Mexico's President Now Has His Own PBS Adventure Show

It's about the many exciting activities that await Americans south of the border

With the increasingly bloody drug war in Mexico badly tarnishing the country's world image, President Felipe Calderon is going to new lengths to promote tourism. The Associated Press reports:

The balding, 49-year-old leader is personally trying to change his country's violent reputation by appearing as a sort of adventure tour guide in a series of TV programs to be broadcast starting in September on Public Broadcasting Service stations in the United States.

The president dons an Indiana Jones-style hat and a harness and descends a rope into the 1,000-foot-deep Sotano de las Golondrinas cavern, accompanied by Peter Greenberg, host of the "The Royal Tour" TV series. Calderon also straps on scuba tanks to lead Greenberg into a sinkhole lake known as a cenote in Yucatan. And he helps a Lacandon Indian paddle a boat down a river in a jungle in southern Chiapas state. …

Among choice quotes from the show, due to premiere in New York in September: "I have other duties that are more dangerous," said the president while spelunking.