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In May 2019, my wife and I went on a tour of South America, with visits to Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina. It also included Patagonia, the part of Argentina that’s closest to the Antarctic.
We flew to Rio de Janeiro and stayed in a hotel near the famous Copacabana beach. The next morning, we went to the top of the Sugar Loaf mountain and saw a panoramic view of the city.
We explored the botanical gardens and visited the Tijuana Atlantic Forest, the largest urban forest in the world. Of course, no trip to Brazil would be complete without seeing the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue.
But the highlight of Brazil for us was the Iguazu National Park, a Unesco Heritage Site. We were taken to various vantage points at the park just so we could have a good view of the Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfall in the world.
Iguazu Falls is so huge that most of it actually spills into Argentina (although a sizeable part of Iguazu River is in Brazil). In fact, you get a better view of the natural wonder from the Argentina side, a fact that we discovered on our trip across the border the next day.
We were very impressed with the San Martin falls, the tallest one among Iguazu’s many tiers.
The next day, we flew to Lima, the capital of Peru for a two-night stay.
After our city tour of Lima, we went to the Larco Museum, which has the best collection of precious metals in Peru. We also went to Cusco, the old capital of the Inca Empire (13th to 15th century). Cusco is a Unesco World Heritage Site that has a rich mix of Incan and Colonial Spanish architecture. We opted for the full-day tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, along the river valley of Pisac.
We then proceeded to Ollentaytamboo and saw impressive cliff side ruins that were built by the Incas. It is the only ancient town that is still operating today.
We took a train to Agua Calientes to visit Machu Picchu, Peru’s most spectacular archaeological site. It is the Lost City of the Incas that was built in the 15th century. It was never discovered by the Spanish when they invaded the city, and was only stumbled upon by an American explorer in 1911. We spent hours climbing the various ruins.
We spent a night at Agua Calientes before returning to Cuzco by train. The next day we went on a tour of Sacsayhuaman, an important Inca site in Cuzco. We took a boat ride on Lake Titicaca and visited a tribal village.
After Peru, we flew to Santiago, the capital of Chile. There, we visited many old buildings and journeyed to the seaport of Valparaiso, one of Chile’s Unesco Heritage Sites.
I was delighted to find an Easter Island statue at Vina del Mar. Easter Island is a Chilean territory on a remote volcanic island in Polynesia. It is famous for the nearly 900 monumental statues called moai, said to be created by inhabitants during the 13th to 16th centuries. Now I no longer need to fly 3,000km from Chile to the island to see the statues!
After that, we flew to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, where we saw and were fascinated with Eva Peron’s final resting place.
We went to El Calafate to prepare for our Patagonia excursion, which began early the next day. We sailed on Lake Argentino through the Spegazzini to the group of icebergs located about 20km from the Upsala glacier. The visual feast was fantastic as we saw huge icebergs in various shapes and colours.
We flew back to Buenos Aires and was treated to a sensuous tango show and delicious dinner, which was perfect as the last meal of our exciting holiday.
The views expressed are entirely the reader’s own.
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