The French initially thought that Rio's harbour was actually the entrance to a massive river whose mouth they sailed into one fine January day. The Portuguese swiftly dispelled any further French colony-expansionist notions of settling there and moved them on and took possession of the verdant area themselves. Little did they know that this bay would be considered one of the wonders of the modern world by many that visited and Rio de Janerio is now home to six mi...

There must be treasure buried around here! Just look! There are so many sheltered coves and bays with wide open white sand beaches all over the place! You could hide Blackbeard, the Black Pearl and a whole fleet of pirate galleons here and nobody would ever be the wiser! When Spain and Portugal plundered these South American shores in the 15th and 16th centuries, English pirates were waiting offshore ready to take the plunder themselves, or in the name of Queen ...

When you leave the little town of Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu and head back out of the Sacred Valley, you feel as if you have slipped the out of the fierce, piercing, penetrating, undeterminable stare of the emerald cloaked Emperor's Royal Guards. So severe are the slopes and terrain here, it is almost as if the mountains are those Royal Guards guarding a very precious and valuable treasure, which MP is. Darth Vader's Emperor would happily have th...

Villacamba was where the last Inca Emperor and his escorts holed up before they were overtaken by the Spaniards and the Inca Empire came to an end. It was this city that Prof Hiram Bingham was searching for in the Sacred Valley in 1911. But instead of finding what he was looking for, he fell through a bush in a small enclosure and noticed some stones that were separated by straight lines. He immediately knew that he found something man-made and proceeded to clear...

We are in hot water, literally. Beneath the fabled "lost" city of the Incas, Machu Picchu, lies the little village of Aguas Calientes. From the base of one of the towering mountains, that make this part of the world unique, flows a stream of hot soothing water. Hot Water in Spanish! From this little town you cannot see or even behold where Machu Picchu might be. All you know is that it is somewhere above you. High above. It could any of the three or fou...