Mexico

All you can hear is the sound of your own slow breathing. Lurid yellow, orange and pink fish flash by, like tiny electric bolts. Your flippers gently brush against the tips of swaying tropical plants and with each metre you swim deeper, there' another underwater scene, each one more mesmerising than the last. Welcome to the world of scuba diving.

Forget climbing to Everest Base Camp or mountain biking down Bolivia’s Death Road.  Go adventuring off the beaten track with our list of This year’s adventure travel destinations, and you’ll easily be the backpackers with the best story at the bar.  From sandboarding the world’s biggest dunes to climbing inside a volcano, here are the top ten adventurer’s travel destinations.

I stepped from my airport taxi into an undulating sea of travellers clutching sugar skulls, pan de muerto sweet buns and cheery wreaths of marigolds.  Met by a grinning skeleton with a purple feather boa, he handed me tumbler of smoky agave liquor mescal. 

When travelling through Mexico everywhere you look you will find stories of the quest for human freedom.  They are told in the bold colours of the past-Mexican Revolution murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros.  They are etched in the Zócalos of Colonial cities where the War of Independence was fought.  And they are visible in the pyramid skylines of the ancients, where Mayas, Zapotecs, and Totonacs raised their sights toward harmony with the sun and the moon.  There are 27 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Mexico.  These are places of unique cultural identity and historic importance.  Most of

In Mexico you discover new worlds through timeless connections.  There are cities here that haven't been populated in over thousand years, and yet when you visit you come to know the people who lived there, from their art, their hopes for corn and rain, their plans for harvests and burials.  There are Colonial centers where you can trace globalization from Persia to Arabia to Africa to Spain in the arabesque of a balcony, the pomegranates in a sauce, the gold lavished on a church.  But these cities are showcases of the New World: its native craftspeople and farmers, its unfathomable wealth, its artists who decorated alters with angels as their forebears had with feathered gods.  The heritage sites of Mexico tells a story; come, let us share them with you.

JAKOBSHAVN ‘ICEBERG FACTORY’, ILULISSAT, GREENLAND
This is one of the main outlets of the Greenland ice sheet. Here you can see enormous chunks of ice break off the main glacier and become icebergs.  Apparently, it’s where the one that sank the Titanic is thought to have originated.  Some of the Icebergs are half a kilometre in size and to see them up close is awe-inspiring as it is bizarre.  You can sit in a nearby hotel quietly having breakfast and watch these immense slabs of ice float past. Picture: Paul Souders / Barcroft Media

QUINTA REAL ZACATECAS, MEXICO

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more achitectually impressive hotel than this.  Built into the grandstand of the restored San Pedro Bullfighting ring in central Mexico, Quinta Real Zacatecas is so seamlessly built into the original structure that you wouldn’t be surprised if a matador with a red cape swooshed by.  Rooms overlook the central former bullring, which witnessed its last bullfight in 1975.  It dates back to the 19th century and is now converted into a cobblestoned courtyard and dotted with overflowing plant pots.

Copper Canyon also called Barranca Del Cobre in Spanish is a lush canyon system in Chihuahua state northwest Mexico.  The Barranca Del Cobre canyon system is four times the size of neighbouring Arizona’s Grand Canyon and deeper in some areas. Apart from its natural beauty and breath taking views the Copper Canyon offers a train journey that travels from sea level to 7,500 feet in less than 150 miles; giving it the name “Train in the Sky”.

The ride on the Copper canyon railway is the main attraction of the region because from the train it’s like you are seeing the entire world.  The railway system took almost 100 years to build and is considered to be an engineering marvel.  The copper canyon rail excursion is voted the most exciting train journey in the world.