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.

  

Kilwa

When the Portuguese sailed around Africa in the 16^th century, one of the greatest cities on the coast of what is now Tanzania was Kilwa. It was then one of the centres of Swahili civilisation. The Portuguese made its ruler accept the sovereignty of the king of Portugal and built a fortress. The Portuguese made the same with other Swahili cities but whereas other cities, like Zanzibar or Mombasa, later became prosperous, fortunes of Kilwa declined and eventually the city was abandoned. Only ruins now remain, where sheep from a nearby village run between pillars of once magnificent mosque and baobabs grow through the walls of ancient palaces. The city stood on an island which was supposed to provide safety, nowadays one can go there with a Swahili sailor in a wind-blown dhow.  

Vanuatu sculpture

In Port Vila (Vanuatu's capital) I found a gallery selling Vanuatu sculpture. Most of what is being sold there (so the owner told me) is not created for the tourist trade. The object he sells are made for initiation ceremonies (like circumcision) and would normally be later discarded. Some of the initiated decide to earn a few bob and sell them instead.

Navajo dress

Navajo traditional dress has nothing to do with feathers, buckskin or fringes, in fact it has nothing to do with what we may imagine to be Indian. It seems to include a lot of velvet and one can guess it developed late in the 19^th century, after the tribe settled in the reservation. Similarly, Navajo traditional dance has nothing to do with what one can see at powwows. The Navajo dance in pairs and in a circle. One can see it at Navajo Fair that takes place every year at Window Rock, the capital of their reservation. Navajo Traditional Dance is one of the events at the week-long fair. This is where these pictures were taken in summer 2013.