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Desert flamingos in sunset lagoons: Chile’s new kind of wonderful
Chile’s breathtaking surprises, Costa Rica’s wildlife, the world’s smallest monkey in Ecuador – and more: Central & South America’s travel hits from Good Weekend’s 2023 Dream Destinations issue.
Flamingos dine in one of the Atacama Desert’s salty lagoons.Credit: Getty Images
Watching flamingos at sunset in the Atacama Desert, Chile
WHY: In one of the driest places on earth, the chance to watch these iconic birds feed at sunset is a new kind of wonderful.
THE EXPERIENCE: The Atacama Desert is reportedly the driest non-polar desert in the world, full of salt (which was once mined here), lithium (which still is, to a small extent) and copper (the region is still host to the world’s largest open copper mine). Tourism is the dominant industry today, thanks to luxury digs like the 32-suite, five-star Tierra Atacama Hotel & Spa, 2400 metres above sea level in the tiny town of San Pedro de Atacama. Tierra is part of a Chilean group bought last year by the Australian-founded Baillie Lodges.
A sunset flamingos tour is a must: walk along paths crunchy with salt to see these magnificent creatures dining in lagoons shallow enough to reflect the Andes back at you. On another day, ride a bike to more nearby lagoons, these ones for swimming. They are so salty your body floats, and you need to shower immediately after. Don’t miss, too, a walk through Moon Valley, an arid landscape of sand dunes and rocky escarpments that is, indeed, decidedly lunar.
IDEAL FOR: Desert devotees who like eco-driven luxury.
LIKE THIS? TRY: A trip to the remarkable Tatio Geyser Field, a 1.5-hour drive away, the third-largest geothermal field in the world. Katrina Strickland
Convening with wildlife in the Pantanal, Brazil
Macaws are one of more than 600 bird species residing in Brazil’s Pantanal.Credit: iStock
WHY: The world’s largest tropical wetland harbours an astonishing variety of wildlife.
THE EXPERIENCE: The Pantanal is a vast floodplain that covers about 200,000 square kilometres of western Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Why is it not better known? Because less than 10 per cent of it is public land. The rest is made up of privately owned farms, which use the fertile terrain for cattle. Then there’s the access issue: there are only two roads in and out and during the wet season (November to March), about 80 per cent of the Pantanal is underwater. Given these logistical obstacles, why bother? Estimates vary, but it’s thought that there are more than 600 bird species, 100-plus mammal species and between 80 and 180 different reptiles, depending on who’s doing the counting. Venture outside at dawn and you’ll be bombarded by a cacophony of squawks, tweets, shrieks and whoops from a list-ticking frenzy of parrots, macaws, toucans and tinamous. Other exotic drawcards include jaguars, anteaters, giant otters, caimans and capybaras – the world’s largest rodents.
IDEAL FOR: Birders and wildlife enthusiasts.
LIKE THIS? TRY: Brazil’s Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, north of Brasilia. Famous for its towering waterfalls, the park’s 240,000 hectares are home to wolves, vultures and giant armadillos. Rob McFarland
Traversing the Panama Canal, Panama
The Panama Canal. Credit: iStock
WHY: For a journey of technical – and wildlife – splendour on a famous nautical shortcut.
THE EXPERIENCE: Not only is this 80-kilometre-long passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific an audacious engineering achievement, but transiting through it is a mesmerising nine-hour process involving three sets of locks and an eccentric cast of rowboats, pilots and bell-ringing locomotives. Along the way, you’ll pass under several impressive bridges, including the Bridge of the Americas’ 344-metre span. See the canal-side prison where former dictator Manuel Noriega spent his final years and (if you’re lucky) spot crocodiles, capuchin monkeys and some of the country’s 1000-plus bird species.
In 2016, larger locks were unveiled to accommodate bigger vessels and it’s worth visiting the canal’s information centres to appreciate the bewildering complexity of the nine-year expansion. While the new locks are quicker and more efficient, they lack the theatre of the originals, so pick a ship that’s small enough to use the latter, such as Aurora Expeditions’ 132-passenger Greg Mortimer.
IDEAL FOR: Sailors, engineers and wildlife lovers.
LIKE THIS? TRY: The world’s second-most famous nautical shortcut, the 193-kilometre-long Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea via a channel through Egypt. Rob McFarland
Spotting animals in Veragua, Costa Rica
Journey through the treetops on a “Sky Gondola” with the Veragua Rainforest Eco-Adventure.
WHY: Two words – rainforest and sloths. There’s other stuff but, really, rainforest and sloths.
THE EXPERIENCE: The Veragua Rainforest Eco-Adventure is an hour’s drive from the Costa Rican port city of Puerto Limón, making it a popular shore excursion for cruise lines such as Seabourn. The 138-hectare park is a biodiversity hotspot set in the foothills of the Talamanca mountain range, where it also borders La Amistad International Park, the largest nature reserve in Central America. Here, if you’re lucky, you will encounter any of the 585 species of butterfly, 808 beetles, 68 amphibians, 78 reptiles, 478 birds and more than 100 mammals that live hereabouts. Or you might not; it’s not a zoo, after all.
But you might see howler monkeys, sloths, yellow-billed toucans and the surreal blur of hummingbirds darting between flowers in the park centre’s garden. A low-rise central hub of buildings contains a canteen, a souvenir shop, a snake vivarium and lecture rooms, but the hero here is the dripping, ripe green richness and warmth of the outdoors (with the notable exception of the lepidopterarium, which contains many hundreds of iridescent butterflies dancing to a tune only they can hear). Invest in a long-lens camera or binoculars.
IDEAL FOR: The rainforest-curious who don’t want to machete their way into the wilderness.
LIKE THIS? TRY: The Rainforest Awareness Rescue Education Centre in Iquitos, Peru. Learn about the Amazon rainforest and get up close with rescued baby manatees, sloths and other local wildlife. Keith Austin
Following in Gabo’s footsteps in Cartagena, Colombia
UNESCO World Heritage-listed Old Town, Cartagena. Credit: Alamy
WHY: Colombia’s most famous novelist studied and worked in this historic coastal stunner.
THE EXPERIENCE: It’s hard not to be seduced by this sultry gem on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Márquez (known widely as “Gabo”) certainly was. After moving there from Bogota in 1948 to study at the city’s university, he started his journalism career at a local paper and set one of his most celebrated works, Love in the Time of Cholera, in a fictional fusion of Cartagena and its coastal neighbour, Barranquilla. On a walking tour with local specialist Impulse Travel, you can visit some of the places that feature in the book, see Márquez’s family home and the former convent that contains his ashes. Along the way, be prepared to fall under the spell of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed Old Town, a beguiling maze of cobbled streets and shaded squares lined with pastel-hued mansions.
IDEAL FOR: Romantics and the literati.
LIKE THIS? TRY: Medellín, a one-hour flight south. Once known as the world’s most dangerous city, it has become a poster-child for innovation and civic planning. Real City Tours’ exploration of its notable attractions helps explain the turnaround. Rob McFarland
Searching for pygmy marmosets in the Ecuadorian Amazon
The pygmy marmoset, the world’s smallest monkey.Credit: Alamy
WHY: It’s one of the best places to see the world’s smallest monkey.
THE EXPERIENCE: Ecuador’s slice of the Amazon doesn’t get the same attention as Peru’s or Brazil’s, but it’s no less impressive. Sacha Lodge is a stunning property on a 2000-hectare private reserve that’s accessed by a two-hour boat and canoe journey up the Napo river. Birders flock here to see more than 600 different species, including kites, parakeets and caciques, which share the reserve with a Noah’s Ark of anteaters, sloths, bats, ocelots, frogs and snakes. But for many, the biggest drawcard is the range of primates, which includes mischievous troops of squirrel monkeys, clamorous mobs of howler monkeys and adorable, pocket-sized pygmy marmosets.
One of the lodge’s most striking features is a 275-metre-long canopy walk, suspended 36 metres above the forest floor. Other wildlife viewing options include nighttime kayak trips, hikes with local indigenous guides and pre-dawn excursions to platforms cradled high in giant kapok trees.
IDEAL FOR: Intrepid, early-rising nature lovers.
LIKE THIS? TRY: Visiting the Ecuadorian highlands to search for spectacled bears, South America’s only native bear, named because of its distinctive facial markings. Rob McFarland
Horse-riding across Northern Patagonia, Argentina
Experience Argentina on horseback, led by polo star Jakob von Plessen.
WHY: You haven’t truly seen Argentina until you’ve done this.
THE EXPERIENCE: No chaps are necessary, but after spending five nights in rustic timber cabins as you ride through the heart of Argentina’s picturesque Lake District, you might feel like you’ve earned a pair. You don’t have to be an expert horse-rider, but you also don’t want to be afraid of heights. Participants traverse 1000-metre-high volcanic ridgelines on sturdy local Criollo horses across 12,000 hectares of privately owned cattle station beside the country’s oldest national park, Nahuel Huapi.
As part of an 11-day itinerary run by Australia’s Classic Safari Company, Argentinian polo star Jakob von Plessen leads the way. There’s fishing for trout and evenings are spent around fire pits, eating meat barbecued on hot coals under a twilight that lasts until 10pm. You also spend a night at the property of a real-life gaucho (Argentinian cowboy), who prepares a meal for you.
IDEAL FOR: Adventure fiends and horse-fanciers.
LIKE THIS? TRY: Travelling among Africa’s wildest animals on a mobile safari: book a six- or eight-night horse-ride across Kenya’s Masai Mara. Craig Tansley
In association with Traveller. Thank you to Julietta Jameson, Jane Reddy and Anthony Dennis from team Traveller for their help on this issue.
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.