la la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ >>> in bahia you find yourselfazil, where the magic comes from. if you want to get there, just follow the sound of the drums. this is salvador de bahia, city of 3 million people, first capital of brazil. the wellspring for everything african and spicy. where things seem to just sway and move constantly. it's a place where everybody is sexy, where even the ugly people are hot. unsurprisingly, this is where artists come from. african spiritualism, occult magic, candomble, and capoeira. >> caipirinhas. >> caipirinha. >> did i mention caipirinhas? they do those here, too. i like them. i like them a lot. >> what's magical about this cocktail is the first taste, it's like i don't know, man, it's a little too something. then like that second sip, it's like oh, that's kind of good. then the third sip, it's where are my pants? fortunately, food in these parts tends to be, shall we say, hearty. for instance, a delightful meal of fried meat with plenty of absorbent starch product like farofa, the perfect accompaniment to many

♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la-la ♪ >>> tangier, it's morocco. it was loosely governed by the major powers, an international zone. for years, it seemed, everything was permitted. nothing was forbidden. at the northern tip of africa, a short ferry hop from spain, tangier was a magnet for writers, remittance men, spies and artists. if you were a bad boy of your time, you liked drugs, the kind of sex that was frowned upon at home and an affordable lifestyle set against an exotic background, tangier was for you. matisse, genest, william burroughs. many have come this way, staying a while or hanging around. but no one stayed longer or became more associated with tangier than the novelist and composer paul bowles. in works like "the sheltering sky" he created a romantic vision of tangier that persists even today, a dream that's become almost inseparable in the minds of many from reality. i'm here to find that dream city. the place burroughs referred to as "interzone." ♪ tangier like i said was a city of ex-pats -- people with pasts, people who simply d

la la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la >>> what do you need to knows. the first time i came here, it was like -- it was a transformative experience. it was a powerful and violent experience. it was as if -- it was just like taking acid for the first time. meaning what do i do now? i see the whole world in a different way. i often compare the experience of going to japan for the first time, going to tokyo for the first time, to what eric clapton and pete townsend must have gone through. the reigning guitar gods of england. what they must have gone through the week that jimi hendrix came to town. you hear about it, you go see it, a whole window opens up into a whole new thing. and you think, what does this mean? what do i have left to say? what do i do now? >> welcome to tokyo. you are not invited. this is the other tokyo. 12-hour flight and i'm baked. no sleep. might as well -- must -- go out. ♪ the kabuchiko district near my hotel has the advantage of being where the subterranean life, the repressed ids of the japanese male, some female too, come out

la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ ♪ >>> in july 2013, whenar-old nelson mandela was critically ill. in the country he freed from white minority rule was already in mourning. and already fearful of what the future might be without him. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> i pray that he -- somebody takes the baton from him. >> i wish him a speedy recovery. and come back to his people. ♪ >> so a good friend of mine, a really great travel writer, said something. the more i travel, the less i know. i feel that particularly strongly in south africa, a place i came in a state of near total ignorance, loaded with preconceptions. for the first part of my life, the south africa i knew was not a happy place or a good place. it was a pariah state. surrealistically, outrageously divided into black and white. a throwback to attitudes we thought we'd long learned to reject. ♪ >> the nationalist government in south africa enacted apartheid laws in 1948. who you could marry. where you lived. where you could walk, be educated, everything decided by racist laws

la la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ >> i'm in peru with thisas looking at this, he went into the tree. >> that's funny. >> chef of the world famous restaurant le bernardin in new york. to look at where chocolate comes from, particularly our chocolate, the very expensive limited run designer chocolate bar business that eric got me into last year. so that's why we're in peru. but before we get all indiana jones we're spending some time in lima, as we like the capital city just fine. and we have, both of us, from previous trips, friends here. lima is the cultural hub and culinary capital of a country that has exploded in the last decade with scores of world class chefs, cooks and restaurants. it has long been considered to be one of the best food scenes in all of south america. >> good. >> how far away is the house? >> that's it. >> yeah. >> five minutes. >> one of our friends here is chef restaurateur, coque ossio, one of the best most successful chefs in the country. his family is something of a beloved culinary dynasty in peru. and pucusana, a

la la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ >>> colombia, ordinarilyn this country makes the news or appears in a film or a television drama, it's not for its looks, which are, i should say right up front, spectacular. it's not for its people who are -- everyone i've ever met, anyway, are warm, proud, generous and fun. or for its food, which is truly great. i don't know what this is, but it's good. food in this country is excellent. ♪ >> i'm no stranger to this place. generally speaking, it's a particularly vibrant mix of spanish, european, afro-caribbean, and indigenous people. these are deep waters, my friends, that no news story or episode of "miami vice" has ever come close to navigating. it is and always has been a fiercely, fiercely proud country, and its people yearn to see international coverage of something other than cocaine and violence, but that isn't a legacy that's easy to ignore. its decades of civil unrest have left vast swaths of colombia relatively unknown, even to its own citizens. to reach a place previously considered a no-go area,

la la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la >>> holy mother of santa muerteh of cocaine. let it not be interfered with by the cops, or the competition. let any who would mess with me be killed. my enemies destroyed. please forgive us our sins, for they are many. so is business good? i mean, are there more murders, particularly narco murders? [ speaking spanish ] >> every day, mexico wakes up to count the dead. they are, after all, left out to be seen. often with a helpful note, identifying who done what and generally speaking, why. there is a language to the never-ending violence, a coded message in the twists and marks of the bodies. and valente rosas is one of many documenting them for the press. this is what he does every night, rides around waiting for a phone call or a radio message telling him that there's another one. so who's buying drugs? who's selling drugs to who? [ speaking spanish ] >> here, you kill each other for a reason. it's business? >> si. >> more mexican civilians have been killed since 2006 than all the american military lost in ten year

, la, la ♪ sha la, la, la, la, la ♪ sha la, la, la, la ♪ sha la, la, la, la, la >>> the western myththe american imagination. none of us can escape it. for ages, we identified ourselves with the image of the lone cowboy, the perception of frontier values, self-sufficiency, rugged individualism, the freedom of wide open spaces. few places in america still manage to embody that mythic landscape of the imagination like the state of new mexico. what does freedom mean? it's different things to everybody, it seems, but something about this place manages to capture the overlap between a whole hell of a lot of very different cultures. old route 66 runs through new mexico like a collapsed vein, right through santa fe and albuquerque. it must have seemed like magic once. families loaded in a massive chrome and steel chariots with powerful v-8 engines and took off down that blacktop highway. they slept in whimsical motor lodges and bungalows, swam in kidney-shaped pools. then it all went redundant. route 66 was decommissioned, chopped up, largely forgotten, except by desperate and lazy travel s

la la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ ♪ >>> right now we're inn. farish street. >> a street with a lot of history. what did it used to be like back in the day? >> the street was packed with folks. folks all over. they had their own restaurants, grocery stores, juke joints, i mean, everything happened on farish street that happened in jackson for the african american community. >> the state capital of jackson, mississippi, located along interstate highway 55, just outside what's known as the mississippi delta. it's the kind of place that makes you wonder why did they make it the capital? until you grab hold of what used to be around here. farish street used to be the hub of african-american life in this city, its black commercial, cultural center. when dr. king came to town, he came here. everybody did. medgar evers had an office just upstairs here. musicians like tommy johnson, sonny boy williamson too, and elmore james all played here and the likes of duke ellington, cab callaway, count basie and louie armstrong all took the stage at places like

la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ >>> i can go to the desert, there by accident. but that's part of the whole experience of the desert is that, you know, it ain't friendly. it ain't nice. it ain't good, you know? you're out here, you know, a half a mile, it doesn't matter if you're half a mile out or you're 20 miles out. there's no reason to walk a mile further. you're already in infinite desolation. sin city was true, it was real. part of moving out here was you were never going to see your family again. that was it. i'm moving to vegas and you ain't coming to see me and i ain't coming to see you. that's the character of the city. it really was, you know, the pit of america. it wasn't that somebody came out here because i'm going to make a million bucks. it was i'm going to come out here and i'm going to survive and you all ain't going to bug me anymore back home. ♪ >> in vegas there's winners and losers. and god knows i've been both. in a place like this where you can lose your shirt on the unlucky turn of a card, you need a friend. and for my

♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la >>> it's where nearly everything american and great camee world wanted, made here. the heart, the soul, the beat of an industrial cultural super power. a magnet for everyone with a dream of a better future. from eastern europe to the deep south. american dream? you came here. >> the one straight ahead with the green roof? >> the rococo building, completely empty. >> unbelievable. >> the white one is being rehabbed. there's money coming in. the one on the right is completely empty. the great pyramid with the spire on top sold for $5 million. >> $5 million for that? you can't buy a garage in the hamptons for that. >> $5 million for a skyscraper. >> it is post-apocalyptic. i mean, it's like a science fiction film. what the hell happened here? >> well, it is post-apocalyptic. except for the fact there are several hundred thousand people living here. >>> 2 used to be 2 million people. that was rubber. that guy was steel. that guy was a doctor. this was what made america. the road started here. the automobile. frozen peas started here. credit on

la la sha la la la la la ♪ ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ >>> ah, the storybook kingdomst complex, magically surreal places in spain. and one of the most beautiful. grenada is tucked against the sierra nevada mountains of andalucia in southern spain. it's not like barcelona. it's not line san sebastian. it ain't madrid. any reasonably sentient person who looks at spain, comes to spain, eats in spain, drinks in spain, they're going to fall in love. otherwise, there's something deeply wrong with you. spain is the sort of place that never really made any sense anyway, and in the very best possible way. this is the country that gave us the spanish inquisition. also anarchy. this is where devout catholicism mixes with surrealism, modernist cuisine with traditional tapas. christianity and islam traded spaces, shared space. the effects of influences of all those things are right here to see. you can almost look back through time and through the mists of history and see the phoenicians marching up across the vega, or are those feral hippies? an influx of hippies have made things