Santiago is a fine base for tourists with a taste for wine. Many of the country’s best wine-producing valleys and vineyards lie within a 100-mile radius of the Chilean capital, with some just a short ride away. There’s also an undeniable and appealing sense of history in this New World wine producing region. Vines first […]
I’m standing on the brink—the very brink—of the volcano’s crater. Below me, in the carbon-rich lake, dark patches streak the green waters, which glisten with minerals. A lone sheep grazes nearby, impervious to the keening wind. Overhead, smokelike clouds, moving in off the late-afternoon peaks. Tranquil it might be, but that crater never lets you […]
The Amazon Rainforest is unrivalled when it comes to biodiversity. Along with millions of insect species, more than 1,000 bird species, and hundreds of amphibian and reptile species, the Amazon is also home to about 430 species of mammal, with more still to be discovered. For adventurous tourists wanting to explore the Amazon — be […]
(Editors Note: This is the first post in a new series on great figures of Latin American history. It presents men and women whose destinies were forged in the lands charted by Columbus, and who ended up playing key roles in the still-unfolding drama of “the other America.”) The Humboldt Current. Humboldt’s penguin. Humboldt Peak. […]
The Nazca Lines geoglyphs vary greatly in terms of size, form and complexity. Simple lines and geometric shapes run all across the arid plain, which stretches more than 50 miles across the desert near Peru’s southern coastline. You’ll also see representations of trees and flowers, etched into the dry plateau by the Nazca culture sometime […]
La Paris del Sur, its denizens call it. The Paris of the South. And for a few brief moments, you might actually be taken in. Those wide central boulevards, for example: they certainly feel European, with their Art Deco apartment buildings and dusky ground-floor shops. Likewise those cafes, with their old men waving their endless […]
Of the 17 species of penguin that occur worldwide, seven can be seen in South America. Their breeding grounds range from the Galapagos Islands along the equator to the Pacific coasts of Peru and Chile and further on down to the continent’s frigid southernmost tip… Galápagos Islands, Ecuador When people think of wildlife in South […]
Machu Picchu isn’t just an archaeological wonder: It’s also an architectural masterpiece. With more than 200 buildings that we know of, intelligently divided into urban and agricultural sectors and an upper town and lower town, there are no finer examples of Inca planning and construction. As you take a tour of Machu Picchu, you’ll see […]
If you conjure up a mental image of Rio de Janeiro, even if you’ve never been there before, it’s almost certain that a beach will appear in that image. Brazil’s most iconic city is home to two of the most famous beaches in the world: Ipanema and Copacabana, both of which have inspired internationally-acclaimed hit […]
Anyone who has visited the great waterfalls of the world – Niagara, the Salto Angel and the Victoria Falls – will tell you that Iguazu, on the Brazil-Argentina border, is hands-down the most incredible. Look at any list of Top 10 Waterfalls and Iguazu will be number one. In 2011 Iguazu was voted one of […]
On the ledge below the overlook, the three birds huddle: a slate-gray mass. One stands slightly aloof, gazing into the distance, while a second, officious, pecks under the wing of the third. Above them the canyon air is warm, with a rising early-morning wind. Rufflike plumes ripple with the breeze. After a moment, bird three […]
It’s a saying Chileans love to repeat. Dios está en todas partes, pero atiende en Santiago. “God is everywhere, but His office hours are in Santiago.” But if that’s the case, it’s the Chilean capital’s museums that serve as the Man Upstairs’s hall of records. When Chile’s first museum was built in 1830, right after […]
To reach little Genovesa, the most northeastern island of the Galapagos, cruise vessels must sail up to eight hours from other more visited islands. Large cruise ships have to bypass Genovesa – also called Tower Island – because the reef makes it risky for them to enter into and anchor at Darwin Bay, where passengers […]
The guide in the ski cap stands stock-still, squinting through the binoculars at the blue ice. From off the lake, high winds stir his big-grizzly beard. He looks over. “Looks kinda like space aliens, don’t it?” He offers you the glasses. You tug your parka’s sleeves down over your knuckles, taking careful hold with your […]
It’s Holy Week in Quito, and that means Alberto Alava is looking serious. The dark, mustachioed chef has his cap tilted back, concentrating intently on his work. That work includes peeling a multitude of different grains (including fava beans and chochos, a thick-skinned legume typical of the Andes), soaking strips of salt cod in milk, […]
Polar winds whip snow against me as I stand beneath the looming mountain. Gray afternoon half-light. It’s the end of the line. Granted, “end” in Ushuaia, Argentina, is a word that long ago passed beyond cliché, considering every empanadería, Claro cell-phone kiosk, and leather-goods outlet in town has seen fit to append “del fin del […]
Puno, Peru suffers from a case of bad PR. Ask most travelers about the windswept Andean town, and you’ll likely get a lot of blank stares. “Puno—where exactly is that?” Those same travelers will prick up their ears at the mention of neighboring Lake Titicaca, or of the Islands of the Sun on the Bolivian […]
Slow, sleepy Colonia del Sacramento, on the Uruguayan side of the Río de la Plata, looks like a town where nothing ever happens. But Ruben Collado knows better. “Bueno, it happened in 1763, during the Seven Years’ War. The Lord Clive was a pirate ship that came here intending to capture the port at Colonia, […]
Isabela Island, by far the largest island in the Galapagos, is also one of the richest in wildlife. Home to more wild tortoises than all the other Galapagos Islands combined, it’s also the best place to spot penguins in the archipelago, which harbors the most northerly penguin colony on earth. (Isabela lies directly on the […]
Sapphire lakes that are absolutely still, mirroring the silent peaks around them. Cascades, like liquid smoke, plunging into icy rivers. A branching network of sandy trails, leading ever deeper into towering forests of thousand-year-old alerce trees… This is Argentina’s Lake District, a vast, primeval wilderness huddled at the foot of the Andes in northwestern Patagonia, […]
