Hiking travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Tongatapu is Tonga’s main island, and the location of the former British protectorate’s capital, Nuku’alofa. The second city of Mu’a is also there, along with most of the commercial activity and grandiose official residence of the king. Nuku’alofa is full of Victorian buildings, churches, old graveyards, bustling markets and a classic Pacific waterfronts. Most of the island’s hotels are there, though this is very mush a shabby working town. Photo by: msdstefan
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If you approach Porto Santo by air, the whole island seems a glorious-golden yellow against the glistening cobalt blue sea. The island is known as ‘painting made by god’ and is 46 km to the northeast of Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean. The island tending to remind of North Africa, rather than Europe – a starkly beautiful desert landscape of palm trees and cacti, dotted with pine groves and small wheatfields. Photo by: Tiagoto
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Rugen is the largest of Germany’s islands, nearly 1,000 sq km with 570 km long wiggling coastline of steep cliffs and broad, shallow inlets. It is a picture-book paradise of white cliffs, wide sandy beaches, wood and moorland with romantic castles, old churches and old-fashioned towns of fin de siecle villas. Photo by: mario_65
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Hallstatt is a small picturesque village around 80 km away from Salzburg and is one of the most visited towns in Austria (beside Salzburg and Vienna). Surrounded by steep mountains, situated on the shores of Lake Hallstatt, it is described as one of the most picturesque towns in all of Europe. Since more than 7000 years people are living here. It’s a major archeological landmark and since 1996 is recognized by the UNESCO as world heritage.
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In the Pacific Ocean, in British Columbia, the Queen Charlotte Islands are peaks of a submerged mountain chain. The seven largest islands of the 1,884 islands and islets in the archipelago are Langara, Graham, Moresby, Louise, Lyell, Burnaby and Kunghit. Just 2 km into the sea, the continental shelf falls away dramatically to the immense depths of the ocean, and this is Canada’s most active earthquake area. Photo by: marc_guitard
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Set just off the Ontario coast in Lake Huron, Manitoulin Island is the largest freshwater island in the world (2,800 sq km). A wonderful place of petit villages, rolling pasture, forests and lakes, its edges are fringed with long beaches and white cliffs.
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Islands, islands everywhere – hundred of them in the Mindanao Island group, of which is the largest by far is ‘big daddy’ Mindanao at 97,500 sq km. Mindanao is the centre of Islam in the Philippines, though it is now the island’s minority religion. Even so the struggle to secure an independent Muslim state on the island has been taking place for centuries and continues to these days. Photo by: frankeys creation
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