An Amazon river lodge
A “vast, pristine” river archipelago in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil’s Anavilhanas National Park is a place of “otherworldly” beauty, said Idra Novey in Travel + Leisure.
It lies on the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon which, owing to its acidic water, is mercifully free of mosquitoes, so visitors needn’t take malaria pills. On a recent trip, my family and I stayed at the luxurious Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, where I swam in the river at sunset every day, spotting spider monkeys in the overhanging branches and families of pink river dolphins playing.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
We visited a riverside village, and hiked for an hour to a cave complex where we saw a towering angelim pedra tree (the tallest of all tropical species) with exposed roots “as elaborate as a Gilded Age chandelier”. Yet more wondrous were our boat trips through the flooded forest, where the immense old trees were reflected in the river’s black surface as in a “shadowy chamber of mirrors”.
Bears and bison amid Romania’s high peaks
The Southern Carpathian Mountains of Romania are home to Europe’s largest unbroken area of forest, pierced by “epic” limestone ridges and roamed by wolves and bears.
Logging companies have chipped away at it since the fall of communism, said Toby Skinner in the Financial Times, but in recent years, philanthropists including the Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss have bought up large tracts to protect them under the auspices of the Foundation Conservation Carpathia. The aim is to create a 200,000-hectare national park, “the Yellowstone of Europe”, and rewilding work is already under way.
On a week-long trip with the European Nature Trust, I stayed in lodgings ranging from the aristocratic Zabola Estate to a “cosy” log cabin in the mountains. On guided hikes, I ventured deep into virgin forest where the beech and fir trees were up to 500 years old, and watched a family of bears at close quarters from a hide.
Most “magical”, however, was a chance sighting in a high mountain meadow of a herd of European bison, a species that was reintroduced here in 2020.
The trip costs from £3,500pp; the European Nature Trust.
Walking in the wilds of northern Japan
The northernmost quarter of Japan’s main island, Tohoku was the region worst hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Eight years later, a 600-mile hiking path was opened along its east coast, said Adam H. Graham in Condé Nast Traveller, as part of efforts to draw visitors back.
Passing memorials to the roughly 20,000 people who died, the Michinoku Coastal Trail wends through woodland groves, along “immaculate” beaches and “blustery” sea cliffs.
On a trip last year, I hiked four of its most spectacular sections and also ventured further inland, to walk for a day along the Oirase Gorge. Set in the Towada-Hachimantai National Park, this path follows a river through an ancient beech forest that owes its “rich” biodiversity partly to the region’s volcanic soil.
There are “abundant” waterfalls, and a chance of spotting bears, tree frogs and tanuki (raccoon dogs). I saw trees I’d never heard of, from white-bark magnolias to Manchurian elms, and was glad I was there in November, when the forest was “ablaze” with autumn colour.
Inside Japan has an 11-night trip from £4,456, including flights.
-
5 cinematic cartoons about Bezos betting big on 'Melania'Cartoons Artists take on a girlboss, a fetching newspaper, and more
-
The fall of the generals: China’s military purgeIn the Spotlight Xi Jinping’s extraordinary removal of senior general proves that no-one is safe from anti-corruption drive that has investigated millions
-
Why the Gorton and Denton by-election is a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’Talking Point Reform and the Greens have the Labour seat in their sights, but the constituency’s complex demographics make messaging tricky
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
-
Is This Thing On? – Bradley Cooper’s ‘likeable and spirited’ romcomThe Week Recommends ‘Refreshingly informal’ film based on the life of British comedian John Bishop
-
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars – history at its most ‘human’The Week Recommends Alwyn Turner’s ‘witty and wide-ranging’ account of the interwar years
