Mark Johanson

1 month ago | afar.com | Mark Johanson

Panama’s Guna Yala is, in many ways, the antithesis of the glossy magazine version of a Caribbean destination: The archipelago (formerly known as San Blas) has no resort hotels, no cruise ships, no teens on jet skis. Almost all the 32,000 people who live on its 49 inhabited islands (of 365 total) are Guna, the first Indigenous community in Latin America to gain political autonomy exactly 100 years ago, in 1925.

2 months ago | bbc.co.uk | Mark Johanson

Once emptied of wildlife, South Africa's Babanango Game Reserve is now home to the Big Five – thanks to a bold rewilding project led by Zulu communities and global conservationists. DDaybreak filters through the fever trees and umbrella thorns of South Africa's White Umfolozi River Valley, splintering orange light across a puckered grassland teeming with newly arrived wildlife.

2 months ago | flipboard.com | Mark Johanson

Leaders stumble from one crisis to anotherNo matter how one wants to sweeten what is unfolding in South Africa, the reality is that our government is stumbling from one disaster to the next …

2 months ago | robbreport.com.au | Mark Johanson |Belinda Aucott

It’s been immortalised in literature and on film—join us as we follow Che Guevara’s footsteps and tackle a rugged Andean passage from Argentina to Chile. There’s a point near the start of Che Guevara’s classic travelogue The Motorcycle Diaries when the young Marxist revolutionary crosses from his native Argentina into the unknown wilderness of Chilean Patagonia.

Mar 14, 2025 | lonelyplanet.com | Mark Johanson

All islands have their folklore, but few can compare with Robinson Crusoe, whose name alone recalls the fictional castaway modeled after a real-life privateer marooned here in the 1700s. This remote Chilean outpost, 667km (414 miles) west of Valparaíso in the South Pacific, has, at various times, served as a base for marauding pirates, a prison for Chilean independence fighters, a WWI battleground, and the site of a multimillion-dollar treasure hunt.