With the opening of several dramatic new hotels in and around the small, strikingly beautiful Atlantic beach town of Jose Ignacio, Uruguay has emerged as a discreetly glamorous destination.
Driving north from Estancia Vik Jose Ignacio, it was a pleasure to putter through the Uruguayan countryside, where rolling pastures are dotted with lean horses and piebald cows and punctuated by stands of oak and eucalyptus trees.
Many visitors to Uruguay skip Montevideo, perhaps because of its lack of quality hotels or because they're in a hurry to get to the beach. This is a mistake. Montevideo (meaning "I see a hill") is a polite, attractive city with some superb architecture and excellent restaurants; it easily warrants a night or two on either side of a beach holiday.
For anyone who shares my preference for intimate hotels, the 10-suite Algodon Mansion in Buenos Aires' chic and leafy Recoleta neighborhood--the equivalent of Manhattan's Upper East Side--is a fine base from which to explore the sprawling Argentine capital, even if the service could use a little fine-tuning.
When you tell people you plan to tour Nicaragua, be prepared for the inevitable: "Really? Well, be careful." Many of us associate the country more with Contras and Sandinistas than ecolodges and beaches. These unfortunate connotations persist even though the civil war ended 22 years ago.
In spite of being repeatedly sacked and set alight over the centuries, Granada retains its colorful colonial charms. Its compact center, laid out in an approximate grid, invites exploration on foot. Some guidebooks include both the scruffy lakefront and the Fortaleza La Polvora in one walking tour -- a ridiculous amount of ground to cover, particularly since the fortaleza (fortress) proves to be even less dazzling than the lakefront. I suggest a more sensible itinerary, covering my favorite sights in the old heart of the city.
The world's most impressive wildlife spectacle is the congregation of the wildebeest in the southern section of Tanzania's Serengeti National Park from January to March each year.
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