Until the 16th century Izamal was a mighty Mayan city, with six pyramids around a huge ceremonial plaza at the largest urban centre in the North Yucatec Plains. After the Bishop Diego de Landa arrived at Izamal’s mission in the mid-16th century the city would never be the same again, and colonial buildings were placed …
A tropical dreamscape, Huatulco is a small resort in Oaxaca bordering its own national park. Until the airport was modernised in the 2000s there was no easy way down to Huatulco, and even today the only international flights come from Chicago and various airports in Canada. The resort has nine Bays and 36 beaches along …
At the very end of the Baja California Peninsula, Cabo San Lucas is a modern resort that ticks all the boxes for nature lovers, active sports aficionados and beach bums. The postcard landmark in Cabo San Lucas is the Arco, a stirring natural arch in a group of tormented granite rock formations at Land’s End. …
At the southern tip of Baja California Sur where the Pacific meets the Sea of Cortez, Los Cabos is a thriving tourist region that has only just come to the world’s attention. The Los Cabos Corridor between the main towns of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo is a succession of enticing coves …
A city that has cropped up almost overnight, Playa del Carmen is now one of the most desirable getaways on Yucatán Peninsula. This length of coast on the Mexican Caribbean is known as the Mayan Riviera. And as well as boasting world-class white sandy beaches and all the marine life of the Caribbean, the Riviera …
A former mining town in the Bahía de Banderas (Bay of Flags), Puerto Vallarta today is a booming resort city with a cosmopolitan crowd. Foreign visitors first arrived with the advent of commercial air travel in the 1940s, and these artists and writers settled at the “Gringo Gulch” quarter. Mass tourism took off in the …
The capital of Yucatán, Mérida is a city that grew suddenly in the late-19th century, powered by a booming henequen industry. Derived from the agave plant this hard-wearing material was once known as “green gold” and the landowners who produced it constructed extravagant homes in Mérida. Those mansion are concentrated on Paseo de Montejo, a …
On the Romantic Road in Middle Franconia, Rothenburg ob der Tauber is one of those sweet old towns that doesn’t seem quite real at first glance. To enter, you pass through a defensive system of more than 40 towers that are much as they were when King of Sweden and Count of Tilly were in …
Volcanoes, steaming lava fields, bubbling mud pools, waterfalls and geothermal springs all await in primordial North Iceland. In this region just a few kilometres from the Arctic Circle you may feel at the end or the beginning of the earth. North Iceland’s natural marvels are spread around a vast and unpopulated area, where the largest …
You’ve surely read about Iceland’s glaciers, volcanoes and hot springs, well in the South Iceland region you can live them. The most convenient way in is to drive the Golden Circle, which has the site of Europe’s oldest parliament, the thunderous Gullfoss waterfall and the geyser that gave all other geysers their name, all on …