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Hot air balloons, zip wires, pinata-smashing and swimming with manatees – they’re all in a day’s work for Stephen Fry as he sets out on the trip of a lifetime.

It’s seven years since he embarked on an epic journey to each of the USA’s 50 states for the BBC. Frankly, it was a bit of a rushed job, with some destinations appearing for just a few moments each, and never really giving viewers an impression of what they were really like.

Hopefully, his latest series – Stephen Fry in Central America, on ITV – will be a little more in-depth, or at least give Fry a moment to get out of whatever mode of transport he has adopted to drink in its atmosphere on our behalf.

This time, as the title has already revealed to you, he is sampling the delights available just south of the border, most of which he has never seen before.

“I’d only ever visited Mexico before, and that wasn’t really for very long,” he explains.

“That’s part of the reason I wanted to do this series. I had the idea about four years ago when I was chatting about the American series I’d done, going round all the States in a taxi, and of course the most enjoyable part is going to places you’ve never seen before. And I said the places that have always intrigued me are the areas between North and South America.

“I knew that some of these countries were potentially dangerous, that they were the only land-route between the cocaine-producing areas of South America and the huge markets in the States. Everybody knew that there were cartels ruling some areas of some cities.”

Indeed, Fry’s first stop is Mexico. He starts on the Sante Bridge, which separates El Paso in Texas from Ciudad Juarez, an important transit point for drug cartels – and a place regarded as one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities.

However, he is quick to point out that he loved the experiences he had, particularly when it came to meeting the region’s people.

“The one thing you can’t get from books and the internet is a sense of the people, and in the end that’s always going to be what’s fun and interesting and different to all the other characters you meet,” he says. “And the culture. I always say there are some things that tell you more about a country than anything else, and they are the music, the food and the humour. And Central America is pretty rich in all of those things, it really is.”

Later in the first episode, Fry takes a trip to Chihuahua, and en route he meets some of the area’s cowboys, then travels by train to the Sierra Madre mountains, where he’s dazzled by its natural wonders.

“Overall it was a terrific experience, it really was amazing,” claims Fry. “It was full of colour and variety and astonishment. I hope if this series does one thing, it might make people think, ‘Let’s go to Guatemala for our holidays,’ Or ‘Let’s go to Costa Rica for our holidays’ – instead of to the obvious places.”