Alexandra de Vries (Brazil) made her first journey to Brazil at the ripe old age of 1 month. (Alas, few of her food reviews from that trip survive.) In the years since, Alexandra has returned many times to travel, explore, and live in this amazing country. Alexandra co-writes Frommer’s Brazil and Frommer’s Portable Rio de Janeiro about her alltime favorite place to visit.

Eliot Greenspan (Ecuador, Venezuela) is a poet, journalist, and travel writer who took his backpack and typewriter the length of Mesoamerica before settling in Costa Rica in 1992. Since then, he has traveled almost ceaselessly around Latin America, writing articles and guidebooks to feed his travel habit. He feels particularly at home in the neotropics—in its rain and cloud forests, on its rivers, and under its seas. Eliot is the author of Frommer’s Ecuador, Frommer’s Costa Rica and Frommer’s Belize.

Charlie O’Malley (Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay) is a writer and wine enthusiast who can be found living in Mendoza, Argentina, when he’s not traveling the rest of South America.

Jisel Perilla (Colombia) worked with a nonprofit microcredit organization in Medellín, Colombia, and has written about, lived in, and traveled throughout much of Latin America. She currently resides in the Washington, D.C., area and was at work on Frommer’s Panama as this book went to press. Neil E. Schlecht (Peru) first trekked to Machu Picchu in 1983 as a college student, spending his junior year abroad in Quito, Ecuador. The author of a dozen travel guides (including Frommer’s Peru and Spain For Dummies), as well as articles on art and culture and art catalogue essays, and a photographer, he has lived for extensive periods in Brazil and Spain. He now resides in northwestern Connecticut.

Kristina Schreck (Chile) has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and has lived and worked in Argentina and Chile for 8 years. She is the former managing editor of Adventure Journal magazine and is co-author of the first edition of Frommer’s Chile & Easter Island. Kristina currently resides in Santiago and the Andes, where she works yearround for Ski Portillo (and although she thinks it is the greatest ski resort in the world, to be fair, she asked an independent, impartial source to edit the Chile skiing coverage in this guide).