501 Places

Have you ever stood outside a world famous monument or historic site and questioned whether you can justify spending the money on the entrance ticket? The chances are that you’ve only thought about it briefly before accepting your lot and paying up for the once-in-a-lifetime experience. After all, you’re not likely to return to that part of [...]

The latest guest post on 501 Places is written by Kathryn Bullock, a travel industry entrepreneur who recently returned from a trip to Colombia. Kathryn shares with us the highlights of her 5 week trip and reveals to us why Colombia deserves its growing reputation as a place that greets its visitors with the warmest [...]

While hitchhiking around Europe in the 80s I met a German guy who pretended to be an Icelander, and even had the Iceland flag on his backpack. He was keen to  escape the negative perception he feared he would get as a German on the roads of France or Italy. (He also presumed that young [...]

October is not a month where we traditionally travel. Too early for a winter trip and getting cold in many temperate regions, it is one of those months where we typically gather and store, so that we can spend later. So travelling on my birthday has been a rarity. One fond memory springs to mind, [...]

As someone who has not surfed or snow boarded, the chance to do just that in the middle of the desert was too good to pass by. At a rest stop at an oasis on the four day drive south from Lima, we saw the enormous dunes of the Nazca desert, and were tempted by [...]

Think of Argentina and think of passion. What spring to mind? For most people it will be the tango. The sensual dance, the elaborate costumes and the alluring sounds of the distinctly Latin music. Staying for the few days in the city it is impossible not to see the tango in action. Even if you [...]

It is refreshing to find places in the world where modern science cannot provide all of the answers. It can often add little or nothing to questions of how, why and who created a feature or structure that has us all enthralled at its beauty, its size or the reason why someone would create it [...]

Having watched many nature documentaries that have shown the magnificence of glaciers, I was still in awe from the first sight of Perito Moreno. It’s not just the height or the mind boggling mile width of this enormous wall of ice. Looking back at the glacier it stretches as far as the eye can see, [...]

Walking through my home town of St Albans, it is not uncommon to hear the sound of Peruvian pipes eminating from the marketplace. Whenever I do hear the distinctive sound, my thoughts always drift back to our time in Peru, and particularly of the few days we spent around Lake Titicaca before we headed for [...]

There are few places as grim as Puerto Natales out of season (ok, not including Blackpool or Skegness out of season… no, think of it, at any time of the year). Bitterly cold, a blustery wind coming of the icy waters, and heavy rain that tries to turn to snow but doesn’t quite do it. [...]