Chatting about our travels with friends recently, we were asked

“Where is the most amazing place you’ve been?”.

Now there’s a question. Amazing in what way? We started thinking about it. How many ways could there be?

Scenically. Culturally. Environmentally. To name but three. Which sent me off into our photo archive of the last 25 years, and countless memories.

What follows is a photo essay of some of those amazing places.

Whakaari, or White Island, in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty. We got to visit this active volcano; I’m not sure we would do this now. More recently, a number of visitors were killed when the island erupted when they were there.

Calmer volcanic landscapes on Lanzarote.

Lanzarote

Grapevines protected by walls of scoria on Lanzarote.

Argentina, Ruta Cuarenta.

Fabulous basalt columns in Argentina. I think this collection look like a ‘Green Man’.

An amazing mix of volcanic features, also Argentina. These ones are known as ‘The Monks’.

Desert landscapes of the Andes.

Atacama Desert, Peru. Plenty of stories. Here’s one.

Saltflats. Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.

Salar de Uyuni.

Salar de Uyuni. A story here

El Paso Cristo Redentor, descending from Argentina to Chile.

Not a Salar, but the expanses of calcium carbonate at White Sands, New Mexico, USA.

White Sands.

And then, some wonderful cultural snippets:

Attending Choppfest, a Bavarian beer festival in Paraguay. Complete with lederhosen and thigh-slapping.

The wonderful can-do culture in Uruguay. The bike mechanic was so apologetic that they wouldn’t get the wheel repaired until after siesta. Even though they didn’t have quite the right parts, they fabricated a repair that lasted 10,000km.

We’ve spent a lot of time in Uruguay, and there are many stories. A taster.

The fantastic parades in Bolivia and Peru. Usually we had no idea what was going on, but it was always a joyful experience.

There are a few posts about festivals on the website. Here’s one.

Uruguay again. A throwback to simpler times, and the feeling of a calmer way of life. Though I am aware that this is my view from the outside.

Pedalling the remote challenge of the Dempster Highway to arrive in Inuvik in time for the midsummer celebrations. Yes, this photo was taken on midsummer’s day.

And then, the surreal desert ecosystems.

The Boojum trees of northern Baja, Mexico.
“The boojum tree is one of the strangest plants imaginable. For most of the year it is leafless and looks like a giant upturned turnip. Its common name was coined by the plant explorer Godfrey Sykes, who found it in 1922 and said “It must be a boojum!”. In saying this, he was referring of the strange and mythical creature that the author Lewis Carroll called a boojum in his children’s book, The Hunting of the Snark. The Spanish common name for this tree is Cirio, referring to its candle-like appearance.”

Huge cardon cacti, Baja California.

Colossal specimens, Baja California

You can read a review of our time in Mexico here.

The whole experience of taking the 4-day ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt in Chile. The nonstop vistas of the voyage through the Chilean Inside Passage, the wildlife and the weather. The temporary, improbable community of younger backpackers, older, more upmarket travellers, and truck drivers thrown together for the four days of the voyage.

You can read more about it here.

And there you are. A few snippets of amazing from the last 25 years of travelling.