Episode list

Our travelers Justine Shapiro, Ian Wright and Megan McCormick set out on a voyage around the massive gulf that separates the North and South American continents to delve beneath the perception many people have that the Caribbean is merely a rich man's playground to bring you the Ultimate Caribbean experience! There are hundreds of tiny islands strung out across the Caribbean but the largest islands have the strongest characters. We visit Trinidad, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic to discover the history of the Caribbean - and its decidedly dark underside. It was colonized by European settlers who put the native Carib and Arawak Indians to work on the sugar plantations; when they were virtually wiped out the colonists brought over millions of African slaves. Our travelers visit Santo Domingo, a plantation on Jamaica and the Maroons (descendants of escaped slaves who still live in the hills) to discover more. If you want to avoid the crowds, head to some of the smaller islands such as St Kitts which still has a seriously English feel while Dominica remains a jungle paradise. Tobago is a beautiful peaceful island and a great place to get involved in local events - where the Bacoo Goat Race is the place to be seen at! Just outside the Caribbean the Turks & Caicos Islands are the place to escape. Animal lovers will find another sort of paradise in the Caribbean from exceptional diving to swimming with dolphins to keeping out of the way of alligators and communing with massive leatherback turtles. If you want to get trekking, Dominica has the biggest rainforest in the Caribbean and big tracts of it are still untouched while the Dominican Republic's pine forests are a great place to go mule riding as Megan discovers! Jamaica also offers some wonderful views - for an amazing experience climb the Blue Mountain in time for the sunrise - a perfect way to end our Caribbean odyssey!

With over 1.3 billion citizens and a land mass barely larger than the USA, it would be easy to think China is just crammed with people, but as Globe Trekker's Ultimate China shows, this is a land of incredible diversity. Megan McCormick starts out in the old capital, Xianyang, which was established over 2000 years ago and is the home of Emperor Qin's huge mausoleum with its army of terracotta warriors. On a brief journey through the history of the nation, Megan McCormick, Justine Shapiro and Zay Harding visit the forbidden city of Beijing and the centuries of Imperial reign. During these centuries, we find that China led the world in arts and sciences and became rich selling silk, porcelain and tea along the silk route and from ports such as Quanzhou. But the Imperial era was brought to an end by the Opium wars with Britain and the series of revolutions that followed, culminating in the communist revolution under Mao Zedong. Justine meets a teacher who experienced Mao's oppression in the cultural revolution and Zay talks to one of the original long marchers who fought beside Mao against Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist army. China seems to be modernizing at an incredible place, but many millions of Chinese still live peasant lifestyles. Away from the cities, Justine visits the beautiful Miao people of the south west and sees the swinging festival of the Akka people. Zay sees the extraordinary Tolou mud homes of the Hakka people of Fujian. And between them all they see that China has stunning rural landscapes, ranging from jagged mountains to vast deserts. In the midst of that, Chinese ingenuity is everywhere, from elevators up mountains, to the Great Wall of China and, most recently and dramatically, the Three Gorges Dam project which is transforming the Chinese landscape forever.

In this episode, our explorers take you to the ultimate travelers' destination - India. Megan McCormick blows herself away with the hot native cuisine, Holly Morris gets a close up view of Indian sanitation, Andrew Dado tries his hand (and the rest of his body) at the ancient practice of yoga, and Justine Shapiro hugs her way to spiritual enlightenment - and that's just the beginning of their trip across this stunning sub-continent.

For over 4000 years, Mexico has been the home of huge and complex civilizations and today it's one of the most colorful cultures in the world. In this ultimate guide to Mexico, Ian Wright, Justine Shapiro and Zay Harding explore the country's many different facets. In search of the history of Mexico, Justine and Ian trek into the mountains and the jungles, climbing the mighty pyramids and seek out the remains of Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, Palenque, Tulum, and Tenochtitlan to find out how the Mayans, Aztecs and other pre-colonial Mexicans lived, died, and worshipped. Ian then heads to the coast to investigate the arrival of Cortez and his conquistadores near Acapulco in 1519. Mexican artistry, food and drink also show a blend of indigenous and Spanish flavors, from the silversmiths of Taxco and the tile makers of Talavera, to the global influence of Mexican ingredients and cuisine. Justine finds the origins of tomatoes, maize, peppers, tequila, chillis and chocolate and Ian finds that a tortilla can make a pretty good Frisbee. But away from the cities, Mexico offers adventure, from cliff diving and surfing near Acapulco, to desert treks in search of prehistory. Ian comes nose to nose with whales in Baja. Zay Harding sweats it out with the Tarahumara Indians in the spectacular Copper Canyon and rafts the jungle whitewater of Vera Cruz. And finally, Ian goes back deep into Mexican history, living in the jungle with the last descendents of the Mayan people of Pelenque, the Lancandon Indians and taking a spiritual journey into the overgrown jungle home of their ancestors.