
Governments have been using various tools to fight the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America: fumigation, spraying of insecticides and even a plan to distribute mosquito repellents to athletes during the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

South African airline Comair will operate the Boeing 737-800, configured to seat about 120 passengers, on the route from the St Helena Island’s airport to Johannesburg. A British Overseas Territory, St Helena is a remote South Atlantic island, where French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was once exiled and died after his defeat at Waterloo.

Panama is holding tough negotiations with cruise lines hoping they will return to the country, using local facilities as Home Port, but government authorities admit that the demands from the companies are too high.

Uruguay's former president Luis Lacalle Herrera said that an air bridge between Montevideo and the Falklands/Malvinas Islands is 'viable' and was optimistic about such an opportunity in the near future.

A record number of cruises are set to call at Gibraltar this year, representing an 11% increase on last year with an estimated 350,000 passengers from 227 visits. Some 18 cruise ships will make their first ever visits to Gibraltar with six of the brand new vessels selecting Gibraltar as part of their maiden season.

More than 250.000 passengers and crew members from cruise vessels visited Uruguay during the three months extending from November to January, according to the latest release from the country's Ministry of Tourism. The number of calls in Montevideo during that period was 58, with 156.100 people of which 112.400 (72%) came ashore.

Results from a new study examining 20 years of commercial cruise activity in the Antarctic Peninsula region have important implications for Antarctic visitor management. The paper was published online this week in the journal Antarctic Science, according to the latest release from IAATO.

Punta Arenas in the extreme south of Chile is encouraged by the cruise industry prospects for its port and facilities: this season Norwegian Sun has returned with at least ten calls and for 2016/2017 a line will be cruising to Antarctica with Punta Arenas as a home port.

A Philippine crew member from the Norwegian Sun cruise vessel jumped overboard before reaching a port in South Chile and has been declared 'disappeared' by the Chilean navy which organized a rescue operation.

Chile's flag carrier Lan is celebrating this week the seven decades of its first commercial flight between Santiago and Punta Arenas, extreme south of the country, opening the region to closer trade, tourism and investment opportunities. Actually Lan in the thirties and forties, when the company was first starting did in effect make regional flights from Punta Arenas to nearby places mostly on rough landing strips.