Diana Jarvis

St Helena is 1800 miles from Angola, 1200 miles from Brazil and, at one-third the size of the Isle of Wight, it’s pretty tiny. But when you’re on foot on one of the many hiking trails, the landscapes feel vast, epic and far-reaching.

It’s a volcanic island, cleft from the same fragments of land as the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Bijagos Islands and all the other tiny landmasses in the mid and near Atlantic. There are endemic species aplenty. I was surprised to discover that 94% of British wildlife is found on British Overseas Territories like St Helena, which has nearly a third of them.

Jamestown is the main town on St Helena. It’s got distinct Cornish fishing village vibes, but with tropical heat and humidity.

It’s a tiny sliver of a town, crammed in between two huge volcanic rocks and opening out onto the sea.

The coastal resort town of Vlorë is surrounded by mountains and, as the sun is lowering in the sky, turning everything into golden, we set off on foot up a stony mountain path. As dusk overtakes the day, multiple aromas emanate from the rich diversity of plants flanking the path. And we go up, up through an oak glade and a plain of spiny thickets, pausing occasionally to admire the view across the sea.

Eventually we reach the homestead of Sofo and Dhurata. It’s a lot more developed than the ‘shepherd’s hut’ we’d been promised.

We arrive just in time to watch Sofo put his free-ranging turkeys to bed for the night and lock his equally free-to-roam goats up into a pen, safe from the jaws of resident wolves. Dhurata brings us freshly made traditional sweet pancake-like treats that she’s made to celebrate the birth of a cousin’s baby.

Sofo entertains us on his selection of wooden flutes. He tells us, through translation from our guide Elton, that wooden flutes were once whittled and played while shepherds tended their flocks out on the mountains all day. But the art is dying out as everyone now entertains themselves on instagram and other distracting phone apps instead.

Up here in the mountains, it feels remote and quiet, yet Sofo and Dhurata have a large restaurant where they cater for visitors from all over the world. They’ve also built three thatched wooden huts that, alas we are not staying in, but would make a perfect base for a night of breathing in fresh mountain air.

Karavasta Lagoon is a RAMSAR-protected wetland area on the Albanian coast and part of the Divjaka-Karavasta National Park.

It’s famous for the Dalmatian pelicans who call it home, but there’s also plenty of other bird species to spot, too, including greater flamingos and migrating waders.

You can take a boat through the reed-flanked wetlands, walk among the pinewood paths or cycle along the thin strip of land separating the lagoon from the sea.

It was by pure chance that we met Edmond and Hirka.

Elton, our guide, had taken us on a walking tour of Old Tirana with the main purpose of showing us relics from the communist era. We loitered around an unassuming green door with an engraved stone plaque and Elton explained that it commemorated the building’s former purpose as the printing press for propaganda poster and papers.

As we lingered, we were joined by the building’s current resident, Edmond, whose uncle and other antecedents had been the printers, propagandists and conspirators. He invited us in to the yard and his mother, Hirka, joined us. She (in some ways) fondly remembers the communist days; she waited tables in a famous cocktail bar and knew all the movers and shakers of the time. She remembers the propaganda printing and tells us stories of near captures and the fate of various family members.

This is our first experience of Albanian warmth and welcoming hospitality. It’s certainly not our last.

There aren’t many communist era buildings left in Old Tirana anymore. Each plot of land is highly sought after by developers and many owners of these old, crumbling buildings are, understandably, only too willing to exchange cash for decaying past.

After a long cycle ride among the dunes, woodlands and waterside paths of the Divjaka–Karavasta National Park, we arrive hot, sweaty and hungry at the Rrasa family homestead.

The intricately ornate yard is decked with stone carvings and sculptures adorning every available wall and they’ve all been lovingly created by Adriatik Rrasa, stone mason, wood carver, metalworker and all-round enthusiastic master craftsman ad his son Euro.

With a canopy of vine leaves overhead gently flickering the midday sun and shade across the stone surfaces, it was a photographers’ nightmare to capture. Yet it was an utterly joyous place to sit, look…and learn.

Eva Rrasa is an expert in Tasseomancy – the art of fortune telling by interpreting the patterns in coffee grounds – and she uses thick Turkish coffee to divine innate truths. She starts by swilling a drop of two of water around the cup I’ve just drunk from and sets it upside down for ten minutes. With her daughter Arnisa translating, she reveals insights that really do make more than a hint of sense.

Set between the shifting sands of a nature-rich tidal lagoon and a honey-sand beach with huge Atlantic waves crashing over rocky outcrops, Oualidia in Morocco is a world away from the labyrinthine medinas and frenetic markets of Marrakesh or Fez. In fact you’re unlikely to even see a carpet seller or ceramics trader in this resort town; it’s much more a favourite weekend destination for rich Marakshis than a Westerner/backpacker hang out.

The lagoon is part of the RAMSAR protected Sidi Moussa-Oualidia wetland complex and an important ecosystem for both biodiversity and agriculture. It’s a prime stop-off for migratory birds and you can take a boat and guide out into the lagoon to see the rich birdlife. Look out for global red-listed endangered species like the marbled teal and purple swamphen along with easier-to-spot species like the greater flamingoes and Eurasian spoonbills.

The town has become famous for the cultivation of Japanese oysters. Try them for a few dirhams each in one of the harbour shacks, or head to Ostrea II a little walk up the coast and have them with champagne.

Fishing is one of the main pastimes in Oualidia and you’ll spot precariously perched fishermen on rocky outcrops already surrounded by the crashing waves with their long rods dipping out into the water.

The calm waters of the lagoon are the perfect place to take a dip or learn to surf (although you might be sharing the sea with a hundred or so inquisitive seagulls). The King of Morocco reportedly sends his children here for surfing lessons and his family even used to have a home here.

UNESCO-designated João Vieira Marine Park Biosphere Reserve is located in the Bijagos islands of Guinea-Bissau. It comprises the Ilha de Orango National Park – a mix of savannah and mangroves and home to hippos and crocodiles, among many other species – and Poilão marine reserve – an internationally important nesting site for endangered green and hawksbill turtles.

Toubab Diaolao is a fishing village on the Atlantic coast of Senegal. Over thirty years ago Haitian-born Gérard Chenet picked this quiet spot to build a space for a theatre and musicians’ community known as Sobo Badé. In 2017, Senegal’s brand-new international airport was opened a mere 20-minute drive from here, so time will tell how long this village will remain quiet and undiscovered.

The Kolukkimalai Tea Estate is the world’s highest organic tea plantation and it’s situated on the Kerala/Tamil Nadu borders, high among India’s Western Ghats. Visitors can stay in an eco-chic mountain hut, hike among the surrounding hills, tour the tea factory, try their hand at tea picking and, most importantly of all, sample the many varieties of tea grown on the estate.

Kaziranga National Park in Assam, northern India is a World Heritage site and home to two-thirds of the world’s remaining one-horned rhinos. The species is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List but, thankfully, conservation efforts in the park have been successful and the population is gradually increasing. Other creatures you might spot on safari include wild elephants, water buffalo, swamp deer and, if you’re really lucky, tigers.

Sitting atop a crumbling old WWII-era French pillbox on Popenguine’s Cap de Naze, an elevated mass of volcanic rock, crashing wild atlantic waves scour the endless white-sand beaches below and the urban expanse of Dakar shimmers, barely perceptible, in the far distance. A lone osprey gracefully soars overhead and a pair of colourful Abyssinan rollers dart in and out of a stately baobab tree while all around the acacia and tamarisk trees buzz and twitter with insect and bird life. 

Go back thirty years, however, and it was a very different picture: the wood in the forest had been plundered for both building materials and firewood, and the land was so degraded that it no longer acted as a viable defence from the wild ocean. That is until a coalition of local women’s groups from the surrounding villages got together with the Department of Forestry and, along with funding from a French NGO, took on the conservation of the land, naming it Parque Naturelle de Popenguine.

Visiting the park requires a permit and a guide which are easily sought from the Campement next door. Guides are university-educated conservationists and speak a variety of languages including English and French. You can also stay the night in the simple thatched huts of the the Campement and chat with some of the local women involved in the project as they prepare your breakfast. The best time to hike in the park is dawn when the air is moist and cool, and the sun hasn’t yet begun to appear from behind the hills. You might even spot a porcupine or hyena heading home from their nocturnal wanderings.

The Vaco Bruto is a rite of passage performed by the men of the village on the Guinea-Bissau island of Uno in the Bijagos islands. The men don carefully carved masks and act out a bull fight to show their strength and power.

You can read about more from my trip to Guinea Bissau in this piece I wrote for Rough Guides.

Grey seals breed all around the UK’s coastline and I was lucky enough to see them one cold October day in 2021.

Heath fritillary butterflies are one of the UK’s rarest butterfly species, found only in a handful of places in south east England.

Thanks to conservation efforts of the Kent Wildlife Trust, you can see them in abundance (if you know where to look!) in Blean Woods near Canterbury in Kent.

They emerge in June and can be seen throughout July in open areas of the woodland and tend to prefer areas where trees have recently been cut or coppiced. Their favourite plants to feast on are common cow wheat and ribwort plantain. I think they quite like blackberry flowers, too, as that’s what I found them on during my visits.

West Blean and Thornden Woods is managed by Kent Wildlife Trust and it’s also the site of an exciting rewilding project. Bison have been released into a large fenced area of the woodland, along with Konik ponies, Iron Age pigs and wild cattle.

Just a short boat ride from Senegal’s capital, Dakar, Goree Island today is a colourful, car-free island that provides a laid-back respite from the more frenetic capital.

But this wasn’t always the case. The Island played a horrific part in the slave trade and was often the last place in Africa enslaved people saw before boarding ships across the Atlantic.

You can visit the House of Slaves Museum and witness the tiny prison cells in which hundreds of people were kept, as well as the shackles and manacles used to restrain them.

It’s a sobering experience and a very visceral way of comprehending the horrors of the past.

El Jadida, on the Moroccan coast, was once a Portuguese outpost. You can explore solid walled city from the ramparts overlooking the Atlantic ocean or explore the narrow, labyrinthine streets within.

Outside the walls, there’s a long sandy beach to the south and a promontory to the north that doubles as a sea defence and a good spot for socialising in the late afternoon light.

Having worked in travel publishing for many many years, there are many many places on my ‘to visit’ list. Merzouga has been on that list since I worked on the Rough Guides 25s mini series in 2005.

Perhaps back in 2005, Merzouga, deep in the Sahara desert, might have felt remote and faraway. It’s a bit of a tourist circus these days; camel rides, drumming with the ‘locals’, campfires, sleeping in a tent to the sounds of drunk tourists in the next camp over making more of night of it than you.

It wasn’t quite the peace and solitude I’d imagined, but it was still awe inspiring. I gave up on the tent, owing to someone snoring next to me, and slept out under the stars instead.

You can read more about my adventures in Morocco in this piece I wrote for Adventure.com.

Chefchaouen in the Rif Mountains of northern Morocco is a relative newcomer to Moroccan itineraries but it’s now a firm fixture on many a country tour.

It’s also a photographers’ favourite owing to the delectable blue hues of many of the buildings.

I wrote about its insta-fame and the pitfalls of it for Eye for the Light.