GEO Reports

Infamous drug baron Pablo Escobar had four hippos flown over from Africa to populate his very own zoo on his private estate in Columbia. After his death in 1993, the hippos escaped and have been colonising local waterways ever since. Conservationists are now waging a war against this invasive species which is harmful to the local ecosystem and highly dangerous to humans.

When Massimo Vacchetta discovered little Ninna, he immediately adopted her and saved her from certain death. The veterinarian, whose specialty was caring for cattle, had found his vocation: he opened a hedgehog refuge, now a local institution partly run by volunteers.

Far away from the South Korean capital of Seoul is the Buddhist Gameunsa Temple. Three nuns live, pray and cook together here as they preserve the knowledge of centuries-old temple cuisine. The abbess of this small monastery is the charismatic Wookwan Sunim, revered in Asia as one of the best cooks in the world.

Rural regions of the Amazon basin in Brazil are very hard to reach and lack infrastructure and public services. To bring law and justice to remote areas, a floating courthouse takes to the waterways for six weeks a year.

In Nepal, in the Thrangu Tara monastery near Kathmandu, nuns have the privilege of creating sand mandalas, intricate geometric configurations of symbols, painstakingly assembled from grains of sand. These astonishingly beautiful creations are destroyed to remind Buddhists of the transitory nature of all things.

The danzón is a Mexican dance that has its origins in the French contredanse. After crossing the Atlantic, it passed through Cuba before arriving in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century. This tradition is still very much alive in Mexico City, particularly among the older generation, for whom the danzón is a celebration of life, love and community spirit.