I’d been in the air for so long that I’d almost forgotten where I was going, and was starting to wonder if I would ever get there. I went to the back of the plane to stretch my legs and looked out through the window when my breath caught in my chest. Stretching away as […]
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 […]
Some say that if we were meant to fly we’d have been born with wings. Perhaps. But I doubt those naysayers have been to Milford Sound. And I’d bet a golden grouse they’ve never seen it by helicopter. The truth is New Zealand’s epic fjord land can only be appreciated fully if seen from the […]
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 […]
Ten years ago you had to look pretty hard to find a fantastic place to stay in Marrakech. Sure there was a grand dame (that would be La Mamounia), but mostly it was a city of damsels in distress—long-in-the-tooth-and-never-that-beautiful-in the-first-place sort of places. And then began the riad renaissance, a remarkable era of restoration in […]
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 […]
It’s that time of year when any self-respecting Brit recognises his deep cultural debt to the sun-kissed city of Seville by rolling up his sleeves and sharpening his paring knife: it’s marmalade-making season. And perhaps the best time of year to visit Andalucia. What what?! You’re not British, or—worse still—you don’t make your own marmalade. […]
Whenever possible, we try to bring you the unique, the quirky and the off the beaten track. Occasionally though, we can’t help but point out the obvious—things that everyone knows about but that are so good we just have to mention them. Angkor Wat is one of those. Chances are if you went to Southeast […]
The stretch of the Thames that runs from Oxford to London is an almost uninterrupted perfect run of weeping willow’d prettiness, unspoilt villages and top notch pubs. No better way to discover it than by plying the river in a 100-year-old rowboat with a few friends. Jerome K. Jerome’s 120 year old book “Three Men […]
The best thing I ever did to improve my already stratospheric enjoyment of snorkelling was to buy an underwater case for my camera. For about $150 USD, you can transform your point-and-shoot into a mini-submarine, and your holiday snaps into a National Geographic special. It helps if you have picuresque friends, too. All the major […]
How can it be that a town of two thousand people (give or take a thousand), a hundred temples and shrines (give or take a dozen), and a 350 ft high granite rock (give or take an elephant) doesn’t feature on Google Maps? You can zoom in ‘til the holy cows come home, but you […]
The United Nations gets a lot of flack these days. While we don’t care to express any political views, we would like to shake the mighty UNESCO arm of this global goliath. Way back in 1945 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded with the immodest goal of “building peace in […]
An hour’s ferry away from the cruise-boat/fridge-magnet/tourist nightmare that Dubrovnik is rapidly becoming, is the quiet and tranquil island of Sipan. Happily, it’s also a 10 minute drive and a 15 minute speedboat ride for those who don’t have the patience for the ferry. Either way, it’s a world away. The reason to go? Marko’s […]