Volcanoes, cloud forest and Caribbean shores

Central America

Central America is a narrow land bridge packed with distinct landscapes and cultures. Colonial cities, Maya history, surf coasts and cloud forests often lie within a day’s travel of one another.

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Central America rewards travellers who do not underestimate its short distances. Mountain roads, border crossings and local buses slow a route down, while bringing markets, villages and farming regions into view. Volcanoes mark the skyline; on either side are beaches, mangroves and reefs with very different characters.

The dry season is popular, while greener months can be quieter and more lush. Rain often comes in heavy bursts and varies by coast. Link a few places logically rather than racing through every country. This leaves time for walks, regional dishes and communities where Maya, Afro-Caribbean, Indigenous and colonial influences meet in locally specific ways.

From the magazine

Stories about Central America

Editorial stories linked to Central America and to the countries and places within this region.

Article

Tortuguero, from the canals to the nesting beach

Boats, not cars, carry visitors into Tortuguero, through lowland rainforest cut by lagoons and narrow channels. Beyond the village, the same protected landscape reaches a Caribbean beach where green, leatherback and hawksbill turtles nest.

M Hamba-redactieMara

Article

Cuenca and the Ecuadorian Hat Called Panama

Cuenca turns pale coastal fibre into shaped, finished hats for shops and export, but its workshops tell only part of an Ecuadorian craft rooted in Manabí. The name “Panama hat” records where overseas buyers encountered the hat, not where Ecuadorian makers produced it.

S Hamba-redactieSofia

Article

Ten places where local bread is still made by hand

Bread shows the daily work behind a neighbourhood meal: a household’s marked dough at a Marrakesh communal oven, dark rye beside sourdough in Copenhagen, and bolillos from brick ovens in Mexico City. These ten working addresses and market settings sell local bread made through distinct local practices.

A Hamba-redactieAisha

Article

Ten Squares That Change After Dark

At sunset, restaurant stalls fill Jemaa el-Fna and listeners close around storytellers who adjust each performance to the crowd. Elsewhere, evening brings aperitivo tables, commuter tides, street food, ceremonies and concert audiences to public ground.

T Hamba-redactieTomoko

Article

Eight cultivated landscapes, from Douro vines to Kericho tea

A dry-stone wall in Portugal holds vines to a schist slope. On Bali, water runs from mountain channels through temples and down a chain of rice fields. Below the Andes, old irrigation ditches carry meltwater to Malbec vines. These eight regions show farming not as a backdrop but in the walls, canals, food and daily work that give each landscape its form.

T Hamba-redactieTomoko

Article

Where Ecuador’s cacao changes form in Quito

At República del Cacao’s Quito factory, cacao arrives stripped of its tropical disguise. Growers have already harvested the pods, fermented the wet beans and dried them; the city’s work begins with sacks of dry cacao.

S Hamba-redactieSofia

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