Destination: South America

World Travel Watch: Commonwealth Games Concerns in India, Elections in Cuzco and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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Interview with Michael Scott Moore: ‘Sweetness and Blood’

Jim Benning talks with the author of a new travel book about the spread of surfing around the globe

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World Travel Watch: Plague in Bolivia and Peru, Warnings in Northern Ireland and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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Venezuelans Show Some Love For Love Hotels

Japan’s love hotels get a lot of media love. Now it’s Venezuela’s turn in the spotlight. Rachel Jones writes:

University students such as Daniel Ramirez, 24, often turn to mid-range hotels in central Caracas to be with their significant others. On his first visit to Hotel Roda, Ramirez had the opportunity to be intimate with a month-long girlfriend for the first time.

“There was no place I could go to see her,” said Ramirez, who lives with his family because he can’t afford an apartment. He was reasonably satisfied with his experience—including clean rooms, wall and ceiling mirrors, and a television with pornography—and later returned with another girlfriend. The awkward part, he said, was a lack of privacy in the hallways.

“Couples pass each other like this,” Ramirez said, ducking his head and cupping one hand over his eyes.


World Travel Watch: Deadly Heat Wave in Moscow, Underground Colosseum Tours and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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World Travel Watch: New Trekking in Kashmir, Dengue in Venezuela and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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Jersey Girl

Jersey Girl REUTERS/Christine Grunnet

Abbie Kozolchyk finds herself on an unlikely quest to buy soccer jerseys from Bolivia to Bhutan

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World Travel Watch: Striptease at Uluru, Ongoing Strikes in Greece and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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World Travel Watch: Floods in China, Train to Machu Picchu Resumes and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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World Travel Watch: Violence Returns to Medellin, G20 Restrictions in Toronto and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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World Travel Watch: Volcanoes in Ecuador and Guatemala, Violence in Rome and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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Confessions of a Focus Group Traveler

Confessions of a Focus Group Traveler iStockPhoto

When LiAnne Yu visits other countries, she watches people from behind a one-way mirror. She now knows which cultures prefer jeans that accentuate curvy butts.

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World Travel Watch: Floods in Central Europe, Ongoing Violence in Bangkok and More

Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news

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Travel Movie Watch: ‘180 Degrees South’

180 South looks like a great new outdoorsy travel documentary. In it, Jeff Johnson retraces a 1968 road trip from Ventura, California, to southern Patagonia undertaken by Yvon Chouinard and a few others. The film features surfing and climbing, and, it seems, a healthy dose of philosophizing about travel and life.

It’s touring the country now—dates and locations are listed here—and it comes out on DVD in June. Here’s the trailer:


Copacabana: ‘Unknowingly Retro ... Deliciously Original’

It’s also Ground Zero for dog hairdressers, according to Jon Lee Anderson. His compelling take on Copacabana and Rio de Janeiro is in the Financial Times:

That’s the Copacabana I see, anyway, a place full of ordinary people and chancers, too; a bit tawdry and unknowingly retro, and, therefore, deliciously original. To a large extent, this description also applies to Rio at large. At a time when so many other cities in the world have seen radical makeovers to adopt the cloned look of homogeneous urban modernity, Rio is still refreshingly eclectic and chaotic, so enveloped in its own self-indulgent, sometimes desperate but radiant reality, too, that it seems to inhabit its own time capsule.