South America

Travel through South America by country:

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

Travel through South America by popular city:

Bogota, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro

Travel through South America by popular things to do:

Adventures in the Amazon, Falkland Islands, Iguazu Falls, Tierra del Fuego

Inca Trail? Not this summer.

by Jeremy Kressmann on

World travelers just can’t get enough of Peru’s famous Inca Trail. But has the Inca Trail had enough of them? It may come as surprise to anyone still planning summer travel to Peru, but the world-famous path to Machu Picchu is completely sold out for the 2008 summer travel season, with the next available opening in September 2008.

As veteran Peru trekkers might know, the Peruvian government began imposing restrictions in 2005 on the number of hikers who could take the path each day to no more than 500. Couple this with the insane popularity of Machu Picchu on globetrotter “must-see” lists and increasingly affordable airfare deals and you have a serious supply and demand problem on your hands. While this quota is helping to preserve the impact of human visitors on this priceless cultural artifact, it’s certainly frustrating news for anyone planning their trip to Peru around a stopover at the site.

If it turns out the big, bad Peruvian government has thwarted your travel plans this summer, don’t despair just yet. As this article article points out, there are a few alternative routes to the famed Inca Trail including the Salkantay Trail, which also climaxes at Machu Picchu, along with the scenic Lares Valley and the spectacular Colca Canyon.

And if you’re still dead set on that Inca Trail trek? Give it another try in the off-season. You might even have that million-dollar view at the top all to yourself.

GADLING TAKE 5: Week of 4-18-2008

by Catherine Bodry on

I suppose this week will go down in travel-writing history as the week of the TKA. In case you’ve been at the South Pole all week, that would be the Thomas Kohnstamm affair. The whole fiasco prompted all stages of grief in the travel-writing world: shock, denial, anger, despair, and, finally, acceptance — sort of. Aaron, Jeffrey and Justin covered the scandal, and if you’d like a play-by-play, read the following posts:

Other stuff happened this week, too. Here are a few examples:

Hope you have a scandal-free weekend.

New luxury train: The Great Brazil Express

by Abha Malpani on

You know a service is for rich Western tourists when: in a non-English speaking country the name of the service is in English, the website is only in English and prices start at $3,500. Their video-promo has nice imagery but is full of clichés and sounds like a monologue for retards. Welcome to Brazil’s first luxury train service: The Great Brazil Express.

The website still lacks information, but we know that its first 7-day tour begins on April 23: from Curitiba (capital of Brazilian state

Drug lord’s personal items on sale in Brazil

by Iva Skoch on

Talk about a fun auction!

Brazilians have been flocking to an auction of goods confiscated from Colombian drug baron Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, who was arrested in Sao Paulo last year and given a 30-year sentence last week. According to BBC, about 5000 people turned up for Tuesday’s opening and 80% of the items had been sold within three hours.

As far as I know, no drugs were for sale, although that would undoubtedly make the auction all the more popular. Three thousand items were on display, including 12 televisions. Clothes on sale included Abadia’s underpants, the quickest items to sell after his capture half-naked by Brazilian police in August 2007.

Underpants? People are weird.

Outbreak of dengue hits Brazil

by Iva Skoch on

Seriously, are mosquitoes good for anything? I am a believer in the ecosystem and all that, but I could easily support a plan in which mosquitoes would be replaced with some nicer insects.

CNN reports today that Brazil has reported more than 55,000 cases of dengue, which can be a deadly mosquito-borne disease, in the past four months. Dengue has killed 67 people this year in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state. Slightly less than half of the deaths were children under the age of 13.

We don’t know whether the deaths were attributed to the more severe form of dengue, dengue hemorrhagic fever, which can be fatal if unrecognized and not properly treated. With treatment, fatalities due to dengue hemorrhagic fever, which is characterized by abnormal internal or external bleeding, can be less than 1 percent.

Dengue fever, the more common form of dengue, is apparently caused by four closely related viruses. All of them are carried by infected mosquitoes, mainly the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, also known as yellow fever mosquito. Mosquitoes carrying dengue viruses breed in stored, exposed water, including places as shallow as jars, discarded bottles and plant saucers. There are 10 million cases of dengue around the world each year, so this is actually quite common.

Prevention? You have heard it a million times. Wear long sleeves, loose, baggy pants and make sure you’re using good insect repellent. Symptoms? High fever, severe headache, backache, joint pains and eye pain, nausea, vomiting and a rash.

Mosquitoes suck.