Dream Trips 2004

GETTING THERE: The best land gateways are tropical Cairns (touristy to a fault) and Townsville (Cairns' yokelly competition about 150 miles south). Americans usually first touch down in distant Melbourne, Brisbane, or Sydney and take a connecting flight to reach the reef. High airfares used to make that leg the deal breaker, but young Virgin Blue (virginblue.com.au) offers one-way Sydney-Cairns flights for $74 (on sale) to $170 (normal price). Add that to a good Los Angeles-Sydney fare ($899 in our summer), and your toes can get to the sea's edge for as little as $1,047 round trip. Alternatively, a company called Oz Experience (ozexperience.com) will guide you and a busload of other adventurers from Sydney to Cairns, allowing you to take your time, for $287; it requires a minimum of nine days each way.

YOU MADE IT: Dozens of outfits vie to take you to the reef, an hour offshore. One of the cheapest, Compass Cruises, in Cairns (011-61/7-4051-5777, reeftrip.com), leads snorkeling outings for $45. Three-day, 10-dive expeditions cost around $425, and there's plenty of equipment to go around. Day trips to the many islands (some overcrowded, some virtually deserted) start at around $20. Generally, the farther from land you go, the better the diving is.

WHO KNEW? Cairns has more than 20 hostels, many with nice double rooms, so lodging doesn't have to cost more than $25 a night. Avoid going in the rainy season, from January to March, when waters can get cloudy from river runoff-that's when transpacific airfare costs the most, anyway. And, for heaven's sake, always check with locals before jumping into these wild waters: From November to April, the deadly box jellyfish prowls the waves, and, year-round, saltwater crocodiles browse for meals at the shore. -JC

Red Square Moscow, Russia

Russia is more than a decade removed from the fall of Communism, yet the country's heart and soul is still Moscow's Red Square, a 500,000-square-foot swath of public space that is actually not red, or square (it's more like a gray rectangle). It's here that you'll find the royal trio of Russian icons: onion-domed St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin looming behind high walls, and the world's creepiest tourist magnet, Lenin's corpse.

GETTING THERE: Flights to Moscow often drop below $500 in winter, when temperatures there rarely climb above freezing. In summer, it's unusual to find airfare under $1,000. (Tip: Try Finnair, with a change in Helsinki.) But an air/hotel package is usually more affordable. For $699 in winter and $1,399 in summer, Eastern Tours offers a six-night package to Moscow and St. Petersburg, with lodging, air from New York, train tickets between the cities, transfers to hotels, and guided tours of both cities, with a particular focus on the Kremlin and Red Square. It's a bureaucratic nightmare to get a tourist visa (by itself, $100) without using a travel agent-another good reason to go with the package. Flight taxes and visa fees tack on about $300 through Eastern Tours (800/339-6967, traveltorussia.com).

YOU MADE IT: Most decent hotels-such as the Rossiya Hotel (moscow-hotels.net/rossiya-hotel), a modern, three-star property right across from Red Square ($104)-help guests negotiate the complicated and mandatory visa procedure. It's also necessary to register with local authorities within three days of arrival. Most hotels take care of this for you for an additional $20 or so-skip it and you risk getting hassled by the police. The wait for Lenin's Mausoleum can sometimes last three or more hours (it's generally open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and closed Mondays and Fridays). Stone-faced guards turn tourists away for any number of reasons. Carrying baggage is a no-no of late, due to security precautions (both Red Square and Lenin's Mausoleum were closed for spells last year, without much warning, for renovations and terrorism concerns). Entrance to the mausoleum is free and also grants access to the Kremlin Wall, where Stalin, Brezhnev, and other luminaries are buried.

WHO KNEW? Lenin's body in the mausoleum is dabbed with embalming fluid twice a week. Every year and a half, the entire corpse is bathed and decked out in a new suit. The so-called Lenin Laboratory, which is in charge of the former leader's upkeep, has become quite adept at preserving the human body. A recent client was Kim Il Sung, father of North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il, whose embalming was rumored to have cost $1 million. You don't need to have Communist ties for its services, however. The laboratory will actually immortalize anyone who's willing to shell out $300,000. --Brad Tuttle

Antarctica

You can't get more remote than The Ice (as scientists call it), the coldest and windiest of the continents, where 90 percent of our planet's freshwater supply is locked up in deep freeze. Although it was hypothesized to exist by the ancient Greeks, humans didn't set foot there until the 1800s. It seems like the least likely tourist destination, but nowadays up to 15,000 travelers a year sail to the fringes of the elusive Seventh Continent so that they can take in its primordial beauty-and brag about it for a lifetime.

GETTING THERE: Because of Antarctica's unpredictable weather, scheduled plane service is nearly impossible, so tourists visit the continent via ship. The season blips by between December and March, which means the few available ships book up fast. Some tour operators charge $20,000-especially for longer cruises departing from Australia or New Zealand-but it's simple to find a run under $4,000 leaving from Ushuaia, at the tip of Argentina (about a $350 round-trip flight from Buenos Aires, which is itself about $600 from Miami). Because it's convenient to the spindly Antarctic Peninsula, Ushuaia is base to many 100-passenger vessels, primarily Russian-built icebreakers, promising professional lecturers and landfalls by Zodiac dinghy. Ten-night departures sell for under $4,000 through U.S.-based Adventure Center (800/228-8747, adventurecenter.com). That includes all meals but means sharing a triple cabin; reserving a double adds about $800 to the bill. Some trips don't actually make landfall, so scrutinize the itinerary before you sign on. You might want to find a cruise through the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (iaato.org), whose members adhere to stringent environmental guidelines.

YOU MADE IT: You won't need any cash on the cruises because they're essentially all-inclusive-residual stuff like your bar tab is settled at the end by credit card. But be sure you have seasick patches and pills since you'll be crossing the nasty Drake Passage, where swells can top 60 feet. Layers of synthetic-fiber clothing are recommended instead of cotton and wool, which tend to trap moisture and keep you colder. And since there are no stores in Antarctica, bring more film than you think you'll ever need. And then pack even more-those penguins are photogenic.