Dear Globetrotter: Welcome to the 358th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

On Oct. 12, about 1,500 people were evacuated from Machu Picchu, Peru, after a mudslide covered a section of the railway line to the mountaintop Incan ruins. No one was hurt, and buses were employed to take the people down.

Snow melting on a nearby peak caused a chunk of Veronica Peak to break off, burying the tracks with seven meters of mud and rocks. Rail service was restored in a few...

Hello! My name is Steven Venables.

When I started in the travel industry 40 years ago, everything was a little more formal. In fact, the airline I first worked for, United, required us to wear military-like uniforms and use only our last names when introducing ourselves to passengers or answering the telephone. I was “Mr. Venables.”

But people would often slaughter my name, calling me Mr. Vegetables, Mr. Animals or worse. So, with permission, I assumed a false but easier-to-...

Most know that Hollywood made Cleopatra famous with movies of her romantic trysts with Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony, but historians generally view Arab Queen Zenobia as having greater beauty, chastity and valor than her Egyptian ancestor. But who was Zenobia?

During the third century A.D., Rome was challenged by Persia (Iran). As Roman Palmyra, in Syria’s eastern desert, had twice defeated Persia, Rome permitted Palmyra to gradually change from a merchant republic, governed by a...