Add
Private Notes
Each year several thousand gauchos--Uruguayan cowboys--gather in the interior town of Tacuarembó for a festival and parade. We travel to a ranch deep in the interior and follow the gaucho life and their preparations for the parade.
The island of Trinidad and its small companion, Tobago, form the most ethnically diverse nation in the Caribbean and are home to an extraordinary variety of wildlife species. We sample Trinidadan food with its strong East Indian roots, and are reminded of African traditions as we watch stilt walkers practicing and steel bands rehearsing. We hear the haunting calls of oilbirds and watch leatherback sea turtles exavating their massive beachside nests.
The ancient Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán was home to several great markets. As we travel through Mexico City, which sits on the foundations of the ancient Aztec home, we make a night stop in the historic flower market, brave our way through the controversial market of witches, and contemplate a bewildering array of merchandise at a flea market. Finally, we follow the route of ancient canals and board a boat for a ride through the market's historic source, the floating gardens of Xochimilco.
Unlike much of Brazil, the interior of the northeastern state of Pernambuco is an arid semi-desert. Away from the great Río San Francisco, the countryside is called the sertão, an often drought-stricken scrubland. The inhabitants have fashioned their own culture and history, and still commemorate their fabled bandit-hero, Lampião. Their great interior market recapitulates this history.
One of the world's most diverse forests, the Mata Atlantica once covered Brazil's southeastern coast for over a thousand miles and still blankets the steep hills of Río de Janeiro. Now less than ten percent remains, much of it in protected parks. Within the Mata, runaway slaves established their villages, some of which persist and can only be reached by boat.
For well over a thousand years, the Blackfeet people of Montana have made their home where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains in Glacier National Park. For them, the bison (or American buffalo, as they call it) has been central to their survival, their culture, and their way of life. We join them as they seek to expand their once-threatened tribal herds of bison. We venture inside the park to find why the Blackfeet viewed it as sacred ground.
It is the largest bay on the Atlantic coast of the Americas, pivotal in the history of prehistoric, historic, and contemporary United States. Its tributaries drain a gigantic portion of the eastern U.S., including the Potomac River, home to Washington, D.C. Its fisheries have been depleted, its oyster and clam industries much reduced, and rising seas threaten its shores. Still, hardy residents cherish the bay and their efforts are restoring some of its ancient productivity.
Colombia's Caribbean coast was once a source of the wealth of the Caribbean. The city of Cartagena was the most important city in the entire region. Now a home to monuments a half millennium old, the city and coast are home to a wide variety of cultures, including a palenque, or village founded by escaped slaves. They continue to practice a self-sufficient way of life.
The state of Oaxaca is home to more than sixty different ethnic groups. We visit several of them. The Coastal Mixtecs, whose textiles and masks set them apart from other groups, invite us to join them during Holy Week, when they enact ceremonies that set them off from other peoples.
From dazzling beaches to verdant mountains to parched scrubland, Ceará exhibits many of the attractions and also the contradictory currents that Brazilians face. We visit the old sections of the capital city of Fortaleza, a once-isolated beach town, the sweltering inland semi-desert, and the lush mountain range that forms the state's garden basket.
