tours Archives

Charco Azul cave and waterfall tour, Puerto Rico: swimming limestone caves, Taíno petroglyphs and cliff jumping

An hour's drive west of San Juan, the Indio River has been cutting through Puerto Rico's northern limestone karst belt for millions of years. The result is Charco Azul and the Arenales Caves — a system of underground tunnels, sculpted slot canyons, turquoise swimming holes…

Why book an Icacos Island boat tour from Fajardo: all-inclusive snorkelling, beach day and lunch

Icacos Island is a small uninhabited cay off Puerto Rico's north-eastern coast, part of a chain of islands and reefs sitting at the convergence of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The water here is a different quality from the beaches around San Juan…

A waterfall in El Yunque rainforest, Puerto Rico.

El Yunque, Puerto Rico: The only tropical rainforest in the US — and a natural rock slide to go with it

El Yunque National Forest is one of the smallest national forests in the United States by area — around 28,000 acres in the Luquillo Mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico. It is also the most biologically diverse, and the only one classified as a tropical rainforest.…

Visiting Convocation House, Oxford: practical guide for first-timers

Convocation House is a 17th-century ceremonial chamber inside the Old Bodleian Library complex on Broad Street, Oxford, used for over 300 years as the meeting place of the University of Oxford's governing bodies and three times as England's Parliament during the Civil War. It is…

The Kravice waterfall in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A waterfall, a Sufi monastery and a medieval ghost town: what Herzegovina looks like beyond Mostar

Mostar draws visitors for its Ottoman bridge and its story. Both are worth a day of anyone's time. But the city sits in the middle of a region whose other sights — a Sufi monastery carved into a cliff above a turquoise spring, a medieval…

How far Edinburgh is from Loch Ness — and why the journey is the point

Loch Ness is 175 miles from Edinburgh. The drive takes around three and a half hours in a straight line — but the direct route misses almost everything worth seeing. The road that actually matters goes west via Callander, through Loch Lomond and the Trossachs…

Kilt Rock and Mealt Falls on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.

Loch, castle, island: what a day trip from Inverness to Skye actually covers

The Isle of Skye sits just 80 miles south-west of Inverness. But the island's main attractions — Portree, Kilt Rock, the Old Man of Storr, the Fairy Pools — are spread across its 50-mile length. Driving yourself means choosing between them. This 12-hour guided tour,…

Monks, mountains and Muscat: a wine and olive oil tour through the hills above Chania

Crete has been making wine since the Minoan era — a history of roughly 4,000 years. The island grows its own distinctive grape varieties, many found nowhere else in the world. The hilly Kissamos region west of Chania is one of its core wine-producing areas,…

The island that marble built: a full-day bus tour of inland Naxos

Naxos is the largest island in the Cyclades — bigger than Mykonos and Santorini combined. Most visitors spend their time on its western beaches and never venture inland. That's a genuine loss. The island's interior holds ancient temples, marble-paved mountain villages and an unfinished kouros…

The town that water built: exploring Eureka Springs by golf cart

Eureka Springs, Arkansas, exists because of a rumour. In the late 1870s, word spread that the natural springs tucked into these Ozark Mountain hollows could cure almost anything — blindness, paralysis, skin disease, you name it. By 1881, so many people had arrived to test…