Season 3
10 episodes
25 min. per episode
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Exploring hidden cultures across the Americas, a curious traveler uncovers untold stories that challenge perceptions and ignite connections.
Episodes
The last vestiges of the once-mighty Dutch empire live on in the Caribbean in the ABC Islands-Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Islanders speak four languages, one of which is their very own, as they explain. We visit Curaçao, now independent, and wander the streets of Willemstad, its capital city. In its colonial buildings we find hints of a past glory made possible by slave trade. After a short flight by puddle jumper we land in Bonaire, still a colony, where we don Scuba gear to mingle with its incomparable marine life and hunt down the Lionfish intruders. Then we witness the extraction of uncountable tons of salt from Bonaire's tidal flats. Finally we trek into a national park where dense groves of tall cacti are home hordes of lizards and lagoons harbor tranquil flamingos.
Across the All Saints' Bay from Brazil's huge city of Salvador in Bahia state, the region known as the Reconcavo supports a distinct culture and heritage. Over the centuries slaves escaped their owners and founded their own towns. They, along with other colonists, shaped the local society and exploited its tropical riches, its dende palms, its mangrove swamps, its rivers, and its once-lush forests. Tropical islands along the coast became homes to the very affluent and to humble fishing families. Meanwhile a tire company has taken on the challenge of preserving and restoring the once-great Atlantic Forest, the Mata Atlântica.
Bogotá, Colombia, is the nation's capital and its social, cultural, and economic center. At 8,600 feet elevation, its air is thin and with eight million residents its air is dirty. To help decrease traffic congestion and air pollution Bogotans have created a dramatically effective mass transit system instituted Cyclovía: each Sunday they cordon off their downtown and turn it over to bicyclists and pedestrians. Colombians love their coffee and brag about it. Most Colombian coffee comes from the Zona Cafetera to the west of the city. Traveling there gives us a glimpse of the life history of the world's most popular beverage, coffee.
The mighty Sierra Nevada is our most important mountain range. It influences much of California's weather and produces most if its water. It was once the greatest barrier to transcontinental transportation and communication. It is a symbol of earthquakes, which created it. Tectonic geologist Eldridge Moores helps host David Yetman decipher the mysteries of the range's origins and describes the sierras' importance.
Long stretches of Brazil's northeast coast are lined with sand dunes, some of them the size of small mountains, some of them so vast that they create their own climate. Their color, shape, and composition and their relationship with wind provide a striking variety of landscapes, each with its own ecological character, its own plants and animals. The sands are also home to the cashew tree, famous for fruit and nut. One tree in particular has become a major tourist attraction.
Take a fresh look at the lands that make up much of the Western Hemisphere. Each country contains landscapes, peoples, and history that have not received the attention they deserve on the world stage. In the Americas with David Yetman undertakes a new approach to travel and adventure. From Japanese immigrants in the Amazon to descendants of poor Italians in Chile, from Mayan temples in Guatemala to ancient fortresses in Mexico, from the glacier-carved frigid barrens of northern Canada to the timeless villages of the Altiplano in Perú. The series takes viewers to parts of Brazil mostly unknown to the outside world, to the wild mountains of western Argentina, to festivals in Colombia and the often ignored Great Lakes of the United States. We approach volcanoes in Hawaii, Chile, and Alaska, ride rafts, boats, ferries, horses, and motorcycles. We visit peoples who can replace conversation with whistling, islanders who have cooked the same meals for ten thousand years, and pastoralists who live at an altitude too high for any activity except herding llamas. We meet people from all walks of life and let them tell their stories, show us their homes, take us about their work, and tell us how they came to be who they are. We show the histories of natives and immigrants, islanders and mainlanders, rural folk and city-dwellers. In the Americas with David Yetman undertakes a new approach to travel and adventure-with a decided bias in favor of our western continents and islands.