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The Amazon Rubber Boom (1879-1912) caused the economic and social transformation of Brazil’s Amazonia region. In Europe and the USA, the Industrial Revolution and the production of tires drove the high demand for rubber. Rubber could be tapped from trees in the Amazon rainforest, and mostly European entrepreneurs employed indigenous people and migrants from the Northeast to locate and extract it. The temporary commercial success led to the rise of a wealthy elite in the Amazonian cities. They imported all kinds of luxury items from Europe and provided their cities with street cars and electrical lighting. Theaters were also built as places to show off, and the ones in Manaus and in Belém are considered the best examples of this specific era. They still hold a prominent position in these cities, at the central square where in less-commercial cities usually a cathedral stands.

The Teatro Amazonas in Manaus is the pride of this city, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state. Entry to the theater as a tourist is easy nowadays – it’s open Tuesday til Sunday from 9 to 5, and they have a whole bunch of young guides eager to show people around. There seem to be no fixed hours for the tours, I was assigned an English-speaking guide all to myself when I arrived at 1.45 p.m. 

This theater has been lovingly restored in the 1990s and it is used again for all kinds of performances. They reverted the exterior back to its original pink colour …

As a short excursion von Khiva, I visited the Complex of Sheikh Mukhtar-Vali. It's a bit to the East, less than 30min drive, most of it being spent on getting out of Khiva. The mausoleum is situated on a scenic cemetery. It is dedicated to yet another sheikh, the founder of the local town, Ostana.

The mosque is nice and quiet. While I visited a local couple came to pray in the mausoleum.

OUV

While it sure is a nice visit, there really isn't anything outstanding about the site that warrants an individual inscription. At most, seeing the proximity to Itchan Qala I could see it as an extension.

Note: This is not part of the Silk Roads serial site nominated in 2023 as the corridor moves South from Bukhara to Turkmenistan.

Getting There

Hub is Xiva/Khiva. See Itchan Qala for my comments on how to get there.

From Khiva just get a driver to take you to the mausoleum and back to Khiva. You can haggle with local cabbies as I did. Or you get a driver for the whole day, add some of the Desert Castles (T) and Khazarasp (T).

In November 2022, finally I was able to visit Yemen Mainland. Just Hadramout though, but that's were Shibam is. Will advise on logistics below.

It was around 10AM when we finally headed to, in my opinion, the highlight of the Yemen trip: Shibam Hadramout, the Manhattan of Arabia. Shibam is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982 and I now know why: It’s an amazing unique place.

Shibam is a unique city in Wadi Hadramout as it’s completely built from mud bricks up to eleven stories high. These skyscrapers house around 7000 people and are built very close to each other. The whole city is surrounded by a wall. It’s amazing to see that just mud and wooden beams are used to build these houses. Cars can get in through the main gate, but you’ll only be able to drive up to the mosque and the main square. The alleys must be explored on foot which you can cover all of them in 2 hours.

If you walk the alleys, you’ll notice plenty of goats. They live on the ground floor of many of the buildings. When I arrived, the goats were the only living beings I saw in Shibam, but this changed. I got invited to see the interior of one of the houses. They are colourful and not sandy as the outside! Each floor has a few rooms for the various families living together. The top floor often is for the newlyweds which move down …

Looking at the places on my "to visit" list, Samarkand is the one that made the list first and stayed there the longest. My late aunt sometime in the 80s (or 90s?), had been to Uzbekistan and told me some mythical stories about her visit to Samarkand. I can't remember many details, but I think she was a bit challenged regarding customs and hygiene. In any case, I got Fernweh for the place: Wanting to go to Samarkand has stayed with me ever since.

I had planned to visit in 2020 but then Covid hit. Now, in 2022, I felt was the time to follow up.

Samarkand is a bustling city. It's not frozen in time, but modern Uzbekistan's second largest city. There are plenty of mosques, madrasahs and mausoleums spread across the city, with the Registan as the centre piece. But there is no old town to see.

The main tourist axis runs from the Registan via the Bibi-Khanum Mosque to the Schahi-Sinda complex. These are the highlights of any visit to Samarkand. There is a nice pedestrian zone connecting all sites and this is where most tourists congregate. Unlike Bukhara, Samarkand very much feels like an Uzbek city with locals being in the majority.

Other main components of the site are:

• Ulug Begs Observatory: You can take a cab or just walk from the Schahi-Sinda complex. Personally, I found that too little remains to appreciate the site much. When walking you …

In September of 2022, I had a chance to reacquaint myself with Nice, having explored it first over twenty years earlier. As with any reasonably large city, it has quite a lot to offer to every visitor: museums, churches, palaces, public spaces, elevated viewpoints, and a certainly colorful historic old town. And yet, it is not exceptional in any sense of the world. As others noted before me, Nice's recognition as a WH property is quite a stretch of the concept of the OUV; as you move around town, you will be hard-pressed to put your finger on what exactly made this large seaside town a foremost leader in well-to-do winter tourism. Everybody takes a stroll along the Promenade des Anglais when they are in Nice - that can't be enough of a reason by itself, can it?

At least, if you visit Villa Massena - which sits right on the promenade - it will help fill a few gaps in understanding how Nice has become the winter resort of choice for the rich and famous, which shaped its history in the last couple of centuries. It will not exactly convince you of the OUV, but it does offer a bit of perspective. Most of the other main points of interest - there is a cluster in the Old Town, another in Cimiez, and a few other standout museums dotted around town - have at best a very cursory connection to Nice's place as a pioneering winter tourism destination.

No community member so far has succeeded in ‘completing’ Brazil. This is surprising, as its list does not feature any particularly hard-to-reach sites. The main ‘issue’ is that there are many of them and all spread out across this vast country: it takes a lot of stamina and certainly cannot be done in one trip. The state capital of Maranhão, São Luis, is one often lacking. It lies isolated in the far north, but with the upcoming nomination of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park some 250km away it surely will start to attract more people.

The town shows its WH status proudly. There are already signs with the familiar logo and the subtitle ‘City of Tiles’ upon entering the city border. In the historical city center they have maps indicating the sights and the delimitations of the core zone. The maps show no less than 73 monuments and 29 squares, and that turned out not to be an exaggeration.

I had put together my own City Walk and that brought me to the following places:

The Upper town (on the site of the original French fort) holds all the important public buildings, including the City Hall and the seat of the State government. They are built in a neoclassical style and in good condition. The supersized Christmas decorations almost take over the scene at the moment.

I had started my walk at 8 a.m., the time that all the homeless started waking up. There were lots …

The Central Amazon Conservation Complex is a mostly contiguous area of parks and reserves in the northwest of Brazil, approximately in the center of the Amazon biome and the Amazon basin. You can dip your toe in with a one-day tour to Anavilhanas from the state capital of Manaus, but I opted for a more substantial visit to the sublocation ‘Mamirauá Reserve’. Situated over 500km west of Manaus, I first had to fly to Tefé. This is a bustling river port of 60,000 inhabitants with no road access. I was picked up for another 1.5 hours of travel by boat to the Uakari Lodge, where I stayed for 3 nights inside the Reserve.

The OUV of Mamirauá lies mainly in conserving a varzea forest, seasonally flooded by fertile “whitewater” rivers flowing from the Andes region. On our first day, we got to see which effect the floodings have on the local flora and fauna. We visited an island where the difference in water level can be up to 12 meters. The habitat is only suited to animals that can fly, swim or live in trees. You won’t find any tapirs or capybaras here…. Even the ants and termites build their nests high up in the trees instead of on the ground. Jaguars survive also up in the trees, but they are half the size of their cousins elsewhere.

The seasonal rise in water levels has an impact on the local people too. Mamirauá is inhabited by 14 small  …

February 2022 - we arrived at the Bourgogne early in the morning. Since February is not the most suitable time to visit vinyards we limited the visit to taking fotos of a chateaux and the adjacent vignoble.

 In Beaune we visited the local market which offered a tremendous selection of cheeses, fuetes, vines, juices and even homebrewed beers. 

Unfortunately you can only visit the colorful rooftops of the old Hotel Dieu in combination with the museum. We didn't have the time for that, so just a short visit to the Bourgogne. Probably will come back sometime for grape harvest and to see Dijon as well.

I found the 4 visitable tombs are easily reached by a frequent local bus from Kazanlak to the village of Shipka from where it is a few kilometers walk.

The magnificent mask found near the tomb of Seuthes III can be admired in the Archeological Museum in Sofia.

I found each of the tombs interesting and surprising in their design. I think the extension would make sense.

What a difference a different location makes ... Coming from Nukus by shared cab, I had exited my cab at Beruni to visit Pil Qala. It was a 15min walk from the junction to the ruins and I figured I could always get a ride to Urgench and Khiva (I managed).

Pil Qala was fairly underwhelming. It's pretty small, surrounded by a town and itself heavily reconstructed. Admittedly, the castle being made of clay means it has to be reconstructed regularly. But still: This felt underserving of being on the list. Too little.

I had ticked this one off mentally, when I found the option of doing more castles as stopovers on my way to Bukhara. I didn't want to take the train and drivers are surprisingly cheap, so: Let's go!

The next morning the driver picked me up at my hotel at 8 a.m. We first passed Kyzyl Qala (not included) and then arrived at Toprak Qala. This was already nice. A fortified hill with plenty of clay ruins. I limited my exploration as the trails felt slippery and a tiny bit dangerous.

From Toprak Qala we drove on to Ayaz Qala and this is where the site clicked. Seeing the upper castles and the lower castle on approach was stunning. The site is large and there is so much to see. And you are standing in the desert with the green, arable lands that the castle protects on the horizon to the …

Back in 2008 we gave a pretty thorough visit (including walking the entire "route") to the T List site which was then called “La ville d'Ouidah : quartiers anciens et Route de l'Esclave”. It has since “morphed” into something larger (with a completely new Ref No) via the addition of 4 sites “upcountry” from Ouidah (to make 8 in all) and a new title “Sites marquants de la Route de l’Esclave au Bénin”. We have only visited 1 of these additions but, in this review, as well as covering the original locations, I will share what I have been able to discover about the additions, as part of a wider objective of trying to understand the entire site as it may now be nominated.

The original site, placed on Benin’s T List in 1996, lacked any description or location details but the assumption must be that it covered (at least) the 4, now separately identified, locations in/around Ouidah. I suspect that every visit will commence at the “Fort Portugues” (incorrectly described in the UNESCO description as being in Ketou province). Strictly this isn’t a part of the “slave route” which relates to the c4km "path" along which slaves are supposed to have walked to their embarkation for the Americas having reached Ouidah and been sold for onward transport. But the Fort is clearly a focal point for any history of Slave trading in the Area (See Wiki). Indeed it has, for many years …

I went to poverty point in october of 2022, it is extremely out of the way and not near anything. I recommend it as a day trip if you go to new orleans. If you need gas or food the Farmer one stop right by it is something I recommend, it's not gourmet but it's a friendly little spot with a bit of everything. I spent about 4 hours on an archaeological day (highly recommend) there, about an hour and a half to hike the site, 30 minutes in the museum and the rest at the archaleogical day exhibits. Atlatl throwing was my favorite demonstration. I highly recommend the 15 minutes of film the museum offers before you do the hike, it was extremely informative. The Mound A is the highlight of the hike, pictures do not and as far as I'm concerned do not do it justice. It's something that you have to experience in person and it well surpassed my expectations I had for it. It has made me very excited to visit Cahokia soon. 

February 2022 - after visiting Orange we drove through the marvelous Ardeche Valley. It should be on the Natural WHS list on its own. We stopped at numerous viewpoints to take good shots an memories back home. Of course we stopped at Pont d'Arc as well. The Natural Bridge on one side, the entrance to the cave in the back. A must-stop to see the actual core zone.

With my daughter I decided to enter as the Chauvet II theme park to get a better impression of the WHS. The visit took us several hours though. First the stone age exhibitions and finally the guided tour through the Replica.

Quite something. Not as disneyfied as I thought. It felt really authentic and my daughter was excited as well. Psst! We also took some forbidden pictures. Happy we ticked that one off. Lascaux is probably a similar experience. Now we still need to watch the Werner Herzog documentary.

Puerto Plata is one of the tourist hotspots in the Dominican Republic. We spent our family vacation in one of the resorts, a few minutes’ drive from the city center. The city has its own international airport and a cruise terminal. Further, Carnival’s private cruise terminal, Amber Cove, is only a few minutes outside the center.

Thanks to the massive amount of tourists the region sees each year, the old town is very well maintained. There is a large number of wooden colonial houses, all of them in colourfully painted. There is a nice square next to an unimpressive church. The fortress is San Felipe is small but in good shape. The city is clean compared to Santo Domingo and during off-season also very relaxed.

In general, there are many colonial city already on the list, but given that the Dominican Republic, despite its important place in history, has only one WHS and the number of wooden structures being rather special compared to the other colonial towns I visited, I give it a thumbs up.

From Puerto Plata it is around 1.5h drive to La Isabela, the first settlement in the new world and other TWHS in the region.

Of all the sites in Uzbekistan I liked Itchan Kala in Xiva (Khiva) best. Samarkand is obviously the biggest and objectively best site in Uzbekistan, but it's fairly spread out. It's also modern Uzbekistan's second largest city with traffic and crowds. It didn't evoke much of an old town feeling in me and I would not have wanted to stay for longer.

Bukhara meanwhile has an old town flair and features the nicest Islamic buildings in Uzbekistan. But ... It's overpriced and overcrowded by (mostly French) tour groups.

Xiva/Khiva was noticeably calmer than the other two. I assume this is due to Xiva/Khiva being a way smaller than the other two cities. And several tourists not making the effort of getting there as it's really far off. While Bukhara has a bullet train connection, getting to Khiva requires either a flight or a 15h train ride.

Within the walls Xiva/Khiva has a compact and mostly consistent old town, free of cars and traffic. Els' description of an empty museum city does not really cover it. Streets are filled with street vendors and loads of tourists (but way less than in Bukhara). But she is spot on to this day about the tour groups' nationality: French.

To visit, you have to buy a ticket that covers all but two sites in the city wall. There are several great ones, the highlight to me being the wooden columns and roof of the Juma Mosque. And everywhere there are …

I visited in November 2022. Due to lack of time and a pesky cough I was only able to visit Site 1. Other reviewers have accurately described these curious sites. There is also a large cave at Site 1 where it is speculated the jars were baked, as the cave has chimney holes. It is also likely more recently locals hid in the cave during bombing runs. One curious fact I can add, as stated prior, the jars were likely made for food and alcohol storage and perhaps alcohol distillage. However bone fragments and ashes were carbon dated to as many as 500 to 1000 years later (approx 900 AD). So the jars were repurposed by another generation for burial long after their initial use. I stayed at Pukyo B&B near the airport. Very nice people and excellent food. They also provide tours.   

I visited the Lower German Limes in Germany and the Netherlands. The “Roman Disneyland” Xanten is already covered in other reviews. The museum in Cologne was in September still under reconstruction. Therefore I will focus my review on the Netherlands.

In my quest to find original remains in the Netherland. While most of the dots on our map seem to scatter around Nijmegen, it seems that none of these remains are actually visible. Then I stumbled upon Utrecht. Most (if not all) remains in the Netherlands are underground and in Utrecht you have the chance to go there. "DOM under" provides a guided tour to, you guessed it, an excavation site under the cathedral, or rather the part of the main square, that used to be part of the cathedral before a storm struck it down.

Space down there is limited. So you need to pre-book for a timeslot. We started in the basement of a house. There are a few exhibition items and the briefing took place there. Most important: there are remains of the roman walls visible within the building structure. For the second part, we left the building and entered the excavation site via stairs in the middle of the square. The Roman remains are only part of what I saw underground. There are several layers with part of the earliest church and the destroyed cathedral as well. However, there are Roman remains, which makes the Limes in the Netherlands not completely invisible.

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I went to the Statue of Liberty in November of 2022, the covid restrictions were mostly lifted and the statue of liberty cruises that got us to the island were packed and rocky, people piled on in hoards and they packed the boats full of people. Some people in line and I joked they were giving us the real experience. The statue of liberty was extremely impressive, the size and immensity of it were not understated and it's a beautiful statue. I plan on going to NYC again and will probably do a crown tour when I do so (this requires months of advance in registering) otherwise I don't plan on returning. I felt that I got everything out of the experience I could the first time. 

I went to the Everglades the weekend before thanksgiving of 2019, the climate was perfect for the area. My first stop was the Flamingo campground area, I only spent a day in total and was not initially impressed with the flamingo area. If you are camping there or staying overnight I think it would be a good place to do so. I biked Shark valley tram road later that day which was an amazing experience. I probably saw upwards of a hundred alligators over 6 feet in length and a dozen baby alligators at the end of the trail. The observation tower allowed for a beautiful view. This is one of the world heritage sites I definitely plan on visiting again I would love to do an airboat tour or a kayaking trip. 

I visited this tWHS in spring 2022 en route to Butrint from Durres. It is indeed a very big area and if you walk to all the different components of this tWHS a visit can easily take half a day. If you're pressed for time most of the highlights are close to the entrance and a quick visit to the neat museum can suffice.

Like Stanislaw I was mostly surprised by the national importance attached to this site known also as Ilyria and to the Ilyrians in general throughout Albania. It has the same scale as some of the best ancient Greek sites in Greece and Turkey and likewise is full of endangered Hermann’s tortoises and snakes so stay away from overgrown areas. Other than that if you enjoy ruins, this is definitely one of the best places Albania has to offer together with Butrint and also a great place to hike from one bunker to the next. The highlights not to be missed in my opinion are the museum itself (St. Mary's Church) where more excavations are currently taking place just in front of it, the six columned monument to Agonothetes built in the 2nd century BC, the odeon and the nymphaeum.

Unfortunately, some of the problems mentioned by Solivagant are still true and the site still doesn't have sufficient protection. During the COVID-19 lockdown in June 2020, part of the site was vandalized. Two columns were knocked down, resulting in the almost complete collapse of the …