My South American Adventure

11th October 2011 – British Airways in World Traveller Plus to Buenos Aires – longest flight that BA fly!  13 hours and it seemed to last forever.  We had 65 minutes to transfer to our flight to Lima and onwards to Quito with LAN – we were met at the gangway by a LAN representative to say that our flight was either cancelled or very delayed to Lima so they were putting us on a direct flight to Quito as that was also delayed by one hour.  Only a slight problem as we were booked in business class between Buenos Aires and Lima and they only had premium economy on the flight…however, they gave us each a voucher for $680!!!

Ecuador

12th October – Arrive late afternoon at the Radisson Plaza Hotel – lovely modern hotel and small by today’s standards – very welcoming and the room was great.  Had an early supper and tried to sleep but woke up at 5.30am and raring to go…

13th October -First day on our own – visited the LAN office to see if they would give us the $1360 in cash but not to be…it would be credited to my mastercard but the paperwork was not ready so we were to go the next day so we set off to explore the Historic centre – La Compania – incredible church built in 1600s and full of gold leaf…walked thru Independence Plaza and then walked up to the La Basilica – David walked up to the top and got great photos of Quito..whilst I sat in the sunshine in the grounds of the church and had a cappuccino.  We then walked backed to Independence Plaza and had lunch in a restaurant called El Ricon del Fraile – on the first floor of a glass covered  small courtyard of the Bishop’s palace.  Great Ecuadorian food….a traditional dish called….which had steak with a fried egg on top plus lentils, rice, chips, avocado and salad…a huge amount of food all tasting good.

Made our way back to the hotel and had a couple of hours sleep to try and catch up on our jet lag.

Supper in local restaurant just around the corner of the hotel – again local food – fish.

14th October – transfer to Hotel Quito (large impersonal hotel and which obviously caters for groups) – room was basic even though it was “upgraded” to a king size executive room although it had no temperature control nor mini bar and it was faded splendour!

At 1400 we were collected by Gustavo of Klein Tours and went to Middle of the World…the equator where you can stand with one foot in the northern hemisphere and the other in the south.  Went to a village where it has been established where the real equator actually is – we could see how the locals lived centuries ago before the invasion of either the Spanish or the Incas.

We then went to see the French monument but this has since been proved to be in the wrong place.

Told Gustavo that we did not wish to go to the Historic centre again and settled for a coffee/tea.  He took us to a personal favourite restaurant which had the most incredible view of Quito and we spent a happy hour chatting about Ecuador, politics, schools, health system, family and vowed to keep in touch via Facebook.

15th October

Met the rest of the group – Maria & Rob, Paul and Jo and set off at 0800 – having borrowed a step from the hotel so I could get on the coach – to Otavalo Market via Peruche where we looked at a shop where they make figures from what looked like play dough and then on to Otavalo Market for an hour…colourful local market which sold anything from meat (live chicken), vegetables, fruit to clothes of every description and colour, local jewellery, hammocks and carved figures – managed to get an alpaca poncho for $20 which should come in very handy when we get to Patagonia.  Onto to Sumag Micuy Restaurant for lunch which consisted of roast chicken, vegetables, corn on the cob and potatoes and we had the opportunity of tasting guinea pig (I dipped out as we had seen it in the over with its head on!!) but David did taste it and like a lot of light meat thought it tasted of chicken.  After the meal we were treated to a rather amateurish display of music and dancing – all a bit painful.

After this we went to see a musician who made pan pipes…from reeds he cut and then tuned and bound together.  His daughters came out and they played a short tune – all hoping that we would buy something – either pan pipes or a CD..sadly they were disappointed.  We moved down the road to a weaver who showed us how to weave various fabrics but once again we all declined to buy!

Next stop was Cuicocha Lagoon – bit dreary and the very blue lagoon was decidedly grey.  David and the rest of the group went for a 30 minute trek in drizzle whilst I stayed in the van.  After a quick visit to the Cotacachi Leather market – basically a street of leather shops selling anything leather but nothing attractive or of a design that was desirable so once again nothing purchased.

Next stop was the Magdalena Community Karanki – long drive and the last part of it was on cobbled roads in the dark.  Arrived at the “main house” where we told that we were all to be separated and would be taken to a local house where we would eat and stay the night….bit daunting.  We were first off the van and were welcomed by 3 children – one waving an Ecuador flag – we were shown into a small one floor house – kitchen, living room, bedroom with ensuite shower room.  There was a roaring wood fire in the living room – it was lovely and warm – so much so that the family were far too hot.    They never have a fire in their house, come rain, shine, or winter!!We were introduced to the family – never found out what mother and father were called but their daughter Miriam was married to Orlando and they had 2 children – Jason and Chessi plus their 2 cousins Jesus and Melanie (odd to find that the names were strangely European).  Mother in the kitchen cooking our meal whilst we tried to converse with Miriam.  There were bottles on top of the fridge with prices on them – beer $2, coke $.50 etc plus a menu of eggs for breakfast…scrambled, fried, boiled – you just pointed to the one you wanted next morning!!  Fortunately for us Miriam’s English, whilst basic, was good enough to carry on a conversation.  Our meal arrived – huge pot of soup – mainly made of corn – and it was slightly embarrassing as it was assumed that we would eat whilst the others sat and watched.  Fortunately we were able to insist that Miriam and Orlando join us.  So we had a really enjoyable time trying to converse about their life in the community – Miriam did not work (but probably worked hard as they did not have the luxuries that we take for granted) and Orlando was a farmer.  We believe that the community had one tractor which was shared amongst the 10 families.  After soup we had fish and chips with carrots, peas and broccoli and lastly the tomato tree fruit.  Plenty for all and made us feel much better.

The children joined us after the meal and I produced my iphone and ipad both have several games on them.  Crash Bandicoot was a huge success!  The most amazing thing was that even though the 3 children wanted to play with the games they never argued about who played – they patiently waited their turn and willingly gave the ipad/iphone to the next child who was waiting – they shared and it was lovely to see.  When the 2 year old came in they took care that she was included and they sat her with them so she could see – never letting her hold one of the machines but showing her how to work it.  Something we have lost at home.

We all had an early night….mother had put hot water bottles in our beds and even though on first impression we thought the beds hard we both had a good night’s sleep.

16th October

Woke at 7am and heard the front door opening – mother was coming in to cook our breakfast…having milked the cow!  We were treated to homemade bread (like pita bread) with jam/butter followed by scrambled eggs.  Plus a good cup of coffee with hot milk.

The children soon joined us and it was obvious that they would like to play the games again…which I duly produced.

Mother regularly rose at 4am to do embroidery and she came in with a big bag of her work.  We rather felt obliged to buy and selected 4 table mats beautifully worked for $40.  Just wanted to give them something back for their generous hospitality.

We were then picked up and joined the rest of the group and it was soon obvious that we had really had the best evening.   The tour of the community continued by visiting all the houses that took in visitors….one was huge and almost a self catering apartment – this was followed by a presentation in the main house by Klein Tours about the community which they have funded and continue to do so.  They are keen for us agents to send them clients….but we would have to be very selective!!

David went off to have a horse ride around the countryside and I stayed back and talked to our guide Carmen…

Lunch consisted of another great soup, followed by roast pork, corn, avocado, potato with cheese and again tomato cherry fruit and coffee.

The trip back to Quito was mainly on a cobbled road – long, uncomfortable and we all wished we had gone back on the Pan American Highway – but we did get to see two cows tied together ploughing a field – the husband leading whilst the wife helped with turning them round.

Back at Hotel Quito we discovered that no alcohol is sold on Sunday in Ecuador!  David wanted a vodka and ginger ale and then the fun began.  We were told in the bar that we could order via room service but then they would not take the order as we had not got a “voucher”.  This turned out to be the credit card form which is normally lodged when you check into a hotel…on check in this time we were not asked for one….David went to reception and did the necessary paperwork.  Room service then decided that they did not have ginger ale.  We insisted that we had had a vodka and ginger ale a couple of days before but the man on the phone was adamant that it would have to be sprite.  10 minutes later a knock on the door and the waiter brought a tray in with 3 glasses on it – 2 containing ginger ale and the third being 1/2 full of vodka.. David was a happy boy!!

Met the others for supper at the restaurant on the 7th floor – odd it did not have a name – and they had just discovered that no alcohol could be served.  Sat down and had a good supper and also had an early night as we were leaving the hotel at 0600 in the morning for our flight to the Galapagos.

17th October

Impressed with Aerogal…new A320 airbus and the service/food was good.

Arrived in Baltra and I couldn’t get on the bus as the step was way too high so we were directed to a second bus which had a lower step.  The sky was blue and it was lovely and warm.  Short journey to the quayside and we could see the boat – Galapagos Legend.  Bit of a challenge as we transferred by zodiac – the staff convinced I could get on it (did have a life jacket!) and with lots of helping hands I did manage to haul myself into a sitting position on the zodiac.  Lots of helping hands to haul me onto the boat which was comforting.

After we were shown to our tiny cabin we went straight to the restaurant for lunch – it was here that we learnt that the boat, although in The Galapagos which is one hour behind Ecuador, operating on mainland time.  Lunch was tasty…buffet which included salad, honey fish, rice, vegetables and followed by fruit salad/cake and coffee.

Had a 30 minute briefing about the rules of The Galapagos and a brief description of the excursion to North Seymour this afternoon.  It has been decided that I will not go as there is a short hike over rough uneven ground….David will take lots of photos for me.

After a short sail we arrived at North Seymour – a small islet north of Baltra with the same arid vegetation such as prickly pear cacti and salt bushes. The island is home to the largest colony of frigate birds in the Galapagos as well as nesting blue footed boobies and swallow tailed gulls.  The sandy shore teems with Galapagos sea lions and marine iguanas. This was the season for the frigate birds – the male performing a courtship dance with their inflatable red pouches.

All the animals/birds are totally unaware of the danger of humans – so much so that they congregate and sometimes you just have to step over them!!

18th October

Overnight we sailed to Floreana and after a buffet breakfast it was time to take a walk in Santa Cruz toward a salt-water lagoon behind the beach to see pink flamingos – sadly only one turned up on the day!!  We trekked up to Dragon Hill which offered a lovely view of the bay.   This was also a nesting site for land iguanas.  We also spotted eagle rays, golden rays, sharks and sea turtles.

In the afternoon we sailed a little further round the island and stopped at Punta Cormoran – peaceful small island with extinct volcanic cones. Lots to see – birds, ducks, stilts and sandpipers.

At lunch we were given a dinner menu and had to choose in advance – the food was varied and surprisingly good!

19th October

Overnight we sailed (rather noisily and bumpily) to Espanola – one of the oldest islands in the archipelago.  It has one of the densest and most diverse concentrations of wildlife in the world.  We saw iguanas with their unique copper-red patches, sea lions, lava lizards, blue footed boobies, finches, swallow tailed gulls and the long billed mocking bird.  At Punta Suarez there is a spectacular blowhole, where thundering spray shoots 90 feet into the air!

Back on board for lunch and in the afternoon we docked at San Cristobal and went to see the giant turtle farm – they are breeding the turtles as there are an endangered species…we saw tiny week old turtles to 50 year olds meandering around the grounds.  Stopping in the very small town for a drink it was lovely to watch the sea lions wandering around on the pavement looking for a sunny spot to sleep – this included the park benches!!

20th October

I went on an early dingy ride to see more sea lions whilst David went  snorkelling – jolly cold and a wetsuit was definitely needed!!

Back to the airport for our flight to Quito (via Guayaquil) – Aerogal were impressive with their new A320 aircraft.  We bid farewell to our fellow travellers and waited at the airport for our flight to Lima on LAN.  The flight to Peru was good and we arrived at 2230 where we met Jorge and his wife Melanie who escorted us across the road to the Ramada Hotel.  Sat and had a coffee/chat and then off to bed.

PERU

21st October

Jorge once again met us at the hotel for breakfast and then we checked in for our flight to Cusco – once again LAN very good, on time.  We were met at the airport and went to Casa Andina Private Collection Hotel where we were to stay for 3 nights.  Lovely hotel built around 2 courtyards.  Walked up to the main square and had lunch on a balcony – we had been advised to eat lightly so I had a delicious bowl of local soup and an omelette whilst David had a local chicken dish.   Wandered around – lovely day with blue sky – bought a lovely baby alpaca cardigan.

In the evening we ate at the hotel restaurant – Alma – Cocina Viva – I had soup and David had trout.  Early night as we had been up so early for catch the flight!

22nd October

Whilst the hotel is very lovely we were in room 101 and at 5.45am the guests started parading through the corridor outside – en route to Machu Picchu/Sacred Valley – very difficult to sleep and most seemed to be very jolly enquiring how their fellow travellers slept and dragging their suitcases noisily along!!

However, we took a taxi to Poroy Station just outside Cusco and boarded the Hiram Bingham train to Machu Picchu.  Luxury train which clattered along for nearly 4 hours – the observation car was open at one end and we could just gaze at the passing scenery.  There was a 3 piece band on board and they were extremely good – our guide (Carlos) joined in most of the songs and waved a tambourine (or something like it) and we were treated to breakfast and then brunch.  On arrival at Agues Calientes we were taken through the local market and boarded an old bus and went up a very windy steep road to Machu Picchu – bit of a panic as they asked for passports which we did not have but our UK driving licences were accepted.  We were treated to a 3 hour tour of the magical Inca site – built around 1530 – took many iconic photos and we were so lucky that the sun shone and the rain stayed away.  After the tour we went to The Sanctuary for afternoon tea.  Back on the bus and down the hill to reboard the train.  Great supper served on the way back and we arrived back about 2115.

23rd October

At last a morning at leisure – had a late breakfast and then tried to check in for our flights tomorrow for Lima/Santiago – what a saga – it took over an hour on the phone to LAN to sort the check in – at first I thought we might not make the flight to Lima as it seemed oversold but managed to persuade the chap on the phone to find us seat numbers which he did.

We had a city tour with Edwin in the afternoon – funny chap – seemed at a bit of a loss as to what to say – we first went to The Convent of Santo Domingo del Cusco to see some Inca temple/ruins and then off to visit Saqsayhuaman – about 10 minutes drive out of Cusco – huge rock boulders had been built on top of one another.  We then went back to town and visited the Cathedral which was lovely inside and enormous – had a black Christ on a crucifix with an Inca skirt.  Quick whizz round as we had arrived only 20 minutes before the church closed.

Back to hotel and changed and went to Meson de Don Thomas for dinner – local restaurant complete with 4 piece band – David started with soup which included an egg and we both had alpaca for our main course….dreadful coffee – their cappuccino machine had broken and they convinced us they could make similar – but it was ghastly!!

As we had already packed we went back to the hotel for a relatively early night

CHILE

24th October

Early pickup at 7.30am for the airport – flight to Lima was delayed by 30 minutes but we did arrive on time!  Wandered around the shops – nothing to buy and went for a snack/drink in the VIP lounge….  Flight was due to depart at 1300 but when we got to the gate there was no aircraft – not a good sign…the flight would be 40 minutes late!!  So we walked back to the lounge….back to the gate 40 minutes later and they were calling David’s name…never a good sign!  the LAN representative was clutching 2 wallets….the aircraft had been changed and there was no bushiness class nor premium economy on the flight and to top it all we were not even going to sit together in economy.  However he was offering $1,030 each as compensation – this now totals $1,710 each from LAN…will pay for the sumptuous meals we will eat in Chile!!!!

met on arrival by Valentina – our guide for the trip – and taken to the Santiago Park Plaza Hotel – faded splendour but with jolly good restaurant§ and nice staff

25th October

Had city tour of Santiago – wonderful wide avenues with many statues in the middle. Saw changing of the guard at the palace and had a wonderful lunch at the Fish Market – much variety and tasty.

After lunch it was off to the Undaggara vineyard for a tour of the grounds/winery and then wine tasting…no good for David nor I!

In the evening we took a taxi to Patio area in the Bellavista area where there were many restaurants to choose from….we opted for a steakhouse.

26th October

Ridiculously early start with 5.30am wakeup call so we could have breakfast and leave at 6.40am for the airport for our 2 hour flight to Calama.

We all jumped into small coach and drove 55miles to San Pedro where we checked into the Altiplanico Hotel – splendid small hotel. We were then sauntered the 1/2 mile or so into town for lunch. Very small town with really only one main street which has lots of restaurants, small tourist shops and shops selling excursions. Had reasonable lunch and then walked back. It was exceedingly hot and dusty…..

4.30pm we were collected and taken to the Valley of the Moon for a sandy walk and then to see the sunset on a sandy ridge – back to the hotel for dinner…I didn’t make it – far too tired!!

27th October

Full day tour to Laguna Cejar – a salty lake where David went floating..very hot but the water was very cold!

We went on to see the Salar de  Atacama – one of largest salt lakes in the world – we stopped en route to visit Toconao – a small village with buildings made entirely from white volcanic stone – we went to a small house where a local woman made woollen items by knitting with cactus needles – we bought scarves for David, Christine and Gilliey.  From there we went to see the Laguna Chaxa – part of the Reserva Nacional de los Flamingos where there were lots of flamingos….but before visiting here we had had a packed lunch in the middle of nowhere under a picnic roof area surrounded by trees…most odd as we were in the desert!  In the evening we took a taxi into San Pedro where we had a great local food supper -

28th October

We had the opportunity to visit a geyser some 90 miles away up a dirt road leaving at 0630 – we declined and spent a day at leisure…lazy morning reading by pool, taxi into town with Tina, a little shopping and great lunch at La Casouna – local restaurant….apple soup, chicken with mash potato followed by papaya.  Taxi back to hotel and time to relax.

Dinner at hotel – good food

29th October

9.30am start for Calama Airport for flight to Santiago and on to Puerto Montt – sadly LAN had rescheduled the flights and we had rather a wasted day waiting around Santiago Airport for our onward flight.

We missed our tour of Puerto Varas in the evening as we arrived so late – checking into the Cabana Del Lago Hotel – we had the smallest room possible with a cupboard for a bathroom…dreadful

30th October

Up bright and early for a full day visit to the Orsono Volcano – stunning unexpected scenery along the shore of Lago Llanguihue with fabulous views of Orsorno and Calbuco volcanoes.  We walked on a rocky path and were suddenly at the Saltos de Petrohue (Petrohue Rapids) – wonderful scenery – a series of rapids and waterfalls which were formed long ago by cooling lava from the volcano forming a barrier to the river.

We drove on to Lago Todo los Santos and had a cruise on a small boat around the lovely lake.  Afterwards we had lunch at the Petrohe Hotel – wonderful hotel with fab views – food was local and lovely.  On the way back to Puerto Varas we drove up to the lower reaches of the Orsorno Volcano complete with ski lifts and tacky shops.  Here 2 young girls turned up with a wheelbarrow containing 9 puppies….trying to give them away as the mother had lost interest in feeding them.  Our driver succumbed and we drove back to the hotel with a whimpering puppy in a cardboard box!  Tina, David and I left the coach in town and went to look for a place to eat.  It was the beer festival which we steered clear of and found a lovely bar on the first floor of a wooden building.  Next to it we found a lovely shop with lots of great clothes.  Next to the shop was a great seafood restaurant – we share a huge starter of King Crab which was very tasty.

31st October

Should have left the hotel at 0630 for our flight to Punta Arenas but sadly we were caught up in ash cloud of a volcano some miles away.  It was affecting the Chile Lake District and Buenos Aires so we were grounded!  This turned into a lovely day of rest…reading, long lunch and a good supper at the Mediterranean Restaurant – I had a chicken stew whilst David had a beef one…both very tasty – highly recommend the restaurant – on the seafront.

What this did mean was that we would miss our night in Puerto Natales but were promised we would not miss any of the sights.    So we had a third night at the Cabana del Lago (seen better days) and fortunately they moved us out of our cupboard to a junior suite for the last night.

1st November

Finally we were able to leave Puerto Montt for Punta Arenas – a 2 hour flight after which we drove for nearly 3 hours to the Torres del Paine National Park – long day but stopped many times to take photographs – lucky as the weather was clear and bright and the photos were great.  We stopped at Lake Azul which sadly was grey as the sun had gone in but did get many views of different angles of the Cuerno del Paine (Hornes of Paine) – stunning stunning views – quite breathtaking and different from every angle – you just cannot help yourself taking more and more photographs.

We checked into the Rio Serrano Hotel…modern and recently refurbished – large and a little impersonal but the views from the rooms were spectacular…dinner at the hotel was chronic…a buffet which looked totally unappetising and very expensive…I have soup and David had a plate of food….not good!

2nd November

Up really early as we were going on a boat ride round Lago Grey to see the glacier – walk through a small forest and over a wooden bridge which swayed over a river!!

In the afternoon we toured the National Park and had some free time in the afternoon which we relished and sat and read in front of a roaring fire – sadly the view of “The Horns” totally disappeared in mist – really strange experience as we knew this fabulous sight was right in front of us and it was as though a curtain had been pulled in front of it.

In the evening we had a hilarious evening at a restaurant within walking distance of the hotel – atrocious food, service and it was cold.  They got our drinks wrong, and our main courses were also wrong and cold!!

At least they acknowledged this and our meal was complimentary – sad really as we left hungry!

3^rd November

We set off for our night in Punta Arenas stopping en route at Estancia Rio Penitente – an estancia establish in 1891 by Scottish pioneers – wonderful old house with a sheep farm run by a lovely lady.  We had a tour of the farm, saw a sheep being sheered and then were treated to a tasty lamb lunch

Onwards to Punta Arenas where we stayed one night in Cabo de Hornos – we had a quick drive around the town and had supper in the hotel.

4^th November

Early start back to the airport for our flight back to Santiago via Puerto Montt.  Fortunately the ashcloud had now subsided and we flew straight through.

Back to Santiago Park Plaza Hotel for the night and we had dinner there as our flight the next morning to Buenos Aires was as 0845.

ARGENTINA

5^th November

Lan flight to Buenos Aires landed around lunchtime and we took a taxi (book in arrivals hall before you get into the main part of the airport) to our hotel – Marriott Plaza Hotel in Plaza San Martin.  Old fashioned hotel which was sadly in need of a refurb.  However, a really joy was finding a restaurant that we had visited 24 years ago – El Estrablo – a great steak place and we had a real lunch treat.

Once settled in our room in late afternoon we ventured out for supper in Calle Florida – a pedestrian street which certainly comes alive at night with many street sellers plus the shop keepers vying for trade.

6^th November

We had heard about San Telmo as a great place to visit on a Sunday and it was a joy – great street market and wonderful antique shops – we had a “local” breakfast in the market and wandered happily around for most of the day – stopping only for lunch at a typical restaurant.  The weather was kind and warm.  The evening we had room service…what a luxury.

7^th November

Sadly Buenos Aires does not have a lot to offer – its streets are littered with rubbish and there is much graffiti – we toured the Teatro Colon – the opera house which apparently has perfect acoustics and walked around the area – there are wide boulevards with lovely statues down the centre but the traffic is chaotic and it is surprising that we did not see accidents.  We did discover Puerto Madero which is similar to Shad Thames in London – lots of good restaurants along the river and ate a great lunch at Happenings

8^th November

Last day – David went off to see the botanical gardens whilst I went to see the Evita Museum – we had supper at El Estrablo and finished our tour with a tango show in San Telmo – great ending to a wonderful month.

9^th November

British Airways brought us safely back to the UK……

The Canadian Rockies, I read, form part of the Canadian Cordillera, extending from the plains of Alberta in the east to the trench of British Columbia in the west, and comprise the most northerly section of a sublime mountain range the runs as far south as the border regions of Idaho and Montana in the United States. But don’t mistake the Canadian Rockies for the American Rockies: whereas the southern range is all stubborn gneiss and granite, the northern segments are supple, glaciated limestone and shale. And, okay, theAmerican Rockies can boast a higher elevation than their Canadian counterparts; but that is a cartographic nicety. The Canadian Rockies actually rise further from base to summit (the valleys are at a lower altitude), their jagged, sharp-pointed peaks divided from each other by wide, u-shaped, ice-fashioned valleys in contrast to the v-shaped, river-carved valleys of the American Rockies.

There’s the geography and the geology; I, however, was after the scenery.

Our trip began with a flight to Calgary. After an overnight stay, my husband, David, and I picked up our hire car and headed on Highway 1 towards Banff. As we drove, the mountains began to cast their shadows, wildly folded cliffs of rock that vaulted into the blue sky. Our first stop was the small town of Kananaskis. The rangers’ visitors centre was a rich and helpful source of information. But what struck me most about Kananaskis was its modest harmony with the soaring, unpopulated wilderness that surrounds it: there were few people and even less commercialisation. Next came a trip further west to Banff itself, the largest community in the Banff National Park and sat at the foot of looming Mount Cascade, for lunch. Though where Banff ends and where the park begins may not always be certain. Locals on their way to work, it is said, are as likely to come across a deer or elk as they are the neighbour’s dog or cat.

Refreshed, it was then on to Lake Louise, its silky turquoise waters shimmering like an alpine gemstone, clasped by the steepling white mountains. We stayed at the hotel Chateau Lake Louise, which almost dips its toes into the water, and the view from our room was as breathtaking as it’s possible to imagine. The town, a last outpost before the three-hour journey to Jasper in the north, is dotted with some delightful restaurants. But what most impressed was the scale of the landscape – every vista leads your gaze skywards – its scope magnified humblingly by the miniature measurement of the human habitation.

After two nights in Lake Louise, we started our drive to Jasper, a route that would take us through the Columbia Icefield. The roads appeared almost deserted. Passing foamy waterfalls, green-blue lakes and fluttering alpine meadows along the way, the distant, framing horizons crowned with peaks, every corner seemed to yield a photographer’s dream. On our arrival at the Icefields we boarded one of the tour buses. The bus itself, as if inspired by the vastness of the glacial plain, was enormous, its wheels almost six feet in diameter. One of the largest accumulations of ice and snow south of the Arctic Circle, the Columbia Icefield covers an area of 325 square kilometres; but the truly jawdropping statistic is that, even given the effects of climate change, its slow-grinding sheets of ice sometimes reach an astonishing depth of 360 metres. At one point on our bus journey, we stopped so that we could step out onto the Athabasca glacier, a tongue of frozen water that spans 6 kilometres in length and a kilometre in width. Such is the immense expanse not only of space but of time here too, the snows that formed its ice were laid down some 400 years ago.

From there, we embarked on a drive along the finger of the Rockies up to Jasper, a town decorated with an enchanting array of lovely little shops. The Jasper National Park is where you come if you want to see the wildlife of the Canadian Rockies as much as its geological grandeur. The Park protects a sliver of the wonderful diversity of flora and fauna that once blanketed the west of the country. Elk, deer, moose, caribou, bears, coyotes, wolves, beavers, lynx, pine martens, cougars, snowshoe hares and wolverines still flourish here, the extraordinarily varied geographies and climates sustaining a whole range of of habitats. During our stay in Jasper we were taught how to behave if we encountered some of the larger examples of the local wildlife: bears can be a problem, and the recommended way handling a meeting is to raise your arms in the air and to shout “Go back, bears”. We saw two but not at such close quarters that we were required to put our newly learned bear-dispersing skills into practice.

After a two-day stop in Jasper, we caught the Via Rail Canadian train bound for Vancouver. For the 530- mile trip we were provided with (very comfortable) sleeping bunks to which we could retire when we at last exhausted the awesome array of views that filled the window of the observation car. With the hot on-board showers, the splendid food, the opportunity to strike up conversations with fellow passengers – Canadians are the friendliest of people – and the proximity of such scenery made me glad we were travelling by train and not plane.

Arriving in Vancouver the next morning, we joined our Alaskan cruise ship, disembarking at the port of Juneau. Our plan was for a couple or so of excursions. The first took us back to sea to watch as a pod of killer whales, their dorsal fins cresting the surface in silent formation, on a hunt. The second saw us at the Mendenhall Glacier, half a mile wide with ice in parts 800 feet deep, and catching up with some more bears. The third – we went by boat since there are so few roads in Alaska – ushered us by water from the natural wilderness to what was once the centre of some pretty wild human activity.

Skagway made its name as a Klondike gold rush settlement, and you feel you can still hear the sound of pickaxes echoing in the nearby canyons, and the tunes of barroom pianos and the hubbub of boisterous boomtown crowds filling its streets. History felt even closer, perilously so, when we took the woodentracked railway through the White Horse Pass, the superstructure of struts and beams supporting the lines hewn from the pine forests. Our onward journey to the marvellous Glacier Bay National Park, with its dark fjords, tidewater glaciers, freshwater rivers and streams, and gleaming snow-topped mountains, brought a moment of reflection. As recently as 1794, when explorer Captain George Vancouver first charted the adjacent waters of Icy Strait, he noted that the bay was a mere five-mile indent in a colossal glacier thousands of feet thick, filling a 100-mile long fjord and stretching as far inland as the St Elias mountain range. But the ice has been in concentrated retreat, melting away in the face of rising temperatures. As we cruised past the ice shelf, we were startled by a low, silence-consuming roar: seconds later, the glacier calved a monumental slab of ice, which thundered into the bay. We spotted a family of black bears on the banks of the bay, and the captain stopped the boat for half an hour so that we could watch them browse and snuffle and play.

Cruising back to Vancouver, we called in at Granville Island, perched on the city’s peninsula, which was once a decaying industrial area but has been rejuvenated. Arts shops, crafts studios, farmers’ markets and fabulous seafood restaurants now jostle for your attention along the quayside. Our final destination, before flying home, was Vancouver’s world-famous Stanley Park, an oasis of green in the city’s downtown area. Hugging the coastline, the park, abundant in gardens, pools, lagoons and stretches of mighty Douglas firs,Western Red cedars and Sitka spruces, their height outreaching even the spreadwinged totem poles that stand sentinel beside them, was a fitting conclusion to our trip.

For in western Canada, even the city parks seem to carry reminders of the sheer size of the Rockies. On our journey to Vancouver we had passed another train. It lasted an age to rumble past us, hauling its freight of 250 coaches behind it. Yet even this monument to humankind’s own capacity for the colossal was dwarfed by the landscape through which it travelled. The Rockies feel eternal. I know that my memories of them will last a lifetime.

The team at Tickets Anywhere can tailor and plan a Canadian Rockies holiday of a lifetime – or the holiday of a lifetime anywhere else – specifically to suit your wishes, making sure that it includes the sights you want to see and the places you want to visit.

Michelle Forsyth enjoys a spectacular visit to the America of canyons, cacti and cowboys.

Eternal landscapes, infinite skies. That’s what you need for a backdrop, as those makers of classic Hollywood westerns understood, if you are to create myths on a scale that both magnifies and dwarfs us. The myths of humankind’s struggle with nature, of the elemental battle between the good and the bad, of the lone, pale horse rider and the pioneer settlement perched on the edge of the world. The myths of America’s west.

My exploration of the far American West, the last frontier of the great nineteenth-century continent-wide expansion to find new lands, new riches, new lives, began with a flight from Heathrow to Phoenix, the state capital of Arizona and the fifth most populous city in the US. Arizona is itself an exemplary demonstration of the enthralling diversity of the west. The hubhub and modernity of the city, the stillness and geological antiquity of the mountains, the heat of the desert, the cool of the snow-blanketed peaks. Lying at the centre of the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix, for all its air-conditioned luxury hotels and soaring sky-scrapers, is still resonant with the spirit of those original seekers after seams of gold and horizontouching herds of cattle, and is the portal to the south-western heartlands.

From Phoenix, we travelled to Tanque Verde Ranch, located in 640 acres of the lush desert foothills that surround the Rincon Mountains. Established way back in 1868, today the ranch is home to beautifully appointed guest rooms and vistas that take the breath away. After breakfast, we leaped into the saddle to learn how to ride cowboy-style. Nature herself kindly supplied a suitable terrain: red rock buttes, rolling grasslands, riparian streams, ghostly mountain ranges, cacti so tall they seemed to spike the sky, wandering coyotes and the slither of the occasional rattlesnake.

Our next destination was Scottsdale, established in the 1880s by a US Army chaplain who bought up the land to farm citrus, peaches and sweet potatoes. First on the agenda on our arrival was a desert driving tour in a Tomcar (a huge US army vehicle), the trail lacing its way through abandoned mines and ghost towns, the air scented with the perfume of wildflowers and the desert illuminated by a light that bathed the mountains and the sand in rich, vibrant colours. Once settled back in our fabulous hotel, we were treated to a delicious meal at Mastro’s City Hall Steakhouse, the finest prime beef and seafood served under stunning art-glass chandeliers or out on the patio which was gently swathed in the fragrant, balmy breeze that carried in from the surrounding desert.

The following morning, we departed along Route 66 for Flagstaff, a town that sits high (a cool 7,000 feet high) amidst the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest. After a wild west walking tour in downtown Flagstaff, it was on to Tusayan and the Grand Hotel, designed as a mountain lodge with its exposed timber beams and flagstone fireplaces. Unpacked and settled in, it was time for a sunset trip to one of the geological wonders of the world: the Grand Canyon. Carved over aeons by the rush and energy of the Colorado River, the Canyon inhabits a special place in the popular imagination that is wholly exceeded on your encounter with this cathedral of geography. The statistics record that the Canyon stretches 277 miles from snaking end to snaking end; that its walls at some points descend a full mile from the desert rim to the boulder-strewn floor; that it required the passage of millions of years for the thunderous flow of cascading waters to gouge out this colossal ribbon of steepling cliff face. What the statistics don’t do is to prepare you for the firsthand experience of such epic grandeur, such dizzying sublimity. On the approach to the South Rim viewing point – undemonstrative meadows dotted with aspen and spruce – nothing leads you to believe you are walking on what is to become the roof of the planet. Then, suddenly, the Canyon falls away beneath you, and you find yourself re-adjusting all the normal scales of judgement of depth and height. It appears as if the earth is as far below you as the sky is above you. I didn’t think that anything could equal the thrill of gazing down into the Canyon itself, but a visit to the Imax Theatre at the National Geographic Centre, with its huge screen helicopter ride over the Canyon and the Colorado Plateau, brought just as awe-inspiring a perspective to the immensity of the area.

The sensation of being airborne was replaced, on the next day, by an actual flight. Leaving our Tusayan hotel, we caught a plane that made its way to Las Vegas, traversing the remaining length of the Grand Canyon. Could there be any greater contrast than the natural magnificence of the Canyon and the architectural edifice of Las Vegas?

There is, of course, a connection. Las Vegas has its own kind of grandeur, its own kind of monumentalism, one born of the size and ambition of the American imagination, perhaps coaxed and nurtured by the landscape. Las Vegas is artifice writ large, a gloriously sequinned, backlit, staged imitation of the rest of the world – pyramids, towers, coliseums, modern Paris and ancient Egypt glitzed and schmaltzed alike – conjured and willed from an empty strip of Nevadan desert. The city is a fantasy made glass, steel and stone. It might be cupped in the vast spaces of the West but it has banished the idea of time. Here night and day merge in an adrenalinedriven flow of endless activity. Here is a place where you can pursue that most American of dreams: reinventing yourself over and over again in the neon glow.

More recently, however, Las Vegas has seen the rise of hotels and a visitor culture that are not the addiction of gamblers or run-away lovers or wantaway dreamers. We stayed at the Wynn, with its crystal sculptures and marble floors, one of many new hotels that are not themed or casino-based. Instead of the thrill of the roulette wheel or the penny slot machine, we thrilled to the astonishing choreography of an evening performance by Cirque de Soleil. Not that the true spirit of Las Vegas was entirely abandoned: the show was a spectacular interpretation of Viva Elvis.

From Las Vegas we ventured to Reno, the former’s older but smaller brother (you go to Las Vegas to get married and to Reno to get divorced, completing a circle of love and regret). Reno, as much as its sibling, is a mecca for gamblers and delights in its ostentation, energy and zestful pursuit of life, describing itself as the ‘Biggest Little City in the World’. But it is also changing: into the jumping off point for visitors who wish to see the natural beauties – the Sierra Mountains, the empty mesas, the derelict mining claims and the lonely, tumbleweed desert tracks – of outback Nevada, a seeming universe away from the clinking chimes of the one-armed bandits and the bustle of motel lobbies. On the morning of our arrival in Reno, we were whisked to Lake Tahoe, Nevada’s glittering sapphire gemstone, its azure waters mirroring the liquid skies that greet the lake on the distant horizon, the two merging in the hazy palette of the blue of the mountains.

The next day saw us driving to Carson City, Nevada’s state capital, where we picked up the steam train – the sight of the puffing plumes emerging from it added to the romance of the trip – to Virginia City. A boom settlement that sprang up almost overnight following the discovery in 1859 of a colossal silver lode, Virginia City transformed chancers and prospectors and centless adventurers – or at least the lucky ones – into millionaires. Today, visitors are treated to saloons – the Bucket of Blood was my favourite – and (carefully managed) shoot-outs that are the memory of those claim-grab days. Back in Carson City, another treasure trove of frontier history and folklore awaited us as we strolled the Kit Carson trail, marking the rise from desert dust and the desperation of the early pioneers of a truly western American city, one that is enmeshed in its past and yet look ever forwards, buoyed by the can-do optimism of its raggle-taggle founders.

Nowhere is that progressive anticipation of a new future, or its history, better exemplified than in Carson City’s National Automobile Museum. No sooner the twentieth century breaks, and gone is the horse and buggy. In their place stands the shiny mechanisation of the internal combustion engine, the new motor of American expansion. To symbolise the vigour and vitality and steady forward gaze of the West, you only have to look at the Thomas Flyer, the car that, in 1908, won the 22,000-mile New York to Paris race. As if to reinforce the point that, for all it is steeped in the myths of the near past and in the geography of the far, far distant past, the American West is wholly of the present too, on our final full day we attended the Reno Air Race. As the competing planes roared over our heads at 500 mph, it looked and sounded a paean of praise to a technology that the old West could never have imagined yet did so much to help create by fashioning a belief that the even the sky, in this endless landscape, need not be a limit.

The next morning we caught the plane from Phoenix airport. Heading home. Heading east.

The team at Tickets Anywhere can tailor and plan an American holiday of a lifetime – or the holiday of a lifetime anywhere else – specifically to suit your wishes, making sure that it includes the sights you want to see and the places you want to visit.

Whether you want to marry abroad or simply honeymoon in exotic destinations we are able to help you plan that perfect day.

Many  couples now have their "Wedding list" with us – thus their friends and family give memories instead of gifts…….

Ever stuck for an idea for winter sunshine – here are a few of our suggestions…..

There is nothing like the long evenings and cold grey skies of January to March to prompt thoughts of getting away from it all for a restorative break. The team at Tickets Anywhere have put together their five top winter destinations by way of inspiration.

Muscat, Oman

Perched on the coast at the point where the Gulf of Oman noses its way out into the Indian Ocean, Muscat is an Arabic antidote to the creeping westernisation of Dubai. The traditionally styled white buildings sparkle against the blue skies, and the beaches are powder soft and lapped by the turquoises and vermilions of the sea. If the sun proves a little too relentless, you can always retire to the shade to wrap yourself in a chilled vanilla-scented towel and sip an ice cold drink of orange juice suffused with mint. Rousing yourself from your Arabian Nights couch, you can explore the sights of a city that breathes the history of the Middle East.

The Grand Mosque of Sultan Qaboos, for example, the prayer hall of which is adorned with thousands of lights and almost as many colours. Or the Mutrah Souk, its alleys leading you ever deeper into the market, its shops and stalls loaded with fabrics, foods and jewels. The more energetic may fancy a dune safari. Sat in a 4×4, you will be driven out into the desert, the vehicle surfing the crests and troughs of sand, stopping perhaps at an oasis where feet can cooled with a paddle in the water as the fronds of the palm trees wave gently, and then on to an Omani restaurant to be served platters of steaming rice and spiced meats, dates and Arabic coffee. As the sun dips over the mountains, the British winter will seem a world away.

Cruise the Nile

A vast blue ribbon lacing its way through the yellow, sun-burnished sands of Egypt, the waters of the Nile brought verdant life to the parched desert. Irrigating more than simply the harvests of crops, it was the well-spring also of the great ancient cultures of the Pharaohs, allowing it to thrive and flourish along with the reed beds. Perhaps the most memorable way to explore Egypt is to navigate the course of the mighty Nile on a floating luxury hotel of a cruise ship. As the river unfurls, your ship, its progress accompanied by the bobbing traffic of the feluccas, carries you through one of the planet’s most fabulous and monumental dynastic histories: the Temples of Karnak and Luxor; the Necropolis of Thebes, the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut and the Colossi of Memnon; the Temple of Horus in Edfu, and those of Sobek and Haroeris in Kom Ombo; and that vast icon of modernity in a landscape astonishing for its human antiquity, the Aswan Dam.

Diving and snorkeling in the Red Sea

If you would rather be in the water rather than cruising along on the surface, you may be tempted instead by a Red Sea diving and snorkeling holiday. Crystal clear and warm, and blessed with thousands of kilometres of coastline decorated with shallow reefs and ringed with islands, the Red Sea is the ideal setting for underwater adventure.

The coral reefs, stippled with anemones and sponges, glow with the rainbow hues of submarine gardens and flash with the glistening kaleidoscopic choreography of swirling shoals of tropical fish. Turtles skirt the edges of the reefs, while dolphins play in the deeper water. There are holidays designed for experienced divers, for families with children and for those who just want to learn to scuba dive in a marine paradise.

Spanish steps

For cultural splendour, Spanish cities are amongst the most impressive in Europe. Granada, sat at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains in Andalusia, was the last Muslim city to fall to the Christians in 1492 and in the Alhambra, a magnificent series of towers, palaces, gardens and fountains that date in part back to the Moorish Nazari dynasty of the 14th-century, boasts one of the architectural wonders of the world. Once you have marvelled at the Alhambra, you can visit the Cathedral with its stunning= facades and its artistic treasures.

Or you may prefer Seville. On the banks of the Guadalquivir river, Seville is rich in Hispanic culture, its back streets haunted by the flamboyance of longgone flamenco dancers and matadors, by the spirits of Don Juan and Carmen. As well as the famous minaret of La Giralda, Seville has the largest cathedral in the world – massive chains hang from the ceiling inside – the Alcazar Palace – a sublimity of gardens, marble patios, exquisite plasterwork and intricate tiling – the second largest art gallery in Spain, churches, grand bridges, flowered balconies, secret patios and parks. And lots of tapas bars. Or you may choose Barcelona, gothic and modernist, exuberant and serious, a cauldron of the arts and architecture. From La Rambla, with its hubhub of street life, to the Barri Goti, the old medieval heart of the city, from the cathedral of La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s soaring, expostulating vision in stone, to the Museu Picasso, Barcelona is truly unlike anywhere else in Europe.

Shopping in New York

Where better for some retail therapy than the greatest city in a country that practically invented the consumer? Visitors to New York with an empty shopping bag or two to fill should focus their energies on three areas – midtown, downtown and discount. Midtown you will find Saks department store (49th and 5th) from where you can amble up to Bergdorf Goodman and maybe Tiffany’s. Faconnable (5th and 54th) offers European styles without the accompanying disappointment of European price tags.

From Fifth track towards Madison Avenue and Barneys, DKNY and Nicola Farhi (beware, though, prices here are more likely to dent your plastic). Downtown things are a little less expensive. Try SoHo (between 6th and Broadway) for some affordable jeans. Fifth Avenue below 23rd Street has Banana Republic, Club Monaco and J Crew. If you want something a bit more chic, dip into North of Little Italy where you can loosen your purse strings wandering along Mott, Elizabeth and Mulberry streets. Budget a tad tighter? Then seek out Woodbury Common, an upstate bus trip away, with its 220 designer discount shops. Fly home, poorer but much happier.

Even if this top five list of winter getaways doesn’t quite lure you this winter, not to worry.

The team at Tickets Anywhere are on hand to give you advice and help you plan your holiday to almost any destination of your choosing.

Cannot believe this is now nearly 5 years ago….we had a great evening on a Thames river boat. Here’s an extract from Magazine Thame Out.

The travel company that is still thriving

When Bryony Hordern set up Tickets Anywhere, some 25 years ago, it was in a small, rented office next to a Hertfordshire pub. “I had a desk and a phone,” Bryony recalls, “and that was about it.” Tickets Anywhere have come a long way since then. Today, Bryony’s travel company has just celebrated its 20th year in Thame and is still growing. Looking back to those early days, Bryony muses on the reasons why the company took off in the way it did. “I started out with a bucket shop basically,” she says. “But, more importantly, I started out with a business philosophy. Planning a holiday, or a trip, can be quite stressful. I wanted to make travel not just as easy as possible for people but enjoyable too.”

It is an approach that holds as good now as it did 25 years ago, despite the changes to the travel industry brought about by the advent of the internet. “The internet has certainly been very effective for booking holidays,” Bryony says, “but it is also, ironically, rather impersonal. Here at Tickets Anywhere you deal with a real person, someone who will sit and listen, someone who will know how best to organise the details of your holiday. Someone you can call at a moment’s notice should you need any advice or anything confirmed. Book a holiday online and you are on your own. Book a holiday with us, and there is someone with you all the way.”

Bryony is justifiably proud of her staff, people, she feels, who have been instrumental in the success of Tickets Anywhere. The respect, it appears, is mutual. In return for being a considerate, personable employer, Bryony has been rewarded with the sort of loyalty that would be the envy of most firms. “One of my team has been with me from just after we re-located to Thame,” she adds with evident satisfaction.

The move to Thame came after Bryony met her husband and decided that the town would provide a more central business base. First came premises in Swan Walk, then the offices in Greyhound Walk. “Being in Thame provided a real platform for us,” says Bryony. Another platform has been Bryony’s willingness to adopt an imaginative take on travel planning. At the moment Tickets Anywhere is running a special programme which shows how, by switching a day here, a flight there, an airline here, people not only can go on their dream holiday but can save hundreds of pounds into the bargain. “Planning and knowledge are everything,” explains Bryony.

Tickets Anywhere is equally imaginative about its social role, selling tickets free of charge for Thame Players. Bryony’s customers may travel to the four corners of the earth, but it seems the company that helps smooth their journeys is firmly rooted in its local community – and looks all set to be so for the next 20 years as well.

We had an lovely trip by coach from Bangkok to Chaing Rai seeing wonderful sites and tasty yummy local food.

There is a lustrous quality to Thailand, one that gleams in both the eye and in the mind’s eye. A faintly golden hue seems to shine from the landscapes, whether the central plains, the bronzed beaches of the coast, the slow, sliding rivers or the morning and evening skies. There is, too, an inner sense of light, a tranquillity of spirit, the reflective glow of the contemplative traditions of Buddhism that pervade so many aspects of cultural life in the country.

We chose to visit in February when the humidity and the temperatures are lower (the cool season runs from November to early March), although you can still happily expect to see the thermometer reach the high 20s under the polished, cloudless blue of the sky.

Our arrival point, as for most visitors, was Bangkok, a cacophonous, teeming monster of a city where modernity – the howl of traffic in seemingly perpetual motion and the glass of shopping centres sparkling in the sun – mingles effortlessly with the memories of far older times.

Our two days in Bangkok, with its swirl of activity and cheek-by-jowl contradictions, joyously banished any Western wish for ordered balance and cohesion. It takes just a step or two down a concrete boulevard, alive with the hustle and bustle of consumerism and commerce, to find yourself marvelling at the sudden calm of the towering architecture of religious devotion, enclaves of serenity in a sea of human energy. The city is an intoxicating mix of the urban and the countryside too. For all its seething, fluid might, Bangkok is a patchwork of pockets, too, of Siamese village life, chicken spitting and hissing on street barbecues, baskets of vegetables balanced on trestle tables, the shouts and cries of the vendors mixing with the whine of the vehicle-choked roads. You can take the Skytrain to the glamorous shopping malls to sate your desire for any number of luxury brands or you can swerve from the main concourses of 21st century Bangkok life to sample the laden pleasures of the open-air markets. You can luxuriate in the modish interior design of a chics restaurant or you can stand for a moment beside a simple street shrine in contemplation of its gentle otherworldiness. During our stay in Bangkok we paid our respects to the monumentalism of Thai royalty and spirituality, the Grand Palace. Built in the late eighteenthcentury, it is an astonishing complex of ceremonial grandeur – towers, columns and courts – and of the soothing mysteries of the spirit. Within the vastness of the Phra Kaew temple sits the small, elegantly carved and revered Emerald Buddha, seemingly eternal in the enduring stillness of its precious stone.

We bid farewell to Bangkok and embarked on a long-tail boat ride to the floating market of Damnoen Saduak, the most famous of Thailand’s many river-born food markets. The canal was a congestion of canoes, each weighed to the gunnels with every conceivable Thai vegetable and fruit, variously dug and plucked from the surrounding and abundantly fertile fields and orchards, and each a barter waiting to happen. From there – we travelled all the way by air-conditioned coach – we made our way upcountry to Nakorn Pathom and the glories of the spectacular Phra Pathom Chedi, a temple that is surmounted by the largest pagoda in Thailand, its 127-metre cone angled into the blue sky above, its marble steps conducting you into an interior where a colossal Buddha stands shining within a sumptuous arch.

The next day’s trip was, for British visitors, particularly affecting. Amidst the peaceful, quiet green of the fields, where you could not imagine horror, flows the River Kwai and across it spans the bridge that carries its name and, with it, so very many terrible memories. Its infamy set in celluloid permanence by David Lean’s film, the bridge marked the point at which the death railway, built by the Japanese, employing the enforced labour of Allied prisoners of war and enslaved Thais, in World War II as a means of moving supplies and ordinance between Thailand and Burma without running the risks of sea transport, meets the Kwai river. It is estimated that in the deliberately accelerated construction process – the track was laid through jungle and steep valleys and solid rock in just one year when three years would have been speedy – over a quarter of a million men perished, victims of disease, malnutrition and brutality. Today, trains still run on its narrow-gauge, curved steel girders, ferrying passengers to Nam Tok and Bangkok.

Nearby lies the Don Rak war cemetery, its manicured lawns and lovingly attended gardens lined with the graves of some 7,000 prisoners of war, British, Australian and Dutch. The headstones are silently eloquent: names, ages (few were older than 25), and regiments are recorded in mute testimony to unimaginable suffering. Where the identity of the man buried there is unknown, the inscription simply records the last resting place of “a soldier who died for his country”. At the Jeath War Museum, an Allied camp has been reconstructed, its claustrophobically intense huts cramped with bamboo bunks. The lost are honoured by the presiding presence of the Buddhist monks who curate the museum.

Next came a drive further north to the market town of Uthai Thani and, from there, a two-night stop-over in Ayutthaya. The basin plains of the region are surrounded by the coursing Chao Phraya and Sakaekrang rivers, the mountain ranges to the west and the lush, verdant jungles that border Kanchanaburi province. Ayutthaya was once the capital of Siam (old Thailand) and in 1700 was one of the most populous cities in the world, with a million inhabitants. After exploring the ancient temples, the foot of their walls populated by crossed-legged stone Buddhas, some in a haunting state of ruin, others renovated and decorated with white stone crystal and glazed tiles and door panels of inlaid motherof-pearl, we took a boat ride along the Chao Phraya river to the summer palace of Bang Pa In.

Following a scenic train journey to Lopburi, we arrived at Sukhothai, the Saimese capital in the thirteenth century, which translates as ‘the dawn of happiness’. A walk through the ancient city explains why. A world heritage site, the ruins of the temples, dappled with lily ponds, are gazed upon by the eyeless stares of sentinel sitting Buddha statuary, their heads topped by curlicues of speckled stone in seeming imitation of pagodas, their bodies kissed orange by the rising morning sun. Feeling peckish after our tour, we snacked on sticky rice accompanied by deep fried rice and spicy pork salad wrapped in banana leaves.

Another stunning drive through breathtaking mountain scenery saw us at Chiang Rai, in the far north of the country, the golden triangle at which the borders of Thailand, Laos and Burma (Myanmar) converge at the confluence of the Mekong and Kok rivers, with its vine-snaked limestone cliffs, waterfalls and hot springs, for a refreshing two nights at the Phowadol resort and spa. In between fresh, flavoursome meals, we were guided through an array of local temples adorned with glittering silver mirrors, with gables writhing with carved dragons, with white stucco friezes and guarded by ornamental elephants. On our second day at Chiang Rai, we ascended into the soaring mountains to a Burmese border market. Here you can buy finely cut sapphires and rubies (so inexpensive that you are tempted to doubt their authenticity until you gaze into the diffracted blue and red light of the gems). At the Long Neck tribal village, the people, exiles from their native Burma, wore bracing copper rings that extended the growth of their necks.

On our penultimate day we journeyed a few kilometres southwards to Chiang Mai, moated and walled and hedged by mountains and legends, and yet happy to marry the ancient with the modern, a city that felt like the roof of Thailand. Chiang Mai is rich and populous with temples; while there are 121 alone within the municipal limits, we stepped aboard the cable car that bore us up to the hilltop Phrathat Doi Suthep temple where we were as astounded at the site, chosen by the founding monks as a place of veneration by virtue of setting a relic of the Lord Buddha on the back of an elephant and allowing the animal to roam until it trumpeted, as by the vistas rolling out across the valleys. Tempting though the Chiang Mai handcraft markets were, and the fabulous aromas wafting from the restaurants, we had a final date: with a nearby elephant camp at Mae Ping and the chance to ride down by the banks of the river aloft one of nature’s most magnificent creatures.

Our trip ended with six days of beach-bound relaxation at Phuket, time in which to absorb the exhilaration of the previous ten. My abiding memory of the trip, once I had returned home and gathered my thoughts, was not just the meeting of worlds, not just the dizzying landscapes, not just the sensuous of the food, not just the easy, uncomplicated mixing of the religious and the secular. It was a smile. The smile with which every Thai greeted us: to their culture, their country, their lives.

A universal, golden smile.

Syria – a country that should definitely be on your list of places to visit…not now but certainly in the future.

On being offered the chance to visit Syria – a group of other agents and I were the guests of travel firm, Cox and Kings – I must confess to some initial misgivings. The standard of the accommodation was one; our safety and security another. Those misgivings were to last no longer than the moment our plane set down at Damascus airport. What followed was both a revelation and a thoroughly delightful overturning of preconceptions.

Damascus is possibly the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world, and, as such, breathes an astonishing heritage. Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all an integral part of the fabric of the city, ancient, civilisation-shaping beliefs and customs embedded in the very stonework of the thoroughfares of the pre-modern districts. Shaded alleys run deep into the heart of the ancient city, channels that feed into labyrinthine medieval souqs; bazaars are alive with the sounds of trade millennia old; streets, decorated by jewel-like houses, suddenly open up to magnificent courtyards; arches support steepling minarets; chapels that, you imagine, still appear as they once did to pilgrims of the middle ages hug themselves in corners; and the soft fragrances of fruits, spices and herbs drift on the gentle breeze.

Our hotel was a gem of traditional Syrian architecture, its rooms – which came complete with everything the traveller could wish for including air conditioning – gathered around a beautiful central courtyard. By day, we visited the stunning Umayyad Mosque, the Bab Keissan Gate on the old Roman walls, the tiny underground church of St Ananais (he who was responsible for the restoration of St Paul’s sight after his conversion), and Mount Qassioun, from the foot of which Damascus spreads out in all its panoramic splendour.

The food was excellent. Each lunchtime greeted us with a different mezza. One evening, we visited a restaurant over whose modest threshold we would never have set a foot had we not been tipped off as to the pleasures awaiting us on its menu. It was run by two brothers who served us not only a meal of mouth-wateringly sensual flavours and textures but a side dish of endlessly amusing anecdotes. Another culinary delight met us at the Baghdad Café, essentially a roadside hut but one which produced from its kitchen some glorious Bedouin cooking.

While in Damascus, we did most of out site seeing on foot, and I can honestly say, even allowing for the sporadic distribution of street lighting, that I have never felt safer. Or more welcomed. Almost everyone seemed to speak English; and everyone seemed genuinely pleased to see you. Falling into conversation with a young woman I met – she was an engineering graduate – I was assured that Syria was no oppressive Islamist state. Women wear the burka if they so choose, but there is no compunction, and many women hold not only good jobs but positions of influence and authority in the country. Crime appears unheard of.

Leaving Damascus, we journeyed to Palmyra, the finest jewel in Syria’s already rich tourist crown. On our way, we passed through Maalula, a village cupped in a narrow valley that trickles from the foothills of the Anti-Lebanon range, where the locals speak Aramaic, a language that Christ would have understood as his own, and live in houses, painted in dazzling blues and yellows, that press right against the cliff face. As we left, a village woman blessed in Aramaic, and I found it immensely moving.

Palmyra itself is an oasis in the middle of the Syrian desert and it overflows with wonders. Pink hued as it has aged under the Arabian sun, it was once a vital staging point on the old Silk Road, linking the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia and Persia. Long before even silk brought its wealth to Palmyra, the settlement was important enough to be mentioned in an Assyrian tablet dating as far back as the 19th century BC. The Romans took up serious occupation in Palmyra during the second century AD, and it is from this time that most of the breathtaking ruins date. Everywhere is a forest of colonnades, temples, theatres and funerary towers.

Roman Palmyra’s fall from grace came when Zenobia, a descendant of Cleopatra and the widowed wife of Palmyra’s greatest ruler, declared the city’s independence. Rome’s response was a siege and Zenobia’s capture. The ruins, which have been painstakingly excavated and restored, cover a site some 50 hectares in size, and new finds are being unearthed all the time. Gazing up at the great Temple of Bel, I felt awestruck not by the magnificence of the surroundings alone, sublime though they are, but by my hand-touching proximity to a civilisation that was in its pomp and glory two millennia ago.

Refreshed after a night’s rest at a nearby hotel, we next set off for Cracs des Chevaliers, possibly the most impressive medieval citadel still standing anywhere in the world. It was built by the crusading Knights Hospitallers to control the Homs Gap, a corridor in the Syrian coastal mountain range and a key strategic point for the defence of the Syrian inlands. It took over a century to complete, but given its landscapedominating scale – it has the immoveable gravity of a small mountain – I was surprised it was finished as quickly as that. The Hospitallers held their man made peak for 127 years until, in 1271, the fortress fell to the Mameluk Sultan Beybars. With its cloud-touching towers, mighty bulwarks, soaring ramparts, barbicans, casements, bastions, gateways, aqueducts, cisterns, halls, courtyards and cavernous storerooms, Cracs des Chevaliers could house an army of 5,000 men and withstand a five-year long siege.

As if the sight of one overwhelming fortress were not enough, we were presented with another. At Ugarit, one of the few Bronze Age sites in the Middle East, stands Qala’at Salah ad- Din, Saladin’s castle. Cresting the Jebel Daryous mountain range, the castle holds its impregnable position on rocky spur overlooking two fast-flowing steams below. The neck of land that once connected the plateau was cut away by hand to create un unassailable gorge; cut away, that is, save for a needle of stone, 28 metres high, on which the drawbridge perched.

From Ugarit, it was on to Aleppo, Syria’s second city. While Damascus has always been Syria’s holy heart, Aleppo made its name as a commercial centre. Its trading past helped to shape Aleppo. The wide treelined avenues give it a European architectural sensibility, and many of the city’s inhabitants are descended from Armenian Christian refugees who settled here after leaving Turkey. That said, Aleppo is still very much an Arabian bazaar city. The chaotic souqs and caravanserais crowd each other, the cobbled streets echo to the clatter of horsedrawn carts and donkey-riding couriers, while the scent of olive soap, spices, roasting coffee and grilled shwarma perfumes the air.

On our final day, based in Aleppo, we drove out to the basilica of St Simeon Stylites, a 5th century Christian who, deciding that life in a monastery was too much of a soft option, retreated to the top of a 12-metre pillar where, secured to a railing by a chain around his neck, he lived for the next 36 years. On his death in 459, a church was built around the pillar to commemorate Simeon’s remarkable piety (and sense of balance). The basilica is a glorious ruin, but the pillar itself is now a sadly depleted 2-metre version of its former self, having been assiduously chipped at by relicseeking pilgrims over the centuries.

Dotted around Aleppo are the ‘dead cities’, around 700 ruined Byzantine villages, abandoned after the olive trade on which their inhabitants depended went into decline. Some of the ‘cities’ are merely single structures – monasteries, villas, baths – or monuments; others are eerie ghost towns. It was while we were visiting the ‘cities’ that we came across a group of Bedouins. Although Bedouins have a reputation for keeping their distance from visitors, we were keen to talk to them. Our tour leader approached the group and asked if we could take photographs. Smiles all round. Of course we could. The hospitality did not stop at a few snaps either. I was invited into one of the tents – the son could speak English – and met the family as they sat upon their rugs. The welcome was as warm and as generous as all the welcomes I had received during my time in Syria.

Flying home at the end of eight very impressive days, hugely enjoyable days, I felt a shiver of shame at the doubts I had entertained at the start of the trip. Syria as a top holiday destination? I was truly converted.

With many European holiday destinations now part of the eurozone, even such traditionally inexpensive places as Portugal are experiencing steadily rising costs we take a look at the attractions of three countries where it is still possible to enjoy an exotic break without the extra baggage of a hefty price tag.

Morocco

Morocco is barely a four-hour flight from the UK but remains a world away. Barricaded by the towering Rif and Atlas mountain ranges, the country has held strong to the rich cultural texture of its indigenous Berber people. Step off the plane and you bid farewell to the predictabilities of Europe and embrace the differences of northern Africa.

Not that Europe is entirely absent. From Tangier, that centre of nineteenth century colonialism with its slightly languid air of half-remembered decadence, the desert trade routes direct you along the Atlantic coast to Casablanca, cosmopolitan and Humphrey Bogart famous. Casablanca is a mix of old and new. The clogging traffic jams and impoverished shanty towns give way to generous boulevards, parks and rows of impressive colonial architecture.

Here you will also find the fishing ports of Asalih and Essaouira, their whitewashed walls sparkling in the sunlight that reflects from the expanses of the open ocean. Morocco’s Atlantic seaboard is rimmed with fabulous sandy beaches and dotted with villages and old forts, sweeping up into verdant green valleys.

Away from the coast, you can delight in, as travellers down the centuries have done, the great cities of Marrakesh and Fes, the medinas a potourri of surprises that could occupy a decade’s worth of visits. Marrakesh is a maze of winding streets and alleys, designed, if designed at all, to encourage a meandering, distracted yet exhilarating stroll of discovery. Around each corner expect the unexpected: snake charmers, turbaned potion sellers, water peddlers advertising their wares to the crack of castanets, souqs that are an oasis of cool and shade in the heat, stalls offering fresh cooked snails, and carpet shops by the hundred.

Real escape, though, comes with the interior of the country. The dazzling peaks of the Atlas mountains, beaded with trails from one Berber village to the next, the houses flat-roofed and earthen, interspersed with terraced gardens and walnut groves, will take the breath away. Running down from the Atlases are a series of enchanted valleys like the Draa, a filament of orchards, red clay casbahs, lit, in the evenings, by a suffused, soft-focus purplish sunset. If a sense of adventure is upon you, you could strike out for the eastern side of the Atlases and the spectacular Tidra Gorge, a cathedral of a rift in the mountains, its pink and grey cliffs vaulting hundreds of feet up towards the blue skies.

Egypt

Think Egypt, think pyramids. But the truth is that Egypt is so much more even than these marvels of the ancient world. To the astonishing legacy of the dynasties of Pharoahs you can add the heritage of the Greeks, the Romans and the Arabs.

Cairo is swirl of sounds, scents and sights, its hubbub of modernity – wailing traffic and urban developments – encircling a mediaeval centre that, within a couple of steps, conducts you through a palimpsest of the past. You can either immerse yourself in the pulsating hustle and bustle of the hawkers and the traders or you can sit quietly at a small café table, refreshing yourself with a sugary sherbet and watching the morning and history hurry by.

You can time travel even more immense distances still by taking the short trip out to the west of the city and Giza and its pyramids, colossal 4,000-year-old geometries, their stark glory brought into sharper relief when set against the uniformity of the desert.

Upriver lie more wonders. At Luxor, the splendours of the ancient Egyptians appear in greater numbers and monumentalism if that were possible. Rightly described as the world’s greatest open air museum, the ruins of the temple complexes at Karnack stand within the modern city. Just across the Nile are the tombs of the west bank Necropolis, including the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.

Head south to Aswan – travelling by felucca, the traditional sail boats of the Nile, is the best way to traverse this eternal, life-bringing ribbon of water as it wends its majestic route – and you will be treated to yet further architectural testimonies to the visionary grandeur and the mysteries of antiquity of the Pharaohs and their armies of priests and workers.

To the west of the Nile delta spreads another expanse: the sands of the deserts that eventually wash out to the Sahara. The landscape is broken by the flowerings of green that crouch, crowned by the fronds of palm trees, around the springs that irrigate the oases, and by eerie outcrops of rock that stand sentinel over the whispering dunes.

As if mirroring the rolling, horizonbound deserts, to the east you come to the Red Sea, with its aquamarine waters, illuminated everywhere from below by the brilliant flourishes of colour of the coral reefs that encrust the seabed. Should you wish a retreat from the carnival of activity that is urban Egypt, you will discover age-old serenity among the Coptic monasteries that rise along the Red Sea coast and its hinterland.

Turkey

Turkey is a holiday for everyone. If it is history you are after, where better to visit than the land gave us the Trojan wars, that has witnessed the coming together of civilisations, that counts Alexander the Great among those who helped to shape it and that, at the court of the Ottomans, produced an empire that spanned both east and west. There are said to be more Greek ruins in Turkey than in Greece; and more Roman ruins than in Italy.

If, on the other hand, you want to lounge, relax and do nothing more than escape the pressures of life back home, then Turkey boasts an abundance of golden beaches, the waters of the Mediterranean splashing carelessly onto the sand, and fabulous hotels where you can enjoy the pampering of a lifetime.

On Turkey’s Aegean coast you can while your time at such historically resonant sites as the excavated ruins of what was Troy. After that a trip to Ephesus, home to possibly the finest preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean, its temples and churches a glorious measure of its importance to both Roman religion and Christian faith, should be on the itinerary. Then may be on to Pergamum, not as visited as Ephesus but almost as rich in history.

Alternatively, you can set your sights on the beaches and fishing villages of the Mediterranean coast, with their lush orange groves, orchards of pomegranates, fragrant pine trees, their coves, inlets, turquoise waters and cliff sides into which are carved, here and there, the columns of temples long since deserted by the acolytes who once worshipped in them.

The team at Tickets Anywhere can tailor and plan a Moroccan, Egyptian or Turkish holiday of a lifetime – or the holiday of a lifetime anywhere else – specifically to suit your wishes, making sure that it includes the sights you want to see and the places you want to visit.

The phrase ‘lost city’ has an enthralling resonance about it. The mystery of abandonment and the thrill of rediscovery. Perhaps no city has been more lost or more wonderfully rediscovered than Machu Picchu, its stone terraces hovering, silent and untrodden for centuries amidst the Andean clouds, high above Peru’s Urabamba Valley, breathtaking in its solitary magnificence and breathtaking, literally too, in its oxygen depleted air. Machu Picchu was not our sole destination, though. We had embarked on a trip that would introduce us to the many other glories of Peru.

In the absence of direct flights, we flew from London to Amsterdam, and from there onto Lima, perched on the Pacific coast at the confluence of the Chillon, Rimac and Lurin rivers (everywhere is high in Peru). The following morning we toured the colonial grandeur that frames the centre of the Lima. Towering over us was the San Francisco Monastery, flamboyant in its Spanish neoclassicism. Beneath us, and the monastery, were the catacombs, a winding cavern of an ossuary, the bones of some 25,000 Limenos apparently interred here. In Peru, we were to discover, the past, however seemingly buried, has a habit of breaking through the surface of things.

On the third morning, we left Lima, and our plane took us across the Andes to Arequipa, overlooked even at 7,800 above sea level by the snow-capped volcano, El Misti. Arequipa feels at one with the snow; many of its colonial buildings, arranged in colonnaded plazas, are made from sillar, a white volcanic rock that entranced pre-Inca settlers every bit as much as it seduced later Spanish architects with its pearly luminescence. On our visit to the Juanita museum, we came face to haunting face with Peru’s pre-Colombian past. Juanita, or the Ice Maiden, is the mummified and startlingly preserved body of an Inca girl – she was aged about 14 when she perished sometime between 1440 and 1450 – found on the cordillera of nearby Mount Ampato.

From Arequipa, we drove into the Andes, the peaks seemingly touching the sky, the slopes ribbed alike by the flow of ancient rivers and the agricultural terraces carved by the Incas, passingalong the way herds of llama, towards the Colca Canyon. A word of advice here. The Colca Valley rests at 14,000 feet above sea level, and, in the thin air, oxygen can be in short supply. I brought a cache of diamox tablets with me, prescribed by my doctor before we travelled, and I was thankful for the relief they offered.

The Canyon – twice as deep as the Grand Canyon – is dotted with a series of delightful villages, each with its own little market. Early on the morning after our arrival – we were comfortably ensconced at the Casa Andina hotel – we took a trip to Condor Cross from where we marvelled at these gigantic birds as, almost motionless save for the flickering of the tips of their wings in the breeze, they rode the thermal currents that rose up from the valley far, far below.

Refreshed by the hot springs that also rise and bubble in the Colca, we readied ourselves for the next stage of our journey: Lake Titicaca. Sat on the border with Bolivia and fed by the meltwater from the glaciers that have gouged their way through the Altiplano sierras, Lake Titicaca was regarded by the Incas as the place from which the world was created, the work of the god, Viracocha who emerged from its waters to bring the stars and the earth and its people into existence. I could imagine how this vast bowl of water, suspended up here in the heavens, captured the minds of the Incas as a mythic source of life. Speckled across the Lake are what appear to be small islands but are in fact Uros, platforms of totora reeds, crafted and strapped and bound by the local people to serve as floating homes. The Uros are re-built afresh from a new crop of reeds every nine months.

While at Titicaca, we dropped in at a local school. The children sang angelically for us; in return, the money that visitors contribute after a performance is used to pay the salary of their teacher. The hills surrounding the Lake are terraced and planted with wheat and potatoes, with long stone fences separating crops from the grazing alpacas.

Bidding farewell to Titicaca, we next boarded the Andean Explorer, a train in the grand old style of the Orient Express, which clattered along at a leisurely pace, allowing to gaze in wonderment at the mountains, the steams and rivers, the valleys and the villages. The rail journey to our next destination – Cuzco – was a bare 250 miles, yet in that space I witnessed landscapes that varied in nature and appearance from Italian Tyrol to Provencal countryside to barren desert.

Cuzco’s beauty is its architectural testimony to Peru’s history of competing civilisations. Spanish colonial baroque, ornate, elaborate, conquering, sits atop massive stone walls built by the Incas. Cuzco was once the capital of the Incas’ own empire, and its streets andalleyways were said to have been laid out in the effigy form of a puma, a creature sacred in the pantheon of Inca belief. On his arrival in 1533, conquistador Francisco Pizarro sacked much of the old Inca city, with only the boundary walls and the Temples of the Sun and Virgins of the Sun surviving the Spanish re-arrangement of their new property.

Close by lie the remains of another walled complex, Sacsayhuaman. It was constructed, during the 12th century AD, not by the Incas but by another pre-Colombian culture, the Killke (the Inca appropriated the buildings when they assumed control of the area). The huge stones of Sacsayhuaman are so perfectly adjoined, so precisely interlocking that it is impossible, even after a millennium of weathering and conquest (the Spanish harvested the limestone blocks in order to build Cuzco’s crop of churches), to slip a single sheet of paper between some of them.

On the day after our arrival in Cuzco, we travelled some 60 miles to the western end of the Incas’ Sacred Valley and to the fortress of Ollantaytambo. It was in this stronghold that the Incas, under Manco Yupanqui, most fiercely resisted Pizarro’s advance through their territory. Here Inca architecture has also put up resistance. Even now you can see Inca doorways, narrow, tall and topped with a single stone lintel. There are Inca fountains, too, splashing water as they once did for the princesses that bathed by them. Inca terraces ramp their way up the hillsides, the plan of Ollantaytambo always contesting the constraints of the vertical. Nowhere is this defiance of gravity more spectacular than in the Inca storehouses, pressed into the mountainous slopes, where the grain from the terraces was kept, winnowed and ventilated by the winds which sweep up the valley.

An overnight stay at the Casa Andina hotel ushered us, the next morning, to Machu Picchu. A train, accustomed to hauling itself up the slopes, carried us on the final stage to the lost city. Machu Picchu, its temples, houses, aqueducts and alleys blending with the paradise green of the hills, was built by the Incas around 1450 and deserted by them about a hundred years later. It was only in 1911 that archaeologists from outside Peru discovered its marvels. Machu Picchu feels a symbol both of Inca might and vulnerability: enthroned at the top of the world – saddled between two mountain peaks, the cliffs falling 450 metres sheer in places to the river, invisible in the mists, at their foot – yet also a magnificent refuge from the encroaching threat of the Spanish invaders. So seemingly intact the walls, so upright the polished stones, so preserved the steps, so exact the temples, that it was impossible to shake off the sensation that the abandonment had happened just years ago. Our guide was splendid, and the three hours we spent at the site seemed to fleet by.

We spent the night Machu Picchu – the following morning was ours to explore further – and then we were on our way back by train and road to Cuzco. There we enjoyed one last night at another fabulous hotel before it was time to catch our flight to Lima, and back to Amsterdam and London. The trip lasted 14 days. 14 days that spanned worlds and civilisations and centuries. 14 days I will remember forever.

The team at Tickets Anywhere can tailor and plan a Peruvian or South American holiday of a lifetime – or the holiday of a lifetime anywhere else – specifically to suit your wishes, making sure that it includes the sights you want see and the places you want to visit.