As a child, Chile’s Nobel Prize-winning poet, Gabriela Mistral, knew poverty first hand. Before turning to poetry, she made her mark in education and throughout her career as journalist and diplomat, championed the universal right to a better life through equality in education. The welfare of children was a lifelong cause. Her appeals on behalf of poor children before the United Nations were instrumental in forming UNICEF. In her will, she donated all her royalties to the children of Montegrande, the town where she spent her early years.

The treaty did not end tensions between the two nations, and nationalist protests over sovereignty continued. On Panama's Independence Day in 1959, students demonstrated at the U.S. Embassy in Panama City, demanding that the Panamanian flag fly at the canal. President Eisenhower ended the "flag riot" by allowing the Panamanian flag to be placed below, but not beside, the U.S. flag, a compromise that temporarily assuaged the citizens.

Three of the homes where the beloved poet, Pablo Neruda, lived and worked are popular stops on the itineraries of many Chile tours. To fully appreciate these quirky museums during one’s travel to Chile, it is necessary to understand Neruda’s love life, his politics and his spending proclivities. He loved women. He loved nature. He loved objects. These houses, Isla Negra, La Chascona and La Sebastiana, and the objects they contain, were the dream worlds Neruda created for himself, their value appreciated mostly by him.

On every continent, bankers, mechanics, lawyers and computer programmers escape real life to enter the world of tango for a few days in festivals that celebrate the dance and its culture. In 2006 alone, tango festivals were scheduled in places as far flung as Wuppertal, Zurich; Copenhagen, Stockholm, Catania, Seattle, Singapore, Budapest, Taipei and Istanbul. You'll find a full listing of tango festivals around the world at www.totango.net.

Scientists believe that it is in the Amazon Rainforest regions of what today belong to Ecuador and Colombia where the cacao tree most likely originated. Today, many varieties of cacao trees grow here, their beans being used by chocolate processors to give chocolate its distinctive taste. In the Ecuador Amazon, cacao grows mostly in small groves, intermingled with other trees. Most valued here is the country’s famed Arriba tree, a species that fungal diseases devastated in western Ecuador during the early 1900s but spared in the Napo River region.