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Contrary to its neighbour Mauritius, Réunion island does not have a lot of beaches so most people (including ourselves) come for hiking.

Over the course of four days we did four hikes: (i) Trou de Fer, (ii) Col du Taïbit/Marla, (iii) Piton des Neiges, and (iv) Piton de la Fournaise. These and more hikes can be found on the website https://en.reunion.fr/organize/hiking-trails where also GPX tracks can be downloaded and practical information is provided (where to park, distances, …). However, we didn’t need GPX tracks since all hikes are well marked.

Whatever hike you do, it is recommended to do it before noon since later in the day the clouds come in limiting visibility and consequently blocking the nice view you hoped to have after climbing for a couple of hours.

Below some comments per hike we did (end of September):

Trou de Fer: large car park at the Gîte de Bélouve / start of the hike. In principle, this is a easy walk but the day(s) before we arrived it rained and during our walk it started raining again making the trail very very (ankle deep) muddy. We even considered turning back but in the end made it to the viewpoint which was worth the hassle.

Col du Taïbit: only a couple of parking spaces at the start of the route so start early (but alternatively there is a bus stop). The route goes up to the Col du Taïbit and back down to the …

WHS#55

I visited Tel Megiddo during my travels through the Galilee in April 2019. The tel is quite imposing as I approach, as it's the lone hill on the flat Jezreel Plain. Hill look-alike, at least, because this tel is huge. It towers several meters higher than me, and walking up it really feels like walking up a small natural hill. But natural it is not. This tel is made up of 26 different layers of civilization, stretched between maybe 7 millennia all before the time of Jesus. It's been in ruins longer than San Marino has been a state, and inhabited even longer than that, so it's really a historic treasure. Anyway, a visit to the tel will always start at the gates to the city, dating back from the Late Bronze Age. For their age, the walls surrounding the passageway are surprisingly tall. Some layers of civilization have even been flattened to mere inches of thickness. This can be seen in the dug out portion where the Early Bronze Age temple, the site's most famous ruin, is located. The walls of this manmade depression still show several layers of the different cultures that have settled on this very spot. The site is really an interesting setting, with its palm trees all over the place and a view of the vast plains all around. A walk further brings me to 2 of the most impressive ruins: the grain silo and the water management system. I was actually able …

I wasn’t terribly interested in the Water Management System of Augsburg, but I did feel an urgent need to make my German WHS score ‘complete’ again! So last Saturday I ventured out to this Bavarian city on a day trip from my home – flying Amsterdam-Munich and then taking a train to Augsburg. Even for an experienced traveler and German speaker, buying a train ticket from a vending machine proved to be like finishing a moderately difficult exam, having to answer question after question – resulting in a final bill of 50.90 EUR for the return trip to Munich Airport - Augsburg. Ouch!

So this day consisted of a lot of sitting in planes and trains. The stay was to be so short that I did not even bring a bag and only kept my iPhone in a coat pocket. No passport as well; for a few months, I am using only a credit card-sized ID card for travels within the EU (which feels a bit like having a second passport, so the real one can be safely sent to some embassy for a visa). The iPhone fortunately gave me access to some good podcasts. I recently started listening to the Counting Countries series, so while I was physically in Germany my mind wandered off to Tajikistan and Niger.

From Augsburg railway station you can walk to the historic city center in 15 minutes. You pass through shopping streets, where it was pleasantly busy and perhaps only the …

When I looked at the list of all World Heritage Sites around Madrid, Aranjuez was the least interesting site in my initial opinion; however, after visited the place, it became the second least interesting site since Alcala de Hanares won the position. Since I already saw the Royal Palace in Madrid twice including its grand royal park couple of month ago, I was not happy to have a trip just to see another Spanish royal palace, so pairing it with Cuenca was a good idea.

From Madrid I drove to Aranjuez, the city was quite lovely with many greens and fine houses, some kind of prosperous neighborhood, but when I reach city center, the view of ideal royal city welcomed me with grand scale, Grand palace on the right, French landscape gardens on the left and large square with beautiful San Antonio de Padua Church at the far end in the middle. I drove into a small alley next to palace complex, the buildings, pavement, trees were all stately and beautiful design, however those large open spaces in front of the church and next to the palace with few people around made the city a bit desert and lifeless and the area in front of the palace were shockingly rundown with shabby gardens and abandoned and ruined buildings. I toured the interior of the Aranjuez Palace, as other reviews mentioned, certain rooms especially the Moorish room and porcelain room were quite stunning and the display of royal gowns …

It's worth coming here even though the roads are horrible for the last section and if you plan on continuing north/west be ready for a looooong bumpy ride. Slips are constantly ruining travel plans in this area.

On arrival you get the typical booklet for the site and a visit to the museum. There are two parts of the museum and one is not related to the caves and I skipped out quickly. You are then ready to ascend to the actual sites, no guide necessary, with local guards taking care of you as you arrive at each one.

One would think the site is so big and should be explored fully in a day, but I think that is a little wasteful. It is big but I thought it was jading to see the first cluster at Segovia already, each time you descend a horrible twisted set of stone slabs ("stairs") to see very little. Some have art and carvings but then I find it just so-so, and you descend one of these to see some broken jars - no thanks. Try to get the guide to ONLY show you the mui grande ones so it doesn't become too boring quickly. With the weather acting up I decided to return the same way rather than making a long circle to see the rest. There were also forest fires but they didn't seem to care about it so I take it they were managed fires (I'm still suspicious …

The northern town of Franeker is a typical dutch affair, cobble streets, canals, people parking AT the side of the canals (I wonder how many cars have dropped in due to bad parking) and there is free parking just outside of town with only a few minutes walk to the planetarium.

This should already be on the WH list, ages and ages ago. It has a lot more going than "Defense Lines" or a canal ring, or Schokland obviously, and I'm not directly saying these are bad sites but the planetarium has a huge unique clockwork going that, flawed a little because it does not account for leap years, still works today, as well a super interesting museum padding it. I wish to have a wide-angle camera just for the planet room, and I would like to spend more time just seeing the gears working - fascinating.

Although you can browse around by yourself it really helps to attend the Dutch/English talk where you can ask questions. Overall if you are open for learning about astronomy it can take 2 hours to get through the li'l house.

I think this site deserves its world heritage status and it surely fills a WHS niche. It is not the oldest radio telescope in the world but one of the oldest "bigger ones" as far as I could find out. Personally, I find the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is four times bigger in diameter (and six years younger), more impressive. A cross-national nomination would have made sense in my opinion (well played, UK!).

What I did not like so much was the fact that the site's management has made the WH listed smaller Mark II Telescope completely off limits to the public. I understand that astrophysics research is still carried out by the University of Manchester but allowing visitors a closer look and operating such a site would not exclude each other. Nowadays, to have a closer look on the Lovell Telescope, the main one, the visitor has to pay at least 7.65 GBP entrance fee for an adult, plus 4.00 GBP for a parking ticket. These fees give you access to the Lovell Telescope site (protected by a circular fence), a rather boring exhibition in the so-called "Space Pavilion" (the "Star Pavilion" was closed at the time of my visit in November 2019) and the Jodrell Bank Gardens, which were undergoing refurbishment and were partly closed for that. Overall, I found the site overpriced. And to be honest, I took the better pictures from outside the aforementioned area.

That said, staff at the Jodrell Bank …

The first view I got of the Etna were from Catania. The Via Etnea is aligned in such a way that you can see the volcano. Still, I couldn't count that.

To get my tick, I took a bus to Refugio Sapienza and hiked from there up the mountain. On the bus ride we had already passed several (cold) lava fields, clearly indicating that this is an active volcano. It's interesting to see how close Catania is to an active volcano.

Around the Refugio there were several cold craters waiting to be explored. From the refugio, if you want to continue up, you have the option to take a lift or hike; I hiked. But the initial hike to the upper station is mostly via lava fields that are rather terrible to hike. If it weren't for the price, I would probably recommend taking the lift. Eventually, everything was clouded in fog and snow. For a while I couldn't see much further than 10m and was questioning if it made sense to continue. Luckily, when I reached the final spot, the sky cleared briefly and I took the attached picture.

My hiking app kept proposing trails that lead into the snow fields. I decided against it and would recommend to you to do the same. It's really best to follow the road.

At the end of the road, you get a good view of the volcano and can hike along an active crater rim. From this …

2019 Removed from Danger list

whaaaaaaat?

So basically this place is crumbling to pieces and I see no maintenance done at all. In fact each building I stepped close to I was almost afraid it was going to collapse, but then I'm adventurous so I actually walked across beams and into the back of buildings to find ghosts - oh wait I mean, cool dusty machinery that used to be part of this great site, and I mean "great" as in a large. It's huuuuge. It takes hours to see everything. The best creepy pictures were when the sun started to set. I kind of felt like this was the Nostromo after the Alien took out all the crew members and it drifted in space for a while. It was also that deserted but the season probably causes little guests to come out here in windy weather.

Alright so this place used to be a massive saltpeter work, with workshops, housing, trains, clinic. It was probably awesome to see in its heyday. Strolling down the dusty road at the entrance that reminds you of a wild west town at the other side of the continent. I am imaging it all glorious but the presentation now is more for photoshooting: creepy haunted houses have nothing compared to this place. The guys from these stupid ghost hunting shows should check it out or maybe the Conjuring couple.

I suggest you check this out before it gets closed for …

I made it a goal to visit all of the UNESCO sites in Peru and as many of the tentative sites as I could during a five-week trip in 2014. Of all of the sites, Chankillo was by far the most challenging to visit because of the lack of infrastructure and information online. When I saw that it's being put forward for a nomination in the near future, I figured it was time for a review. In general, the tourist infrastructure around Peru’s UNESCO sites is good compared to many places in the developing world, and so I hope the infrastructure around Chankillo has improved At the time I visited, albeit long before it was an inscribed site, there was no signage and no facilities 

Chankillo is an astronomical complex in western Peru, about half way between Trujillo and Lima. It's claimed to be the oldest astronomical site in the Western hemisphere, at over 2000 years old. There are some ruins of various buildings, but the highlight of the sight is 13 notched towers (with twelve spaces in between) that were used to measure the place where the sun rises and sets on the horizon to determine the approximate date of the year. I highly recommend going at sunset or sunrise so you can see the phenomenon yourself. (Although I went at dawn, it was a cloudy day, so I didn't actually get to experience it.)

The site was not well marked, and so I went by a …

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This park seems quite average at best, no elephants means "oh my god why would anyone want to come here if no elephants", right? Well I have never been to Kruger and don't really plan on it because at Kgalagadi have ticked off soooo many animal species in just one day going straight through the South African part. But wait, there's more! You can go to all three countries in one visit if you go to Botswana first, then out into Namibia (it doesn't have any of the park and correct, the Botswana part is not a UNESCO site). Well, the cultural aspect of the park is totally lost on me because in 7 days inside the park I didn't come across a single San person, or Bushmen as the Botswana guide calls them, and he even showed me 'Gods Must Be Crazy' to entertain me on the trip! So unfortunately this isn't a site I can say it's possible to appreciate the meaning of the inscription. I have a feeling that the San people are really into having visitors anyway.

So I was with guide and 4x4, 2 extra tires that were barely enough as we went through the wet roads to look for animals. The dry days gave us plenty including lazy lions, a cape cobra, but the wet days obviously very little. It was fun, I think it is a great park and I met lovely people - but then again this isn't why …

This WHS is already well reviewed by the first three reviewers and my visit was quite similar to that of Carlo and Nan. I will try to provide complementary information from my visit.

Like Carlo, me and my friend only visited the archeological zone of Yagul, and we were about the only visitors there. We started with La Fortaleza and enjoyed the nice view over the ruins, the surrounding mountains and agricultural fields around. You can see the little tableland-ish mountain where most caves are located. We then visited the ruins themselves. Many sings are within the site with plenty of information and make visiting by yourself quite easy. You can get into some old tombs, which is quite cool. El palacio de los seis patios and el juego de pelota remain the most impressive constructions there.

Getting there was not as straight forward and easy as stated by Nan in his review. Our plan for that day was to visit most sites in the Central Valley from Oaxaca, starting with El Tule and then moving to Yagul, Mitla and maybe Hierve el Agua. When we arrived where we've been told to take the collectivo for El Tule, most streets were closed and policemen where everywhere. We've heard that "pacific" protest happened the day before and that people died. So they were trying to control the traffic as much as possible and avoid other events. With the help of other tourists and policemen, we finally found the only street where …

I recently amended my WHS coverage strategy from purely looking for the hotspots to also going out of my way twice a year for a difficult/expensive WHS (expecting that when I get older I will have more time to travel, but physical challenges will get harder and the money less easily replenished). An odd one among the latter set of WHS is St. George, Bermuda – one of our most isolated WHS (it’s 1,200km from Independence Hall). The island group of Bermuda is not a particularly hard destination to reach, but it is mostly visited from the US or via a cruise. From Europe, there’s only one British Airways flight a day. And it surely ticks the “expensive” box: start from the UK price level, add a logistical surcharge as most things have to be flown in, take the cruise ship price inflation into account, and finally the American-style 15-20% tipping. In the end, this ‘tick’ cost me some 1,500 EUR.

The WHS is located on and around one of the northernmost islands of the Bermuda archipelago: St. George Island. The town is known as “St. George’s” (short for St. George’s Town), but it seems to have lost its “’s” in the official WHS name: The Historic Town of St. George and Related Fortifications, Bermuda. Note also the addition of “Bermuda” at the end – there are so many towns called St. George around the world that the Bermudians probably wanted it to be clear that their St. George …

Grand Bassam is a beach town about 45 minutes away from Abidjan. Its UNESCO status comes from the fact that it was a French colonial capital for a few years in the late 1800s. The capital was moved inland soon after it was established due to an outbreak of yellow fever, leaving behind a cluster of French colonial buildings that still remain today. Most of the site is on a barrier island/isthmus, which is walkable via a bridge from the modern town. The part on the isthmus is still sparsely inhabited, but has the eerie feeling of a ghost town due to the number of abandoned buildings. There was significant flooding in Grand Bassam in October 2019. When I visited in mid-November, the water levels were still high on the inland side, but water had cleared from the streets and there were few signs of damage.

As is a theme with some of the sites in Africa, I wish there was better upkeep and more information online. Although a few key buildings (like the costume museum in the former governor's palace) have been preserved, many of the buildings were deteriorating and some were abandoned. The upside is that there certainly were not a lot of tourists, and there seemed to be no tourist infrastructure when we went. But it was safe and easy to walk around. We wandered around for a few hours, gave a boy a tip to show us around one of the abandoned buildings, found one …

The library is situated at what looks like the only empty road in Bogota. Entrance is free but you have to put your stuff into a locker to enter the inside rooms, with guards posted to ensure it. Odd. The main attraction is the entrance fountain though, which seems flawed as it doesn't flow entirely center, and the parks around the area make for a nice visit. Inside are modern corridors and spiral staircases which aren't too special. I think this should come on the "nice to see but not WHS" list.

Besides, if you don't speak Spanish the library is kinda useless and one feels out of place among the students roaming around. Maybe if I wouldn't have had my camera around my neck I would not stand out so much. Staff was really happy to see a visitor though.

September 2018 - my wife and me had spent a few hours in Verona coming back from Tuscany in May 2016. But this time I was going to a conference and spent 3 nights in Verona. My room was just next to Castelveccio and I needed 5 min to the Arena. I already arrived on sunday. so I had 1/2 day and 2 evenings to stroll around the streets surrounding Piazze del Erbe.

It is a beautiful city with Renaissance Houses and a completely intact city center. Highlites were the Arena, Piazzas, Ponti and views to the other side of the Etsch. You could also visit the whole city within 1 day. But that way I could enjoy food, drinks and the atmosphere of the city.

In November 2019, I made the eight-hour bus ride from Lima to Nasca on a Wednesday, spent 30 minutes flying over the lines on Thursday morning, and made the eight-hour trip by bus back to Lima that afternoon. So, nearly a full day of travel for a brief flight over one of the world's most amazing UNESCO World Heritage Sites (securely nestled in my Top 10). The flight over the Nasca desert makes it abundantly clear that so many recent sights lack not only universal, but even national or regional, value.

I went to 3 plantations in one day, and none take very long so it was on the way to one of the best beaches on the island: Grote Knip. There is the "Knip Manor" just outside the driveway with reasonable opening hours. San Juan is also on the way if you take the detour on the smaller road. Once you get to the outskirts of Willemstad it's clear roads. Both of these are on the tentative list because they are untouched, I visited a third one in town (Chobolobo) and took the tour (every hour) but it is a modern distillery and therefore not going to be part of the nomination.

What each landhuis has in common are that the interior decorations in European, or dare I say Dutch fashion. I don't find these exceptionally unique for the interior but they are unique for Curacao. Interesting was to see the slave books, to show who gave birth while working onsite, with a special room for such women.

I wanted to visit Ascension but it is only open rarely (Thursday for a tour and every first Sunday of the month to the public) which didn't fit my schedule at all. It may be the best one to visit though.

Would not be surprised if these get inscribed, as were the coffee plantations on Cuba but I disagree they are.

August 2017 - actually we planned a trip through the baltic states with our old campervan. Halfway on the way to the ferry, the Engin started striking, eventually we had to be brought back to Berlin and leave the car in front of the car repair, it would take some weeks. Luckily we could rebook the ferry so we started the trip with a small car and tent a day later. After 28 hours on the baltic sea we arrived in Liepaja. We found a nice campground just north and visited the town next morning. That day we wanted to arrive in Jurmala going through Kuldiga. Grobina is just a few km east of Liepaja so we decided to stop here. Nice idea to make a joint Viking sites nomination, but as a Stand alone, it doesnt seem to be very significant. We saw some dragonboats on the swamp, visited the nearby church and resumed our trip to Kuldiga

I had to check twice. There, below the catwalk on which I stood, was a man riding a goose. Close by men fished, oblivious to their goose-riding compatriot. It was a most unexpected thing to see – particularly in the ruins of an abandoned church. I’m used to World Heritage Sites which educate and inspire. It’s always nice to find one that amuses too. And in this instances it also encouraged me to study the other mosaic decorations of St Stephen’s Church in greater detail.

The history of Um er-Rasas is a confused one spread across many centuries. The ruins on site today are the remains of a local religious hub from the Byzantine era. The core site is not large, but includes the remains of a large number of churches. And a mile to the north stands a Stylite tower, a 15m tall pillar where Christian hermits would live apart from the world. It was previously known as Kastron Mefa’a. The ‘Kastron’ identifies it as a military camp (‘castrum’) on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire (so, should the current vogue for inscribing every single scrap of Roman limes as a World Heritage Site continue we may see this site inscribed twice). The ‘Mefa’a’ suggests that it was built atop or in the vicinity of the settlement of Mephaath, mentioned in the Book of Joshua as belonging to the tribe of Reuben. At some point it appears to have been incorporated into Moab for it …