Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
The large South American cities can be as modern and sophisticated as their counterparts anywhere in the world.
Santiago in Chile, the starting point for Saga's South American Adventure, is a clean and elegant metropolis. Like the country itself, it has a long and narrow shape, having developed along both sides of a wide tree-lined avenue, the Alameda, that runs north to south.
The inhabitants of Santiago are polite and hold old-fashioned values: when travelling on the city's immaculate underground railway I was impressed by the way men always stood up to offer their seats to women.
Because of its unusual shape, the long, thin country of Chile enjoys a greater variety of landscapes and climates than anywhere else in South America. In the north is the dry, hot Atacama Desert, while far to the south lies Punta Arenas in icy Patagonia.
Pretty Puerto Varas, in Chile's lovely Lake District, was founded by German settlers in the 19th century: its tea shops sell Black Forest gateau and Apfelstrudel, and its mock-Gothic church is copied from a German original.
Customers on the South American Adventure travel from Puerto Varas to Bariloche in Argentina, where they stay two nights and enjoy a tour of the Andean lakes. It's then on to Buenos Aires, perhaps the continent's most European capital. The wide boulevards, tree-lined squares, Baroque churches and impressive neo-Classical municipal buildings could be in Madrid or Lisbon.
The pink facade of the Casa Rosada on the Plaza de Mayo is one of the city's great landmarks, as is the enormous obelisk on Avenida 9 de Julio, one of the widest avenues in the world. To experience the real atmosphere of Buenos Aires, however, it is necessary to head for the old port district of La Boca, where brightly-painted wooden houses have been converted to art galleries and restaurants. At almost any time of day you may see locals dancing an impromptu tango in the street, to the delight of onlookers. Another interesting district is the San Telmo area, where charming colonial houses and churches act as a backdrop to a lively Sunday antiques market.
There is much more to Argentina, of course, than Buenos Aires. On a day trip from the capital one can experience the excitement of a rodeo demonstration on a ranch where gauchos – Argentine cowboys – round up horses and display their other skills. Visitors are also treated to a lunch of prime local meat followed by folk singing and a tango show.
Guests on Saga's tour move on from Buenos Aires to Iguassu Falls, on the border with Brazil. Wider and higher than those at Niagara, the falls of the River Iguazu plunge over a precipice at a rate of 61,800 cubic feet a second, creating a perpetual cloud of mist. A recently-installed narrow-gauge train provides an ecological form of transport on the Argentine side, taking visitors past begonias, orchids, ferns and palm trees and offering them glimpses of colourful butterflies, toucans, parrots and caciques.
There can be no fitter ending to the South American Adventure than a stop in Rio de Janeiro. Rio is one of the world's great cities, celebrated in literature, movies and songs. The people of Rio, from the wealthy residents of Ipanema to the street urchins of the favelas, have a zest for life that is shown to the world at the riotous annual Carnival. Rio's spectacular setting is best appreciated by taking the cable car to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain, or, better still, the cogwheel railway to the great statue of Christ the Redeemer, listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.