Travel Guides: All Countries, South America.
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| | | | The grannies from Ipanema
From the Mail on Sunday
Brazil is the kind of place that conjures up preconceptions. Violent crime. Giraffe necked models posing on beaches in thongs. Skyscrapers. A kickabout on every street corner.
So the reality came as something of a shock. The people couldn't have been nicer. The beaches were full of ample grannies in stout swimsuits, while laughing toddlers built sandcastles.
There were skyscrapers, but there were also innumerable quaint cobbled lanes with picturesque pastel coloured cottages and little churches. And no one would have been so rude as to play football in the street.
Was this Brazil, or Clovelly, that picturesque village in Devon? Well, it wasn't, of course, because Clovelly doesn't have a huge loudspeaker blasting out music every 15 yards.
That's the principal difference between Brazil and every other country. In Brazil, music is a shared concern, a public offering from one music lover to another. Not just samba and reggae music, either; if you're a middle aged Brazilian lover of Frank Sinatra, then you play My Way in the street at full volume.
We began our tour at Salvador, on the north east coast, surely one of the prettiest cities anywhere in the world. The recently restored city centre of multicoloured icing and marzipan cottages, hilly cobbled streets and cafe-dotted squares shone in the ever present summer sun.
It was New Year's Eve, there was bunting everywhere and huge model Santas decorated every building, each one holding the appropriate symbols: a saw for the carpenter's, spectacles outside the library, loaves at the baker's.
At midnight we went down to one of the city's myriad immaculate beaches, where firecrackers signalled the passing of the old year, a thousand speakers blared loudly and sweet old ladies stood in the shallows tossing white roses into the sea.
Travel guide: South America
The peak rush hour train to Machu Picchu
From the Daily Mail
Every day Peru's Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, is rediscovered by at least 1,000 tourists who are slowly destroying one of the wonders of the world.
More people now come to this sacred citadel in a week than ever lived there in its 15th-century prime.
And the attempt to improve facilities for international visitors - better hotels, a helicopter service and a planned cable car to replace the bus trip up the mountain - have only made the wear and tear worse.
It's easy to see why so many want to flock here, for every kind of holiday from backpacking to whitewater rafting, mountain hikes and even hippy magical-mystery tours to re-enact the Incas' pagan sun worship.
When I caught sight of the emerald green grass slopes and stone-coloured remains of Machu Picchu, flanked by its awesome, snow-capped peaks, I felt the same sense of wonder I had when I first saw the Taj Mahal. You go expecting to be disappointed. Miraculously, you're not.
For nearly 500 years Machu Picchu was covered by impenetrable rain-forests and surrounded by forbidding granite precipices.
It lay hidden from the gold-hunting Spanish conquistadors, who sought to destroy all traces of an Inca civilisation that had stretched in its heyday to Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and to the borders of Argentina and Brazil.
The site was first uncovered in 1911 by an American scholar-explorer, Hiram Bingham, later a Senator and Governor of Connecticut.
But Bingham didn't know he had found Machu Picchu: he thought it was Vilcabamba, final refuge of the Incas against the Spanish invaders.
Fifty years later, however, after a massive earthquake had shaken up the scenery, the real Vilcabamba was identified by archeologists, who then realised that what Bingham must have stumbled on was Machu Picchu itself. So there were really two Lost Cities of the Incas, not one, which seems very careless of them.
Travel guide: South America
Machu man in Inca high country
First let's dispose of the Incas. You could be forgiven for thinking the Spanish did that with some efficiency back in the 16th Century.
But while Francisco Pizarro and his Conquistadors may have closed down the Inca empire, they left enough ruins and reminiscence to tantalise travellers for the next 500 years. And they missed the fabulous lost city of Machu Picchu.
I had every intention of going to Peru and not writing about the Incas. Instead I would report from the Colca Valley, a much less familiar part of the country, and leave Machu Picchu to the guide books.
But the Incas thought differently and I found myself irresistibly drawn to Cuzco, the old Inca capital on which the Spanish stamped the finest colonial city in the country.
Everything starts early in Peru. My wake-up call to catch the train to Machu Picchu was at 4.30am, a sadistic time when you are enjoying the luxuries of one of the world's most comfortable bedrooms in the five-star Monasterio Hotel, where oxygen is piped in if you are affected by the 10,860ft altitude.
At the station the sky-blue and yellow train gleamed in the half light. It might have been a Pullman, not half-a-dozen diesel cars. 'This is our best train in Peru,' confided Fernando, my guide.
At 6am with two toots on the hooter, the train set off, scraping and trumpeting through Cuzco's slums, ascending in a series of steep switchbacks.
Beside us, life trickled out of the shanties and into the streets. Young women washed their hair at the trackside and old women balanced fruit in piles for impromptu street markets.
Inside the train a uniformed attendant wiped condensation from the windows and served hot drinks. A single thickness of glass separated two worlds, one where people had their windows wiped, the other of shabby adobe and urchin children scattering from the track.
To the accompaniment of the timpani of the wheels, we passed through fields of potatoes and beans into a landscape of rough hills, gum trees and donkeys.
Travel guide: South America
Perfect blend of exotic intrigue
From the Daily Mail
Would you go to Costa Rica? Big-name tour operators are.
Located in Central America, between Nicaragua and Panama, Costa Rica has suffered from its proximity to countries plagued by headlines about explosions, Sandinistas and Contras.
In fact, in a land the size of Belgium, the only explosions are from volcanoes, and the only khaki is the mottled greens of its rain forests - it hasn't even had an army since the Forties.
It is a gentle, fertile, fruit-filled land which, in a time when operators are constantly searching for new, more exotic destinations, more than fulfils the requirements of today's travellers: great scenery, good climate and plenty of diversity when it comes to things to do.
With both a Pacific and Caribbean shoreline - no surprise then that Costa Rica means rich coast - the country offers everything from turtle-watching tours to sport-fishing, and three volcanic ranges, which include the aloof, fractious Arenal volcano.
On a good day, you can see lava streaking scarlet from its rim, and then have a soak in hot springs at its base, whatever the weather. High on Arenal's slopes, lines of lava record the 1968 eruption like telltale wrinkles. Steam constantly swirls from the summit.
Alas, there are those who fail to respect the sleeping giant two Germans went too close and perished in 1987. The Rain Forest Aerial Tram just beyond the capital San Jose, is another of many novel tourist experiences in Costa Rica, albeit manmade.
It's a modified ski-lift with open, green baskets that carry you gently and almost silently way above the rain forest canopy for nearly two miles, providing a bird's eye view of the ecosystem, without disturbing the natural wonder you've come all this way to admire.
Biologist Don Perry set up the ride after he began exploring the area in the Seventies by using rope-climbing techniques. Thankfully, for the fainthearted, he developed this more sophisticated system, which opened in 1994.
Travel guide: South America
The icy beauty of Chile
From the Daily Mail
Three weeks after my return from Patagonia, my toes are still the colour of squashed blackberries and, some time before Christmas, all my toenails will drop off.
My calf muscles ache with the memory of the roller-coaster hikes through the wilderness and my lungs are unlikely ever to forgive me for the stress imposed on them up seemingly endless slopes.
The southernmost reaches of Chile, the place where the South American continent fragments into finger-like islets, lakes and fjords, are not for the fainthearted - or for those, like me, with ill-fitting walking boots.
But for people who want to experience this 'miniature Alaska' - the glaciers, the icebergs, the milky opalescent lakes, plummeting waterfalls and exotic wildlife from Andean condors to pumas - the aches and pains are worth every moment.
Our first glimpse of the magnificent Glaciar de Grey, which is part of the southern ice cap, came two hours into a day-long trek through the Torres del Paine National Park in the heart of Chilean Patagonia. It was a moment to savour in any lifetime.
From a distance and in brilliant sunshine, the glacier resembled a gigantic meringue whipped into shimmering white peaks and blue-green troughs. It would take another two hours to reach the closest viewpoint.
Our journey continued along a cliff top overlooking Lago del Grey (Grey Lake), into which the glacier drains and sheds its icebergs: a stately trail of pristine white, green and turquoise monsters, sculpted by the wind, as they make their ponderous journey down the lake.
We neared the glacier, the icy breeze off its surface intensified and suddenly, there it was: the leading edge of the glacier (or rather retreating edge since it diminishes by four to six metres a year).
Close up, it resembled a gaping lower jaw of enormous, crooked, tombstone teeth, a sight so awe-inspiring that you temporarily forget that the glacier is only the half-way point in your 13-mile trek.
The Glaciar de Grey is just one of the treasures of the Torres del Paine park. The name, meaning 'towers of blueish', was given in its original translation to the area by a long-extinct Indian tribe, the Tehuelches, who moved there 11,000 years ago from the Patagonian pampas.
Travel guide: South America
Land of the tango
From the Mail on Sunday
The brightly pastel shaded houses that line the quayside of the La Boca barrio in Buenos Aires these days attract afternoon strollers and evening revellers to their neighbouring bars and cafes.
But they used to be bordellos that served the sailors returning home from the sea at the end of the last century and it was here that the tango was born.
Wherever you are in Buenos Aires, you are never far from some representation of the music and movement of the tango. The dance can be melancholic or joyful, threatening or flirtatious, but it has an hypnotic effect on the Latin soul. Its appeal has also spread across the oceans in recent years with tango clubs popping up from New York to Tokyo.
The tango actually started as an all-male affair as a machismo display ritual with three, four or five guys taking the floor to compete in demonstrating their masculinity.
Then the girls got in on the act and, through its whorehouse associations, the dance was condemned as immoral in the early decades of this century and practised only among the lowest orders of Argentinian society. Spanish and Italian immigrants particularly identified with its most plaintive aspects which reflected their sense of loss of homeland and anxiety for the future.
It was not until a charismatic tango singer called Carlos Gardel swept to fame that the dance became respectable, largely through the force of his wholesome personality. Gardel's winning smile still beams down from posters and photographs in every club and bar in Buenos Aires.
Then came Rudolph Valentino, with his smouldering interpretation in The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse movie and the rest of the world woke up to the emotional intensity of the work.
Travel guide: South America
Explore the fading glory
From the Mail on Sunday
A school geography book I used to have summarised Argentina as 'the land of the gaucho'. But even as a 12-year old, I guessed that there must be more to the country than smouldering pampas cowboys in big trousers.
Before I left for my visit I was reliably informed that Argentina's capital Buenos Aires is the Paris of the South. So I touched down in a tropical rainstorm expecting grand boulevards and mad old women who looked like Dick Emery dragging around toy poodles who looked like Barbara Windsor.
Buenos Aires did indeed have wide boulevards and mad old dog lovers galore. But while both cities might have the same bone structure, Paris has had regular facelifts while her Argentinian sister was in danger of looking her age.
Behind curved windows, First World War barber shops were still offering First World War haircuts. Belle Epoque cafes with ornate display cases laid out hundreds of pastries for a handful of customers. The glory days were receding, but the city was still beautiful.
The sun came out and I was met by my first guide Gabriel, a passionate university professor aged just 28. He bounded across town, sleeves rolled up to do battle with the past, the Michael J. Fox of history.
And history is alive in Buenos Aires. The central square, Plaza de Mayo, reverberated with loudhailers as political demonstrators drummed. Banners of Che Guevara flapped in the hot afternoon.
'They are the piqueteros, the unemployed. We have suddenly 20 per cent unemployment and no unemployment benefit in Argentina,' Gabriel said passionately.
Piqueteros carrying fenceposts waited on the sidelines with scarves wrapped round their faces to thwart police cameras. I looked and realised many of them were women. Never date a woman with a fencepost.
I saw the presidential building Casa de Gobierno, nicknamed Casa Rosada or Pink House. There was the famous balcony where Madonna sang Don't Cry For Me Argentina in Evita before moving to England to marry Guy Ritchie.
Having learned my history from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tintin books, I was lucky to have Gabriel around, if only because Tintin didn't do Buenos Aires.
'The story of Eva Peron and her husband is like a thriller,' said Gabriel. 'See those holes?' The walls were pock-marked with mortar fire. 'Peron's own army tried to assassinate him in the middle of the night.'
Travel guide: South America
Holy times in Antigua
I trawled through the streets of Antigua, Guatemala, looking for a hotel room just before Good Friday, writes Teletext viewer Dee Anand, of London.
It was a seemingly impossible task. Holy Week, or Semana Santa, is big in this part of the world. It's even bigger than Christmas.
Guatemala, in Central America, is a country of electric colour and finely held, long-cultivated faith and traditions. A country that has come through the darkest of histories with colour and smiles and a life and a verve that has been impossible to wrench from it - despite the countless attempts that continue to this day.
It has the noise, outrageous costumes, slack timekeeping, sunshine, lived-in faces and strapped-on children of a country with more of an indigenous population than those around it and more of a complex, put-upon past relating to them.
But it is not the suffering you feel straight away, it is the comfort of being in a place that retains the character it has taken generations to develop, despite a centuries old wrestling match.
Antigua is in the south of the country, just 40 minutes or so in a minibus from Guatemala City. It was the capital before it was ravaged by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but it is now a relaxed old colonial city with cobbled streets running between the grid system that should make it easy to navigate.
I of course prefer the system where you are told to turn left at the Mayan, right at the tree that smiles like the moon, straight on at the laughing child and opposite the man with a face like a fish. But they use that in the mountains. Here, I was hopelessly lost most of the time.
It is a city of whitewashed and pastel buildings, infused with noisy, bumpy tuk-tuks, the ruins of old churches, a big central square with a wedding cake cathedral and anything you want within walking distance.
It is also surrounded by three volcanoes which have caused it a problem or two in the past. One of them still active, with lava bubbling along the paths. It's a real tourist attraction.
And it was here that several reputable guidebooks and several less reputable locals had unequivocally stated was "the best place in the world" to be for the Semana Santa celebrations.
Travel guide: South America
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| | | | Godlike Bob
Many of the local population are black, the descendants of African slaves, and they feel a ferocious affinity with the West Indies further north, an affinity that the West Indians, as far as I know, are completely unaware of. Everybody, but everybody, wears a Bob Marley T-shirt. The man is almost a god to the Salvadoreans.
The Brazilians certainly share the Caribbeans' laissez faire attitude. We had booked a rental car for a day through Avis back in London, but of course it never turned up at our hotel.
We rang the local Avis office. They told us to pick it up from another Avis in the suburbs. When we got there, there was no car. 'It's at the airport. We'll drive you there right away,' a helpful woman explained.
A mere hour and a half later, we bundled into her tiny hatchback along with the entire office staff and set off, sweating, for the airport, exhaust scraping noisily along the road.
After a long, meandering tour of the coast, dropping staff at their respective homes, we became entangled in a huge traffic jam. Eventually, after another hour and a half, we inched our way into the airport and, following a further 30 minutes' form filling, secured our vehicle. We Try Harder, read the slogan on the Avis brochure. Harder than whom, exactly?
Beware of the altitude
The nearest city to Machu Picchu is Cuzco, once capital of the Inca empire. A rickety, narrow-gauge train runs between them through the Sacred Valley of the Rio Urubamba, past fields of beans, bananas and sugar cane.
We chose this lazy route to Machu Picchu, a day-return from Cuzco, taking in the valley's astonishing scenery.
Hardier travellers walk the Inca Trail, bivouacking overnight and climbing the sacred mountain at dawn. The helicopter service is a quicker, softer option than both.
Cuzco has a handsome square, Plaza de Armas, where you can drink coffee on a balcony - or, better than Peruvian coffee, which is generally poor, a glass of piscou sour, a bittersweet local aperitif.
There are some splendid hotels, including the Libertador, where we stayed, or the Monasterio, as well as cheaper rooms for as little as a few pounds a night. The streets in the centre are safe to walk in the evening, though tourists are warned about pickpockets, and pedlars and shoe cleaners can be a pest.
Visitors need to beware of the altitude - 12,000ft in Cuzco, and only 1,000ft less at Machu Picchu. The initial effect is like jet-lag, making you feel generally unwell.
It is galling to see old men carrying heavy packs on their backs despite these conditions. Coca tea, freely available, helps to counter altitude sickness.
Machu Picchu has to be the centre-piece of any visit to Peru, but there are many other regions and natural parks to explore, such as Trujillo or the Amazon jungle, the desert coast, the Andes, Arequipa or Lake Titicaca.
Above Cuzco, the fortress at Sacsayhuaman displays the Incas' superlative skill as builders. They may not have developed a written language or even discovered the wheel - but boy, could they build walls.
Giant blocks of granite, weighing hundreds of tons and looking a bit like Henry Moore sculptures, were tongued and grooved to create structures that kept out the elements, including earthquakes.
Rhubarb-coloured rock
Pillows of cloud rested on the high peaks ahead. Suddenly we were in the mountains, plunged into a gorge of rhubarb-coloured rock. An angry brown river, the Urubamba, raced beside us.
Two hours after leaving Cuzco we entered the Sacred Valley of the Incas. The hills were now huge, their slopes, shrink-wrapped in green serge, so steep that extraneous rock, plants and people have been tipped off. We are insects at their feet.
The track dropped into glossy equatorial forest. Wisps of steamy cloud trailed across the summits. The mountains closed in behind us. It felt as if we had reached their heart and penetrated a secret sanctum, which we had.
Machu Picchu, the Greta Garbo of archaeological sites, lies 1,300ft above the train station. Fernando explained: 'Forty per cent of everything you are told about Machu Picchu is fact. The rest is guesswork.'
Built on Machu and Huayna Picchu (Old and Young Mountain), it resembles an estate of executive homes just beyond the foundation-stage.
There are 216 buildings - temples, palaces and houses. But why it is there, what it was for and why it was suddenly abandoned remain a mystery.
For 400 years it was buried in the jungle until, in 1911, American archaeologist Hiram Bingham was led to it by a local farmer. No one questions its importance to the Incas.
Eight tracks converge on it and the masonry is especially fine - a clue to its status. I found myself taking photographs of stones and their joints in awe - at the massive temple of Sacsayhuaman near Cuzco, one stone weighs almost 130 tons; at Machu Picchu another has 32 facets.
I stayed the night in the Sanctuary Lodge, a far-from-spartan hotel at the entrance to the site.
When the train returns to Cuzco in the afternoon you have Machu Picchu almost to yourself. I should like to say that when the ruins are deserted the spirits of the Incas return.
For the man who spread-eagled himself against a wall to absorb its 'energy' they may have done. For me their mystery merely deepens.
Gliding above the hummingbirds
The ride was constructed with minimal impact on the rain forest, partly because Sandinista helicopters helped lower the 12 supporting towers into the forest (rather than have them hauled in by land) when, without an army, Costa Rica wasn't able to do the job.
Each basket holds five visitors and a naturalist for the 45-minute journey over the tree tops, and although wildlife cannot be guaranteed - 'We're not in a zoo,' said our guide, Michel Aranda - there's still plenty to enthral the 350 visitors a day who arrive in peak season.
As raindrops muster on plants the size of a large potting shed, we watch, attentively, for the eyelash viper - so named because, if you do spot one, it'll be at that level, lying in wait for hummingbirds.
On this occasion we're unlucky. Instead, as we glide gently by, Michel points out a Hot Lips plant (Psychotria elata) - its bright red colour attracting pollinators.
'The rain forest is like a library,' whispers Michel. 'There's a lot of information here but we don't know how to read it. It's also a giant natural pharmacy - but we're not always sure how to dispense its palliatives.
Take the Bauhinia tree - its seeds and bark are useful for kidney problems - and there's probably lots of natural variations on Viagra in here!' Michel chuckles. Now that could be a big boost to tourism . . .
One animal we probably won't see is a wild cat because they can smell us, says Michel, so the only way to spot them is to disguise yourself.
'For three days you must drink water only from the river, and eat leaves, then you smell like nature and they won't detect you,' he explains. True, we wanted to see a mountain lion. Just not that badly.
Granite core of jagged peaks
They were looking for ostriches and guanocos, a type of llama which still grazes the park's open steppes. And as they approached the mountain range, the three dominant towers of the Paine Massif appeared to the Tehuelches to soar upwards in a seamless continuation of the twilight sky - hence the word 'blueish'.
The Paine Massif is part of the Andes but isolated from it, a 12 million-year-old independent geological formation created by the upward thrusting of the sedimentary layers of the Earth's crust.
Eroded by ice, wind and rain, what remains is a fantastic granite core of jagged peaks, towers and pinnacles with names such as the Shark's Fin, and the Horns or Cuervos del Paine.
The latter is perhaps the most famous of the park's panoramas, but it is the Torres, the three polished granite towers, that lure adventurous travellers. The seven-mile trek to their base is described as one of the most challenging in the park or, in the careful language of the hotel literature: 'This exploration demands an important degree of physical effort.'
Well, yes it did. An hour-long climb up a muddy slope had everyone gasping for breath, shedding clothes despite the chilly spring morning and gulping from their water bottles.
But the ramble through a soggy beech forest above a rock-strewn river lulled us into a false sense of security - we had yet to negotiate the moraine.
This is the mass of rocks and sediment deposited long, long ago by a retreating glacier and its navigation was made more precarious by a thin layer of snow which made it difficult to judge the footholds.
Suddenly, following in the footsteps of our guide, Max, became a necessity as he expertly snaked his way up, from boulder to boulder, across the tiny rivulets and streams.
Safely at the top, it was an exhilarating experience to sit in the sun and contemplate the Towers from the enormous boulder where we ate lunch, protected from the rocks ricocheting off the surrounding slopes and the occasional avalanches which could be heard gathering speed on the far side of the Towers.
From dance to football
In modern Buenos Aires, the dance crosses all cultural, social and age divisions. At the feria de mataderos on the edge of town, a weekly market cum fair where gaucho cowboys show off their horse riding skills by galloping wildly through the streets, a bandstand had been erected beneath massive plane trees. The crowd that kicked up its heels to the music included stiff backed matrons in full length skirts, girls in trainers and jeans and gnarled veterans in braces and shirtsleeves.
Nightclubs that specialise in tango are known as malenga and at the Club Almagro, just off the 16 lane Avenida de 9 Julio, which carves its way through the city centre, the briefest of miniskirts and tightest of pants were being flaunted.
It was gratifying to see how many of the dazzlingly attractive young girls had brought their fathers. Or seemed to have done.
The professionals who demonstrate the art of tango gather in a few select cabaret houses and the standard is nowhere higher than at El Viejo Almacen, among the antique shops and outdoor cafes of the San Telmo district.
Football and tango are the twin passions of Argentina and, while relations may be regularly strained between our country and theirs on the soccer pitch, the dance floor is the place where all differences are automatically put aside.
And there is no more intimate or intoxicating introduction than the stylised seduction of the tango.
A secret shrine to Evita
Gabriel wrenched from his rucksack a photograph of President Juan Peron and his campaigning wife Evita riding down the very avenue we were on, arms waving to crowds that couldn't get enough of Peron's strange mixture of dictatorship and rights for descamisados - the shirtless workers'.
'What people don't know about this photo is that Eva was so weak from cancer that her arm had to be supported by a metal frame so she could wave to the people,' said Gabriel. The balcony where history was made looked smaller in real life, but then so does Madonna.
We got privileged access to the General Trabajo, a utilitarian former government building where Eva often worked until dawn establishing hospitals, campaigning for votes for women and singing La Isla Bonita in an unconvincing Spanish accent.
Inside was a secret shrine to Evita herself, where she looked down like a religious icon. Even in this glamorous portrait it was a face that appeared very tired and ill.
Next door was a green-tiled cubicle. It gave me the creeps. This is where the national sweetheart stood for two years after her death as experts embalmed her corpse.
'They did a perfect job. When Peron saw the body he thought she was alive,' said Gabriel, while I stared queasily at the drain in the floor.
Another passionate historian, Professor Mario, shook my hand so hard I felt a vein bulge in my temple.
'After the 1955 coup the miltary destroyed the hospitals simply because they had been built by the Perons,' he shouted, bouncing up and down. 'We hid Eva in this shower cubicle.'
I touched the clammy green tiles. In 1955 she should have been alive. No one deserves to die at 33, let alone someone who had built hospitals for the poor.
After his wife's death Peron went power-crazy and lost office. Eva's body was stolen and somehow smuggled into Hungary. I suppose Customs declaration forms don't specifically mention embalmed presidents' wives.
Faith and tradition
The city prepares for a year for Semana Santa and hotels are booked out months in advance. The Good Friday parades are famous the world over. Huge floats with statues of Jesus going to his death and Christian symbolism leave from the cathedral and various churches and spend the day and night walking virtually every street in the city.
Huge numbers of people carry and follow these floats with dirges playing, clashing with the sounds of food stalls and water sellers in the market squares. The floats eventually return to the churches they left from and the figures of Jesus, Mary and the disciples are taken down and placed in glass cases to be seen by a congregation the year round. In addition to that, it is a big old party with drunks sleeping wherever they fall.
The night before the Good Friday parades, people line the procession route on their hands and knees for a carpet-making ritual. These carpets are really intricate patterns of coloured sawdust, layered over each other in careful and specific design. Children and adults cut out stencils and sprinkle the sawdust with water so it doesn't fly away. And this is going on everywhere, every street, every corner, in every part of the city, more colour and more design. It's a latent contest as to who has the best carpet.
And the next day, parades of people dressed as Roman soldiers, followers of Jesus in death robes (a whole biblical fancy dress party in other words) carry the ominously swaying huge floats forward over the carpets that have been so dedicatedly created. Only for people to rush back and recreate them again and again during the day, for the next parade to ruffle them once more.
A whole city of people dress in clothes from a different place and a different time. From bright purple, silken robes with Arab headdress to full Roman centurion outfits (occasionally made even more weird when you see a Coke bottle tucked into their tunics, or a Roman on a mobile phone).
At times it can be quite moving, watching the seriousness with which they carry a float of Jesus bearing his cross into the bright yellow facade of the famous La Merced church. The scent of incense punching through that of frying chicken, tortillas and cigarette ash makes the air heavy.
It's these sights, sounds and smells, together with the pomp and ceremony and the ritual and the deliberation, that make the Semana Santa parades an unforgettable experience.
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Feeling inspired? Then book a flight.
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| | | | Steamy Rio
A few days into the New Year we flew up the coast to Olinda, another historical chocolate box lid adjoining the city Recife. Quieter, sleepier and slightly less well kept than Salvador, Olinda is famous for its carnival. When they're not fast asleep, Olinda's residents spend their days practising for carnival, and barely an hour seems to go by without some mini-procession of banging drums and lofty, swaying papier-mache people.
Olinda obviously isn't used to English visitors. A notice in our hotel helpfully advised us that 'the dairy rat of your room start ends at noon 12 o'clock', while the restaurant offered a tempting dish of 'Dull shrimp with greek rice and golf sauce'.
To the north of Olinda stretches Brazil's prettiest coastline, hundreds of miles of superb, palm-fringed, deserted beaches. We hired a car from Hertz - heading straight for the airport to pick it up this time and enjoyed a memorable day drinking white wine and eating fresh fish by the sea, our cafe table thudding faintly throughout to the sound of Bob Marley.
On the way back, we passed a huge forest fire and stopped to look, but only briefly, as the 50ft-high wall of flame was advancing rapidly towards the road.
And, of course, our car refused to restart. After 10 minutes of nervously turning the starter over and pumping the pedals in panic, the engine finally started; but the vehicle refused point-blank to exceed 7mph, and expired soon afterwards at an Esso station a few miles down the road. We telephoned the emergency number. 'Just stay put and we'll have another car there in a few hours,' said the man from Hertz. 'It's an emergency,' I said. 'Just as long as you stay put everything will be all right,' he replied.
Somehow, I didn't believe him. Instead, a delightful old couple gave us a lift back to Olinda, dropping us at the door of our hotel. Abandoning the car to nature, we felt, evened matters up with the rental companies.
Our next port of call was Rio de Janeiro itself, lush and steaming, its teeming population crowded up against its steep hillsides. The summer weather is a lot less reliable in Rio than further north: the sunlight playing about the head of the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, which stands guard above the city, was transformed by gluey clouds into a sticky halo.
Before long, black columns of cloud were sweeping across Ipanema Beach, depositing several feet of dark water into the narrow streets.
Beer good, champagne less so
The Incas were brilliant artisans and gardeners who used the angles of the sun to create towns that were self-sufficient in food all year and maintained a strict hierarchy in which nobles, priests and workers each had their own place.
In Lima itself, a pleasant city apart from the shanty towns on the mountain slopes all around, the main action is at the colonial-style Plaza Mayor, skirted by the cathedral and the Presidential Palace, where riot troops with tanks are on constant alert in the streets. Five blocks away, reached via the main shopping area, the Jiron de la Union, is Plaza San Martin, where revolutionary pamphlets were being handed out.
The National Museum, and the Gold Museum in Lima, show the exquisitely crafted jewellery and robes that the Spaniards failed to loot.
The district of Miraflores is Lima's entertainment centre, with a bull-ring, nightclubs, and some elegant villas. We stayed on the outskirts, at the well-appointed Country Club.
The sea area nearby has some excellent fish restaurants and the coastal resort of Barranco is just a few miles away. Food is cheap, but not outstanding in quality, apart from cuy (guinea pig), palta rellena (avocados filled with fish or chicken) or ceviche (a mixture of marinated raw fish).
Cristal beer is good, but Peruvian champagne less so - a pity, since my partner and I wanted to celebrate an unforgettable engagement secured on the heights of Machu Picchu.
Travel facts The best time for an inland holiday is May to September; January for the seaside. KLM flies from Heathrow to Lima, via Amsterdam. Details on 0870 507 4074. Bales Worldwide offers packages to Peru, details on 0870 241 3208.
Outcrops of rock
Taking a flight south to Arequipa, I drove into the Andes foothills. It took six hours to reach Chivay at the centre of the Colca Valley.
After fields of onions and potatoes and flocks of llamas, the road becomes a track edging up a mountain with apocalyptic drops to a head-throbbing 14,000ft.
A local palliative for altitude sickness is coca, a stimulant which fuelled Inca rituals and the basic constituent of cocaine.
The leaves were sold by the sackful in Chivay market. 'Try some,' suggested my guide, Lizzie. I took a small handful and folded a pinch of mysterious black ash in them.
'It makes the coca more effective,' Lizzie explained. I began chewing. It tasted of bad fish. The market women, sensing entertainment, gathered round.
The side of my tongue went numb as if I'd had an injection at the dentist. The women were giggling. I lost all feeling in my cheek. Some Inca figurines have hollow cheeks which is supposed to denote the taking of coca.
To the disappointment of my audience, I turned to spit it out, neither high nor hooked, but my headache had gone.
As a release from the Machu Picchu crowds, the Colca Valley is perfect.
This is a Peru of donkeys, cattle, charging buses and women in hats. Tall felt hats are worn by the Collahua people; white straw fedoras with rosettes and embroidered bands by the Cabanas.
Apparently an 18th Century Spanish king insisted everyone wore hats to signify respect to the authority of Spain and hats have been de rigueur ever since.
This is a land of colossal scenery. Outcrops of rock on the valley floor are 1,000ft escarpments, sharp mountains retreating in hazy ridges are five miles away.
Blended to suit all tastes
But there was to be an unexpected surprise; an eyelash viper curled up near the path like a flecked liquorice spiral, and a golden orb spider that had spun its web above a picnic table, waiting for its own snack - a flailing fly - to exhaust itself in the trap.
The orb's web is yet another tiny, but magnificent, Costa Rican wonder.
The country has cast its own net to include many others - natural or otherwise.
To sample a few, a guided tour of the country is the best option, especially if time is limited.
But you might want to pack a small cushion for any minibus journey - the country's roads sport more holes than a Costa Rican hammock.
At least, though, the rough terrain helps keep coach convoys at bay in the more unspoiled mountain areas.
This isn't a cheap place, either, compared with other Latin American countries (expect to pay £15 a head for a decent meal), but the rewards are worth it.
For a country famed for its outstanding coffee, Costa Rica is a little-known blend suited to all tastes.
365 days of exploration
The physical rigours of the day made us appreciate comfort - and the Hotel Explora en Patagonia did not disappoint. It is one of a handful of residences in the Torres del Paine National Park - which lies about 240 miles from the regional capital, Punta Arenas (a four-hour flight south from Santiago) - but the most luxurious by far.
Situated on the shore of the Lago Pehoe, beside a waterfall, it looks more like a boathouse than one of South America's very best hotels.
Yet it offers a clever blend of luxury and informal comfort, from the exquisite food and wine to the open fires and deep sofas in the lobby with its lake and mountain views.
Even our bathrooms had a little window positioned so you could lie back in your bath and savour the sight of the snowy Cuervos del Paine by moonlight.
Most importantly, the hotel offers a team of 10 guides (all of whom speak excellent English) and a choice of eight 'explorations' daily.
These range from gentle hikes of a couple of hours' duration to wildlife safaris by four-wheel drive, pony trekking and longer or more demanding walks and climbs.
Claims of '365 days of exploration' stem from the park's temperate climate (it is close to the sea), and the Southern spring (September to November) and autumn (March to May) are the best times to avoid crowds of holiday-making Chileans.
Locals say that 'four seasons in one day' is the most accurate description of the climate and during our four days there we had rain, sleet, snow and brilliant sunshine.
What is true is that the weather is not extreme and with the right gear there is nothing to stop you from experiencing the glories of the Torres del Paine.
And if your boots actually fit, you might even get to keep your toenails, too.
TRAVEL FACTS:
Details from Roxton Bailey Robinson Worldwide on 01488 689 700 or visit the website at http://www.rbrww.com
The biggest Beatlemaniac
That night I ambled through the theatre district, which was doing big business. I don't speak Spanish, but the general theme of the shows seemed to be 'Give Back My Suspender Belt, Reverend!'
If possible, visit the Cavern Club Buenos Aires. The excitable owner Rodolfo Vazquez is the biggest Beatlemaniac in the world and is featured in the Guinness Book Of Records for his 5,612-item memorabilia collection that includes a piece of Hamburg's Star Club.
Rodolfo had the wide eyes of the true believer. I knew how to send him into moral panic. I asked him to name his favourite: John, Paul, George or Ringo?
'My favourite Beatle?' A riot broke out on his face. His eyebrows fled each other. 'As an ideological leader, John,' he said, then looked instantly guilty. 'But as a musician, Paul.'
What about Paul's appalling film Give My Regards To Broad Street?
But boy, was he hooked. He'd even brought over Pete Best, the group's original drummer who was replaced by Ringo. 'He's a great guy, but he could never have been a Beatle.' he said. 'He doesn't have the magic of Ringo.'
Sadly, much of Rodolfo's collection is at his ex-wife's house. That's ex. Who could compete with the magic of Ringo?
Next morning I decided to grab the bull by the horns and see if some of the passion of South America would rub off on me. I headed towards the district of San Telmo for tango lessons. According to Gabriel, this quaint area with its backstreet bars used to be known as the City of Sin, with 30,000 ladies of the night.
Tango was developed as a dance in brothel waiting rooms to keep the clients from wandering off. That explains the close physical contact, but not the clumpy shoes. Perhaps they were for clients who didn't tip.
I was worried that, as in Britain, a dance class might be a front for an unwashed physics teachers' singles night, but in Buenos Aires cool people with partners turned up.
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| | | | Paradise on earth
We hired another car (from a local firm, this time), crawled out of the flood waters and fled south. Our destination, the town of Parati, was four hours' drive down the coast.
This time the hire car did extremely well. It expired only 10 miles short of Parati. After a journey involving several turnoffs, another charming local family ferried us the rest of the way.
Parati, when we finally got there, proved to be the cherry on the elaborately iced Brazilian cake. Could there be a more idyllic little place, a more immaculate 18th Century smugglers' hamlet with lovelier colourful wooden shutters, swinging inn-signs, rustic donkey carts and wonky, fat cobblestones?
It was hard to believe it wasn't a film set. And all set in a bay of 65 tiny wooded islands, with more than 300 secluded beaches.
Parati is not exactly a secret in Brazil. No less a pioneer than Amerigo Vespucci called it 'a Paradise on earth'. It has some of the best hotels and restaurants in the country, frequented by the likes of Tom Cruise and Mick Jagger. Our own hotel, the Pousada Pardeiro, occupied an entire block: beautiful spacious rooms, furnished with 200 year old antiques, surrounded a verdant courtyard amply stocked with toucans and tame marmosets.
So if anyone ever suggests a holiday among the cottages and country lanes of Devon and Dorset, turn them down. Explain that you can't face the graffiti, the crime, the vandalism and the gangs of local louts throwing their weight around. No, you must tell them: I'm going to quaint, genteel Brazil this year.
Although if you do go there, you might care to pack, according to musical taste, a pair of ear muffs.
Best time to visit: The rainy season is from January to April in the north, April to July in the north east and November to March in the Rio/Sao Paulo area. April to June and August to November are recommended as the best times to go to most parts of the country.
Mid-December to February is the national holiday season, so hotels, planes and buses may be heavily booked.
Safety: The Foreign Office advises that there is a high crime rate in major cities, particularly in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Taxis and the metro are much safer than buses or trams. In both cities avoid the old central area after dark.
Enormous vultures
Much of the landscape was man-made in the 11th and 12th Centuries, 400 years before the Incas. Plateaux, mottled green with agriculture, have been levelled as if with a plasterer's float and hillsides have been cut into terraces.
The Spanish established 14 towns along the valley, enriched from the proceeds of silver mines, each with a plaza and church.
In the centre of the valley the Colca Canyon plunges 4,000ft as if the ground has been opened with a scalpel. When you look over the rim you expect to see exposed a vital organ of the Earth instead of the tiny, cappuccino-coloured river shredding itself in rapids.
The canyon is more than 60 miles long and at one point deeper than the Grand Canyon. The most spectacular view is at a point called the Cross of the Condor.
It is well named. On the morning I was there, four of the enormous vultures were wheeling above the canyon, balancing on thermals without flexing their great, square wings. It was a hypnotic experience, watching birds with 10ft wingspans swoop by so close you could see their heads turning.
Like the Incas, who made the bird the motif for much of what they built, I have looked a condor in the eye.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Cazenove & Loyd Expediciones (http://www.caz-loyd.com tel: 020 7384 2332) specialises in travel to South America.
The jungle trail
The tango seemed an odd mix of formal and racy, shins wrapping round thighs while faces stared stonily ahead. Like playing footsie at a funeral.
Teacher Pablo took my hand. I duly stepped on his toe.
'Watch me, not your feet!' he implored. 'Because your feet will always be there, but I may run.' Too right. With my heels I could have ended his career.
Next morning I flew through blue skies to the rich rainforest of Iguazu, crawling with howler monkeys, tapirs, ocelots, pumas, parrots and more than 500 species of birds. The jungle was so thick that as our plane dipped over trees I couldn't see any runway.
Perhaps they expected us to climb down vines.
Iguazu is famous for its impressive waterfalls on the Brazilian border, as seen in Roland Joffe's film The Mission.
The jungle trail has ' Danger: Jaguar' signs, but 'You'll be Lucky' might be more realistic. According to yet another guide called Gabriel: 'There is a problem with breeding jaguars as they don't feel the attraction to their partners when they have been in the same group for a long time.'
Great, just what the world needs; an endangered species with seven-year itch.
We walked along the top of the falls, just four feet from a family of coati-mundi, strange snouty beasts as though a mouse had got lucky with a badger.
Gabriel showed us mimosa bushes - which closed their leaves when stroked - pepper plants growing upwards and the dama de noches plant, which only blooms at night, filling the darkness with scent.
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| | | | Abseil through a waterfall
A butterfly with transparent wings like stained glass windows sat next to me. Above, the 'furious fig' or strangler fig throttled their host trees. I'd seen all this in Tintin, and would have liked a bit of Tintin-esque action, say, finding a talking Indian amulet followed by a short guerrilla kidnapping and home for tea.
We consumed jungle staples like vitamin-rich mat tea and delicious cheese bread made from tapioca.
Another big jungle product is yucca - a nasty houseplant in England is natural washing powder over here - and bamboo, which grows eight inches a day. I tried watching it grow but decided I preferred its urban neighbour, drying paint.
Things livened up when an adventure company, for reasons that were probably obvious to everyone else in my party, lashed me into a harness, hoiked me up a monster tree and told me to jump. I flew 50ft above the ground, just like Tarzan, only screaming 'Help'.
Then they asked me if I wanted to abseil through a waterfall. Lack of Spanish meant it was an offer I couldn't refuse. I'm glad - it was fantastic.
Next day I transferred to the ecological Yacutinga jungle lodge, for tourists who push their own hire cars to save petrol. This amazing candlelit jungle hideaway has an orchid nursery, romantic cabins and a catwalk where you can birdwatch nose-to-beak.
Our guide Rosendo was terrific to hang out with because he had been born again - not, mercifully, via churches and tambourines, but after almost dying on the operating table during a dramatic bout of peritonitis.
Now out of hospital, Rosendo was, unsurprisingly, one of the happiest people I've ever met. He showed me a scar I could put my fist in. He offered to let me test this, but I was worried it wouldn't come out again.
At night he led us into the cayman swamps, where boa constrictors drop out of trees for fun. He gleefully recounted tales of the pombero, a local ghost who comes out of the jungle to lasso women with his personal rope of human origin.
The pombero could have a career in working men's clubs if he ever makes it to Yorkshire.
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| | | | Real men with vigorous moustaches
We left Yacutinga by rowboat the next morning, drifting quietly upriver like the African Queen, though thankfully with more emphasis on kingfishers and less on malaria.
Last stop was an example of old Argentine glamour, a stay in an estancia, a weekend getaway in the vast green stretches of Argentinian pampas. Any South American aristocrat worth his beef herd used to have one of these.
El Ombu de Areco is in the heart of gaucho country. It was built for General Pablo Riccheri, who invented national service then went to the country-to sit in a clawfoot tub and laugh.
At night, this stunning colonial building was perfumed with honeysuckle. My room had a clawfoot tub, antique furniture and traditional gaucho's salamander stove.
Unfortunately the other guests were braying toffs and a madman who chased me round with his e-mail address. They say the English aristocracy take their elegance everywhere. That's as maybe, but they could start packing their nasal hair trimmers.
Come morning, we saddled up for gaucho riding. The gauchos were real men with vigorous moustaches, check shirts and breeches, the Village People of the pampas. We cantered across the broad countryside rounding up cattle, surprisingly easily - cows normally leg it when a horse approaches.
I will remember this ride for years, cantering across vast fields with birds of prey hurtling round us. I can't get closer than 50ft to a hawk in England, but in Argentina they don't bat an eyelid. A flock of green parrokeet settled right next to us.
Then, in broad daylight, tiny owls dive-bombed our dogs.
This was the life. Riding back to the ranch I felt like Bobby Ewing. The estancia's swimming pool looked inviting after a hot ride, and I RSVP'd.
After a swim, a bath in a clawfoot tub and a gigolo (all right, I lied about the clawfoot tub), we sat down in the garden to an asado, the Argentine national dish - dripping beef-flesh barbecue. I haven't had such a visceral day since Paul McCartney released Mull Of Kintyre.
The Argentines - passionate, political and mostly called Gabriel - definitely know how to live. It wasn't the Paris of the South after all, it was Dallas.
TRAVEL FACTS:
Trips Worldwide (0117 311 4403/info@tripsworldwide.co.uk and http://www.tripsworldwide.co.uk) offers tailor-made holidays to South America.
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