Tag Archives: South America

New Travel Books: “New York Times Explorer – 100 Trips Around The World”

Taschen LogoNYT Explorer. 100 Trips Around the World takes travel beyond the obvious with adventures in exotic places and new perspectives in familiar ones, all based on the distinguished travel journalism of The New York Times. Each journey features a first-person narrative and postcard-perfect photography, capturing the unique personality of the destination—as well as practical information to help get you on your way. 

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Whether it’s a culinary adventure in vibrant Mexico City, an historic and meditative train ride through Siberia, or a solo trip to Paris, get your bucket lists ready and share in the discoveries of Explorer a collection of 100 dream destinations—four volumes’ worth of adventures in onefrom the Travel pages of The New York Times.

The Times writers offer guidance, from the personal to the practical, along with a wealth of color photographs that capture the catch-your-breath awe of each destination. Motor past pink sands and bougainvillea in Bermuda with Andrew McCarthy, follow Virginia Woolf’s footsteps through the English countryside with Francine Prose, or dare to pilot a boat through the Venice lagoon with Tony Perrottet.

The editor

Barbara Ireland edits the 36 HoursExplorer, and forthcoming Cultured Traveler series of travel books in collaboration with The New York Times and TASCHEN. A writer and editor based in upstate New York, she is a former deputy Travel editor and deputy Op-Ed page editor at The New York Times. She is a graduate of Cornell University and was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University.

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Top New Timelapse Videos: “NOX ATACAMA III” In Chile By Martin Heck (2020)

Filmed and Edited by: Martin Heck – Timestorm Films

Home to the darkest and cleanest skies in the world, the Atacama Desert offers views to the nightsky like no other. 2 years after the very successful first video “Nox Atacama” we return to this magnificent region and get rewarded with uncountable numbers of stars and fantastic nebulae in one of the most quiet a empty places on earth. Not a single noise distracts from the grand show the nightsky has to offer. “Nox Atacama II” was also filmed in this period.

Filmed over a month in Mar/April 2019, I worked in freezing temperatures, altitudes up to 5200m/17000ft, salt lakes and icy slopes. The Atacama is not welcoming to life and equipment. The lack of oxygen makes it tough to get anything done in these high altitudes. But it provides without doubt for epic and vast vistas of one of the greatest landscapes on earth.

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WORLD AFFAIRS PODCASTS: “LIFE AFTER LOCKDOWN”, BRASILIA & SOLITUDE IS BLISS

The Economist Editors Picks Podcast logoA selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, a 90% economy—life after lockdowns will be hard in ways that are difficult to imagine today. Also, a bust-up in Brasilia (10:10), and solitude is both a blessing and a curse (17:25).

Top Architectural Design: “Buried Studio” By Igor Leal, Rio de Janeiro (2020)

Buried Studio

It is a project for the construction of a work environment (home office) in a backyard of a residential land. The space has approximately 47.00m² and has a work environment and meetings with a bench for pantry, bathroom and external environment. 

Buried Studio - Igor Leal - Rio de Janeiro interior

Its formal composition sought, through a solution of operative topography and the construction of a winding green roof, to integrate the new projected environment to the large existing lawn in the surroundings.

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Top New Travel Videos: “Last Wild Places – Iberá” In Argentina (NatGeo)

Iberá National Park in northeastern Argentina is part of one of the largest wetlands in South America, but much of its wildlife went extinct in the 20th century due to widespread hunting and habitat loss. Now, a dedicated team of conservationists is working hand in hand with local communities to reintroduce many of the keystone species that were lost, while also helping to preserve the region’s unique cultural heritage.

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Natural World Art: “Ten Artists Who Celebrated Nature” (Christie’s)

From Christie’s article (April 22, 2020):

Ivan Shishkin Siverskaya 1896 Christie's
Ivan Shishkin “Siverskaya” (1896)

From Switzerland to South America, from the South of England to the coast of Maine, they have been moved by mountains, oceans, deserts, plains, lakes and forests — we hope you will find their art every bit as stirring as we do

Russia’s pine forests

Siverskaya, located 70km south of St Petersburg, was a popular summer retreat for Russian city-dwellers in the 19th century. It was in Siverskaya and its neighbouring woods that Ivan Shishkin — one of Russia’s most famous landscape painters, dubbed ‘the patriarch of forests’ — created some of his best-known works.

Peak of Mount Emei (1958) - Huang Junbi - Christie's
Peak of Mount Emei (1958) – Huang Junbi

Mount Emei, China

Mount Emei in Sichuan, southwest China, is the highest of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains, reaching to 3,099 metres. The mountain is a place of pilgrimage, where dozens of temples and monasteries have been erected, and has been an inspiration for artists for centuries.

Wednesday 22 April, 2020 marks 50 years since the declaration of the first Earth Day in 1970 — an occasion on which to reflect on our natural world, and perhaps take action to help sustain it. In celebration of this anniversary, we look back on a selection of artists for whom nature — and our planet — has been an inspiration and guide. 

Christie's

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Top Aerial Travel Videos: The “Atacama” In Chile (Bravo Film Company)

Directed by: J. Brivilati

“It’s like waking up from a dream. And then you begin wondering ‘where am I going?’ And to answer that question you have to try and find out what you want. ‘What do I want to happen? How far we could go?’ – Alan Watts”

A short film I made about my last trip to Atacama, Chile, in 2020. There’s a kind of effect, something magical that happens to you in the middle of the desert. To have nothing to listen to if not the mixing of wind and your breath it forces you to look inside, to talk to your soul. This trip meant a new opportunity to learn about my experience on this planet, to learn about humility and to connect with Mother Earth.

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The Atacama Desert (Spanish: Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,000 km (600 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places in the world, as well as the only true desert to receive less precipitation than the polar deserts. According to estimates, the Atacama Desert occupies 105,000 km2 (41,000 sq mi), or 128,000 km2 (49,000 sq mi) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included. Most of the desert is composed of stony terrain, salt lakes (salares), sand, and felsic lava that flows towards the Andes.

The desert owes its extreme aridity to a constant temperature inversion due to the cool north-flowing Humboldt ocean current and to the presence of the strong Pacific anticyclone. The most arid region of the Atacama Desert is situated between two mountain chains (the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range) of sufficient height to prevent moisture advection from either the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean, a two-sided rain shadow.(From Wikipedia)

International Design: “Sustainable Home” (484 SF) By Brazilian Firm Gustavo-Penna Architects (2019)

Gustavo and Penna Architecture Brazil“Our SUSTAINABLE HOME is made of matter and spirit. The raw material, the unused by-products of the mining activity, is the main component: from it we take advantage of its qualities and properties. Finding an ecologically suitable use for this waste determines the unique character of the housing unit. In its spirit, the housing unit intends, in addition to its technical function, to be a home, a place for each person to feel valued, welcomed in their dreams, hopes and desire to live together. Each house, even in its simplicity, must be able to create a sense of pride and self-esteem ”, adds Gustavo Penna.

The pilot project is part of the environmental education equipment of the Gerdau Germinar Program, which presents the public with new concepts of sustainability applied to mining activities and the concept of circular economy in housing – one of Gerdau’s social investment territories.

Gustavo and Penna Architecture Interior Brazil

The Mining Engineering Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in partnership with Gerdau has developed a solution for the production of blocks, drainage floors and mortar with iron ore tailings, a solution that can transform mining waste management in the future.

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Podcasts: How Foreign Governments Are Facing Covid-19 (The Economist)

A selection of essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the role of big government in the time of covid-19, (10:20) assessing the havoc the pandemic is causing in emerging countries, (17:45).

In just a few weeks a virus a ten-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter has transformed Western democracies. States have shut down businesses and sealed people indoors. They have promised trillions of dollars to keep the economy on life support. If South Korea and Singapore are a guide, medical and electronic privacy are about to be cast aside. It is the most dramatic extension of state power since the second world war.

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