Panama Canal

Panama Canal

The Isthmus of Panama connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Panama Canal allows ships to pass through and access the West Coast of the United States. The Panama Canal, finished in 1915, was an important part of history, taking many years and several rounds of planning to accomplish.
There are two local museums devoted to the history and construction of the Panama Canal, one at Casco Antiguo, and another at Miraflores Locks. The museums exhibit the engineering marvels that were accomplished during the building of the canal, and explain the technical parts of the canal.

Great Smoky Mountains national park

Great Smoky Mountains national park

Named so for their misty blue and gray haze, the Great Smoky Mountains are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountain Range. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the country’s most visited national park, with over 9 million visitors annually.

The park offers beautiful vistas from Clingmans Dome, hikes along the 70 miles of Appalachian Trail that pass through the park, old growth forests, and plenty of wildlife. Laurel Falls is one of the most popular waterfalls in the park, falling 80 feet (24 meters), and accessed via Laurel Falls Trail. Cades Cove is another popular place to visit within the park. This Historic District features historic cabins, churches, and barns in an isolated community along an eleven mile scenic drive.

Uluru Ayers Rock in Australia

Uluru Ayers Rock in Australia

A sacred site of the local Aboriginal tribes, Uluru (named Ayers Rock by European colonists) is a natural landmark of Australia that has come to represent the nation and its native ancestry. Made up primarily of sandstone, the rock has a reddish appearance, which often varies at sunrise and sunset. The rock protrudes 348 meters (1,142 feet) high, and has a circumference of about 9.4 kilometers (5.8 miles).

While some visitors make the steep climb up to the top of Uluru, which takes about an hour, the Aboriginal people of the region prefer that visitors walk around the sacred site, rather than climb it. Guided walks are available around the landmark, on which visitors can learn about the various sites and rock art.

Cueva de las Manos in Aegentina

Cueva de las Manos or Cave of hands in province of Santa Cruz, Argentina

Cueva de las Manos, meaning “cave of the hands” in Spanish, is a series of famous paintings on the walls of caves. Located in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina, the cave paintings date back to between 9,000 and 13,000 years ago, and were created by the hunter-gatherer people who resided in Patagonia. These communities were some of the earliest in South America, making this site very important. The caves were inhabited by several waves of people, though the most recent of these were probably ancestors of the Tehuelche people around 700 CE.

Archaeologists have found that the cave dwellers used pipes carved from bones to spray paint the cave walls, using their hands as stencils to create hundreds of silhouettes of their hands in varying shades of red, purple, yellow, and brown. Most of the hands are left hands, suggesting that the artists were right handed, and painted their own hands.

There is also art featuring humans and animals in hunting scenes, with the indigenous guanacos and rheas, as well as abstract designs like shapes and zigzags. The hunters are depicted using bolas, their traditional hunting weapons.