Nestled in a serene and picturesque valley 5,000 feet above sea level and framed by three heavily wooded volcanoes, Lake Atitlan is one of Guatemala’s most majestic tourist destinations, often compared to Lake Como in Italy. Sparkling blue on a sunny day and brooding on a cloudy one, it’s Guatemala’s deepest body of water. Ringed […]
Tikal, one of Central America’s most heralded archeological sites, lies deep within a trackless rainforest in Guatemala. Containing the mouldering ruins of a great Mayan empire which reigned supreme more than 1,000 years ago, Tikal is far from the beaten track, an enclave within Tikal National Park, 300 kilometres north of Guatemala’s capital, Guatemala City. […]
She may well have been the most famous victim of the Holocaust. Anne Frank, the young Dutch Jewish woman whose brief life has inspired mountains of commentaries, biographies, movies and plays, succumbed to typhus in a German concentration camp 70 years ago this month. The gabled house in the center of Amsterdam where she and her […]
Talk about being caught in a time warp. Antigua, a United Nations World Heritage site, is one of the oldest and best preserved towns in Guatemala and indeed in Latin America. As you walk on its cobble-stone streets, passing pastel-colored Spanish-style buildings with red tile roofs, you feel as if you’ve been transported back to […]
They’re gems of the colonial period in Cuba, quaint towns founded and developed by French and Spanish explorers from the 16th century onward. Cienfuegos and Trinidad, about an hour away from each other in southern Cuba, are usually overlooked by many of the Canadian and European travellers who typically descend on this island nation during […]
Call it, if you will, a camp for adults coming out of the cold. The Paradisus Princesa del Mar, an all-inclusive, reasonably-priced ocean-side resort in Varadero, Cuba, caters to tourists in dire need of a break from the grip of miserable winter weather. Not surprisingly, most of its visitors are Canadians. On a direct […]
Natchez, which overlooks the mighty Mississippi River and the flatlands of Louisiana, had more millionaires per capita than any other town in the United States before the Civil War. Prosperous due to its network of cotton plantations, worked by the descendants of African slaves, Natchez showed off its wealth through stunning architecture. Landowners who […]
The American constitution enshrines the principles of democracy and egalitarianism for all citizens. Yet for much of its history, the United States was not the land of freedom and opportunity for African-Americans. The injustices and humiliations they endured are presented with laser-like precision, intensity and emotion at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The […]
Jefferson, a town in Yoknapatawpha county, looms large in the novels of William Faulkner, a great Southern writer and a Mississippian. Jefferson, in fact, is modelled after the real town of Oxford, the home of the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, while fictional Yoknapatawpha county stands in for Lafayette county. Faulkner, a Nobel Prize […]
“Welcome to my world,” Elvis Aaron Presley crooned in velvety-soft tones. “Won’t you come on in.” This invitation, emanating from a hidden loudspeaker, could be heard shortly after my bus pulled into Graceland, the gated estate in Memphis, Tennessee, where the legendary rock ‘n’ roll star lived until his untimely death 37 years ago. It […]