Tethered Experience On Your Bucket List?

Here's your chance to mark two items off your bucket list at once, a cruise to the North Pole and a hot air balloon ride while you're there! The ballooning experience is the latest offer from Quark Expeditions, a longtime leader in polar expeditions for tourists.

The $295 dollar per person balloon ride experience was offered for the first time earlier this month according to a report in USA Today Travel. The lighter-than-air joy ride was offered by Quark Expeditions as an added value item on the North Pole tour of their 128-passenger icebreaker, 50 Years of Victory, after it arrived at the Pole.

The balloon took about an hour to be set up and remained tethered the entire time. Four pasengers at a time were taken aloft for a short ride. The July 2 balloon outing was the first time a passenger hot air balloon experience had taken place on a polar expedition. 50 passengers in all took part. The rides took place south of the actual Pole however as wind and ice conditions made balloon operations there impossible.

Quark officials plan two polar expeditions in 2013 (departing June 20 and July 1) and several more in 2014, 15, and 16.The cost? A mere $23,995 per person. Double occupancy no doubt! And the balloon ride is extra!

FMI:  www.quarkexpeditions.com