501 Places

In this week’s guest post travel writer and journalist Andrea Wren describes a visit to Soweto. She shares with us her experience of taking a township tour and offers tip on those planning to make a similar visit. Looking into a corrugated iron shack the size of a camper van, it was hard to believe [...]

This story might sound strange to anyone under 30, while older folk may recognise some of the sentiments I experienced in this incident. I met my first South African in 1987. I remember it well. I was 18, halfway through another Inter-rail summer, and I was in the station in Salzburg ready to catch some [...]

Like millions of others I’m counting down the days till the start of the football World Cup in South Africa on June 11th. Once the final 32 qualifying countries were decided, I was looking at the list and thinking of which ones I had visited, which ones where on my immediate to-do list, and which [...]

According to the GfK Ascent Survey of 15,000 UK holidaymakers in 2009, as presented at the CIMTIG organised Travel Vision 2010 evening, UK tourist numbers for last year to Egypt are up 20% and Turkey up 9%. On the downside the Canary Islands have seen a drop of a massive 22%, while numbers are also [...]

I can’t say I seek out horse riding opportunities. The last time I rode a horse was certainly not through choice, and was in fact an evacuation from a hotel in India, cut off in a major snowfall. This time the riding was for a different purpose. Here on the Nyika plateau in northern Malawi, [...]

This was is unremarkable photo of a gamekeepers’ watch tower. Poaching is common in this part of Africa, and the Malawi authorities patrol this vast area looking for poachers. There are a few of these look-out posts scattered around Vwaza Game Reserve, in the west of the country, and most are as ricketty and uncared [...]

10 game drives in 5 days (sunrise and sunset); standard for most safari lodges, and in many cases guests opt out of the early morning ones after the first couple of days. We were determined to make each drive; after all we had paid for it, and in any case there wasn’t a great deal [...]

I like Cape Town. It is listed in many Top 10 cities lists, and rightly so IMHO. Great restaurants, attractive waterfront, fascinating museums, a place steeped in history, and of course a backdrop that very few places can compete with. Yet my own memory from our visit there centres on the day we spent out [...]

It’s hard to beat the multi-coloured beauty of an African sunset. The sky seems bigger, the hue of the reds and oranges more expressive, the clouds more dreamy. And the sounds of the plains around us while watching the sun dip below the horizon leave you in no doubt where you are. We stayed in [...]

As a rule we never visit the same place twice. The world is too big, and time too short. We explore a new destination as much as we can and move on. And while every place we have visited holds some good memories, few have left us with a longing to return. The Seychelles are [...]