The beach at Infinity Bay, Honduras

A couple times a year I like to highlight which pages of Luxury Latin America travelers are clicking on the most. It changes a lot from one quarter to the next depending on where our readers are headed and who’s in the news (good or bad), and usually it’s a bit surprising who makes it up to the top.

The most popular pages are the portal ones, like the main luxury tours page or luxury travel in Costa Rica, but here are the individual ones people planning a vacation landed on the most so far this year.

Luxury hotel and resort reviews:

5) Infinity Bay in Roatan, Honduras
4) Cayo Espanto near Ambergris Caye, Belize
3) Jicaro Island Ecolodge near Granada, Nicaragua
2) Azul in Ambergris Caye, Belize
1) Hotel Garzon in Uruguay

Mendoza wine country, Argentina

Luxury tours in Latin America:

5) Getting Pampered in the Spas of Argentina
4) Touring the Wine Districts of Chile Near Santiago
3) Touring the Best of Mendoza Wine Country, Argentina
2) Trekking From Lodge to Lodge to Machu Picchu, Peru
1) The Coffee Triangle of Colombia

So from all this I’ll conclude you want to head to a beach, get pampered, or drink some wine. Except for that hardy bunch going trekking through the Andes Mountains…

We’ve been spending a good bit of time in fast-growing Colombia recently and for good reasons. The country’s tourism numbers are increasing rapidly as people update their expectations and new hotels are going up at a frenetic pace.

Our latest tour story, from writer Judith Fein, is about a return to Colombia with Adventure Associates, going beyond the usual first-timer’s route to dive deeper into the culture and the people.

She landed in Bogota, as most visitors do who aren’t flying direct to Cartagena, but her trip took her to interesting villages far away, including Villa de Leyva. Well, after taking part in a cooking course in the capital.

The city of Medellin gets a bad rap, like many cities where the reputation of 10 or 20 years ago is a very hard perception to change. Really this is an attractive, vibrant city with low crime and a favorite for expatriates choosing Colombia. Nevertheless, our correspondent did go on a Pablo Escobar tour after returning from the Antioquia region.

See the full story here: Cooking, Culture, and Cobblestones in Colombia

Ron Medellin is the one brand you’re sure to run across while traveling in Colombia. So you might want to stick to cocktails.

Last year I attended a big travel trade show in Cartagena, Colombia. At the big opening night bash, sponsored by Avianca Airlines, all the liquor on offer was imported, including rum from Cuba.

A few months ago I mentioned this to someone in the travel industry in Colombia, that I found this quite strange considering the place and the host. He replied,”Well, have you tasted our rum?”

I chuckled and replied, “Only the kind that comes in a box.”

He said I should go try their Ron Medellin brand, but not to spend too much money on it. Once we started talking about some of the fine rums from Central America, I could tell he had a good frame of reference and didn’t hold the home team’s in high regard.

I could only find the 3-year version in the shops I went into in the historic district of Cartagena when I was there a couple months ago, so I bought a bottle of that and tried it, neat and in a cocktail. Then I tried the 8-year neat as well in a bar.

The verdict? The cheapest version is okay in a cocktail, especially by the pool or at a beach bar, but it’s a far inferior run to drink straight compared to most others you find between here and Guatemala.

We often speak of wine and spirits with words like “structured,” “balanced,” and having a complexity of flavor. The problems that mar the Ron Medellin 3-year touch on each of these, with off-balance flavors that seem to emphasize what’s wrong over what’s right. There are tones in this rum I haven’t smelled or tasted elsewhere, some of which I can’t even describe. I just know they don’t belong there. There’s a little maple, some pecans, and some chocolate—but more like baking chocolate than Godiva.

Anything this copper-colored after just three years in barrels makes me wonder a bit too. Notice how all three versions above are the same color? That’s just not right…

The additional five years in those barrels helps a lot: the 8-year version has smoothed out many of the rough spots and tastes more conventional. Still not great neat, but on the rocks it’s okay. In this one you get more power from the traditional caramel and toffee notes, tempered by more time in contact with oak.

I didn’t get a chance to try the 12-year version, and would be hesitant to buy a whole bottle of it at double the price, but I’ll give it a try next time I see it in a bar.

In conclusion, you can find better rum from Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—as well as a few Caribbean islands like Barbados—but if you’re looking for something to mix with Coke or pineapple juice on vacation in Colombia, root root for the home team and go for Medellin rum.

I mentioned in our monthly newsletter last month that my Avianca flight to Colombia was another reminder just how far the U.S. airlines have fallen in comparison to most of the international carriers.

Avianca made me feel like a passenger again instead of a  number on a spreadsheet to be optimized and squeezed.

This matters because soon Avianca will probably be the name you see the most besides LAN in Latin America. It merged with TACA last year and by the end of May the TACA brands will all change to Avianca. By the end of 2013 the Ecuadorian airline AeroGal will change to Avianca name too.

On the way down to Bogota from Ft. Lauderdale, I was flying in economy but still had a seat-back entertainment system, a real meal, and a glass of wine. The flight attendants smiled instead of just nagging everyone to turn off their Kindle. My business class report will have to wait for another time, but it looked far superior to what I’ve seen on United and American.

Since international and domestic passengers can check two bags without fees, there was plenty of overhead bin space on my first flight and the three that followed. Naturally the plane boarded a lot faster for the domestic ones since there was no economic reason for bringing a rollaboard bag on the plane

We even got drink service on a 45-minute flight from Bogota to Pereira. Nice.

A few fun facts and some history about Avianca:

Avianca is the second oldest airline in the world after the Dutch carrier KLM.

TACA was created in 1931 in Honduras. It grew fast the past couple decades through acquisitions. In 1991 TACA bought all the airlines of Central America that were in financial trouble (Aviateca of Guatemala, SAHSA of Honduras, LACSA of Costa Rica) and merged them into GRUPO TACA.

In 1999 GRUPO TACA created an airline in Peru called TACA Peru

TACA stands for TRANSPORTES AEREOS del CONTINENTE AMERICANO (American Continent Air Transport)

Last year Avianca and TACA joined STAR ALLIANCE, in many ways the best international alliance for frequent fliers.

Avianca and TACA have 4 main connection hubs in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Bogota and Lima and fly to all Central America and South America.

North American gateways (direct or in code shares with partners) include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Washington-Dulles, JFK, Chicago-O’hare, Toronto, and Mexico City.

See more at Avianca.com for more info and flight deals. See SeatGuru’s Avianca section for seat pitch and plan configurations.

There’s no shortage of beautiful landscapes in the Coffee Triangle of Colombia, but few of them get as many oooh and aaahs as the gorgeous Cocora Valley, near the attractive town of Salento.

The secret seems to be getting out on Salento. There were far more tourists wandering around the shops and cafes when I was there in February than there were when I visited a few years back. Colombia’s tourism numbers keep rising as more and more tourists return from the country raving about how great it was. The safety situation is dramatically better than it was in the dark past and the infrastructure is good overall.

When we got to the Cocora Valley 11 kms away, we practically had the place to ourselves though.

The trip up there is half the fun. You get into an old Jeep Willy with benches in the back and barrel out of hilly Salento into the land of the wax palm trees. The best way to do is standing up and holding on to the roof bar so you get a full panoramic view. First you see the misty mountains from afar as the Jeep winds around the turns. As you get closer you see the super-high palm trees studding the green mountains like toothpicks with palm leaves on top.

This is a stunning landscape to admire at more then 2,000 meters and you can see it by walking further in the hills from the parking area or booking a horseback riding trip with a guide from the stables on site.

Most visitors who come up here visit one of the restaurants though. The thing to order is locally farmed fresh-water trout fried up with or without breading and garlic. It comes with fried plantains and different sauces. Order a beer or get the mulled juice, sugar, and spices drink caneloza with or without rum.

There’s no need to make reservations or book a tour for this experience. Just show up in the Salento town square, hire a jeep, and head into the hills.

See more on this Cocora Valley trip in either of these feature stories: Exploring the Coffee Triangle of Colombia and Touring the Best of Colombia.