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Volume #3, Issue #4 - May 2009

Adventure, Archaeology Found in the Lost Castle of Alara
By David Elliott
There can’t be many places left on the planet where you can act out your cherished Indiana Jones fantasies, but Alara castle in southern Turkey is one of them.

It is not signposted, despite being just a five-minute drive inland from the modern coast road connecting the large resort towns of Alanya and Antalya. Five minutes if you know where you’re going, that is. It took me almost an hour to negotiate the labyrinth of lanes and dirt tracks, until I suspected that its location must be a closely-guarded secret.
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Fez Goes Global in Song at The World Sacred Music Festival
 
 
By Anita Breland and Tom Fakler
Boujloud’s blue and green tiles glint in the setting sun. Place Pacha el-Baghdadi, the immense square outside the ancient medina gate, swarms with people jockeying for position along its brick ramps to view a free concert.

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Pleasant Surprises in Bogota, Colombia
By Ifang Hsieh
A few years ago, my colleague returned from her business trip to Bogota, the capital city of Colombia, and mentioned that she was accompanied by at least one bodyguard whenever she ventured out of the hotel. My recent visit was unplanned, and in place of a bodyguard, I spent a day touring the city with a personal guide and a driver recommended by the hotel. Bogota turned out to be such a delightful stop that it has since become one of my favorite destinations on Earth.
 
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A Trip to the Mayan Underworld… and Back
By Mark Campbell
The skeleton was on its back. I wondered how the woman would have felt as she was led—willingly? fearfully? proudly?—through the black cavern and sacrificed to appease Chac, the god of rain.

“Actun Tunichil Muknal means cave of the stone sepulcher,” our guide had explained as we stood before the dark hourglass mouth of the cave 45 minutes earlier. “To get to the skeletons we must swim into the entrance. Then we must wade. Sometimes the water is waist deep, sometimes chest deep. There are bats.”

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Hold On to Your Panama Hat… This is One Exhilarating Ride
By Mary Anne Lonze
In Ecuador, Most travelers hop on the 40-minute commuter jet from Quito to the coastal city of Manta, but we chose the more adventurous 7-hour overland route. Through the Andes mountains. In a taxi. After all, why come this far and take the easy way out?
 
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Ormiston Gorge: Jewel of the West McDonnell Ranges
By Claudia Riley
A Perentie lizard moves ponderously across the riverbed, its forked tongue flicking in and out, tasting the air, looking for food.  The quiet whir and click of digital camera shutters is the only sound on a breathlessly hot afternoon as tourists capture memories of a day out in the Australian bush.  Ormiston Gorge is Central Australia at its unbeatable best.

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