Things to Do in Central And South America

Set in an impressive neoclassical building in downtown Rio de Janeiro that harkens back to an era when the city was a national—and imperial—capital, the National Fine Arts Museum (Museu Nacional de Belas Artes) houses over 16,000 artworks created by Brazilian painters, sculptors, and other visual artists. Focused mainly on artists from the 19th century, including Brazilian-born but French-trained painter Victor Meirelles de Lima and painter-turned-educator Pedro Américo, the museum also features works imported from Europe when the Portuguese royal family moved the imperial capital from Lisbon to Rio ahead of Napoleon’s troops in 1807, and works by contemporary Brazilian artists such as Lithuanian émigré and Modernist artist Lasar Segall and Nativist painter Di Cavalcanti, a heavyweight in the Brazilian Modernist movement who attempted to exclude any discernible European influences in his artwork.

Opened in 1937, the museum includes a collection of Brazilian folk art with a heavy focus on northeastern Brazil, and a collection of traditional West African art, such as textiles, wood carvings, and masks. Paintings featuring religious scenes and iconography, such as Giovanni Battista Tieppolo’s reverent Saint Cajetan and 16th century humanist Francisco de Holanda’s The Lord’s Supper make up some of the signature pieces of the museum’s international holdings.

The National Museum, housed in the barracks of the Bellavista Fortress, has been proudly displaying indigenous and pre-Columbian artifacts, religious artwork and geological and archaeological pieces linked to Costa Rica’s rich and colorful history since 1950.

While there are many notable museums in Arequipa, the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries (Museo Santuarios Andinos) is one of the best. Visitors can see exhibits that focus on Andes Mountain archaeology and history, such as the world-famous preserved mummy of ‘Ice Princess’ Juanita, a young Inca girl whose remains were only discovered in 1995. Juanita was sacrificed over 500 years ago as part of a Capac Cocha ceremony in which children were sacrificed to appease mountain gods. The child is thought to have been about 11 to 15 years old, and the body is so well-preserved that it has been touted numerous times as one of the world's top discoveries.

Nahuel Huapi National Park, which surrounds the lake of the same name, and within which San Carlos de Bariloche is located, is an expansive park of nearly 1.8 million acres, and Argentina’s oldest national park.

The park actually contains another park, Parque nacional Los Arrayanes, which is where the much-visited Quetrihué peninsula is. This peninsula is home to a large tract of 300-650 year old red-to-light-brown-barked Arrayan trees.

The larger park covers a large range of altitude, from 700 to 3400 meters, and contains four distinct ecosystems, from high Andean peaks (above 1600 meters), including the imposing Cerro Tronador, Andean forests, Valdivian rainforests and (mostly treeless) windblown Patagonian steppe.

With four different ecosystems, there is a great variety of different types of vegetation, including several types of Patagonian beech. Small mammals, from the monito del monte (a lemur-faced marsupial, whose name means “little mountain monkey"), foxes and two tiny species of deer are seen near the arrayanes, while slim-necked guanacos (relatives to the llama) graze on the steppe. Five hundred kilometers (300 miles) of trails crisscross the park, which range from the easy 3-hour hike to the Castaño Overo Valley to multi-day hikes, from different access points within the park

Holding over 9 million volumes within its stacks and archives, Brazil’s extensive National Library (Biblioteca Nacional) is the largest library in Latin America and remains one of the first institutions established during Rio’s reign as imperial capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. Founded in 1810 and relocated to its current handsome Greek Revival-style setting in 1910, the library has maintained an archive of the country’s most important publications, periodicals, photographs, films, and music through the present—its collection of Brazilian popular music is unmatched, with over 200,000 pieces, from samba to sertanejo (a genre from the dry backlands of the northeast akin to American country music).

The library is open for public use and wows visitors with its elegant red-carpeted staircase and eclectic interior flourishes. One of the most valuable holdings inside is the late-19th century photography collection of Empress Theresa Christina Maria, Naples-born wife of Brazil’s second emperor, Pedro II, which was recognized by UNESCO for its historical significance and given to the library after her death by Pedro on the condition that the collection would be named for her. Despite moving the national capital to Brasília in 1960, a branch of the National Library didn’t open there until 2006.