South America

South America offers some of the world's most extraordinary and varied cruise destinations, from the dense biodiversity of the Amazon basin to the ice-sculpted wilderness of Patagonia and the dramatic fjords of Chile. Ocean cruises along the continent's coasts call at vibrant cities — Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Cartagena — and remote outposts where human settlement gives way to raw, elemental landscape.

The Amazon River cruise is in a category of its own: navigating thousands of kilometres through the world's largest rainforest, with skiff excursions into blackwater tributaries where pink river dolphins, giant otters, and countless species of birds inhabit the flooded forest. Manaus, the grand rubber-boom city deep in the Brazilian jungle with its extraordinary opera house, is the usual gateway.

Further south, the Patagonian fjords of southern Chile rank among the most remote and spectacular waterways on earth, while Cape Horn represents the ultimate seafaring challenge. Glacier-calving spectacles, penguin colonies on the Falkland Islands, and the gaucho culture of the Argentine pampas complete a continent of extraordinary diversity.