Central & South America

The Skylodge with the sun peeking over the mountains.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

Sleep With the Condors at This Peruvian Hotel Hanging Off a Cliff

The cliffside Skylodge hotel dangles 1,300 feet above the ground

Why Do Hundreds of Macaws Gather at These Peruvian Clay Banks?

Brightly colored parrots of the western Amazon basin display a behavior not seen anywhere else

The Milky Way and moon illuminate a lone tree in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

An Astronomer's Paradise, Chile May Be the Best Place on Earth to Enjoy a Starry Sky

Chile's northern coast offers an ideal star-gazing environment with its lack of precipitation, clear skies and low-to-zero light pollution

Stone steps descend as far as 500 feet into the Moray concentric agriculture terraces near Maras, Peru, crossing a temperature differential of some 60 degrees. Ancient innovators may have domesticated and hybridized plant species here, using temperature ranges to simulate conditions found across the far-flung Inca Empire.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

What Endures From the Ancient Civilizations That Once Ruled the Central Andes?

To journey here is to roam through almost six thousand years of civilization, to one of the places where the human enterprise began

Taken by ship to North America and Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the tiny fruit gave rise to all the many tomato varieties enjoyed today.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

Why Is This Wild, Pea-Sized Tomato So Important?

Native to northern Peru and southern Ecuador, this tiny and rapidly vanishing tomato boasts outsized influence on world gastronomy

Rumi Colca gateway, Cusco, Peru, 2014

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

How the Inca Empire Engineered a Road Across Some of the World's Most Extreme Terrain

For a new exhibition, a Smithsonian curator conducted oral histories with contemporary indigenous cultures to recover lost Inca traditions

Monky’s street posters have become synonymous with the syncopated, high energy beat of a music genre, called Chicha.

When the Poster Promoting the Concert Is as Exciting as the Music, You Know You're Listening to Chicha

The sounds, graphic art and the mestizo lifestyle that goes with the music is the latest revolt of the Peruvian masses

Katya and Blanca Canto pose with their carved gourds at their home in Cochas Grande.

A Look Behind the Peruvian Art of Gourd Carving

With magnificent hand carvings, artisans craft stories of celebration and tragedy into dried gourds—a tradition practiced for more than 4,000 years

Q'eswachaka suspension bridge. Q'eswachaka, Apurímac River, Canas Province, Cusco, Peru.

Urban Explorations

A Dozen Indigenous Craftsman From Peru Will Weave Grass into a 60-Foot Suspension Bridge in Washington, D.C.

The ancient technology used lightweight materials to create soaring 150-foot spans that could hold the weight of a marching army

Monarch Butterflies, Sierra Chincua Butterfly Sanctuary, Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico

Where to See Thousands of Monarch Butterflies

The species is being reviewed for potential addition to the Endangered Species list. Can tourism help save the butterfly?

Parque Central in Old Havana, Cuba

Top Historic Sites to Visit in Cuba

Cuba is rich in history-laden spots—and a relaxed travel ban will make it easier for Americans to visit

Edward Ranney, Viscas River Valley, 2001.

Stunning Black-and-White Photos of the Nazca Lines

Edward Ranney's photographs of the famous Nazca Lines show the mysterious geoglyphs from an unusual angle—eye-level

Prelorán left Argentina and eventually settled in Los Angeles. He's shown here during the filming of Casabindo in 1977.

Rescuing Jorge Prelorán’s Films From Storage And Time

The Smithsonian’s Film Archives is reintroducing the world to the influential work of the Argentine-American filmmaker

A New Canal Through Central America Could Have Devastating Consequences

The ramifications of the proposed route have environmentalists worried, and for good reason

The installation, "A Room of Her Own: An Altar for My Mother," is on view through January 2015.

Halloween

An Awe-Inspiring Altar Remembers One Latino Artist's Guiding Spirit

At the American History Museum, an installation reimagines the life story of a Latina artist and writer

Throwing money into the air during the celebration of the Hungry Ghost Festival.

Festivals of the Dead Around the World

In the United States, Halloween is mostly about candy, but elsewhere in the world celebrations honoring the departed have a spiritual meaning

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia

Halloween

World’s Most Beautiful Cemeteries

A visit to these hauntingly beautiful cemeteries illuminates more than just mortality

University of Sao Paulo researcher Marcio Martins holds one snake while watching another, a deadly venomous snake living only on Queimada Grande Island, Atlantic Forest, Brazil.

This Terrifying Brazilian Island Has the Highest Concentration of Venomous Snakes Anywhere in the World

Brazil's Ilha de Queimada Grande is the only home of one of the world's deadliest, and most endangered, snakes

Maunsell Sea & Air Forts in the U.K.

17 Amazing Photographs of Abandoned Places

Top places you should see before they die... or at least disappear

How Do Thousands of Clear Blue Lagoons End Up In These Brazilian Sand Dunes?

Every year during the rainy season, Brazil's Lençóis Maranhenses National Park treats visitors to an amazing sight

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