Hamba Travel Magazine
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From a detour close to home to a long road through East Africa. Pick a part of the world, or read them in order.
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Stories about South America
27 stories from our editors. Filter by part of the world, or page back in time.
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What Paramaribo Cooks Begins at the Centrale Markt
Boats and trucks bring fruit, leaves, roots, fish and spices to the Centrale Markt beside the Suriname River. Inside, those ingredients lead towards roti and pom, saoto and peprewatra, and towards the histories that shaped Paramaribo’s kitchens.
South America · Peru · Cebollapampa
The High Path from Cebollapampa to Laguna 69
At Cebollapampa, the trail follows a stream across the green floor of a glacial valley. The hard climbing comes later, when grass gives way to loose rock and Laguna 69 waits above a second wall of switchbacks.
South America · Colombia · Medellín
What Comuna 13’s escalators changed on Medellín’s hillside
In Las Independencias, six pairs of public outdoor escalators cut through one of Comuna 13’s steepest residential slopes. They eased the climb home for people carrying groceries, heading to school or returning from work, then became part of a crowded route of murals, guides, music and small businesses.
South America · Chile · Chiloé
Three Wooden Churches at the Heart of Chiloé
Castro wraps its timber frame in yellow and purple metal. Achao holds an older sanctuary together with wooden pegs. Dalcahue faces the channel behind nine wooden arches. These three churches show how Chiloé’s carpenters adapted Catholic forms to an island world of timber, boats and wet weather.
Ecuador · Panama · Cuenca
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.
South America · Oceania · El Doradillo
Ten responsible places to watch for whales from shore
These ten coasts put people on paths, platforms, dunes and cliff tops while whales follow their own routes offshore. Pick the right season, stay on land and accept the essential uncertainty: even in peak months, the sea may hold no whale in view.
South America · Uruguay · Chile
Five South American beaches, ranked beyond the postcard
Red rock, ancestral monuments, city apartments, Caribbean forest and volcanic cliffs define these five very different shores. This ranking weighs landscape, local setting, nature value, the kind of visit each beach suits and a deliberate spread across South America; it makes no absolute claim about the continent’s “best” beaches.
Europe · Venice · Rio de Janeiro
The 10 Cities Best Understood from the Water
A fine skyline is not enough. In these ten cities, a ferry or small boat reveals how trade, terrain, buildings and daily travel grew around a river, canal or bay.
Europe · South America · Venice
Ten trading cities where the old streets still work
At Venice’s Rialto market, fishers and wholesalers still sell the morning catch beside open-air fruit and vegetable stalls. Across ten old trading cities, quays, lanes, workshops and fortifications still show how goods once moved and how people use these places now.
Europe · Plaça Reial · Piazza Santo Spirito
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.
South America · Europe · Middle East
Eight mineral landscapes shaped by salt, iron and hot water
On Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, a hard white crust runs towards an empty horizon. Elsewhere, iron colours whole mountains red, hot springs build terraces, and Roman miners have left cliffs behind.
Wadi Rum · La Palma · Atacama
Ten dark-sky landscapes, ranked from moorland to mountain basin
Pink sand runs below Wadi Rum’s sandstone walls, while telescope domes stand on La Palma’s volcanic crest. This ranking places New Zealand’s glacial Mackenzie Basin first, where a wide alpine floor gives the night sky a large, uncluttered frame.