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.

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Adam Clark Estes