Here are the available villas for rental in South America.

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. ... more

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. ... more

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. ... more

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. ... more

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. ... more