Now that everyone is free to travel to any part of the world, without having to worry about quarantine restrictions, it is always nice to know what other attractions there are that you may not have visited yet. These interesting destinations can easily be the motivation to those who want to feed their wanderlust and enjoy life to the fullest.
Personally, I make it a point to read about tourist attractions in other countries so that I can visit them and mark them with a star on the world map I have on my wall at home. Since I started my tourism career more than half a century ago, I’ve had this giant-sized world map, hung on my wall, where I mark all the places I have been to.
Since my career has spanned all sectors of the tourism industry – international airlines, international chain hotels, international travel agencies, destination marketing, etc., I have crisscrossed the globe many times and my map is now cluttered with many stars. Adding to the stars were my family’s many reunions which brought us to interesting foreign destinations, the latest of which was in Havana, Cuba.
Featured in this month’s edition of Elephant Tales, the online magazine of Red Elephant Reps, is a new and interesting Italian destination worth visiting. A four-hour drive south of Rome is Basilicata, a small silent village rich in history and is best known for the Lucanica di Picerno pork sausage which is made from an ancient recipe crafted before the Roman Empire.
Basilicata’s charm is in its historic hilltop villages which offer amazing views of the surrounding landscapes. One of them is Matera, one of Italy’s oldest villages and among the oldest in the world. The UNESCO World Heritage list has included its stone cave dwellings or sassi, which date as far back as 7000 BC.
Nearby is Castelmezzano, a village that sits quaintly in a valley between two mountains. So, for the adventurous, it offers one of the longest ziplines in the world – the Volo dell’Angelo (Flight of the Angel) takes fun lovers from Castelmezzano to the beautiful town of Pietrapertosa.
But the crowd-drawer in Basilicata is Craco, a ghost village perched on a rocky hill. Abandoned since 1963, as residents were affected by many landslides, it used to be a thriving hilltop village. Now, its desolate towers, crumbling balconies, and moss-covered church give visitors an eerie glimpse of the village’s interesting past. Its claim to fame is its having been used as the backdrop for many Hollywood films, the biggest of which was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
Another attraction worth visiting is on the other side of the world and is one of the Seven Wonders of Nature. Located at the boundary of Brazil and Argentina is Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfall system in the world, composed of a total of 275 drops, the longest of which is 82 meters high.
The Garganta del Diablo or Devils’ Throat, the biggest among the many drops of the waterfall system, is right at the center. It is U-shaped and receives approximately half of the river’s flow.
Iguazu Falls is four times wider and two times higher than Niagara Falls. Most of the falls is on the Argentine side but the river flows through Brazil. What makes Iguazu Falls so spectacular are the boardwalks and catwalks that allow visitors to get very close to the falls.
Another UNESCO World Heritage site is Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock, an imposing natural monolith in the Central Australian Desert. It is a huge red rock, 348 meters high, made of sandstone, and is about half a billion years old. The aborigines in the area revere it as a sacred mountain.
There are stories that it is a favorite landing site of UFOs because residents in the area claim to have seen many times bright lights from the sky moving swiftly toward the top of the mountain. The bright lights stay there for some minutes then disappear quickly into the evening sky just as fast as it came.
Uluru is five hours southwest of Alice Springs in central Australia. Scaling the mountain is no longer permitted which may be bad news to the adventurous but those who admire nature’s beauty will marvel at the sight of this majestic monolith.
These are just a few of the many destinations you can add to your bucket list. Whatever your preferences are, our world has them. Let’s live life to the fullest…let’s travel and enjoy God’s gift to us – nature’s bounty.
For feedback, I’m at bobzozobrado@gmail.com
