Wildest: Latin America

Venezuela is famous for its lost worlds, its forbidding mountains, huge swamps, and impenetrable jungles, all seemingly cut off in space and time. Yet each is linked, by the mighty river: the Orinoco, the rumored route to El Dorado, city of gold.

The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, and the richest ecosystem on earth. This film uncovers what makes the Amazon such a powerhouse of evolution; how it has come to home a third of all species on the planet.

Every year The Pantanal is drowned by immense floods, and then suffer severe drought. Yet, while people struggle, the Pantanal hosts some of the greatest gatherings of animals on the planet.

The longest chain of mountains in the world, the Andes run the length of western South America and dictate the climate for the whole continent. They include some of the highest peaks outside the Himalayas.

Patagonia is a place of extremes - of vast ice fields and snow-capped mountains; of windswept deserts and violent oceans. Survival here means being tough enough to cope with brutal winters, and canny enough to exploit brief seasons of plenty.