8 essays filed from South America.
Cartagena, Colombia
Cartagena's old walled city is one of the most architecturally complete colonial-era Spanish ports in the Americas. The Caribbean climate, the food, and the post-conflict tourism boom have made it a Latin American travel staple.
June 4, 2023
Uyuni, Bolivia
The Salar de Uyuni is a 10,500-square-kilometre salt flat at 3,650 m altitude in southwest Bolivia. In dry season it is a hexagonally-cracked white plain extending to the horizon; in wet season, a thin layer of water turns it into the largest mirror on earth.
March 4, 2023
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Buenos Aires runs on a particular timetable: lunch at two, drinks at nine, dinner at eleven, the milonga at one in the morning, breakfast back at the apartment as the sun comes up over the Río de la Plata. Adjust your sleep schedule before you arrive.
January 18, 2023
El Chaltén, Argentina / Chile
Patagonia is, at its heart, the experience of being very small in a very large landscape. The wind shapes everything. The granite spires rise on a planetary scale. The travel logistics are demanding. The reward is one of the last genuinely big-empty regions left on earth.
November 19, 2022
Aguas Calientes, Peru
Machu Picchu is a place that survives its reputation almost entirely. The site is genuinely astonishing — a complete Inca city built on a vertical Andean ridge at 2,400 m, abandoned to the cloud forest for centuries, rediscovered in 1911. The trick is choosing how to arrive.
June 12, 2022
Cusco, Peru
Cusco is where the Spanish built their colonial churches and palaces directly on top of Inca stone foundations — sometimes literally using the same walls. The city at 3400 m is the gateway to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley, but it deserves three or four days on its own merits.
June 8, 2022
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rio is one of the most dramatically sited cities on earth — granite peaks rising from the sea, beaches that stretch across the city's southern edge, forest-clad hills that run almost to the centre. The city's energy is famous and real; the trick is to find the slower-walking version of it.
February 26, 2022
Puerto Ayora, Ecuador
The Galápagos Islands are the closest thing left on earth to an undisturbed wildlife laboratory — animals that have no significant fear of humans because, for most of their evolutionary history, they had no humans to fear. The experience is genuinely irreplaceable.
May 15, 2021