I highly recommend Triplíce Tour, located in Hotel Del Rey (Rua Tarobá 1020, CEP 85851-220, Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brazil; phone [45] 2105-7500).

On a tour to Brazil in October-November ’09, my friend Mike and I visited Iguaçu Falls for three days and booked a day tour with Triplíce to visit Itaipú dam, the Bird Park and the falls on the Brazilian side for BRL190 (near $104). As it turned out, there were only the two of us on tour.

Our guide, Fernando, who spoke excellent...

Thank you, Bruce Kerfoot (April ’06, pg. 83), for recommending Mehmet Ozbalci of Turfantastik Tours (Istanbul, Turkey; phone +90 212 589 33 25 or fax 589 32 56).

My husband, daughter and I took a trip to Turkey in December ’09 and hired Mehmet to guide us in the countryside. He suggested a 6-day itinerary including the ancient cities of Troy, Pergamum, Ephesus and Aphrodisias plus the hot calcium pools at Pamukkale, a short visit to the Mevlâna (Rumi) museum and shrine at Konya and a...

My husband, Carl, and I toured Croatia privately, Sept. 9-24, 2009. For the first part of our trip we used CroTouring (Milutina Baraèa 20, 51000 Rijeka, Hrvatska, Croatia; phone +385 51 277 086). Their guides made it not just a good trip but a great one.

Carl and I chose Opatija as our base for our first week because we wanted to explore the northern part of Croatia and the southern part of Slovenia and to enjoy the Adriatic.

The manager of CroTouring, Silvia Todorovic, met us...