Hispanic Heritage Month

Latin American Secret Places

Argentina

Palermo Soho is the biggest neighborhood in the city of Buenos Aires, noted for its elegant middle class and upper middle class houses and its streets full of trees. It's filled with cafeterias, houses specially designed, places to enjoy alternative theatre and a huge variety of restaurants that inject lots of vitality to the neighborhood. This zone is also identified as

Palermo Hollywood, because it's frequented by local TV and movie personalities.

Bolivia

Salar de Uyuni or Tunupa is the biggest salt desert of the world. It's located around 11, 900 feet high in Potosí, in the Bolivian highlands, near the Andes range. The area it now occupies was covered around 40,000 years ago by the Ballivian Lake. It's estimated that this place holds around 64 billion tons of salt and annually some 25,000 tons are extracted.

Chile

Salto del Petrohué is located in the Llanquihue province, inside the Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park. It's one of the most spectacular landscapes in the south of the country. The torrent of River Petrohué runs among curiously formed geological stones, giving way to spectacular waterfalls, with the Osorno volcano in the background. Petrohué is a native word that means "place of smoke signals", maybe because of the water steam that's lifted by the Petrohué.

Colombia

San Agustín is located in the foothill of the Colombian 'macizo', surrounded by the rivers Magdalena, Sombrerillos and Naranjos. In 1995, it was declared Historical and Cultural Heritage to the Humanity by the UNESCO. On the outskirts of San Agustín, you can find an Archaeological Park. Also, you can find beautiful places like the Magdalena Lagoon, where the Patria River, the Santiago and Ox Lagoon and the Magdalena Canyon are born.

Costa Rica

Cahuita is a tiny city located 26 miles south of Puerto Limón, in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Its beach is beautiful, ideal for swimming or snorkeling. The Cahuita National Park is one of Costa Rica's most visited and it surrounds the city from the south. It's a rest and work zone for Jamaican immigrants, and since the '70s it's been transformed into a natural protection area that combines tourism and ecology in an enviable way.

Cuba

Trinidad is located in the south central part of Cuba, looking at the Caribbean Sea, sitting below the mountains of Guamuhuaya, from the province of Sancti Spíritus. This city-museum stands frozen in time, with hotels, restaurants, businesses and other modern life commodities that have taken over without ruining its fame as an authentic architectonical jewel. In 1998, Trinidad and the "Valle de Los Ingenios" were declared by the UNESCO Heritage to Humanity.

El Salvador

Tazumal is an archaeological zone in El Salvador located in the heart of Chalchuapa, in Santa Ana, about 49 miles to the west of the capital. This area is surrounded by a series of structures that constituted an important part of a sophisticated Mayan colony. You can see parts of the water drain system, tombs, pyramids, temples and one of their most important sculptures: the "Estela of Tazumal", best known as the "Virgin of Tazumal".

Guatemala

The live volcano of Pacaya in Guatemala has been active since the 1960s and the lava really boils and irradiates a bright color red. Its activity changes constantly, but still, the tourist access to the top is permitted under some controlled conditions. It's constituted by some strongly fractured peaks and there are two noted cones: The Cerro Chino or "Chinese Hill" (inactive) and the MacKenney cone (active). Nowadays, the volcano is active since April 2006.

Mexico

Holbox is a rustic island filled with fishermen that's also the refuge of thousand of birds. It's located in front of the northern coast of Quintana Roo state, and can be accessed through Cancún. With a population of only 1000 locals, willing to keep the nature of the place: you can only move around the streets made of sand with golf carts or a bicycle, and there are only small ecological hotels.

Nicaragua

The Cocibolca (voice in ancient language nahuatl which means 'the sweet sea'), is also known as the Lake of Nicaragua. It's the second largest in Latin America, after the Lake Titicaca between Bolivia and Peru. It makes a remarkable journey because there are more than 400 little islands and two large ones: the Zapatera Island and the Ometepe Island. In this last one, you can find two volcanoes (one active) and it's a sanctuary for flora and fauna.

Puerto Rico

Flamenco Beach, located nine miles east of Puerto Rico in the Culebra Island, is one the most beautiful beaches in the 'Isla Grande'. The visitors can enjoy over a mile of white sands where they can relax, sunbathe, swim in their blue-green warm water or dive under one of the best kept coral reefs in the Caribbean. If you're captivated by this paradise, you can camp for the night or stay in one of the hotels in the town.

Venezuela

Because German immigrants settled in Colonia Tovar, Venezuela, this little mountain town has been built like a city from that country called Baden. With time, it has become a very romantic zone, where the climate is generally cold. Located on the valley of El Palmar del Tuy, in the state of Aragua, it's approximately one hour away from Caracas, the nation's capital. In this place, you can taste typical German food, as well as locally produced products such as beer, bread, meat and more.