Picture the scene. You’ve travelled half way round the world to see one of the planet’s greatest natural wonders, only to be told that it’s closed. Imagine the crushing disappointment… So it was for us in Argentina after arriving from Buenos Aires at the Selvaje Lodge Hotel in the jungle half an hour’s drive from…
Tag: The natural world
To the Salinas Grandes, high up in the Andes
The twisting roads of the European Alps in winter offer memorable views of snow-capped peaks and soaring pines. Come summer, cattle graze on verdant meadows filled with colourful wildflowers. But thousands of miles away in the Andes of north-west Argentina the mountains couldn’t be more different in the middle of a Southern Hemisphere spring. This…
Lebanon: Jeita Grotto and Byblos
Lebanon is big enough to pack a punch, but small enough that we could do the trips without having to switch hotels. In one busy morning we got to see a majestic grotto and an ancient city on the coast. But with the country’s roads making a fairground bumper car ride look polite, there was no…
Iceland’s Golden Circle
I can see why Iceland’s tourism business has taken off. A trip around the Golden Circle and its many geological attractions is worth the price of the air fare alone. And I’m not going to let the extreme cold or the stomach bug I was suffering, which qualifies me to write the ultimate guide to…
The Blue Mountains, New South Wales
Driving into the Blue Mountains an hour west of Sydney is child’s play compared to navigating the European Alps. Where the latter has worryingly narrow and winding rounds, the Australian range is connected to the city by a string of dual carriageways. They’re not pretty and not particularly environmentally friendly but we were soon seduced…
A day out in Tasmania’s Mount Field National Park
Tasmania is an island of glorious landscapes. And we spent our last day in the state deep in the countryside exploring Mount Field National Park, which is famous for its forests and waterfalls and about an hour’s drive north-west of Hobart. That drive was almost as spectacular as the park itself, hugging the banks of…
Exploring Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore
There’s something ridiculous about going for a walk in a hilly Singapore nature reserve when the weather is so hot and humid. But we were never going to find out much about the country jumping from one air-conditioned building to another. So visiting the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve stayed on our list of things to do. However, our planned trip to…
Niagara Falls: A natural wonder scarred by greed
Niagara Falls is a spectacle of epic proportions. Niagara Falls the town is grim, an example of how greed and tourism at its worst can come close to destroying its reason for being. I spent our day and night there trying to ignore the ugly buildings and brazen commercialism, to focus instead on the waterfalls….
Into the earth’s crust at Grotte di Castellana, Puglia
Deep below the fields, farms and villages of Puglia lies Grotte di Castellana, a cave system that’s something like 90 million years old. It made for a great stop on the road to Alberobello during our tour of southern Italy. Italy’s largest subterranean network of caves was created by an underground river but, remarkably, it…
Northern Ireland: The Giant’s Causeway and Dunluce Castle
If there’s one thing I’ll remember about Northern Ireland, it’s that this relatively small part of the UK has such a variety of landscapes. The coast of County Antrim is one of the best and its star attraction is the Giant’s Causeway. Driving to giant Finn MacCool’s legendary domain on a warm, sunny day in…
Tenerife: The epic Mount Teide
When the clouds weren’t hovering threateningly over Tenerife we couldn’t miss the island’s magnificent volcano, Mount Teide. Descending from 35,000ft in our Airbus on that first day, we saw it dominating the island that it helped to create, its upper slopes covered in snow. And from our hotel grounds in the resort town of Puerto de…
Japan: The mountains, an onsen and a dramatic waterfall
Japan is a nation of contrasts, as a visit to one of the country’s traditional, steamy onsens illustrates. These are the famous public baths fed by sulphurous hot springs where getting naked is mandatory, something the locals go for with the type of enthusiasm I’d normally associate with outgoing, uninhibited Scandinavians. It’s not the sort…
A cycle tour of Jekyll Island, Georgia
Our stay on Jekyll Island was all about relaxation but we also wanted to find out more about area, so we hired a couple of bikes and went on a ride. The bikes took a little getting used to, especially the surprising lack of brakes. I only discovered how to stop when I lurched suddenly,…
San Francisco: Cycling around Golden Gate Park
We never got round to crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on our visit to San Francisco, making do instead with a catamaran trip across the bay to the city’s finest landmark. However, we did cycle round the park that bears its name. Golden Gate Park is represented by a big green blob on maps of the…
Scotland in the spring: To the top of Cairn Gorm
We’d exhausted ourselves on our Rothiemurchus walk but we didn’t sleep well afterwards. Perhaps it was the light, for the sun sets late and rises early during summer in the Cairngorms. So neither of us had the energy for anything too exhausting, despite a much better weather forecast. After another ample breakfast and a gossip with…