Soaring Gold Prices Draw Illicit Miners—and Armed Gangs—to Colombia's Jungles
PUERTO CLAVER, Colombia—The lure of even a few specks of gold compels Elizabeth Mosquera awake before dawn to slog to a muddy pit, where she wades into waist-deep water and starts to pan.
Traces of the precious metal are enough to supplant the pedicures and dye jobs she used to provide for a pittance. 'What you earn in a month in a regular job, you can make here in an hour or two,' said Mosquera, 47 years old.
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Wall Street Journal
21 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
Soaring Gold Prices Draw Illicit Miners—and Armed Gangs—to Colombia's Jungles
PUERTO CLAVER, Colombia—The lure of even a few specks of gold compels Elizabeth Mosquera awake before dawn to slog to a muddy pit, where she wades into waist-deep water and starts to pan. Traces of the precious metal are enough to supplant the pedicures and dye jobs she used to provide for a pittance. 'What you earn in a month in a regular job, you can make here in an hour or two,' said Mosquera, 47 years old.
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While some are opting for quiet beach vacations or leisurely wine tastings. More and more, women are choosing bold, immersive adventures—think of destinations such as Morocco, Colombia, Egypt, and Cuba. Places that challenge and could potentially transform them. 'I think there are multiple reasons, including the fact that women are exhausted at being defined as mothers, wives, grandmothers, career women, etc, and they're facing the if not now, when' question head on,' Stacey Ray, owner of the female-founded travel company Sisterhood Travels, says. For many women in older generations (such as baby boomers and those in Generation X), travel may have once felt exclusively like something reserved for family vacations or something that you would do with a husband. But more and more women are taking the plunge and booking a ticket for one. 'Approximately 40 percent of our clients are married women traveling solo," Rays says. '[That's] up about 15 percent over the last couple of years. 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Stacey Ray/Sisterhood Travels 'At the time, my husband and I were caregiving for my elderly parents, and we found it pretty necessary to go on solo vacations because one of us needed to be home to care for my parents,' she says. 'I decided, at the encouragement of my husband, to do a photography-focused trip with a friend. I quickly discovered that I loved traveling.' Since then, solo travel has become a shared passion for both her and her husband, and Arehart has visited over 15 countries alone, including Antarctica, the Galapagos, Botswana, India, Africa, Brazil, Svalbard, and Peru. 'We don't always need to be physically next to each other to keep our marriage strong and thriving,' she says. 'Even though my parents are both deceased now, we still do our solo travel, but we make a point of scheduling a few vacations that we can do together each year as well.' 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Vogue
4 days ago
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In Galerie Sardine, a New Idea of What the Art Gallery Can Be
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