Some of the places that receive little coverage in guidebooks but welcome high-spending foreign tourists.
São Tomé and Principe
São Tomé is not a Caribbean island or a South American town, but a small central African country of about 150,000 people which attracts about 20 tourists a week. There are no "packet tours", explains the site, but there are five hotels and three hostels. Flights are expensive, but the jungles, empty beaches, mountains and scuba diving compensate.
Albania
This patriotic site considers Kosovo and parts of Montenegro to be "Albanian" and devotes considerable space to explaining how Serbs and the USSR went about ruining Albania's heritage. Little practical information, but interesting photos and descriptions.
Iowa
As Bill Bryson put it: "I came from Des Moines, Iowa. Someone had to." Bryson got it wrong, of course, as the Iowa Department of Tourism points out. The state hasn't managed to highlight its attractions very well, but closer investigation reveals plenty of skiing, horse-riding, Native American tribal sites, corn mazes and the Mississippi river, where you can cruise on gambling and non-gambling riverboats.
Sark
Charming site dedicated to the smallest of the inhabited Channel Islands, which can only be reached by ferry - either from Guernsey or St Malo. The coastline, with its caves, tiny harbour and circular Venus Pool - a 20ft deep natural pool revealed at low tide - is unexpectedly beautiful.
Uruguay
My command of Spanish is very limited, and I barely had a chance to glimpse the thermal springs, beaches and waterfalls of Uruguay before this site crashed my Mac. The foreign office warns of armed muggings in the capital, Montevideo.
Faroe Islands
The Faroes, halfway between Iceland and Norway, belong to Denmark but the 45,000 inhabitants speak a different language and rule themselves. Many visitors come to admire the puffins and migrating birds, but diving (see the excellent Faroe Islands diving), hiking, fishing and riding are also popular. Opinions differ, apparently, as to whether the trolls and nymphs disappeared when electric light and heating came to the Faroes.
Mongolia
One of my favourite travel websites. The section on Mongolian culture is particularly engaging, but the list of tour operators and hotels is also exhaustive.
Swaziland
Few tourist boards dare to put a bare-breasted woman on their homepage, but then not many are quite as obscure as Swaziland's. The country is very proud of its royal family and nature reserves: you can photograph the latter, but not the former. Gentlemen visitors, we learn, should wear "lightweight lounge suits, slacks and sportcoats, safari suits with either long or short trousers, and shorts and casual shirts". An extraordinary and fascinating site.
