Virgen de la Candelaria is the patron saint of the city of Puno, located 3,870 meters above sea level.

This festival has given Puno the title of “Capital del Folklore Peruano” (Capital of Peruvian Folklore) and is considered one of the three most important religious festival in South America.

On the main day, 2 February, the virgin is led through the city in a colourful procession. The festival is linked to the pre-Hispanic agricultural cycles of sowing and harvesting. Go and see the famous dance of the demons, mass, banquets and firework displays. To end the celebrations the dancers who fill the streets finally head to the cemetery to render homage to the dead.

Every detail, from the colours in their costumes to the beats of the music and steps of the dances have a special meaning, and are passed down from generation to generation. All the senses come alive at this thriving festival, which intertwines religious ceremonial dances with secular activities, such as horse-racing, cock-fighting, feasts, and of course, drinking.

The Fiesta Grande Andacollo runs from the 24-26 December 2011 in Andacollo, Chile.

But what really gets the crowd going is the daring display of Palo Volador – a death-defying native Mayan custom. On the 21 December brave dancers twist rope around their bodies before leaping off a 30 metre pole that has been raised in the plaza, next to the Church of Santo Tomas. Their free falling bodies whirl around the pole, with surprising elegance, while the rope rapidly unravels lowering them to the ground.

The Fiesta de Santo Tomas runs for a week from the 13-21 December 2011 in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.

The day of December 6 itself is actually very quiet. No one is on the streets, and few places are open. Why? Because most people are hung-over or, quite simply, worn out. The big day is the day before, the 5th, when most offices and shops close at 1 o’clock in the afternoon so that people can get home and start la fiesta early. Some companies even have their own parties that day, hiring bands to come to their office. At noon, there is a parade down one of the main avenues. Participants wear one of the various traditional costumes of the country’s myriad indigenous groups and carry baskets of flower petals.

As the sun goes down on the evening of the 5th, the streets become crowded with local musical groups and dancers. Chivas roar up and down the main avenues while people pour in and out of restaurants, bars, and discotheques. Quiteñans celebrate their city in the way they know best: dancing and drinking until dawn.

Be careful to leave valuables at home since the streets will be crowded and pick-pocketing more likely. Enjoy the party!

The fair starts out on the streets with a parade of the best Paso Fino horses in the country. It continues with a multitude of popular festivals and parties in various sections of the city.

Cali also stands out as the world salsa capital, with the best national and international orchestras vibrating throughout the city and bringing together different kinds of publics in closed shows with performances by phenomenal prize-winning dancers and in multitudinous concerts staged by the best interpreters of this musical genre.

Get your dancing shoes on for parties, parades, music concerts and beauty pageants in Colombia’s salsa capital.

Cali Fair is definitely one of the best ways to end the year.

For the past seven years he has been working on a series entitled Genesis, a collection of photographic essays that look at the landscape, wildlife and human communities that live with what he describes as their ancestral values.

A selection of pictures from the project, which is due to be completed by 2012, is now on show in the newly opened gallery in the east wing of Somerset House in Holborn. The space once inhabited by the tax office now forms a very pleasant environment and ideal gallery space for Salgado’s work, glorious black and white photographs of forests bathed in that heavenly light that seems to follow Salgado on all his assignments.

Other pictures show some of the tribal communities he spent three months living with as they moved from camp to camp through the forest. He describes them as “living in a very pure way,” and his pictures of their daily lives and ancient rituals provide a glimpse of the past that Salgado is attempting to protect.

His photographs attempt to make us realise both what could be lost, and the fact that it has not yet all been destroyed. As he says, there is plenty to save.

“People destroy the forest not because they are bad, but because they are not informed,” Salgado said. “Working closely with the people of the land is very important, to achieve equilibrium, we must fight to protect it.”

As well as his photographic work for the past 20 years or so, together with his wife Lelia, he has worked to restore a small part of the rainforest in Brazil through the Instituto Terra, and he is also an ambassador for Unicef.

His epic project Workers, which was published in 1993, brought worldwide acclaim, and a few critics, yet there are few who work on such a global scale and are able to combine a photographic eye that is second to none, alongside such passion for the subject. So if you are in the area, pop along to Somerset House and see the pictures as they are meant to be seen, as prints.

The current exhibition is a joint one with photographer Per-Anders Pettersson who travelled to Acre in north-west Brazil with the actress Gemma Arterton to highlight the work there by Sky Rainforest Rescue which is a three-year partnership between Sky and the WWF.

Amazon is now on show at Somerset House, London, until 4 December 2011.

The purpose of this event is to help the needy. This is why the key point of the event is the parade by the name of Belleza con un propósito (beauty with a purpose) that has been taking place since 1979. The money collected during the parade benefits institutions that work for the elderly, children, and disaster victims to satisfy their basic needs, health and education.

No glue was used for any of the sculptures, only water and pressed sand. An exhibition space of over 32,300 square feet has been dedicated to the works.

The event was organised by training company Foto Urbano, which has taken similar exhibits worldwide, but never to Colombia.

The Colombian capital was an unlikely destination for such festival and over 6,000 tons of sand had to be shipped in from the River Sumapaz.

All the works will be on display under a tent in Bogota’s El Campín sporting arena until 31 December 2011.