Hidden Beach, Puerto Vallarta
Located on the remote Marieta Islands off Puerto Vallarta, this beach was once a military practice site used by the Mexican government in the early 1900s.

Now, ecological tours that offer snorkeling and kayaking are the name of the game on "Hidden Beach."

Alter do Chão, Brazil
A popular destination among the smell set of travelers looking to relax in the Amazon, Alter do Chão is an aggressively scenic town in the Para state near the city of Santarém. A perfectly formed sandbar, known as the Island of Love, sits in front of the colorful downtown, drawing tourists out into the moving waters. Travelers won't have the beach to themselves, but the expanse of the Amazon is an amazing thing to contemplate from the inside.

Kaihalulu, Hawaii
Sometimes referred to as Red Sand Beach, Kaihalulu is off the beaten path in the sense that the only way to get there is to take a rather dangerous, winding path along the Maui coast. The reward for anyone daring enough to make the hour or so long trek is having a brick-red swathe of paradise to themselves. Though swimming can be a bit dangerous thanks the tides and undertows, this may be Hawaii's ultimate hang out.

Lofoten, Norway
Certainly the coldest beach to make this list, Lofoten's white sand crescent is no less scenic for abutting the frigid waters that lap Norway's frozen north. As with many beaches in the Lofoten Islands and in other arctic archipelagoes, the beach here looks paint-by-numbers Caribbean. The water is turquoise and the sand a whiter shade of pale. The backdrop, however, is all fjordland drama and pickled herring. Visitors come here from the mainland on the ferry to enjoy the pristine beauty. They do not generally go swimming.

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In anticipation of this year's AFAR Experiences-Mexico, set for October, AFAR co-founder Joe Diaz visited Mexico City, as well as Mexico's beautiful Pacific Coast, in the fall of 2013. Each time he has visited, he's found new reasons to return. Here are 10 reasons why Mexico is the place to be, in Joe's words.

1. People: The level of friendliness of the Mexican people is among the highest in the world. Everywhere you go someone will be willing to lend a helping hand. Here is one of my favorite highlights, which captures the friendly spirit of the Mexican people.

2. Value: Your dollar can go a long way in Mexico and the price-to-value ratio is high. (Remember what Warren Buffett says, "Price is what you pay, value is what you get.") As you travel into the interior of Mexico and away from major beach destinations, you'll notice the difference in prices. Two of my favorite areas are San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato.

3. Food: I can't say enough about the freshness, flavors, diversity, and quality of Mexican food. Every region brings its own distinct traditions. From roadside stands to Michelin-starred restaurants, Mexico is home to some great eats. Sayulita is my recommendation for the world's best shrimp burrito. And when in Mexico City you need to eat at Dulce Patria and Anatol.

4. The Pacific Coast: I love Mexico's Pacific Coast. There is so much coastline to explore. One of my favorite spots is the area around Puerto Vallarta. The small villages north and south of the city bring you back to a calm and tranquil state of mind. One of my top beach towns is Sayulita, which is about 45 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta.

5. Escape from it all: Mexico has always had a reputation as one of the world's best hideouts. From the beaches of Tulum and Oaxaca to the haciendas in the Yucatan, you won't have to search long and hard to find your perfect escape. La Casa Que Canta was one of my hideaways this year. And for our Editor in Chief, Julia Cosgrove, her "go to" is Amansala in Tulum.

6. Indigenous culture: Spending time in Chiapas, I developed a love for, and a fascination with, Mexico's indigenous culture. The textiles are beautifully hand-woven and the people here use clothes and patterns as a form of communication. Chiapas isn't one of Mexico's most traveled areas, and there's plenty of opportunity to explore beneath the surface.

7. An easy long weekend: Mexico is not far away, regardless of where you live in the United States. From the West Coast, Baja is only a couple of hours away. And from the East Coast you have the Yucatan. For your next long weekend, consider spending it in Mexico.

8. The music: From mariachi to modern rock, Mexico pulses with infectious tunes. Head to Guadalajara to spend time in the place that calls mariachi home. Or when you're in Mexico City, take a trip to Plaza Garibaldi. If modern is more your style, download some of Mana's best tracks.

9. Tequila and mezcal: I'm a huge fan of these truly Mexican spirits. And it takes a trip to Jalisco and Oaxaca to begin to understand the depth and variety of flavor that tequila and mezcal afford. Shake off your awful memories of getting drunk on Cuervo as a teenager and begin to explore the quality of real 100% agave-made tequila. You'll leave the hangover at home.

10. Architectural ruins: Mexico is home to some of the richest archaeological sites in the world. Thousands of pyramids dot its landscape, with the most famous near Tulum and Mexico City. This year I visited the pyramids of Teotihuacan and Guachimontones. To begin to comprehend the knowledge and vision it took to construct these will take your breath away.

[readon1 url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/afar/10-reasons-to-visit-mexic_b_5003631.html"]Source:www.huffingtonpost.com[/readon1]

Carlos Slim Helú lost his spot atop our world billionaires list this year, but the Mexican telecom magnate is still the richest in Latin America — by $52.3 billion.

There are 114 billionaires in Latin America worth a total of $440 billion. Slim’s $72 billion fortune gives him a secure lead ahead of No. 2 Jorge Paulo Lemann, a Brazilian private equity giant worth $19.7 billion.

Lemann and two other high-ranking Brazilian billionaires — No. 9 Marcel Herrmann Telles ($10.2B) and No. 13 Carlos Alberto Sicupira ($8.9B) — make up the powerful Brazilian trio behind some of America’s most storied brands.

Their private equity shop 3G Capital has a major stakes in ketchup company Heinz and fast food chain Burger King. The three billionaires are also controlling shareholders in beer-maker Anheuser-Bush InBev. Six of the top 25 richest Latin Americans, including the 3G investors, got the bulk of their fortunes from beer.

Brazil is home to 65 billionaires, more than any other country in the region. The third-richest man in Latin America, Brazilian Joseph Safra, built a $16 billion banking empire that has nearly doubled in value over the last five years. More than one-third of Brazil’s billionaires are new to our list this year, a reflection of the country’s dynamic economy and entrepreneurial spirt.

Mexico has the second-most billionaires in Latin America with 16, and Chile has 11. Chile’s richest person, Iris Fontbona, inherited mining assets from her late husband and now shares a $15.5 billion fortune with the rest of her immediate family, making her the fourth-richest in the region. Her net worth is equivalent to 6% of Chile’s GDP.

[readon1 url="http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2014/03/19/meet-the-richest-billionaires-in-latin-america/"]Source:www.forbes.com[/readon1]

The visit of more than 90 US travel agents to the area over three separate FAM trips strengthened the beach segment for the destination; there were also specialty workshops held for luxury agents specializing in the premium segment.  

During the month of March, three FAM trips with US agents stood out among the many promotional activities of the Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB).

The trips included a retail agency that’s part of the Virtuoso Worldview Travel consortium as well as wholesalers MLT Vacations and Funjet Vacations.

Nine agents from Worldview Travel stayed at the destination from March 12-17; these agents specialize in luxury vacations and came to explore the Riviera Nayarit and inspect the hotels of interest to their clients. They were accompanied by Betty Emeric, General Manager for Alaska Airlines, who was on-hand to promote connections with the destination.

Their activities included visits to Sayulita, San Pancho, Punta Mita and Nuevo Vallarta; they were very impressed with the Riviera Nayarit’s symbiosis between nature and luxury.

A group of 25 agents from Funjet Vacations visited from March 5-8, arriving from different US gateways. There received training and updates with everything that’s new about the destination. They also visited Sayulita and many of the region’s accommodations.

The early part of the month (March 2-6) saw the arrival of the largest of the three FAM trips that visited Mexico’s Pacific Treasure. A total of 60 agents from five different states were present.

After their workshops they will not only sell the destination, but they will also be able to promote Delta Vacations’ direct flights from Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Detroit.

The group performed numerous site inspections and toured the Marietas Islands to get a taste of the Rivera Nayarit’s biodiversity.

The objective of the visits was to maintain the Beach segment while strengthening the Premium segment as well.

Through these promotional activities the Riviera Nayarit CVB seeks to consolidate its position with the US market, a very important captive audience that now has even more agents who are completely head over heels for the Riviera Nayarit.

March 18 – This past Friday marked the arrival of Joseph Michael Kai-Tsu Liu Roqueñi to our city as part of a small detour as he seeks to run practically from pole to pole of the American continent barefoot, or Tarahumara style (wearing artisan sandals).  

There are three pieces of evidence that aviation safety experts say make it clear the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was taken over by someone who was knowledgeable about how the plane worked.

TRANSPONDER

One clue is that the plane's transponder — a signal system that identifies the plane to radar — was shut off about an hour into the flight.

In order to do that, someone in the cockpit would have to turn a knob with multiple selections to the off position while pressing down at the same time, said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. That's something a pilot would know how to do, but it could also be learned by someone who researched the plane on the Internet, he said.

ACARS

Another clue is that part of the Boeing 777's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was shut off.

The system, which has two parts, is used to send short messages via a satellite or VHF radio to the airline's home base. The information part of the system was shut down, but not the transmission part. In most planes, the information part of the system can be shut down by hitting cockpit switches in sequence in order to get to a computer screen where an option must be selected using a keypad, said Goglia, an expert on aircraft maintenance.

That's also something a pilot would know how to do, but that could also be discovered through research, he said.

But to turn off the other part of the ACARS, it would be necessary to go to an electronics bay beneath the cockpit. That's something a pilot wouldn't normally know how to do, Goglia said, and it wasn't done in the case of the Malaysia plane. Thus, the ACARS transmitter continued to send out blips that were recorded by the Inmarsat satellite once an hour for four to five hours after the transponder was turned off. The blips don't contain any messages or data, but the satellite can tell in a very broad way what region the blips are coming from and adjusts the angle of its antenna to be ready to receive message in case the ACARS sends them. Investigators are now trying to use data from the satellite to identify the region where the plane was when its last blip was sent.

GUIDED FLIGHT

The third indication is that that after the transponder was turned off and civilian radar lost track of the plane, Malaysian military radar was able to continue to track the plane as it turned west.

The plane was then tracked along a known flight route across the peninsula until it was several hundred miles (kilometers) offshore and beyond the range of military radar. Airliners normally fly from waypoint to waypoint where they can be seen by air traffic controllers who space them out so they don't collide. These lanes in the sky aren't straight lines. In order to follow that course, someone had to be guiding the plane, Goglia said.

Goglia said he is very skeptical of reports the plane was flying erratically while it was being tracked by military radar, including steep ascents to very high altitudes and then sudden, rapid descents. Without a transponder signal, the ability to track planes isn't reliable at very high altitudes or with sudden shifts in altitude, he said.

[readon1 url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/16/malaysia-airlines-takeover_n_4972889.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular"]Source:huffingtonpost.com/[/readon1]

In Los Angeles, the teams trained travel agents with Apple Vacations and gave seminar presentations with MLT. While in New York, they visited Delta Vacations to promote the direct flights to the destinations; they were also present at the New York Travel Show, where they had appointments with agents and direct consumer.

The Riviera Nayarit has its sights set on the emerging market of Colombia, where they hired a public relations agency as a result of the 60% increase of Colombian visitors to Mexico that came about thanks to the recent elimination of visas requirements.

The Mexico Tourism Board (MTB) presented the “Live it to believe it” campaign during the Vitrina Turística Anato 2014, the most important tourism event in Colombia and one of the most relevant of its kind in Latin America.

The trade show takes place the during the last three days in February, during which five national campaign spots were presented including that of the joint Vallarta-Nayarit campaign.

The Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) took full advantage of the magnitude and reach of this event, which included the participation of 30 thousand buyers and sellers of tourism products and services from Colombia and around the world that came to view the offers presented by over 700 exhibitors from approximately 30 countries.

As an emerging market, Colombia presents a very real and tangible opportunity for the Riviera Nayarit. Once Mexico eliminated the visa requirements for Colombians there was a 60% increase in visitors from this coffee-producing nation to our Aztec lands.

The Riviera Nayarit CVB met with new wholesalers as well as those they had already established relationships with since the previous year, vigorously reinforcing their interest and commitment to sell the destination.

Those wholesalers included Pelicanos Tours, Cielos Abiertos, Viajes los Nómadas, Travel Depot, Uga Turismo, Solways, Viajes Falabella, Luz Verde and Turivel, among others.

This visit also cemented the new representation the CVB will have in Colombia with the hiring of a public relations agency that will be tasked with increasing the presence of the destination and its hotel infrastructure with the travel agencies and tour operators in this country. They will also be charged with expanding awareness of the destination through the local Colombian media.

With the help of these promotional and positioning endeavors the Riviera Nayarit seeks to capture the emerging market that Colombia represents for Mexico.

2013 showed an average of 65.67% yearly occupancy rate, which compared to that of 2012 showed an increase of 2.03%. Approximately 2,389,408 tourists stayed in area hotels.2013 was a year of restructuring and results for the Riviera Nayarit as far as occupancy rate is concerned. This was determined from the final results of the poll commissioned by the Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The average annual occupancy rate for 2013 was 65.67%, which compared with that of 2012 showed an increase of 2.03%. The sample polled in the Riviera Nayarit included the municipalities of Banderas Bay, Compostela and San Blas. The months with the highest occupancy rate of the year were February, March, July and December.

According to Fernando González Ortega, president of the Banderas Bay Hotel and Motel Association, once the tendency has been reversed they expect a positive domino effect to go into play, as long as the efforts of all of the sectors involved in the tourism development of the region continue.

“When the tendency is reversed, the first growth indicators take a lot of work to establish,” said González Ortega. “However, once that happens, the growth is obtained much more rapidly. The increases are mathematical during the first few years and geometrical during the next, that is, it’s harder at the start until the ripple effect starts taking hold.”

The number of visitors that occupied hotel rooms in 2013 was 2,389,408. This calculation does not take into consideration tourists that stayed in apartments, villas or other vacation rental properties.

Of the more than 14 thousand hotel rooms offered in the Riviera Nayarit, 3,475,922 room nights were sold; 56% of these were to national tourists and 44% to international tourists; 75% were in the Banderas Bay area, 24% in Compostela and 3% in San Blas.

The recovery of the international market is an indicator of the trust the foreign tourist is placing once again in the Riviera Nayarit.

In an effort to consolidate the Riviera Nayarit as a top premium beach destination in the romance segment, the Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) coordinated the productions of the Revista Nupcias (Wedding Magazine).

 The Nupcias team arrived in February. This bimonthly Mexican publication helps women with practical tips on how to organize their wedding, honeymoon and their first home.

The topics of the productions were “Groom and Bride” and “The Honeymoon,” shot at the Iberostar Playa Mita and the area around the Litibú development, including its golf courses and beaches.

The first photo shoot will be published in the March-April book, with the second following in the May-June publication. Previous articles promoting different resorts and towns in the Riviera Nayarit had already been published in 2010 and 2012 with good results.

The Revista Nupcias’ demographic is composed of 95% women between the ages of 21 and 35, with an ABC+ socioeconomic level at 93%. 97% of their readership also frequents restaurants, have at least two credit cards and another 81% vacation at least once a year.

The magazine distributes 40 thousand issues in Mexico with a reach of 280 thousand readers per issue.

The book is a wedding planner that helps brides-to-be and newlyweds pick out the dress, hair, makeup, accessories, montage and romantic destinations, as well as offer topics on sexuality and the home.

“It’s a pleasure to be working together again and to keep showing everyone how beautiful the Riviera Nayarit is through the pages of Nupcias,” said Sandra Notario, editor-in-chief of Revista Nupcias.

Weddings and honeymoons celebrated at the destination by Mexican couples are on the rise. International celebrities are also choosing to come here to celebrate their honeymoons.

Taking into account that Mexico is the main source of tourism for this destination, the public relations office of the CVB is looking to maintain and increase this captive market through events like these.

In just a few days the video he shot in Monteón and Sayulita received more than 70 thousand “Likes” on Facebook.

The recently activated Facebook campaign titled “Around Mexico with Messenger” consists of following a 19-year-old youth around the country and publishing videos and pictures of the places he’s visited—now including the Riviera Nayarit.
 
Using the hashtag #chicoprovinciano, Cris Núñez is sparking social media sensation, receiving online recommendations on places to visit and things to do.
 
During his visit to the Riviera Nayarit he stopped at Playa Canalán in Monteón, as well as Playa los Muertos and Patzcuaritos in Sayulita, where he learned how to surf.
 
“I would say Sayulita is a magical place,” he said during his 2:08-long video. “I learned how powerful it is to meet people who will let you do what you want to do. It was amazing.”
 
The intention is for Facebook users to keep in contact with Cris and to continue to repost his videos. On February 4th he published his Riviera Nayarit video, which in less than a week garnered over 70 thousand “Likes.”
 
This campaign was launched in Mexico, thanks to the very active Facebook participation of its citizens, who on a daily basis number some 30 million users around the country.
 
Cris was chosen after a long search for the ideal representative for the project, even though he had never left Guanajuato, where he’s been living since he was three years old.
 
The trip began on January 28th and so far he’s visited San Miguel de Allende, El Oro de Hidalgo, Mexico City, Tulúm and the Riviera Nayarit.
 
Click here to see the video: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=617640174958438

The Riviera Nayarit was invited to the Festival to expand on the topic “Top Birding Destinations in Central and North America: Mexico’s Riviera Nayarit,” thanks to the shows James Currie taped in this destination.

The 18th San Diego Bird Festival will take place from February 27 – March 2, 2014 and the Riviera Nayarit will play an important part in the event thanks to its reputation as one of the most important birding destinations on the continent.

The credit goes to James Currie, who was invited by The Great Egret Society to attend the Festival and show the first episode of two featuring the Riviera Nayarit, “Top Birding Destinations in Central and North America: Mexico’s Riviera Nayarit.”

Currie is the creator, host and producer for the birding show, Nikon Birding Adventures TV. James created two shows in the Riviera Nayarit in 2013, one of them on Isabel Island, which subsequently aired on the Discovery Channel twice at the start of this year.

Currie is known for his professionalism in his birding life, having organized excursions for over 12 years, while photographing and recording images from the Amazon to Australia, Africa and Madagascar, just to name a few.

James will also be the keynote speaker for this edition of the Festival. The Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau truly made a wise decision when it made the arrangements for James Currie’s visit to the destination, as the results continue to generate excellent exposure.

The San Diego Audubon Society is dedicated to the protection and appreciation of birds, other wildlife and their habitats through education and research, focusing on environmental restoration and conservation.

This particular chapter dates back to 1948 and since then they have created two wildlife sanctuaries in San Diego; their goal is to have three thousand volunteer hours dedicated to the birds.

Much like San Blas, San Diego is an area where there is a huge concentration of birds, both endemic and migratory, with more than 500 species. Both regions are actually migratory corridors for birds of the Americas.

The nature programs focusing on the Riviera Nayarit have elicited a lot of interest. This Festival is a wonderful showcase to entice visitors interested in birding, especially important considering that in the United States alone there are 15 million confirmed birdwatchers.

Click here to visit the Festival’s official website: http://www.sandiegoaudubon.org/