Stunning Donostia, Spain

Fruteria

Rarely in traveling do expectations and reality intersect, but they certainly do in Donostia  Known to the Spanish as San Sebastian, this coastal gem lies on the Northern coast of Spain, mere kilometers from the French border, at the foot of the Pyrenees and at the heart (or stomach) of Basque country.  Wide stretches of sandy beach, cobblestoned old town and sultry weather draw both the European jet set and backpacker crowds alike, where they happily mingle over tapas (pinxtos) and wine.

 The Old Town is the focus of most tourists’ attention, and for good reason.  Stone streets cover about six square blocks, lined with tall and narrow buildings, open only to pedestrians and service vehicles, and full of open air tapas bars, shops and pensions.  Our first few attempts to find a pension were met with silence as no one responded to the doorbell, but finally we found a simply appointed place called Pension Amaiur Ostatua, with a large room and small iron balcony overlooking one of the pedestrian thoroughfares.

The old section sits on a small peninsula, with curved bays and expansive beaches on either side framed by broad promenades. We were there off season, so it was quite peaceful, but you could picture the thronging, bronzed, scantily clad masses that descend upon the city during the warmest months.  A funicular on the far end of the main beach takes you up to a vantage point with stunning views of the bay dotted with sailboats and tall white buildings stretching out from the coastline.  I have never been to the French Riviera, but that was the first thing that sprang to mind overlooking Santander.

Old Town

A number of small parks and gardens provide green space for residents and tourists seeking respite from the bustle, or a short siesta in preparation for the next tapas crawl.  From where Old Town sits, you can hike steeply up ancient footpaths for similar views of the city as well as views of the undeveloped rocky coastline.  These trails are part of the El Camino Santiago, a complex web of trails used by Christian pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela, and although a bit difficult to find the start of (ask a local), offer stunning coastal views and chance to burn off some of those calories.

Food and drink though, is what Donostia is truly famous for and it certainly did not disappoint.  While Spanish tapas have become famous around the world, it’s commonly accepted that the best tapas are actually from Basque Country, and Donostia is the best of the best.  Tapas are called Pinxtos in the Basque language, and are small plates or appetizers.  In the Old Town starting at about nine in the evening, begins the tapas crawl.  This consists of wandering from bar to bar, eating a pinxto, drinking a small wine or beer, enjoying conversation with friends or people watching, and then moving onto the next one, until the wee hours of the morning.

Two types of pinxtos were on offer at each bar; cold dishes were spread out across the large bar counter, the best of which were cooked to order once chosen.  Then there was always a small menu of raciones (larger portions made to order), which also turned out to be specialties of the house, and they were the real star of the show in most places.

Almost all of the prepared cold pinxtos were served on little slices of bread, infinitely varietal in presentation but not so much in substance, primarily consisting of combinations of egg, mayonnaise based salads, shrimp, and cheese.  The simple and succulent Serrano ham or even better Ibirico ham should not be forgotten however, and a simple plate of this melt in your mouth dish can not be missed.

Pinxto Bar

Croquettes, deep fried balls of pleasure, came in many forms, but some of my favorite included the pistachio croquettes and a similarly deep fried bisque ball at Astelena, and the bleu cheese croquettes at an ETA bar whose name I’ve conveniently “forgotten”.  Being right on the coast, there was plenty of fresh seafood, and the grilled and Pinxto Barskewered shrimp, cuttlefish in ink and calamari, simply dressed and grilled were succulent.

The raciones, usually written on a chalkboard somewhere in the bar, were always what the locals seemed to order, so we started to as well, and it certainly paid off.  Rape in salsa verde (Monkfish in a green salsa), Tacos de Benito (seared tuna, salad and a tomato dressing), and Chorizo a Veira con ajillo (sausage in a garlic sauce) were some of the more memorable dishes.

My favorite place by far though, was called Ganbara, whose specialty is mushrooms.  On the counter are literally mounds of exotic fungi – delicate chanterelles, woodsy morels, giant forest shrooms, fresh porcinis.  The hongas (mushroom) mixed plate there will forever bring me back…a plentiful helping of the different varieties, sautéed in butter and garlic until slightly caramelized, served in a hot baking dish with bread to sop up every last bit.

Undiscovered Comoros Islands, Indian Ocean

Scattered in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique are the four small islands of the Comoros, whose name comes from the Arabic for "moon". The name is strangely appropriate considering the islands have been so surprisingly isolated from the tourism boom that has enveloped the rest of the Indian Ocean nations.

Harbor

Like neighboring Zanzibar, the archipelago lies at the crossroads of the Arab and African civilizations, and its Arabian heritage can be seen in the delicate arches of its whitewashed mosques. Like another neighbor, the Seychelles, it also boasts all the requisites of a fantasy island, tropical warmth, turquoise waters, palm trees. But nobody visits the Comoros – supposing they have even heard of the place.

The reason is the troubled Comoran history. Since independence from France in 1975, the Union of the Comoros has been anything but united. While one of the islets, Mahoré, voted to remain a French overseas territory, the three others have gone through a turmoil of no less than 20 coups d'états, several led by the infamous French mercenary Bob Denard, with the latest occuring as recently as 2008.

No wonder that when I landed on Ngazidja, the main island, I found a neglected (but peaceful) backwater. Imagine streets with more potholes than asphalt, goats munching on heaps of roadside trash, dilapidated collective taxis wheezing around, and run-down hotels, only one of which had 24-hour running water. Conversely, the total absence of foreign tourism meant that people were friendly and happy to chat.

Tower

But once I had visited the few nice sandy beaches and spent a few evenings belting out karaoke favorites at one of the three decent restaurants in Moroni, the capital city, I discovered that I had pretty much exhausted the after-work entertainment possibilities. Only one adventure remained - to hike the Karthala volcano.
Its dark mass looms 2,361 meters above the port of Moroni, sometimes wrapping its rainforest-covered flanks in a blanket of clouds. It happens to be one of the most active volcanoes in the world, having erupted 20 times in the past century. But at the time of my visit it had been quiet for two years, so a climb was safe. Because the paths up were notoriously poorly marked, I hired a guide. His name, appropriately, was Chauffeur ("driver" in French).

On the said day, he swung by at 5 a.m. to pick me up from my hotel, where I waited gazing at the starry sky beside the bemused security guard. Our battered taxi collected another traveler, a Frenchman named Ludovic, and we drove to a village an hour away. Chauffeur was wearing a pajama-like tracksuit, a droopy sweater and worn boots, Ludovic (like myself) regular clothes and a pair of trainers.

Both took regular cigarette breaks. Little wonder that peasants in flip-flops breezed effortlessly past us, when we set off through plantations of banana trees, fragrant clove trees and vanilla bushes. Vanilla had been the cash crop of the islands until artificial flavorings made its price crash. Our guide was less than knowledgeable when we asked him about wildlife. "Are there any snakes here? - Yes there are. What kind of parrot is that? Yes, it's a parrot."

Landscape

After an hour-long slog up winding paths, we emerged from the forest and walked through rust-colored heathland. We were now high enough to take in both edges of the island, where the blue of the ocean melted into the sky. We stopped to pluck wild strawberries, which seemed to melt on our tongues in a burst of sweetness. Around noon, we reached zebu pastures and pitched our tents, then continued upwards in the mid-day heat.

Presently, we hiked on ashen gray land, stepping over sun-bleached dead trees. We climbed one last ridge and a lunar landscape opened in front of us. The most barren field of brownish ash, strewn with rocks, stretched ahead. We trudged across it to reach the edge of the collapsed crater, the caldera. Hundreds of meters below us, two tiny fumaroles puffed.

The only sound was the whisper of the light breeze. We picnicked, snoozed. Ludovic wrote "la vie est belle" (life is beautiful) in the sand, then we proudly crossed the moon-like surface again and made our way back down to our campsite.

The next day, the climb down the mountain was long and uneventful, until we reached the village, where the children excitedly pointed at us with cries of "mzungus!" (white people). I had a wonderful time and I think, with more development, that the islands could be a tourist attraction. Someday, perhaps, the children of the island won't find visitors to be so strange and unusual.

Prepare What You Need Before Traveling

If you are heading to be traveling by air, make sure that you do not place any valuables or electronics on your checked luggage. Baggage handlers usually are not well-known for being mild and any electronics will probably stop up destroyed throughout transport. Airways are likewise recognized to lose luggage and you simply will not hope to require a chance of shedding a specific thing worthwhile.

When traveling by plane, check out to restrict oneself to the single twenty pound carry-on bag. Using this method, you always know in which you luggage is. Should you be touring to many different destinations in a solitary journey, you can find nothing worse than experiencing your luggage chasing you about whilst you go with out clean underwear.

Deliver apparel that is definitely appropriate for vacation. This implies goods which you can clean and dry around the hotel place, and that will not wrinkle from currently being air-dried. Also, remember the fact that you can buy clothing when you go, and it will most definitely be a great deal more suited on the climate and society on the community.

When traveling abroad, hold a note of all really important related information. This could embrace the deal with, telephone number and web page of your respective consulate or embassy in the country by which you're traveling. Once you go into any bother while you are overseas, here is the first spot it's worthwhile to make contact with. They may give you the option to aid you with any troubles perhaps you may encounter.

When packing, be certain that you split up your valuables. When you are packing various bags for just a journey, unfold your costlier things out somewhere between them. Continuously steer clear of putting all of your valuables in one bag just in case this bag is shed or stolen. Dropping only one bag remains to be terrible but might not wreck your journey.

Bear in mind scheduling a cruise on your next travel adventure. When you're over a cruise, you don't ought to be concerned about identifying destinations to consume or continue to be. Excursions on land will be arranged for you personally with the cruise director. Everything is completed for you personally. So, you'll just sit again and revel in.

Asking for any more suitable resort area if you find yourself checking in will most probably get you one! When you would favor an even better look at, a quieter space or maybe just one closer on the ice-machine, chances are high superb that one particular is available. It requires but a minute to consult and can most positively raise your remain.

Instead of heading someplace far absent, try to look for local sights which you can travel to. Not only will you help save time and expense, however, you may even be supporting local establishments and also your localized economy. When you desire ideas, call up your local guests bureau for options on nearby functions for you personally along with your family.

Spanish La Palma, Canary Islands

As though it were caught floating halfway away from the Iberian peninsula of Europe towards South America and became lodged off the coast of western Africa, La Palma has something of each continent in its soul. The steepest island in the world at only 16 miles wide and 8000 feet high, La Palma also has enormous ecological diversity and a historic significance dating to 1492.

Tazacorte

That was the year that the first Spaniard, Alfonso Fernández de Lugo, landed on La Palma. The island soon became a stopping ground for crews heading west to the New World. For Columbus it was a necessary stop-over for rest and supplies. The capital Santa Cruz grew to become one of the three most important ports in the Hispanic world. It also saw the departure of thousands of immigrants to South America, such as Cuba where the islanders set up tobacco plantations.

When we visited Santa Cruz we found a pleasant and relaxed city. It’s tidy and tiny with old colonial buildings. There are white churches accented with dark volcanic stone and quaint houses decorated with colorful wooden balconies. There’s a replica of Columbus’ ship the Santa Maria at the end of the Plaza de la Alameda, a delightful square shaded with old laurel trees.
It’s the island’s laurel trees that today make up Los Tilos, a protected biospheric reserve north of Santa Cruz. The name, Los Tilos, is derived from the Spanish word for smelly, since laurels stink when felled.

Santa Cruz Balconies

We joined a guided trek through Los Tilos and were astonished by the diversity of its greenery. Our guide Ilonka from Natour-Trekking explained that there are more than 2000 forms of vegetation and 70 plants unique to La Palma. The hills are a tapestry of fig trees, orange trees, palm trees, banana crops, vineyards, pines, laurels and dragon trees, a tree found only on the islands of the middle Atlantic and which can grow to be centuries old.

"Banana’s are boozers," explains Ilonka as we stop at a banana orchard in San Andres y Sauces, another colonial village with cobbled streets and narrow alleys. "One kilo of bananas needs 1000 litres of water." So avocados, which are much less demanding of the island’s water supplies, are slowly replacing banana farming.

For now the island is covered by huge patches of banana land, with the gigantic leaves swaying in the wind. Some of the fields are covered in plastic to prevent the heavy leaves from bruising the bananas, but as a local restaurateur tells us, bananas cultivated in this way are less tasty.

And taste, it turns out, is a specialty here. We encountered our tastiest treats during our hikes on the western side of the island, known as the sunnier side. As we approached a small almond farm the farmer’s wife appeared with satchels of roasted, sugared almonds for us to buy. At Tazacorte, a genteel village with bright, arty street furniture, we drank sugar cane juice pressed through an old-fashioned hand-mill. It gave us that extra kick needed to climb the cliff for a panoramic view.

East Coast

The goats we saw roaming the northwestern hills produced the best delight of all: goat cheese roasted over pine-brush and topped with a typical Canary Islands sauce called mojo verde. The crushed coriander and garlic sauce combines tantalizingly with the smoky flavour. La Palma’s goat cheese is so fine because of the very diversity of greens the goats can freely graze.

These pampered goats also have spectacular views of the island’s most majestic feature, the Caldera de Tarubiente. This snowy peak is an extinct 5-mile wide crater and the climax of the volcano trail that runs along the north-south spine of the island. The western winds cause clouds to pour over this ridge like milk spilling in slow motion. From here you can also see the tips of the other Canary islands Tenerife and La Gomera.

After all the trekking and fantastic sea views, we were ready for a day at the beach. At Los Cancajos, near Santa Cruz, the sand is very black from the volcanic explosions that formed the island. The lava-rich soil is also the reason for La Palma’s quality wine. With a bottle of malvasia—the wine that was once noted by Shakespeare—and anise-seeded bread, we enjoyed the view of Santa Cruz’s miniature skyline from the warm beach.

Rio San Juan, Nicaragua

Lancha

The conquistadors explored it in the 16th century. English pirates sailed up it in the 17th century. Epic battles Lanchatook place on its shores. Soldiers killed by tropical diseases were fed to the flesh-eating sharks of its dark waters. In the 19th century, gold-diggers rushed up it towards California. In the early 20th it nearly became an international inter-ocean canal in place of Panama. Really, the heavy currents of history flow in Nicaragua's Rio San Juan.

This powerful river carries the waters of Lake Nicaragua, Central America's largest body of freshwater, 192km eastward to the Caribbean. The only "road" through this remote rural area, it runs between vast reserves of thick tropical rainforest on its left bank and isolated farming communities on its right bank, which is in fact Costa Rican. The full journey downriver takes twelve hours. Always one for an off-the-beaten-path expedition, I puttered down the river over the course of several days, soaking up the tranquil atmosphere.

I caught my first glimpse of the Rio San Juan at daybreak, as my ferry reached the fishing town of San Carlos after a fourteen-hour lake crossing. In the ethereal dawn light, the water and the sky would have merged their twin expanses of blue-grey, had they not been divided by the dark, mist-covered shoreline. "The threshold of an adventure!" I exclaimed, excited.

The next day, I embarked on a lancha, a long and impossibly narrow wooden motorboat that ferries passengers, sacks of rice and even sometimes a shipment of cows from one settlement to the next. We glided in the wake of Benalcazar, who reconnoitered the river for Cortés in 1525 during the Spanish conquest.

Castillo

Indeed, the conquistador had figured out the strategic importance of a waterway almost linking the two oceans (the western edge of the lake is just a few hours from the Pacific). But so had English filibusters, among which the infamous Henry Morgan. In the 17th century, he and other pirates repeatedly sailed from the West Indies right up to Granada, sacking what was one of the Spanish empire's richest cities.

In response, the Spanish fortified the Rio San Juan. Only one fort still stands intact, the 1675 Fortaleza de la Inmaculada Concepcion, whose dark mass looms above the town of El Castillo. I spent a happy morning at the museum of the fort trying to picture myself as Rafaela Herrera, who fired cannons from that very spot in 1762.

Since her father, the commander of the fort, had died just as English buccaneers were about to attack, she promptly proclaimed herself head of the garrison and successfully led the defense of the fort – she was 19! Later, an English fleet under the orders of Horatio Nelson did take the fort in 1780, in one of the last battles between England and Spain, but the conquerers were quickly decimated by a cohort of tropical diseases.

Scratching my own mosquito bites, I cursed the surrounding jungle and set off for the mouth of the river, another eight hours away. Once the boat had navigated the frothing rapids just beneath El Castillo, the ride was smooth. En route, we stopped in several tiny communities, really just a handful of thatched wooden farmhouses sheltered by banana trees. Half-naked kids and their dogs watched the farmers in rubber boots and cowboy hats clamber off. It was probably the most dramatic event of their week.

Carlos

The end of the ride is San Juan de Nicaragua, a small collection of clapboard houses connected by footpaths near the mouth of the river. Its glory days (as Greytown) started during the gold rush of 1848, when an enterprising American set up the Ruta del Transito, a route which ferried thousands of gold-seekers from New Orleans to San Francisco by way of Nicaragua's Rio San Juan, avoiding the direct but dangerous overland journey – until the continental railway was inaugurated.

The river's last hopes to become an international shipping lane were destroyed when Panama was chosen over Nicaragua for an inter-ocean canal in 1903, and the town turned into a backwater. In the 1980's it was razed by the Contras and flattened by a hurricane, then rebuilt a few miles away.

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A Guide to Rocky Mountain Vacations

The majestic Rocky Mountains are a major tourist location in the western United States. Visitors can participate in a quantity of activities, including hiking, skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, & plenty of more. The Rockies are home to several campgrounds, ghost towns, gold prospecting sites, & national parks. a quantity of the biggest tourist attractions in the Rockies are Pike's Peak & Royal Gorge. There are several world famous national parks in the Rockies, including Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, & Glacier.

The legendary Rocky Mountains stretch from old Mexico up through the United States & into Canada. The Rocky Mountains are over 3000 miles long, spanning parts of California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, & Wyoming before continuing into Canada. Stories of early adventurers like Lewis & Clark exploring the Rocky Mountains are legendary.

about everyone will find something to enjoy on a Rocky Mountain holiday. Aside from all of the great outdoor activities, the Rockies have a quantity of other attractions as well. The Telluride Film Festival is a prestigious yearly event that attracts a quantity of the biggest stars in Hollywood to a small Colorado town. plenty of Smoky Mountain resorts offer spa treatments & other relaxing diversions.

The Rockies are a tourist attraction all year round. The summer months are  warm, with the average temperature reaching 82 degrees Fahrenheit. January is the coldest month, with an average temperature of 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The year-round average temperature is a brisk 43 degrees, a perfect temperature for plenty of outdoor activities.

there is a plethora of lodging options in the Rocky Mountains. Travelers can camp, visit RV parks, stay in hotels or ski resorts, or lodge in distinctive cabins & chalets. Vacationers on any type of budget will be able to find an affordable place to stay.