Brazil: A Woman's Pride In Shining Pots

Squatting next to Rio Preto in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest, a woman washes dishes and polishes pots. Behind her and to her left are two canoes.

  

Rio Preto means Black River in Potuguese. There are many black rivers in the Amazon, including Rio Negro, South America’s second most powerful river after the Amazon, of which it is a tributary.

Black rivers look like black mirrors. However, when scooped in a hand their waters have the color of tea. They even taste like tea. Unlike white rivers, which run over sand and clay, they run over rocks and should be transparent instead of muddy, like the Amazon. They get their color by soaking the surrounding vegetation when seasonally flooding the forest. 

Colombia: Last Of The Ice Miners

 One of travel’s rewards is the unexpected you can nearly always count on when leaving behind  the boredom of modern life.  In 1994, when I climbed southern Colombia’s Cumbal Volcano with my family, our goal was to peek inside its crater. We never imagined we would be watching farmers carrying blocks of fossil ice on their backs from the bottom of that crater.

     Now the farmers quickly wrapped the ice inside grass and espeletias. This would protect its temperature from the sun and the warm sides of the horses which would carry it down the volcano.  The men told us they would sell the ice to small ice cream makers in villages far below.

     Unfortunately, we had arrived too late to watch them ax the ice out of the rocks. They were done for the day. And soon forever. Electricity and refrigerators would soon reach those villages.

Cameroon: Poling A Dugout Canoe On The Benue River

Beckoning scene of a canoe-poling man on the BenueRiver near Garoua, north Cameroon.

Weaving With A Backstrap Loom

In Peru’s small Andean town of Uchucmarca, in Amazonas Province, a girl is using a backstrap loom to weave a poncho outside her family’s house.

Peru: A Great Husband

Shucking corn in his backyard was only one of the many activities this quiet man happily shared with his wife in the small town of Uchucmarca in Peru’s Amazonas Province. While on a 1976 Natural History magazine assignment in the couple’s remote region, which lacked accommodations of any type, I had to base myself in their modest house. But the bread they baked and sold to their neighbors, and the wife’s alfalfa soup, were among the best I tasted anywhere.

Peru: Honoring Saint Mary In Procession

In Peru’s Andean town of Puno, on Saint Mary’s Day, a crowd is flowing out of the cathedral following a representation of the Virgin Mary carried by several men.

Peru: Brisk Business At An Indian Market

Is there a better place anywhere to photograph people with their guards down than at markets? I don’t think so.  Imagine how visible a blond, blue-eyed photographer dressed differently from the surrounding crowd should be. But to women anxious to put their hands on the best cabbage I was not even there. I shot this scene in Pisac, in the Cusco province of Peru’s Andes Mountains, some time in the seventies. 

Peru: Celebrating Saint Mary's Day

In Corongo, a big village in Peru’s Andes Mountains, danses celebrate Saint Mary’s Day.

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A Corongo, un gros village des Andes péruviennes, des danses célèbrent le jour de Sainte Marie.

Eritrea: The Struggle For Water

Against a sinking sun, along Eritrea’s Red Sea Coast near Thio, two Danakil boys are filling canvas bags on a donkey with the water of a drying river.

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Au soleil couchant, le long de la côte Erythréenne de la mer rouge à Thio, ces garçons Danakil remplissent des sacs de toile sur l’âne avec l’eau de ce qui reste d’une rivière en voie d’asséchement

Sunflower Fire At Dusk

Sunflowers shining at dusk under Colombian Andes Mountains.

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Tournesols brillant au crépuscule d’Andes colombiennes.