FORBES recomends Azores
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For a mixture of European flavor and a unique mid-Atlantic cultural heritage, Banas recommends the Azores. Explore the dramatic natural beauty and bounty of crater lakes in this collection of nine volcanic islands in the middle of the North Atlantic. Portuguese by language, it has a culture and cuisine all its own.
"There's one place you can go where they take all this food and cook it in this geothermal heated area, put the food in the earth, let it cook for several hours, then they take the food out of the ground, then it gets shipped by truck and served in fine restaurants nearby," says Banas. Called cozido das furnas, they often consist of mixtures of meats and stews and are a feature of the area near Sao Miguel.
Some places remain unique because they are remote, and have been for a long time. Madagascar, sitting approximately 225 miles off the Eastern Coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, is so isolated it's seen one-of-a-kind evolutionary developments. Ninety percent of its native plant life is found nowhere else in the world.
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