South America Travel

Maldonado used to be the place to stay if you wanted to avoid the outrageous prices in nearby Punta del Este. But then the Maldonado hoteliers cottoned on and jacked up all their prices. There are a couple of interesting museums in town, but Punta’s burgeoning hostel scene makes it a much better budget choice these days.

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This town is a surfer’s dream – out on a point, if there’s no swell on the left, it’ll be coming in on the right. Weekends in summer, the town often hosts free concerts down on the beach, making accommodation bookings essential.

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Land must be cheap in Fray Bentos – the whole town is dotted with big, leafy plazas. Most travelers are here on their way either to or from Uruguay, but if you’ve got a few hours to kill between buses, the town boasts a fascinating museum that’s well worth checking out.

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This is Uruguay’s playground (and also, to an extent, Brazil’s, Chile’s, Mexico’s, Spain’s etc) – a long stretch of beaches all the way from Montevideo to the Brazilian border offering something for everyone – surfers, party animals, nature freaks and family groups.

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Take some winding, cobbled streets, add an intriguing history and put them on a gorgeous point overlooking the Río de la Plata. What do you get? A major tourist attraction.

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A super-mellow little town with a lush central square, Carmelo’s streets slope down to its carefully restored waterfront. From here, boats leave for the most interesting (and cheapest) of the Argentine border crossings – a two-hour ride through the delta to the Buenos Aires suburb of Tigre.

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The interior is dominated by Kaieteur National Park. You may have been to Angel or Iguazú Falls, seen Niagara or not even be particularly interested in waterfalls; it doesn’t matter, go to Kaieteur Falls (www.kaieteurpark.gov.gy). Watching 30, 000 gallons of water per second be shot out over a 250m cliff (allegedly making this the highest single-drop falls in the world) in the middle of a misty, ancient jungle without another tourist in sight is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The brave (or crazy) can actually stand at the top of the falls and gaze over the precipice. Depending on the season, the falls are from 76m to 122m wide. Swifts nest under the falls’ overhang and dart in and out of the waters around sunset each night. On the walk to the falls look for scarlet red cock-of-the-rock birds and miniscule golden frogs, an incredible, rare critter that can be used to produce a voodoo poison 160, 000 times more potent than cocaine.

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Suriname, the self-proclaimed ‘beating heart of the Amazon,’ is just that: a warm, dense convergence of rivers that thumps with the lively rhythm of ethnic diversity. From Paramaribo, the country’s effervescent Dutch-colonial capital, to the fathomless jungles of the interior, smiling descendants of escaped African slaves, Dutch and British colonialists, Indian, Indonesian and Chinese indentured laborers and Amerindians offer a genuine welcome to their tiny country. You get the best of both worlds here: a city that’s chock-full of restaurants, shopping venues and night spots and an untamed jungle utterly away from the things of man. It’s not easy to get around this river-heavy, forest-dense country and the mix of languages can make it hard to communicate, sometimes even for Dutch speakers. Don’t forget that a meeting of culinary traditions means the food here is as spicy and lush as the country itself.

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St Laurent is a dozy place with some of the finest colonial architecture in the country and, even 60 years after the penitentiary’s closure, is dominated by penal buildings and the ghosts of its prisoners. Along the banks of the Fleuve Maroni (Marowijne River), bordering Suriname, St Laurent is also a place to take a river trip to Maroon and Amerindian settlements.

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Amsterdam meets the Wild West in Paramaribo, the most vivacious and striking capital in the Guianas. Black and white colonial Dutch buildings line grassy squares, wafts of spices escape from Indian roti shops and mingle with car exhaust, Maroon artists sell colorful paintings outside somber Dutch forts. Locally known as ‘Parbo,’ the inhabitants are proud of their multi-ethnicity and the fact that they live in a city where mosques and synagogues play happy neighbors. In 2002 the historical inner city was listed as a Unesco World Heritage site.

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