Top 5

  1. The 'Superclásico' and other derbies
The continent that gave us Pele, Maradona and Carlos Valderrama loves its football... so much so that in the late 60s Honduras and El Salvador fought a brief war following a World Cup qualifier. Derby games between rival clubs are intense, none more so than Boca Juniors versus River Plate in Buenos Aires. A top flight football game here is almost as much about participation as it is about spectatorship, with the hugely vocal fans singing and dancing along to live bands in the stadium. The atmosphere is never more electric than when the two titans of the Primera División collide in what is known as the 'Superclásico'. 

Brazil hosts an equally thrilling clash in the form of Flamengo versus Fluminense (the so-called Fla-Flu derby), which takes place in Rio's famous Maracanã stadium and holds the record for highest crowd attendance of any club game – 194,000 in 1963. Meanwhile Mexico City’s 105,000-seater Azteca stadium plays host to the bitter rivalry between Cruz Azul and Club America.

  2. Brazilian Grand Prix
Brazil has a rich Formula 1 tradition. Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna each won the Drivers' Championship three times, and Emerson Fittipaldi won it twice, making Brazil the nation with the second most wins after Britain. The Brazilian Grand Prix takes place at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, formerly known as Interlagos, in São Paulo this weekend (6-7 Nov). Can you name the four Brazilians competing in this year’s race? Answers in the comments. If rally is more of your thing, Argentina and Chile host the Dakar Rally in January, and the Baja 1000 rally takes place in Baja California, Mexico in November.

  3. The Argentine Open
Argentina hosts the three most important polo tournaments in the world, The Argentine Open, The Hurlingham Open and the Tortugas Open. The biggest of these is the The Argentine Open, or Abierto de Palermo, which takes place this November. First played in 1893 and held at the Campo Argentino de Polo in the chic Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Palermo, it's a highlight of the social calendar for fashionable porteños.

  4. Surf championships
The ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) World Tour visits Santa Catarina in Brazil every year as the third instalment of the ten-event world series. Head to Santa Catarina at the end of April/early May and you can watch the world's best surfers like Kelly Slater and Mick Fanning take on the gnarly beachbreaks of Imbituba. Puerto Escondido in Mexico is also home to an international surf contest in mid November and the Mexpipe Challenge in February.

  5. And something a bit different...
No Latin American sporting top 5 would be complete without a hint of the unusual. Perhaps my favourite sport in this category is Lucha Libre, the Mexican wrestling phenomenon where masked opponents fight it out in front of adoring crowds. I've never quite worked out whether the comedy aspect of the bouts, which feature spandex-clad wrestlers flying through the air, is intentional or not.

Some other unusual sporting pastimes include goat racing in Tobago and the All Saints' Day horse race in Todos Santos Cuchumatán, Guatemala, which brings in an element sadly missing from conventional racing - all the jockeys are blind drunk.

Or for not-so-unusual sports in places you might not have expected to find them, you could try watching a baseball game in Cuba, where it is the official national sport, or cricket in Guyana.