http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/ Welcome to Been there. Your tips on the places you know - that you love, live in or have just visited - are what make this guide. http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34616 llamatravel.com) but you can book independently too. The spacious but simply furnished rooms are in wooden cabins on raised walkways amidst 34 acres of beautiful butterfly-filled gardens where you hear (and sometimes see) the strange bark of howler monkeys on your way to meals. The rates are inclusive of all meals plus boat transfers and tours. Doubles $289 for two days, one night. Just one warning – it’s in the rainforest, so it does, well, rain a lot. We were lucky but the welly store in the hotel was a clue.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34616 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34608 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34608 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34597 All supplied toiletries are natural and you're not supposed to use your own unless they're also 100% natural. Monkeys, coaties, armadillo's, frogs, toads, snakes, scarlet macaws can all be seen from your cabin and the whole place is TV free.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34597 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34591 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34591 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34590 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34590 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34566 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34566 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34563 The Poor Knights Islands and the waters around them are protected by 900m no fishing zone so the size of fish shoals can be quite staggering. Equally the diversity of soft corals growing on the walls and pinnacles, not to mention the animals that inhabit them, make diving there a unique experience. Larger predators, including Manta rays, Hammerhead sharks and even Killer Whales have been spotted there on occasion.
Watching the sun set over the islands with a sky full of returning seabirds finished off a fabulous day's diving.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34563 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34239 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34239 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34139 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/34139 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33852 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33852 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33832 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33832 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33756
This Unesco World Heritage Site is set in spectacular scenery and is professionally run, without any fuss. Please believe the hype and take an elephant safari. It's a humbling experience to ride these stoical and patient relics from prehistory. You'll see plenty of rhinos as you pass through the elephant grass swampland, and if you're very lucky you may see some of the fifteen species of India's most threatened mammals. We saw wild elephants, several dear species and fantastic birds, but you could see fish eagles, hornbills, King Cobras, tigers, bears, leopards, or more.

We stayed in pristine huts with new kids on the block, the Nature Hunt Eco Camp. Superb.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33756 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33755 This Unesco World Heritage Site is set in spectacular scenery and is professionally run, without any fuss. Please believe the hype and take an elephant safari. It's a humbling experience to ride these stoical and patient relics from prehistory. You'll see plenty of rhinos as you pass through the elephant grass swampland, and if you're very lucky you may see some of the fifteen species of India's most threatened mammals. We saw wild elephants, several dear species and fantastic birds, but you could see fish eagles, hornbills, King Cobras, tigers, bears, leopards, or more.
We stayed in pristine huts with new kids on the block, the Nature Hunt Eco Camp. Superb.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33755 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33724 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33724 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33601
Ilha Grande lies just an hour off Brazil’s Costa Verde, that lush strip of Atlantic coastline stretching from north of Rio all the way down to Santos. It its time, this huge unspoiled tropical paradise, with more than 100 miles of jungle trails, has been a pirates’ lair – and as recently as the early 1990s housed a penal colony on one of its countless remote and isolated coves. Nowadays it still takes prisoners but only those who track down its isolation, sample empty beaches, coral reefs and laid-back Brazilian hospitality. It’s difficult to escape.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33601 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33595 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33595 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33512 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33512 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33477 We arrived at the park excited at the prospect of seeing rare goats. In addition to nature’s gifts, it is home to Anamudi (2690m), the highest peak in India south of the Himalayas. We were not allowed to walk up the mountain path, so along with everyone else ascended the foothills aboard the park bus. We jumped off with about 40 domestic tourists at the high entrance point. We were not allowed to deviate from the path. We were told to keep quiet so as not to upset the wildlife. We could not pass go. Fair enough.
Accompanied by families of screaming children scrambling in the undergrowth, shouting groups of men and chattering women in bejewelled thong sandles and saris, we tried to pretend we were at one with nature. A Nilgiri Tahr crossed the carefully designated pathway in front of us ignoring the noise: the 25 species of other mammals, 132 species of birds, 101 species of butterflies and 19 species of amphibians recorded in the Park kept their distance. An abrupt end to the path made it clear we would not be allowed any further, ending our dream of a decent shot at climbing the highest peak in southern India.
A little disappointedly we returned down the hill-path, trying to find a moment of tranquility among the tourist madness. Anyone who has visited India will know this is never an easy task. We gave up at the bus drop-off point, and, in a last ditch effort to find some serenity in the beautiful surroundings, decided to walk back to the bottom. Fat chance. A guard shooed us back up the hill and we joined a heaving bus of tourists back to the park entrance.
Oh well, we saw the goats.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33477 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33476 High up in the valley, under the cool shade of a cardamom plantation, I asked the guide if we could take a stroll into the rain forest. Nitish swiveled his eyes, carefully avoiding mine.
“Madam, there were wild elephants here yesterday.”
In the white heat of the tea estates women sliced fragile new shoots from the tips of shrubs, their razor-sharp shears specially adapted to catch the crop with each snip. Others heaved sacks as big as boulders onto a truck. A man sat in the shade, perfunctorily supervising the women’s work.
Wild elephants? Aren’t they one of the attractions here? I tried an encouraging smile, my excitement fading as he explained the danger.
“Angry elephants will charge and trample everything in their way, madam, including you.”
Stunted and pruned to within an inch of their lives, tea shrubs are packed tightly in manicured rows, like a green candlewick bedspread draped over the rumpled hillsides. Dotted around the slopes, shade-giving acacia trees perforate the swaddled fields. The women moved carefully between the bushes.
I glanced at the forest, now dripping with malevolence under its latticework of branches. Myna birds shrieked and glistening tropical flowers pierced the gloom. A shadow shifted in the darkness and a crazed string-puppet butterfly, the size of a bat, lurched out of the gloom.
Nitish, heartened by my hesitation, warned of foxes in these parts. I shrugged, Fantastic Mr Fox didn’t frighten me.
“If they are hungry they will attack you.”
Unlike the sly tricksters of childhood fairy tales, it seems Indian foxes are wild and ferocious, “like small Alsation dogs.” My naïve Jemima Puddle-Duck persistence faltered.
A muffled shriek from the tea fields stopped us dead in our tracks.
Nitish smiled as he went in for the kill, “also, madam, there are snakes.”
The next day we visited The Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company tea museum, where monochrome images of puny white men holding guns, each with a foot planted on a dead tiger, were hung in the corridors. We watched a short, and surprisingly interesting, film about the history of the area, then walked through the displays. It is a working museum, and you can walk through the whole process from the leaves arriving to buying your souvenir bag of tea at the end.
A sign on the wall told us that schools and crèche facilities are provided for its families by the local tea cooperative. Remembering yesterday’s scream, I asked a manager if labouring in the plantations could be dangerous.
“Certainly, our workers get bitten by the occasional snake, but we carry anti-venom and are able to treat bites immediately.”
He informed us that all visitors to India should learn how to identify poisonous snakes.
“If you are attacked you must tell the doctor which snake bit you, so the correct anti-venom can be administered.”
Now, I reckon I can recognise an angry cobra, but with over 270 species of snake in India I decided I should keep my camera handy. If avoidance tactics don’t work, the only way I’m going to be able to explain which would-be slithery assassin has bitten me is to take its photo. Smile please.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33476 http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33455 Strangely, for me, the jungle itself wasn’t the best bit. I loved the people who lived there. While I helped them to reforest instead of deforest, they taught me how big life can be even with very little.
On my last day I scaled a waterfall, avoiding bullet ants, poisonous spiders and deadly snakes, to visit a natural oil spring. Daniel, our jungle guide, told me that in 50 years time an oil company would be drilling where I stood, exploiting both the oil and the people who live there. Afterward I travelled up the Madre De Dios river to the Shintuya community. There I saw a hand painted Makaw on the side of a Peki-Peki boat. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
In that moment I realised there are all kinds of marks we can make on the world and I knew there and then I wanted to leave a brightly coloured one.]]> http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/tips/33455