Araucarias

Araucarias, or monkey puzzle trees, in the wild only grow in southern Andes and only above 1000 metres. They are supposedly relics from the time of dinosaurs. Individual trees also can reach extraordinary age, more than one thousand years.

Da Qiongpei

Da Qiongpei is a Tibetan Buddhist monk living in the city of Lithang in what used to be Eastern Tibet and now is a part of Sichuan. When I was travelling in China I saw an album with his works. The pictures are very interesting, modern but based on traditional Tibetan iconography. I am told some of these pictures are illustrations of the famous poems of the Sixth Dalai Lama. Da Qiongpei translated those poems into Chinese and himself illustrated the book. The black and white pictures are from this book.

Hangzhou Western Lake

Long ago, before the Mongol invasions, Hangzhou was the capital of Chinese emperors. Imperial gardens included Western Lake, or Xihu, a tranquil and blissful place at the time. There is no trace of any imperial palaces now, but the lake is there and it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in China. Crowds of Chinese tourists invade the place and look for a trace of that famous blissful tranquility.

  

Laguna San Rafael

Outside the Antarctic and Greenland there are not many places where a glacier flows right into the sea. This is the case in Laguna San Rafael in Chilean Patagonia. One can watch icebergs tumble into the water and float in the lagoon. The unforgettable forget-me-not colour is supposedly caused by oxygen trapped in the ice and squashed over millennia under the weight of more and more new snow. Transparent ice is more recently frozen water.