All posts are about travel experience and travel guide
Top Attraction 1 Glacier walking, Franz Josef or Fox Glacier. Explore stunning blue glacier ice and crevasses on a half- or full-day glacier walk, led by knowledgeable and safety-conscious guides. All the gear, including crampons, is provided. Top Attraction 2 Waipoua Forest, Northland. Stroll through the vertiginous canopy of tangled foliage in this mighty Northland…
Metate Room is the award-winning fine-dining option at Mesa Verde in south-western Colorado. Run by Aramark, the industrial food services corporation with a 20-country footprint and concession contracts in many of the largest US national parks, Metate Room offers diners a sweeping view of the park’s landscape and wildlife, including wild mustangs. Its name, Metate,…
Māori works of art are not only beautiful to look at, but also reveal a great deal about their society’s beliefs, history and social structure. The classic art of New Zealand Māori is an unsurpassed Pacific tribal art. Many creative styles and much skilled craftsmanship yielded, and continue to yield, objects of great beauty. To…
Behind much of New Zealand’s art and literature lies a degree of tension between the landscape and the people who inhabit it. Many New Zealanders have always had something of an ambivalent attitude towards the arts. Grants to artists and writers by the state funding agency once regularly aroused derision, as if wastrels and idlers…
Isla Bastimentos The second largest island in the Bocas del Toro archipelago, Isla Bastimentos is dominated by the Isla Bastimentos National Marine Park, which includes jungle-backed beaches with powdery white sand and the pristine coral formations just off-shore. Bastimentos is much more relaxed than Bocas Town, with just one small creole town of 200 called…
Outside of Boquete What Panama lacks in volume in terms of coffee, it makes up for it in quality. Shade-grown varieties grown in the rich volcanic soil have given Panama a name in the premium coffee market, surging past the better-known Costa Rica. In particular, it’s the varietal called Gesha, or Geisha, a plant of…
POLLERAS OF AZUERO The complexly designed pollera costumes are widely considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful forms of traditional dress. While the Spanish colonial dress was common in haciendas throughout Latin America, the most famous polleras come from the Azuero peninsula. Worn during special occasions, these polleras consist of a one-piece skirt…
Drink Some mistake rum for Panama’s national drink. It’s not. That honor belongs to seco, a thrice distilled, 80-percent-proof sugarcane liquor. The most famous brand is Seco Herrerano, produced in the town of Pesé, by the Varela Hermanos distillery, which dates to 1936 and coincidentally also makes Abuelo rum. While inexpensive, top bartenders in Panama…
Portobelo to Isla Grande Approximately 43km (27 miles) east of Colón lies the sleepy seaside town of Portobelo 8 [map] , which was one of the wealthiest ports in the Spanish Caribbean from the 16th to early 18th centuries, thanks to much of the silver and gold from South America passing through here before being…
Fact The French attempt at building the Panama Canal, led by Suez Canal architect Ferdinand de Lesseps, was a disaster. Few foresaw the enormous challenges that the thick, mosquito-infested jungle presented, ranging from floods to yellow fever. In the end, more than 20,000 died before they called it quits. There are several ecolodges within or…