A popular and respected naturalist, Patty Hostiuck is well-versed in tropical as well as polar ecosystems. She began her career in Alaska as a ranger; since then she has worked as a freelance naturalist and lecturer on numerous expedition ships. Patty, who has led over 50 trips with Smithsonian Journeys, has guided travelers to the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers, Chile, Costa Rica, Belize, the Galápagos, Iceland, Botswana, Australia and Borneo, among many other destinations. Below is a post about her most recent trip – this one to Peru.

In April, I served as Study Leader for Smithsonian’s Legendary Peru trip with a delightful group of guests, most of whom were not only first-time Smithsonian travelers but also first-time visitors to South America. Peru is a great country to begin one’s exploration of South America; it contains the greatest number of archaeological sites and boasts the most highly evolved ancient civilizations on the continent, including the Inca Empire. Machu Picchu was the magnet that drew most of these guests here, but as they have now learned, Peru offers other rewards—delicious and daring cuisine; breathtaking scenery and varied geography, from desert to mountains, cloud forest to lowland jungle; myriad wildlife and botanical wonders; friendly, authentic and down-to-earth people; and, yes, abundant shopping!—certainly a country worthy of repeat visits.

Our April visit turned out to be wonderful timing. In Lima, the capital, the weather was sunny and bright, lacking the gray garúa mist that predominates June – October, and the abundance of flowers was a tonic to those of us just emerging from winter. Although April is the end of the rainy season in the mountains, our weather nonetheless was splendid in Cuzco, Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca. Highland terraced crops were like colorful patchwork quilts, while potatoes—which originated in Peru—were being harvested by colorfully dressed, hard-working Quechua people.

Machu Picchu’s high season for tourists is June-August, so it was a pleasure to explore the magnificent ruins in less crowded conditions. In addition, several species of orchids were in bloom including a towering red Sobralia and a dainty pink Epidendrum locally called “wiñay wayna” which means “forever young.” Due to its location in the Andean cloud forest, Machu Picchu and environs harbors a great diversity of hummingbirds. Feeders at our cloud forest lodge attracted energetic swarms of at least six species of these glittering avian jewels with colorful names like Collared Inca, Sparkling Violetear and Chestnut-breasted Coronet.

Peru lived up to all its promises, both cultural and natural, ancient and current. Smithsonian guests departed well-satisfied with their choice and already planning their next visit to South America. What will it be? Patagonia? Amazon?

Machu Picchu. (Courtesy of Flickr user quinet.)

Sobralia orchids add pops of color to the Machu Picchu landscape. (Courtesy of Flickr user Matito.)

Lama near Machu Picchu. (Courtesy of Flickr user Emmanuel Dyan.)

Hummingbird near Machu Picchu. (Courtesy of Flickr user Ivan Mlinaric.)

La Catedral in central Lima. (Courtesy of Flickr user James Preston.)

Cuzco, Peru. (Courtesy of Flickr user fortherock.)

Woman cooking on Uros Island, Lake Titicaca. (Courtesy of Flickr user pclvv.)

Click here to read more about Smithsonian’s upcoming Legendary Peru departures this fall and winter.

Throughout our Smithsonian tour of Vietnam, we witnessed the role of family as the heart of this society. Ancestor worship; weddings, funerals, and reburial ceremonies; preparations to return home to celebrate Tết, the Lunar New Year; and the idea of the country as itself a large, extended family (the word for country, quốc gia, literally means nation-family) – all provide evidence that family imparts a sense of self, identity, and belonging.

It would be misleading, however, to think of this family-centeredness as cloistering Vietnamese in some private world behind the doors and walls of home. Instead, as we walk along streets in Vietnam’s largest cities or cruise down its waterways (for, in Halong Bay and the Mekong Delta, water is, after all, a key thoroughfare), we see that the social world of the family spills out of the confines of the home and is intimately connected to the bustling activity of streets and markets. All the more so as Tết approaches.

Our journey begins in Hanoi about two weeks before Tết. Preparations focus on Ông Táo, the Kitchen God. Through his residence in the home, Ông Táo learns all a family’s secrets. On the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month, Ông Táo will journey skyward on the back of a carp to give a full account of the year’s events to the Jade Emperor. A proper ritual send-off will sway him in making a positive report. Our first full day in Hanoi ends in the Ancient Quarter with an evening walk down Hàng Mã Street, which specializes in votive paper items and decorations that are used in offerings such as those that will soon be made to Ông Táo. Row after row of housefront shops take over the sidewalk with eclectic arrays of red lanterns, dragons (in honor of the upcoming Year of the Dragon), auspicious messages that can be hung on decorative kumquat trees, red and gold lì xì envelopes that will bear small gifts of money for children, and paper replicas of currency, clothing, jewelry, and electronics that will be burned as offerings to the ancestors. The group tentatively weaves through the traffic, as commuters on motorbikes stop on their way home to buy ritual or decorative items. Other residents perch on small stools to enjoy phở (noodle soup) or grilled meat at streetside cafés. Our local guide reminds us that Hanoi’s tubehouses – long, narrow multi-storied structures – can be cramped, so both socializing and domestic tasks move out onto the street.

Lantern shop in Hanoi. (Image courtesy of Flickr user mrbold_fickr.)

The next day, the group journeys through the drizzle to Halong Bay, where we witness a different sort of street life in floating villages formed by groups of boats anchored together. These villages include bank branches so that residents can conveniently exchange the money they receive from Chinese and other foreign fish buyers. We stop at the houseboat of one family, where three generations (grandmother, parents, and children) live in a series of one-room wooden structures linked by planks that surround enclosures for raising grouper or oysters. There is a roofed verandah for work or socializing, a drainage system for collecting rainwater, a generator to power television, lights, and other appliances, and a dog to patrol the entire compound. Both friends and customers can easily stop by.

Halong Bay. (Image courtesy of Flickr user Bruno BRA.)

About a week later in Cần Thơ, we get another view of watery street life. Early one morning, we board a boat at the hotel’s dock to travel about 45 minutes to a floating market. For several hours each morning, boats congregate to trade the bounty of the Mekong Delta region. Produce sold here will be transported to markets throughout the country or exported abroad. Every boat has a bamboo pole for hanging samples of its offerings, including pomelo, turnip, star apple, shallots, garlic, scallions, melons, and squash. In the throng of boats, the poles help customers locate what they wish to buy; the hails used in land markets would be futile over the din of boat engines. We disembark to taste local fruit, including the infamous durian, at a floating store and phở restaurant. Back on our boat, a few detours down smaller tributaries yield a closer view of the houses that line the waterways, the narrow wooden monkey bridges that traverse the numerous canals, and the flowering water hyacinths and morning glory that make the scene so memorable, but which also threaten to clog the boat’s motor.

Market in Cần Thơ. (Image courtesy of Flickr user dalbera.)

In Ho Chi Minh City, a.k.a. Saigon, the pre-1975 name that most residents still prefer, our group gets a different taste of street life. On one of our final days in Vietnam, a few of us venture to a boutique specializing in fair-trade handicrafts. Our excursion takes us through the Tết flower market in the large “September 23rd Park.” Families, couples, groups of schoolchildren, and tourists oggle displays of horticultural virtuosity: delicately patterned orchids, exuberant chrysanthemums, lovingly tended bonsai, and giant kumquats. Some plants are shaped like famous Vietnamese landscapes, while others take the form of a dragon in honor of the coming year. Even in a city as large as Saigon, an outing to the Tết flower market can be an occasion to bump into friends and acquaintances. As we get closer to New Year’s Eve, families and friends will pile onto their motorbikes to cruise around the downtown area – a chance to see and be seen while taking in the festive atmosphere of this most special time of the Vietnamese year. Although Tết is often described as a family holiday, the preparations for it that we witnessed on streets and waterways throughout the country underscore the intimate links between kin and community and between social and economic life in a country where a sense of cultural heritage is paramount.

A bridge on Nguyen Hue Blvd. in Saigon. (Image courtesy of Flickr user HudrY.)

Floral display for Tet, Saigon. (Image courtesy of Flickr user Calflier001.)

Crowded street at night during Tet, Saigon. (Image courtesy of Flickr user robertlafond2009.)

Read more about our small group “Discovering Vietnam” trip here.

She is currently in the field, leading our Classic China and Tibet tour. Read her post below detailing the group’s first stop – The Imperial Palace in Beijing.

The afternoon was brilliant — the gusting winds from the day before had cleared the air, making the immense spaces of the courtyards feel, if possible, more vast than what I remembered. I could easily imagine how exposed and how diminished some ambassador would have felt making that long center walk down the length of the vast reception grounds, tracking dead center to the red beamed halls that wait at the end of each of space. But we moved along the side pavilions, following the red bannisters that line the side buildings, looking down into the gigantic courtyards. We wanted to make sure we had leisure to enjoy what the Qian Long Emperor had enjoyed—the scholar’s garden in the very back of the royal compound. We were working our way back to his living quarters, through the chain of side passageways. We were essentially by ourselves, as we hugged the tall sides of the buildings, and I felt less like a tourist, and more — in the privacy of these side spaces — like a messenger. We entered the garden in the living quarters of the fourth Qing Emperor, and the sense of vastness and formality of the front grounds and grand halls vanished, as had the crowds. We entered through a simple small open gate, coming face to face with the pock-marked strange stones (guai shi) and weathered tree-trunks. Small pavilions were laid out as if in monastic retreat and the small benches and low smooth stones made it easy to sit for a bit and sense the intimacy of the garden. The late afternoon sun felt lovely on our backs and the trees caught the sounds of the remaining Beijing winds.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Mal B.

Learn more about future trips to China and Tibet.

Which ones inspire you to travel?

"Three fishermen on Inle Lake." Taken by David Lazar (Brisbane, Australia). Photographed January 2011, Inle Lake, Myanmar.

"Old mine on Red Mountain Pass." Taken by Robert Castellino (Lafayette, Colorado). Photographed October 2009, Ouray, Colorado.

"Blue Ice Cave." Taken by Jamie Scarrow (Bruce, Canberra, Australia). Photographed December 2011, Antarctica.

"House collage." Taken by Shyamal Das (Kolkata, India). Photographed October 2010, Sikkim, West Bengal.

"Segways on tour in Valencia near a modern building." Taken by Marcel van Balken (Amstelveen, Netherlands). Photographed October 2010, Valencia, Spain.

"Moonrise over Northern Lights." Taken by Ben Hattenbach (Los Angeles, California). Photographed March 2011, northern Alaska.

"Steam from Mammoth Hot Springs." Taken by Steven Ross (Nixa, Missouri). Photographed October 2009, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

"Village boys relaxing." Taken by Nimai Chandra Ghosh (Kolkata, India). Photographed November 2009, West Bengal, India.

David Wimpfheimer is a biologist and a professional naturalist with a passion for the natural history of the West and a special interest in birds. During his 25 years as a guide, David has lectured on trips to Death Valley, Baja California, Yosemite National Park, and more. This spring, David will return to Yosemite to lead a Smithsonian group. In his post below, David discusses his plans for this upcoming trip and what makes Yosemite, designated a national park in 1890

Yosemite. The very word conjures up many vivid images, thoughts and feelings. Huge, thundering waterfalls, an incomparable valley of sheer

Giant Sequoia (Photo courtesy of David Wimpfheimer)

granitic cliffs and domes, groves of giant sequoias, birds, bears and other wildlife.
I have visited Yosemite National Park every year for the last thirty. I never get tired of going there. How could I with so many varied landforms and organisms?

This June, I will be taking another Smithsonian group to Yosemite. Last year, the Sierra experienced one of the greatest accumulations of snow in recorded history. While that made for a great show of waterfalls, deep snow actually prevented us from walking out to some of our destinations. 2012 is just the opposite, a very low year for snow. Don’t worry, the waterfalls will still be spectacular, and we’ll be able to walk to Sentinel Dome. This is a moderately easy mid-elevation walk through open montane forest of fir, pine and juniper to spectacular views of Yosemite Valley and the Sierra crest to the east.

Waterfall (Photo courtesy of David Wimpfheimer)

With less snow in the mountains all the park’s roads will be open. Glacier Point, towering thousands of feet above the cascading waters of Nevada and Vernal Falls, is a place that never fails to impress me. The views are there, but I enjoy sharing the smaller details; spiky seedpods of a Chinquapin bush, the ethereal song of a Hermit Thrush, or even a Sooty Grouse calling from the bough of a majestic Red Fir. Tioga Pass will be open allowing us access to the dramatic alpine zone. Mono Lake lies just to the east in a spectacular sagebrush basin. This is an awesome place that I hope to show our group.

Yosemite is the kind of place that is really more than just the sum of the words describing it. A photograph of a giant Sequoia can never do justice to its size. That’s why we’ll take a walk through the historic Mariposa Grove. The spirit of John Muir seems to call out from this unique place. Our June visit will be a good time to see the huge white blossoms of azalea here while chickadees, warblers and other birds are in full song.

There is so much to share with participants, but I want you to have your own special experience of Yosemite. It may come on one of our group walks, but you’ll also have the opportunity to just sit by the bank of the Merced River and take in this glacially carved landscape on your own. Like most national parks, there are many choices here. We’ll guide your explorations, but always allow room for more discoveries.

See photos from past trips below and learn more about David’s June trip here.

Half Dome (Photo courtesy of David Wimpfheimer)

Photo courtesy of David Wimpfheimer

Photo courtesy of David Wimpfheimer

Photo courtesy of David Wimpfheimer

Photo courtesy of David Wimpfheimer

Amy Kotkin, Director of Smithsonian Journeys, speaks with Aly Dagang, program leader and Associate Dean for Latin America at SIT, a division of World Learning.

Aly Dagang in the field with students

Amy Kotkin: This June, Smithsonian will partner with World Learning on a month-long program for college students who would like to study tropical ecology and sustainability issues in Panama. Why is Panama a particularly important place to study these issues?

Aly Dagang: Panama is an outstanding place to study tropical ecology due to the range of vastly biodiverse ecosystems that occur within close distances. Per square area, Panama is the most biodiverse country in the Neotropics. The proximity of terrestrial, marine, and coastal ecosystems allows students to experience multiple, unique environments throughout their studies.

AK: The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), located in Panama, is regarded as one of the world’s foremost centers for long-range studies in tropical ecology. Will students enjoy access to some of STRI’s research facilities during their stay?

AD: Yes, students will have the opportunity to spend one week at Smithsonian’s Bocas del Toro Research Station on Colon Island on Panama’s northern Caribbean coast where they will attend the marine ecology and fisheries module of the program, taught by a Smithsonian staff scientist. In the Panama Canal Watershed, students will visit Smithsonian’s Barro Colorado Island research station and become familiar with active research experiments undertaken by Smithsonian and Smithsonian-affiliated scientists.

AK: The program encompasses stays in both Panama City and David. Can you tell us why it is structured in this way? What are the advantages?

AD: The program is structured in this manner to provide students with the broadest access to tropical ecosystems as well as to natural resource use projects that students will be introduced to and where they will spend time. In David, on Panama’s Pacific coast, students will attend Spanish classes at the national university while engaging in field experiences in the cloud forest of the La Amistad UNESCO World Heritage Site (PILA). In the PILA buffer zone, students will live and work with rural families engaged in sustainable cottage industries aimed toward the conservation of PILA’s natural resources. In the capital, students will engage in the climate change module and meet with practitioners and scientists who are actively working on projects seeking to broaden the knowledge base with a particular focus on the effects of climate change in the tropics. Students will also visit projects that are exploring integration into the international carbon market.

AK: Homestays are a key element to all of SIT’s programs. Why do you house students in homes rather than dormitories for a segment of their stay, and can you tell us anything about the homestays in Panama?

AD: Homestays are one of the hallmarks of the SIT experiential learning model. Living with a local family allows students to become immersed into the local culture, to forge relationships with people from the area in which they are living, and become much more familiar with local norms, customs, and lifestyle. On the Panama program, students live in homestays while in David, in the PILA buffer zone, and sometimes in Panama City. In David and Panama City, our hosts are working class families who tend to have long-standing roots in their neighborhoods. In the PILA buffer zone, families are rural agriculturalists who have lived for many years in the mountain region where students are based. Most host families in general have children and large, extended families.

AK: Spanish instruction is also included in the program. Do students need any particular level of proficiency in order to register?

AD: No, there are no language pre-requisites for the Spanish classes. Students of all language levels are accommodated within the program.

AK: What can you tell us about the faculty for this program?

AD: Faculty are drawn from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the national university, local NGOs, and one international NGO. Instructors are highly regarded and are considered experts in their fields. In addition to the program’s Academic Director, each module is taught by an individual expert providing students the opportunity to interact with specialists in each of the fields of study.

Students explore Panama's cloud forests

AK: The Panama program includes 6 college credits. What are the requirements for credit?

AD: To earn all six credits, students must complete satisfactorily all requirements of the two three-credit courses, Spanish and Sustaining the Earth in the 21st Century, as articulated in the course syllabi.

AK: The program was first offered in 2011. What did last year’s college students particularly value about the experience?

AD: I believe student’s were most captured by the homestay experiences, both rural and urban, as they allowed students to integrate into society as well as provided them with new perspectives and visions of Panama and its environmental resources. Also students seemed to find the field excursions to the mountain forests and to the Caribbean coast particularly engaging and unique due to the hands-on, experiential learning they engaged in there.

More About Aly Dagang, Ph.D.:
Dr. Dagang, a California native, completed her B.A. in international development with an emphasis in Latin American Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. She obtained her Ph.D. from the School of Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Her research was carried out with local farmers and examines biophysical and socioeconomic aspects of wood and fruit tree repopulation of grazed, extensive pastures in Central Panama. Dr. Dagang was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama in the province of Panama Oeste. She has worked on numerous projects in Panama with foci that include gender, agroforestry, sustainable agriculture, community development, environmental education, forestry, and conservation.  Dr. Dagang was academic director of the SIT Panama program from 2002 to 2009 and now serves as associate academic dean for the SIT Latin America portfolio. She is also the agroecology professor for the SIT Study Abroad Panama semester program.

Want to learn more? Click here for more information on Smithsonian Journeys’ Study Abroad Programs.

Jeffrey A. Cole has led over 50 Smithsonian journeys to Latin America since 1992. Jeff’s research and publications have focused on colonial South American history and civil-military relations in Argentina and Chile. He has taught Latin American Studies at Clark University, Tulane University, SUNY-Oswego, Cornell University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Smith College.

Sometimes something really wonderful, and unexpected, takes place on a Smithsonian tour. In February 2012, on our last day in Chile and while visiting the port city of Valparaíso, our Smithsonian group visited a statue dedicated to William Wheelwright. Mr. Wheelwright, born in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, introduced steamship navigation, the telegraph, and other innovations to Chile in the nineteenth century. More importantly, on this occasion, his great-granddaughter, Margaret (“Peg”) Keirstead, had the chance to share her pride in his service with her fellow Smithsonian Journeys travelers. As we all lined up to have our picture taken in front of the statue, a Smithsonian banner proudly displayed, everyone reflected on the many ties between Chile and the United States, and how our histories are intertwined.

The group had visited Cape Horn on a beautiful morning, had walked among more than 100,000 penguins on Magdalena Island in the Strait of Magellan, and had enjoyed beautiful weather in Torres del Paine National Park, but this sharing of a personal connection to William Wheelwright in Valparaíso might well have been the highlight of the trip; it certainly was for Peg.

Smithsonian travelers pose in front of a statue of William Wheelwright, an important early steamship and railroad entrepreneur in South America and great-grandfather of Peg Keirstead (in the very back wearing a gray shirt).

Find out more about our Patagonian Explorers trip here.

Jupiter’s Moons:

Readers with a backyard telescope, or even ordinary binoculars, should also be able to spot four of Jupiter’s permanent moons, first seen by Galileo Galilei on a clear January night in 1610. Starting closest to Jupiter, these moons are Io, Europa, Ganymed and Callisto (named after the nymph who Zeus placed in the sky as the constellation Ursa Major after jealous Hera turned her into a bear). Depending on the night, one or more of the moons may be hidden from view on the far side of the planet, so consult this handy guide from Sky & Telescope to identify which is which.

Jupiter and its four moons taken with a handheld camera in x32 zoom. (Image courtesy of Flickr user treehouse1977.)

Gazing into Deep Space:
Want an even CLOSER look? Try peering at real-time images generated by the Mount Graham International Observatory’s new Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, the most powerful optical telescope in the world. Until relatively recently, ground-based telescopes had to live with wavefront distortion caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. This distortion (the reason stars appear to twinkle to the human eye) significantly blurred images of distant objects. The Large Binocular Telescope, one of several visited on Smithsonian’s “Astronomy in Arizona” tour, uses a groundbreaking type of adaptive optics technology to produce the clearest images of deep space ever collected – sharper even than those collected by Hubble.

The Large Binocular Telescope atop Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona. Photo by David Steele; courtesy of The Large Binocular Telescope Observatory.)

A central region of the globular cluster M92. The image on the left was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The (clearer) image on the right was take by the LBT in adaptive mode.  This picture is one of the sharpest images of deep space ever recorded. (Image courtesy of the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory.)

Further Reading:
A Complete Guide to Viewing the Planets this Month:

• February 2012 Guide to the Five Visible Planets (EarthSky)

More About The Large Binocular Telescope:

• LBT Adaptive Optics Video (The Large Binocular Telescope Observatory via YouTube)
• The New Galileos – The Large Binocular Telescope (BBC Radio 4; story starts at 1:35)

Viewing the Stars with Smithsonian:

• “Astronomy in Arizona” full itinerary and trip dates.

Here are stunning images captured this week in Valvika, Nordland Fylke and Langfjordbotn, Finnmark Fylke, Norway:

Photo courtesy of Flickr user trondk.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user The-Dan.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user The-Dan.

If these images have piqued your interest, check out the details of our Scandinavian Sojourn trips headed north this summer!

For more information on the recent aurora borealis (and more stunning photos), visit “This Week’s Breathtaking Aurora Borealis” on Smithsonian.com.

Perú is a magical place. For most Smithsonian travelers the goal, the prize I should say, is to see Machu Picchu with one’s own eyes. My wife and I went to Machu Picchu in January 1980, when the means to get there, the accommodations, and other aspects of the infrastructure were far less than they are now. Machu Picchu was one of the first places we visited that turned out to be better than we had hoped it could be; it still is, though we must now contend with some 2,000-2,500 other visitors each day.

But there is a great deal more to Perú. Perú was the richest part of the world in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it was a very wealthy country in the 19th century. Perú is not a developing country, but one that has been at the apex in the past and will be again.

The cultures that eventuated in the Inca Empire of the 15th and 16th centuries stretch back 5000 years and more, and feature the magnificent Moche of the north and the enigmatic Nasca of the south. The Andean peoples who faced the European invaders in the 16th century have not disappeared, but rather have successfully resisted efforts to alter their lives for a half-millennium.

For me, Perú is fabulous archaeology, a testament to the ability of human beings to adapt to diverse ecological challenges. It is also the opportunity to walk around the courtyard of the National History Museum and speak to the portraits of the viceroys whose correspondence I read for my dissertation. Perú is wonderful Chinese food, eaten in a “Chifa,” the legacy of the Chinese immigrants who came to Perú to build the railways in the 19th century and stayed to work on the cotton plantations in the north. It is also home to Peruvian Fusion Cuisine, which is taking the culinary world by storm. Perú is the myriad faces one sees along the way, reflecting the peoples of South America, Europe, and Asia. Perú is discovering that Google is available in Quichua, the language of the Inca Empire!

But most of all, Perú is a wonderful 15-year-old girl in Ollantaytambo, whose hair I cut for the first time in her life in September 2001, just days after 9/11, and who – through that ceremony – became my god-daughter. The Smithsonian Associates on that Peruvian trip joined in the festivities, as we were all in need of something to take our minds off events in NYC. Hilary (she was named after Mrs. Clinton) now corresponds with me by e-mail, but we try to see one another in person as often as possible, usually in the shadow of the ruins of Ollantaytambo, where her ancestors were building a fabulous temple to the sun when the Europeans arrived.

Enjoy Perú in all its aspects.

I’ll leave you with the Quichua admonition, repeated daily: “Don’t Lie, Don’t Steal, and Don’t be Lazy.”

Learn more about our Perú tour and our study leader, Jeffrey Cole.

The beautiful landscape of Connemara.

As our Smithsonian group left Galway, I was struck again by the stunning contrasts of the Irish landscape. There are many types of beauty here, from the wild hills of Connemara which we saw yesterday to the elegant lake and parkland awaiting us in Killarney. We stopped briefly this morning at Dunguaire castle, which stands like a chess piece on the edge of Galway Bay. It was originally the fortress of a seventh-century king of Connacht, one who was among “the warriors of Erin” buried at Clonmacnoise.

Rebuilt in the sixteenth century, Dunguaire later served as a meeting place for the leading lights of the Irish literary renaissance. In the early morning mist, it was easy to imagine William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and John Synge passing underneath the grey stone archway, a romantic setting for the Celtic Revival.

The landscape emptied as we headed south into County Clare, lovely still but growing desolate. A famine wall snaked up a mountain and disappeared down the other side.  Through famine and eviction, the population of Country Clare plunged from 286,000 in 1841 to 104,000 in 1911. The hills through which we drove looked abandoned against the sullen sky. On their slopes, we could see the vertical scars that mark abandoned potato fields.

The ground grew stony as we approached the Burren, a name that literally means “a rocky place.” A different kind of beauty met us there, an eerie moonscape of eroded limestone. Cromwell’s surveyors famously reported that the Burren lacked enough water to drown a man, tree to hang him, or soil to bury him. But a microclimate mix of plants flourishes in this karst environment. They are strange neighbors — alpine, arctic and Mediterranean types combined with native species. But even stranger are the megalithic monuments that guard this landscape, “millenia deep in their own unmoving” as the Irish poet Seamus Heaney put it.

“Why here?” someone asked quietly as we walked across the craggy pavements to the Poulnabrone dolmen, one of the most striking of these structures. Its twelve foot capstone balanced carefully on the portal stones, Poulnabrone preserved the bones of some twenty people spanning five centuries, five thousand years ago. Today, it looks like a giant’s table, having lost the mound that once covered it, one of ninety megalithic tombs in the area. The question was repeated in expanded form, a little impatiently: “Why would people build monuments like this in such a barren place?”

The answer: it was not always like this. When the farmers arrived 6,000 years ago, pine and hazel woodland covered this land, and the growing season was long. Fire, axe and hoof cleared the trees and turf; without its cover, the soil slipped away with wind and rain, exposing the limestone skeleton. Ancient pollen attests these changes occurred gradually, and only recently — since the first millenium A.D. — was the bedrock laid bare. Like the once fertile land of Inismor which we also visited, where Aran farmers in recent times made soil out of sand and seaweed, the Burren is in large part a man-made landscape and a cautionary one as well.

Continuing south, we stopped next at the Cliffs of Moher, which drop vertically seven hundred feet into the Atlantic Ocean and inspire a different kind of awe. The new interpretive center offered a wealth of information about the geology, history and wildlife of the Cliffs, but nothing can compare with the sensation of being physically there, overlooking the Atlantic Edge. As we continued to Killarney later that day, the countryside grew softer and more gentle. A ferry ride across the Shannon River invited thoughts of Vikings traveling up those waters a thousand years ago, but the scene was peaceful and bucolic, all blues and greens and greys. We passed Saint Mary’s Cathedral on our way into Killarney, a lovely Gothic cathedral built in the nineteenth century. Even in this cheerful town, the hard times are remembered: a giant redwood tree in front of the church marks a mass grave of famine victims. After such a day of stark drama, the warmth and friendliness of the pub are welcome, but my thoughts this evening keep returning to the melancholy beauty of County Clare and the mystery of the Burren.

Packed yet? Click here to see our tours to Ireland or here for Cassandra’s next tour.

Vaulted Substructure of the Apollo Temple at Claros. Photo: Kevin Daly.

This trip to Turkey has been filled with both the familiar and the novel. It had been some time since I had seen sites like Troy and Ephesus, while the Lycian sites and a gulet passage are entirely new to me. The itinerary has brought views of cities both thriving and ruined. Nowhere was the contrast more vivid for me than what we saw in the bustling, modern city of Izmir and the isolated, ancient oracular site of Claros.

The "Ghost Village" of Kayaköy. Photo: Kevin Daly.

Claros was an addition to the schedule that our guide, Akyn, and I thought would add a lot to our itinerary. We had the shrine to ourselves, and as a group we were able to talk intensely and hands-on about ancient temple building, sacrifice, and inscriptions. While Akyn and I had seen Claros before, the fresh eyes and questions of our travelers helped us see it anew. Besides being a treat in itself, this quiet moment at a remote site helped prepare us for the awe-inspiring and busy site of Ephesus.

View back toward the gulets from St. Nicholas Monastery Island. Photo: Kevin Daly

While our trip was a healthy blend of the modern, the old, and the ancient, my own interests and the interests of the group tended to pull us toward all things archaeological. But daily life intervened regularly, and this intervention was extremely revelatory to us all. Of course in a very real sense daily life quickly enters the archaeological record: a coin is dropped, a house is demolished, or a pipe is laid.

At the same time the present can help us recapture past days. While the Great Fire at Izmir/Smyrna forever altered the landscape of that city, we found echoes of what it must have been like in our strolls through the Old City of Antalya. Our gondola ride to the top of the site of Pergamon elicited questions concerning ancient travel, defense, and hydraulic engineering. The displacement of travel makes these interactions between new and old all the more intense. If Hartley was right in writing that “the past is a foreign country,” we have had a wonderful double journey every day.

Click here for Q&A with Kevin Daly and here to learn more about tour tours to Turkey.

New features to this new 13th edition include 30 city plans from major cities around the world; flags for every country; the new independent country of Kosovo; and major new place name updates in China, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, Afghanistan, and Iran. The detailed thematic information contains contributions from top experts. New topics discussed include migration, the global impact of recession, migration, and polar regions.

Use the Times Comprehensive Atlas to plan your next journey, or give it as a holiday gift to the travelers in your life. Click to see our current sales and specials on worldwide tours.

After a delightful three-day stay in Normandy at our 13th century farm house inn, La Ranconniere, we have one last breakfast buffet with its irresistible chaussons aux pommes (apple turnovers), a delightful complement to our tea or café au lait, and we set out in our comfortable tour bus for the final leg of our trip, with an early evening arrival in Paris before us. As if on schedule, and despite predictions of rain, the overcast sky begins to give way to rays of sunlight as we pull into our parking place near the charming port of Honfleur, from which Jacques Cartier and Samuel Champlain had left France in the 16th and 17th Centuries to discover a French New World in Canada along the St. Lawrence River and into the upper American Midwest.

The lively port of Honfleur.

Still a fishing village today, but more attractive to many tourists because of its picturesque Vieux Bassin, lined with pleasure boats and cafes along the Quai Sainte-Catherine, Honfleur has become a prime weekend and holiday destination for Parisians who are just a few hours’ drive away on the AutoRoute, and who love to stroll around the narrow streets of the old town, patronizing its many chic art galleries and high-end shops. Our group of travelers joins the Parisians, at least in window shopping, but also takes time to visit the unusual, all wood, Sainte Catherine Church, with its very beautiful sculpted frieze of musicians, and a separate clock tower designed to limit damage should one part of the church catch on fire. While others take the opportunity to wander around the little town for photo opportunities that await around each corner, some of the travelers go with our guide, Francoise, to visit the Boudin Museum, home to the works of Eugene Boudin, who was one of the first landscape artists to paint out of doors, and who was an early teacher of Claude Monet.

After picking up sandwiches to eat on the bus, or having a quick crepe and coffee along the quays of the old harbor, we continue to follow the Seine River toward Vernon and Giverny, the home of that most famous of the Impressionist painters, who had sketched, under Boudin’s influence, as a young man in Honfleur. Upon our arrival at Giverny, we go first to discover the famous lily pad pond with its Japanese bridge, covered in wisteria, that appear in so many of Claude Monet’s paintings. In mid-June the lily pads are in full bloom and the surrounding gardens are spectacular in shades of pink, red, orange, blue, and every imaginable combination. Reflections of the different flowers in the pond offer dozens of views that might be mistaken for Impressionist paintings, taken directly from the very nature that Monet so loved. After leaving the lily pad pond, we follow an underpass below the road which was a train track in Monet’s day, and arrive at the fantastic gardens which extend below the dramatic, pink -colored house with dark green shutters, which for forty years in the late 19th and early 20th century was home to Claude Monet and his large family.

Monet’s gardens are resplendent with brightly colored flowers of every sort from roses and iris to purple garlic. Several pathways allow visitors to go up and down between the different beds to the delight of those horticulturalists along on the tour, as well as rank amateurs such as I am who can only repeat the word “gorgeous” at each newly discovered plant. Thanks to contemporary photographs from the period when Monet was at the height of his creative powers, his house has been restored with copies of all of his paintings hung in exactly the same location where he had placed them long ago. In addition to these copies of his own works, the originals of many of the now quite-valuable Japanese prints which he had collected are found on the second story along with Monet’s bedroom and that of his wife. Returning to the ground floor, we explore the dining room with its yellow ceiling and the spectacular kitchen, with copper pots hung on the blue walls, and featuring beautiful blue and white tiles above and around the large stove. Before exiting Monet’s property we browse through the gift shop, located in the studio especially built for his huge lily pad series of paintings that are now housed in the Orangerie in Paris. And just before leaving Giverny, we have time for a quick glance at the hill side behind and down the street from his house, where Monet created his famous series of haystacks, painted in all the different seasons. Today the field is covered with oats and poppies, and by closing one’s eyes, it is easy to imagine Monet sitting beside this field and painting one of his many works featuring bright red Coquelicots (poppies).

Boarding the bus one more time we take the AutoRoute that follows the path of the Seine River all the way to Paris. After about an hour and a half’s travel, near St. Cloud, a former royal palace, we emerge from an underground tunnel with a panoramic view of the Seine basin and catch our first view of the “old lady,” Paris’s Eiffel Tower, harbinger of still more exciting discoveries that await us tomorrow.

Packed yet? Click here to learn more about our France Through the Ages tour and here to learn more about Study Leader John Sweets.

Hughes begins by taking us to the Rome he first met at the tender age of twenty-one, fresh from Australia in 1959. From there, he journeys back more than two thousand years to the city’s foundation, steeped in mythology and superstition that sewed the seeds of Rome’s development.

Traveling through the centuries, Hughes investigates the modern era, from Mussolini to La Dolce Vita, to today’s age of technology and tourism.

Spend the weekend with Hughes in Rome, or journey there yourself on our tours to Italy.