According to The Telegraph newspaper, the swine flu attitude in Cancun seems to be ignore it and it will go away.

Have you ever wanted to fly in a private jet, but find that it’s a little out of your league? You can stay in this bizarre Costa Rican hotel suite instead, one that is half bungalow, half airplane.

A HotelChatter writer found little that was cool about Five Cool Rooms in Buenos Aires. Read the review to see the problem we have with most hip boutique hotels in Buenos Aires: small rooms, bad service, and rates that are way out of line for what you get. (The writer wanted to stay at Home, which we can vouch has an excellent restaurant.)

We’ve been hearing about this swanky Uxua Casa Hotel in the Bahia region of Brazil since before Luxury Latin America went live two years ago, but apparently it is open for real now. It’s on our list to get to at some point as our Brazil section will start up next week.

It took us a little while, but we recently got one of our correspondents into the Atacama Desert region in Chile. This is reportedly the driest spot on Earth, but nevertheless it has become a luxury travel hotspot, home to three upscale hotels and all kinds of well-run excursions with top-notch guides.

Our Emma Fox got the scoop on all three of the hotels and we’ll be posting those reviews as the week goes on. First up though, is a rundown of the kinds of Atacama tours that are available. Naturally there are plenty of hiking and nature watching excursions, but also options to go horseback riding, stargazing, and for the really adventurous—sandboarding.

Excursions in the Atacama Desert will help you decide what you want to do if you make it to this alien landscape, plus it will give you the inside scoop on which providers and guides are the specialists in specific activities.

There’s a lot going on outside of what we cover in detail here, so today we’ll take a step back and look at the travel and real estate news for Latin America.

- Argentina seems to have backpedaled on its unpopular decision to start soaking North American and British visitors an extra $130 or more for the pleasure of spending their money in the cash-strapped country. For the moment anyway, no announcements or collections have taken place. It looks like they have figured out that travel will nosedive when word gets out, especially for families.

- Costa Rica has added a new property tax on houses and condominiums valued at more than $180,800 according to International Living. It’s either a Robin Hood play or a contribution to a good cause depending on how you look at it, with the money going to build affordable housing for locals currently living in shantytowns. Either way, it’s probably not going to impact whether you buy there or not: at a rate of .25% up to $1.36 million, the tax on a $500,000 condo would be $1,250 per year. Still that is far higher than any other country in the region and Costa Rica already has some of the most expensive coastal real estate between Los Cabos and the bottom of South America.

- The always buzz-worthy Francis Ford Coppola has opened another lodging property, this time in Argentina. We won’t be reviewing it since it’s more a rental villa than a hotel, but Jardin Escondido is in the artsy Palermo Soho neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It’s a three-level townhouse that can sleep 13, with a large pool courtyard.

- Conde Nast Traveler just put out its 2009 Hot List for hotels. The Latin American coverage is pretty skimpy, but that’s okay. We’ll continue to bring you detailed reviews of consistently great hotels rather than the trendy flavors of the moment. They did touch on a few we’ve reviewed already though in Luxury Latin America, including Casitas del Colca (Peru), Inkaterra La Casona (Peru), and St. Regis Punta Mita (Mexico).

Milagro tequila

I’ve been wanting to review Milagro Tequila for a while because no matter what airport I’m flying out of in Latin America, Milagro always seems to be front and center at the duty free store. But who are these guys? You never see their bottles in a regular store in Mexico—just in the U.S.—and I don’t recall ever seeing an ad or a review in a magazine. (In all fairness, their website does link to four reviews from last year, though one of the magazines—Travel + Leisure Golf—is now kaput.)

Unfortunately, their Flash-heavy website is high on form, light on substance. I still have no idea where this tequila comes from and who is behind it. The contact page lists only a single e-mail address, with no phone number or physical location. Is Dr. No running this enterprise, or is it the front business for a drug cartel? Probably not, becaue it is distributed by William Grant & Sons, the same well-known distributor that has Glenfiddich and Hendrick’s Gin in its portfolio.

The proof is in the product though and I have to admit that from a price to payoff standpoint, this tequila is a bargain. In many duty-free stores, you can get the blanco version for 20 bucks and the reposado version for under $25. When I was in Mexico City recently they were offering a 3-for-2 special, but traveling alone I couldn’t stow that much in my luggage. I picked up some of their agave nectar instead for my wife and it was a pretty and useful gift.

I’m not going to tell you that Milagro tequila will blow you away and one sip will be a transformative experience. The reposado I bought, however, was more than good. It is good enough to sip on its own and it made a killer margarita I was happy to serve to my guests a few weeks ago. (And no, I don’t use that awful store-bought margarita mix, so you really could taste the tequila.) It’s a bit sweeter and more flowery than the norm, with a triple-distilled smoothness that would appeal to those not accustomed to drinking this spirit neat.

If you’re looking for tequila that will cover the basics for a good price, Milagro is good enough and if you are trying to grab a gift for someone, the bottle is pretty enough to make it look much more expensive than it is. For a step up in price to a C-note or so, there are versions that are truly impressive from a visual standpoint (second set in the photo above), but again at about half the price of competitors’ most showy versions. In my opinion you have to have a really sensitive and experienced palate to tell the difference between a $50 tequila bottle and a $250 tequila bottle anyway. Extensive aging doesn’t help tequila, so after a certain point it’s more about the bottle than what’s inside. Unless you’re buying for a true conneisseur, Milagro is a good bet.

Related Luxury Latin America story -Â Tequila Gets Ready for its Close-up in Jalisco

In our luxury real estate section we’ve got a new story up on the current state of the housing market in Boquete, Panama.

This worlwide recession has naturally affected the property markets in Latin America also, but not as much as you would think, including in Panama. For one thing, if you ever watch the HGTV show House Hunters International you know this region is still a screaming bargain compared to any choice area in the U.S. Second, it’s not just Americans and Europeans buying in Panama. Thanks to power-hungry Chavez, most of the rich Venezuelans have gone elsewhere and one of the prime spots they have chosen is here, not far from home.

But the market is taking a breather, which is a good thing. When prices double in four years, that’s not healthy and the movement attracts a lot of developers with a get-rich-quick gleam in their eye. The eternal spring climate of Boquete is enough of a draw even in prices only appreciate a few percentage points a year, so hopefully now most of the buyers will be those who really want to live there as opposed to those trying to gamble on a quick flip deal.