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Your support makes all the difference.1 - Tikal, Guatemala: cAD800.
With spectacular temples cloaked in jungle, the Mayan city of Tikal is the image of a "Lost City" from a Hollywood movie. Stay overnight and enter the ruins early for an unforgettable dawn chorus of parrots, macaws, toucans and howler monkeys. Other Mayan ruins include Chichen Itza and Palenque in Mexico and Copan in Honduras.
2 - Machu Picchu (right), Peru: cAD1500.
Breathtaking. The four-day Inca Trail hike, passing smaller ruins, Inca roads, cloudforest and snow-capped mountains, is the best way to appreciate it. The Cusco region contains many other worthwhile Inca ruins.
3 - Kuelap, Peru: cAD1OOO.
The greatest pre-Colombian fortress in the Americas.
4 - Ciudad Perdido, Colombia: cAD500-14OO.
This 400-hectare city is South America's most important archaeological find this century. It lies hidden high on the thickly forested slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. You can get there by helicopter but, like the Inca Trail, hiking (a seven-day round trip) makes it an unforgettable experience. The Tairona people were highly skilled engineers and astronomers who resisted the Spanish for a century.
5 - Teotihuacan, Mexico: c30OBC.
On the plains near Mexico City, this was once one of the world's largest cities, with an estimated population of 250,000. A 4km-long central avenue is flanked by huge ceremonial plazas and pyramid temples. Its builders are unknown.
6 - San Augustan, Colombia: cAD600-1400.
Hundreds of strange, often conical statues dot the green hills around this laid-back country town. Again, little is known of the people who left them. Ancient burial chambers surround the nearby village of Tierradentro, which is set in lovely countryside.
7 - Cartagena, Colombia: AD1533.
Frequently besieged by pirates such as Sir Francis Drake, this Caribbean port was the storehouse for the treasures of the Spanish Main waiting to be shipped to Europe. The old centre is the continent's finest colonial town, with elegant houses and streets surrounded by still-intact city walls. Scenes from the film The Mission and the BBC series Nostromo were shot here.
8 - The Nazca Lines, Peru: 90OBC-AD600. Etched into the dust of Peru's coastal desert are sketches of animals and geometric patterns up to 180 metres across and only visible from the air. Why did the Nazcas draw them? They were made by removing sun-darkened stones from the desert surface to expose lighter stone beneath. The lines are one of the continent's great mysteries.
9 - Santa Catalina nunnery, Arequipa, Peru: AD1580.
Perhaps the most fascinating colonial building in the Americas. Surrounded by high walls, it is virtually a city within a city. Inside is a perfectly preserved miniature colonial village.
10 - Chan Chan, Peru: AD1000-1400.
The Chim empire stretched 1,000km along the northern coast of Peru. Their capital, Chan Chan, near Trujillo, is the world's largest adobe (mud-brick) city, covering 28 square kilometres. The Spanish destroyed it, but one of its nine great palace complexes has been restored. The nearby (unrestored) Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, built by the earlier Moche (cAD100-700), compete with Kuelap as the continent's largest pre- Colombian structures. Other Moche sites include Sipan, Tucume, Pampagrande, and Batan Grande.
And four top museums ...
1 - Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City. Meso-America from the Olmecs to the Aztecs.
2 - Museo de la Nation, Lima.
4,000 years of Peruvian civilisation.
3 - Bruning Museum, Lambayeque, Peru.
Moche and Chim culture from Peru's north coast.
4 - Gold Museum, Bogota.
Charts Colombia's rich but little-known history.
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