La Virgen de Guadelupe

Pictures of Our Lady of Guadelupe are ubiquitous in Mexico. One can see them not only in churches or roadside shrines but even as grafitti in cities 

Becoming a chief in Vanuatu

Eating human flesh is now illegal in Vanuatu but whoever wants to become a chief has to prove that he can kill. The victims are pigs nowadays. During the ceremony of a nomination of a new chief they wait turn quietly (or sometimes not so quietly), tied to a palm tree on a plaza in front of a nakamal. A band playing on slit drums sits next to the entry to the nakamal. A throng of dancers circles the victim. The candidate for a chief is easily recognisable, he is the one who wields an axe. At the correct moment the axe splits the pigs scull, the pig falls in convulsions, blood running down its snout. The dancers in the meantime circle another victim. (This is no literary fiction, I witnessed a ceremony like this on Pentecost island).

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.