Terrain and Weather

The terrain of the northeast is varied, with many destinations to visit on Argentina tours in the mountains, lush rainforests, lowland plains, and forested valleys in the south; and humid tropical vegetation and weather, with wet summers and warm winters in the north. The Gran Chaco that is comprised of areas of Formosa, Chaco and Santa Fe provinces as well as provinces further west and parts of Paraguay and Bolivia, experiences some of the highest temperatures on the continent.

Marine Turtles
Once abundant, only seven species of marine turtles remain. Four of these, from the largest to the smallest, travel to Costa Rica to nest every year, the leatherback, the green turtle, the hawksbill and the olive ridley. The turtle species that nest here all do so at night, crawling onto a safe spot on the beach and using their back flippers to dig and cover the hole where they deposit their eggs. The sex of the turtles will be determined after the eggs have been deposited, with warmer sands usually producing females and colder sands, males.

These two tribes comprise Panama's largest indigenous group, with a tribal membership totaling some 170,000 Ngobe and 18,000 Bugle. They live near Panama's western border, some on the Caribbean coast and some inland, in a comarca (reservation) that is divided into seven districts and covers about nine percent of Panama's territory in the Chiriqui, Bocas del Toro and Veraguas provinces.

Pablo Neruda lived in a world of his own making. Nowhere is this more evident than in his nautical-themed home at Isla Negra, where he described himself as the captain and his guests as crew. When he had to don a tuxedo to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, he remarked that the garb reminded him of the get-ups he and his friends would wear during costume parties at Isla Negra. All that was missing was the mustache he sometimes painted on. Isla Negra was the first of three homes Neruda built and the one he chose as his last. Today it has become the Museo Neruda.

The most sought after of the chambira fronds are the cogollos, the new tender shoots. The best known of the chambira crafts made from the cogollos are shigra bags, used to carry everything from farm produce to lipstick and wallets. Among the other decorative crafts made from cogollos are baskets, belts, macramé and necklaces, offering a strong fiber on which to string beads.