Latin (Central and South) America is a region of enormous contrast, where superlatives abound. The continent contains; the world's greatest rainforest, the Amazon (also the world's largest river), which harbours the most extravagant expression of life on Earth; the world's driest desert, the Atacama; and the world's longest and second highest mountain chain, the Andes and the New World's largest wetland, the Pantanal. While offshore, the Galapagos Islands will forever be synonymous with Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution.