’ve always talked about, whole families across the generations, and couples who’d like a beach to themselves.
Can You Book a Private Expedition for a Milestone Birthday?
Yes, and it’s exactly what our next private trip is. In January a group of about eight friends are heading to the Philippines, and the whole thing started with one person quietly organising a surprise 30th. They first looked at joining one of our scheduled departures, then decided they’d rather have the island to themselves, so we built it privately instead.
It isn’t only thirtieths. We’ve had an organiser ask about taking a group out for a 60th. A big birthday tends to arrive with a quiet question attached about what the next ten years are for. On an island there’s nothing to hide behind, and the day you finally get a fire going with your oldest friends shouting encouragement is a better answer to that question than most.
If it’s one person’s birthday rather than the whole group’s, there’s a simpler route. Some people give a place on one of our scheduled trips as the present, and the birthday person joins a small group of other guests rather than having the island privately. As presents go, it’s a step up from socks.
What we can shape around it is the occasion itself. A private trip ends with a pickup off the beach, a celebration dinner and a proper bed, so the birthday gets a real finish as well as the island.
Can Friends Book a Private Island Trip Together, Not Just Family?
Yes, and it’s a different trip to the one you’d have with strangers. Old friends tend to assume they know exactly how each other works. Then training starts, with shelter, fire and water to sort out as a team, and it becomes clear fairly quickly who leads, who solves the problems and who keeps everyone laughing when the rain comes in sideways. It isn’t always the person you’d have put money on.
If some of your group would actually quite like to meet new people, the scheduled departures are still there, and we keep those small on purpose. And if the group is really your colleagues rather than your mates, that’s its own sort of trip, and we’ve written about team building on an island separately.
What About Fathers and Sons, Siblings and Couples?
The parent and grown-up child trips are the ones I find most interesting, and the ones I’d have predicted least. What you get is teamwork, and something like equality. A real presence from the parent with their child, which is not always how those two people are with each other at home. It’s special to watch them work something out together.
Whether people behave differently because a brother, a sister or a dad is there, I’d be wary of claiming too confidently. If I had to guess, it becomes less about proving something on your own and more about supporting each other and getting through it together.
Couples work better than people expect, too. There’s something about being handed a difficult thing to do together, with no phones and nothing to hide behind, that a fortnight on a sunlounger doesn’t get near. We’ve had couples come for anniversaries, and we’ve had a couple come on honeymoon, which I’d have thought was a stretch until it wasn’t.
Is There an Age Limit on a Private Expedition?
On our scheduled departures it’s eighteen, as a standard. Part of that is safety. Most of it, honestly, is the feel of the group. A camp fire with kids around it is a different evening from a camp fire without them, and everyone else on that beach booked the second one. Neither is worse. They’re just not the same trip. We do look at younger guests case by case from sixteen, if they genuinely want to be there rather than being brought along.
A private trip is where the ages can open right up, because the whole schedule is yours. We pitch the difficulty at whoever is actually coming, which matters a great deal when the youngest is fourteen and the oldest is sixty. Tell us the ages when you get in touch and we’ll be straight with you about what works.
Can Two or Three Families or Friend Groups Share a Private Trip?
Yes, and it’s more common than you’d think. Plenty of the private family trips we run are two or three families going in together. It splits the cost, it gives the children someone their own age to conspire with, and it takes the pressure off any one family having to be good company for days on end.
The same logic works for friends. Two households who holiday together anyway, or a birthday crowd who’d each bring a partner, can go in as one group and the island simply gets a bit busier around the fire.
How Much Does a Private Adventure Cost?
Private expeditions start from £24,000 per group, priced on request for your dates and destination. The exact price depends on the island, how many of you there are and how long you want, and it comes down per person as the group grows. A shorter trip is possible.
Because the cost per head falls as numbers rise, going in with another family or a second group of friends works well. At the other end of the scale, a group of four friends recently asked us about a private Philippines trip of around a week, shorter than our scheduled departures, and that’s very much something we can do. Tell us who’s coming and we’ll quote you exactly.
If there are only two or three of you and you don’t mind company, a scheduled departure is the simpler route, with a £490 deposit a head. If you’re still weighing it up, there’s more on how to choose an expedition and an honest look at whether one is worth it at all.
Which Destinations Can You Book Privately?
Seven at the moment. The white sand and turquoise water of the Maldives, a wild jungle island in Panama, the beaches and warm seas of the Philippines, the isolated world of Tonga, kayaking through Botswana, the Tanzanian bush, or deep in the Swedish forest if your group would rather swap palm trees for pines.
How Is a Private Trip Different from a Scheduled Departure?
A private trip takes its shape from your group, and destination and length flex to suit. A typical one runs about six days. You arrive and head straight out to the beach, phones off. Day two is shelter, fire and water, learned as a team. On day three you fish and forage to feed everyone and move to your own camp. On day four the instructors step back and the group runs itself, with every call made together. Day five is the pickup and a celebration dinner, and day six is a slow breakfast and goodbyes from a group that knows each other rather differently than it did on day one.
Families generally want to do the surviving part together rather than apart, which is usually the whole reason they came, so that’s how we build it unless you ask for something else.
People come back from these trips talking about the shelter they built and the fire they finally got going, and they’re still talking about it years later. Doing that next to your brother, your dad or the friends you’ve had since school seems to plant something that lasts a good deal longer than the tan.
Our private adventures page has the destinations, the prices and a way to tell us who’s coming.
So who would you bring?
Tom Williams
Founder, Desert Island Survival and winner of Channel 4’s Alone UK
