We arrived in Cirali after a hot, dry trek from Maden beach in temperatures of 35 degrees.  We were incredibly thirsty and the first pansyion we reached was Ioanna’s, a Danish-run small hotel catering to Danish visitors who want a home from home in the Mediterranean.  Ioanna’s is run by the Elsborgs, a Danish husband and wide team who spend their summers in Turkey sharing the idyllic lifestyle of Cirali beach.  They served us two long cold beers immeddiately, to restore us to full health.  You don’t have to be a Dane to stay there, although the website is not translated – www.ioanna.eu.  They prepare a mean barbecue every evening, so a fat burner review would be useful unless you are going trekking every day of your holiday.

Tags: beach vacations, Turkey holidays

The old town of Antalya is known as the Kaleici and it has plenty of bars and pensayions where you can stop for a drink. The price of wine is very high in Turkey, and the choice is limited. The average meal for two will cost around TL60 (€30), but a bottle of wine to accompany the meal can cost anything from TL45 (€23) upwards. The Otantik Boutique Hotel is situated in Hesapci Street and the hotel includes its own Wine House, where you can enjoy a large glass of white wine for TL5 (€2.5). The Otantik has a tranquil shady garden for dining or drinks. There are eight guest bedrooms, and unusually for Turkey they are equipped with minibars and safes. You will not find some of the other facilities in your hotel room that are on offer at the international hotel chains, like XBox, but there is satellite TV in the rooms. www.otantikbutikotel.com

Tags: Antalya Tours, Turkey holidays

Luxury Adventure Travel to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands

Nothing sounds more exotic or exciting than luxury adventure travel to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands. Let’s take these one at a time and see what you would be getting if you indulged yourself with luxury adventure travel of this kind.

First the Galapagos Islands. Luxury adventure travel to the Galapagos Islands is following the footsteps of Charles Darwin and the Beagle, as he formulated his theory of evolution by studying the life forms on these islands, untainted by human hand for thousands of years. You can try to spot the blue-footed boobies waddling among the hundred year old 600 pound tortoises, or seek out the Amblyrhynchus, a three-foot long, iguana resembling a dinosaur that lives only on these islands.

You could make your initial stop to tour Quito, and have a look around one of the Indian markets nearby, such as the Saquisili Indian market, and buy a hand-made Panama hat – these are made in Ecuador, not Panama! Quito itself offers a great deal to the adventurer, and you will be able to straddle the equator – one foot in the northern and another in the southern hemisphere. Quito was destroyed by the Indians to prevent it being taken by Pissarro, and rebuilt by the Spanish colonialists.

Then take a business class flight on your first stage to tour the Galapagos Islands, and transfer to a luxury cruiser to visit Espanol Island, the first of the Galapagos Islands you will visit. Don’t forget that this is luxury adventure travel to the Galapagos Islands, and that you should want for nothing: the best accommodations and personal attention.

After admiring the iguanas, which swim only at this island, cruise over to Santa Cruz, and visit the Charles Darwin Research Station at Academy Bay, where you will check out the captive tortoise and iguana breeding centers. After crossing the equator, Genovesa Island can be very deceiving. The quietness of this volcanic area lulls you into a false sense of security, because you will shortly enter Darwin Bay and be assaulted by the sound of thousands of birds of many different types: boobies (both blue and red footed), Audubon’s shearwaters, noddies and red billed tropicbirds among many others. This is an ornithologist’s heaven.

Wreck Bay (I wonder how it got that name) on San Cristobal is the administrative capital of the Galapagos and you can fly from there back to Ecuador, connecting in Guayaquil for your flight to Lima. This is the start on the second part of your vacation: Luxury Adventure Travel to Machu Picchu. However, why rush it? Why not first have a look around some of the other places that Peru has to offer?

Take a trip to Cuzco: at three miles high, one of the highest cities in the world. Imagine your 100 meters time here! When you get this high, you have to take it easy or you could become ill, so let yourself acclimatize after your sea-level trip to the Galapagos Islands. Give it a day and then head off for a tour to Chincero in the Urubamba Sacred Valley, to learn something about the old ways of the Incas. Keep in mind that is a luxury vacation, and in keeping with that you should also visit La Cicciolina, which one of the best restaurants in this part of the world. Now you are ready for your luxury adventure travel to Machu Picchu!

What better than a luxury train ride on the Hiram Bingham train to the lost city, enjoying champagne and a top class brunch on the way. It was Yale historian, Hiram Bingham, who brought Machu Picchu to the attention of the civilized world in 1911, and wrote his first book on his finding under the title “The Lost City of the Incas”. In fact the city had been constructed around 1460, when the Inca Empire was at its peak, and it is believed that it was abandoned less than 100 years later due to an outbreak of smallpox killing most of the inhabitants. Read more »

Tags: beach vacations