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Private Notes
Native Americans in pre-Conquest Mexico celebrated one day each year when their deceased ancestors would return to visit-El Día de los Muertos. This ancient tradition is the state of Oaxaca's most important celebration. Parades, home altars, and gaily-decorated graves welcome back the dead. The custom has spread beyond Mexico to Los Angeles and Tucson.
The Brazilian city of Belem at the mouth of the Amazon is a showcase of products from the great river basin. Now the famed açai berry is expanding Belem's reputation. Reclusive river people, called ribeirinhos harvest the berries by climbing the tall palms where they grow and rush the produce by boat to the port. There they trade for other goods, and quickly escape the city to return to their tranquil, timeless lives at the edge of the world's greatest river. Host David Yetman takes us through Belem and visits the homes of the river people.
Over two thousand years ago Mayas undertook construction of a city deep within the jungles of the Petén region of Guatemala. For over a thousand years the city of Tikal dominated the countryside and the region with its towering temples, affluent society, and hosts of scientists, engineers, and craftsmen. Host David Yetman accompanies archaeologists who explain the unfolding story of Tikal as new discoveries emerge a daily basis.
The Georgia Straits of coastal British Columbia, Canada are dotted with hundreds of islands. This is lumber and fishing county nearly free of roads. One cargo ship delivers heavy equipment and supplies to remote camps, and takes on passengers to view the wild beauty of the straits and inlets, with towering peaks and glaciers overlooking the sea.
Far inland from the tropical beaches of Brazil's Bahia state lies an ancient escarpment that juts up into Bahia's vast interior. Host David Yetman takes us on a tour of the Chapada Diamantina, once a rich source of diamonds, now an increasingly popular recreational region. The sheer cliffs and steep mountainsides intercept moisture from the distant Atlantic. The resultant rainfall brings flows into the arid sertão and waters the great swamp where runaway slaves hid from their owners.
Once each month a train departs the coastal mega city of Lima, Peru, bound for the highlands. Along the way the railroad passes through numerous tunnels and over trestles, crowning out at nearly 16,000 feet elevation. Host Dave Yetman hops on the train to arrive at its destination, the indigenous city of Huancayo, high on the Altiplano of the Andes and as different from Lima as any two cities in the world.
The Hawaiian Islands owe their existence to a volcanic hotspot, whose spewings over millions of years have created the archipelago. Host David Yetman climbs over old and new lava flows to observe new lands emerging from the ocean. At night manta rays flock to the newly created seafloor of the Kona Coast.
Chiloé is the second largest island in South America and just one island of an archipelago of southern Chile. Chilotes, as the residents are known, consider themselves a people apart, a proud mixture of indigenous and Hispanic origins. Host Dave Yetman joins Chilotes who demonstrate the traditions of food, towns, and society that extend back well before the arrival of Europeans.
On September 16 each year, Mexicans from all parts of the Republic flock to the small city of Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato to commemorate the "Grito," the call for independence from Spain. The grito's originator, the popular but unconventional priest Miguel Hidalgo, issued the call in 1810 from the steps of the town's stately church. The annual celebration involves the entire community but we are offered a special tour by one of Father Hidalgo's descendants.
Indians outnumber non-Indians in the Peruvian highlands. Many of them, in cities such as Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Huancayo and hosts of villages continue to farm and produce handicrafts much as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Now they use cell phones and the Internet, but their native dress and languages and their nearness to the soil help them maintain their identity as a people apart. Host Dave Yetman meets Quechua people and learns from them about their fascinating past and present.
The small city of Tultepec, a suburb of Mexico City, specializes in the production of fireworks, supplying much of the country known for fireworks in its festivals. In March of each year Tultepec celebrates with dazzling, flamboyant, and hazardous displays of fireworks that wildly exceed any other in Mexico.
Southern Chile is a land of forests, rivers, lakes, and volcanoes. It is also home to Native American and immigrant communities. We visit Mapuche Indians and German and Italian immigrant communities and the vast landscapes they inhabit.
In the early 1920s, a small group of Japanese peasants received a land grant deep in the vast forests of the Amazon. Today their descendents have become prosperous farmers, raising tropical crops and pepper, all the while protecting large tracts of primary tropical forest.
Archaeologists have only recently begun to restore the important Maya city of Ceibal, situated along the Passion River deep in the Petén forest of Guatemala. We travel to the site with scientists directing the latest excavations and visit the homes of the Maya workers who are restoring the site.
California's Sierra Nevada is the largest and highest mountain range in the continental United States and, until recently, a geological puzzle. The source of colossal wealth in the form of gold and, now, water, it was a formidable roadblock to settlement of the state. Wevisit the range with renowned tectonic specialist Eldridge Moores.
Each year on January 6, pilgrims travel to the ancient Maya city of Tizimín in the Yucatán peninsula to celebrate Epiphany. The festival of the Day of the Kings combines pre-Columbian and modern themes, all of them gilded with the touch of the Mayas.
Panama City has been a pivotal shipping port for hundreds of years-over water and over land. Today it has become an economic powerhouse, the Hong Kong of the Americas, thanks to its booming canal. But the canal cannot function without the services provided by the huge rainforest that envelopes it.
African-Brazilians provided Brazil with internationally renowned cultural symbols: samba and carnival. The center of African-Brazilian culture is the city of Salvador in the state of Bahia. Its connection to Africa-physical and cultural-helps us to understand the distinct cultural and culinary contributions from this vibrant repository of African influence, and to recognize the heritage of slavery.
Yellowstone National Park is U.S. national park, and one of the most visited. In winter, access is limited, and visitors and wildlife are challenged by deep snow and fierce cold. The frozen landscape is utterly transformed from summertime, and its explosive potential is even more evident.
The Chinantecan people of mountainous northern Oaxaca, Mexico, speak by whistling as well as by talking. We visit their isolated community and see for ourselves how they use whistled speech to supplement-and sometimes replace-spoken speech.
The last vestiges of the once-mighty Dutch empire live on in the Caribbean in the ABC Islands-Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Islanders speak four languages, one of which is their very own, as they explain. We visit Curaçao, now independent, and wander the streets of Willemstad, its capital city. In its colonial buildings we find hints of a past glory made possible by slave trade. After a short flight by puddle jumper we land in Bonaire, still a colony, where we don Scuba gear to mingle with its incomparable marine life and hunt down the Lionfish intruders.
Across the All Saints' Bay from Brazil's huge city of Salvador in Bahia state, the region known as the Reconcavo supports a distinct culture and heritage. Over the centuries slaves escaped their owners and founded their own towns. They, along with other colonists, shaped the local society and exploited its tropical riches, its dende palms, its mangrove swamps, its rivers, and its once-lush forests. Tropical islands along the coast became homes to the very affluent and to humble fishing families.
Bogotá, Colombia, is the nation's capital and its social, cultural, and economic center. At 8,600 feet elevation, its air is thin and with eight million residents its air is dirty. To help decrease traffic congestion and air pollution Bogotans have created a dramatically effective mass transit system instituted Cyclovía: each Sunday they cordon off their downtown and turn it over to bicyclists and pedestrians. Colombians love their coffee and brag about it. Most Colombian coffee comes from the Zona Cafetera to the west of the city.
The mighty Sierra Nevada is our most important mountain range. It influences much of California's weather and produces most if its water. It was once the greatest barrier to transcontinental transportation and communication. It is a symbol of earthquakes, which created it. Tectonic geologist Eldridge Moores helps host David Yetman decipher the mysteries of the range's origins and describes the sierras' importance.
Long stretches of Brazil's northeast coast are lined with sand dunes, some of them the size of small mountains, some of them so vast that they create their own climate. Their color, shape, and composition and their relationship with wind provide a striking variety of landscapes, each with its own ecological character, its own plants and animals. The sands are also home to the cashew tree, famous for fruit and nut. One tree in particular has become a major tourist attraction.
It's the world's largest lake, vast enough to create its own climate. Lake Superior separates the U.S. and Canada, on the east by a portage canal. For a thousand years the lake has seen vibrant cultures and trade in copper. Canadian shores harbor unending forests and some of the coldest towns in the Americas. Within its waters is Isle Royale National Park.
For two hundred years Nicaragua suffered from the double insult of shaking earth-earthquakes and volcanic eruptions-and military and political interventions from the north. Today a democratic Nicaragua is promoting its diversity of cultures, its Spanish colonial heritage, and its natural wonders. Misquito Indians from the Caribbean coast and descendants of Aztecs, who hardly know each other, still flourish within the country. Nicaragua's lakes, forests, and volcanoes are finally earning the accolades they deserve.
The Brazilian state of Pernambuco, about the size of Maine, is home to the megapolis of Recife, Brazil's fifth largest city and home to more than 5 million Pernambucans. Recife's carnival, along with celebrations in its colonial suburb Olinda and the in the cities of Bezerros and Nazarene da Mata, though not as internationally famous as those of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, are part of a flamboyant, joyous, boisterous week of immense parades, intense dances, and elaborate costumes. And invitations are not required. You can jump in at any time.
Five hundred years ago Franciscan priests journeyed to the remote city of Cuetzalan in Puebla State. The region was fertile for evangelizing, an urban area of Aztecs and Totonacans who supported a vibrant culture. Although less remote now, the traditions and languages continue in a town that venerates its fiestas and the ancient rituals they perpetuate, especially the acrobatic, airborne voladores.
Two of Alaska's vast national parks, Lake Clark and Katmai, have endured a heritage of volcanic explosions. Lake Clark is a wilderness of endless forests, lakes, marshes, glaciers, and recently active volcanoes, while nearby Katmai, born of one of history's most violent explosions, shows the aftermath of a cataclysmic eruption a century ago and how the rainforests and inhabitants have recovered. Both parks are home to abundant wildlife, while villages of native Americans continue as well, along with their traditions.
Belize has a decidedly different history and culture from the rest of Central America. English is the first language of this small nation, reflecting the its British ancestry, yet Belize retains deep historic connections among its many residents of Maya ancestry, and is proud of its strong African roots among the Garifuna people. Belize also has world-class archaeological sites, vast tracts of intact rain forest, and some of the world's richest marine treasures.
The explosion of craft beer brewing across the United States has created a widespread interest in the process of beer making. A beer festival in Tucson, Arizona, leads us to some local brewers and sends us on a quest to the origin of what makes beer different-hops. Nearly all our hops are cultivated around Yakima, Washington where we follow the annual harvest. We sample as many products of hop production as possible.
An hour or so distant from Panama's burgeoning capital and its great canal, a broad peninsula juts into the Pacific Ocean. The Azuero Peninsula is home to traditions, landscapes, and people different from those of the capital and its suburbs. Residents of Azuero celebrate what sets them off from the rest of Panama. And they are huge fans of baseball.
Argentines maintain that Patagonia begins at the Río Colorado in the Province of Neuquen. Traveling south, we cross that river on Ruta 40-Route Forty-in a volcanic landscape amidst a vast desert, the majestic peaks of the Andes always present on our right. Within the slopes of the Andes are myriad lakes and towns constructed by European immigrants-and expatriates, but never far from the arid, windswept steppes of Patagonia. More secluded are the Mapuches-Indians who resisted the European onslaught and today struggle to retain their culture.
The Wind River Range in western Wyoming is the state's largest mountain range, nearly one hundred miles from north to south. With dozens of massive peaks, it is also home to the wildest country in the lower 48 states. Much of it is protected in wilderness, which we commemorate on the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964. On arriving, we visit ancient foothill sites where Shoshone Indians left examples of their art, historic locations of Indian battles, and scars of mines and ghost towns before plunging deep into the wilds of the Wind Rivers.
A small state in Brazil's dry northeast, Ceará is home to a variety of traditions not found in the rest of the vast country. The inland bush, called the sertão, is home to cowboys and an odd rodeo, while the coast supports fishermen whose wooden boats are little changed over the last several centuries. Ceará is home to Brazil's most important religious shrine, its last lace-weavers, and a startling array of tropical fruit.
From the urban capital city of Bogota and its famous Ciclovía dedicated to bicycles, this sprawling nation offers a unexpected variety of cultures and urban landscapes. We hop from the mountains to the extreme southern tip of the country to see wildlife and to visit indigenous villages of the people who live in the heart of the Amazon jungle.
Argentina's nostalgic Ruta 40-Route Forty-passes along the base of the Cordillera of the Andes from the extreme north to the southernmost road in the nation. On its way Ruta 40 meets the famed wine capital of Mendoza, whose dedication to Malbec wine is recent, but whose wine production dates to colonial times. We linger in vineyards and bodegas, sampling the varieties of Malbec and Argentine food. Farther south Ruta 40 penetrates the northern reaches of Patagonia, a windswept desert bordered on the west by the incomparable Andes, and massive pre-Andean volcanoes.
The state of Oaxaca is Indian country, and its landscapes the most diverse of any Mexican state. Host David Yetman samples food in a traditional Zapotec market in the high valleys, navigates among crocodiles in mangrove swamps on the coast, and joins in the harvesting, drying and roasting of coffee in the cloud forest.
The shanty towns for which Río de Janeiro is famous (or notorious) play a pivotal role in the city's cultural history. Favelas, as they are known, rise precipitously from near the ocean far up the hillsides. Often bereft of minimal municipal services, they are home to a rich cultural life, their own social organization, and along the way in their history, have provided the artistic and dramatic talent for Brazil's most important international artistic contribution, Carnaval in Río. We visit favelas and speak with residents there.
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.
In 2016, the U.S. government made it easier to visit Cuba. Now, a Cuban cultural expert shows us Havana once off limits to us. Hidden among its fine old buildings we find a village created by artists, an African-Cuban cultural center, a canalside restaurant, a school for women boxers, a women’s bicycling cooperative, and a street dedicated to live African- Cuban music.
Revenues from Amazon oil mean prosperity to many Ecuadorans, but the benefits for native peoples of the Amazon are less clear. Chinese oil interests are scouring the ancestral lands of Huaorani people for petroleum. The results are varied and controversial as the Hauorani lands and pristine rain forest are invaded by oil explorers and their machines.
Six centuries ago the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, was the world’s grandest urban center and its market the world’s busiest. Now home to more than 20 million souls, Mexico City’s museums, monuments, galleries, public celebrations, and vast ethnic mix reflect its past and present glories, and make it Latin America’s most vibrant city.
In the Arizona desert, scientists study a small ocean at Biosphere II facility, where researchers measure sea changes under controlled conditions. But the real ocean is uncontrolled and vast. We journey to the Bahamas to join researchers in caves and in reefs who are making startling findings about changes in climate and their effects on our oceans.
Situated along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Pinacate Volcanic Range houses a violent history of fire and brimstone. Visible from outer space are five massive craters, hundreds of cinder cones, and lava flows miles long, all set in a varied desert of epic dryness only a few miles away from a burgeoning ocean resort town. Peoples, ancient and modern have left their traces.
Researchers at Biosphere II in Arizona have re-created tropical rainforest in a closed environment to study the effects of climate change. Scientists compare that artificial environment with a tropical rainforest reserve in Costa Rica, a living laboratory where scientists record the effects of global warming on the forest and its dwellers.
Dominican Republic has survived a troubled history of dictators and intervention from the north. Now it is a hotbed of baseball, a hotspot for viewing humpbacked whales, and home to one of the liveliest carnivals anywhere, the best place to view diablos cojuelos—limping devils—on parade: the Carnival of La Vega.
More than any other of the contiguous United States, Oregon has been shaped by volcanoes. East and west of the Cascade Range are two different landscapes. On the east side, we climb through lavas of volcanic glass and follow a mountain bike trail at the edge of a flow, then venture west to the fertile valleys and the wild Pacific coast in all its glory.
Santiago de Cuba, a thousand kilometers southeast of Havana, was once Cuba’s most important city. Ravaged by hurricanes and impoverished by the U.S. blockade, it has endured and still celebrates its African roots and an ancient religious shrine. Residents of African descent celebrate an old French custom.
In the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, we find nations apart from mainstream Mexico. Populated for centuries by peoples speaking Mayan languages, they retain their customs and dress–while struggling to protect their homelands. Their towns and villages retain traditional pre-Columbian governments. They have invited us to one of their annual ceremonies.
Mexico City comes to grips with falling water tables, exhausted springs, and sinking earth.
Te arts & urban restoration of the Columbian city of Medellin inspire large cities around the world.
