8th November 2014 / Articles /

Cute, cuddly in Peru… and it comes with chips

View at Machu Pichu

View at Machu Pichu (more pictures at the end of the article)

THE guinea-pig stared at me. I stared at the guinea-pig. Then I took a deep breath, counted to three — and ate it.

There’s much more to visiting Peru than taking in Machu Picchu, the 500-year-old “lost city” of the Incas, which is considered the must-see attraction of South America — and eating guinea-pig, a local delicacy, is one of the more memorable diversions.

It tasted awful, although it looked, on first inspection, rather natty. With great aplomb, brandishing trays on shoulders, a team of waiters had brought forth our roasted creatures (with side orders of chips). Each guinea-pig, front legs perched on a sweet potato, wore a half-tomato “cap” with a decorative mint sprig. The animals’ mouths were propped open by slices of carrot in what disconcertingly seemed like hey-how-you-doing smiles.

How to eat it? Our guide advised hands: “It tastes better that way.” We tentatively pulled at haunches. Jon, sitting opposite, was having a minor fit. “I don’t want to think it’s a blinkin’ rat,” he muttered. Natasha, our only non-eater, had already stomped off, with a parting: “All of you, you’re all monsters!”

It was hard to disagree. The meat had a metallic, fizz-on-the-tongue aftertaste. And despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help imagining the cuddly things scurrying across the floor of a village hut, as we had seen them just a day before, on a visit to Ollantaytambo.

Visiting Peru consisted of a sequence of indelible memories, the highlight of which was undoubtedly Machu Picchu. But tour operators are increasingly aware that the breathtaking sight has become a victim of its own success: on some days more than 3,500 people scamper over its ancient terraces. Which is why many, including Cox & Kings, the company I travelled with, are now highlighting visits to other parts of Peru, and other experiences (small-animal eating being just one of many), along with trips to the famous Inca ruins.

We were staying for four nights at the Libertador, a four-star hotel in Cuzco — just around the corner from the pretty Plaza de Armas with its fountain, church and cathedral. The latter includes a giant 18th-century painting of the Last Supper, which featur- es, as its centrepiece, a rather scrawny-looking guinea-pig.

The idea of our week-long whistle-stop trip was to see as much of the region as possible, including sights that many tourists fail to visit because they are so obsessed with the Big Attraction. We were leaving the now-well-and-truly-found city till the final day — planning to visit in style on the Orient-Express train Hiram Bingham, named after the American who was the first outsider to come across Machu Picchu in 1911. It turned out to be a great way of dividing our time.

“We will try to avoid the crowded places,” said Carlos, our guide. “First, we see Sexy Woman!” He was referring to Sacsayhuaman, which is pronounced just like “sexy woman” — and is presumably “Gag Number One” in the “Get Them Laughing” Cuzco tourist studies exam.

Sacsayhuaman is a fort overlooking Cuzco. It was built in the 15th century and it was here that the Incas launched a counter-attack against the Spanish conquistadors, who were led by the ruthless Francisco Pizarro, in 1536. Pizarro’s men, who had arrived in Cuzco four years earlier, won the day. “It was bloody — the Incas’ last stand. After this it was all over for them,” said Carlos.

Outside the walls, three children, aged about 8, dressed in traditional multicoloured outfits, were offering themselves for pictures — one had a green parrot on his head, another held a rope attached to a fluffy white llama, “Please mister, take picture. One sol,” they said. One sol is about 20p.

Poverty is rife, despite the tourist boom. Street urchins prowl Cuzco at night, hanging on to people’s clothes and demanding soles in exchange for grubby packets of gum. Muggers and pick-pockets are, however, rare — a decade ago they were common. Better policing and a realisation that tourism is the region’s “golden goose” have been key, said Peter Frost, author of Exploring Cuzco, the best guidebook, who I met in the hotel bar one evening.

Some locals blame hardships on Peru’s colonial past. One of our guides in Lima — who had shown us the ruins of Caral, recently discovered 182km (110m) north of the capital and considered the oldest in the New World — surprised us by saying: “If only we’d had the British, not the Spanish. The real problem with us is we had the wrong colonialists!”

After seeing other battlements above Cuzco, we drove to the salt pans of Maras. They are spectacular. Since Inca times, farmers have operated evaporation pans, taking advantage of an underground salt supply; proof that this part of the Andes was once beneath the ocean. There are about 3,000 pans, each about 5ft by 10ft and coloured a shade of cream, white or ochre-brown, depending on the stage of processing. Together they look like a huge, lopsided artist’s easel.

Near by is Moray, another astonishing Inca sight. Three enormous circular terraces are built into the landscape, where the Incas used to encourage crops to grow at different levels (where there are markedly different temperatures) so they could adapt to varying altitudes. Amazing evidence of ancient science; although many “New Age” tourists claim it’s a UFO site.

We saw Ollantaytambo, another fort, believed to be shaped like a giant llama. No one is sure if this is true, partly because it has been damaged and partly because the Incas left no written records. “Inca theories are 60 per cent incorrect, 30 per cent have a chance of being true, and only 10 per cent are correct,” said Carlos, a 10 per cent man.

And so to Machu Picchu, 90 miles northwest — the most remarkable place I have visited, and I include the pyramids in Egypt and Petra in Jordan. The crowds were thin — we had arrived at 2pm on the Hiram Bingham when most people were having lunch.

The views and setting were mind-blowing, everything we had imagined and more. We snapped away and soaked up the scenery — thankful that this had been left to the end of the trip as anything afterwards would have been an anti- climax. We also agreed that while Machu Picchu is not the be-all-and-end-all of Peru, it clearly must, as Unesco hopes, be protected.

Unesco, we learnt, wants a 2,500-tourists-a-day limit, and a plan of this sort looks set to be put in place soon, along with a ticket price rise from the current £15. Authorities put a similar restriction on the numbers using the Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchu in 2001; now only 500 a day can go, porters included, and it must be booked 45 days in advance.

On a terrace looking across the mesmeric valley, I met Yashpal, a “naturopathetic physician, mystic minister and ambassador of the peoples’ world” (so said the card he handed me), from Port Townsend, Washington, in the US. “Wow! These peaks round here, man . . .” he said dreamily, wearing a white floppy hat, but no shoes, so he could be “more connected to the earth”.

“These peaks, man. You can just imagine this as a temple of nature, why they wanted to be here. Man, they just must have worked with nature . . . to have been totally at one with nature, man.”

Maybe, man, I thought. But not with the guinea-pigs. They would have eaten those.

Need to know

Getting there: Tom Chesshyre travelled to Peru with Cox & Kings (020-7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk) which offers a similar luxury, tailor-made eight-day tour from £2,360pp. A nine-day Highlights of Peru group tour, including a night at Machu Picchu, costs from £1,395pp.

Red tape: No visa required.

When to go: Best weather is from February to October. Guinea-pig: Kusikuy on Calle Suecia in Cuzco is the most traditional guinea-pig restaurant; ask your concierge to book it.

Reading: Exploring Cusco by Peter Frost (Nuevas Imágenes, £7.50); Peru (Rough Guides, £12.99). Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, by Mario Vargas Llosa (Faber, £7.99).

Further information: Latin American Travel Association (www.lata.org); Perurail (www.perurail.com). Altitude sickness: To minimise risk, spend as long as possible acclimatising to places higher than 2,500m (8,200ft), such as Cuzco, before doing any strenuous exercise.

First published in The Times, January 28 2006

Traffic jam near Lima

Spot the llama in Cuzco

On the edge of Cuzco

Maras salt pans

Guinea-pigs at local home

The Hiram Bingham train

The Hiram Bingham

View from the train

Machu Picchu

Llama at Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu

More llamas at Machu Picchu

Riot police in Cuzco

Unexplained arrival of riot police in Cuzco

Eating guinea-pig

4th November 2014 / Articles /

The real James Bond in Jamaica

Birds of the West Indies

HALFWAY up a mountain on a remote stretch of Jamaican coast – far from the round-the-clock daiquiris of Montego Bay’s all-inclusive resorts – I’m on a 007-style mission with a twist. I’m going birdwatching.

For James Bond, as Ian Fleming created him, this might have meant posing in a casino with a Martini – not a daiquiri, of course – raising an eyebrow to attract a Pussy Galore or a Kissy Suzuki. But I have a pair of binoculars, my shirt is soaked (the humidity is intense), flies are nipping at my ankles and I’m surrounded by thick jungle.

A tiny yellow bird, a bananaquit, flashes by. A white-crowned pigeon lands on the path ahead, then strolls forward as though it has joined us for a walk. A red-billed streamertail hummingbird buzzes above.

I consult Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1947. This excellent book has long been the bible for twitchers in the Caribbean, but its author has achieved fame of another kind that has nothing to do with knowing your yellow-throated vireo from your white-tailed nightjar.

James Bond was an American ornithologist based at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. When Ian Fleming, himself a keen birdwatcher, sat down in February 1952 to write his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, the story goes that he glanced at a bookshelf, saw Bond’s guide and took a liking to the name.

“That’s definitely how it happened,” says Carolyn Turland, one of the guides from Reliable Adventures Jamaica, which offers rainforest walks on Bluefields mountain in the southwest of Jamaica. Fleming wrote his 14 Bond adventures at his villa, Goldeneye, on the north coast.

“He phoned James Bond and he asked him if he minded having his name used. Bond said: ‘Fine by me.’ My aunt knew Fleming. She lived by Goldeneye. My uncle sold him the land. We used to go swimming on the beach by the villa when we were kids. Fleming was only there in the winter; we would go when he was away.”

This tale, Turland says, was well known locally, and it fits in with Fleming’s own explanation of the name. He later met the ornithologist and introduced him to the people he was with at the time as “the real James Bond”.

Whether or not he was joking, taking Bond’s book to Jamaica is a useful way to see another side of a Caribbean island that is often written off for its gawdy hotels and high crime rate (mainly confined to tough parts of Kingston, the capital).

As we climb slowly up a hot and humid path, birds of all varieties flutter past, some darting into the emerald-green undergrowth. We peer into the foliage with our binoculars to catch glimpses of their bright plumage.

Jamaica has about 300 species of birds, including 22 that are endemic, Turland and her husband, Vaughan, tell me. Both are dressed sensibly in khaki (my white shirt, they say, might scare off birds) and are wearing trousers and boots, which keep away the flies (I’m in sandals).

We spot a worm-eating warbler with distinctive white markings on its head. A peregrine falcon soars above a clearing full of scarlet butterflies. A rufous-tailed flycatcher hops on to the branch of a mango tree.

It’s a wonderfully peaceful place.

Vaughan is a big fan of James Bond, the ornithologist, who first visited the Caribbean in the 1920s. “He was a real treasure,” he says warmly. “He was light years ahead of his time. His guidebook is just a magic book for the whole Caribbean. There have been a lot of books since then – with more colour plates and more technology used – but I don’t think you can beat it.”

We are accompanied by two local guides, Veda Tate and Deceita Turner-Grant, who are employed by Reliable Adventures Jamaica, which began in 2003 aiming to promote eco-tourism and to provide local jobs. After taking in a long lime-green lizard that Veda describes as a “green guana; it eats insects”, she points dramatically at a treetop.

“A patoo!” she exclaims. “A what?” I ask, looking upwards at what appears to be a branch. “A patoo! There!” And then I see it: a giant owl with an enormous mouth that looks like the face of the Joker from the Batman films. “He’s moving. Oh my God, he’s opened his eyes! I’ve seen the patoo’s eyes for the first time!”

The owl is nocturnal, hence the rarity of seeing it awake.

Veda’s enthusiasm is infectious. “I love birds, just love them,” she says. “When I’m in church, sometimes a bird will fly in through the windows, a bananaquit maybe. I will look at it and forget everything, not pay any attention to the sermon.”

Deep in the jungle, we spot a Jamaican tody, a tiny green and white bird with a red circle under its bill. Another hummingbird buzzes above. Everywhere we look there seems to be birdlife: we end up seeing 30 species in half a day.

We go for lunch down the mountain at the Ocean Edge restaurant, a basic wooden structure with a corrugated roof and adverts for “overproof rum”. No vodka martinis on the menu (shaken or stirred).

Two magnificent frigatebirds with 3ft wingspans sail in the thermals above the Caribbean sea. Vaughan says: “They’re real devils. They frighten the seagulls and steal their food.”

Then he discusses eco-tourism in Jamaica and the country’s “image problem”. His mood turns serious: “Everyone talks about crime and Rastas and all that when they mention Jamaica. It’s so frustrating. You watch a TV programme and everyone’s smoking ganga. But that’s not representative of Jamaica. There’s a whole lot more to the country than that.”

After a day on the Bluefields mountain playing the part of the “real James Bond” on the island where Bond came into being… I can agree with that.

Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond film, is released on October 31.

Need to know

Getting there Virgin Atlantic (0870 5747747, www.virginatlantic.com) has return flights to Montego Bay from £672.

Stay Island Outpost (www.island outpost.com) offers rooms at Jake’s hotel, near Bluefields mountain, from £60. The company also has a week-long stay in Jamaica with two nights at Jake’s, two at Strawberry Hill in the Blue Mountains, two at Gee Jam on the northeast coast and a night at the Goldeneye estate, all inclusive, costing £687pp. A night in the villa in which Ian Fleming wrote Goldeneye costs from £1,618 for six, with meals and private beach.

Birdwatching Reliable Adventures Jamaica (www.jamaicabirding.com) offers half-day, five-hour birding tours from £45, lunch included. Hotel transfers can be arranged: one hour from Montego Bay and Negril.

The name is Bond

In Die Another Day Pierce Brosnan disguises himself as an ornithologist and carries a copy of Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies in one scene. Latest editions of the guide by ornithologist James Bond are available on www.amazon.co.uk.

The films Dr No and Live and Let Die included scenes shot in Jamaica. Ursula Andress famously emerged from the water on the beach of Laughing Water in Dr No.

For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, by Ben Macintyre (Bloomsbury, £20).

On the Tracks of 007 by Martijn Mulder and Dirk Kloosterboer (£20, www.onthetracksof007.com)

The Imperial War Museum (www.iwm.org.uk) is holding a major exhibition on Ian Fleming and James Bond until the end of February, admission £8.

Lastminute.com is offering “Spy Academy” day courses from £39.50 in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, with instruction on using hidden cameras, shooting and “axe throwing”.

First published in The Times, October 25 2008

View from Strawberry Hill

Guides on birdwatching tour

Birdwatching with Bond's book

Birdwatching with Bond’s book

Inside Goldeneye

Bedroom at Goldeneye

Private beach at Goldeneye

Cutting in scrapbook at Goldeneye

Within the grounds of Goldeneye

Desk at Goldeneye

4th November 2014 / Articles /

Mandela’s prison island, 20 years on

Mandela's cell

Mandela’s cell on Robben Island

In a grey room with a concrete floor, bars on the windows and fluorescent tube lighting, a group of about 40 tourists is sitting on narrow benches listening to Ntambo Mbatha, a 49-year-old former inmate on Robben Island, explain what life was like in the notorious prison where Nelson Mandela was held during the struggle against apartheid.

Mbatha has just shown us a dirty mat on which inmates used to sleep and is pacing about as he used to during his seven-year “terrorism” sentence in the 1980s. “When you arrived you were given a number. Your name ceased to exist,” he says. “We lost our identities and were divided on racial grounds: blacks, coloureds and Indians.”

The policies of apartheid were maintained even on this hot dusty island that is only a 45-minute ferry trip from the Cape Town waterfront. “But we refused to be divided,” Mbatha says proudly, leading us through a courtyard full of weeds to the section where Mandela and other political leaders were held in solitary confinement. Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in captivity on Robben Island. He was released 20 years ago next Thursday.

Mandela’s cell was small and grim — much smaller than the bathroom at my swanky hotel back on the Victoria & Alfred docks in Cape Town. We file past with cameras flashing, taking in the mat on which he slept, a tiny wooden table and a red toilet bucket. “We” consists of a mixed group of overseas tourists and South Africans of all colours. Although there has been chatter as we walk through the courtyard, we fall silent by the grey metal bars.

It is a moving moment. “This is the first time I have been here and it is very sad,” Carolin Sejeng, 38, a black medical co-ordinator from Johannesburg, says in the courtyard afterwards. “Sometimes you just don’t realise what things are like until you see them with your own eyes.”

Tours to Robben Island take about four hours — 45 minutes each way on the ferry, with a walk through the prison compound and a drive around the island on buses bearing the slogan: “The journey’s never long when freedom’s the destination.” The experience comes alive because the guides are former inmates.

Mbatha takes us to a room near the former censor’s office. This was where all letters were read before being passed on to prisoners once a week. Political messages were cut, but the censors also often deleted love messages.

After telling us this, Mbatha regales us with his own story. He left South Africa aged 21, travelling via Swaziland and Mozambique to Angola, where he was trained by the African National Congress, before returning to South Africa, where he was arrested in Soweto for anti-apartheid activities.

He was taken to a detention centre where he was “severely treated both physically and psychologically: I cannot begin to tell you what happened”. As we part, we shake his hand, and he is asked how he can bear to return here. “It is just my work,” he says simply, with a smile.

We file on to a bus, where we meet another guide, Sedick Levy, 68, who was imprisoned on the island in 1963. As we drive to a limestone quarry he tells us about the Sharpeville massacre, in 1960, when at least 69 protesters were shot dead by police in that township.

Levy tells us that work in the quarry was a hard slog and how sunlight hurt the workers’ eyes, but they were refused sunglasses. The toilet at the quarry became an important place where inmates could talk to each other without being overheard. “Some of our youths today think that freedom has fallen from the sky,” he says quietly. “Little do they know how their parents suffered.”

Farther on, we look out across to the splendid silhouette of Table Mountain and Levy says: “I hate this place.” He is referring to Robben Island, not South Africa. He loves his country now: “Before I kick the bucket, at least I can say that I have lived under a democratic government.”

A gift shop near the ferry dock sells copies of the shirt printed with goldfish that Mandela wore when he returned to Robben Island, as well as postcards bearing his messages. “The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days,” one says, while another, more cheekily, says: “I cannot help it if the ladies take note of me; I am not going to protest.” Chess sets are on sale with pieces made in the shape of F. W. de Klerk, Desmond Tutu and Mandela (the king).

Only 20 years after his release life has changed beyond recognition on this once notorious island.

Need to know

Getting there ITC Classics (01244 355527, itcclassics.co.uk) offers five- night trips staying at Table Bay Hotel (suninternational.com) on the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront from £1,580, flights and transfers included. BA (ba.com) has return flights from £619.

Getting around Holiday Autos (holidayautos.co.uk) has car hire from £118 for a week.

The Robben Island Museum (robben-island.org.za) has four daily ferry departures. Tours are popular, so book well in advance on the internet — you can print out tickets, £17.

Nelson Mandela: for details on 20th-anniversary freedom celebrations, see nelsonmandela.org.

First published in The Times, February 6 2010

Prison yard

Different diets for different races

Sentry Tower

Sentry tower

4th November 2014 / Articles /

The quiet side of Puerto Rico

The beach at Playa Navio

The beach at Playa Navio, where the final scenes of Lord of the Flies were shot in 1963 by Peter Brook (more pictures at the end of the article)

It felt like another planet. In the early evening gloom, dark shapes of swamp-like vegetation spread out in a wide circle around the crater-shaped bay. Insects buzzed as darkness descended. We paddled into the middle, the splash of each stroke echoing eerily across the calm surface. And then we noticed something. As we dipped our paddles into the salty water, a murky — at first almost unperceivable — light glowed below. As the minutes ticked by and we moved farther out into the bay, with not a soul about, the glow grew brighter.

We paused as Abe, our guide, explained the strange goings on: “This bay has the highest concentration of dinoflagellates on Earth: the micro-organisms that create this light. They absorb sunshine during the day using a process of photosynthesis. At night they release it to attract fish that eat their predators.”

As the odd light rose from the depths, Abe said that while in normal sea water there might be 30 to 40 dinoflagellates per gallon (too few to notice their illumination), in Mosquito Bay on Vieques, a small island east of Puerto Rico, there are as many as 720,000 per gallon. Soon the peculiar creatures were in full bioluminescent glow, unlike anything we’d seen before. Each paddle stroke produced a blaze of blue-white light. The outlines of fish zipped below like streaks of lightning. “Jump in,” said Abe. And we did; our bodies suddenly lit up as though we’d been dipped in fluorescent paint.

Vieques is a most unusual place; and not only because of its other-worldly waters. The island is part of Puerto Rico, eight miles to the east of the mainland and about 20 miles long and four miles wide, with about a third of the eastern edge closed to visitors — it is contaminated with unexploded ordnance left over from the days when the US Navy used it as a base.

The Americans, after setting up camp in 1941, finally left in 2003 in the wake of protests after the death of a local during an errant manoeuvre. This was the culmination of many years of anti-US feeling on the island, where the 10,000-strong population had been squashed into only a quarter of the land. It is one of the quietest Caribbean islands, hardly developed at all, unlike mainland Puerto Rico, which comes under the commonwealth of the United States with its highways, burger joints, KFCs and malls.

While some mainland Puerto Ricans would like the country, first conquered by the Americans in 1898, to become the official 51st US state, others are in favour of independence. Nowhere is that sense of wanting independence stronger than on Vieques, with its recent US Navy past.

It’s a sleepy, tranquil island — a perfect hideaway from the mainstream Caribbean. With its narrow, empty roads shaded by creepers hanging from thick-green trees, bright flashes of scarlet flowers on its Flamboyant trees, empty beaches, crumbling US Navy bunkers and two tiny towns, it feels incredibly secretive. It’s stylish, too — if you stay at its new designer hotel (the only one of any size; the next biggest has about a dozen rooms).

It took 20 minutes to fly from San Juan — Puerto Rico’s capital, with its splendid fortified 16th-century old town — to the airstrip at Vieques. On the way we could see the big, five-star hotels and golf courses along the main island’s eastern coast, as well as the peaks of the El Yunque National Forest. We could also see the huge breakwater built by the Americans, originally intended to link Vieques with the mainland in the 1940s to act as a safe haven for a retreating British Navy in the event of Hitler occupying the UK. Construction was halted in 1943 when Allied fortunes improved.

The W Retreat and Spa, opened last year, had its own “executive lounge” at the tiny airport — a laid-back bar serving rum cocktails and Corona beer. From there it was a five-minute drive in a minibus to the hotel, which has more than 150 rooms designed in a boho-chic style.

You enter through giant wooden doors into a reception with multicoloured decorations on the wall in the shape of butterflies and the little coqui frogs (which make a distinctive “cokee-cokee” sound). Past circular sofas with colourful throw pillows, you reach a large lounge with Moroccan-style rugs, L-shaped day-beds, peculiar abstract art, multicoloured guitars marked with “Love Sweet Love” (for guests to use), games of Monopoly, art books and a red-baize pool table.

Ambient dance music played. Waiters stood behind a bar with pink seats. On a veranda, couples sat at large pink, yellow and green circular seats (no shortage of colour at the W Retreat). A fire pit, where a flame was lit at dusk and “sunset sip” cocktails were served each evening (included in the price), was sunk cleverly into a lawn overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Our room was also in this funky style, with a circular sofa and a giant bed surrounded by a decorative curtain. It overlooked two infinity swimming pools, where children played and couples relaxed on loungers with bright pink towels.

We explored the island in a Jeep Wrangler hired for $50 (£30) a day from the car rental agency across the street. “A bargain, but take a look first!” the owner said, showing me a beat-up vehicle with ripped, slightly soggy seats (caused by an overnight downpour; we covered them in cardboard) and a glove compartment that fell off when we opened it.

It was perfect for Vieques, and we were soon investigating the jungle-enveloped lanes, dropping south to the small town of Esperanza, with its higgledy-piggledy bars, laid-back B&Bs and restaurants with names such as Lazy Jack’s and Duffy’s. Chilled-out folk in flip-flops shuffled about — a far cry from the bustle of the mainland. Nearby, we took in Playa Navio, the beach where the final scenes of Lord of the Flies were shot in 1963 by Peter Brook, driving down a madly bumpy lane to get there. Only two other people were on the sands, no sign of children; savage or not.

Then we drove back through more jungle, past the entrance to Mosquito Bay, where its glowing waters are deep blue during the day. Vieques no longer has the US Navy launching bombs and causing a racket. Now it has hippies, boho cool, a lovely quiet feel — and, of course, some very strange lights in its waters at night.

Need to know

Getting there
BA (ba.com) has return flights to San Juan, via Antigua, from £461. Cape Air (www.flycapeair.com) has returns from San Juan to Vieques from $140 (£86).

BA Holidays (0844 4930758, ba.com/puertorico) offers a week, room only, at the St Regis Bahia Beach Resort on the mainland from £1,709pp including return flights from Heathrow. St Regis is a new five-star hotel, just outside San Juan and close to the El Yunque rainforest.

BA Holidays also has a week at the Rio Mar Beach Resort & Spa, a four-star family-friendly hotel just outside San Juan, from £969pp.

Where to stay
Rooms at the W Retreat & Spa Vieques Island (whotels.com) cost from $402.

What to do
Abe’s Snorkeling & Bio-Bay Tours (abessnorkeling.com) arranges two-hour night tours, in kayaks, of the bioluminescence. Prices start at $30pp and $15 for children under 11.

Further information
Puerto Rico Tourism Company (seepuertorico.com); The Rough Guide to Puerto Rico (£12.99, roughguides.com).

The film The Rum Diary, based on the book by Hunter S. Thompson and set in Puerto Rico, is released on November 11.

Where to go for the quiet life in the Caribbean

Los Roques, Venezuela

The archipelago of Los Roques lies about 160km north of the Venezuelan mainland. It consists of 42 named islands and 250 unnamed islets. There’s only one village, on the island of Gran Roque, which has a little airport, a handful of sandy streets and a wide selection of colourfully painted pousadas. Many are run by Italians, who flocked to Los Roques after a restaurateur named Vincenzo Conticello wrote about its charms in the 1980s. The islands, with their many isolated sandy beaches, are known for their great seafood — especially lobster.

Details Journey Latin America (020-8747 8315, journeylatinamerica.co.uk) has a ten-night trip to Venezuela, including five nights in Los Roques from £2,452pp.

La Isla de la Juventud, Cuba

Though few have heard of it, this island off the southwest coast of Cuba is the seventh- biggest in the West Indies, with a population of about 100,000. But the “island of youth” is a sleepy place compared with the bustle of the mainland — a recent Times Travel writer reported finding dogs asleep on highways outside the main town, Nueva Gerona. This feels busy in comparison to the rest of the island, with market places and salsa dancing in the evenings. It’s a short drive to plenty of beaches and wild, isolated nature reserves. Tourism is rare, people are open and friendly and there is little of the dollar-chasing of the mainland.

Details Best At Travel (020-7849 4145, bestatcubaholidays.co.uk) offers three nights on La Isla and four in Havana, with all flights from £870pp.

Carriacou, Grenada

Divers know about Carriacou — there are wrecks of First World War gunboats in its waters — but few others seem to. The main town is Hillsborough, which has a few buildings, a jetty and a fruit market. There is also a museum detailing the history of slavery on the island; the African influence on Carriacou still runs strong and there are “big drum” dances, which can be traced to the West Coast of Africa. There are peaceful beaches, protected nature reserves and lovely hidden coves. Carriacou is Arawak for “island of reefs”, another reason divers love it so much. The population is about 5,000.

Details Dive Worldwide (08451 306980, www.diveworldwide.com) offers seven-night trips with all flights, hotels and diving from £1,295pp.

First published in The Times, October 29 2011

$50 a day Jeep

$50 a day Jeep on the breakwater built by the Americans, originally intended to link Vieques with the mainland in the 1940s to act as a safe haven for a retreating British Navy in the event of Hitler occupying the UK

Old US bunkers on Vieques

Museum in the town of Ponce

Historic fireman's depot in Ponce

Historic fireman’s depot in Ponce

4th November 2014 / Articles /

On holiday in the “axis of evil” – North Korea

Train from Beijing

On the train from Beijing to Pyongyang (more pictures below)

THE communists were watching intently. One wore a rough, green military uniform with a cut-off collar. He had a large, moon-like face and an inscrutable expression. The other, who had a flint-like look in his eye, was in a slick grey suit.

Both, like almost everyone else I was about to meet in the country, sported red circular badges depicting North Korea’s founding father, the “great leader” Kim Il Sung, who helped defeat the Japanese and set up the country in the 1940s. Their shoes were neatly placed on the floor of my tiny compartment on the Beijing to Pyongyang train. Journey time: 26 hours.

I sat up sharply. I was fully clothed and had been resting while officials took away my passport. This had already taken two hours. I was the only westerner on the shiny green train.

The man in the grey suit asked: “Do you have a mobile phone?” He seemed pleased I did. He took it, examined the casing, placed it in a brown envelope, sealed the ends with tape, stamped a red mark on the front, and said: “Do not use mobile phones in North Korea.”

I was asked to open my bags. The man with the moon-like face asked: “May we smoke?” And without a chance for a reply, they lit up.

Through a fug, they peered at my possessions. “What is this?” snapped the grey suit. It was a book by T.S. Eliot. “Poetry,” I said. He looked suspiciously at the cover. The other man flicked through the Bradt guidebook, examining the pictures and grunting. “And this?” It was a thriller by Lee Child. “Ah, crime action thriller,” he said, as though this was OK.

“Are you married?” asked the grey suit, suddenly. I said I wasn’t. He drew on his cigarette, exhaled a plume of smoke and replied thoughtfully: “A single man may live like a king but die like a dog.”

With that, they handed over my passport and departed. I was in. My visa was in order. I had received free life-counselling. I was a tourist in North Korea – probably the most secretive country on the planet.

Do not expect privacy in North Korea. Tourists are watched carefully by official guides who report to the secret police. I was on a nine-day visit on a package offered by a British travel company (a handful offers trips).

And I was monitored the entire time.

My guides, whose names I won’t give in case I cause them trouble, were with me almost every moment I was not in a hotel room. They met me at Pyongyang’s giant station, and hardly let me out of their sight.

The only time I was allowed to walk “on my own” from my hotel one afternoon, I soon discovered that X had been following.

“You went further than you said you would!” she admonished, in a friendly way. Even though they were keeping a close eye on me – I was visiting as a tourist not as a journalist (few are ever allowed in) – we got to know each other and became chums after their initial bouts of questioning in which I lied and told them vaguely that I was a travel agent. This “interrogation” only ended half-way through the trip, when they ran out of steam.

My tour took in Pyongyang, Kaesong in the south by the Demilitarised Zone, where there is the famous border point where you walk round a negotiating table to step into South Korea, a trip to mountains in the north, and a visit to the West Sea Barrage, a giant structure that prevents floods.

Pyongyang was the highlight. Everything about it was enormous, built on a giant scale: the concrete apartment blocks (many requiring a lick of paint), the endless monuments to Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers’ Party, the “study houses” where children are taught musical instruments, the building of the Peoples’ Army Circus, the parade squares, the boulevards.

As the guidebook said, it is a showcase city. The country I’d seen from the train looked rundown: crumbling dwellings amid simple farmland with ploughs pulled by miserable-looking oxen with ribs showing.

Pyongyang, however, is designed to impress: there were even chandeliers, marble columns and fancy murals in the subway. It is so markedly different from the rest of the country that non-resident North Koreans are only allowed in with special permits. Otherwise, everyone would try to live in Pyongyang.

But despite the scale of the buildings, it was clear that poverty was a big problem. One obvious sign of the lack of wealth was the almost total absence of cars.

There were hardly any. Often our Landcruiser was the only vehicle on the road. People cycled or walked by, but the giant avenues were empty. This was particularly striking when we drove to Kaesong. Most of the time, we had the ridiculously big ten-lane motorway to ourselves.

Along the sides, people strolled along, staring in disbelief at the westerner – me – driving past.

We visited embroidery factories, acrobatic shows, memorials to soldiers, farms, Buddhist temples (Buddhism is tolerated), and military museums commemorating “victory” over the US in the Korean War in 1953. We stayed at comfortable hotels designed for diplomats; the one in Pyongyang even had CNN as well as the dull local station (constantly showing military band performances), though there was never the chance to use the internet freely.

At one hotel there was a computer where you could send emails from a hotel email account. But this was only allowed after the address of your recipient had been checked. Two of my three emails never arrived.

The cult of Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994 and whose son Kim Jong Il now runs the country (often causing bother over his pursuit of nuclear weapons), is strong.

Whenever we visited monuments to Il Sung – and we also went to his giant mausoleum, where locals broke down in tears – I was made to bow.

Even the slightest joke about the endless pictures of the Kims, which were on virtually every street corner, was frowned upon by the guides. “We do not say things like this about our great leader,” said X.

On Mount Myohyang, we went to the International Friendship Exhibition, a collection of gifts presented to the Kims by a ragbag of figures including Gaddafi, Castro and Mugabe. I asked whether it was ironic to celebrate international friendship when the citizens of North Korea are rarely permitted to visit the outside world.

“That is a very journalistic question,” said X, suspiciously.

Food was varied. We ate lots of barbecues (duck, chicken, beef), rice, tofu, bean sprouts, and kimchi, a spicy cabbage. Occasionally – as a westerner – I was given disgusting burgers and chips.

Sometimes the guides ate with me, other times not. But they always knew where I was, even if I was left alone. “You went to bed early,” X would say, even though I had eaten by myself and gone upstairs without thinking I’d been noticed.

You’re never really alone in North Korea. Big Brother really is always watching… sometimes even, as I discovered on the train from Beijing, when you’re fast sleep.

Traffic warden

Traffic warden, Pyongyang

Traditional dress

Traditional dress, Pyongyang

Central square Pyongyang

Central square, Pyongyang

The “great leader” and son – painting in hotel

Parade practice

Parade practice, Pyongyang

Parade practice

Parade practice, Pyongyang

Service station employees

Meeting the service station employees on the way to the DMZ

Centre of Pyongyang

At the DMZ

Propaganda poster

The great leader

The “great leader”

Propaganda poster

Soldiers taking a break

Picnic

Barbecue picnic

Busker

Busker and woman in red

Lining the street

Lining the street to await the Olympic flame

Legs tied together

Legs tied together – not sure why…

4th November 2014 / Articles /

Hip hop and chili dogs in Washington DC

Drummer outside Washington Wizards stadium

Drummer outside Washington Wizards stadium (more pictures at end of the article)

by Tom Chesshyre

MARY Speyer, the owner of a women’s retail chain in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is talking to her gardener when I pull up in my hire car. She is blond and smiley, occasionally patting her golden retriever in her front garden on Lowell Street, north-west Washington DC.

It is a bright March morning – warm but not quite shorts weather. And everything seems spookily, extremely spookily, familiar.

The reason for this is simple: for four years in the early 1980s, when I was aged 10-14, this was where I lived.

I explain to Mary that I’ve come to DC on a “nostalgia tourism” trip. “How funny!” she exclaims, beaming and asking me about my parents’ work in America’s capital (my father was the Washington correspondent for The Observer, covering the Reagan years).

It has been almost 20 years since I was last in the city, I explain. “Really? Well isn’t that something,” says Mary inviting me in to see the house, where memories of completing homework in the dining room, mastering early computer games in the basement, listening to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album and the Police’s Synchronicity in my bedroom, “shooting hoops” (playing basketball) in the back yard and playing American football in the front garden come flooding back.

This small front room was where my Dad kept his enormous Telex machine – an early form of news wire. This is where we used to put the Christmas tree. This was where my brother, sister and I ate Cheerios for breakfast.

I even recognize the leaves on the front lawn (I used to spend hours raking them for extra pocket money).

Mary tells me that Karl Rove, the chief strategist in George W. Bush’s two election victories, now lives round the corner. “There’s undercover security everywhere. This must be one of the safest streets in the city,” she says as she leads me next door.

Soon I’m talking to Bill Howe, now 87, who I remember from all those years ago. Bill says “Well I never” and is soon telling me about his old work on the Poppy Electronic Satellite Reconnaissance Programme – information that he had to keep to himself in the 1980s for Cold War secrecy reasons.

I’m here for a long weekend, with a couple of trips to sports events planned, time set aside to see the main sights, and a night out on the town to watch an “old skool” hip-hop group called EPMD on Saturday lined up – I became hooked on rap in DC, listening to the Sugar Hill Gang, Run-DMC and Grandmaster Flash in the days when the music was not all about boasting about guns and girls.

I’m staying at a hotel in Georgetown, a smart university neighbourhood overlooking the Potomac River. “Preppies”, people who wear designer shirts with alligators on them and own smart cars, were just being invented when I was last here. Now they are everywhere.

There is a feeling of great wealth – and conspicuous consumption is definitely conspicuous. I walk down side streets lined with smart brown stone houses that must cost millions. Most are immaculately maintained. Most have very expensive cars parked outside.

On the subway to watch a basketball game down town, I get a better feel for the “real DC”. The majority of the population of America’s capital is black and in the carriage to see the Washington Wizards take on the Toronto Raptors I am one of the few white faces. There’s not a “preppie” about.

Outside the venue, a man is beating overturned plastic tubs – playing the drums. I drop a dollar in an upturned cap, he says “Yeah man!”, and then go inside where there’s a brilliant atmosphere.

Hot-dogs, chili dogs and pretzels are being munched. Budweisers and Miller Lites are being drained. Cheerleaders leap about. Mini remote-control blimps fly about displaying adverts. T-shirts with slogans that say “honoring our heroes” (in the Iraq war) drop from the sky at half-time on tiny parachutes.

It’s a truly American experience. As is watching the Baltimore Orioles play the Washington Nationals at baseball at RFK Stadium the next day. The Orioles won the World Series in 1983, when I was here, and the Washington Redskins, the local American football team, won the Superbowl in the same year – after playing many games in this stadium. It was a fantastic time to be a young sports fan.

I see signs that remember the old Redskins heroes – John Riggins and Joe Theisman, names I’d almost forgotten – feeling a stab of nostalgia; which I guess is what nostalgia tourism is all about.

I’m reading a crime novel by a local called George Pelecanos, a best-selling author who sets most of his books in DC, during the trip. They give a great flavour of the “street” side to the city – a side that I didn’t know much about at all when I was a kid.

In the early 1980s, DC was known as the “murder capital” of the US, though crime has improved remarkably since, especially in downtown areas where squadrons of “Safety and Maintenance Workers” run patrols that have made the streets safe.

After eating a chili dog at Ben’s Chili Bowl, a famous fast food restaurant popular with the likes of Jesse Jackson and Bill Cosby on U Street – the centre of riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, and which features heavily in Pelecanos’s work – I see EPMD play at the 9:30 Club.

I am one of a handful of white faces there. It’s a great act with old lyrics buried in my brain coming out again, and it’s a fantastic venue: a converted theatre that was recently deemed the best place for live acts in the whole of America by Esquire magazine.

Feeling tired on Sunday, I take a traditional tour (of sorts) of the main memorials, the White House and Capitol Hill.

I say “of sorts” as I join a group travelling on Segway scooters. We pass sights that are engrained in my memory, feeling a bit odd on the scooters and marveling at the size of the Washington Monument and the Mall.

Then I stop off at my old high school: Maret. Like Georgetown, it too has gone upmarket since my time. “Standards have improved remarkably since you left,” says Sarah, the “director of alumni programs” – making me laugh.

Kids are playing baseball on the old baseball diamond, there’s the sound of a crack of a bat… and suddenly I’m feeling nostalgic again.

Watching the Washington Wizards

At the Washington Monument

The Jefferson Memorial

RFK Stadium

Baltimore Orioles play the Washington Nationals at baseball at RFK Stadium

Protesting for peace

Protesting for soldiers

The Lincoln Memorial

4th November 2014 / Articles /

A DIY safari in Namibia

Namib Naukluft National Park

Namib Naukluft National Park (more pictures at end of the article)

I’ve been on the road through the Namib Desert for two hours after picking up my Land Rover from a depot in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, and I have not seen another vehicle or even another soul (though I’ve stopped to take pictures of a troop of cute black-faced monkeys sitting on a picket fence).

The landscape seems to stretch for ever under a royal-blue sky. It is arid and hot — incredibly hot, over 40C (104F). The air-conditioning in the Land Rover does not seem to make a huge difference, so I open the windows to let in a rush of air. Soon, I am covered in a thin film of white dust from the road, my hair turning grey. It is totally silent.

Little trees with spiky leaves spread out into the distance, looking like strange alien beings (if you squint your eyes). I am soaked in sweat and have been drinking lots of water from bottles kept cool in a fridge in the boot. I am also, I realise as a couple of ostrich scoot across the road in the heat haze of the horizon, feeling very happy indeed.

Namibia seems to do that to you — and it is its sheer size, vast emptiness and amazing beauty, as well as the sense of exploration you get on a fly-drive, that seems to do the trick.

I am on an eight-day DIY safari, heading for the seaside resort of Swakopmund after crossing the desert, then camping in the desert, before heading to a lodge to see the spectacular rose-red sand dunes of the Namib Naukluft National Park, which is twice the size of Switzerland — everything in Namibia is huge. I end up driving 855 miles (1,375km) in a week.

The journey to the old German colonial town of Swakopmund — which features in a remake of the 1960s cult spy fiction series The Prisoner (originally shot in Portmeirion, North Wales, and shown on ITV next Saturday) — takes six hours. It leads through ochre canyons, pink-rocked gorges and wide-open, dusty planes that spread out into the distance for ever. The sheer vastness of the scenery is hard to take in. It is so big you wonder whether the gravel road will ever end.

I pass rusting colonial buildings (abandoned farms), a cowboy (the first human being I see) with an enormous herd of white goats, big caramel coloured cattle, and lots and lots of sand. After a while, a pick-up truck passes in the opposite direction — the driver nods and waves, as I soon find everyone does (isolation makes people friendly). I drive through his trail of dust. Namibia is definitely the dustiest place I have visited, as well as one of the most scarcely populated. There are 2.1 million people, which works out at 2.2 people per square kilometre.

Within a few hours of my holiday, I already realise that this is going to be a trip of a lifetime. And then I come to Swakopmund. Mine is the only car being driven along wide sandy avenues flanked by pastel buildings. It feels almost psychedelic and otherworldly. After passing a restaurant located inside an old tug boat, painted rusty red, peach and apple green and elevated on top of a building, I find my hotel, The Stiltz.

I am on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, so named as it is extremely arid and was considered a place to avoid by early explorers — and I am staying in a pod-like building perched on telephone poles. It has terrific views of dunes that ripple for hundreds of miles to the south. I park the Land Rover, drop off my bag and explore the town by foot, soon finding Sam Nujoma Avenue, the main street. Namibia, which gained independence from South Africa 20 years ago, is mostly a safe country, though it’s best not to walk about much at night.

Sam Nujoma is a blaze of pinks, oranges and yellows, with a building on a corner with a mini minaret in green, yellow and red. It is colourful and cheerful, with a laid-back feel and nice cafes to chill out in. “Caffeine isn’t a drug, it’s a vitamin,” says the motto at one, where I read a copy of The Namibian newspaper, which tells me that a contingent of South Koreans is visiting the country to buy uranium to use in nuclear power stations (uranium mining is big business). And there are people! Quite a few of them, tourists and locals aplenty; the population is about 36,000, though where they all are half the time, I don’t know.

Inside the tourist information office, Brigitte, the attendant, tells me she hopes that the new filming of The Prisoner will attract more visitors. “We want to put Namibia on the international map,” she declares. Then she says that there has been an influx of visitors recently after Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie visited in 2006, when Jolie gave birth to their baby Shiloh at a private clinic.

Next day I visit the dunes that I can see from my hotel. The best way is a quad-bike tour, and on mine I am amazed at how far we go. My guide, Michael, points at a jackal and shows me sidewinder snake tracks. Up in the dunes, which formed five million years ago and stretch 1,240 miles from South Africa through Namibia to Angola, it feels like a different world. The sands seem to slither onwards in an eternity of curves. It is a surreal spot.

Then I head for a night at a campsite in middle of the Namib Desert. There are no employees and no other campers, just a few guinea fowl that take to following me around. I light a fire, cook some sausages, open a bottle of white wine, and read Wolf Hall under the brilliant stars of the Milky Way, feeling as if the world (at least this part of it) belongs to me. It is a place for contemplation, especially if travelling alone, like me. I fall asleep in the neat tent that is attached to the Land Rover’s roof, and wake to a cool, amazingly quiet dawn.

I drive onwards for many dusty miles, stopping for fuel in the petrol station town of Solitaire. There I eat a slice of delicious apple pie and drink a coffee under an acacia tree before reaching the remote Kulala Desert Lodge, which overlooks a dry river bed. The next morning I am taken to the Namib Naukluft National Park. After climbing a 130m (426ft) dune at dawn (spectacular), I visit a dried out lake with a shiny white surface and the skeletal remains of 600-year-old trees, all framed by a huge red dune, nicknamed Big Daddy.

This is truly something out of Salvador Dalí; Nature’s own version. Namibia is, I can say with certainty, one of the most unusual and stunning places I have visited. And the way to go is to take to the roads yourself.

Getting there

Safari Drive (01488 71140, www.safaridrive.com) offers 12-night trips, six camping and six nights in lodges, driving a Land Rover from £2,090pp. Or three nights in lodges and ten camping from £1,460pp. Both prices exclude flights, which are about £800pp, but include a seal and dolphin-watching boat trip, and quad-biking in the dunes. Accommodation in Swakopmund is at The Stiltz, and the Kulala Desert Lodge in Namib Naukluft National Park.

Driving tips

Take lots of water

Have back-up cash for remote petrol stations that may not accept cards. Do not speed — bumps can cause vehicles to overturn.

Keep lights on in dusty areas so you remain visible to other vehicles

Reading

Namibia Handbook by Lizzie Williams (Footprint, £14.99) — thorough, with a good section on Swakopmund and clear maps

Further information

The Namibian Tourism Board (namibiatourism.com.na)

TV series

The Prisoner begins on ITV at 9pm, from April 17 and will run for six weeks

The Prisoner’s remake gets an African flavour

After climbing dramatic dunes and finding himself in a town that looks as if it belongs in a psychedelic dream — multicoloured houses, giant avenues and odd bubble-style taxis — the main character in a new version of The Prisoner, the 1960s cult television series, out next week, looks haunted. “I don’t know how I got here,” he declares, as he looks around The Village, where he is trapped in a strange society where everyone is known by their number.

Although you think this must be a film set, Jim Caviezel, who plays a secret agent named Number Six, is on the run in the real-life Namibian coastal town of Swakopmund — a far cry from the original setting in the quirky resort of Portmeirion in North Wales.

You can recognise much of the town after seeing the programme. Near my hotel there are the peculiar, pink A-shaped houses that Number Six calls home. There are 50 of them and they make a strange sight. They are surrounded by bushes spouting purple flowers and there was not a soul in sight as I wandered about.

In the background, there were terrific views of the dunes that Number Six finds himself crossing while trying to work out what he is doing there and following the instructions of the odd community’s leader, played by Sir Ian McKellen. Walking up a hill to the centre of town, I passed many of the multicoloured houses that the first German settlers built (with elaborate stucco flourishes and long iron balustrade balconies), and which also act as a backdrop to many of the TV shots.

At the top, I came to the ornate, yellow Swakopmund Hotel, which figures large in the new, six-part series. This has a lovely courtyard with a pool, and I learnt from a receptionist that the main building was once the town’s railway station.

Further along, down by a beach, there were rows of multicoloured public benches and palm trees with arts and crafts stalls spread out in the shade. This section features frequently in the new TV show, and it is where Number Six often goes to a caf? to ponder his fate.

The programme-makers definitely picked the right location for the strange series: Swakopmund is delightfully odd.

First published in The Times, April 10 2010

On the dusty road

Swakopmund

Swakopmund’s German colonial era architecture

Unusual holiday camp in Swakopmund

Dune riding near Swakopmund

Namib Naukluft National Park dune

Land Rover with tent on roof up in Namib Desert

Campsite in Namib Desert

Town of Solitaire

Cars in Solitaire

Namib Naukluft National Park dune

The Namib Naukluft National Park with its 130m (426ft) dune at dawn

Parched landscape

Parched landscape at dried out lake

4th November 2014 / Articles /

A little bit of France in the Indian Ocean

Cirque de Cilaos

Dramatic scenery at Cirque de Cilaos (more pictures at end of article)

A traveller’s tip for visitors to La Réunion: do not wear sunglasses or leave off your headlights when driving through single-lane tunnels high in its volcanic mountains.

It’s not a good idea, as I learnt on the second day of my visit to this beautiful French-owned island, about 500 miles off Madagascar’s east coast in the Indian Ocean. I was enjoying the dramatic mountain scenery while concentrating on the 400-plus hairpin turns on one of the world’s twistiest roads when I casually ignored a sign saying “Allumez vos feux” (turn on your lights).

Not noticing the tunnel entrance ahead, I suddenly found myself creeping along a long dark corridor, unable to find the switch for my headlights after hastily whipping off my prescription sunglasses.

Peering through the darkness, I made nerve-rackingly slow progress towards the light at the end until, finally, I was out safely and continuing on my way to Cirque de Cilaos, the giant crater of an extinct volcano with a peaceful little town in its centre (more of which later).

A fly-drive week in La Réunion was an adventure I’ll never forget — leaving a series of vivid images that makes this French département, technically part of the EU, a refreshing alternative to other Indian Ocean islands such as Mauritius, the Seychelles and the Maldives, with all their bland beach-resort hotels.

Even driving from the airport to the capital, St-Denis, along an ocean road, brought a surprise. Suddenly almost every car pulled to the kerb, passengers leaping out. I did the same. And there, not much more than a stone’s throw from the shore, a glorious humpback whale leapt out of the sea, looking momentarily like a stone column, before crashing back into the water. The crowd of mainly locals stood entranced, taking snaps with mobile phones.

After my humpback experience, I soon found myself in vibrant St-Denis, which has a population of 130,000 (from a total of 827,000) and a very laid-back melting pot of cultures: French, Indian, Tamil, African and Chinese.

In a grid of colourful streets, with buildings painted in bright yellows, greens and reds, men in white robes strolled down rue du Maréchal Leclerc towards the mosque which, almost unbelievably, was in a tall building that had shops selling miniskirts and high-heeled shoes at its base.

Guys in Lacoste tracksuits and baseball caps lolled on corners by stalls selling fresh orange juice. Young women tottered past in tight jeans and miniskirts, heading towards a covered market stacked with great piles of tangerines, tomatoes, lettuce and sweet peppers, and metal cages full of ducks and chickens. One chicken was squashing itself against the metal. “Eh! Eh!” the woman selling them cried comically, beating the cage with a broom.

Farther on I passed old colonial buildings with ornate stuccoed gables; some dating back centuries. France took possession of the island in 1642, initially naming it Île Bourbon after the royal house. This was changed to La Réunion after the Revolution, to commemorate the union of Marseilles revolutionaries with the National Guard in Paris.

St-Denis is a vibrant, happy city, a good first port of call before a visitor heads on to Boucan Canot, an hour south. This beach resort is unlike any I have visited. It is described locally as the “other French Riviera”. Glamorous women and local playboys — posing, but not haughtily as on mainland France — mixed with families having picnics and the mainly French tourists; hardly any Brits visit the island. The beach is short with rough sand and a handful of cafés, bars and restaurants.

It was here, at the Bambou Bar, that I first tried cari, the local creole dish. Cari is wonderful and, for €14 (it was odd paying in euros so far south), I was tucking into a huge curry-like tuna dish, with white rice in a separate bowl, and other little bowls filled with rougail (a hot sauce with sliced carrot and tomato), pumpkin stew, lentils in a green sauce, red beans in gravy and finely chopped boiled cabbage with ginger. You can also have chicken versions; equally delicious, as I later found.

Well fed, I headed onwards to discover the “cirques”. There are three main “cirques ” in La Réunion, extinct volcanoes that were once the favourite hideaways for runaway slaves: Cirque de Cilaos, Cirque de Salazie and Cirque de Mafate.

The sleepy town of Cilaos is about 1,200m above sea level and is surrounded by jagged mountains with peaks soaring as high as 3,070m. It is a favourite place for hikers and I set off from behind its elegant white church, following steep boulder-strewn tracks surrounded by thick vegetation.

This led me, after an hour, up to La Roche Merveilleuse, a viewing point on a huge rock. And what a view: the caldera of the volcano spreading for miles around, clad in emerald foliage against a cobalt blue sky. The tiny settlement below looked toy-like on its hilly slopes amid the dramatic peaks. For a moment or so it felt as though I was visiting a living Machu Picchu. I also went on hikes in Salazie and Mafate, both captivating as well, especially Mafate, with its hairy walkway at the top of a cliff, but Cilaos was best (even if the drive up was so tricky).

The highlight of La Réunion was still to come. After an overnight stay in the lively coastal town of St Pierre, where the steep sloping streets reminded me of San Francisco, I had another long, twisty drive to Piton de la Fournaise — one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It’s also a tourist attraction.

The scenery on the way up turned from lush green hills dotted with brown cattle to vast glacial canyons — moon-like surfaces where only the hardiest plants survive — and dusty plains filled with red and black volcanic ash. Clouds swept over peaks and across the road in fast-moving swirls. And at the top, at 2,360m, I stood at the edge of the cloud-white crater, imagining the fiery world below. It was as though I had reached the edge of the Earth — no matter that I couldn’t see smoke or flames below, though luckier visitors often do (and it’s all perfectly safe).

In a week on the island I travelled 500km, finally ending up back at the airport after visiting the sugar cane plantations and black-rock beaches of the east coast. Forget the Maldives; forget Mauritius. This is the Indian Ocean island with real character, excitement … and a lot of very bendy roads.

How to do La Réunion

Where to stay
La Réunion is not a haven of five-star international hotel chains of the Four Seasons, Aman, or Shangri-La variety. However, there are decent three and four-star properties, all featured by Rainbow Tours (020-7226 1004, rainbowtours.co.uk). Among the best are:

Hotel Bellepierre (hotel-bellepierre.com, doubles from €144 a night) on a hill overlooking St-Denis, with neat rooms and terrific views across the colonial rooftops and the Indian Ocean.
Hotel Boucan Canot (boucancanot.com, from €200) has a stunning position, right by the sea in Boucan Canot, plus charming rooms and a decent pool.
Hotel Saint Alexis (en.hotelsaintalexis.com, from €160), is at one end of the beach at Boucan Canot, with a huge pool, stylish rooms and a calm atmosphere.
Villa Belle (villabelle.e-monsite.com, from €175) is a boutique B&B with very cool suites in St Pierre — plus a great pool in its lush gardens.
The Diana Dea Lodge & Spa (diana-dea-lodge.re, from €87) is the most chic new hotel on the island, tucked away on a hill overlooking St Anne on the east coast; the island’s best bargain.
Grand Hôtel du Lagon (020-7348 4880, naiade.com, from €245) is the biggest hotel on La Réunion with a huge pool, designer rooms and a good creole restaurant in St Gilles les Baines on the west coast.

Where to eat
There are great seafood restaurants as well as places serving cari, the local dish.

Le Cap Méchant d’Abord (00262 917199, ville-saintpierre.fr) on Boulevard Hubert Delisle on the waterfront in St Pierre is particularly good for creole dishes with a wide selection of French wines.
Le Bambou Bar (lebamboubar.com), in the heart of the promenade in Boucan Canot, is great for caris.

Meals in both restaurants came to about €25 for a starter, main dish and wine. In St-Denis, there are all sorts of stalls selling fried chicken and sandwiches filled with a sloppy pork and sweet pepper stew — very tasty and about €5. Across the island there are also European-style supermarkets (including a Carrefour) and grocery shops. Prices are reasonable. A decent bottle of wine from a supermarket costs about €6.

When to go
The peak season is October to December, when many French visit, but you can go at any time. The summer season is December to March (average temperature 26C), the winter is April to November (average 20C). The sea temperature is a stable 23C all year round. It can get cold in the cirques and at the top of the volcano, so take warm clothing; hiking boots are recommended.

Health
I was bitten once by mosquitoes during my stay in St Pierre. I didn’t see any other mosquitoes, but it is best to take a spray. Anti-malarial tablets are not required. In 2005 and 2006 La Réunion was struck by a mosquito-spread disease called chikungunya; it has been eradicated.

More information
Ile de La Réunion Tourisme (reunion.fr); Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles (Lonely Planet, £16.99).

Need to know

Getting there
Tom Chesshyre was a guest of Rainbow Tours (020-7226 1004, rainbowtours.co.uk), which offers an eight-night trip from £2,350pp with a night in St-Denis, three nights in Boucan Canot, one night in Cilaos, one in St Pierre, one in La Plaine des Palmistes (close to the volcano), and one in St Anne on the east coast. International flights and car hire are included. Air France (0871 6633777, airfrance.co.uk) has returns from London to La Réunion from £958.

First published in The Times, October 25 2013

My hire car in La Reunion

Typical view from the roadside

Bar in St-Denis

Beach at Boucan Canot

Tunnels to watch out for

One of the tunnels to watch out for on a driving trip

Church at Cirque de Cilaos

4th November 2014 / Articles /

Take the dusty road to the heart of Africa’s spice island

Matemwe

Driving through countryside close to Matemwe (more pictures at the end of the article)

Somewhere near the turning to Stone Town in Tunguu, on a stretch of dusty road surrounded by tropical forest in the centre of Zanzibar, a policeman in a white uniform raised his hand to ask us to halt. He had spotted us from afar and we had seen him spring from where he had been leaning in the shade. He looked grave, as though we had done something very wrong.

I pulled over. He sternly gestured for me to move over even farther. I drove our Suzuki Jeep on to the dirt verge. Then he went to the passenger window and stuck his head inside.

He asked to see my international driver’s permit (which all visitors must have when driving in Tanzania; available for £5.50 from post offices in the UK). I showed him this and he held the document thoughtfully, examining the grey cardboard cover almost ruefully. He then leaned farther into the car.

“Not stop there! Not stop! Fee! Fees and bail of the Government of Zanzibar!” he said.

“But you asked us to stop,” I replied.

“The Government of Zanzibar!” he answered. “Fees and bail!” Then he put his hand in a pocket and pulled out a ragged scrap of paper, on which there was small smeared print and a Biro figure indicating 50,000 shillings (about £22).

We had been warned about police road stops when we collected our hire car at the airport, and had been told to hold our nerve on such occasions. This advice had been relayed by a slightly nervous-looking rental company rep. Not many tourists hire cars in Zanzibar; we didn’t see another tourist driving about during a week on the 35 mile-long, 12 mile-wide island.

We did hold our nerve, and the officer eventually (after quite a stand-off) took back his scrappy paper and waved us on. We had passed one of the big tests of a fly-drive in Zanzibar: don’t hand out shillings to shifty policemen on remote roads.

Our regular police stops almost became part of the fun of the trip. What would be the character of the officer ahead? Stern, snappy and bullying like our friend near Tunguu, or charming and smiley like many others who simply appeared curious to talk to passers-by from foreign lands. Often we were just waved through without stopping. Other times we would see officers asleep in the shade of a mango tree.

Driving yourself on a break in Zanzibar is a wonderful way to see an island with a rich history that makes other Indian Ocean islands seem dull by comparison. We stayed at three hotels (two nights in each), travelling by car in between and exploring places that the majority of visitors do not see: we know this because we saw them lying by the pools each day.

From our first hotel — the splendid Kasha Boutique, with villas with plunge pools on the northeast coast of the island — we drove one morning to investigate Stone Town. After negotiating a bumpy dirt track and the sleepy fishing village of Matemwe, where tiny children waved and gave us the thumbs up (often looking as though they were thinking: “Who are these mad people in the car?”), we passed along roads with cattle, chickens and goats, as well as carts pulled by oxen and locals precariously transporting the long mangrove branches for contructing buildings.

It was hot and increasingly chaotic as we arrived at Zanzibar’s capital, with thousands of people milling about at streetside stalls selling bright, neatly stacked piles of mangos, watermelons, limes and sweet potatoes, as well as great bundles of colourful clothes. Past several mosques (the island is Islamic, while mainland Tanzania has a large Christian population) and the entrance to the port, we drew up in front of the fabulous House of Wonders, next to a little park overlooking the coast of Africa, about 25 miles to the west.

The House of Wonders lived up to its name. Built by Sultan Barghash in 1883, at a time when Stone Town was the headquarters of the Imamate of Oman that ruled much of East Africa, the name comes from its use of electricity and lights that illuminated a building on the island for the first time. It is an extraordinary structure, with huge metal columns, vast balconies and a tall, thin clocktower; looking a little like an antebellum home from the Deep South of the United States, except with its dimensions almost comically exaggerated.

Inside, we learnt about the days when Zanzibar was a famous stop for explorers about to head into deepest Africa; Burton and Speke (in 1856), Livingstone (1866, on his last journey; he returned in a coffin in 1874), and Stanley (in 1872, when he arrived to a hero’s welcome after hunting down Livingstone). We also found out about the years of the British protectorate from 1890 until Zanzibar gained independence in 1963. Interestingly, the pop star Freddie Mercury, whose father worked for the British as a civil servant, was born and lived on the island until he was sent to boarding school. Perhaps he was thinking of the roads of his homeland in later years whenever he sang Another One Bites the Dust.

After examining the relics in the old Sultan’s Palace next door, we ordered coffees at a pretty café named Archipelago, overlooking the water. The is close to the Africa House Hotel, where Livingstone is said to have stayed. We wander about the hot streets, popping into the handful of souvenir stores selling wooden masks and bags of spices (the island is famous for its cloves), with only a few other tourists walking about. They had all come with guides, but we were free to explore on our own. And each day we did. On one afternoon, we visited the tiny, curious village of Nungwi on the northern tip of the island, entering its famous “supermarket” — which sold a handful of sodas, canned foods and toiletries. This was as close as Zanzibar got to a super-market as we know it on the whole island. The coastline here was particularly stunning, with its white sand beaches and coral reefs.

On another we stopped amid the lush green of the tall mahogany trees of Jozani National Park, where we searched in vain for the endangered endemic colobus monkeys. We took in the ruins of the first mosque built (in 1107) on the east coast of Africa, northwest of a quiet fishing village called Kizimkazi — a splendid, laid-back place where fishermen were mending nets and carving new boats in the shade of trees down by the beach.

We revisited Stone Town and ventured into the warren of the old slave market and a fruit market that seemed to go on for ever, teeming with pineapples, bananas, passion fruit and piles of cashew nuts, another big local crop.

It was a week of exploration, dodging traffic officers, getting lost (the signs on the island are appalling) and smarting at the stark contrast between the world of luxury hotels and the hard realities of life for many in East Africa. The average annual income in Zanzibar is about £160; rooms at most of the top hotels are much more than that a night.

But going by car was a great way to see what we found to be one of the most interesting spots in Africa. With an international driver’s permit, a smile for the policemen and an eye for goats darting across the road in front of you, it is easy, and enjoyable, to go on a fly-drive on Tanzania’s lovely spice island.

Need to know

W&O Travel Rainbow Tours (020-7226 1004, rainbowtours.co.uk) has seven-night breaks with three nights at Kasha (half board), two at Baraza (full board and all drinks) and two at Palms (full board and all drinks) from £2,175pp, based on two sharing, flights and transfers included. A hire car costs from £260 extra a week.

Kasha (kasha-zanzibar.com) consists of luxurious new villas overlooking a sand beach and a coral reef, while Baraza (baraza-zanzibar.com) is a new hotel with five-star rooms with an Arabian theme; the Palms (palms-zanzibar.com) is a hideaway of six huge villas with private plunge pools.

Alternatively, seven nights’ half-board at the Breeze Beach Club & Spa, a relaxed family-friendly resort, is from £1,190pp, with flights and transfers included.

First published in The Times, February 19 2011

On approach to Zanzibar

View from propeller plane on approach to Zanzibar

Goats crossing road

Goats cross road in unusual manner

An election

An election was in the offing…

Stone Town

Lick of paint

…parts of which could have done with a lick of paint

The House of Wonders

The House of Wonders, Stone Town

Boats Stone Town

Boats by Stone Town

4th November 2014 / Articles /

My great rail journey through Kosovo

Peja

Peja, Kosovo

At Pristina station there are gasps. In the distance a cherry-red train is hurtling in our direction, trailing a line of smoke and hooting its horn. My fellow holidaymakers raise their camera. “Oh what a beauty,” says one. “Marvellous, marvellous,” whispers another. The train thunders past and shutters click. The driver blows the whistle twice and adds a few more hoots.

Not many people go on holiday in Kosovo, and even fewer take a holiday on the rails in the tiny, newly-established republic, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 (and is about the size of Devon). Yet here we are on a group tour by train, catching rides across the green rolling countryside of the recently battle-torn land and on into Macedonia.

Our mission? To see the city of Peja before heading south and passing through immigration control into another country altogether: Macedonia, where our train will take us to its capital, Skopje.

The highlight is the journey west from the capital Pristina to Peja, near the borders with Montenegro and Serbia, as well as the foothills of the Albanian Alps (known as the “Accursed Mountains” for being so rugged). It’s a ride that takes about two and a half hours, giving us a different perspective on the pretty countryside, though it’s not this that has attracted those around me. “This is what everyone was hoping for: a proper old loco pulling carriages,” says Steve, a retired financier from Shropshire, peering out of the window as the train snakes round a bend. “We’re delighted.”

He and some of the others have already identified that the loco is a 1961 Norwegian model and that the carriages are ex Austrian Federal Railways from the 1980s; Kosovo’s trains are made up of a ragbag of cast-offs. There are some serious rail buffs among us, including the author of several illustrated books about trains and a few rail bloggers. Almost all have cameras. Many have pads. There is the odd flask. We are trainspotters on tour, on an inaugural train holiday in Kosovo.

It all makes for a refreshingly unusual holiday. After the Tito-ero apartment blocks and tumbledown yards of the edge of Pristina, the scenery opens out into green rolling hills, fields with brown cows and meandering, glistening rivers. The cherry-red train rattles along, never picking up much speed, and stopping intermittently at the burnt-out ruins of small grey-stone stations. These were struck by bombs during the civil war that ended in 1999 and have yet to be repaired, though they are still used by passengers, who leap off on to the side of the track. Health and safety has clearly yet to find a foothold in post-independence Kosovo: kids run happily alongside the train as it pulls away and some on board waggle their legs out of an open carriage door. The burgundy-capped conductor doesn’t bat an eyelid.

As we chug onwards in our comfy old second-class Austrian carriage, the landscape becomes even more remote and the snow-peaked Accursed Mountains rise in the distance. Church spires poke up from isolated churches. Tractors plough muddy fields. A faint smell of diesel wafts in from the loco.

Peja is a sleepy city with streets named after Tony Blair, Madeleine Albright and Nato — the intervention during the civil war is far from forgotten in Kosovo, and Britain and the US are regarded favourably wherever we go. There’s even a statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina. We hop off at the station and cross a couple of tracks by foot. Ours is the only train.

For a while we switch from trainspotting to sight-spotting. After staying overnight at a hotel on Tony Blair street, we wander around a market selling fake Hugo Boss jackets, watermelons and vast arrays of wedding dresses, which are busily being perused by mothers and daughters. Peja is, according to the Bradt guide to Kosovo, “where you can find the most beautiful girls in Kosovo”, and weddings seem to be very much in the air. We take in the statue of Mother Teresa, who is from Macedonia but revered in Kosovo. It stands by the iridescent Lumi Bardhi river, and we sit in one of the many cafés drinking strong coffees in the sun; 50 cents a cup. Everything is dirt cheap in Kosovo. It’s difficult to spend ten euros on three-course meals at the best restaurants, including drinks.

At the stunning monastery of Pec Patriarchate, hidden behind high walls, we find barbed wire and protection from Kfor (Kosovo Force, the international peacekeeping force overseen by Nato). The protection is required due to the continuing tensions between the Albanian majority and Serbian minority in the country. Kosovans with Albanian roots are not allowed into the monastery, which is run by 25 nuns. One shows us the magnificent frescoes and gold chandeliers in the 14th-century church, which smells of incense and is illuminated by candles and streaks of sunlight filtering from windows high above.

This is followed by Visoki Decani Monastery on the outskirts of town, which dates from the 13th century and is set around a courtyard behind more tall walls. In the main church, onyx walls and purple marble columns support a dome above colourful frescoes depicting the life of Christ.

After a stop at the gorgeous gorge in the Rugova Mountains beyond Decani, we are back on the tracks heading east to Pristina, where I talk to a wide-eyed local student in a neighbouring carriage who says: “I’ve never seen a train-lover before.” We spend a day taking in more sights: the Clinton statue, the excellent little Ethnographic Museum and yet another breathtaking monastery: the 14th-century Manastir Gracanica, recognised in the Unesco World Heritage list. It’s not so far from the hilltop where Slobodan Milosevic made his infamous speech on Serbian nation identity in 1989 that presaged the trouble to come in the civil war. This spot is also behind protective walls, with the monument commemorating those who died during Serbia’s 14th-century defeat in the Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans still standing.

We fit in a happy hour taking in a steam locomotive and a small railway museum by a station that formerly offered services to Belgrade (which no longer run due to the continuing hostility between Kosovo and Serbia). It was from this station, we learn from our guide, that many tens of thousands of those with Albanian ancestry were transported out of Kosovo during the 1990s; a chilling reminder of the relatively recent troubles.

The steam locomotive is green and shiny and creates a bit of a stir. “1950s, operated until the early 1960s, I would say,” comments Nick, with a gleam in his eye. Nick describes himself as a train historian and has visited “all the axis of evil countries, I like to go out there on the edge”. On trains, of course.

During our journey south from Pristina to Skopje – pulled by an Italian-made engine dating from 1983 with a “diesel multiple unit” (I am reliably informed) — a couple from the group fills me in on trainspotter terms. There are, apparently, many nuances in the world of trainspotting. A “haulage basher” is a person who likes to travel to lots of different places, while a “track basher” makes a special effort to travel on as many lines as possible, and a “number cruncher” is more interested in making a note of different train numbers. There are also those who collect “footplate rides” – which count as when they are invited to the cab at the front of trains by drivers.

Finally, there are “gricers”. Nobody on the trip can explain from where this term originates but it refers to the especially geeky trainspotter. “Ghastly plasticky shoulder bag from the 1980s. Anorak. Scruffy trainers,” says Charlie, a retired librarian from Islington, attempting a definition.

Mike, a particularly snap-happy trainspotter, tells me: “We get a bad press. We’re fair game for it. But the thing is: on holidays like these, we go to the places that other people don’t see.”

And as we cross into Macedonia and head on between the magnificent snowcapped mountains into Skopje, I agree — we have taken in some amazing sights.

Need to know

Tom Chesshyre was a guest of Ffestiniog Travel (01766 772030, ffestiniogtravel.com) which offers a 12-night guided tour travelling through Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania from £1,650pp including flights from Gatwick via Istanbul to Pristina and back from Tirana.

Further information: Kosovo (Bradt, £15.99) includes information on independent train travel in Kosovo. Tom Chesshyre is author of Tales from the Fast Trains: Europe at 186mph (Summersdale, £8.99)

Great European train rides

Glacier Express in the Swiss Alps
Travelling on the Bernina Express and Glacier Express between the snowcapped peaks of the Swiss Alps has to be one of the most exhilarating train journeys anywhere. Ffestiniog Travel (01766 772030, ffestiniogtravel.com) has created a 15-day guided tour departing on September 8 that begins with a Eurostar train from St Pancras to Paris and a TGV onwards to Basle. In Switzerland travellers use the unlimited Swiss train pass, included in the price, to see Neuchâtel, the Jura region and the Bernese Oberland (with the Eiger and Jungfrau mountains and views of Lake Geneva), before taking the Glacier Express to Chur and the Bernina Express to Tirano in northern Italy and travelling back by train to London. The price is from £2,275pp including all train travel and B&B stays in hotels.

Across the roof of Norway
The Bergen line, which opened in 1909, touches 1,301 metres above sea level at Finse as it crosses the Hardangervidda, Europe’s largest mountain plateau. Taber Holidays (01274 875199, taberhols.co.uk) offers self-guided six-night “Across the Roof of Norway” tours that begin in Oslo and end in Bergen, a distance of 308 miles. Along the way there’s dramatic mountain scenery, with the route passing through deep pine forests and alongside stunning fjords. The trips are offered through the summer until the end of September with the price starting at £1,063 including flights, rail tickets and B&B.

Rome and southern Italy
Great Rail Journeys (01904 521936, greatrail.com) has many rail trips in Europe, but among its newest offerings is a trip around Calabria in southern Italy covering 14 days. It begins in St Pancras and continues onwards, via Eurostar to Paris and a TGV to Turin. From there, a first-class ticket takes guests to Rome, where two nights are spent, before continuing south to Calabria, taking a track alongside rugged coastline to Lamezia Terme. Guided tours are arranged in the south from the hotel in Tropea, taking in the medieval town of Gerace and the Carthusian monastery near Serra San Bruno. On the return to Britain by train there is also a stop-off in Bologna in northern Italy and Mulhouse in France; the price is from £2,195pp including all trains, B&B hotels and some meals.

Budapest to Istanbul
For a European rail journey of a lifetime, in style, the Danube Express departing from Budapest’s Nyugati station to Istanbul is hard to beat, though the price is steep: £3,680pp (01462 441400, danube-express.com). The train takes in four countries in four days – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. There are stop-offs along the way including a “Puszta” horse show in Lajosmizse in Hungary, and a visit to the ancient capital of Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria. The price covers two nights’ B&B at the Astoria Budapest and two nights’ B&B at the Yasmuk Sultan Hotel in Istanbul, with three nights in a private en suite compartment on the train with all meals and wine and beer on board, and international flights.

Harz Mountains, Germany
Travel on steam trains and narrow gauge railways through Germany’s Harz Mountains on a five-day train lovers’ break put together by Diamond Rail Holidays (0844 5443808, diamondrailholidays.co.uk). The guided trip includes a Eurostar journey via Brussels to Hanover on Deutsche Bahn and costs from £699pp with four nights’ half-board in hotels. The highlight is a high-gradient ride on the Brocken steam railway to the summit of the mountains, and there’s also a trip on the Selketal railway through the picturesque Selke Valley. At the end participants return to the UK by train.

Classical cities of Spain
See four cities in central Spain on a “Classical Cities of Old Castile” self-guided rail tour organised by Inn Travel (01653 617000, inntravel.co.uk). Spend two nights in each of Segovia, Salamanca, Madrid and Toledo, with a suggested itinerary covering cultural sites such as the museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco in Segovia, the Thyssen-Bornemisza gallery in Madrid and the El Greco museum in Toledo. The price is from £700pp with eight nights’ staying in B&Bs and rail tickets included, but not flights.

Lochs and Highlands of Scotland
Responsible Travel (01273 823700, responsibletravel.com) offers an eight-day break by train travelling around Scotland. You start in Glagow and chug along past Loch Lomond on the West Highland Line to Spean Bridge in the Highlands. After an overnight stay at a hotel, it’s onwards by steam train from Fort Willam to Mallaig, after which there is a ferry to the Isle of Skye. A night is spent on the island and then the trip continues, after a ferry back to the mainland, to Inverness, Perthshire, Killiecrankie and Edinburgh. The price is from £985 with B&B accommodation along the way.

Also try Planet Rail (planetrail.co.uk), Treyn Rail Holidays (railholidays.com), Voyages SNCF (uk.voyages-sncf.com), Railbookers (railbookers.com), Expressions Holidays (expressionsholidays.co.uk), Discover the World (discover-the-world.co.uk) and Explore (explore.co.uk).

First published in The Times, July 19 2014

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Category: Articles

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Great European train rides