I am a city boy. I thrive in concrete jungles, like the Barbican in East London, Soho in NY, or walking through the skyscrapers of HK. The thought of spending seven nights in a sea-faring vessel traversing the equatorial seas was not an immediately appealing prospect. Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands are in the vast Pacific, a […]

I’m the least likely candidate when a week long hike is mentioned at Trufflepig. But what is travel if not a challenge to your norms? Aren’t those experiences the most rewarding? And to be fair, hiking with Mountain Lodges of Peru is far from an uncomfortable experience. It was with some trepidation that I joined […]

I grew up in England’s glamourous northwest (home of Coronation Street and Take That), where excitement was not particularly varied. Playing in a motorway median was the highlight—like an extreme sport, the adrenaline came from car-dodging over four lanes. So whenever I find myself in a new city I look for an excursion that is […]

If trekking in the tropics with weird and wonderful wildlife is your thing, pack your hardcore hiking-boots for Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. This 43,000-hectare park preserves the largest tract of Pacific coastal rainforest in Central America. The stats are impressive: over 500 species of trees, 400 species of birds (including most […]

Everyone has heard facts and figures, stats and standards about the Amazon—how it is the largest flow of water in the world, the largest rainforest in the world, the list goes on. But which Amazon is the best to visit? It spans many countries: Brazil is the most famous with the lion’s share, but the […]

Imagine an all-seeing, all-knowing force, constantly watching over you. It knows what you like, what you don’t like, where you’re from and where you’re going, and precisely where you are at all times. Sounds rather perfect to us. It’s a surprisingly large leap between four and five star service at a luxury hotel. There are […]

Crossing the border from Nicaragua into neighbouring Costa Rica you may well be tempted to ask the question: what in the name of Anastasio Somoza Garcia happened here? For where Nicaragua can be likened to the black sheep of the family – dishevelled, temperamental and prone to disaster, Costa Rica is surely the family swot […]

Some countries have all the luck.  Just think of what the film ‘Lord of the Rings’ did for New Zealand tourism.  Or how about ‘A Year in Provence’?  One petit book and all of a sudden the world wanted to relocate to rural France and spend a year renovating an old stone house. Sometimes even […]

Fly to the bottom of the world, turn left and continue right to the end of the road, driving for an hour on the bumpy dirt track to the end of the lake, and you’ll get to the 100 year-old Patagonian lodge of Helsingfors, the best of Patagonia’s remote lodges. Founded as a working estancia […]

Brazil’s not known as a country to cover its charms. And yet, the little towns of Paraty and Tiradentes are largely hidden from the traveller’s initial glance. One is tucked in the mountains of the interior, the other snuggles the coast (about halfway between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo). Geographically they’re 430 km apart, […]

Cusco has its fair share of hotels, welcoming grubby backpackers, blue rinse jet setters, and everything in between. You could spend hours (if not weeks) choosing the best place to bed down. If you’re a hotel aficionado and want to be wowed, it’s no done deal; there are several properties worthy of distinction. And of […]

Let’s say you want to visit the Italian Lakes, but you can’t finagle an invite to Clooney’s place. Villa d’Este is sold out because an oligarch is tying the knot that very same week. Or maybe it’s the middle of March (when Italy is still springing back to summer). Or you’ve already been three times and […]