Meet your advisor
I'm Marshall. I plan custom trips and book cruises, and I started Merakiva Travel to get more people to see the world. Here's how I got here.
How I Got Here
I didn't set out to plan trips for a living.
After I finished my PhD in archaeology, I spent a few years in corporate marketing and product work, and then, one day, out of nowhere, I got laid off.
Around the same time I realized that travel was the thing I looked forward to most, and that helping other people realize their own travel dreams was where I got real joy.
Travel opens the mind. It makes us feel more alive.
Twenty years of traveling, more than 35 countries, and now, three years planning trips for other people.
What is Merakiva?
The two questions that come up every time I introduce the company:
What is it, and how do I say it?
- Meraki
- Meraki (Greek) means doing something with your whole soul: with passion, not on autopilot.
- Kiva
- Kiva (Hopi) is the circular chamber where a Pueblo community gathered, often for ceremony.
- Merakiva
- Merakiva is a philosophy of travel. It means traveling with intention and with community in mind, whether that is with your church group or on your own, meeting the locals.
As for pronouncing it: take the sound of "America," drop the A, then "key," then "va." But say it however you want to. I don't care, it's a made up portmanteau.
Mērakíva
The feeling of doing something with your entire soul, together with your community.
What I Actually Do for You
You tell me where you want to go. I work out how the place actually functions: which hour to be standing in front of the thing you came for, which detour is worth the drive, which town earns the night and which one is a car park with a fence around it.
Then I plan it, book it, and stay reachable while you're there.
Every trip is built from the ground up. A honeymoon in Italy, three generations on a cruise, eleven days working out a country you've never been to, one quiet week at one resort. Every itinerary bends: a different hotel, a different month, three more days, a slower pace. The itinerary is where the conversation starts.
Travel with Adventure
My PhD is in archaeology, and I spent more than ten years doing fieldwork in Spain, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq.
Fieldwork makes you comfortable with travel that gets uncomfortable. More useful than that, it leaves you with a habit and a toolset: research a place exhaustively before you go, then find out, once you are standing in it, what the research got wrong.
It's that unique travel skill that I bring to you. To make sure your trip gets that same work, and you get to skip the discomfort I've experienced oh so many times.
Your Time is Limited. Travel is Precious. Let's Go.
Want to see how this works, start to finish?
As seen in
I Rode Every Line on Riyadh's Brand-New Metro ($23 Billion)
Travel as a Way of Understanding
I make videos about the places I visit and love — old ruins, brand-new metro lines, the history sitting right under a city's feet. The same habit that shapes every itinerary I plan: research it first, then go find out what the research got wrong.
Watch on YouTubeLatest videos
How Istanbul's Marmaray Tunnel Hit a $500M Dead End
I went to Africa's most unique Roman city (Dougga, Tunisia)
I went to Carthage's ANCIENT military base (it still exists)
Shorts
The Great "Famine" was worse than you thought
Should Native American sites be National Parks?
This Roman theater has perfect acoustics
Istanbul's best tourist activity is $1.12
Merakiva is more than travel planning. Check out the other brands in the Merakiva family including Stonebound Expeditions, small-group archaeology adventure trips, and Always Sunny Tour, Philadelphia's only tour of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
A bit more on both