This first trip to Latin American would be taken in November – December, before the Christmas holidays. January and February were the summer months in the southern hemisphere when many of those that needed to be contacted would be away, thus the issue would have to be published in late March, with a nominal deadline for advertising and editorial copy to be in New York by March 1, 1976, which would give me time to put the final touches on the issue and update information I had culled during my swing through Latin lands. As a truly generous gesture, Syd agreed to let my wife, Lucy, accompany me on the trip, including her air fare. She would join me in Rio and remain with me as far as Lima. She could be a kind of secretary, phoning key companies from the hotels we were lodged in to set up appointments for me.
Hence, I was ready to fly off from Madrid on Sunday, November 2nd. My itinerary read: Rio de Janeiro – Sao Paulo – Buenos Aires – Lima – Bogotá – Caracas – Mexico City. I would then fly to New York to spend the Yuletide holidays there, being joined by my wife and young son, lodging in the rather creaky Excelsior Hotel on West 81st Street, before it was refurbished and converted into a luxury hostelry.
The booking of flights and hotels for the trip were handled by a travel agency in Madrid. I don’t recall the details of how I picked out the hotels along my route, other than that the one for Buenos Aires was the old-fashioned stately Hotel Plaza, built in 1909, that I selected in the mistaken notion that my Argentine contacts would appreciate a Yank lodging in one of the city’s traditional local hostelries, rather than in the nearby Sheraton. However, after having stayed in the Plaza one night in a dumpy dark room, we shifted to the nearby bright, modern Sheraton and were given a room with a splendid view of the city. The Plaza, having long since plummeted from its former glory, shuttered in 2017. In Bogotá and Caracas I booked into the leading hotels, the Tequendama and the Tamanaco, respectively, though on later trips I would choose the Hilton in Caracas, as I had in Sao Paulo. In Rio, on that first trip I stayed in a modern hotel in Copacabana, the Leme Palace, but in later years opted for the more convenient Othon Palace, the National, somewhat out of town where in later years the Rio Film Festival was being held, and finally in the traditional Copacabana Palace with its swimming pool, excellent al fresco restaurant, prime location and spacious, airy bedrooms –one year I fled to there in the middle of the night from the nearby posh Meridien where the inability to open the bedroom windows provoked in me a fit of claustrophobia.
On January 4, I then undertook the second part of my Latin tour, visiting Miami and Puerto Rico. In subsequent trips, I would also include Los Angeles in my itinerary. Once or twice I substituted Santiago for Lima, and even popped into Chicago on one occasion to survey the Hispano sector there.
In those days, when only top executives used credit cards, I departed with a substantial billfold of American Express travellers checks as well as a healthy wad of Yankee dollars. I believe my total expenses for the whole first Latin trip amounted to roughly $5,000. Much of this was balanced against payments for advertising I had received in Madrid. My passport bore the required visas from Brazil, Peru and Venezuela, obtained in the corresponding consulates in Madrid.