Steamy Miami booms with pleasure-seekers

A steamy tropical climate and resident mix of immigrant Caribbean islanders laces southern Florida with a Caribbean flavor.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Miami, the state's main international gateway and largest city. Here, you'll hear Spanish as often as English and encounter Latin American culture - particularly Cuban - at every turn.

The city has had all sorts of ups and downs over the years, gaining notoriety in 1980s as the prime US murder hotspot and later as location of the TV program Miami Vice. The show gave the city a colorful, exciting and exotic spin - with two stylish undercover cops keeping South American drug lords at bay - which helped provide a catalyst for the city's turnaround; which came as the result of a concerted clean-up effort and the wooing of Latin American big businesses.

Now a flamboyant year-round playground, Miami booms with pleasure-seekers, luring the rich and famous into the flocks of impossibly beautiful people who hit South Beach to party and parade amid the gentle pastels of its Art Deco architecture.