Americas Travel Guide

The Western Hemisphere encompasses an astonishing range of landscapes, cultures, and natural wonders — from the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu and the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands to the cosmopolitan elegance of Buenos Aires, the revolutionary streets of Havana, and the raw, ice-sculpted wilderness of Antarctica. This guide covers the South and Central American destinations that reward serious international travelers most richly: places where history, wildlife, and landscape converge in experiences genuinely unlike anything available elsewhere on earth.

Peru & Machu Picchu

Peru is one of the world's great travel destinations. Its combination of extraordinary pre-Columbian archaeology, living indigenous cultures, dramatic Andean landscapes, and — increasingly — world-class cuisine places it among the most rewarding journeys available to the international traveler.

Lima is the essential gateway and deserves more time than most travelers give it. The Larco Museum holds one of the finest collections of pre-Columbian gold and ceramics in the world. The Barranco and Miraflores neighborhoods offer the contemporary face of a city that has quietly become one of South America's great dining destinations — led by chefs like Gastón Acurio, whose Peruvian cuisine movement has made Lima internationally recognized.

Cusco, the former capital of the Inca Empire at 3,400 meters (11,200 feet), requires acclimatization before the altitude is comfortable. It rewards the effort: a city whose colonial Spanish architecture is literally built on Inca foundations — enormous stone walls fitted together with extraordinary precision, without mortar, that have survived centuries of earthquakes that toppled the buildings constructed on top of them. The Sacred Valley contains Ollantaytambo (a perfectly preserved Inca town and fortress) and the terraced agricultural site of Moray, still not fully understood by archaeologists.

Machu Picchu — the fifteenth-century Inca city perched on a ridge above the Urubamba River, rediscovered in 1911 — is one of those rare destinations that fully lives up to the anticipation. Arriving early, before the day-trippers from Cusco fill the site, is strongly recommended. Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake (3,810 meters / 12,500 feet), provides a compelling conclusion: the Uros floating reed islands and the island of Taquile offer a direct encounter with communities that have maintained their cultural traditions largely intact.

Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands

The Galapagos Islands constitute one of the world's most extraordinary wildlife destinations — the living laboratory that informed Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and still home to species found nowhere else on the planet. Marine iguanas (the world's only sea-going lizard), giant Galapagos tortoises, blue-footed boobies, flightless cormorants, Galapagos penguins, frigate birds, sea lions utterly indifferent to human presence — the wildlife encounters are unlike anything possible anywhere else.

Quito, Ecuador's capital, has one of the world's best-preserved colonial city centers — a UNESCO World Heritage Site of Jesuit churches of baroque exuberance and narrow cobblestone streets. The Mitad del Mundo monument marks the equator line, and the city's position in the Andean highlands gives it a spectacular setting. An optional excursion into the Amazon basin — the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve or the Yasuni National Park — adds river dolphins, anacondas, macaws, and the overwhelming biodiversity of the upper Amazon.

The Galapagos expedition typically runs seven to fourteen days, visiting multiple islands by small expedition vessel. Each island has its own distinct character and wildlife community — the archipelago's isolation over millions of years has produced genuinely unique evolutionary outcomes on each one. Snorkeling among sea turtles and hammerhead sharks in the crystalline Pacific waters adds a marine dimension to the remarkable land wildlife encounters.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica punches well above its weight as a travel destination. Despite its small size, it contains an extraordinary five percent of the world's known biodiversity, packed into landscapes ranging from misty cloud forests to active volcanoes to Pacific mangroves. It is also a model of sustainable tourism — over a quarter of the country's land area is protected as national park or biological reserve.

The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve is among the world's premier birdwatching destinations: resplendent quetzals, three-wattled bellbirds, and more than four hundred other species in a cool, moss-draped canopy. Arenal Volcano, one of the most active in the Americas, provides a dramatic backdrop for hot spring bathing and jungle hiking. On the Pacific coast, Manuel Antonio National Park reliably delivers white-faced capuchins, sloths, scarlet macaws, and white-sand beaches in a compact, accessible package. The Osa Peninsula, wilder and more remote, rewards travelers willing to make the extra effort with one of Central America's last intact primary rainforests.

Argentina & Brazil

South America's two largest and most cosmopolitan nations combine beautifully in a single itinerary that moves from the cultured elegance of Buenos Aires to the thunderous spectacle of Iguazu Falls to the samba-inflected exuberance of Rio de Janeiro.

Buenos Aires is one of the world's great cities: a European-influenced metropolis of wide boulevards, independent bookshops, tango halls, and steakhouses, with a passionate attachment to culture, conversation, and late-night dining. The San Telmo antiques market, the colorful La Boca neighborhood, Recoleta Cemetery, and an evening at a traditional milonga (tango venue) are the essential experiences. Iguazu Falls, straddling the Argentina-Brazil border, is one of the world's great natural wonders — wider than Niagara and taller than Victoria Falls, the 275 cascades are accessible from walkways on both sides of the border. Rio de Janeiro provides the natural conclusion: Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf Mountain, Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, the Santa Teresa neighborhood — and, for travelers who plan accordingly, the electric spectacle of Carnival.

Cuba

Cuba is one of the Western Hemisphere's most fascinating and photogenic destinations — a country that has preserved an extraordinary time capsule of pre-revolutionary architecture and street life alongside a rich tradition of music, dance, visual art, and a genuinely unique political and social experiment. It rewards travelers who approach it with genuine curiosity rather than as a beach destination.

Havana's Old Town (Habana Vieja), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a treasure of colonial architecture in various states of elegant decay and careful restoration. The Malecón seafront promenade, the Museum of the Revolution, the classic car culture, and the live music scene of bars and casas particulares create an atmosphere genuinely unlike anywhere else in the Americas. The colonial city of Trinidad is one of the best-preserved Spanish colonial towns in the Caribbean. The Viñales Valley — dramatic limestone mogotes rising from flat tobacco-farming land — provides a compelling rural counterpoint.

Antarctica Expedition Cruises

Antarctica is the adventure of a lifetime — the last true wilderness on earth, a continent of staggering, almost incomprehensible scale where nature operates entirely on its own terms. No destination on earth delivers the combination of sheer spectacle, emotional impact, and genuine remoteness that Antarctica provides to those willing to make the journey.

Most Antarctica expeditions sail from Ushuaia, Argentina (the world's southernmost city), across the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula. The Drake can be challenging, but crossing it is part of the experience — the sense of having traveled beyond the edge of the inhabited world is genuine. Once in Antarctic waters, Zodiac landings on rocky beaches bring travelers face to face with penguin colonies (Adélie, chinstrap, and gentoo), Weddell and leopard seals hauled out on ice floes, and humpback and minke whales feeding in the nutrient-rich waters. The scale of the icebergs — some the size of cathedrals, glowing in shades of blue that defy naming — is impossible to fully convey.

The expedition season runs November through March (southern hemisphere summer). November offers dramatic penguin courtship behavior; December and January bring 20+ hours of daylight; February and March deliver peak whale feeding activity.