Recently, due to the death of some zip liners in the Cusco region, the government had considered shutting down all adventure tour operations there. Of course this is not the first time that anybody has died while doing an adventure activity and as of now, most activities are still operating

Many people seem to think that travel to South America is dangerous. The U.S. Department of State recently came out with a new system of grading the safety of countries and it shows some interesting things

Have you ever wondered which South American countries receive the most visitors and why?

Last week I was listening to a webinar about a 2000 mile long trail from Ecuador to Peru that was built by the Incas. Several people hiked it over a period of about 133 days, I think, in order to check it out, and now a small portion of that is being offered as a 5 day trek, starting from Huaraz in Peru.

It reminded me of part of an Inca trail that I had been on inChachapoyas, about 20 years ago.

Are you thinking about visiting your local travel agent to get help in planning a trip to South America? If so you might consider a recent survey about U.S. travel agents. The results of that survey indicate:

• ​agents said that about 75% of their business was big ship cruises, all inclusive resorts and airline tickets
• for those that indicated a specialty, almost 67% said it was big ship cruises
• only .6% said that South America was their best-selling destination

I know that some people have the idea that a trip to the Amazon is a life-threatening experience for anybody, so they definitely would not want to bring their kids there. Well it could be dangerous if you went on your own and didn't know what you were doing. But if you go with a company that has good guides and a good program, it can be a safe and very entertaining and educational experience for kids. And kids seem to leave with a sense of pride because they leave the natural jungle feeling more connected to nature than they ever did back home in their concrete jungle.

As I was doing my morning walk and listening to the radio, they were talking about something called "forest bathing", which I'd never heard before.  It seems that it was developed in Japan in the early 1980's to help people to connect with nature and thus reduce stress levels and give people an overall better sense of health. Then I noticed that there were other articles about it, such as in Mother Earth News . 
It seems there has been a lot of research done on the effects.

My wife and I just got our new passports back and I was going through the little booklets that they sent along with the passports. They actually had some information that I thought would be quite useful to know in order to avoid problems or to help you out if you are already having problems.

Recently, Turismo Chile, the government organization responsible for promoting the country, invited some agents to visit the country and the agents came away very impressed.