Over the years, I've been asked many times if it is safe to travel to South America. I had one American guy who was planning a family multisport trip, but he had read that somebody was killed in Peru, so he decided that he didn't want to travel there or to Ecuador, Chile, Argentina or Brazil because they were too close to Peru and it wasn't safe.

I recently read an article in "Travel Weekly" where a travel consultant said:

Are your plans for a European vacation looking grim now that the European Union is considering restricting the entrance of Americans, especially unvaccinated ones? If so, here are a few reasons to consider Brazil instead:

Many people are eager to travel to South America again and are looking for information about when that will be possible. We will try to keep this post updated with the latest information we get from our local operators in each country.

There's no question that there are more plant and animal species in the Amazon. It is said that there are more than 1500  bird species, over 40,000 different plant species, 3,000 freshwater fish species, more than 370 types of reptiles and approximately 2.5 million insect species in the Amazon rain forest, which covers over 2 million square miles.

When the worst of this pandemic is over and people start traveling internationally again, they will want to make sure that they can do it safely. Besides thinking about airports and airplanes, they should probably also consider some things about the destinations that they are traveling to. So here are some things that they might consider:

Mamirauá was the first Brazilian Sustainable Development Reserve created by Amazonas state by governmental decree. These type of Reserves aim to reconcile biodiversity conservation with sustainable development in areas inhabited by traditional peoples. 

Mamirauá is a unique place: a complex ecosystem of lakes, lagoons, islands, levees, channels and many other formations, which forms when river waters rise from 7 to 15 meters for up to six months in the year.  The reserve itself becomes almost an island, bounded by the Solimoes and the  Japura Rivers. This causes many animals to be "trapped" in the reserve and to create unusual characteristics - like the tree-climbing jaguars.

Many people never consider buying any form of travel insurance and many just figure it is an unjustified expense. Young people subconsciously feel they are invulnerable, but a lot of older people realize that they or their close relatives are living a more fragile existence and that the chances of some health crisis popping up are greatly increased, so they do consider getting insurance, in case they need to cancel their trip.

But there is one type of travel insurance that is increasingly becoming more important in this day and age....

Lately, every day people are hearing about fires in the Amazon, which is quite alarming. Naturally, since we send lots of people to the Amazon, we get people asking if the fires are going to affect their trip.

More and more I've been reading about problems with overcrowding at tourist destinations. While it's great that more people have the means and desires to travel, they don't all have to go to the same places. There are plenty of other magical places to visit in the world, and plenty of them are in South America. Instead of following friends to places they have been, why not go to some great places first and have the others follow you?

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