We began Traveler's Mind in the state of Veracruz, where tropical coastal lowlands curve around the Gulf of Mexico and rise quickly to jungled forests of the Sierra Madre Oriental. The city of Veracruz, halfway down the gulf, is Mexico's most important working port, a city with a proud legacy of having repelled invaders from Spain, France and the United States.

Veracruz is famous for its unique variety of musical traditions, including the witty jarocho songs played on jarana, requinto and harp; the romantic boleros of Augustin Lara, a Veracruz native who became Mexico's most famous popular composer; and several tropical dances of Afro-Caribbean origin, such as the sensuous danzón, danced nightly in the plazas of the port.

Over the last decade, Traveler's Mind has taken students to the colorful, raucous and historic port; to the lazy river town of Tlacotalpan, with its brightly painted houses and Arabic-style arcades; and to the Colonial capital of Xalapa, set in a mountainous coffee-growing region near Pico de Orizaba, Mexico's highest peak.

After traveling to India for a workshop in Fort Cochin, Kerala, we returned to Veracruz for two years, with Day of the Dead and Fiesta de Guadalupe workshops in the vanilla-growing center of Papantla, where Totonac culture flourishes in language, ritual and art.

We have since ranged beyond the borders of Mexico: in 2010, we traveled to the old Colonial capital of Sucre, Bolivia; the next year to Valparaíso, on Chile's central coast; and in 2012 to Granada, Spain, where we traced the life of Federico García Lorca.

In June 2014, Traveler's Mind will again meet in Spain, this time in Cádiz, founded by the Phoenicians in 1104 BC and said to be the oldest city in Europe.

Kerala fishing nets photo by Carmel Bentley	Bolivia's Los Masis, restoring Andean cultural heritage

La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda's Valparaíso home	Granada, El Albaicín