Ouro Preto, in the heart of Minas Gerais, is one of the country's most historical cities and is a very popular destinations among travelers and tourists. The small town, hidden away in a picturesque valley, is full of marvelous old buildings and churches linked by narrow cobble stoned streets, giving the impression of travelling back in time. The Municipal Theater, built in 1770, is considered to be the oldest theaters still in operation in Latin America. Most of the town's many churches charge a small entrance fee, which helps with maintenance costs, and contain beautiful artwork and mosaic ceilings mostly the work of Antonio Francisco Lisboa, better known as Aleijadinho. The most interesting chapels are Sao Francisco de Assis, Igreja de Santa Efigenia dos Pretos and Capela do Padre Faria. A good time to visit Ouro Preto is during Holy Week when full-costumed processions are held sporadically up until Easter Sunday. Praca Tiradentes, the town center, is where you will find a lot of the best bars and restaurants. The town also has a university and large student population, which leads to a lively nightlife. The best places to hang out are around Praca Tiradentes and along Rua Direita. Close to Ouro Preto is the Minas de Passagem gold mine, which has a large system of tunnels, some of which are open to the public and can be reached by cable car. The mine is about half way between Ouro Preto and Mariana (12 km away). Mariana is also worth a visit for those who wants to take things a little easier. The region has its share of ecotourism, mountains and waterfalls and the Parque Municipal da Cachoeira das Andorinhas is a good place to do some sight seeing.
You can find the full article here
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Porto de Galinhas - Brazil
Porto de Galinhas, once a small obscure fishing town 60km south of Recife, has now become a major tourist attraction and can easily be described as an unforgettable paradise. An eighteen-kilometer stretch of enchanting beach, lined with palm trees, mangroves and cashew trees, lies around 3km from the town center. There are many small boats for rent that will take you out to the warm waters of Ilha de Santo Alexio island, where you can easily spend the day soaking up the sun and taking in the fabulous sights. Another big attraction is the Muro Alto beach, which is best reached by dune buggy. Also worth visiting is the ancient and magnificent convent of Santo Cristo, founded by the monk, Antonio da Ilha, back in the 17th century. Most of the cheaper pousadas are in the center of the village, while the better hotels are on the beachfront.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
Buzios - Brazil
Buzios, located about 3 hours, or 170 Km, from Rio, is a beautiful fishing village on a peninsula with some 25 romantic, wild or exotic beaches to choose from. As a group, the Buzios beaches are considered the most beautiful in Brazil. Among the location's main activities are Golf (Brazil´s Number One Championship Course), trekking in the nearby wooded area, diving in the crystal clear waters and lying on the white sandy beaches. Buzios can be quite expensive in the high season, compared to other resorts, but is still well worth it. There are many boat trips to the surrounding islands which will keep you busy during the day, while the nightlife is concentrated on Rua das Pedras and Orla Bardot, which have lots of top level restaurants and bars with live music. The town became famous in the summer of 1964 with the first of several visits by French actress Brigitte Bardot, who spent a few days there trying to relax and escape the attentions of the press in Rio. From then on the location became a prime attraction for both foreign and local tourists, drawn by the all year round warm temperatures and little rainfall. Buzios offers about three hundred small lodging choices of all kinds, including those with famous frequent visitors like Bill Gates, Naomi Campbell and Michael Johnson. Remarkably, you will not find a single three floor building on the peninsula, and likewise no major holiday resort. Building is not allowed on most of the beaches. Consequently, Buzios managed to keep some of it´s original, almost Polynesian charm. Being there, you won´t believe that only six or seven Brazilian cities score more overnight stays of foreigners per year. Many of the top hotels and restaurants are run by foreigners, predominantly French and Argentinean residents. You can reach Buzios from Rio by crossing the Niteroi bridge and head in the direction of Rio Bonito. Once on the Lagos highway head in the direction of Cabo Frio and then take the RJ-106 highway to Buzios. Nearby, and well worth visiting, are Arrail do Cabo and Cabo Frio. The beaches in Arrail do Cabo are comparable with those of Buzios, but unlike Buzios people actually live and work in Arrail. The most popular beaches are Praia do Forno, Praia Brava and Praia Grande. You can also visit the Gruta Azul, an underwater cavern, which can be reached by boat. At Cabo Frio you can visiit the Forte Sao Mateus stone fortress, built in 1616, at the end of Praia do Forte. There are also some sand dunes nearby at Praia do Pero in the direction of Buzios
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Rio de Janeiro, with its picturesque placing between sea and mountains is one of the world's most scenic cities. Despite its reputation for crime and violence the city is fairly safe for those who use commonsense. Accommodation and restaurants are reasonably prices while public transport is fairly efficient, especially the subway system. The city center is reserved for business and this is where you will find most airline offices, consulates and foreign exchange bureaus as well as many museums and colonial buildings. Copacabana is Rio's most famous beach and despite being fairly crowded and not so clean is has an unmistakable buzz. The majority of Rio's medium and expensive hotels are based in Copacabana and the area has plenty of restaurants, bars and other entertainment. Further south are Ipanema and Leblon, which are a little more up market. Most of the better restaurants and night clubs are in Ipanema while Pedra do Arpoador is one of the nicest places to watch the sun set. Barra da Tijuca has Rio's longest beach, stretching over 12 km, but is a little difficult to get to without a car. Apart from the beach, a good idea is to take the tram through the old Santa Teresa neighborhood and all the way up to the famous Christ the Redeemer statue, which has a fantastic view of the whole city. Other attractions are the Maracana football stadium, one of the largest in the world with a capacity of around 180,000, and the sugar loaf mountain, which also has an impressive view and can be reached by cable car. If you like to gamble you can go to the Joquei Club racetrack with has horse races most days. Also if you are a little more adventurous you can go handgliding off the 510 meter Pedra Bonita on the Pepino beach in Sao Conrado. The city also has the world`s largest urban park, Parque da Tijuca, which is well worth a visit for its trails, waterfalls and lookouts. For the more courageous there are many Favela tours through the surrounding shantytowns, which are usually quiet safe if accompanied by a guide. You can also take a 15-minute ferryboat trip across to Niteroi and Ilha da Paqueta, which has a different feel to it than Rio.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
Salvador - Brazil
Salvador, capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, is one of Brazil's cultural highlights. The city's population of over 2 million people is renowned for its spontaneity and easy relaxed manner. The city is an ethnic melting pot and is rich in African culture and colonial legacy. Initially finding your way around the city's winding narrow streets can seem difficult but as most activity is centered around the recently reformed Pelourinho region it can be easily managed on foot (if you can manage the steep hills). The Cidade Alta (or upper city) is the historic center of Salvador full of old churches and other colonial buildings while the Cidade Baixa (lower city) is the city's commercial and financial center. The beaches around Salvador are not so clean but if you travel a little further a field they get better. Some of the best nearby beaches are Pituba, Armacao, Piatas and Itapoaa which are within 45 minutes by bus from the center. The best time to visit Salvador is during Carnival (usually in February), which involves street partying and dancing for the best part of a whole week. Hotels fill up quickly during Carnival so make sure to book a few months in advance. The best place to stay is close to Pelourinho or else in the Barra neighborhood, but don't expect to get much sleep. Other highlights are the Festa de Lemanja on February 2 on the Rio Vermelho beach and Lavagem do Bonfim, between December and Janeiro, on the steps of the Nossa Senhora do Bonfim church. For day trips, there are frequent boats leaving from the Maritimo Terminal, behind the Mercado Modelo, in the lower city, to islands in the Baia de Todos os Santos and other locations.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
The Pantanal - Brazil
This is definitely the place to go for wildlife and nature lovers. The Pantanal region, one of the world's largest wetlands, has a rich and exuberant vegetation system, which spreads over 2300 square kilometers, half of which is in Brazil and the rest divided between Paraguay and Bolivia. The region lies an average 80 to 150 meters above sea level and during the rainy season, from December to March, over half, or 1400 square kilometers are submerged in water making land travel difficult. The region has over 230 species of fish, which can be easily observed during the dry season, when rivers are shallow. This is also the best time to observe animal and bird life, with over 1040 different species, as they flock around isolated pools to feed and drink. Fishing is allowed but hunting is not. The Pantanal is sparsely populated with few towns and only one main road, the Transpantaneira, which runs right through the area. There are a number of spots from which to set out into the Pantanal, of the better ones is Corumba, which is almost on the border with Bolivia and as well as being a good central location it has over 170 archeological sites surrounding it and has many boat tours into the heart of the Pantanal. Another option is the quieter town of Bonito which has its own attractions, including clear watered streams rich in colorful fish as well as many caves, waterfalls and other natural attractions.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
Curitiba - Brazil
The southern Brazilian City of Curitiba has attracted attention from architects, urban planners and an increasing number of sources; it has even been mentioned in the novel The Partner by John Grisham and featured in a Brazilian film called Oriundi starring Anthony Quinn. About 250 miles southwest of São Paulo, and separated from the Atlantic port city of Paranaguá by a small mountain range, Curitiba is located approximately 3,000 feet above sea level at the onset of a plateau that extends westward for 500 miles, reaching to the spectacular Iguaçu Falls on the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. In the year 2000, the city had a population of approximately 1,650,000, and the metropolitan region, nearly 2,600,000 - the latter, only an eighth the size of Metropolitan São Paulo, but two-thirds as large as Metropolitan Belo Horizonte, which had replaced Rio de Janeiro in the early 1980s as the second largest industrial center in the country.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
Fortaleza - Brazil
To know Fortaleza is also to go on a trip on its history. The city got modernized, but still keeps signs from the past in museums, churches, fortresses, squares, stations, theaters and historic buildings. The city center is filled with those memories, such as the Fortress of Nossa Senhora da Assunção, built on the same place where the city originated, and the Luz Palace, a beautiful construction in classic style from the end of the 18th century, which used to be the State Government headquarters. However, going to the beaches is, without doubt, one of the best activities for those coming to Fortaleza. Iracema, Meireles and Futuro beaches are among the most popular options within the city. To walk on the Beira Mar Avenue promenade from the start, at Mucuripe, up to the Ingleses Bridge, at Iracema Beach, is a must-do walk, and quite reinvigorating. Boat trips by the beach margins are offered at tourist spots and are ideal for those wishing to enjoy a panoramic view of the capital. The city has a physical structure able to cater for any type of event, local and international. Ease of access to the airport, flights available to many Brazilian regions and other countries, and the privileged location make the State a natural choice for organizers of fairs, conferences and events. Add the many tourism attractions, offering first class entertainment for the tourists.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
Nepal
Trekkers who linger in Kathmandu, rather than rushing off to the mountains, will be rewarded, writes Kerry Little.
I am standing in a courtyard, waiting for a goddess. The courtyard is empty, except for me and the hundreds of images of animals, workers, lovers and gods etched into its crumbly brick walls. In the centre is a small spiritual monument known as a stupa, the surface once white but now the marbled grey of pigeon droppings blended with red and yellow tika, a powder applied with prayers, the many layers proof of the faith and hope that comes to this place.
You can find the full article here
I am standing in a courtyard, waiting for a goddess. The courtyard is empty, except for me and the hundreds of images of animals, workers, lovers and gods etched into its crumbly brick walls. In the centre is a small spiritual monument known as a stupa, the surface once white but now the marbled grey of pigeon droppings blended with red and yellow tika, a powder applied with prayers, the many layers proof of the faith and hope that comes to this place.
You can find the full article here
Tuvalu
In a large world, Tuvalu is beautifully small. Its statistics are impressively concentrated. Its population of 12,000 makes it the tiniest Commonwealth country and the world's smallest independent nation after the Vatican, which, unlike Tuvalu, is not fielding a team for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
But there's a downside: Tuvalu may be one of the next countries to disappear off the face of the Earth, a victim of rising sea levels and the greenhouse effect.
You can find the full article here
But there's a downside: Tuvalu may be one of the next countries to disappear off the face of the Earth, a victim of rising sea levels and the greenhouse effect.
You can find the full article here
Panama
Panama has woken up at long last to its tourist potential.
The canal is a magnet for visitors, given its huge locks and the towering ocean-going vessels passing through.
But there are also charming colonial towns, sandy beaches, islands to explore and an almost untouched jungle with its luxuriant flora and exotic animals.
Innumerable bays, beaches and diving spots are located along the coasts, which run to 763 kilometres on the Caribbean side and to 1227 kilometres on the Pacific.
You can find the full article here
The canal is a magnet for visitors, given its huge locks and the towering ocean-going vessels passing through.
But there are also charming colonial towns, sandy beaches, islands to explore and an almost untouched jungle with its luxuriant flora and exotic animals.
Innumerable bays, beaches and diving spots are located along the coasts, which run to 763 kilometres on the Caribbean side and to 1227 kilometres on the Pacific.
You can find the full article here
Halong Bay - Vietnam
A cruise on Halong Bay is an essential part of any visit to northern Vietnam, claimed our itinerary. Similar statements must be made in every guide to the country, because when we arrived at the embarkation point we felt as if we'd a entered a tourist mill where we'd be sucked in, processed and churned out a day later.
However, we were soon led through the throngs towards the junk-style boat that would be our home for the next 24 hours.
After inspecting our cute, wood-panelled cabin, we hastened upstairs to the spacious sundeck, eager to see how the crew would extricate us from the tangle of boats. Miraculously, it happened without a fuss and we were soon floating towards Halong Bay, often described as one of the greatest wonders of Asia.
Soon after casting off we were invited to lunch, which consisted of whole crab, fresh prawns, melt-in-your mouth fish and an unrecognisable but tasty Vietnamese dessert. Oh, and did I mention French wine?
Thus sated, we retired to the deckchairs to watch the panorama of Halong Bay unfold. This Unesco World Heritage site consists of around 3000 precipitous limestone islands jutting out of the emerald-green waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The name translates loosely as "place of the descending dragon" and legend says that the islands were hewn from the seabed by the thrashing tail of a dragon.
You can find the full article here
However, we were soon led through the throngs towards the junk-style boat that would be our home for the next 24 hours.
After inspecting our cute, wood-panelled cabin, we hastened upstairs to the spacious sundeck, eager to see how the crew would extricate us from the tangle of boats. Miraculously, it happened without a fuss and we were soon floating towards Halong Bay, often described as one of the greatest wonders of Asia.
Soon after casting off we were invited to lunch, which consisted of whole crab, fresh prawns, melt-in-your mouth fish and an unrecognisable but tasty Vietnamese dessert. Oh, and did I mention French wine?
Thus sated, we retired to the deckchairs to watch the panorama of Halong Bay unfold. This Unesco World Heritage site consists of around 3000 precipitous limestone islands jutting out of the emerald-green waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The name translates loosely as "place of the descending dragon" and legend says that the islands were hewn from the seabed by the thrashing tail of a dragon.
You can find the full article here
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Fiji
We sit cross-legged on the grass facing the village chief, who is part way through a long speech welcoming us to the Yasawa Islands, a necklace of volcanic and limestone beads brushed with white sand and dipped in seas bluer than the sky. As is customary in Fiji the chief, wearing a garland of banana leaves and a cotton sulu (sarong), sips the ceremonial drink kava, made from the pounded root of a mildly narcotic plant, before offering it to his guests. It numbs my tongue and goes down like cold coffee. Formal ceremony over, men and women dressed in raffia and frangipani blossoms bring Fiji’s stories to life in the meke, a performance of song, dance and the beating of bamboo. Though visually entertaining, some performers appear bored, eager to get the show over with. Then we are steered down rows of seashells (50p to £10) with some women pleading for us to buy. These are not intricately made crafts, merely unwanted food packaging.
"There’s a good side and a bad side to tourism," says Fasiu Jione, passenger service director of Blue Lagoon Cruises, which began bringing tourists to the Yasawas in the 1950s. For 2004, the company has secured consent from the chiefs and council leaders of Rabi and Kioa, two remote islands in the north, to visit with its new historical and cultural cruises. "I’ve seen some villages on the mainland where the villagers have become lazy, their diet has changed, people get ill. In the urban centres of Fiji diabetes is one of our biggest killers, because they eat too much processed food.
"But tourism can help," he assures me when I naively ask why Rabi and Kioa, untouched by tourism, cannot be left alone. "Life is tough on the islands. Look at the Yasawas. They sit in a cyclone zone, but with the money from tourism they have put in stronger buildings and a lot of children have been educated."
Developing tourism is crucial to Fiji’s 180 inhabited islands in an archipelago of more than 300, especially since the recent collapse of the local copra industry (harvested brown coconuts), overfishing of the Pacific and the expense of exporting tropical fruits.
You can find the full article here
"There’s a good side and a bad side to tourism," says Fasiu Jione, passenger service director of Blue Lagoon Cruises, which began bringing tourists to the Yasawas in the 1950s. For 2004, the company has secured consent from the chiefs and council leaders of Rabi and Kioa, two remote islands in the north, to visit with its new historical and cultural cruises. "I’ve seen some villages on the mainland where the villagers have become lazy, their diet has changed, people get ill. In the urban centres of Fiji diabetes is one of our biggest killers, because they eat too much processed food.
"But tourism can help," he assures me when I naively ask why Rabi and Kioa, untouched by tourism, cannot be left alone. "Life is tough on the islands. Look at the Yasawas. They sit in a cyclone zone, but with the money from tourism they have put in stronger buildings and a lot of children have been educated."
Developing tourism is crucial to Fiji’s 180 inhabited islands in an archipelago of more than 300, especially since the recent collapse of the local copra industry (harvested brown coconuts), overfishing of the Pacific and the expense of exporting tropical fruits.
You can find the full article here
Tahiti
Ever since Samuel Wallis landed off Tahiti on HMS Dolphin in 1767, and his men discovered they could swap a single nail here for a night of love with a local, voyaging westerners have found it impossible to avoid paradisiacal comparisons in these parts. Get the South Seas right, and you are in Eden. And just as all Muslims save up to visit Mecca once in their lifetimes, so I recommend that all Christians, practising or lapsed, saintly or sinful, gay or straight, undertake a pilgrimage to Tahiti and her islands at some point in their allotted time in order to glimpse this gorgeous approximation of what it was we were thrown out of.
My own second arrival had been deliberately timed for Christmas. Gauguin died here just over 100 years ago, and as a wacky Christmas present to myself and my family, I decided that all of us would visit his faraway grave on Christmas Day. I know, I know. These are signs of insania. But making a film about him had affected me much more deeply than I could have imagined, and some of the things I had seen during the shoot were so damned moving and interesting that, as an act of sharing, I needed the rest of my family to view them too. Were we being morbid? Nah. We were being faithful.
Although Gauguin lived on Tahiti itself for much of the 1890s, in the house with the sunset, he had actually died in 1903 on Hiva Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands, the northernmost islands of French Polynesia. The Marquesas are officially the most remote spot on earth. Set off from here in any direction and before you reach a continent you must complete the longest such journey available on this planet. You want to get away? You come here.
You can find the full article here
My own second arrival had been deliberately timed for Christmas. Gauguin died here just over 100 years ago, and as a wacky Christmas present to myself and my family, I decided that all of us would visit his faraway grave on Christmas Day. I know, I know. These are signs of insania. But making a film about him had affected me much more deeply than I could have imagined, and some of the things I had seen during the shoot were so damned moving and interesting that, as an act of sharing, I needed the rest of my family to view them too. Were we being morbid? Nah. We were being faithful.
Although Gauguin lived on Tahiti itself for much of the 1890s, in the house with the sunset, he had actually died in 1903 on Hiva Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands, the northernmost islands of French Polynesia. The Marquesas are officially the most remote spot on earth. Set off from here in any direction and before you reach a continent you must complete the longest such journey available on this planet. You want to get away? You come here.
You can find the full article here
East Timor
Jesus was 27 metres tall and elevated 100 metres on a chunk of sea-licked headland, his arms outstretched towards Dili as though offering the devoutly Catholic capital a big, celestial hug. "Come to me", he was saying...
I suspect the reply was "No deal": he wore more graffiti than a Brixton railway siding.
The towering icon was a gift to the Timorese from their previous overlords, the Indonesian government. Between the Indonesian invasion of Timor in 1975 and the UN’s negotiation of peace and independence in 1999, one-third of this country’s population of 750,000 is said to have disappeared.
When I heard East Timor was being spoken of as "the new Thailand", I was incredulous. Timor? Timor-Leste, the world’s newest country, only formally independent from Indonesia since 2002? The Timor made famous by news footage of machete-wielding mobs? Apparently so. Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet entrepreneur and traffic marshal to the world’s backpackers, loved the place so much, he authored the new Timor guidebook.
From the shadow of Christ’s bronze robe, sheltering from the scorching sun, Dili looked like a poor man’s Papeete, a Rio writ tiny. A haze of smoke from cooking fires hung over tin roofs corroded red by the semi-tropical climate; there was a presidential palace, a large floating hotel, and remnants of 400 years of relatively benign Portuguese dominion - a few colonnaded villas in lurid colours, grandee mansions, a garrison built in 1627. And, of course, Catholic churches.
I went down from the mount and walked the 5km-long waterfront. It was busy in a small sort of way, the wharf attended by container ships, the waters dotted with dugout canoes. Outside the presidential palace, people sat under huge banyan trees selling fish, fruit and Indonesian sweets.
You can find the full article here
I suspect the reply was "No deal": he wore more graffiti than a Brixton railway siding.
The towering icon was a gift to the Timorese from their previous overlords, the Indonesian government. Between the Indonesian invasion of Timor in 1975 and the UN’s negotiation of peace and independence in 1999, one-third of this country’s population of 750,000 is said to have disappeared.
When I heard East Timor was being spoken of as "the new Thailand", I was incredulous. Timor? Timor-Leste, the world’s newest country, only formally independent from Indonesia since 2002? The Timor made famous by news footage of machete-wielding mobs? Apparently so. Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet entrepreneur and traffic marshal to the world’s backpackers, loved the place so much, he authored the new Timor guidebook.
From the shadow of Christ’s bronze robe, sheltering from the scorching sun, Dili looked like a poor man’s Papeete, a Rio writ tiny. A haze of smoke from cooking fires hung over tin roofs corroded red by the semi-tropical climate; there was a presidential palace, a large floating hotel, and remnants of 400 years of relatively benign Portuguese dominion - a few colonnaded villas in lurid colours, grandee mansions, a garrison built in 1627. And, of course, Catholic churches.
I went down from the mount and walked the 5km-long waterfront. It was busy in a small sort of way, the wharf attended by container ships, the waters dotted with dugout canoes. Outside the presidential palace, people sat under huge banyan trees selling fish, fruit and Indonesian sweets.
You can find the full article here
Galapagos Islands
"After a few days on the Galapagos," said the actor Paul Bettany, "I had a wobbly. I went to our director, Peter (Weir), and said I’d made a mess of the whole film. I wanted to reshoot every scene involving me and animals. It was only on the Galapagos that I felt this sense of wonderment, a huge rush of love for nature."
The film is Master and Commander, which hurtled on to the big screen with Russell Crowe at the helm. The subtitle is The Far Side of the World - a part played by the Galapagos Islands, their first appearance in a movie. And co-star Bettany plays Stephen Maturin, a character passionate about nature and obsessed by the islands. "I was completely humbled by the Galapagos," he told me. "It’s an extraordinary place. You should go."
So I did. In search of wonderment, and to find out how on earth Hollywood was allowed to use these sacrosanct islands, haven to the most extraordinary collection of flora and fauna on Earth, in one of this year’s biggest cinematic splashes. Invasive species are the scourge of the Galapagos - and you don’t get much more invasive than Hollywood brandishing a blockbuster. Furthermore, epic, seafaring adventures haven’t been especially kind to the islands in the past.
You can find the full article here
The film is Master and Commander, which hurtled on to the big screen with Russell Crowe at the helm. The subtitle is The Far Side of the World - a part played by the Galapagos Islands, their first appearance in a movie. And co-star Bettany plays Stephen Maturin, a character passionate about nature and obsessed by the islands. "I was completely humbled by the Galapagos," he told me. "It’s an extraordinary place. You should go."
So I did. In search of wonderment, and to find out how on earth Hollywood was allowed to use these sacrosanct islands, haven to the most extraordinary collection of flora and fauna on Earth, in one of this year’s biggest cinematic splashes. Invasive species are the scourge of the Galapagos - and you don’t get much more invasive than Hollywood brandishing a blockbuster. Furthermore, epic, seafaring adventures haven’t been especially kind to the islands in the past.
You can find the full article here
Island of Hainan - China
A cool glass of chardonnay; fresh grouper with French beans and roe crab; a view across perfectly cut lawns past an infinity pool to a turquoise sea; a marble bathroom, BBC World and a kingsize bed...
The Maldives? The Seychelles, Mauritius, Dubai, Caribbean, even Bali? Well, obviously. But now you can add Hainan to the list, a Chinese island on the South China Sea that's about to transform the way we think about holidays in the world's most populous country.
The resort of Sanya on the southern tip of Hainan, 300 miles from Hong Kong, was little more than a sleepy agricultural backwater a decade ago, with a few hotels offering R&R to Beijing's elite and HK expatriates.
Now it is in the midst of a Dubai-style hotel expansion, adding a beach option to the busy cultural itinerary of Beijing (The Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Great Wall of China), Xian (Terracotta Warriors) and Shanghai (the country's most vibrant, westernised city).
You can find the full article here
The Maldives? The Seychelles, Mauritius, Dubai, Caribbean, even Bali? Well, obviously. But now you can add Hainan to the list, a Chinese island on the South China Sea that's about to transform the way we think about holidays in the world's most populous country.
The resort of Sanya on the southern tip of Hainan, 300 miles from Hong Kong, was little more than a sleepy agricultural backwater a decade ago, with a few hotels offering R&R to Beijing's elite and HK expatriates.
Now it is in the midst of a Dubai-style hotel expansion, adding a beach option to the busy cultural itinerary of Beijing (The Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Great Wall of China), Xian (Terracotta Warriors) and Shanghai (the country's most vibrant, westernised city).
You can find the full article here
Philippines
To be honest, I nearly didn't bother. The night before my foray into the uplands of Luzon, the second-largest island in the Philippines, I stop over in a village at the foot of the Cordillera Central ranges. I'm the guest of an old friend, who's just built a bungalow in this forest clearing with the money she earned working as a housemaid abroad. Amid the shacks, it stands out like a sore thumb - as do I; this is a place that doesn't see many visitors. A crowd that wouldn't disgrace a second-division football match surrounds me as I outline my idea.
The plan, I tell them, is to head for the remote tribal heartlands and meet a few of the 6.5 million people from 40 indigenous groups that still follow a traditional lifestyle on this archipelago of 7,107 islands. This is the cue for the curiosity on the faces of my hosts to cloud into concern. No, they haven't actually been to these places, but still... don't I realise the natives are "uncivilised"? Aren't I worried about getting kidnapped? Haven't I heard about the headhunters?
You can find the full article here
The plan, I tell them, is to head for the remote tribal heartlands and meet a few of the 6.5 million people from 40 indigenous groups that still follow a traditional lifestyle on this archipelago of 7,107 islands. This is the cue for the curiosity on the faces of my hosts to cloud into concern. No, they haven't actually been to these places, but still... don't I realise the natives are "uncivilised"? Aren't I worried about getting kidnapped? Haven't I heard about the headhunters?
You can find the full article here
Vietnam
We're in northern Vietnam to see the beautiful mountains - the Hoang Lien Son rangealong Vietnam's border with China - and to visit the area's tribes. Of Vietnam's 54 different ethnic groups, around a dozen live in these foothills, each upholding its own language, tribal dress and traditions. They have two things in common, though: they all cultivate rice, and they all converge on Sapa at the weekends.
Sapa is a small mountain town built as a summer retreat by the French in the early 1900s. Tourists have made inroads here: alongside the local market are budget hotels, craft shops and internet cafés. Red Dao women argue over pyramids of tangerines and tangles of fresh herbs. Groups of Black H'mông (dressed in near-black indigo, with black headdresses and velvet legwarmers) haggle with Tays, who wrap their heads in electric pink and bottle-green scarves.
In the murky shadows of the eating area, differently-dressed groups sit over steaming pans of noodles, exclusive pockets of red, black and green, like patchwork. But, says Truong, they all get on very well. They might not intermarry or share traditions, but the different groups trade and work collectively, go to school together, converse in Vietnamese and have lived amicably side-by-side for centuries
You can find the full article here
Sapa is a small mountain town built as a summer retreat by the French in the early 1900s. Tourists have made inroads here: alongside the local market are budget hotels, craft shops and internet cafés. Red Dao women argue over pyramids of tangerines and tangles of fresh herbs. Groups of Black H'mông (dressed in near-black indigo, with black headdresses and velvet legwarmers) haggle with Tays, who wrap their heads in electric pink and bottle-green scarves.
In the murky shadows of the eating area, differently-dressed groups sit over steaming pans of noodles, exclusive pockets of red, black and green, like patchwork. But, says Truong, they all get on very well. They might not intermarry or share traditions, but the different groups trade and work collectively, go to school together, converse in Vietnamese and have lived amicably side-by-side for centuries
You can find the full article here
Bermuda
From December to March, temperatures are often low. Added to the rain that is a perennial visitor to Bermuda (you are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, after all), a visit at this time of year can be decidedly chilly. But air fares and room rates are low, except around Christmas/New Year, and the territory is quiet and relaxed.
April and November are the "shoulder" months - with luck, you will get sunny, calm days. These months are second and third driest respectively, behind May - which in many respects is the ideal time: the weather will have settled into bright, warm days, and many of the places that close in "winter" will be open for business. Yet the influx of summer holidaymakers and cruise passengers will not yet have reached its peak.
From June until September, Bermuda is at its busiest, and prices for accommodation rise to reflect that. Furthermore, from August onwards the risk of hurricanes is at its highest; the most recent, Fabian in 2003, caused widespread damage.
You can find the full article here
April and November are the "shoulder" months - with luck, you will get sunny, calm days. These months are second and third driest respectively, behind May - which in many respects is the ideal time: the weather will have settled into bright, warm days, and many of the places that close in "winter" will be open for business. Yet the influx of summer holidaymakers and cruise passengers will not yet have reached its peak.
From June until September, Bermuda is at its busiest, and prices for accommodation rise to reflect that. Furthermore, from August onwards the risk of hurricanes is at its highest; the most recent, Fabian in 2003, caused widespread damage.
You can find the full article here
Cameroon
It was like walking through an impenetrable green mist. The narrow path wound this way and that, skirting round fronds and branches and vegetation of all shapes and shades. It was stiflingly hot even though the thick forest canopy was shading us from the direct rays of the sun.
Something screeched high up in the trees. My guide, Boukou, flapped his arms in imitation of a bird and named it in his own language, then in French, for my benefit. It was, I learned, an African grey parrot. Away in the distance we could hear chimps chattering. The sound rose to a deafening, angst-ridden crescendo of squawks and cries that put the forest on edge and sent a shiver down my spine. Eventually the cacophony shrunk to a muffled clucking.
Boukou's head was for ever turning this way and that, reading the signs of teeming life that crowded in on us. His easy, lolling walk had taken him down countless paths like this throughout the 40-odd years of his hunting and gathering existence. I was being taken on a trek through the equatorial rainforest of Cameroon. Boukou was a Baka pygmy, an elder in one of the few remaining clans that still manage - just - to eke out a sustainable living in a symbiotic relationship with the land.
Boukou tore a trailing vine from an overhanging branch and wound it round his middle. It was eru, the ubiquitous forest plant that tastes of spinach and forms a vital part of the Baka diet. He stopped to examine some tracks in the wet mud, prodding the earth with his bony fingers. "Duiker," he said, filing away the information, "one hour ago."
You can find the full article here
Something screeched high up in the trees. My guide, Boukou, flapped his arms in imitation of a bird and named it in his own language, then in French, for my benefit. It was, I learned, an African grey parrot. Away in the distance we could hear chimps chattering. The sound rose to a deafening, angst-ridden crescendo of squawks and cries that put the forest on edge and sent a shiver down my spine. Eventually the cacophony shrunk to a muffled clucking.
Boukou's head was for ever turning this way and that, reading the signs of teeming life that crowded in on us. His easy, lolling walk had taken him down countless paths like this throughout the 40-odd years of his hunting and gathering existence. I was being taken on a trek through the equatorial rainforest of Cameroon. Boukou was a Baka pygmy, an elder in one of the few remaining clans that still manage - just - to eke out a sustainable living in a symbiotic relationship with the land.
Boukou tore a trailing vine from an overhanging branch and wound it round his middle. It was eru, the ubiquitous forest plant that tastes of spinach and forms a vital part of the Baka diet. He stopped to examine some tracks in the wet mud, prodding the earth with his bony fingers. "Duiker," he said, filing away the information, "one hour ago."
You can find the full article here
Algeria
As the plane descends over the Mediterranean and into Annaba, on the east coast of Algeria, the man in the seat beside me says: "Don't be alarmed if there are people with machineguns marching around the plane when we land. It's normal and doesn't mean anything."
I am the one passenger on the flight who is not Algerian and I remember my mother saying, "Let's hope they don't lock you up in the desert for a couple of years."
My new friend offers to walk me to the passport control. My mind is in a whirl. Are Algerians hostile to foreigners? Are they strict about dress codes? Will I need to adhere to Ramadan and its dawn-to-dusk fasting? I haven't done much research, which is why I don't know that children and non-Muslim visitors are exempt from this discipline. But I'm not seriously concerned. As long as I can get through customs with my new friend as my guide, I've got an extended family waiting for me.
You can find the full article here
I am the one passenger on the flight who is not Algerian and I remember my mother saying, "Let's hope they don't lock you up in the desert for a couple of years."
My new friend offers to walk me to the passport control. My mind is in a whirl. Are Algerians hostile to foreigners? Are they strict about dress codes? Will I need to adhere to Ramadan and its dawn-to-dusk fasting? I haven't done much research, which is why I don't know that children and non-Muslim visitors are exempt from this discipline. But I'm not seriously concerned. As long as I can get through customs with my new friend as my guide, I've got an extended family waiting for me.
You can find the full article here
Khao Sok National Park - Thailand
I lean from the canoe and skim my fingers across the surface of the shallow, rushing Sok River. It is clear and warm and the colour of coriander, and it feels as if we are bobbing in a delicate yellow-green Thai soup.
I am in front of the boatman, attempting to recline in idle Cleopatra fashion, but there is far too much to see and a constant shifting of legs is necessary to prevent cramping. It's not the most comfortable passage and temperatures are hitting the business end of the 30s but, despite the clinging humidity, there's a liveliness to it all that is utterly beguiling.
We have set out from Temple Cave, adjacent to a busy entryway to the Khao Sok National Park, near Khao Lak in southern Thailand. Khao Lak is 190km north of Phuket and its coastline was badly affected by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. But here in the hinterland, in this long, shadowy tunnel of swift river and trees sweeping their leafy skirts in the water, the tourists are back in force and all is peace and dappled light.
You can find the full article here
I am in front of the boatman, attempting to recline in idle Cleopatra fashion, but there is far too much to see and a constant shifting of legs is necessary to prevent cramping. It's not the most comfortable passage and temperatures are hitting the business end of the 30s but, despite the clinging humidity, there's a liveliness to it all that is utterly beguiling.
We have set out from Temple Cave, adjacent to a busy entryway to the Khao Sok National Park, near Khao Lak in southern Thailand. Khao Lak is 190km north of Phuket and its coastline was badly affected by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. But here in the hinterland, in this long, shadowy tunnel of swift river and trees sweeping their leafy skirts in the water, the tourists are back in force and all is peace and dappled light.
You can find the full article here
Guilin - China
For centuries, Guilin has sent Chinese poets and painters into a swoon. Their scroll-painting images of Guilin's dragon-spined mountains are so pervasive that on first glimpse of these celebrated karst upthrusts you may think you have stepped on to a late Tang dynasty chocolate-box lid. But the blast of a truck's air-horns or the restaurant cashier shamelessly hiking your bill quickly help overcome such silk-screened delusions.
Guilin city, population 700,000, in the southern Chinese province of Guanxi, is a huge domestic and international tourist attraction, drawing eight million visitors a year, but that is only half the regional story.
You can find the full article here
Guilin city, population 700,000, in the southern Chinese province of Guanxi, is a huge domestic and international tourist attraction, drawing eight million visitors a year, but that is only half the regional story.
You can find the full article here
Saigon - Vietnam
We arrive in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, as bureaucracy and maps insist) during a monsoon that should be long over. It's only about 6km to the Caravelle hotel in the city centre, but it takes nearly an hour by cab in the tide of rush-hour traffic, the gutters in full flood.
This is a city on the move in every sense. It's not even 10 years since the communist government loosened the regime with doi moi, when trade restrictions were lifted and foreign cash started to pour in. Despite a century of war, Vietnam's resilient and youthful population is intent on leaving the past behind. People are interested in everything that smacks of progress, be it iPods, David Beckham or burgers.
Saigon's commercialism is unexpected: the neon signs, the noise and frenetic activity of the street, the smell of the drains and the stinging exhaust fumes.
Where is the languid elegance of the Indochine of old? Certainly not at the GIs' and hacks' watering hole, the Rex hotel. Once, the Rex bar had an allure; today it is a temple of kitsch. Gone is the edginess of a city existing on the back of a black economy, with its heady mix of war, women and opiates.
For authentic colour, head for the Ben Thanh market, with its stalls of Japanese gadgets, silk and lacquerware. Pause for a bowl of pho, noodles steamed in coriander-scented stock, which the Vietnamese eat for breakfast. Just avert your eyes from the pails of frogs being skinned alive, the semiconscious chickens dangling upside down. Then hail a cyclo and stop off at a nearby street that has the relaxed tempo of another era, where you can buy bric-a-brac and ceramics.
A day or two to get over the culture shock, to shop and acclimatise in the anodyne but luxurious Caravelle Hotel, is all you'll need before wanting to head out of the city.
You can find the full article here
This is a city on the move in every sense. It's not even 10 years since the communist government loosened the regime with doi moi, when trade restrictions were lifted and foreign cash started to pour in. Despite a century of war, Vietnam's resilient and youthful population is intent on leaving the past behind. People are interested in everything that smacks of progress, be it iPods, David Beckham or burgers.
Saigon's commercialism is unexpected: the neon signs, the noise and frenetic activity of the street, the smell of the drains and the stinging exhaust fumes.
Where is the languid elegance of the Indochine of old? Certainly not at the GIs' and hacks' watering hole, the Rex hotel. Once, the Rex bar had an allure; today it is a temple of kitsch. Gone is the edginess of a city existing on the back of a black economy, with its heady mix of war, women and opiates.
For authentic colour, head for the Ben Thanh market, with its stalls of Japanese gadgets, silk and lacquerware. Pause for a bowl of pho, noodles steamed in coriander-scented stock, which the Vietnamese eat for breakfast. Just avert your eyes from the pails of frogs being skinned alive, the semiconscious chickens dangling upside down. Then hail a cyclo and stop off at a nearby street that has the relaxed tempo of another era, where you can buy bric-a-brac and ceramics.
A day or two to get over the culture shock, to shop and acclimatise in the anodyne but luxurious Caravelle Hotel, is all you'll need before wanting to head out of the city.
You can find the full article here
Maldives
Whenever work gets you down, do two things. Find a subordinate sufficiently lower down the food chain and smack his teeth. Then lie back, close your eyes and think of picture-postcard islands. Try to visualise some tiny islands just above sea level that will disappear altogether if a large tourist dive-bombs into the water. Think searing heat, humidity, sand drilled right through with pesky critters all making a beeline for your haemorrhoids and a large hotel bill in US dollars, with more zeroes than your calculator can manage.
If this isn't heaven, all you need to do is add Pamela Anderson to the picture and add a few more zeroes to the bill. If your wife catches you, she'll smack your teeth. Because you should be picturing her looking like Anderson awaiting something big from you. The diamond will add more zeroes, but who's counting?
The queen of picture-postcard getaways is the Maldives. This collection of 1192 eye-popping islands is a true-blue escape. Buy a wallet-humbling $US500-a-night ($660-a-night) package and spend the first of your three nights housed at the airport hotel. Flights tend to arrive in the wee hours when speedboats and seaplane transfers are not in service. Arriving in the dark simply heightens expectations, because in the morning you can throw open those curtains, gather your kids around you, and marvel at the tail ensign of Qatar Airways. If your eyes are misting over at this point, wipe your spectacles, and turn off the airconditioner.
You can find the full article here
If this isn't heaven, all you need to do is add Pamela Anderson to the picture and add a few more zeroes to the bill. If your wife catches you, she'll smack your teeth. Because you should be picturing her looking like Anderson awaiting something big from you. The diamond will add more zeroes, but who's counting?
The queen of picture-postcard getaways is the Maldives. This collection of 1192 eye-popping islands is a true-blue escape. Buy a wallet-humbling $US500-a-night ($660-a-night) package and spend the first of your three nights housed at the airport hotel. Flights tend to arrive in the wee hours when speedboats and seaplane transfers are not in service. Arriving in the dark simply heightens expectations, because in the morning you can throw open those curtains, gather your kids around you, and marvel at the tail ensign of Qatar Airways. If your eyes are misting over at this point, wipe your spectacles, and turn off the airconditioner.
You can find the full article here
Hong Kong
I love Hong Kong, the hustle and bustle, the convergence of the old and brand spanking new. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in Mongkok, the heart of old Kowloon, which 20 years ago was claimed to be the most densely populated place on earth.
In 1969, the Far Eastern Economic Review described it as "one of the most swinging parts of Hong Kong". And it still is. More "Chinese-only" than southern Kowloon mid last century, the area has changed dramatically in recent years but there is still a whiff of the old city on the crowded footpaths, in stark contrast to the shiny new Langham Place Hotel and shopping centre soaring above Shanghai Street.
Arrive late at night and the narrow thoroughfares are busy with bare-chested men unloading great crates of produce from rickety trucks. In the early morning the teeming footpaths close to the hotel are a minefield of activity: butchers plying their trade (I tiptoe around buckets of tongues and bullocks' hooves); fishmongers stocking tanks with curious, generally unidentifiable creatures of the deep; and greengrocers laying out trays of freshly picked choi sum and baskets spilling over with pink dragon fruit and tiny pineapples
You can find the full article here
In 1969, the Far Eastern Economic Review described it as "one of the most swinging parts of Hong Kong". And it still is. More "Chinese-only" than southern Kowloon mid last century, the area has changed dramatically in recent years but there is still a whiff of the old city on the crowded footpaths, in stark contrast to the shiny new Langham Place Hotel and shopping centre soaring above Shanghai Street.
Arrive late at night and the narrow thoroughfares are busy with bare-chested men unloading great crates of produce from rickety trucks. In the early morning the teeming footpaths close to the hotel are a minefield of activity: butchers plying their trade (I tiptoe around buckets of tongues and bullocks' hooves); fishmongers stocking tanks with curious, generally unidentifiable creatures of the deep; and greengrocers laying out trays of freshly picked choi sum and baskets spilling over with pink dragon fruit and tiny pineapples
You can find the full article here
Cambodia
Cambodia has had a rough trot during the past 40 years and although tourism is bringing in much-needed cash, corruption means much of it goes to the already wealthy. Stay in an international hotel chain and you're helping Americans or Singaporean corporations more than Cambodians. Visit the temples at Angkor Wat and you're lining the pockets of a Vietnamese petroleum baron who leases the temples and is a pal of the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen.
In Siem Reap, you're there for the temples of Angkor Wat and you'd be mad to miss it. But there are things you can do when you've had enough of the temples that are fun, fascinating and make you feel good because you'll be helping the locals at the same time.
You can find the full article here
In Siem Reap, you're there for the temples of Angkor Wat and you'd be mad to miss it. But there are things you can do when you've had enough of the temples that are fun, fascinating and make you feel good because you'll be helping the locals at the same time.
You can find the full article here
Quito - Ecuador
The first thing that greets me as I step off the plane at Quito airport is a sign that warns "Altitude 2808m", before adding a tad superfluously, "Walk slowly".
There's not a whole lot of choice up here; perched high on an Andean plateau, the lean atmosphere of Ecuador's capital can leave visitors feeling as though they've just jogged up a few flights of stairs.
I arrive in darkness and am whisked the surprisingly short distance from the airport to my downtown hotel. In the morning, I wake to what sounds like 400 dogs tumbling into the pit of hell somewhere outside my window but, as I open the curtains, all I see is pink light creeping down the flanks of the volcano that looms over the city, disappearing and reappearing at the whim of the low cloud.
I do eventually spot a dog at breakfast later: it's a spry little west highland white terrier gazing over its master's shoulder at a newspaper, glancing up now and then at the soccer on the television.
My lungs feel as if they're beginning to fill at last. It's time to explore, and I wander through parks and thronging streets, gravitating towards the herds of open-mouthed gargoyles of the church of La Basilica and the splendour of the old town beyond.
You can find the full article here
There's not a whole lot of choice up here; perched high on an Andean plateau, the lean atmosphere of Ecuador's capital can leave visitors feeling as though they've just jogged up a few flights of stairs.
I arrive in darkness and am whisked the surprisingly short distance from the airport to my downtown hotel. In the morning, I wake to what sounds like 400 dogs tumbling into the pit of hell somewhere outside my window but, as I open the curtains, all I see is pink light creeping down the flanks of the volcano that looms over the city, disappearing and reappearing at the whim of the low cloud.
I do eventually spot a dog at breakfast later: it's a spry little west highland white terrier gazing over its master's shoulder at a newspaper, glancing up now and then at the soccer on the television.
My lungs feel as if they're beginning to fill at last. It's time to explore, and I wander through parks and thronging streets, gravitating towards the herds of open-mouthed gargoyles of the church of La Basilica and the splendour of the old town beyond.
You can find the full article here
Argentina on a budget
Flipping through Patricia Schultz's New York Times bestseller, 1000 Places to See Before You Die, with its endless recommendations for stays at the world's top hotels, I am amazed to see how often her Argentinian choices tally with my experiences as I travel through Argentina on a budget.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Climbing the Aconcagua - Argentina
Aconcagua is a part of Aconcagua Provincial Park, and there are park ranger stations at the entrance and at all camps. The two most popular routes to the top are Rio Horcones (the normal route -- and the one we took) and Rio Vacas (the advanced route, requiring mountaineering skills; also known as the Polish Glacier Route). Medical assistance is available at both base camps where medical checkups are mandatory before climbing higher.
The climb takes four to six days from the base camps (about 14,000 feet), but from Mendoza (2,310 feet) you really do need one week -- as I learned the hard way -- to acclimatize yourself at lower altitudes first. Allow at least two weeks for the entire expedition.
The biggest challenges of the climb are the cold (it's normally well below zero Fahrenheit near the top) and, of course, the altitude (most people are evacuated due to acute mountain sickness, which can be fatal). Physical training before the trip is also essential.
In case of emergency, rangers will assist with evacuation and organize rescue missions to the higher camps if possible. A helicopter rescue from base camp has to be authorized by doctors, but it is free.
You can find the full article here
The climb takes four to six days from the base camps (about 14,000 feet), but from Mendoza (2,310 feet) you really do need one week -- as I learned the hard way -- to acclimatize yourself at lower altitudes first. Allow at least two weeks for the entire expedition.
The biggest challenges of the climb are the cold (it's normally well below zero Fahrenheit near the top) and, of course, the altitude (most people are evacuated due to acute mountain sickness, which can be fatal). Physical training before the trip is also essential.
In case of emergency, rangers will assist with evacuation and organize rescue missions to the higher camps if possible. A helicopter rescue from base camp has to be authorized by doctors, but it is free.
You can find the full article here
Monday, March 27, 2006
Manaus - Brazil
You could call Manaus the anti-Rome. No roads lead to this Amazonian capital, unless you happen to be coming into Brazil from southern Venezuela. The only impressive buildings were built practically in a day, during the short-lived rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And pizza? Sure, they have it, but topped with tropical fruits like tucumã or cupuaçu and served with packets of mayonnaise.
A city of about a million and a half, perched on the Rio Negro some six miles upstream from where it joins the Amazon, Manaus is not so much a tourist destination as a way station for adventurers who fly in for rain forest treks or pass through on a boat trip downriver to Belém.
While much of it is grimy and virtually shuts down on Sunday, Manaus is a fascinating port city, buzzing with activity six days a week. Flat-screen TV's may be manufactured in a free trade zone nearby and fleets of modern taxis may arrive by boat, but the lack of a road to Bahia or Brasília or São Paulo still gives Manaus a quirky sense of bustling isolation. People here often have striking indigenous faces rather than the blond to bronze to black spectrum of many Brazilian cities.
And there is plenty to do, especially with your taste buds. Visitors can feast on the often-surprising cuisine from Amazônia (a region of nine states, including Amazonas, of which Manaus is the capital), from fresh fish with tongue twister names, to fruits so exotic they make guava seem humdrum.
Between meals, and especially before breakfast, the teeming downtown port and markets buzz with activity, equally fascinating for microeconomics professors and lovers of cheap pineapples. And in April or May, visitors can end the day with opera. Really.
You can find the full article here
A city of about a million and a half, perched on the Rio Negro some six miles upstream from where it joins the Amazon, Manaus is not so much a tourist destination as a way station for adventurers who fly in for rain forest treks or pass through on a boat trip downriver to Belém.
While much of it is grimy and virtually shuts down on Sunday, Manaus is a fascinating port city, buzzing with activity six days a week. Flat-screen TV's may be manufactured in a free trade zone nearby and fleets of modern taxis may arrive by boat, but the lack of a road to Bahia or Brasília or São Paulo still gives Manaus a quirky sense of bustling isolation. People here often have striking indigenous faces rather than the blond to bronze to black spectrum of many Brazilian cities.
And there is plenty to do, especially with your taste buds. Visitors can feast on the often-surprising cuisine from Amazônia (a region of nine states, including Amazonas, of which Manaus is the capital), from fresh fish with tongue twister names, to fruits so exotic they make guava seem humdrum.
Between meals, and especially before breakfast, the teeming downtown port and markets buzz with activity, equally fascinating for microeconomics professors and lovers of cheap pineapples. And in April or May, visitors can end the day with opera. Really.
You can find the full article here
Diving in the Red Sea - Egypt
Descending from a dive boat at Elphinstone Reef, in Egypt's "deep south", I can make out little except a vague blur in the depths of the ocean. Gradually, as I sink further, its outline becomes clearer, and I see a lozenge-shaped reef just below me. Set practically in the middle of nowhere, this seamount acts as a magnet for wildlife from miles around - much as a watering hole does in the savannah.
Circumnavigating the reef, I see that both its northern and southern extremities are carpeted in a dense growth of corals and sponges, with huge numbers of fish milling around it. The herbivores and planktivores (munching on zooplankton) attract the carnivores and omnivores, right the way up the food chain to barracuda, shark, jacks, tuna, trevally and other creatures of the open ocean. It's these big fellas we like to see. An oceanic white-tip shark seems to be in permanent residence, with seven other shark species commonly seen here.
The big fish might come for lunch but they also like to pop by for a session at a cleaning station, to have all their irritating parasites removed by smaller fish. A seamount like Elphinstone is a bit like a motorway service station on the ocean highway: eat, refuel, get your windscreen cleaned and off you go. So you neverknow who's going to pull in for a break next: it could be a passing manta ray, a cruising oceanic shark, or a hungry hammerhead.
"When they all come at once, it's a magical place to be," says our dive guide, Brit. "Even if they don't, it's a very beautiful reef - especially on the east side, where there are load of soft corals. Plus," she adds, "you've got the wall dropping off into the deep - it has that bottomless experience that many divers crave."
Elphinstone can be a busy reef because the live-aboard safari boats also bring groups here, but in general the deep south has far fewer divers to bump into. It makes a refreshing change from the popular northern dive sites, which get very busy indeed. This is one of the main attractions for Rob Bastesman, a dive instructor. He spent three months working in Marsa Alam last year before choosing to revisit it for this year's holiday - always a good recommendation. "There's so much to see, the corals are in much better condition than in other Red Sea resorts, and the dive sites are much less crowded," he said. "Some of the northern dive sites are like Piccadilly Circus, but you don't get any of that down there."
Marsa Alam is some 170 miles south of Hurghada on the western Red Sea shoreline of Egypt. When I first came here five years ago, the journey entailed a tedious four-hour minibus transfer from Hurghada. Then, in 2002, Marsa Alam gained a new airport; weekly charter flights with Excel Airways from Gatwick now operate year-round. The southern Red Sea has become accessible.
You can find the full article here
Circumnavigating the reef, I see that both its northern and southern extremities are carpeted in a dense growth of corals and sponges, with huge numbers of fish milling around it. The herbivores and planktivores (munching on zooplankton) attract the carnivores and omnivores, right the way up the food chain to barracuda, shark, jacks, tuna, trevally and other creatures of the open ocean. It's these big fellas we like to see. An oceanic white-tip shark seems to be in permanent residence, with seven other shark species commonly seen here.
The big fish might come for lunch but they also like to pop by for a session at a cleaning station, to have all their irritating parasites removed by smaller fish. A seamount like Elphinstone is a bit like a motorway service station on the ocean highway: eat, refuel, get your windscreen cleaned and off you go. So you neverknow who's going to pull in for a break next: it could be a passing manta ray, a cruising oceanic shark, or a hungry hammerhead.
"When they all come at once, it's a magical place to be," says our dive guide, Brit. "Even if they don't, it's a very beautiful reef - especially on the east side, where there are load of soft corals. Plus," she adds, "you've got the wall dropping off into the deep - it has that bottomless experience that many divers crave."
Elphinstone can be a busy reef because the live-aboard safari boats also bring groups here, but in general the deep south has far fewer divers to bump into. It makes a refreshing change from the popular northern dive sites, which get very busy indeed. This is one of the main attractions for Rob Bastesman, a dive instructor. He spent three months working in Marsa Alam last year before choosing to revisit it for this year's holiday - always a good recommendation. "There's so much to see, the corals are in much better condition than in other Red Sea resorts, and the dive sites are much less crowded," he said. "Some of the northern dive sites are like Piccadilly Circus, but you don't get any of that down there."
Marsa Alam is some 170 miles south of Hurghada on the western Red Sea shoreline of Egypt. When I first came here five years ago, the journey entailed a tedious four-hour minibus transfer from Hurghada. Then, in 2002, Marsa Alam gained a new airport; weekly charter flights with Excel Airways from Gatwick now operate year-round. The southern Red Sea has become accessible.
You can find the full article here
Morocco
To Westerners, Morocco sounds exotic and remote. It is plenty rich in the exotic, but from New York to Casablanca, the distance by air -- 3,600 miles -- is 20 miles fewer than New York to Paris and just 160 miles farther than New York to London.
Casablanca is the hub of airline transportation in Morocco, and most flights between cities are routed through that famous city on the Atlantic Ocean. Rabat, the capital and also on the Atlantic, is a short distance from Casablanca.
Fez, though, is the spiritual and cultural city of Morocco, at times called the Holy City. The medina, or old native quarter, of Fez was selected for the United Nations' World Heritage List in 1981 -- the first site in Morocco on the list -- and later was joined by the medinas in the cities of Marrakech, Essaouira and Tetouan.
Fez, Marrakech, Meknes and Rabat also are called the imperial cities because each has at one time been the capital of Morocco. Founded in the ninth century, Fez is home to an old university.
I am in the medina of Fez in mid-January, and it is quite cold at night, cold enough to have an electric heater to make my room comfortable at La Maison Bleue's riad, a small hotel in what was built as a family palace in 1915.
The typical architecture -- sometimes called Andalusian, Arabo-Andalusian or Moorish -- of these private homes uses an open central courtyard from which the rooms open on each floor, similar to the buildings Moroccans' ancestors built in southern Spain during the Moorish conquest of the Iberian Peninsula before they were expelled in 1502. The ceilings are high; the courtyard has a small pool and an orange tree heavy with fruit.
From one end of the top floor, guests can look upward to the 16th-century fortress near the old city wall. It has become the Borj-Nord Museum, housing a collection of weapons. The fortress is most impressive when it is illuminated at night, becoming a crown sitting on the top of the city; it also is one of the best points for a complete view of the city on the hillsides below.
You can find the full article here
Casablanca is the hub of airline transportation in Morocco, and most flights between cities are routed through that famous city on the Atlantic Ocean. Rabat, the capital and also on the Atlantic, is a short distance from Casablanca.
Fez, though, is the spiritual and cultural city of Morocco, at times called the Holy City. The medina, or old native quarter, of Fez was selected for the United Nations' World Heritage List in 1981 -- the first site in Morocco on the list -- and later was joined by the medinas in the cities of Marrakech, Essaouira and Tetouan.
Fez, Marrakech, Meknes and Rabat also are called the imperial cities because each has at one time been the capital of Morocco. Founded in the ninth century, Fez is home to an old university.
I am in the medina of Fez in mid-January, and it is quite cold at night, cold enough to have an electric heater to make my room comfortable at La Maison Bleue's riad, a small hotel in what was built as a family palace in 1915.
The typical architecture -- sometimes called Andalusian, Arabo-Andalusian or Moorish -- of these private homes uses an open central courtyard from which the rooms open on each floor, similar to the buildings Moroccans' ancestors built in southern Spain during the Moorish conquest of the Iberian Peninsula before they were expelled in 1502. The ceilings are high; the courtyard has a small pool and an orange tree heavy with fruit.
From one end of the top floor, guests can look upward to the 16th-century fortress near the old city wall. It has become the Borj-Nord Museum, housing a collection of weapons. The fortress is most impressive when it is illuminated at night, becoming a crown sitting on the top of the city; it also is one of the best points for a complete view of the city on the hillsides below.
You can find the full article here
Oporto - Portugal
We're in this ancient port city, set to sail into the finest ports in the world -- white, ruby, tawny and vintage port wines. Oporto gave the nation (Port-ugal) and the wine their names.
These famed fortified wines come from the rugged, steeply terraced Douro River vineyards. But it is in Oporto, the ancient city at the mouth of the Douro, where the wine is nurtured to maturity before it is shipped to the world. Here, in the cool, humid cellars of port houses, called lodges, the character of the young port is shaped as it ages in bottles, casks and vats.
Portugal's second-largest city, a bustling, hardworking commercial center, is the gateway to the north. Known as the "Ancient, Most Noble, Always Loyal and Unvanquished City of Oporto," the town is more like a village than a city; one easily can walk everywhere.
We dodge cars in the steep, narrow streets as we descend to the Douro. Our goal is the lodges of 18 port shippers that offer tours and a glass of port.
We cross the iron spans of the Dom Luis Bridge and enter the old Vila Nova de Gaia quarter. In 2001, Oporto was named the Cultural Capital of Europe, a designation that led to transforming the city and this quarter. Riverside parks, fine restaurants, vibrant outdoor cafes and busy shops give the old warehouse district a festive air.
The quarter offers the finest panorama of Oporto, a town of gray granite, blue-and-white azulejo tiles and orange terra-cotta roofs, home to people since the Bronze Age.
Prince Henry the Navigator, who inspired Portugal's voyages of discovery, was born here in 1394. The prince adopted the Douro craft, the sleek barco rabelo, for some of his voyages. Today, the boats slumber before the port lodges, touting Graham, Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca, Dow, Croft, Warre, Sandeman, Cockburn and Ferreira, some of the leading port houses. For 200 years, these flat-bottomed boats loaded with cargoes of port braved the Douro's dangerous, once rapids-filled waters. Today, trucks and trains transport the wines.
We make our way to the house of Ferreira, the best-selling port wine in Portugal, which is best known for its old tawnies. It has a large stock of older wines, including vintage-dated tawnies that few houses can match.
This lodge has survived since its founding by the pint-size Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira, who was widowed at 33, found she had a flair for business and bought vineyards throughout the Douro. She financed roads, schools, hospitals and nurseries with her wealth, so her 19th-century contemporaries called her by the affectionate diminutive "Ferreirinha." Her memory is still cherished today.
A 400-year-old monastery building houses the medieval tasting rooms, with their granite arches, beamed ceilings and cobbled floors. Beyond lie the dim, musty warehouses containing giant casks, vats and rows of bottles of aging port. The 26-gallon casks hold the wine for several years before it is decanted into more porous 140-gallon wood barrels. The oldest port in barrels is dated 1910.
Our guide at Caves Ferreira tells this portly tale: Two young shippers from Liverpool added grape brandy to this unexceptional table wine in 1678 to stabilize it on its journey to England. By fortifying it so, they created port. Gradually, the port wines we know today evolved.
That same year, the first export of "vinho do Porto" was recorded in the Oporto Customs House. Since then, all port has been exported through Oporto.
You can find the full article here
These famed fortified wines come from the rugged, steeply terraced Douro River vineyards. But it is in Oporto, the ancient city at the mouth of the Douro, where the wine is nurtured to maturity before it is shipped to the world. Here, in the cool, humid cellars of port houses, called lodges, the character of the young port is shaped as it ages in bottles, casks and vats.
Portugal's second-largest city, a bustling, hardworking commercial center, is the gateway to the north. Known as the "Ancient, Most Noble, Always Loyal and Unvanquished City of Oporto," the town is more like a village than a city; one easily can walk everywhere.
We dodge cars in the steep, narrow streets as we descend to the Douro. Our goal is the lodges of 18 port shippers that offer tours and a glass of port.
We cross the iron spans of the Dom Luis Bridge and enter the old Vila Nova de Gaia quarter. In 2001, Oporto was named the Cultural Capital of Europe, a designation that led to transforming the city and this quarter. Riverside parks, fine restaurants, vibrant outdoor cafes and busy shops give the old warehouse district a festive air.
The quarter offers the finest panorama of Oporto, a town of gray granite, blue-and-white azulejo tiles and orange terra-cotta roofs, home to people since the Bronze Age.
Prince Henry the Navigator, who inspired Portugal's voyages of discovery, was born here in 1394. The prince adopted the Douro craft, the sleek barco rabelo, for some of his voyages. Today, the boats slumber before the port lodges, touting Graham, Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca, Dow, Croft, Warre, Sandeman, Cockburn and Ferreira, some of the leading port houses. For 200 years, these flat-bottomed boats loaded with cargoes of port braved the Douro's dangerous, once rapids-filled waters. Today, trucks and trains transport the wines.
We make our way to the house of Ferreira, the best-selling port wine in Portugal, which is best known for its old tawnies. It has a large stock of older wines, including vintage-dated tawnies that few houses can match.
This lodge has survived since its founding by the pint-size Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira, who was widowed at 33, found she had a flair for business and bought vineyards throughout the Douro. She financed roads, schools, hospitals and nurseries with her wealth, so her 19th-century contemporaries called her by the affectionate diminutive "Ferreirinha." Her memory is still cherished today.
A 400-year-old monastery building houses the medieval tasting rooms, with their granite arches, beamed ceilings and cobbled floors. Beyond lie the dim, musty warehouses containing giant casks, vats and rows of bottles of aging port. The 26-gallon casks hold the wine for several years before it is decanted into more porous 140-gallon wood barrels. The oldest port in barrels is dated 1910.
Our guide at Caves Ferreira tells this portly tale: Two young shippers from Liverpool added grape brandy to this unexceptional table wine in 1678 to stabilize it on its journey to England. By fortifying it so, they created port. Gradually, the port wines we know today evolved.
That same year, the first export of "vinho do Porto" was recorded in the Oporto Customs House. Since then, all port has been exported through Oporto.
You can find the full article here
Colombia
Twice the size of France, Colombia boasts myriad natural attractions, from Amazon jungles to some of the last high-altitude glaciers left in the tropics and pristine beaches along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Visitors can see pre-Columbian archaeological ruins and still-vibrant indigenous cultures as well as great museums in Medellin and Bogota.
Best of all, for now there are precious few camera-clickers to share them all with, because the boom still has a ways to go before catching up with more traveled South American destinations. Colombia is the continent's second-most-populous country, after Brazil, but ranked seventh in the region's tourist arrivals in 2004, according to the World Tourism Organization.
"It's still well off the gringo trail," said Michael Kohn, author of a new Colombia guidebook for Lonely Planet due out in June. "The only people you have to share the swaying wax palms and sweaty salsa clubs with are a handful of hardy travelers and crowds of friendly Colombians."
The biggest tourist magnet is the 16th-century walled city of Cartagena, whose reputation for beach-combing, stunning colonial architecture and all-night partying has long made it one of the Caribbean's top destinations.
The city is luring back the attention of the international cruise lines, whose deep-pocketed passengers are the most coveted in the tourist trade. Since 2003, the number of cruise ship arrivals has jumped by 45 percent, to 45,000 last year, the city's tourist board said.
To make room for all the tourists, a record 45 new hotels were built in Colombia last year, many in Cartagena and nearby beach resorts, according to the country's hotel trade association. Generous tax breaks to promote the tourist trade were in part responsible for the building spree.
Colombians are rejoicing over the belated discovery of their country. When The New York Times in February ran an article singing the praises of Bogota, it was announced with fanfare on the front page of the city's main daily El Tiempo.
Getting too far off the beaten path still entails huge risks, however.
Even most Colombians won't visit the Sierra Macarena National Park or the jungle-fringed beaches along the Pacific Ocean, areas effectively controlled by leftist guerrillas battling soldiers sent in to eradicate their coca fields and clandestine drug labs.
And even Colombia's urban centers remain far from a casual traveler's paradise. The tourism infrastructure, particularly Bogota's international airport, lags behind other Latin American destinations. While homicides have dropped to their lowest level in two decades, many life insurance policies still won't cover travel to Colombia.
Frommer's and Fodor's, two venerable guidebook companies, have never published a Colombia guide, and neither has any plans to do so now.
"Travel decisions are based almost entirely on perception, and unfortunately in Colombia's case, some of those perceptions square up too dangerously with reality," said Laura Kidder, editorial director for Fodor's. "I wouldn't recommend the place for a family vacation just yet."
You can find the full article here
Best of all, for now there are precious few camera-clickers to share them all with, because the boom still has a ways to go before catching up with more traveled South American destinations. Colombia is the continent's second-most-populous country, after Brazil, but ranked seventh in the region's tourist arrivals in 2004, according to the World Tourism Organization.
"It's still well off the gringo trail," said Michael Kohn, author of a new Colombia guidebook for Lonely Planet due out in June. "The only people you have to share the swaying wax palms and sweaty salsa clubs with are a handful of hardy travelers and crowds of friendly Colombians."
The biggest tourist magnet is the 16th-century walled city of Cartagena, whose reputation for beach-combing, stunning colonial architecture and all-night partying has long made it one of the Caribbean's top destinations.
The city is luring back the attention of the international cruise lines, whose deep-pocketed passengers are the most coveted in the tourist trade. Since 2003, the number of cruise ship arrivals has jumped by 45 percent, to 45,000 last year, the city's tourist board said.
To make room for all the tourists, a record 45 new hotels were built in Colombia last year, many in Cartagena and nearby beach resorts, according to the country's hotel trade association. Generous tax breaks to promote the tourist trade were in part responsible for the building spree.
Colombians are rejoicing over the belated discovery of their country. When The New York Times in February ran an article singing the praises of Bogota, it was announced with fanfare on the front page of the city's main daily El Tiempo.
Getting too far off the beaten path still entails huge risks, however.
Even most Colombians won't visit the Sierra Macarena National Park or the jungle-fringed beaches along the Pacific Ocean, areas effectively controlled by leftist guerrillas battling soldiers sent in to eradicate their coca fields and clandestine drug labs.
And even Colombia's urban centers remain far from a casual traveler's paradise. The tourism infrastructure, particularly Bogota's international airport, lags behind other Latin American destinations. While homicides have dropped to their lowest level in two decades, many life insurance policies still won't cover travel to Colombia.
Frommer's and Fodor's, two venerable guidebook companies, have never published a Colombia guide, and neither has any plans to do so now.
"Travel decisions are based almost entirely on perception, and unfortunately in Colombia's case, some of those perceptions square up too dangerously with reality," said Laura Kidder, editorial director for Fodor's. "I wouldn't recommend the place for a family vacation just yet."
You can find the full article here
Festival du Desert - Mali
No matter where you have been or what you have seen, arriving in Timbuktu is a thrill. It used to take months to get there, across the Sahara or along West Africa’s malarial rivers. Either way, you risked your life. In January, I made it in a couple of days, by plane, by car and by ferry across the great Niger River, on my way to a music festival in the desert. Travelling more slowly would have allowed time for my eyes to adjust: to see the chameleons on the shade trees, to recognise the half-finished building as a plush hotel, to see the bead of condensation on the side of a chilled drink for what it was, a small miracle. But my eyes were still used to seeing Europe, and to them, Timbuktu seemed absolutely remote - dusty, a little drab and extremely exotic.
I stayed in a hotel reached by sandy piste, not road, a place where you might expect to find camels lounging outside your door. At night, I ate capitaine, the fleshy Niger fish, and drank cold beer with my feet in the sand. In the morning, I found the market full of traders from upriver Mali, downriver Nig-eria, from Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso. Mukhtar, a tall, doe-eyed Wodaabe from Niger, asked what I was looking for. "A chech," I said: a turban. He had one on his head, which he was happy to sell for five pounds. I offered four. "I tell you what," he concluded as he piled the metres of blue cotton onto my head, "how about giving me three?" You need time to adjust to the strange ways of Timbuktu.
Like almost everyone in the market, Mukhtar was going to the Festival au Désert, the extraordinary weekend-long musical bonanza being staged far out in the sands. I had ima-gined myself in a 4WD, leaving Timbuktu and heading into empty desert. The reality proved to be a little different: so many people were heading that way, in Jeeps and Land Rovers, big desert trucks and vans, that the journey quickly became a rally that my driver was only too happy to be a part of. For three hours, he spun the wheel and I banged my head, jarred my shoulder and held on for dear life as the world passed quickly by. Then, suddenly, we were near Essakane, the landscape changed and I was faced with another of those moments requiring adjustment: where I saw white sand, he spotted a music festival.
Eat your hearts out, Reading and Glastonbury. Nowhere on earth touches the white dunes of Essakane as a festival site. A makeshift gate had been erected; at it, a man wrapped a band around my wrist to show I hadn’t gatecrashed. In the desert? Somewhere beyond Timbuktu? The site looked just as I imagine a trans-Saharan caravan camp must have looked in the days when people went by camel, with tents stretching as far as I could see. In the middle was something you wouldn’t have seen in a caravan camp: two concrete stages and a block of latrines. These were the only permanent structures, built after the last festival. Since then, the wind had done its work and carved a natural arena in front of them. Everything else had been brought from Timbuktu and beyond: every open-sided goatskin tent, woven mat and sleeping bag; each microphone, cable, speaker and the many lights that flooded the stage at night, and the technicians to work it all; the charcoal burnt in braziers across the dunes to keep us warm; the copious meals of pasta and rice, mutton and vegetables, the water, and the tea, as dark as the Tuareg who brewed it for us, as sweet as his smile. The warm beer, the necessities and souvenirs laid out in the shopping area - everything had been loaded into vehicles or onto camels and brought out for the festival. It was a unique meeting of people and place, and everyone had come to hear sweet music drifting off into the heart of the desert.
You can find the full article here
I stayed in a hotel reached by sandy piste, not road, a place where you might expect to find camels lounging outside your door. At night, I ate capitaine, the fleshy Niger fish, and drank cold beer with my feet in the sand. In the morning, I found the market full of traders from upriver Mali, downriver Nig-eria, from Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso. Mukhtar, a tall, doe-eyed Wodaabe from Niger, asked what I was looking for. "A chech," I said: a turban. He had one on his head, which he was happy to sell for five pounds. I offered four. "I tell you what," he concluded as he piled the metres of blue cotton onto my head, "how about giving me three?" You need time to adjust to the strange ways of Timbuktu.
Like almost everyone in the market, Mukhtar was going to the Festival au Désert, the extraordinary weekend-long musical bonanza being staged far out in the sands. I had ima-gined myself in a 4WD, leaving Timbuktu and heading into empty desert. The reality proved to be a little different: so many people were heading that way, in Jeeps and Land Rovers, big desert trucks and vans, that the journey quickly became a rally that my driver was only too happy to be a part of. For three hours, he spun the wheel and I banged my head, jarred my shoulder and held on for dear life as the world passed quickly by. Then, suddenly, we were near Essakane, the landscape changed and I was faced with another of those moments requiring adjustment: where I saw white sand, he spotted a music festival.
Eat your hearts out, Reading and Glastonbury. Nowhere on earth touches the white dunes of Essakane as a festival site. A makeshift gate had been erected; at it, a man wrapped a band around my wrist to show I hadn’t gatecrashed. In the desert? Somewhere beyond Timbuktu? The site looked just as I imagine a trans-Saharan caravan camp must have looked in the days when people went by camel, with tents stretching as far as I could see. In the middle was something you wouldn’t have seen in a caravan camp: two concrete stages and a block of latrines. These were the only permanent structures, built after the last festival. Since then, the wind had done its work and carved a natural arena in front of them. Everything else had been brought from Timbuktu and beyond: every open-sided goatskin tent, woven mat and sleeping bag; each microphone, cable, speaker and the many lights that flooded the stage at night, and the technicians to work it all; the charcoal burnt in braziers across the dunes to keep us warm; the copious meals of pasta and rice, mutton and vegetables, the water, and the tea, as dark as the Tuareg who brewed it for us, as sweet as his smile. The warm beer, the necessities and souvenirs laid out in the shopping area - everything had been loaded into vehicles or onto camels and brought out for the festival. It was a unique meeting of people and place, and everyone had come to hear sweet music drifting off into the heart of the desert.
You can find the full article here
Eritrea
Travelling in Eritrea always seems to contain this element of the unexpected. For most visitors, the biggest shock comes on landing in Asmara. The city, built by Italy’s brightest young architects when Benito Mussolini decided to use Eritrea as launchpad for his 1935 invasion of neighbouring Ethiopia, is one of the most architecturally consistent cities on the continent, a marvel of Modernist design.
With its marble-floored espresso bars, glorious Art Deco cinemas and palm-lined central boulevard - which survived Eritrea’s 30-year war against Ethiopia miraculously intact - it feels like Turin or Bologna. The sensation of strolling through an Italian provincial market town, rather than an African capital, is at its most surreal in the evening, when Eritrean youths link arms to stroll along Liberation Avenue in what looks very much like a passeggiata.
But this is a Turin suspended at 7,600ft, for Asmara lies at the same giddy altitude as some of Europe’s ski stations. Ferdinando Martini, Eritrea’s first Italian civilian governor, moved the capital up into the cool of the Hamasien highlands in the late 19th century when he found the sweltering heat of the port of Massawa unbearable. "Three seasons in two hours" boast the tourist posters, and they are exaggerating only slightly.
Sadly, few are reading those tourist posters these days. In the early 1990s, the rebel fighters who had just won their nation’s independence drew up ambitious plans for mass tourism. Eritrea could offer the coral reefs of Red Sea resorts without the fear of terrorism; it had all the sun of the Middle East without the Islamic regulations, as it is half Muslim, half Christian, and alcohol is not prohibited; and when it came to pre-biblical sites and mountain-top monasteries, its civilisations dated back as far as Ethiopia’s. Why, the Eritreans even had something to offer railway enthusiasts, as the steam engines of the colonial era were oiled down and sent puffing up the gravity-defying route to the plateau.
Then came a second, two-year border war with Ethiopia. That conflict, with the economic recession and political crisis that followed - in which President Isayas Afewerki alienated his former Western allies by jailing his critics and closing the private press - dispelled dreams of package tours and charter flights.
What remains is a fascinating venue for the adventurous traveller who likes wandering off the beaten track. And visitors’ money will go a long way: staying in a cheap, if perfectly respectable, pension and eating in Asmara’s best restaurants, I found my daily outgoings cost the equivalent of couple of drinks in a British pub.
Eritrea’s landscape alone is almost worth the air fare. I’ve made the journey scores of times, but the trip from Asmara, lying within touching distance of the morning stars, never ceases to astound me. The mountain ranges ripple into the distance, then through the blanket of cloud cover and down into the furnace of the coastal lowlands.
You can find the full article here
With its marble-floored espresso bars, glorious Art Deco cinemas and palm-lined central boulevard - which survived Eritrea’s 30-year war against Ethiopia miraculously intact - it feels like Turin or Bologna. The sensation of strolling through an Italian provincial market town, rather than an African capital, is at its most surreal in the evening, when Eritrean youths link arms to stroll along Liberation Avenue in what looks very much like a passeggiata.
But this is a Turin suspended at 7,600ft, for Asmara lies at the same giddy altitude as some of Europe’s ski stations. Ferdinando Martini, Eritrea’s first Italian civilian governor, moved the capital up into the cool of the Hamasien highlands in the late 19th century when he found the sweltering heat of the port of Massawa unbearable. "Three seasons in two hours" boast the tourist posters, and they are exaggerating only slightly.
Sadly, few are reading those tourist posters these days. In the early 1990s, the rebel fighters who had just won their nation’s independence drew up ambitious plans for mass tourism. Eritrea could offer the coral reefs of Red Sea resorts without the fear of terrorism; it had all the sun of the Middle East without the Islamic regulations, as it is half Muslim, half Christian, and alcohol is not prohibited; and when it came to pre-biblical sites and mountain-top monasteries, its civilisations dated back as far as Ethiopia’s. Why, the Eritreans even had something to offer railway enthusiasts, as the steam engines of the colonial era were oiled down and sent puffing up the gravity-defying route to the plateau.
Then came a second, two-year border war with Ethiopia. That conflict, with the economic recession and political crisis that followed - in which President Isayas Afewerki alienated his former Western allies by jailing his critics and closing the private press - dispelled dreams of package tours and charter flights.
What remains is a fascinating venue for the adventurous traveller who likes wandering off the beaten track. And visitors’ money will go a long way: staying in a cheap, if perfectly respectable, pension and eating in Asmara’s best restaurants, I found my daily outgoings cost the equivalent of couple of drinks in a British pub.
Eritrea’s landscape alone is almost worth the air fare. I’ve made the journey scores of times, but the trip from Asmara, lying within touching distance of the morning stars, never ceases to astound me. The mountain ranges ripple into the distance, then through the blanket of cloud cover and down into the furnace of the coastal lowlands.
You can find the full article here
Sao Tome e Principe
Scenically, it suggests something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel: before me, spooky yet magical, is a sprawling Portuguese plantation house. Derelict and desolate, after years of neglect it is wrapped in the rampant vegetation that covers São Tomé island, in the Gulf of Guinea west of Africa.
Vines loop around the veranda's broken balustrade. Moss grows between stone lintels in roofless rooms. In the grounds is a curious retro swimming pool, cracked and empty, on a lawn reclaimed by jungle fern. Yet with a little concentration, I can picture it half a century ago in colonial times, when the Portuguese cocoa baron and his family ruled the roost, commandeering African workers on this bottle-green equatorial outcrop.
'If roça houses like this were restored as luxury hotels, tourists would come and stay, right?' asks Mario Almeida, who is helping me discover São Tomé. Without doubt they would. The colonists may have been brutes, but they had an eye for sublime spots on which to build their cool, thick-walled homes. From this property, Roça de Porto Alegre, the view is spectacular: in one direction, a cobalt bay and white inlets; in the other, the looming pinnacles of extinct volcanoes. Some neighbouring roças have already begun welcoming overnight guests as word of the hidden pleasures of São Tomé and its sister, Príncipe, spreads among European travellers. Little by little, these twin islands - Africa's second smallest country - are drawing a growing trickle of travellers with a passion for forgotten tropical outposts.
You can find the full article here
Vines loop around the veranda's broken balustrade. Moss grows between stone lintels in roofless rooms. In the grounds is a curious retro swimming pool, cracked and empty, on a lawn reclaimed by jungle fern. Yet with a little concentration, I can picture it half a century ago in colonial times, when the Portuguese cocoa baron and his family ruled the roost, commandeering African workers on this bottle-green equatorial outcrop.
'If roça houses like this were restored as luxury hotels, tourists would come and stay, right?' asks Mario Almeida, who is helping me discover São Tomé. Without doubt they would. The colonists may have been brutes, but they had an eye for sublime spots on which to build their cool, thick-walled homes. From this property, Roça de Porto Alegre, the view is spectacular: in one direction, a cobalt bay and white inlets; in the other, the looming pinnacles of extinct volcanoes. Some neighbouring roças have already begun welcoming overnight guests as word of the hidden pleasures of São Tomé and its sister, Príncipe, spreads among European travellers. Little by little, these twin islands - Africa's second smallest country - are drawing a growing trickle of travellers with a passion for forgotten tropical outposts.
You can find the full article here
Burkina Faso
Diallo Munnyal has become rich by playing the cattle markets of West Africa: buying cows in Boni (in southern Mali) and selling them in Djibo, or buying in Djibo and selling in Ouagadougou, in the centre of Burkina Faso. His one problem is transport. He has the option of transporting the cows by lorry, at 5,000 CFA (£5) per head, but why should he do that when he can pay a few soggoobe a pittance to walk the whole herd there?
All over Africa, nomadic ways of life are fast disappearing, and the Fulani people of West Africa are no exception. Yet not all Fulanis have chosen Munnyal’s mercantile lifestyle - some men still lead their lives on the move, walking through the bush behind a herd of cows. These are the soggoobe, professional cattle-drivers who are paid to take other people’s animals to distant markets. Enduring scorching days and sleepless nights, they claim they have the hardest job on earth.
Every Thursday morning a group of soggoobe leaves Djibo and begins the long walk to Ouagadougou, a journey of nine days. I wanted to tag along.
Dikko Idrissa is from Jaw-jaw, a small village near Djibo. He is 47, and has been doing soggal since he was a boy. Starting today, he is responsible for a herd of 96 cows that Mr Munnyal wants to sell in Ouagadougou. From a group of clamouring herders ("Choose me! Choose me!"), Idrissa has picked three men to walk with him: Boureima (his nephew); Macha, from Monde So; and Diallo Hama, a young man from Mali. At the last minute, there was some commotion when a tuubaaku (white man) asked to accompany them; the matter was referred to Munnyal, who laughingly agreed.
You can find the full article here
All over Africa, nomadic ways of life are fast disappearing, and the Fulani people of West Africa are no exception. Yet not all Fulanis have chosen Munnyal’s mercantile lifestyle - some men still lead their lives on the move, walking through the bush behind a herd of cows. These are the soggoobe, professional cattle-drivers who are paid to take other people’s animals to distant markets. Enduring scorching days and sleepless nights, they claim they have the hardest job on earth.
Every Thursday morning a group of soggoobe leaves Djibo and begins the long walk to Ouagadougou, a journey of nine days. I wanted to tag along.
Dikko Idrissa is from Jaw-jaw, a small village near Djibo. He is 47, and has been doing soggal since he was a boy. Starting today, he is responsible for a herd of 96 cows that Mr Munnyal wants to sell in Ouagadougou. From a group of clamouring herders ("Choose me! Choose me!"), Idrissa has picked three men to walk with him: Boureima (his nephew); Macha, from Monde So; and Diallo Hama, a young man from Mali. At the last minute, there was some commotion when a tuubaaku (white man) asked to accompany them; the matter was referred to Munnyal, who laughingly agreed.
You can find the full article here
Fernando de Noronha - Brazil
The island of Fernando de Noronha is the natural habitat of a particularly dazzling species of South American fauna. They usually roam in pairs, the female recognisable by her silicone-enhanced curves and the male by his surfboard and impossibly well-toned physique. If you are rich, sporty and Brazilian, this is where you come for your holidays.
You have to be well-off, in local terms, because the only way to come is by air. The island - the largest in an archipelago of the same name - is 350km (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil. It attracts an outdoorsy crowd, since there is little to do apart from snorkle, surf and walk. Former Formula One driver Pedro Diniz flew in on his private jet when I was there. I arrived more modestly in a propellor plane on the short hop from Natal, the nearest city on the coast.
When the plane circles before landing you circumnavigate the island. You see the main island’s rugged volcanic contours which enclose some of the most untouched and beautiful beaches in Brazil, and the scattered, tiny black islands around it. It doesn’t look like a lush desert island - more as if someone has transplanted a part of the Hebrides to the equatorial south Atlantic.
You can find the full article here
You have to be well-off, in local terms, because the only way to come is by air. The island - the largest in an archipelago of the same name - is 350km (220 miles) off the northeast coast of Brazil. It attracts an outdoorsy crowd, since there is little to do apart from snorkle, surf and walk. Former Formula One driver Pedro Diniz flew in on his private jet when I was there. I arrived more modestly in a propellor plane on the short hop from Natal, the nearest city on the coast.
When the plane circles before landing you circumnavigate the island. You see the main island’s rugged volcanic contours which enclose some of the most untouched and beautiful beaches in Brazil, and the scattered, tiny black islands around it. It doesn’t look like a lush desert island - more as if someone has transplanted a part of the Hebrides to the equatorial south Atlantic.
You can find the full article here
Whale-watching in Patagonia - Argentina
Designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999 and recognised the world over for its remarkable marine life, the Peninsula Valdés in the Chubut province of Argentina is an ecologist's dream. The Southern Right Whales come to the sheltered bay of the Golfo Nuevo between June and early December to mate and raise their calves before heading further South in search of food. José Luis told us there was an estimated population of 600 whales in the Gulf during this period.
"It looks like we have two males trying to impress a female," José Luis explained. Well they certainly had me impressed. Weighing in at between 40 and 60 tonnes, these majestic and surprisingly graceful creatures were putting on quite a show. One of the frisky fellows approached us so curiously that he was almost head-butting the side of the boat and holding our gaze as if to say: "If you're going to stare at me then I'm going to stare right back - and I'm bigger than you." He then slowly sunk under the surface and we followed his mottled back disappearing underneath the boat and out the other side.
"I just can't believe how close they come," my friend Elly and I gasped at each other as José Luis nodded knowingly.
The distinguishing features of the Southern Right Whales are the knobbly callosities, beige in colour, scattered over the head. The dispersal of them is particular to the individual and does not change over the course of the years so, just like a fingerprint, serves to identify each one.
Over the course of two hours we had followed five different whales and there was always one within view. José Luis started up the boat's engine to lead us back to shore, much to our protests. We were waiting for a glimpse of the iconic flick of the tale that graces many a student Athena poster. For the time being at least, the whales were not going to oblige and we headed back to dry land to continue our journey.
The arid scrub land of the peninsula abounds with further wildlife spotting opportunities and over the course of the day we caught sight of flamingos wading in a shimmering salt lake, a Patagonian ostrich standing tall in the bushes and an armadillo scrabbling in the dirt just metres away. A breezy walk along the cliff tops was rewarded with the sight of tens of Elephant Seals languishing lazily on the beach below. In high season, the number grows to as many as seven thousand. Our one regret was forgetting the binoculars.
You can find the full article here
"It looks like we have two males trying to impress a female," José Luis explained. Well they certainly had me impressed. Weighing in at between 40 and 60 tonnes, these majestic and surprisingly graceful creatures were putting on quite a show. One of the frisky fellows approached us so curiously that he was almost head-butting the side of the boat and holding our gaze as if to say: "If you're going to stare at me then I'm going to stare right back - and I'm bigger than you." He then slowly sunk under the surface and we followed his mottled back disappearing underneath the boat and out the other side.
"I just can't believe how close they come," my friend Elly and I gasped at each other as José Luis nodded knowingly.
The distinguishing features of the Southern Right Whales are the knobbly callosities, beige in colour, scattered over the head. The dispersal of them is particular to the individual and does not change over the course of the years so, just like a fingerprint, serves to identify each one.
Over the course of two hours we had followed five different whales and there was always one within view. José Luis started up the boat's engine to lead us back to shore, much to our protests. We were waiting for a glimpse of the iconic flick of the tale that graces many a student Athena poster. For the time being at least, the whales were not going to oblige and we headed back to dry land to continue our journey.
The arid scrub land of the peninsula abounds with further wildlife spotting opportunities and over the course of the day we caught sight of flamingos wading in a shimmering salt lake, a Patagonian ostrich standing tall in the bushes and an armadillo scrabbling in the dirt just metres away. A breezy walk along the cliff tops was rewarded with the sight of tens of Elephant Seals languishing lazily on the beach below. In high season, the number grows to as many as seven thousand. Our one regret was forgetting the binoculars.
You can find the full article here
Yucatan - Mexico
Mexico has the lot: a great climate, eye-catching scenery, knockout beaches and a gripping cultural history. The only trouble is, it’s vast, and in a single trip you could never cover it all. So why try? Skip the squalor and sprawl of Mexico City, the tack of Tijuana and the vast distances you’d need to cover to see the territory between them, and make a beeline for the Yucatan Peninsula. Jutting out between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, the region is everything that’s good about Mexico.
For a start, this is the northern heartland of what was once Mayan country. The region is freckled with some of the most impressive archeological sites ever discovered; the ancient cities of Chichen Itza and Uxmal top a mighty impressive list. The Yucatan also has perhaps the most picturesque colonial cities in Mexico - Merida and Campeche stand out - while the countryside is full of evocative evidence of an era when this was one of the agricultural powerhouses of the world.
All over, you’ll find the dramatically dilapidated shells of haciendas - the former homes of the conquistadors, where plantation, processing plant and stately home were one and the same. The best of these have been converted into exquisite hotels, and if you like your five-star luxury to come with six-star character, they are exceptional places to stay.
Once the history’s done, there are the beaches. The so-called Mayan Riviera, stretching from Cancun to Tulum, has some of the best in Mexico, as well as a mushrooming selection of Caribbean-side hideaway hotels.
Here is our guide to a two-week, twin-centre break on the Yucatan, making use of an open-jaw flight into Campeche or Merida and out of Cancun. Spend your first six nights at two or three of those charming haciendas, then drive a few hours east and chill out with beachside cocktails at your pick of the resorts.
You can find the full article here
For a start, this is the northern heartland of what was once Mayan country. The region is freckled with some of the most impressive archeological sites ever discovered; the ancient cities of Chichen Itza and Uxmal top a mighty impressive list. The Yucatan also has perhaps the most picturesque colonial cities in Mexico - Merida and Campeche stand out - while the countryside is full of evocative evidence of an era when this was one of the agricultural powerhouses of the world.
All over, you’ll find the dramatically dilapidated shells of haciendas - the former homes of the conquistadors, where plantation, processing plant and stately home were one and the same. The best of these have been converted into exquisite hotels, and if you like your five-star luxury to come with six-star character, they are exceptional places to stay.
Once the history’s done, there are the beaches. The so-called Mayan Riviera, stretching from Cancun to Tulum, has some of the best in Mexico, as well as a mushrooming selection of Caribbean-side hideaway hotels.
Here is our guide to a two-week, twin-centre break on the Yucatan, making use of an open-jaw flight into Campeche or Merida and out of Cancun. Spend your first six nights at two or three of those charming haciendas, then drive a few hours east and chill out with beachside cocktails at your pick of the resorts.
You can find the full article here
Kayaking in Mexico
The only light came from a crescent moon and an uncountable number of stars in the jet-black sky. Cicadas chirruped, the air was warm, and so too was the sand I lolloped on, just feet away from the breaking waves.
I’d had a dinner of chicken and rice, played a dice game and chatted with a couple from New York. It felt like 1am and time to head for my tent, but in fact it was not even eight o’clock.
"Out here, we call 8pm ‘Baja midnight’," said Bernado, our guide, in a matter-of-fact way. "Most people are in bed by 7.30."
"Baja" is Baja California, the long, dangly bit on Mexico’s west coast. Towards the southern tip, a half hour’s boat ride from the city of La Paz, Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida are two islands perfect for sea-kayaking around, and I was spending a week doing just that with 11 others.
In the Sea of Cortez that laps the eastern side of the peninsula, the waters are warm, calm and filled with all sorts of fascinating creatures, from tuna and turtles to manta rays and whales, the beaches are the stuff of chocolate-advert dreams, and there’s starkly barren scenery that would make a spaghetti-western director weep. Tall, muddy-red volcanic cliffs and hills are strewn with boulders and dappled with forests of nine-metre-high cacti. Hundreds of pelicans laze on rocks or cruise on air currents, every so often dive-bombing fish that venture too close to the surface.
La Paz, a two-hour flight south from Los Angeles, makes a pleasant introduction to Mexico. In the evenings, families and courting couples promenade on the five-kilometre (three-mile) Malecón, the city’s seafront. In the centre of town, people sit on benches and watch the world go by in Plaza Constitución, by the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Paz, while stalls selling cheap snacks do a roaring trade as thermometers nudge 30C.
You can find the full article here
I’d had a dinner of chicken and rice, played a dice game and chatted with a couple from New York. It felt like 1am and time to head for my tent, but in fact it was not even eight o’clock.
"Out here, we call 8pm ‘Baja midnight’," said Bernado, our guide, in a matter-of-fact way. "Most people are in bed by 7.30."
"Baja" is Baja California, the long, dangly bit on Mexico’s west coast. Towards the southern tip, a half hour’s boat ride from the city of La Paz, Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida are two islands perfect for sea-kayaking around, and I was spending a week doing just that with 11 others.
In the Sea of Cortez that laps the eastern side of the peninsula, the waters are warm, calm and filled with all sorts of fascinating creatures, from tuna and turtles to manta rays and whales, the beaches are the stuff of chocolate-advert dreams, and there’s starkly barren scenery that would make a spaghetti-western director weep. Tall, muddy-red volcanic cliffs and hills are strewn with boulders and dappled with forests of nine-metre-high cacti. Hundreds of pelicans laze on rocks or cruise on air currents, every so often dive-bombing fish that venture too close to the surface.
La Paz, a two-hour flight south from Los Angeles, makes a pleasant introduction to Mexico. In the evenings, families and courting couples promenade on the five-kilometre (three-mile) Malecón, the city’s seafront. In the centre of town, people sit on benches and watch the world go by in Plaza Constitución, by the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Paz, while stalls selling cheap snacks do a roaring trade as thermometers nudge 30C.
You can find the full article here
Panama
Let’s compile a list of everything we know about Panama. Hats, obviously. A canal, of course. General Noriega ... ummm ... more hats. Ah, the joy of going to a country most people know hardly anything about. Which is what I want to convince you to do.
Panama might be off the radar, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a cracking place for a holiday. It has all the unspoilt beaches, wild countryside, exotic fauna and historical richness you could ever wish for, and, as far as travel frontiers go, it’s decidedly soft — no tinpot regimes, no gun-toting militia, no famines or plagues. In fact, the only thing likely to interrupt your leisurely terrace breakfast in the warm Central American sunshine is the noisy arrival of a nosy toucan. You can even drink the water.
On the map, Panama is little more than a sinuous squiggle that connects the two Americas — but in that squiggle, you will find more bird species than there are in the whole of Europe, hanging out in more tree types than there are in the whole of North America. They share space with beautiful old colonial towns and a beautiful modern capital city — a mini-Miami, with all the excellent bars, restaurants and shops that go with it.
As for the hats, they’re actually from Ecuador — but unless you’re the Man from Del Monte, you can live with that.
You can find the full article here
Panama might be off the radar, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a cracking place for a holiday. It has all the unspoilt beaches, wild countryside, exotic fauna and historical richness you could ever wish for, and, as far as travel frontiers go, it’s decidedly soft — no tinpot regimes, no gun-toting militia, no famines or plagues. In fact, the only thing likely to interrupt your leisurely terrace breakfast in the warm Central American sunshine is the noisy arrival of a nosy toucan. You can even drink the water.
On the map, Panama is little more than a sinuous squiggle that connects the two Americas — but in that squiggle, you will find more bird species than there are in the whole of Europe, hanging out in more tree types than there are in the whole of North America. They share space with beautiful old colonial towns and a beautiful modern capital city — a mini-Miami, with all the excellent bars, restaurants and shops that go with it.
As for the hats, they’re actually from Ecuador — but unless you’re the Man from Del Monte, you can live with that.
You can find the full article here
Uruguay
Uruguay is a small chunk of a country wedged between mighty neighbours, and getting a handle on it had been difficult from the start. Reminders of other lands abound. The Spanish, who first arrived in the 16th century, left behind their language and a few colonial settlements, but most of the touchstones from other continents date from rather later.
During the mid-1800s, a flood of immigrants from Europe arrived here in search of a new life. Earlier in our journey, we’d passed a signpost for Colonia Suiza, a town settled by colonists from Switzerland. The pasta I’d eaten for lunch was as good as any I’ve tasted in Italy, and the vineyard next to the restaurant was straight out of Tuscany.
At least Fernando matched my mental stereotype of a middle-aged South American male. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick, curly hair that gleamed with brilliant-ine and was slightly too long to be fashionable in Europe. With a penchant for Cuban cigars, he looked as if he’d just stepped out of The Boys from Brazil.
Driving into the small settlement of Carmelo, I began to recognise other telltale signs of a proper indigenous culture. Initially, the teenagers zipping along the tree-lined streets on mopeds put me in mind of small-town France, but the Gallic atmosphere evaporated when I realised that everyone was drinking tea.
People walking the streets, people sitting in the sun- dappled plaza, even the youths aboard their motor scooters were supping maté, the South American staple brewed from the dried leaf of Ilex paraguariensis, a relative of the common holly. Every man, woman and adolescent was equipped with a gourd in the hand and a Thermos of hot water slung on a strap across the shoulder, ever ready to top up their day-long infusion.
Cafes, restaurants and hotels will happily refill your flask, Fernando told me. The brew is drunk through a straw, traditionally made of silver, hence the ability to drink while in motion. We think we’re addicted to tea in Britain, but imagine wandering the streets armed with a cuppa and a steaming teapot.
Soon, however, the reminders of Europe returned. We passed what looked like three-sided open-air squash courts — frontons, Fernando said, built by Basque settlers who wanted to play pelota in their new home. British workers who came to build the railroads brought their games too, though some have proved more enduring than others. Uruguay’s oldest football club, Peñarol, was originally formed in 1891 as the Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club.
Indeed, it was a legacy of the old country that had drawn me to this corner of South America in the first place. Few people in the UK know much about Uruguay, but there is one town in the west of the country that almost every Brit has heard of. I was heading towards a settlement whose products occupy an iconic position in Britain’s culinary history. I was on my way to Fray Bentos.
Uruguay was built on the products of its country- side, and in its heyday, the meat-processing plant was a state-of-the-art facility. It was under British management between the 1920s and the early 1970s, and sits on the waterfront of the River Uruguay. The cows were herded in at one end and tins of corned beef emerged at the other. Pursued by Nazi submarines, these chunks of cured meat arrived to sustain the allied effort in the second world war. In 1943, the factory exported 16m tins to Europe.
Not any more. Today, the town doesn’t even produce the whiff of a meat pie. The factory closed in the late 1970s, shortly after it was nationalised, and the brand name was sold to Campbell’s. The last tin of Fray Bentos corned beef I bought was produced in Argentina.
You can find the full article here
During the mid-1800s, a flood of immigrants from Europe arrived here in search of a new life. Earlier in our journey, we’d passed a signpost for Colonia Suiza, a town settled by colonists from Switzerland. The pasta I’d eaten for lunch was as good as any I’ve tasted in Italy, and the vineyard next to the restaurant was straight out of Tuscany.
At least Fernando matched my mental stereotype of a middle-aged South American male. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick, curly hair that gleamed with brilliant-ine and was slightly too long to be fashionable in Europe. With a penchant for Cuban cigars, he looked as if he’d just stepped out of The Boys from Brazil.
Driving into the small settlement of Carmelo, I began to recognise other telltale signs of a proper indigenous culture. Initially, the teenagers zipping along the tree-lined streets on mopeds put me in mind of small-town France, but the Gallic atmosphere evaporated when I realised that everyone was drinking tea.
People walking the streets, people sitting in the sun- dappled plaza, even the youths aboard their motor scooters were supping maté, the South American staple brewed from the dried leaf of Ilex paraguariensis, a relative of the common holly. Every man, woman and adolescent was equipped with a gourd in the hand and a Thermos of hot water slung on a strap across the shoulder, ever ready to top up their day-long infusion.
Cafes, restaurants and hotels will happily refill your flask, Fernando told me. The brew is drunk through a straw, traditionally made of silver, hence the ability to drink while in motion. We think we’re addicted to tea in Britain, but imagine wandering the streets armed with a cuppa and a steaming teapot.
Soon, however, the reminders of Europe returned. We passed what looked like three-sided open-air squash courts — frontons, Fernando said, built by Basque settlers who wanted to play pelota in their new home. British workers who came to build the railroads brought their games too, though some have proved more enduring than others. Uruguay’s oldest football club, Peñarol, was originally formed in 1891 as the Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club.
Indeed, it was a legacy of the old country that had drawn me to this corner of South America in the first place. Few people in the UK know much about Uruguay, but there is one town in the west of the country that almost every Brit has heard of. I was heading towards a settlement whose products occupy an iconic position in Britain’s culinary history. I was on my way to Fray Bentos.
Uruguay was built on the products of its country- side, and in its heyday, the meat-processing plant was a state-of-the-art facility. It was under British management between the 1920s and the early 1970s, and sits on the waterfront of the River Uruguay. The cows were herded in at one end and tins of corned beef emerged at the other. Pursued by Nazi submarines, these chunks of cured meat arrived to sustain the allied effort in the second world war. In 1943, the factory exported 16m tins to Europe.
Not any more. Today, the town doesn’t even produce the whiff of a meat pie. The factory closed in the late 1970s, shortly after it was nationalised, and the brand name was sold to Campbell’s. The last tin of Fray Bentos corned beef I bought was produced in Argentina.
You can find the full article here
Friday, March 24, 2006
Lisbon - Portugal
These are few more immediately likeable capitals than Lisbon (Lisboa). A lively and varied place, it remains in some ways curiously provincial, rooted as much in the 1920s as the 2000s. Pre-World War I wooden trams clank up outrageous gradients, past mosaic pavements and Art Nouveau cafés, and the medieval, village-like quarter of Alfama which hangs below the city's São Jorge castle. Modern Lisbon, with a population of just over 3 million, has kept an easy-going, human pace and scale, with little of the underlying violence of most cities and ports of its size. It also boasts a vibrant, cosmopolitan identity, with large communities of ex-colony Brazilians, Africans (from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde) and Asians (from Macao, Goa and East Timor). Many came over to work on two major urban development projects in the Nineties: the preparations for the European City of Culture in 1994 and the Expo 98 and the European Soccer Championships in 2004. Lisbon invested heavily in these ventures and the rejuvenation of the city with new road, hotel, metro and bridge schemes. Disused dockland has been reclaimed and communication links improved with several showcase pieces of architecture and engineering like Santiago Calatrava's impressive Gare de Oriente and his sleek fourteen kilometre-long Vasco de Gama bridge which links Lisbon airport to a network of national motorways.
The Great Earthquake of 1755 (followed by a tidal wave and fire) destroyed most of the city's big buildings and twenty years of frantic reconstruction led to many impressive new palaces and churches and the street grid pattern spanning the seven hills of Lisbon. Several buildings from Portugal's golden age survived the quake - notably the Torre de Belém , the Castelo de São Jorge and the Monastery of Jerónimos at Belém. Many of the city's more modern sites also demand attention: the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian , a museum and cultural complex with superb collections of ancient and modern art and the futuristic Oceanarium at the Parque das Nações, the largest of its kind in Europe. Half an hour south of Lisbon dunes stretch along the Costa da Caparica and twenty kilometres north you'll pass the coastal resorts of Estoril and Cascais before reaching the lush wooded heights and royal palaces of Sintra and the monastery of Mafra , one of the most extraordinary buildings in the country.
You can find the full article here
The Great Earthquake of 1755 (followed by a tidal wave and fire) destroyed most of the city's big buildings and twenty years of frantic reconstruction led to many impressive new palaces and churches and the street grid pattern spanning the seven hills of Lisbon. Several buildings from Portugal's golden age survived the quake - notably the Torre de Belém , the Castelo de São Jorge and the Monastery of Jerónimos at Belém. Many of the city's more modern sites also demand attention: the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian , a museum and cultural complex with superb collections of ancient and modern art and the futuristic Oceanarium at the Parque das Nações, the largest of its kind in Europe. Half an hour south of Lisbon dunes stretch along the Costa da Caparica and twenty kilometres north you'll pass the coastal resorts of Estoril and Cascais before reaching the lush wooded heights and royal palaces of Sintra and the monastery of Mafra , one of the most extraordinary buildings in the country.
You can find the full article here
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Atacama Desert - Chile
The desert is life and adventure
...Discover for yourself the many wonders of the Atacama Desert, the most arid desert in the world. Spectacular landscapes and natural phenomena abound wherver you look.
And in all this immensity, tiny villages such as Parinacota, Caspana, Socoroma, Surire or Isluga still maintain the traditions of their Aymara ancestors, and the influence of Spanish colonization is still evident in the architecture of their churches. The city of Calama, 214 kilometers from Antofagasta, is an oasis in the middle of the desert. With its fine selection of hotels, this in an ideal basecamp for sightseeing trips to nearby places of interest such as the El Tatio Geysers 3,550 meters above sea level, where great pillars of water and steam which rise up some 10 meters high and reach temperatures of 85oC. 100 kilometers to the southeastlies the arid wasteland of the Valley of the Moon. Towards the north, the village of Chiu-Chiu has several attractions including the nearby 150 meter deep Chiu-Chiu Lagoon, an astonishing natural phenomenon in the middle of the desert.
From Calama, you can also visit the huge amphitheatre of the biggest open-cast mine in the world-Chuquicamata. As the largest of the twelve salt flats in the Northern Region, the Salt Lake of Atacama is especially interesting. It stretches out like a vast white lake as far as the eye can see and its banks are the habitat of unique species of fauna.
The North is entertainment and relaxation
The main cities of the North, Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta are situated on the coast. They all have airports linking them to the rest of the country, and are connected by road to each other and to the most important sightseeing areas. Comfortable hotels, motels and hostels, usually located on or near the sea in these towns, are available for your enjoyment and relaxation. Ther'es no time for boredom in the North... every day you can choose from the delicious variety of local dishes usually based on fish and seafood. For those who like shopping there are lots of local markets in Arica where yo'ure bound to come across that unexpected treasure, or you can visit the Duty Free Zone in Iquique. The choice is endless! Spend the afternoons sunbathing on one of the numerous beaches lulled by the sea breeze and the feeling of endless space! At night enjoy a game of back gammon, roulette or even the slot machines in the Casinos of Arica or Iquique where you can also dine and dance.
You can find the full article here
...Discover for yourself the many wonders of the Atacama Desert, the most arid desert in the world. Spectacular landscapes and natural phenomena abound wherver you look.
And in all this immensity, tiny villages such as Parinacota, Caspana, Socoroma, Surire or Isluga still maintain the traditions of their Aymara ancestors, and the influence of Spanish colonization is still evident in the architecture of their churches. The city of Calama, 214 kilometers from Antofagasta, is an oasis in the middle of the desert. With its fine selection of hotels, this in an ideal basecamp for sightseeing trips to nearby places of interest such as the El Tatio Geysers 3,550 meters above sea level, where great pillars of water and steam which rise up some 10 meters high and reach temperatures of 85oC. 100 kilometers to the southeastlies the arid wasteland of the Valley of the Moon. Towards the north, the village of Chiu-Chiu has several attractions including the nearby 150 meter deep Chiu-Chiu Lagoon, an astonishing natural phenomenon in the middle of the desert.
From Calama, you can also visit the huge amphitheatre of the biggest open-cast mine in the world-Chuquicamata. As the largest of the twelve salt flats in the Northern Region, the Salt Lake of Atacama is especially interesting. It stretches out like a vast white lake as far as the eye can see and its banks are the habitat of unique species of fauna.
The North is entertainment and relaxation
The main cities of the North, Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta are situated on the coast. They all have airports linking them to the rest of the country, and are connected by road to each other and to the most important sightseeing areas. Comfortable hotels, motels and hostels, usually located on or near the sea in these towns, are available for your enjoyment and relaxation. Ther'es no time for boredom in the North... every day you can choose from the delicious variety of local dishes usually based on fish and seafood. For those who like shopping there are lots of local markets in Arica where yo'ure bound to come across that unexpected treasure, or you can visit the Duty Free Zone in Iquique. The choice is endless! Spend the afternoons sunbathing on one of the numerous beaches lulled by the sea breeze and the feeling of endless space! At night enjoy a game of back gammon, roulette or even the slot machines in the Casinos of Arica or Iquique where you can also dine and dance.
You can find the full article here
The ancestral heritage of northern Chile
The native peoples of northern Chile are a true testament to the human ability to adapt to any environment. Living more than 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) above sea level on the altiplano (high plateau) or along the edge of the driest desert in the world, these groups have survived and reached modern times as part of the enormous range of beauty and diversity that Chile has to offer.
Hiking through the impressive landscape of northern Chile is an experience that everyone should have at least once. It's even more impressive when we consider that people have lived in these remote and inhospitable places for centuries and we have just recently entered into contact with them: people with sun-darkened skin and used to the silence of the mountains and desert. These are the Aymaras and Atacameñans, extraordinary people who live in the most incredible places.
Strictly speaking, the Aymaras are a community that conserves its language once the only one spoken in the entire altiplano area. The many groups included under the umbrella of the Aymara name are dispersed throughout Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, where they number approximately 48,000 people. They are primarily animal herders and practice simple agriculture using ancestral techniques. Their small villages have some of the oldest and most beautiful churches of Chile's extreme north, and their fiestas are a colorful contrast to their normally sober way of life.
The Atacameñans are a much smaller group of nearly 3,000 people who have already lost their original language called kunza. With their alpacas, llamas, and terraced agriculture, they live in small oases in the Andean foothills and along the outskirts of San Pedro de Atacama, where much of the knowledge of these people is concentrated. Discoveries made by Jesuit priest Gustave Le Paige allowed the creation of a museum that has earned San Pedro fame and vitality. Other Atacameñan settlements, now long-abandoned, are visible in the pukarás, military-style stone fortifications found throughout northern and central Chile.
You can find the full article here
Hiking through the impressive landscape of northern Chile is an experience that everyone should have at least once. It's even more impressive when we consider that people have lived in these remote and inhospitable places for centuries and we have just recently entered into contact with them: people with sun-darkened skin and used to the silence of the mountains and desert. These are the Aymaras and Atacameñans, extraordinary people who live in the most incredible places.
Strictly speaking, the Aymaras are a community that conserves its language once the only one spoken in the entire altiplano area. The many groups included under the umbrella of the Aymara name are dispersed throughout Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, where they number approximately 48,000 people. They are primarily animal herders and practice simple agriculture using ancestral techniques. Their small villages have some of the oldest and most beautiful churches of Chile's extreme north, and their fiestas are a colorful contrast to their normally sober way of life.
The Atacameñans are a much smaller group of nearly 3,000 people who have already lost their original language called kunza. With their alpacas, llamas, and terraced agriculture, they live in small oases in the Andean foothills and along the outskirts of San Pedro de Atacama, where much of the knowledge of these people is concentrated. Discoveries made by Jesuit priest Gustave Le Paige allowed the creation of a museum that has earned San Pedro fame and vitality. Other Atacameñan settlements, now long-abandoned, are visible in the pukarás, military-style stone fortifications found throughout northern and central Chile.
You can find the full article here
Tijuana - Mexico
Tijuana has been an infamous party town since, and it has long been a rite of passage for Americans under 21 to head to "La Revo", the long main street, to get royally and legally drunk on cheap beer and margaritas.
The place still feels very seedy, and the smell of cheating hangs heavy in the air. The main street is lined with charmless bars blaring distorted music, and as I walk past one place a bouncer calls out: "Hey, you wanna see some naked bitches?"
Below the bars are rows of souvenir shops selling leather goods, fireworks, badly painted pictures of Bob Marley, cowboy boots and hammocks, all staffed by people who pounce like pumas and try to drag you inside. (My favourite spruiking line: "Come in and buy something you don't need!") The rest is girlie bars with names like Skandalo, internet cafes and places offering "Aztec massage". My Mexican friends were right. It's hellish.
You can find the full article here
The place still feels very seedy, and the smell of cheating hangs heavy in the air. The main street is lined with charmless bars blaring distorted music, and as I walk past one place a bouncer calls out: "Hey, you wanna see some naked bitches?"
Below the bars are rows of souvenir shops selling leather goods, fireworks, badly painted pictures of Bob Marley, cowboy boots and hammocks, all staffed by people who pounce like pumas and try to drag you inside. (My favourite spruiking line: "Come in and buy something you don't need!") The rest is girlie bars with names like Skandalo, internet cafes and places offering "Aztec massage". My Mexican friends were right. It's hellish.
You can find the full article here
Guyana
Guyana, a country of exceptional natural beauty, is a splendid combination of the Caribbean and South America, with fascinating touches of a sometimes turbulent past. Perched on the north-east corner of the South American continent, Guyana stretches 450 miles from its long Atlantic coastline into dense equatorial forest and the broad savannah of the Rupununi.
The picturesque capital and primary port is Georgetown, a city of comfortable, modern hotels, fine colonial buildings, and broad, tree-lined boulevards. The striking wooden architecture is reminiscent of Guyana's centuries as a Dutch, and then a British colony. Georgetown offers an evocative introduction to the land of Guyana. Don't miss the imposing St. George's Cathedral, reputed to be the tallest wooden building in the world.
Life in Guyana is dominated by mighty rivers, including the Demerara, the Berbice and the Essequibo, which provide essential highways into the rain forests and jungles of the interior. Mankind has made little impact here, and today Guyana remains one of the world's most exciting destinations for adventuresome travel and exploration.
You can find the full article here
The picturesque capital and primary port is Georgetown, a city of comfortable, modern hotels, fine colonial buildings, and broad, tree-lined boulevards. The striking wooden architecture is reminiscent of Guyana's centuries as a Dutch, and then a British colony. Georgetown offers an evocative introduction to the land of Guyana. Don't miss the imposing St. George's Cathedral, reputed to be the tallest wooden building in the world.
Life in Guyana is dominated by mighty rivers, including the Demerara, the Berbice and the Essequibo, which provide essential highways into the rain forests and jungles of the interior. Mankind has made little impact here, and today Guyana remains one of the world's most exciting destinations for adventuresome travel and exploration.
You can find the full article here
Machu Picchu - Peru
Everyone sees pictures of Machu Picchu and thinks to themselves: wow, that place looks incredible. Wouldn't it be amazing to go there? But then I'm sure they are assailed by doubts related to the logistical difficulty of getting there, safety, language, etc. So I intend to answer these commonly asked questions. But I also intend for this guide to be for those who have already done some homework and want some tips and more in-depth advice.
This guide is obviously for those who wish to see Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley in an independent fashion. That being said there's a lot of information here even for those who'd rather go with a tour, and I think this write-up will help you choose which tour is right for you. Should you go the private tour way the information here may help you coordinate your trip with your guide. As far as my thoughts on "should I take a tour?" I will predictably side with the do-it-yourself camp. With all the information available, both here and in guidebooks and other websites, seeing Machu Picchu yourself is a piece of cake.
You can find the full article here
This guide is obviously for those who wish to see Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley in an independent fashion. That being said there's a lot of information here even for those who'd rather go with a tour, and I think this write-up will help you choose which tour is right for you. Should you go the private tour way the information here may help you coordinate your trip with your guide. As far as my thoughts on "should I take a tour?" I will predictably side with the do-it-yourself camp. With all the information available, both here and in guidebooks and other websites, seeing Machu Picchu yourself is a piece of cake.
You can find the full article here
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Bermuda
As pastel peach and pink and yellow drifted past, I realised what a bicycle ride through Bermuda constitutes: a journey through a sweet shop. Against a backdrop of deep green land and bright blue skies, the view is a confection of elementary colour. Strange, I might have mused, that so sophisticated a territory could comprise so blessedly simple a palette. But instead, my mind mulled over Bermuda's history: a rich tale of accident, fragility and intrigue.
As you meander through the exposed tips of an extinct volcano, the big picture begins to emerge. And a good course to set is a triangle: starting right in the middle of Bermuda. Sweep south-west to the elbow of the territory; arc north to the furthest tip, then cut smartly across the turquoise sea back to where you started.
You can find the full article here
As you meander through the exposed tips of an extinct volcano, the big picture begins to emerge. And a good course to set is a triangle: starting right in the middle of Bermuda. Sweep south-west to the elbow of the territory; arc north to the furthest tip, then cut smartly across the turquoise sea back to where you started.
You can find the full article here
Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop by Emma Larkin
A journalist and regular visitor to Burma, Emma Larkin spent a year following Orwell's Burmese footprints to see if there was any more to this joke than unhappy coincidence. 'I began to imagine that Orwell had seen something in Burma, had had some thread of an idea that had worked its way into all his writing.'
The central theme of this engaging work is also its central flaw. If such a thread existed, Larkin, like Orwell's many biographers, cannot find it. However, Larkin's reportage on modern Burma is every bit as fascinating as Orwell's Burmese essays of the 1930s. Her ability to listen to the Burmese without putting words in their mouths and her unexaggerated prose paint an enlightening portrait of the country.
Forty years of dictatorship have left their mark on the population. One per cent of the 50 million Burmese are in the army, another 18 million are members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association, who, in return for better educational and employment opportunities, form a rent-a-mob for the military junta. Of the remaining 30 million an unknown proportion are informers for military intelligence.
As one of Larkin's acquaintances tells her: "It doesn't make any difference whether they have informers or not. It is enough that we believe their informers are everywhere. After that we do their work for them."
Larkin meets many Burmese who smuggle around forbidden texts, make jokes and allegories from their desperate situation and exhort foreigners to spread word of it. This despite the threat, and often experience, of torture and years in jail for any number of vague crimes against the state. 'In Burma prison exists as an ever present underworld into which anyone can fall at anytime.' On top of this repression, Burma has gone, in 50 years, from being the richest to the poorest country in south east Asia, yet people struggle on.
You can find the full article here
The central theme of this engaging work is also its central flaw. If such a thread existed, Larkin, like Orwell's many biographers, cannot find it. However, Larkin's reportage on modern Burma is every bit as fascinating as Orwell's Burmese essays of the 1930s. Her ability to listen to the Burmese without putting words in their mouths and her unexaggerated prose paint an enlightening portrait of the country.
Forty years of dictatorship have left their mark on the population. One per cent of the 50 million Burmese are in the army, another 18 million are members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association, who, in return for better educational and employment opportunities, form a rent-a-mob for the military junta. Of the remaining 30 million an unknown proportion are informers for military intelligence.
As one of Larkin's acquaintances tells her: "It doesn't make any difference whether they have informers or not. It is enough that we believe their informers are everywhere. After that we do their work for them."
Larkin meets many Burmese who smuggle around forbidden texts, make jokes and allegories from their desperate situation and exhort foreigners to spread word of it. This despite the threat, and often experience, of torture and years in jail for any number of vague crimes against the state. 'In Burma prison exists as an ever present underworld into which anyone can fall at anytime.' On top of this repression, Burma has gone, in 50 years, from being the richest to the poorest country in south east Asia, yet people struggle on.
You can find the full article here
Quito - Ecuador
Flanked by the Andes mountain range sandwiched by the western slopes of the Volcano Guagua Pichincha standing at a colossal 4,790 m with canyons on the eastern side the city sits inside a lengthy narrow basin valley forming a setting unparalleled by most cities in South America. It is also the highest capital after La Paz in Bolivia in this continent and combined with its rich architecture of bygone colonial days the scenery and overall effect is simply breathtaking.
On clear days you may also view other snowcapped volcanoes such as Cotopaxi in the far distance adding to this truly unforgettable, impressionable ambiance of a large Ecuadorian city which combines both old and new, more modern sectors of the north which includes the international and national airport as well as the main embassies, businesses, banking services, restaurants, shopping centers, hotels, parks and tourist agencies.
The southern area (view the section on Old Quito) in contrast houses various museums, churches, galleries, cathedrals, colonial buildings, balcony furbished homes and outdoor markets within narrow cobbled streets which helps balance the formulae. For many travelers of a well rounded 4 to 5 day excursion to Quito of the old and new life styles which was sanctioned through the auspices of UNESCO in 1978 who confirmed this latter area of colonial Quito to be a World cultural heritage site.
You can find the full article here
On clear days you may also view other snowcapped volcanoes such as Cotopaxi in the far distance adding to this truly unforgettable, impressionable ambiance of a large Ecuadorian city which combines both old and new, more modern sectors of the north which includes the international and national airport as well as the main embassies, businesses, banking services, restaurants, shopping centers, hotels, parks and tourist agencies.
The southern area (view the section on Old Quito) in contrast houses various museums, churches, galleries, cathedrals, colonial buildings, balcony furbished homes and outdoor markets within narrow cobbled streets which helps balance the formulae. For many travelers of a well rounded 4 to 5 day excursion to Quito of the old and new life styles which was sanctioned through the auspices of UNESCO in 1978 who confirmed this latter area of colonial Quito to be a World cultural heritage site.
You can find the full article here
Quito - Ecuador
Nestled in a long, narrow valley between the lush base of the Volcano Pichincha to the west and the precipitous canyon of the river Machángara to the east, Quito enjoys an unmatched natural setting. In the night from above Quito is an oasis of lights against the absolute blackness of the forested mountains and volcanoes that surround it. By day the city is equally as impressive. Quito's classic architecture and modern structures work with the timber and vegetation that ring them to produce South America's most beautiful capital city.
Quito is the perfect place to begin exploring Ecuador. See the historic sites of Quito's Old Town and the city's dozens of museums; visit its hundreds of shops, cafes, and restaurants; and take advantage of the plethora of excursions, hikes and climbs in the surrounding area. If you haven't seen Quito, you haven't seen Ecuador!
You can find the full article here
Quito is the perfect place to begin exploring Ecuador. See the historic sites of Quito's Old Town and the city's dozens of museums; visit its hundreds of shops, cafes, and restaurants; and take advantage of the plethora of excursions, hikes and climbs in the surrounding area. If you haven't seen Quito, you haven't seen Ecuador!
You can find the full article here
Salvador - Brazil
Salvador, capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, is one of Brazil's cultural highlights. The city's population of over 2 million people is renowned for its spontaneity and easy relaxed manner. The city is an ethnic melting pot and is rich in African culture and colonial legacy. Initially finding your way around the city's winding narrow streets can seem difficult but as most activity is centered around the recently reformed Pelourinho region it can be easily managed on foot (if you can manage the steep hills). The Cidade Alta (or upper city) is the historic center of Salvador full of old churches and other colonial buildings while the Cidade Baixa (lower city) is the city's commercial and financial center. The beaches around Salvador are not so clean but if you travel a little further a field they get better. Some of the best nearby beaches are Pituba, Armacao, Piatas and Itapoaa which are within 45 minutes by bus from the center. The best time to visit Salvador is during Carnival (usually in February), which involves street partying and dancing for the best part of a whole week. Hotels fill up quickly during Carnival so make sure to book a few months in advance. The best place to stay is close to Pelourinho or else in the Barra neighborhood, but don't expect to get much sleep. Other highlights are the Festa de Lemanja on February 2 on the Rio Vermelho beach and Lavagem do Bonfim, between December and Janeiro, on the steps of the Nossa Senhora do Bonfim church. For day trips, there are frequent boats leaving from the Maritimo Terminal, behind the Mercado Modelo, in the lower city, to islands in the Baia de Todos os Santos and other locations.
You can find the full article here
You can find the full article here
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