The new South Africa comes close to paradise as a travel destination. Breathtaking scenery, a near-perfect climate, superb food and wines, and exciting sporting activities compose an enticing holiday package. Plus this all comes together at an affordable price, often one-half the daily rate of a comparable European sojourn.

What's more, there is a sophisticated, refined European ambiance in the hotels and restaurants amid a charming, warm African culture. True, service is not always perfection and certain areas and neighborhoods are off limits due to crime, but that's typical of many global cities.

Lying at the southernmost tip of Africa, encompassing a vast area of over 1,200,000 square kilometers, South Africa is home to over 40 million people from vastly different cultural societies. To accommodate this diversity, the country now has 11 official languages -- the highest of any country in the world -- although English has been declared the main language of business.

Today, with Nelson Mandela at the helm as president, there exists a genuine sense of pride and euphoric optimism for the country, among all the people, no matter what their politics or living standard. The interesting mix of people and languages, creeds and cultural elements drawn from both the developed and developing worlds, creates a fascinating ambiance and a delectable table

A mostly mountainous country with a tropical climate, Haiti's location, history and culture once made it a potential tourist hot spot. Instead, decades of poverty, instability and violence, especially since the 1980s, have all but killed off this prospect and left it as the poorest nation in the Americas.
In 1697, the Spanish ceded the western half of the island to France, who turned their new territory into a major center for the slave trade. In what was to be the only successful slave rebellion, the French were defeated in a 12-year campaign, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and others, which ended in 1804.

During the rest of the 19th century, Haiti was under the control of a succession of dictators, none of whom had the wherewithal to resolve the conflict between the country’s two main ethnic groups: the mulattos, who held political power, and the blacks. To this day, the huge wealth gap between the impoverished Creole-speaking black majority and the French-speaking mulattos, one per cent of whom own nearly half the country's wealth, remains unaddressed.

Haiti achieved notoriety during the brutal dictatorships of the voodoo physician, Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, and his son, Jean-Claude, known as 'Baby Doc'. With the help of a private militia known as the Tontons Macoutes (the Creole phrase for ‘bogeymen’), political dissent was systematically eradicated and opponents jailed or murdered. Hopes that the election in 1990 of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest, would herald a brighter future were dashed when he was overthrown by the armed forces a short time later.

Although economic sanctions and US-led military intervention forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, Haiti's fortune did not improve, with allegations of electoral irregularities, ongoing torture and brutality. In 2003, a wave of protests against Aristide quickly spread throughout the country plunging Haiti into chaos. By 2004, armed rebels had seized control of many towns and violence spread across the island. In February 2004, Aristide fled the country. An interim government took over and a UN stabilization force was deployed to restore order. But Haiti remains plagued by violent confrontations between rival gangs and political groups. The UN has described the human rights situation as 'catastrophic'.

The Bahamas extends 760 miles from the coast of Florida on the north-west almost to Haiti on the south-east. The group consists of 700 islands and 2,400 cays with an area of 5,358 sq. miles (13,878 sq. km.). Thirty of the islands are inhabited.The 2000 census disclosed that the population of The Bahamas totaled 306,611, with 155,896 females and 147,715 males. Ninety percent of the total population lives on New Providence, Grand Bahama and Abaco. New Providence has 69.9 percent of the population, Grand Bahama and Abaco with 15.5 percent, and 10.3 percent are scattered on the remaining islands and cays.

The original inhabitants of The Bahamas were Arawak Indians, who had migrated through the Antilles from South America. Within a few decades after Columbus landed on San Salvador in 1492, the Spanish had depopulated the islands by shipping the peaceful Arawaks to slavery in the mines of Hispaniola and Cuba, where they died by the thousands.

The first permanent settlement in The Bahamas was established by a group of English settlers from Bermuda called the Company of Eleutheran Adventurers, who organized a community on what is now the island of Eleuthera in 1647, seeking religious freedom.

During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, piracy flourished in the islands because of their proximity to important shipping lanes. The power of the buccaneers was crushed by Woodes Rogers, the first Royal Governor, who established orderly conduct in 1718.

In 1776, a U.S. naval squadron captured Nassau, but withdrew after only one day. Following the American War of Independence, some 6,000 American loyalists and their slaves settled in The Bahamas.