View over Caracas from the Avila Mountain

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Latin America was always a storehouse of delights and, despite some recent emergencies, the region gloriously remains so to this day—richer, more self-confident and more open than ever before in its history. As an interested visitor you don’t have to master Spanish (or Portuguese) irregular verbs. Most of the region’s licensed murderers, torturers and terrorists have now fled—though a futile drug war does persist in Mexico and Central America.

Latin America is a region of natural extremes. Stand at the broad mouth of the Amazon—where there is an island the size of Switzerland between the south and the north banks—and you will see a greater amount of water in one day than passes under Tower Bridge in a year. Flying in to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, one lands in an airport 4068m above sea level, with flight attendants hovering with oxygen