Over 30 years of travel research in three hours of lectures.

Latin America

AD The Roman Empire was already declining.

About 50 percent of Guatemala's 11 million people are Indians, who speak 24 indigenous languages.

1.5% of farmers owns 63% of farmland. 20% of White men own cars; only 5% of Indian men do.

99 percent of the population owns 20 percent of the land. Copal, resin collected from pine trees in the surrounding mountains, is burned in the Roman Catholic church.

1 Pepsi = 1 peso OR 1 peso = 20 kg. of corn for a family for a week.

The Cathedral in Mexico City is the largest in Latin America. It took 300 years to build. The Zocalo (plaza) in front of it is the largest in the world.

Lumberjacks averaged $10-15 per week; food for a family of six cost $6 per week.

In the 19 th century the Yucatan was an informal colony of Chicago’s International Harvester, which turned the sisal into bailer twine for Midwestern farmers. The planters built wedding-cake mansions in Merida and sent their children to schools in New Orleans and Havana.

West Africa

350 years of slave trade here million slaves Portuguese Fort 1482 Dutch Fort 1637

South Asia

Galle, Sri Lanka Portuguese Dutch British Independence 1948

Tea is grown in the Hill Country, above 1,220 meters.

British colonials brought the Tamil Hindu (from India) minority to pick tea.

The British established coffee (until 1870s), and later, tea plantations; in 1948 the socialist government nationalized most of these private estates.

3 billion people in the world depend on rice for their food!

Sinhalese Buddhist are the majority in Sri Lanka.

What food is being sold at this roadside shop?

The bounty of the tropics. Why would people being hungry?

Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka's first capital in the 4th century BC.

A Buddhist statute

The rock fortress of Sigiriya, the Lion Rock was built by King Kashyapa, in the last quarter of the 5th Century to fend off the persistent South Indian invaders. People climb up the 200-meter precarious metal steps to see the temple dancers painted in the caves 1,500 years ago.

And you think studying is hard work?