Argentina - Featuring Buenos Aires and Patagonia

October, 2008
Presented by Wayne Bernhardson

Travel writer Wayne Bernhardson presents sights and insights on two hot travel destinations — Buenos Aires and Patagonia.

Buenos Aires is famous for the tango and has the highest international profile of any South American city. Today it is a bargain destination with first-rate accommodations, innovative cuisine, nonstop shopping, and matchless cultural resources. It is also a city of intimate neighborhoods such as San Telmo and artsy La Boca.

Patagonia spans Argentina and Chile, extending south to Tierra del Fuego. It goes from the Lake District and skiing mecca Bariloche in the north to dramatic glaciers and abundant wildlife on the southern coasts.

Wayne Bernhardson

Wayne earned a Ph.D. in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, and soon departed on his perpetual Latin American road trip. From his Buenos Aires apartment he spends four to five months in South America each year. He is the author of Moon Handbooks to Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile, Guatemala, and Patagonia and has written for numerous magazines and newspapers.

Along the Inca Road

May 6, 2009
Presented by Karin Muller

Filmmaker Karin Muller presents her adventures searching for remnants of the ancient Inca Road. Built more than 500 years ago, it linked the outposts of the Inca Empire which included present day Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Follow her trek from Quito to Santiago as she shows film clips from her Inca Road PBS series and recounts unique experiences such as learning to build a reed boat and rounding up endangered vicunas in Peru’s high plateaus. While documenting Inca culture past and present, Karin provides a rare glimpse into the descendants of the Inca, including a visit to one of South America’s largest festivals in Oruru, Bolivia.

Karin Muller

Swiss-born Karin Muller is an author, adventurer, photographer, documentary producer, and National Geographic Expert on its Peru tours. Her first expedition took her to the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam, the second to the Inca Road and her third to Japan. At press time she is in Africa working on an upcoming educational project.

2007 - 2008

It was the Belle Époque, a time before radio or air travel, at the brink of a revolution in photography and the beginnings of cinema, when Burton Holmes (1870 - 1958) began a lifelong journey to bring the world home. From the grand boulevards of Paris to China’s Great Wall—to Panama, Italy, London, Moscow, Fez, Tokyo, and Jerusalem—Burton Holmes was there, shooting 30,000 photographs and nearly 500,000 feet of film. He roamed the globe throughout the summer, then traversed the United States in winter, presenting his stylish “travelogues” (a term coined by Holmes).

Our speaker, Genoa Caldwell, is archivist of the Burton Holmes

Genoa Caldwell (photo by Debbie Goeppele)

photo collection, in Seattle. Caldwell will open a rare window on the world of 100 years ago with beautiful digital images of vintage hand-painted glass slides. She will also read some of Holmes’s own entertaining prose from Burton Holmes: Travelogues (published by Taschen, 2006, and edited by Caldwell). Author and editor Genoa Caldwell was a photo researcher for the London Sunday Times and editor with prominent New York City photo agencies in the 1960s. Later, while operating her own agency, she became private archivist for the unique Burton Holmes photo collection. Caldwell has maintained the collection for more than 30 years. She lectures and publishes on the life and work of Burton Holmes.

Traveler alert! Update your must-see checklist as author Patricia Schultz makes an encore appearance for the Geographical Society. Now her spotlight is on 1,000 places to see in the United States and Canada. So many choices . . . which should you do? Sail Maine Windjammers out of Camden. Explore gold-mining trails in Alaska’s Denali wilderness. Collect exotic shells on the beaches of Captiva. View an astonishing sunrise over Bryce Canyon. Visit the Corn Palace in South Dakota. Take a barbecue tour of Kansas City. Experience the Ice Hotel in Quebec, the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, cowboy poetry readings, and Lexington after the Derby’s over.

For every region, Patricia Schultz has dozens of unexpected

Patricia Schultz (photo by Diana Allford)

suggestions and essential destinations: wilderness getaways, great dining, best beaches, world-class museums, sports and adventures, road trips, and more. Her previous book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die has sold 2.2 million copies and is a long-running New York Times Best Seller.

Patricia Schultz is executive producer of the Travel Channel’s reality show based on her book. She lives in New York City and has written for Condé Nast Traveler, Islands, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Ravishingly picturesque, romantic beyond reason, the sun-kissed region of Campania is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Erstwhile pleasure dome to the Roman emperors, and still Italy’s most glamorous seaside getaway, this province has been straining the vocabulary of visitors ever since Homer’s Odyssey. Today’s travelers have been bewitched by its surfeit of confetti-hued villages, relentlessly picturesque vistas, and gorgeous gardens, which have been lovingly tended over the centuries by Bourbon kings, English lords, and barefoot contessas. Among the multi-starred sights are: Sorrento—Italy at its Belle Epoque best; perfect Positano—that claim is more than an alliteration; Amalfi—a shimmering medieval city; and Ravello—a cliffside town with the bluest vistas in the world. In telling words and mouth-watering pictures, he traced the rich mosaic of history, ranging from ancient Roman emperors to Edwardian millionaires. Now, based on eight trips, thousands of photographs, and many discoveries, Robert I. C. Fisher brought to the Geographical Society a spectacular “virtual” trip to this Italian eden.

Robert I. C. Fisher’s professional odyssey has taken an almost straight path from art history to the art of travel. He majored in Renaissance art history at New York’s Institute of Fine Arts and his subsequent love affair with Italy led him, in 1999, to write and photograph his first book, Escape to the Amalfi Coast. Along the way, he has written up famous houses for Town & Country and, working as an editor at Fodor's Travel Publications for the past decade, has edited many of their European guidebooks, including Fodor's Naples, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast and those to France, Rome, Ireland, Vienna, Greece, and Switzerland.

2006 - 2007

The Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957. Following Yuri Gagarin's manned flight, the Kennedy administration decided to land a man on the moon within the decade. During this period, Dr. Robert Seamans (shown in the accompanying NASA photo with Dr. Werner von Braun and President Kennedy) was a top administrator at NASA. Presenting an insider’s view, he described for the Geographical Society audience gathered at the Philadelphia Racquet Club both the Soviet and U.S. programs and explained the development and mission sequence that ultimately succeeded. Seamans also presented spectacular images taken both on Earth and in space.

Author, documentary filmmaker, and adventurer Karin Muller has traveled from one end of Japan to the other, living among the people and studying both Japan's ancient culture and its modern ways. She followed dervish mountain cults that undertake such shamanistic practices as fire walking, icy waterfall immersion, and exorcism. She joined a samurai mounted archery team and learned how to handle a longbow on a galloping horse, and she helped light 10,000 floating lanterns during Obon, the Festival of the Dead. Muller visited the Geographical Society at the Ethical Society Building and gave a unique and eclectic multimedia presentation, enabling her audience to see and appreciate honne, the true inner character of Japan.

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