Category: Travel Article
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Chile, Part 3: Easter Island (Rapa Nui)
Ana Te Pahu Our first stop today is at an area of collapsed lava tubes with gaping mouths. Inside the main cave here, Ana Te Pahu, after which the site is named, bananas are growing. The leaves poke out of it. Some bunches of green bananas droop from its branches. Also vines are grown in…
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Chile, Part 2: Easter Island (Rapa Nui)
Stage two of my travels to Chile and it is away from the mainland to the magical mystery isle of Rapa Nui in the South Pacific. Settled by Polynesians from the Marquesas islands it is thought. With its legendary carved stone heads, the moai, monuments to the ancestors. The first European didn’t arrive on the…
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Chile, Part I: The central mainland
So Chile is the destination for my winter excursion from UK. One excellent reason for this choice is that the country’s territory includes Easter Island (Rapa Nui), located about 2,240 miles west of the mainland in the South Pacific. And those enigmatic moai heads on the island are reachable only from Santiago de Chile, the…
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The Southern Caucasus: Armenia, Part 2
The sights of Yerevan behind us, today we are driving west from the capital to see some more major sites, mostly of the religious variety. Various buildings and parks are pointed out en route, including a cemetery in which Armenian flags fly over the graves of every soldier who died in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war…
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The Southern Caucasus, Part 3: Armenia
Well, if Georgia was all about wineries and Orthodox churches and monasteries, Armenia is all about wineries and Apostolic churches and monasteries ‒ with a bit of brandy thrown in. Stage three of my trip to the Caucasus begins with the border crossing into Armenia from Georgia. Another change of coach, guide and driver and…
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Top Travel Spots and Experiences, 2025
The view over Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo It’s impossible to tire of this stunning view over the red tiled rooves and buildings of renaissance Florence. A blissful panorama over the magnificent dome of the Duomo, the spire of Santa Croce, the old white, yellow and cream palaces lining the river Arno, and the dark…
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The Southern Caucasus: Georgia, Part 2
We are swapping Tbilisi and its traffic clogged roads for green and mountainous pastures now. In the suburbs of the capital, the Bank of Georgia appears. It looks like a pile of white lego blocks poking out from a central pillar and facing in different directions. Built in 1975, a fine example of Soviet architecture,…
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The Southern Caucasus, Part 2: Georgia
The Balakan-Lagodekhi frontier between Azerbaijan and Georgia is our current location. Having passed through passport checks in Azerbaijan, we commence trundling our suitcases upwards along paths and ramps to exit one Caucasian country and enter another. The final flag in Azerbaijan billows farewell, while a smaller Georgian flag, along with that of the EU (notwithstanding…
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The Southern Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Part 2
I am currently on a jaunt in Azerbaijan. Having tasted the delights of bold and busy Baku, the group is now heading into its hinterlands, there to savour things natural. Ateshgah Temple Our penultimate stop today is on the Absheron peninsula, the eagle’s beak, to the east of the capital, to view the Ateshgah Temple…