Peru. I wanted to see the Nazca Lines.  On the way, the striking miners had blocked the roads with rocks so that I was heading away from the Nazca Lines. Now I was another day away from them. It was…

in 2005, I took a township tour outside of Cape Town in South Africa. The local bar was a one-room hut without any windows. Inside, very low benches lined the walls. The bar is open from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.,…

In Istanbul, stands Turkey’s most popular tourist site, the Hagia Sophia. The original Hagia Sophia was build in approximately 300 AD by Roman Emperor Justinian to commemorate his conquest of Constantinople. Wikipedia says this was the first construction to use a fully pendentive…

Cambodia, 2010. At a silk farm. I took a free tour. We started by looking at the mulberry trees that feed the caterpillars. With a centrifuge, they separate the mature cocoons from the leaves. Then they were boiling cocoons and…

Madagascar.  In Ambalavao, there is a private paper-making business. Their method for making this paper came from the Arabs back in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Arabs had brought some paper on which to print the Koran but they…