Key West, USA

The Tropical Wild West of the USA


street scooter scene
Mural on a street near Ernest Hemingway's former home.
the southern limit
Key West visitor is photographed next to the Southermost Point of the Continental USA landmark
green city
Key West panoramic as seen from the top of Key West lighthouse.
little theater
Two extras from the Key West Shipwreck Treasures Museum dialogue during a host performance.
candles in sight
Pleasure boats full of foreign passengers ply the sea off Key West.
Cuba almost in sight
Decoration of a bar next to Mallory Square and the dock where successive cruise ships dock.
the sword swallower
Saltimbanco performs his act on the edge of Mallory Square and just before sunset.
Motorized Marine Life
Cyclist passes by a car from a diving company based in the city.
wooden relic
Top of an old traditional church, lost in the tropical vegetation of the city.
The DonaldFashion
Donald Trump t-shirts among many other trinkets and memorabilia are on sale in countless Key West stores.
a little show
Two friends with a musician who livens up the street with Caribbean music, next to the Customs House.
solar worship
Crowds love the sunset west of Mallory Square, alongside one of the cruises that drop tourists in Key West.
Notice to navigation
Key West Lighthouse Tower, a reconstruction of the original, destroyed by one of the cyclones that over time ravaged the Florida Keys.
View Sails II
Two large sailboats between the threshold of the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico.
Last Walls of the South
Fort Zachary Taylor Wall, the southernmost fortification in the continental United States
Cuba style
Roosters loose on a street near Ernest Hemingway's house.
We've come to the end of the Overseas Highway and the ultimate stronghold of propagandism Florida Keys. The continental United States here they surrender to a dazzling turquoise emerald marine vastness. And to a southern reverie fueled by a kind of Caribbean spell.

A multicolored bullet-shaped landmark stands out along South Beach. Check the "Southernmost Point ContinentalUSA”. In high season, as soon as the sun rises from the Antilles Sea, there is a line of outsiders from numerous stops determined to photograph themselves there.

When we got there, the crowd is such and so many altercations are generated that we decided to photograph them at the expense of an unnecessary selfie.

Southermost Point of the Continental USA Landmark, Key West, Florida, United States

Key West visitor is photographed next to the Southermost Point of the Continental USA landmark

The Tropical Bottom and Something Beveled in the United States

In the image of Alaska, Key West gained a reputation for being deranged. As some residents proudly theorize “it's as if they had shaken the USA and all the crazy ones had fallen to the bottom”. some turned out to be true wackos, others not so much.

Tennessee Williams lived a sober life in Key West for about 30 years. Actress Kelly McGillis, the muse of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) in the 80s teen hit “Top Gun” (“Indomable Aces”) managed to run a bar there, but without major scandals.

Laureate writer Ernest Hemingway has proven by far the most notorious of the city's tenants. He owned several six-fingered cats, faithful to deep-sea fishing and successive nights of bohemian drinking, interrupted only by his journalistic forays into war or pre-war scenarios in the world at that time.

Key West, Florida, United States

Key West panoramic as seen from the top of Key West lighthouse.

The warm, humid climate and the feeling of freedom and escape conveyed by the endless sea, inspired and attracted, to Key West, alternative and relaxed ways of being and being. Existences quite different from those in the North where financial pragmatism and individualism had long prevailed.

From Existentialism to Forced Capitalism

And yet, victim of the growing influx of outsiders, Key West found itself crammed with shops, bars, restaurants, entertainment venues and museums, many opened by cruise lines to entertain passengers who disembarked there.

The city and the island thus gained a strange aura of a no-entry theme park, open to all eccentricities and proposals for fun and invoicing.

Key West Lighthouse, Florida Keys, United States

Key West Lighthouse Tower, a reconstruction of the original, destroyed by one of the cyclones that over time ravaged the Florida Keys.

In front of Hemingway's house, a lady at a small motorized stand sells coconuts, sugar cane juice and lemonade. Each coconut – which in other parts of the Caribbean is not worth a dollar – costs there, however tiny, no more or less than five dollars. A rooster with the gaudy, jaunty look of a rooster fighting warrior surrounds his store, looking out for the tidbits he manages to misplace.

Corns on a street in Hemingway in Key West, USA

Roosters loose on a street near Ernest Hemingway's house.

Despite the dominant tourist sophistication and wantonness,

Key West preserves these things. In the wake of newly restored Caribbean houses, too bright and pompous, we find others, worn and decaying. Nearby, some natives share shady porches and street benches.

Key West Wall, Florida Keys, United States

Mural on a street near Ernest Hemingway's former home.

At their feet, more roosters and chickens scour the ground, to and fro, like members of the rightful place and almost of the mixed-blood families that coexist with them.

at the gates of cuba

In cultural and ethnic terms, the Florida Keys – like much of Florida – are intensely Cuban. It was one of his traits that most enchanted Ernest Hemingway and led him to reside in Key West, before moving to Finca Vigia in 1942.

This was the name of the hacienda in the Havana suburbs of San Francisco de Paula that he would live in until 1960, playing an increasingly active role in the massive success of the Cuban Revolution.

Musician and small audience, Key West, United States

Two friends with a musician who livens up the street with Caribbean music, next to the Customs House

Florida, the Florida Keys and Key West, by the way, almost always walked arm in arm with Cuba. The origin of this Caribbean intimacy has the intense aroma of the best habanos.

In the late nineteenth century, American cigar companies began moving from Cuba to Florida to avoid government taxes. By that time, Cuban workers were moving freely between Havana, Tampa and Key West, between 50 and 100, every year. Many ended up settling north of the Strait.

Now, in 1953, when Fidel Castro led his revolutionary army, took Cuba and threw it into the ideological and social ditch of Communism, millions of Cubans, disillusioned by the limitation of their freedom and the degradation of living conditions, inaugurated a series of waves of emigration illegal raft.

Too many succumbed to the precarious conditions in which they undertook the crossing. Over the course of the XNUMXth century, hundreds of thousands of disaffected Cubans – many of them survivors of the same crossing – flooded the Florida Keys, Florida and other parts of the USA

Bar decor off Mallory Square, Key West, Florida Keys, United States

Decoration of a bar next to Mallory Square and the dock where successive cruise ships dock.

The Conch Republic Chimera

The frantic Key West, surrendered to the dollars we were trying to adapt, had its ideological and revolutionary moments. In 1982, the Navy of USA responded to a flow of Cuban emigration to Florida called the Mariel Boatlift, with a naval and road blockade. US Hwy 1 (Overseas Highway) was barred and all vehicles searched.

The blockade paralyzed the Florida Keys and unleashed the fury of Key West. In response, its solidary population declared the independence of a Conch Republic, a baptism inspired by the term that designates the pioneer natives and settlers of the Florida Keys and from the Bahamas. Even idealistic and chimerical, its spontaneous micronation would never be forgotten.

It lingers on flags, musical instruments like the Conchalele and a myriad of commemorative items of the genre, cases of the t-shirts we admire side by side with others that ridicule or praise Donald Trump and make us smile to match.

"we shall overcomb” is one of them, which displays the egg-strand hair of the now US president in order to draw a golden eagle with an open beak.

T-shirt with Donald Trump, Key West, Florida, United States

Donald Trump t-shirts among many other trinkets and memorabilia are on sale in countless Key West stores.

In yet another, Trump opens his formal suit and reveals an iconic Superman costume.

Every 23rd of April, Conch Republic is celebrated by a cultural and gastronomic festival to which dozens of establishments and organizations in the city contribute. And yet, the reasons why the state its advocates craved could never have gone beyond the dream are notorious.

After leaving Hemingway's old house, we visited one of them, an even more pompous and influential Key West home, symbolic of the immeasurable power of the USA and little patient with independence movements, no matter how chimerical: Harry Truman's Little White House.

Little White House, Key West, Florida Keys, United States

The entrance to Little White House, a US government property, frequented by several of its presidents.

A Small White House in the US Tropical Bottom

Between hyper-patriotic Americans and foreigners surprised by the elegant, but almost Playmobil-museum profile of the mansion, there we examine photos, furniture and striking objects from the times spent by Truman and successors in Key West.

Almost always for strategic reasons, different presidents, before and after Truman, took part there in family and political meetings, diplomatic meetings and even mini-summits. In fact, behind the preference for Little White House was almost always the desire to rest, escape or break the routine.

Dwight Eisenhower arranged a series of meetings with his staff at the property. But he also took refuge there to recover from a heart attack. John Kennedy attended it a second time, in 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion that took place at the door.

In 2005, President Bill and Senator Hillary Clinton shared an entire week in that smaller White House, simply resting.

And, as 2009 arrived, the authorities of the Winter White House (as it is also called) tried to influence the Obamas and Bo, their Portuguese water dog, to spend their holidays there. It never happened, for everything except lack of security.

The mansion enjoys the added protection of nearby Fort Zachary Taylor, the southernmost of the US military installations. United States and from the Air-Naval Station of Boca Chica, located a mere 6km away.

Fort Zachary Taylor Wall, the southernmost fortification in the continental United States

With the afternoon consolidating, we moved to the city's marina in the middle of the bustle of welcoming and boarding the crews and passengers on dozens of pleasure ships.

We offer programs for all tastes, from a simple stroll and conviviality washed down with champagne on sophisticated catamarans, to participatory navigations on schooners and sailboats, some historic, others not really.

Romantic Sunset Navigations & Make-Believe Pirate Battles

We climb aboard one of these floating relics. Jeff, the boat's thirty-year-old owner and helmsman of the small expedition inaugurates a bacoco-sentimental speech that almost takes some of the most sensitive ships to tears: “I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart for choosing us.

Life has breathed me with this boat. Thanks to him – and to you, of course – I have the best work on the planet. I do this every evening as if for the first time.” Simultaneously, in American good manners, the crew hired by him highlight from the briefing, the place where passengers already sensitized must deposit their tips.

The wind intensifies. In a flash, we walked away. We share the ocean off Key West with a fleet of competing ships. Two of them hoist pirate flags and take their mission to recreate the region's past as seriously as possible.

Pleasure sailboats, Key West, Florida, United States

Pleasure boats full of foreign passengers ply the sea off Key West

Make-Believe Pirates and Real Conquerors

They are crossed once, twice, three times. Each of the razias is fired with dry powder cannon shots that, more than anything, reach the eardrums of the surprised passengers.

Since 1521 – when the same Spanish explorer and conqueror Juan Ponce de Leon who is said to have aspired to the Fountain of Youth inspired the colony of Cayo Hueso in these parts – many real battles and shipwrecks have taken place there.

From 1761, the region alternated between the Hispanic and British Crowns until, in 1821, all of Florida, including the Keys it was offered by the Spanish governor of Cuba to an officer in the Spanish Royal Navy.

Juan Pablo Salas was so eager to profit from it that he sold it for real bargains to two American buyers. Once the imbroglio was over, one of them assumed the real owner. Thereafter, Key West has preserved itself as an unquestioned possession of the USA

Sunset Worship at Mallory Square, Key West, Florida Keys, United States

Crowd loves the sunset west of Mallory Square, along with one of the cruises that drop tourists in Key West

Mallory Square's crowded sunset

We return to the Marina. We move to the ocean front of the equally or busier Mallory Square. Newly docked cruises flood the city's historic district with fresh outsiders.

A curious crowd there is distracted by the acrobats' performances: by their fuss, that of the tightrope walker Reidiculous and another one, of an anonymous sword swallower, who announces each feat in a voice like a marc.

Sword swallowing saltimbanco, Key West, Florida, United States

Saltimbanco performs his act on the threshold of Mallory Square and just before sunset

The big star's imminent dive dictates the end of the exhibitions. Hundreds of spectators leave the street stars to count their donations. Finally, the sun sets over the Gulf of Mexico.

It arouses contagious photographic adoration and inaugurates a new night of alcoholic-tropical bohemian in the Caribbean confines of the USA.

Sailboats off Key West, Florida Keys, United States

Two large sailboats between the threshold of the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico.

TAP has daily flights from Lisbon to Miami, departing at 10:35 am and arriving in Miami at 14:30 pm.

Florida Keys, USA

The Caribbean Stepping Stone of the USA

Os United States continental islands seem to close to the south in its capricious peninsula of Florida. Don't stop there. More than a hundred islands of coral, sand and mangroves form an eccentric tropical expanse that has long seduced American vacationers.
Miami, USA

A Masterpiece of Urban Rehabilitation

At the turn of the 25st century, the Wynwood neighbourhood remained filled with abandoned factories and warehouses and graffiti. Tony Goldman, a shrewd real estate investor, bought more than XNUMX properties and founded a mural park. Much more than honoring graffiti there, Goldman founded the Wynwood Arts District, the great bastion of creativity in Miami.
tombstone, USA

Tombstone: the City Too Hard to Die

Silver veins discovered at the end of the XNUMXth century made Tombstone a prosperous and conflictive mining center on the frontier of the United States to Mexico. Lawrence Kasdan, Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner and other Hollywood directors and actors made famous the Earp brothers and the bloodthirsty duel of “OK Corral”. The Tombstone, which, over time, has claimed so many lives, is about to last.
Miami beach, USA

The Beach of All Vanities

Few coastlines concentrate, at the same time, so much heat and displays of fame, wealth and glory. Located in the far southeast of the USA, Miami Beach is accessed by six bridges that connect it to the rest of Florida. It is manifestly meager for the number of souls who desire it.
Little Havana, USA

Little Havana of the Nonconformists

Over the decades and until today, thousands of Cubans have crossed the Florida Straits in search of the land of freedom and opportunity. With the US a mere 145 km away, many have gone no further. His Little Havana in Miami is today the most emblematic neighborhood of the Cuban diaspora.
Grand Canyon, USA

Journey through the Abysmal North America

The Colorado River and tributaries began flowing into the plateau of the same name 17 million years ago and exposed half of Earth's geological past. They also carved one of its most stunning entrails.
Mount Denali, Alaska

The Sacred Ceiling of North America

The Athabascan Indians called him Denali, or the Great, and they revered his haughtiness. This stunning mountain has aroused the greed of climbers and a long succession of record-breaking climbs.
sitka, Alaska

Sitka: Journey through a once Russian Alaska

In 1867, Tsar Alexander II had to sell Russian Alaska to the United States. In the small town of Sitka, we find the Russian legacy but also the Tlingit natives who fought them.
Juneau, Alaska

The Little Capital of Greater Alaska

From June to August, Juneau disappears behind cruise ships that dock at its dockside. Even so, it is in this small capital that the fate of the 49th American state is decided.
napali coast, Hawaii

Hawaii's Dazzling Wrinkles

Kauai is the greenest and rainiest island in the Hawaiian archipelago. It is also the oldest. As we explore its Napalo Coast by land, sea and air, we are amazed to see how the passage of millennia has only favored it.
Monument Valley, USA

Indians or Cowboys?

Iconic Western filmmakers like John Ford immortalized what is the largest Indian territory in the United States. Today, in the Navajo Nation, the Navajo also live in the shoes of their old enemies.
Talkeetna, Alaska

Talkeetna's Alaska-Style Life

Once a mere mining outpost, Talkeetna rejuvenated in 1950 to serve Mt. McKinley climbers. The town is by far the most alternative and most captivating town between Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Masai Mara Reservation, Masai Land Travel, Kenya, Masai Convivial
Safari
Masai Mara, Kenya

A Journey Through the Masai Lands

The Mara savannah became famous for the confrontation between millions of herbivores and their predators. But, in a reckless communion with wildlife, it is the Masai humans who stand out there.
Thorong Pedi to High Camp, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal, Lone Walker
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 12th - Thorong Phedi a High camp

The Prelude to the Supreme Crossing

This section of the Annapurna Circuit is only 1km away, but in less than two hours it takes you from 4450m to 4850m and to the entrance to the great canyon. Sleeping in High Camp is a test of resistance to Mountain Evil that not everyone passes.
Alaskan Lumberjack Show Competition, Ketchikan, Alaska, USA
Architecture & Design
Ketchikan, Alaska

Here begins Alaska

The reality goes unnoticed in most of the world, but there are two Alaskas. In urban terms, the state is inaugurated in the south of its hidden frying pan handle, a strip of land separated from the contiguous USA along the west coast of Canada. Ketchikan, is the southernmost of Alaskan cities, its Rain Capital and the Salmon Capital of the World.
Full Dog Mushing
Adventure
Seward, Alaska

The Alaskan Dog Mushing Summer

It's almost 30 degrees and the glaciers are melting. In Alaska, entrepreneurs have little time to get rich. Until the end of August, dog mushing cannot stop.
portfolio, Got2Globe, Travel photography, images, best photographs, travel photos, world, Earth
Ceremonies and Festivities
Cape Coast, Ghana

The Divine Purification Festival

The story goes that, once, a plague devastated the population of Cape Coast of today Ghana. Only the prayers of the survivors and the cleansing of evil carried out by the gods will have put an end to the scourge. Since then, the natives have returned the blessing of the 77 deities of the traditional Oguaa region with the frenzied Fetu Afahye festival.
Magome to Tsumago, Nakasendo, Path medieval Japan
Cities
Magome-Tsumago, Japan

Magome to Tsumago: The Overcrowded Path to the Medieval Japan

In 1603, the Tokugawa shogun dictated the renovation of an ancient road system. Today, the most famous stretch of the road that linked Edo to Kyoto is covered by a mob eager to escape.
young saleswoman, nation, bread, uzbekistan
Meal
Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, The Nation That Does Not Lack Bread

Few countries employ cereals like Uzbekistan. In this republic of Central Asia, bread plays a vital and social role. The Uzbeks produce it and consume it with devotion and in abundance.
Sun and coconut trees, São Nicolau, Cape Verde
Culture
São Nicolau, Cape Verde

São Nicolau: Pilgrimage to Terra di Sodade

Forced matches like those that inspired the famous morna “soda” made the pain of having to leave the islands of Cape Verde very strong. Discovering saninclau, between enchantment and wonder, we pursue the genesis of song and melancholy.
Sport
Competitions

Man: an Ever Tested Species

It's in our genes. For the pleasure of participating, for titles, honor or money, competitions give meaning to the world. Some are more eccentric than others.
End of the day at the Teesta river dam lake in Gajoldoba, India
Traveling
Dooars India

At the Gates of the Himalayas

We arrived at the northern threshold of West Bengal. The subcontinent gives way to a vast alluvial plain filled with tea plantations, jungle, rivers that the monsoon overflows over endless rice fields and villages bursting at the seams. On the verge of the greatest of the mountain ranges and the mountainous kingdom of Bhutan, for obvious British colonial influence, India treats this stunning region by Dooars.
Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica, Caribbean, Punta Cahuita aerial view
Ethnic
Cahuita, Costa Rica

Dreadlocked Costa Rica

Traveling through Central America, we explore a Costa Rican coastline as much as the Caribbean. In Cahuita, Pura Vida is inspired by an eccentric faith in Jah and a maddening devotion to cannabis.
Sunset, Avenue of Baobabs, Madagascar
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio

days like so many others

Cilaos, Reunion Island, Casario Piton des Neiges
History
Cilaos, Reunion Island

Refuge under the roof of the Indian Ocean

Cilaos appears in one of the old green boilers on the island of Réunion. It was initially inhabited by outlaw slaves who believed they were safe at that end of the world. Once made accessible, nor did the remote location of the crater prevent the shelter of a village that is now peculiar and flattered.
Santa Maria, Sal Island, Cape Verde, Landing
Islands
Santa Maria, Sal Island, Cape Verde

Santa Maria and the Atlantic Blessing of Sal

Santa Maria was founded in the first half of the XNUMXth century, as a salt export warehouse. Today, thanks to the providence of Santa Maria, Sal Ilha is worth much more than the raw material.
Reindeer Racing, Kings Cup, Inari, Finland
Winter White
Inari, Finland

The Wackiest Race on the Top of the World

Finland's Lapps have been competing in the tow of their reindeer for centuries. In the final of the Kings Cup - Porokuninkuusajot - , they face each other at great speed, well above the Arctic Circle and well below zero.
View from the top of Mount Vaea and the tomb, Vailima village, Robert Louis Stevenson, Upolu, Samoa
Literature
Upolu, Samoa

Stevenson's Treasure Island

At age 30, the Scottish writer began looking for a place to save him from his cursed body. In Upolu and the Samoans, he found a welcoming refuge to which he gave his heart and soul.
very coarse salt
Nature
Salta and Jujuy, Argentina

Through the Highlands of Deep Argentina

A tour through the provinces of Salta and Jujuy takes us to discover a country with no sign of the pampas. Vanished in the Andean vastness, these ends of the Northwest of Argentina have also been lost in time.
Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

Lost among the snowy mountains that separate Europe from Asia, Sheki is one of Azerbaijan's most iconic towns. Its largely silky history includes periods of great harshness. When we visited it, autumn pastels added color to a peculiar post-Soviet and Muslim life.
Bwabwata National Park, Namibia, giraffes
Natural Parks
PN Bwabwata, Namíbia

A Namibian Park Worth Three

Once Namibia's independence was consolidated in 1990, to simplify its management, the authorities grouped together a trio of parks and reserves on the Caprivi strip. The resulting PN Bwabwata hosts a stunning immensity of ecosystems and wildlife, on the banks of the Cubango (Okavango) and Cuando rivers.
Bolshoi Zayatski Orthodox Church, Solovetsky Islands, Russia.
UNESCO World Heritage
Bolshoi Zayatsky, Russia

Mysterious Russian Babylons

A set of prehistoric spiral labyrinths made of stones decorate Bolshoi Zayatsky Island, part of the Solovetsky archipelago. Devoid of explanations as to when they were erected or what it meant, the inhabitants of these northern reaches of Europe call them vavilons.
now from above ladder, sorcerer of new zealand, Christchurch, new zealand
Characters
Christchurch, New Zealand

New Zealand's Cursed Wizard

Despite his notoriety in the antipodes, Ian Channell, the New Zealand sorcerer, failed to predict or prevent several earthquakes that struck Christchurch. At the age of 88, after 23 years of contract with the city, he made very controversial statements and ended up fired.
Mahé Ilhas das Seychelles, friends of the beach
Beaches
Mahé, Seychelles

The Big Island of the Small Seychelles

Mahé is the largest of the islands of the smallest country in Africa. It's home to the nation's capital and most of the Seychellois. But not only. In its relative smallness, it hides a stunning tropical world, made of mountainous jungle that merges with the Indian Ocean in coves of all sea tones.
Boat on the Yellow River, Gansu, China
Religion
Bingling Yes, China

The Canyon of a Thousand Buddhas

For more than a millennium and at least seven dynasties, Chinese devotees have extolled their religious belief with the legacy of sculpture in a remote strait of the Yellow River. If you disembark in the Canyon of Thousand Buddhas, you may not find all the sculptures, but you will find a stunning Buddhist shrine.
Train Fianarantsoa to Manakara, Malagasy TGV, locomotive
On Rails
Fianarantsoa-Manakara, Madagascar

On board the Malagasy TGV

We depart Fianarantsoa at 7a.m. It wasn't until 3am the following morning that we completed the 170km to Manakara. The natives call this almost secular train Train Great Vibrations. During the long journey, we felt, very strongly, those of the heart of Madagascar.
Street Bar, Fremont Street, Las Vegas, United States
Society
Las Vegas, USA

The Sin City Cradle

The famous Strip has not always focused the attention of Las Vegas. Many of its hotels and casinos replicated the neon glamor of the street that once stood out, Fremont Street.
Coin return
Daily life
Dawki, India

Dawki, Dawki, Bangladesh on sight

We descended from the high and mountainous lands of Meghalaya to the flats to the south and below. There, the translucent and green stream of the Dawki forms the border between India and Bangladesh. In a damp heat that we haven't felt for a long time, the river also attracts hundreds of Indians and Bangladeshis in a picturesque escape.
Boat and helmsman, Cayo Los Pájaros, Los Haitises, Dominican Republic
Wildlife
Samaná PeninsulaLos Haitises National Park Dominican Republic

From the Samaná Peninsula to the Dominican Haitises

In the northeast corner of the Dominican Republic, where Caribbean nature still triumphs, we face an Atlantic much more vigorous than expected in these parts. There we ride on a communal basis to the famous Limón waterfall, cross the bay of Samaná and penetrate the remote and exuberant “land of the mountains” that encloses it.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

In 1955, pilot Harry Wigley created a system for taking off and landing on asphalt or snow. Since then, his company has unveiled, from the air, some of the greatest scenery in Oceania.