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After visiting all of the New 7 Wonders of the World, Christ the Redeemer in Rio was distinctly underwhelming
Kia and I have visited all of the New 7 Wonders of the World but only Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro failed to leave us awestruck. Here, we examine whether Cristo Redentor really deserves a place alongside the other “new” wonders of the world.
Even if your pockets aren’t deep, there are lots of things to do in Montevideo. Here are some of our favourites from our DIY walking tour of the city
When we arrived in Montevideo we had less than two weeks of our round-the-world trip left and very little money. There are plenty of things to do in the city but it’s a relatively expensive destination in an already relatively expensive country.
With just two days and near-empty pockets we made the best of the situation and saw the city by way of a DIY walking tour.
We earmarked Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay as a place in which to stop and take a breather from our hectic travels. Much like our time in Tahiti in the South Pacific, we thought it would be an ideal place in which to pause for a few weeks and reset before continuing onto another chapter of our trip.
Punta Arenas overlooks the Strait of Magellan on the Ferdinand Magellan route and is home to some of the most famous ships in the history of navigation
The sprawling city of Punta Arenas, situated on the historic Ferdinand Magellan route, is not easy to define. It’s possible that the city itself is confused about its identity. Once a penal colony, it is today part roughneck, part modern metropolis, part open-air maritime museum.
The town’s position overlooking the coarse and inhospitable Strait of Magellan – the most important natural passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans – makes it essential to Chile’s maritime trade and provides access to the Antarctic peninsular.
Peru’s Incan gem is testament to the fact that tourism need not destroy a town’s charm and soul. Here’s what to know before visiting Cusco
Cusco in Peru is one of the prettiest, cleanest and, yes, most consistent towns in which we’ve ever been.
The imposing colonial architecture, the trimmed lawns and sweeping views work in flawless harmony to negate the pernicious effects of tourism. Even the ubiquitous golden arches of McDonald’s are coloured an inconspicuous black.
From gargantuan canyons to archaeological enigmas, we take a look at the most interesting facts about Peru and its people
Peru’s Machu Picchu tops bucket lists everywhere, most recently appearing at number three on Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travelist, a compilation of 500 unmissable attractions across the world ranked by the publisher’s global community of travel experts.
In London, you can walk past something significant every day and never notice. We list 10 hidden sites that illustrate the extraordinary history of London
London lacks many things: picnic weather in July, a resilience to winter snow, an effective solution to the hipster invasion. What it does have in abundance – more so than almost any other city in the world – is an inexhaustible well of intriguing history. It spills forth from domes and spires, flows amid the currents of the River Thames, and rushes through the veins of our subterranean network.
Visiting Easter Island is a special experience. It deserves a place amid the Seven Wonders of the World, surpassing Christ the Redeemer and arguably others
I’m going to begin with a bold statement: visiting Easter Island deserves a place amid the Seven Wonders of the World, easily surpassing Christ the Redeemer and arguably one or two others as well.
If your trip to Bolivia is anything like ours, you’ll need a place to catch your breath and reset. Visiting Isla Del Sol is the perfect answer
Like most round-the-world trips, ours has not been a big yellow ball of shining happiness but rather a gradient of colours. At one end lie vivid and soaring reds: the Mount Yasurs and Salar de Uyunis of the trip. At the other end are greys and browns: the 32-hour bus journey from Guayaquil to Lima, the insurance claim for ruined electronics. And in the middle are large swathes of greens and blues: the days that aren’t breathtaking or life affirming, but pleasant and fun nonetheless.
Eye catching, heart halting, jaw dropping: 10 real-life fairytale buildings straight from a Grimms’ tale
One of the best parts of travel is visiting a surreal place previously seen only in pictures. Whether it’s an unknown abode hidden in the hills of Portugal or an iconic structure plastered in the pages of National Geographic, these places are eye catching, heart halting, jaw dropping.
In short, they could be straight out of a storybook. Here are our favourite fairytale buildings from across the world.
Take a Nazca Lines flight over one of the world’s great archaeological riddles. The 1,000-year-old uncanny figures are best seen from the skies
Very little ignites my wanderlust as strongly as a great travel mystery. And as travel mysteries go, the mysterious lines of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru are one of the greatest.
I look back on the highlights and lowlights of our Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu in Peru, to help future trekkers prepare for the challenge ahead
There are three things I feared when embarking on our year-long trip around the world. First: the bugs (let’s face it, that was warranted).
Second: our multi-day Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu in Peru (was I fit enough? Could I cope with the altitude? What about the lack of commode? Would I break down after a long bout of camping?). Third: Dealing with the Patagonian winter (I’ll face that battle when I come to it).
What is the Best Machu Picchu trek for you? We compare the pros and cons of each route to help you choose the trek that’s right for you
Machu Picchu, that great Wonder of the World, that icon of South America so ubiquitous on travel websites and agency storefronts. Is it any wonder would-be visitors fret about choosing the perfect trek?
Some book their trip months in advance to make sure they get their trek of choice, others are left heartbroken when they turn up to find that they’ve missed the boat.
Prior to our trip, we had one pressing question: is the Inca Trail worth it?
We all know of the world’s great architectural wonders: Petra, Giza, Angkor – but what of the hidden gems rarely appearing on those ubiquitous bucket lists? Here are 10 unknown architectural wonders to add to yours.
San Agustin in Colombia is a sleepy little town buried in the rolling green hills of the southwestern part of the country. The town unfortunately lacks the pretty and quaint charms of colourful Guatape or adorable Salento, but makes up for it with Colombia’s finest archaeological park within walking distance.
Visiting Alcatraz prison in San Francisco should be up there with the Golden Gate Bridge
I often joke that if you label any old building a tourist attraction and put it in a guidebook, people will come. It might be a prosaic power station, a random rock formation, or even a tour of a sewage factory – with enough PR, people will come.
In theory, visiting Alcatraz prison could fit into this category of non-attractions. It’s a prison. It has cell blocks, cells, walls and bars. Each cell is indiscernible from the next and the entire building, at least from the inside, should be largely unremarkable.
Our day starts with a 50-minute wait for the bus in Honolulu’s main thoroughfare. An hour after that, we find ourselves crawling along in the capital’s multi-lane traffic – not what we imagined when we planned our eight-mile journey in this supposed island paradise.
Kia tosses me a look. “I hope this is worth it,” she says with a tone that sounds sweet to the ears but hides much promise of pain.
“It will be,” I assure her, quietly gulping.
The Robert Louis Stevenson museum in Samoa was an unexpected highlight of our trip to Samoa. A cursory cultural stop became a genuinely fascinating morning
“The Booker Prize money wouldn’t even keep me in cigarettes,” once quipped best-selling crime writer Martina Cole. Faced with snobbery over the type of commercial fiction she writes, the irreverent author’s swipe highlighted the fact that commercial fiction subsidises literary fiction, allowing publishers to publish the highbrow literature that hardly anyone buys.
