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“Dad, you’ve had a lot of adventures in your life. Now you’re getting on a bit, could you write some down so I can read about them after you’ve gone?“   Thus my daughter a couple of weeks ago. Not sure how adventurous my life has been. I know plenty of people who have gone further in all directions and a major sign of my getting on is that I no longer have a yen for going off to faraway places (full of tourists) or taking risks on the mountains or on the road. But her comme

US forces attacked Venezuela on the 3rd of January 2026 and kidnapped its President, Nicolás Maduro, and its First Lady.  They rendered the President and his wife to the US against their human rights and against international law; US Law Enforcement has charged him with various crimes against the US under the US legal system.  Trump will, no doubt, prevent President Maduro ever returning to power.

Before we head south of the Equator, let’s head toward the Arctic Circle, to one of the last European colonies, a colony, of all places, of Denmark.  We are of course in misnamed Greenland, that huge, empty land of ice. There are few folk in this frozen wilderness, around 50,000, and whilst they would quite like to be independent, they can’t afford it.  The Danes have been kind and generous colonists and call it a “protectorate” and leave the Greenlanders pretty much to their

We live in an age of golden travel. Never has it been so easy to go so far and wide. Yet moving around also has limitations, bounded by...

I first came across Fraxinus uhdei in Colombia in 1998. It’s a species of ash tree from Mexico, known in Colombia as urapán...