Marcus Kane

Zimbabwe took its name from a 900-year-old stone city in the bush, has 16 official languages, and shares a waterfall the locals call the smoke that thunders.

Zambia has a waterfall the locals call "the smoke that thunders," a pool you can sit in at the edge of a 300-foot drop, and a bat migration nobody warned me about.

Yemen has mud skyscrapers older than the United States, an island where the trees look like umbrellas from another planet, and a coffee history older than most coffee.

Viet Nam is shaped like a thin S along the South China Sea, and almost everything that defines the country comes from that geography.

Venezuela has the tallest waterfall on Earth, a lake that gets struck by lightning almost every night, and a beauty pageant tradition that borders on a national sport.

A country of 80 volcanic islands, more than 100 living languages, and the ritual that gave the world bungee jumping. Vanuatu is stranger and smaller than you think.

Uzbekistan sits at the center of a continent, surrounded by countries that are themselves landlocked. Its old cities outlasted empires, and a few of them are still standing.

Uruguay is the country that quietly does what bigger nations only talk about. Then it pours another mate and goes to the beach.

I grew up in a town of 800 in Montana and now live in Portland. Same country, two different planets. That gap is what the United States is really about.

The UK is four countries sharing a king, a language they all bent into different shapes, and an island chain you can drive across in a long afternoon.

The United Arab Emirates went from a string of fishing villages to a global hub in two generations, and the older country is still there if you look.

Ukraine is the largest country lying fully inside Europe, and almost everything about its geography, food, and history reflects that scale.