Columns

(Fourth of four parts, jump to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).

Just prior to the conclusion of my two weeks in Panama as a guest of tour operator Panama Jones, I had the opportunity to fly to the San Blas Islands and overnight at Dolphin Island Lodge.

These islands stretch along some 200 miles of Panama’s Caribbean coastline and are part of a large Kuna Yala reservation which extends from the seaward continental shelf to the top of the jungle-clad continental divide several miles inland.

This was my chance to glean some insight into the colorful Kuna Indian...

(First of two parts, click here for part two.)

“Grandpa, would you help me?” my 11-year-old grandson Casey asked. “When I was out, my friend Peter phoned from the Netherlands and left his number on the answering machine. I have been trying to call him back for over an hour but I keep getting a busy signal.”

“Which number did you dial, Casey?”

“0297-387 640.”

“That is a valid number, but only when the call starts and ends inside the Netherlands.”

“Oh,” he replied, puzzled.

When you make an international call from the U.S., you must insert two...

East of Amman, Jordan’s capital, stretches the desert, a seemingly endless empty expanse of land wedged in between Syria to the north, Iraq to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south. It’s mostly flat, dotted with low-growing shrubs, bushes and cacti. There are few roads here, but there are dozens of desert tracks crisscrossing the expanse. They’ve been used for hundreds of years by pilgrims en route to Mecca and by caravans carrying goods from one trading post to another.

It was here in the desert, in the earliest days of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, that the Umayyad...