Costa Rica's nine-course meal in the sky
It takes a long, winding road and a leap of the imagination to reach the San Lucas Treetop Dining Experience, a fine dining restaurant perched high above the above the misty cloud forest floor in Monteverde; one of Costa Rica's most biodiverse regions.
Hidden behind a tall, discrete gate and suspended on elevated platforms, San Lucas feels like a deep forest secret. But as soon as diners cross the tree-shrouded threshold, the mystery is slowly unveiled – signalled first by a large map displaying the country's seven provinces and some of its islands, bearing the message: A tribute to Costa Rica.
A narrow wooden footbridge, raised some 10m (33ft) off the ground, leads to eight private glass dining cabins overlooking the canopy. Each is enclosed by floor-to-ceiling windows, offering views of rolling clouds, distant mountains and at the Gulf of Nicoya, from where the restaurant sources much of its seafood
San Lucas's sky-scraping design draws inspiration from the hanging bridges and zip lines that made Monteverde a famed ecotourism hub.
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Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
Why this little British island is a haven for heritage railway lovers
'It's going to be a busy day', says the ticket inspector, as I walked past nostalgic holiday posters advertising sail and rail holidays to the Isle of Man and onto Douglas Station's platform. 'The first three carriages are full. Try and hop on the back.' I found a spare seat among cruise ship excursionists as a blast of steam sweeped through the antiquated train. It's the Isle of Man Railway's 9.50 am departure from Douglas, the Manx capital, heading 15.5 miles south to Port Erin (£17 return, included with Go Explore cards). Many of the carriages are 150 years old, yet on this cool spring weekend, they seemed as popular as they ever were in their Victorian heyday. Around 38 miles of historic railway lines – including the Isle of Man Railway and the Manx Electric Railway – criss-cross the island, the first having opened in 1873. Harking back to the golden age of Victorian train travel, I spent the next few days exploring this curious Crown Dependency in the most nostalgic way possible: aboard its old-fashioned steam- and electric-powered narrow-gauge railways. I sat back and enjoyed the view as Douglas' suburbs gave way to sweeping vistas of the Irish Sea. The Isle of Man Railway, the longest narrow-gauge line in the British Isles, still operates its original engines and carriages. For rail enthusiasts, it is a bucket-list journey, and the platform at Castletown – where I alighted for a quick stop on the way to Port Erin – was crowded with enthusiastic photographers and trainspotters as we pull in through a cloud of white smoke. 'This is what the Isle of Man is all about. Its railways', I am told by Grant Taylor, Castletown's stationmaster and a director of the Isle of Man Steam Railway Supporters' Association. 'Second perhaps only to the TT [annual motorcycling event], the railways are the most important thing in the Isle of Man's history. If the rails went, the island would die. How else are you going to get the tourists around?' Grant, whom I'd found in the ticket office surrounded by train memorabilia (including engine driver hats and scale models of famous engines), has worked the railways for decades. They're not just a tourist attraction, he says. Locals regularly use the steam trains to shop at Tesco in Douglas, or even as a delightful airport transfer: ask the conductor to stop at Ronaldsway Halt near Castletown, hop over a stile, and it's just a 10-minute walk to departures. 'I can't see this line ever closing', says Grant, who believes that despite many lines shutting down in the mid-20th century, the survivors are as popular as they were when mass tourism first arrived in the Victorian era. 'There's a dedicated core of visitors returning year after year. Businesses, cafés and museums in Castletown and Port Erin all rely on railway traffic. And staff come back year-on-year to work on the railways because they love it. There's a lovely community feeling.' I strolled into Castletown, where a weathered castle built by a Norse lord overlooks a stone harbour. Once the Manx capital, it houses The Old House of Keys – home to the Manx parliament with a history stretching back over a thousand years to the Vikings – before I caught the next service to Port Erin. At the end of the line, the Port Erin Railway Museum (admission £2, included with the Go Explore Heritage Card) displays restored engines and carriages in historic railway sheds. Opposite, the Whistlestop Cafe serves Manx broth and jacket potatoes inside the station. Down by the blustery harbour, a few hardy swimmers brave the cold waters of the Irish Sea. The next day, I walked to the northern end of Douglas' seafront promenade and caught the Manx Electric Railway's 11.40 am departure from Derby Castle Station. The Isle of Man's rail network has won countless longevity awards, and I found myself in Car No 1, dating back to 1893 and recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest operational tram car in the world. The Manx Electric Railway stretches 17 miles north from Douglas to Ramsey (£17 return, included with Go Explore cards). I paused halfway at Laxey, where the Great Laxey Wheel – the world's oldest working water wheel – towers over a green glen (admission £14, included with the Go Explore Heritage Card). In Laxey, I transferred to the Snaefell Mountain Railway, the world's only electric mountain railway, a remarkable piece of Victorian engineering opened in 1895 (£16 return, included with Go Explore cards). 'These are 130-year-old tram cars', the conductor says on the winding five-mile journey to Snaefell, the Isle of Man's highest peak. 'They're original cars. And some of the drivers are originals too', he adds with a chuckle. Snaefell (Norse for 'Snowy Mountain') rises to 2034ft. On a clear day, you can see the 'Seven Kingdoms': the Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Manannan, the Manx god of the sea. I had every intention of continuing all the way to Ramsey, but I was distracted when I heard the Groudle Glen Railway (£5 return, included with Go Explore cards) was running that afternoon. Though less than a mile long, this volunteer-run steam line is another must-ride for rail enthusiasts. The Manx Electric Railway whisked me back south to Groudle Glen (a request stop), where a seven-minute walk through a temperate rainforest–clad glen led me to Lhen Coan Station. 'This was the Alton Towers of its day,' says Bill Cubbon, an engine driver and chairman of the Steam Railway Supporters' Association. He explains how, in 1896, an enterprising local opened a zoo and built a narrow-gauge railway to transport tourists there. 'There were polar bears, sealions and fortune tellers in the glen,' Bill added. 'These are the sorts of crazy things the Victorians thought nothing of financing!' Now in his 70s, Bill has spent a lifetime restoring the Isle of Man's railways. The Groudle Glen Railway closed in 1962, but in the 1980s, a team of volunteer rail enthusiasts scoured the British Isles for narrow-gauge tracks, engines, and carriages before rebuilding the line. The zoo is long gone, but steam engines with names like Sea Lion, Polar Bear, and Otter preserve this quirky heritage. With Bill at the helm of Brown Bear, I rode the Groudle Glen Railway 'Uphill to the Sea', discovering the Sea Lion Rocks Cafe serving 'Steam Teas' with views of the cliffs where seal lions and polar bears once roamed. 'It's a special line', says Bill, of the nostalgic popularity of the Groudle Glen Railway. 'We must get thousands of passengers a year. Everyone asks when we're getting the polar bears and sea lions back. I say never. We have enough to look after on the railway!' Essentials EasyJet and Loganair fly to the Isle of Man from various UK airports. The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company operates year-round ferry services to Douglas from Liverpool and Heysham, and seasonal summer services from Belfast and Dublin. The Go Explore Heritage Card includes unlimited transport on the Isle of Man's railways and buses, and entry to Manx National Heritage Sites. A five-day adult pass costs £79. The Go Explore Card includes unlimited transport on railways and buses only, and is available for one-day (£21), three-days (£42), five-days (£49) and seven-days (£59). Groudle Glen Railway only runs on Wednesday evenings (7-9pm) and Sundays (11am-4.30pm). Adult tickets are priced at £5 return (or included with Go Explore and Go Explore Heritage cards). Entry to Manx National Heritage sites is also included in some National Trust and English Heritage memberships. Where to stay Comis Hotel & Golf Resort, a ten-minute drive from Douglas, offers doubles from £99, including breakfast. Claremont Hotel on Douglas' promenade offers doubles from £129, including breakfast. Sefton Hotel in Douglas offers doubles from £81, room only.
Times
a day ago
- Times
My epic cross-Africa train ride to the Victoria Falls
So there's me and all these rich folks sitting in fancy dining cars — drinking coffee and smoking big cigars — and yet the landscapes we're crossing are among the poorest on the planet. Today we're lunching on springbok loin with wilted spinach and plum jus, accompanied by a nagging awareness of social imbalance. 'Everybody waves,' my American dining companion notes. 'These people, who have so little, seem so joyful.' That starts a debate on the false relationship between wealth and happiness, and it passes the time until the liqueurs arrive. We're in Botswana now, after a mildly dramatic border crossing in which a young official, whose demand for a 'special payment' had been refused, forced all 53 guests to carry their luggage to a disinfection station and wash their shoes before being allowed into the country. 'Like refugees,' a prickly British guest mutters, but Botswana, it seems, is a thorny nation. The route north from Gaborone, across the Tropic of Capricorn, is basically a 490-mile journey through a hedge. The thickets of mopane and wait-a-while thorn are so dense that they scratch the train as it passes, and the only hints of human habitation are the dusty footpaths crossing the line. • Read part one of Chris Haslam's Rovos rail trip here The absence of wildlife surprises many guests, but that's a recent development. When David Livingstone came this way in 1849, he saw lions, buffaloes, hyenas, rhinoceroses and herds of elephants so great that the Batswana people fenced cattle pens with tusks. In his Victorian bestseller Missionary Travels he also mentions how this was 'a region of terror' due to 'the numbers of serpents which infested it'. The snakes are still there, but there's room no more for other beasts. Africa's human population has grown from about 140 million in 1925 to 1.4 billion in 2025 — and all those people need room to live. Consequently habitat has shrunk and the vast majority of Africa's so-called wildlife is restricted to about 7,800 protected areas (PAs), covering roughly 17 per cent of Africa's land surface. Many of these are badly managed, underfunded and of little conservation value; a recent report by the African Parks Network identified just 162 playing an 'outsized role' in biodiversity protection. But for better or for worse, the African species tourists expect to see roaming wild are now confined to PAs, like zoo animals. • More luxury train journeys The line we're following north is a rusting legacy of the scramble for Africa. A single track takes the shortest route across Botswana to Zimbabwe — the African equivalent to the Somerset section of the M5, taking travellers across a place where no one wants to stop to destinations where they do. The 400-mile line between Francistown and Plumtree opened in November 1897. It was built in just 400 days, and you can tell. The train rocks and rolls like a trawler in an Atlantic storm, and from up in the cab you can see why. The railway stretches to the horizon like a straight line drawn by a drunk, with more kinks than a Conservative Party conference. 'I'm authorised to do 30km/h [18mph] but I don't go much above 25km/h,' says the driver Wikus Meingies. 'Otherwise the guests spill their wine.' Or fall out of bed. At times the dream of being rocked to sleep is only true if you imagine it's Motörhead doing the rocking. Hence the need for the 3,848 bottles of wine on board. Plumtree is the Zimbabwean border, so we stop to get our passports stamped. Kids in smart green uniforms wave as they walk to school, then wave again as they head home for lunch. Zimbabwean immigration is taking its own sweet time, but no one's bothered. As I sit writing in the observation car, I can see guests jogging, shopping, trainspotting and chewing the fat with Plumtree's residents. Most visitors to Africa come on safari. They fly into the bush and stay in luxury lodges where the only Africans they meet are driving the vehicles, mixing the drinks or cleaning the rooms. Here, guests see the continent at its poorest, ugliest, friendliest and most beautiful, and all at 15mph. This is slow travel at its finest. • Europe's best rail journeys The next day we roll into Victoria Falls. We've seen the Mosi-oa-Tunya — or 'the smoke that thunders' — from ten miles southeast, rising in great rolling plumes towards the tourist helicopters that buzz like wasps above the cataract. The winter rains have left the Zambezi high, and the falls are as magnificently terrifying as I've ever seen them. 'Imagine a river a mile broad, suddenly tumbling over a precipice 400 feet deep,' the British hunter Frederick Selous wrote in 1874, 'and perhaps from these naked facts [one] may picture how grand a sight must be the Victoria Falls.' As tourists watch from the 16 viewpoints on the cliffs opposite in the Victoria Falls National Park (No 5 is the best), they're chilled as much by a sense of mortality as the spray. We're staying the night at the Victoria Falls Hotel, which has offered Edwardian elegance, pith-helmeted porters and unbeatable views of the Victoria Falls Bridge since 1904. • Explore our guide to Africa Stanley's Bar in the hotel is one of the world's greats, and the following day, when I find myself in a climbing harness and a safety line on a catwalk beneath that bridge, the roar, the spray, the rainbows and the miracle of engineering to which I cling prove a swift and effective hangover cure. Cecil Rhodes's unfulfilled dream of a railway running from Cairo to the Cape was detailed enough that he specified the Zambezi bridge should be close enough to the Falls that carriages would be soaked by the spray as they crossed. The design job fell to the Leeds-born George Hobson. His measurements — made with chains, tapes and theodolites — and his hand-drawn plans were sent to the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company in Darlington, where the components were fabricated, shipped to Beira in Mozambique and then brought by rail to Victoria Falls like a full-scale Meccano set. It was perhaps not surprising, then, that when the builders tried to join the north and south sections, they overlapped by 1¼ inches. But as the construction crew — described by one diarist as 'the most extraordinary collection of cosmopolitan toughs I have encountered anywhere' — drowned their disappointment in the bar at the Vic Falls Hotel, the steel cooled and contracted, and the next morning the bolt holes aligned. As I emerge from the dark side, the train is waiting on the bridge, dripping from the spray. There's time for a final glimpse of the smoke that thunders, then the diesels rev and we enter Haslam was a guest of Distant Journeys, which has 20 nights on the Grand African Rail Journey— with 13 all-inclusive onboard, three all-inclusive in a hotel or lodge and two B&B in hotels — from £12,995pp, including flights (
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Forget robot bunnies - realtor turned real-life Indiana Jones is hunting Florida's most dangerous predators
Beneath the dark canopy of Florida 's Everglades with only stars in sight, Daily Mail got an exclusive look at one of Florida's peculiar new tourist attractions: the high–stakes, high–end world of python hunting. At the center of it is Amy Siewe, a former luxury real estate broker who traded listings for swamp boots and snakes — and now leads elite eco–tourism hunts capturing one of Florida's most destructive invasive species. 'I wasn't looking for another career,' Siewe told The Daily Mail during a July night hunt. 'But once I realized there was a python problem in Florida, I thought, 'Wait a minute — this obsession I've had with snakes my whole life could actually help solve an ecological crisis.' That crisis is Burmese pythons. Believed to have been introduced via the exotic pet trade in the last 30 years, they've exploded in population across South Florida, willing to kill any native wildlife or pets they come across. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), species like raccoons, opossums, bobcats — and even deer — have seen dramatic declines. 'We find deer hooves in the stomachs of almost every python we catch that are over 16 feet,' Siewe said. 'They are eating full grown deer. It's horrific.' Last month in an attempt to combat the python problem scientists from the University of Florida let an army of remote–controlled robotic bunnies loose in the hope of monitoring python patterns. But Siewe doesn't need to use robotics — she has her hands — and now runs a wildly popular python hunting tour business, charging $1,800 for up to four people and $300 for each additional person per night. Her clients are seeking both adrenaline and a way to help Florida's ecological future. But this isn't just thrill–seeking — it's conservation. 'This guided hunt is both a thrill and a mission,' she explained. 'It's amazing to catch a python, but it's even more powerful knowing you're saving native animals.' Our night with Siewe offered a rare glimpse into her operation. Aboard her custom 'snake deck' truck, outfitted with custom decals reading 'Python Huntress', several flood lights and handheld spotlights, we drove through the Everglades, which spans 1.5 million acres, under nothing but moonlight and stars. The tour did pass by Alligator Alcatraz, which does light up a section of the forest, but Amy said it has not affected her hunting. Her hunting locations are confidential, and her methods are honed from years of experience. That night, she stalked a 16–foot serpent — just three feet shy of the world record —and marked her 700th python capture. Siewe's largest capture to date measured 17 feet, 3 inches. 'There have been 17–footers that take four people to get,' she said. 'I caught mine by myself... she was 110 pounds. I am very proud of that.' Tourists like Jim Gillenwater from Indiana joined Siewe in the swamp the night Daily Mail was there, experiencing the thrill of the hunt firsthand. 'When you're in the middle of the everglades in the summer months, and when we were wrestling the big snake, the bugs were all over us,' Gillenwater said. 'You gotta put in the work and be able to deal with the variables to get the best trophy.' 'It was everything I ever dreamed of,' Gillenwater said. 'It was one of the hardest things I've ever hunted because they're so illusive. I cannot remember more fun than I've had in the last two days [following the hunt] just showing photos of the snake I caught.' Siewe formerly worked for the state's Python Elimination Program, which pays licensed hunters to remove pythons. Now she hunts for herself, her tours, and she also collaborates with researchers to learn more about the behaviors and habits of the pythons. 'It's not the python's fault they're here,' Siewe acknowledged. 'They're just being pythons. But they have to go. Our mammals are disappearing at an alarming rate.' 'It takes a python three years to get to be 10 feet,' she said, 'and it takes 200 animals to get it there. Every single python we take out of the Everglades is saving hundreds of lives.' Florida officials estimate there may be up to 500,000 pythons in the wild. While total eradication may be out of reach, Siewe believes every hunt is the best thing that can be done at the moment. 'We might just be prolonging the extinction of our native animals,' she said, 'but if we can do that long enough for scientists to develop better solutions, then it's absolutely worth it. 'What drives me to keep going night after night, chasing snakes through the swamp? Well, first of all, it's totally my calling. It is the most amazing adventure and the most fun I've ever had in my entire life.' The Florida Everglades have long faced the python invasion, but fears of mass extinctions have become an ever–growing threat to the local animal populations. Ian Bartoszek, one of three authors of a study with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, said: 'The impact the Burmese python is having on native wildlife cannot be denied. This is a wildlife issue of our time for the Greater Everglades ecosystem.' Researchers from the University of Florida released 40 of the fake toy fluffy rabbits, fit with motors, a smell designed to attract pythons, and tiny heaters to mimic the beasts prey in July. The goal is to monitor python patterns and movements in order to alert officials to their presence, before a snake wrangler is sent out to euthanize the snake.
