Twelve wonders of the world

By JIM EAGLES

What are the wonders of the world? What are the places you really should try to see before you die? The pyramids? Elephants playing in the river at Chobe? The majestic grandeur of Mt Everest? Humming birds in Trinidad? Mitre Peak in Fiordland? The Louvre? The Empire State Building? The Taj Mahal? Pandas in China? Dugongs in Vanuatu?

There's so many choices it's hard to know where to start. Personal tastes will obviously vary, but it's always interesting to see what others think.

My personal top 12 of things I haven't seen yet keeps changing.

But at present it would probably be the pyramids, Petra, the Great Wall of China and probably the Buried Army, too, Antarctica, swimming with whales in Tonga, the Iguazu Falls, Machu Picchu, mountain gorillas in Africa (unlikely these days), Mecca (even more unlikely), Jerusalem and Florence.

Or maybe I should add Easter Island, and what about seeing a tiger in the wild, and I've always wanted to see the Kremlin ...

A rather more carefully thought-out top 12 - plus a few runners-up - has just been produced by the travel writers from Knight Ridder Newspapers:

Their selection is:

Great Wall of China - Visible from space, the 2000-year-old bulwark stretching more than 6400km was designed to keep invading tribes out of China. (It didn't work. They simply bribed the poorly paid guards.) Today much of the wall has crumbled into ruins, but the 3.5km stretch outside Beijing draws hordes of invading tourists. Despite the kitsch factor, the wall is simply, mind-bogglingly, amazing.
Information: China National Tourist Office

Empire State Building, New York - Whatever else you do - or don't - in New York, at least once in your life you must brave the lines for a visit to the heights of the 102-storey icon and pretend you, too, are Meg Ryan or even Fay Wray. As Deborah Kerr told Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember: "It's the nearest thing to heaven we have in New York City."
Information: Empire State Building

River Nile - It's not the Great Pyramids of Giza or the Sphinx that are Egypt's true wonders, but the Temple of Abu Simbel and the royal tombs near Luxor that will linger in your memory. Oh heck, just slip back 5000 years and see it all. But dodge The Mummy.
Information: travel agents, Tour Egypt

Louvre, Paris - The Eiffel Tower may be the quintessential Parisian icon, but no museum on earth equals the splendour of The Louvre. If da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" doesn't capture your heart, check out the voluptuous paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Egyptian funerary objects and the ancient sculpture of "The Winged Victory of Samothrace".
Information: French Tourist Bureau, The Louvre

African safari - No matter how many times you've been to the zoo, it doesn't compare with watching a pair of cape buffalo fight for control of the herd, or lions sleep feet from your safari vehicle.
Information: travel agents, or Magical Kenya

London theatre - No city in the English-speaking universe does theatre like London. Catch a musical if you must, but we recommend the classics - Shakespeare, Voltaire, Sheridan - and serious modern playwrights regularly performed at National Theatre, the re-created Globe on London's South Bank and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Information: Visit Britain, Time Out

Chile's blue towers - Torres del Paine National Park in the wilds of Chile's Patagonia region may not be as famous as Iguazu Falls, Machu Picchu or Easter Island, but these granite peaks are as spectacular as any place on earth.
Information:
Dorres del Paine National Park
Patagonia
Chile National Tourism Service
Visit Chile
Go Chile

Yosemite National Park, California - The Grand Canyon is grand and Yellowstone ethereal, but our choice for a gotta-do-it US national park is Yosemite, that dramatic California valley cleaving sheer stone faces carpeted by evergreen forests.
Information: California Tourism, Yosemite National Park

Taj Mahal, India - The romance of this monument to a lost queen might be reason enough to visit the city of Agra, India, on the Yamuna River. Little in this world defies expectations, but the Taj Mahal is an exception.
Information India Tourism

Sistine Chapel, Vatican - The robust emotionalism and artistic intricacy of the "Creation" scenes adorning the ceiling of this Vatican City chapel are enough, literally, to leave you awestruck.
Information: The Vatican

Angkor Wat, Cambodia - Angkor Wat is only the most famous of the intricate, 1000-year-old stone temples surrounding Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Information: travel agents.

Jerusalem - Sacred to three of the world's largest religions, Jerusalem offers more than simply a window on history. Here, Christians can literally walk in the footsteps of Jesus, Jews can pray at the Wailing Wall and Muslims can worship at the Dome of the Rock.
Information: Israel Tourism Office

Knight Ridder's runners-up include Australia's Great Barrier Reef; Machu Picchu in Peru; Lhasa, Tibet; Easter Island; Bali, Indonesia; Covered Bazaar, Istanbul; Iguazu Falls, Brazil and Argentina; and Las Vegas ("Bizarre, yes," they say, "but everyone should go there at least once, if only to gawk at the insanity of others.")

If you want to think about your own top 12, then a good starting point is 1000 Places To Visit Before You Die by Patricia Schultz (Workman Publishing, $39.99) which lists all of the above and a lot more besides.

The Herald has five copies of the book to give away.

To go in the draw for them, write your name and address, and the name of the place you would most like to see before you die, on the back of a sealed envelope and send it to:

Places To See, Travel Herald, PO Box 3290, Auckland.

Entries close on June 8. The first five drawn out will be sent copies of the book. The lucky winners will be named in the Travel Herald on June 15.