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 coasts concentrate, at the same time, so much heat and displays of fame, wealth and glory. Located in the extreme southeast of the USA, Miami Beach is accessible via six bridges that connect it to the rest of Florida. It is 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.
Las Vegas, USA

Where sin is always forgiven

Projected from the Mojave Desert like a neon mirage, the North American capital of gaming and entertainment is experienced as a gamble in the dark. Lush and addictive, Vegas neither learns nor regrets.
Navajo nation, USA

The Navajo Nation Lands

From Kayenta to Page, passing through Marble Canyon, we explore the southern Colorado Plateau. Dramatic and desert, the scenery of this indigenous domain, cut out in Arizona, reveals itself to be splendid.
Death Valley, USA

The Hottest Place Resurrection

Since 1921, Al Aziziyah, in Libya, was considered the hottest place on the planet. But the controversy surrounding the 58th measured there meant that, 99 years later, the title was returned to Death Valley.
San Francisco, USA

San Francisco Cable Cars: A Life of Highs and Lows

A macabre wagon accident inspired the San Francisco cable car saga. Today, these relics work as a charm operation in the city of fog, but they also have their risks.
Mauna Kea, Hawaii

Mauna Kea: the Volcano with an Eye out in Space

The roof of Hawaii was off-limits to natives because it housed benevolent deities. But since 1968, several nations sacrificed the peace of the gods and built the greatest astronomical station on the face of the Earth.
pearl harbor, Hawaii

The Day Japan Went Too Far

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the Pearl Harbor military base. Today, parts of Hawaii look like Japanese colonies but the US will never forget the outrage.
PN Katmai, Alaska

In the Footsteps of the Grizzly Man

Timothy Treadwell spent summers on end with the bears of Katmai. Traveling through Alaska, we followed some of its trails, but unlike the species' crazy protector, we never went too far.
Valdez, Alaska

On the Black Gold Route

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker caused a massive environmental disaster. The vessel stopped plying the seas, but the victim city that gave it its name continues on the path of crude oil from the Arctic Ocean.
Believers greet each other in the Bukhara region.
City
Bukhara, Uzbequistan

Among the Minarets of Old Turkestan

Situated on the ancient Silk Road, Bukhara has developed for at least two thousand years as an essential commercial, cultural and religious hub in Central Asia. It was Buddhist and then Muslim. It was part of the great Arab empire and that of Genghis Khan, the Turko-Mongol kingdoms and the Soviet Union, until it settled in the still young and peculiar Uzbekistan.
Host Wezi points out something in the distance
Beach
Cobue; Nkwichi Lodge, Mozambique

The Hidden Mozambique of the Creaking Sands

During a tour from the bottom to the top of Lake Malawi, we find ourselves on the island of Likoma, an hour by boat from Nkwichi Lodge, the solitary base of this inland coast of Mozambique. On the Mozambican side, the lake is known as Niassa. Whatever its name, there we discover some of the most stunning and unspoilt scenery in south-east Africa.
hippopotami, chobe national park, botswana
safari
Chobe NP, Botswana

Chobe: A River on the Border of Life with Death

Chobe marks the divide between Botswana and three of its neighboring countries, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia. But its capricious bed has a far more crucial function than this political delimitation.
Herd in Manang, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 8th Manang, Nepal

Manang: the Last Acclimatization in Civilization

Six days after leaving Besisahar we finally arrived in Manang (3519m). Located at the foot of the Annapurna III and Gangapurna Mountains, Manang is the civilization that pampers and prepares hikers for the ever-dreaded crossing of Thorong La Gorge (5416 m).
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
Aventura
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.
Saida Ksar Ouled Soltane, festival of the ksour, tataouine, tunisia
Ceremonies and Festivities
Tataouine, Tunisia

Festival of the Ksour: Sand Castles That Don't Collapse

The ksour were built as fortifications by the Berbers of North Africa. They resisted Arab invasions and centuries of erosion. Every year, the Festival of the Ksour pays them the due homage.
scarlet summer
Cities

Valencia to Xativa, Spain

Across Iberia

Leaving aside the modernity of Valencia, we explore the natural and historical settings that the "community" shares with the Mediterranean. The more we travel, the more its bright life seduces us.

young saleswoman, nation, bread, uzbekistan
Lunch time
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.
Culture
Lhasa, Tibet

When Buddhism Tires of Meditation

It is not only with silence and spiritual retreat that one seeks Nirvana. At the Sera Monastery, the young monks perfect their Buddhist knowledge with lively dialectical confrontations and crackling clapping of hands.
Swimming, Western Australia, Aussie Style, Sun rising in the eyes
Sport
Busselton, Australia

2000 meters in Aussie Style

In 1853, Busselton was equipped with one of the longest pontoons in the world. World. When the structure collapsed, the residents decided to turn the problem around. Since 1996 they have been doing it every year. Swimming.
Eternal Spring Shrine
Traveling

Taroko George

Deep in Taiwan

In 1956, skeptical Taiwanese doubted that the initial 20km of Central Cross-Island Hwy was possible. The marble canyon that challenged it is today the most remarkable natural setting in Formosa.

Vanuatu, Cruise in Wala
Ethnic
Wala, Vanuatu

Cruise ship in Sight, the Fair Settles In

In much of Vanuatu, the days of the population's “good savages” are behind us. In times misunderstood and neglected, money gained value. And when the big ships with tourists arrive off Malekuka, the natives focus on Wala and billing.
Sunset, Avenue of Baobabs, Madagascar
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio

days like so many others

End of the day at the Teesta river dam lake in Gajoldoba, India
History
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.
Africa Princess, Canhambaque, Bijagós, Guinea Bissau,
Islands
Africa Princess Cruise, 1º Bijagos, Guinea Bissau

Towards Canhambaque, through the History of Guinea Bissau

The Africa Princess departs from the port of Bissau, downstream the Geba estuary. We make a first stopover on the island of Bolama. From the old capital, we proceed to the heart of the Bijagós archipelago.
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.
Street Scene, Guadeloupe, Caribbean, Butterfly Effect, French Antilles
Nature
Guadalupe, French Antilles

Guadeloupe: A Delicious Caribbean, in Counter-Butterfly Effect

Guadeloupe is shaped like a moth. A trip around this Antille is enough to understand why the population is governed by the motto Pas Ni Problem and raises the minimum of waves, despite the many setbacks.
Mother Armenia Statue, Yerevan, Armenia
Autumn
Yerevan, Armenia

A Capital between East and West

Heiress of the Soviet civilization, aligned with the great Russia, Armenia allows itself to be seduced by the most democratic and sophisticated ways of Western Europe. In recent times, the two worlds have collided in the streets of your capital. From popular and political dispute, Yerevan will dictate the new course of the nation.
Hell's Bend of Fish River Canyon, Namibia
Natural Parks
Fish River Canyon, Namíbia

The Namibian Guts of Africa

When nothing makes you foreseeable, a vast river ravine burrows the southern end of the Namíbia. At 160km long, 27km wide and, at intervals, 550 meters deep, the Fish River Canyon is the Grand Canyon of Africa. And one of the biggest canyons on the face of the Earth.
Goiás Velho, Legacy of the Gold Fever, Brazil
UNESCO World Heritage
Goiás Velho, Brazil

A Gold Rush Legacy

Two centuries after the heyday of prospecting, lost in time and in the vastness of the Central Plateau, Goiás esteems its admirable colonial architecture, the surprising wealth that remains to be discovered there.
Visitors to Ernest Hemingway's Home, Key West, Florida, United States
Characters
Key West, United States

Hemingway's Caribbean Playground

Effusive as ever, Ernest Hemingway called Key West "the best place I've ever been...". In the tropical depths of the contiguous US, he found evasion and crazy, drunken fun. And the inspiration to write with intensity to match.
Dominican Republic, Bahia de Las Águilas Beach, Pedernales. Jaragua National Park, Beach
Beaches
Lagoa Oviedo a Bahia de las Águilas, Dominican Republic

In Search of the Immaculate Dominican Beach

Against all odds, one of the most unspoiled Dominican coastlines is also one of the most remote. Discovering the province of Pedernales, we are dazzled by the semi-desert Jaragua National Park and the Caribbean purity of Bahia de las Águilas.
Prayer flags in Ghyaru, Nepal
Religion
Annapurna Circuit: 4th – Upper Banana to Ngawal, Nepal

From Nightmare to Dazzle

Unbeknownst to us, we are faced with an ascent that leads us to despair. We pulled our strength as far as possible and reached Ghyaru where we felt closer than ever to the Annapurnas. The rest of the way to Ngawal felt like a kind of extension of the reward.
End of the World Train, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
On Rails
Ushuaia, Argentina

Last Station: End of the World

Until 1947, the Tren del Fin del Mundo made countless trips for the inmates of the Ushuaia prison to cut firewood. Today, passengers are different, but no other train goes further south.
Society
Military

Defenders of Their Homelands

Even in times of peace, we detect military personnel everywhere. On duty, in cities, they fulfill routine missions that require rigor and patience.
Busy intersection of Tokyo, Japan
Daily life
Tokyo, Japan

The Endless Night of the Rising Sun Capital

Say that Tokyo do not sleep is an understatement. In one of the largest and most sophisticated cities on the face of the Earth, twilight marks only the renewal of the frenetic daily life. And there are millions of souls that either find no place in the sun, or make more sense in the “dark” and obscure turns that follow.
Fluvial coming and going
Wildlife
Iriomote, Japan

The Small Tropical Japanese Amazon of Iriomote

Impenetrable rainforests and mangroves fill Iriomote under a pressure cooker climate. Here, foreign visitors are as rare as the yamaneko, an elusive endemic lynx.
The Sounds, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Fiordland, New Zealand

The Fjords of the Antipodes

A geological quirk made the Fiordland region the rawest and most imposing in New Zealand. Year after year, many thousands of visitors worship the sub-domain slashed between Te Anau and Milford Sound.