In Egypt the people won over the dictator, and there are some great stories and photos here, for example. Dictators are falling like dominos, finally.
In Italy, the prime minister has to go to trial for having sex with an under-age prostitute and then trying to influence the police work.
In Sweden, temperatures are back down in the minus 20 Celsius (that is 0 F). Keep warm!
In Ecuador, an oil company is fined 9 billion dollars for destroying parts of the Amazon rainforest through oil drilling. (The company, Chevron, says it won't pay and that the courts are corrupt).
and,
what was the headline on Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet today? "New parasitic worm found in foxes in Sweden, now you can't be licked by your dog and pick mushrooms and berries in the forests anymore" (paraphrased, but true). Come on, Aftonbladet - it is like you are turning into the left-leaning fear-mongering Fox News of Sweden... (link to story in Swedish - it is no longer on the top news, but it was in the middle of today)
You meet a friend you don't know so well in a bar. This friend tells you he has a Land Rover stuck in the Central African Republic, and wonders if you feel like going there and drive it back to Europe. Sure you say, and manage to get another friend along for the adventure. You go to CAR (Central African Republic) and the car is nowhere to be seen. Three months later you manage to get to Europe, despite a million mechanical problems, African bureaucracy (which seems to be even worse than Central Asian bureaucracy), fun and unfun adventures, some malaria and dysentery, and not in the Land Rover. And this is what happened.
This book, Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure by Stuart Stevens is a true story, and sort of like a diary of the way Africa works. Things take time. Creativity is a must. Italians are the best mechanics. Don't trust the guides to take you to their home villages. Insurance, what insurance? Sleeping on the roof of a 4-wheel jeep under the stars - this is really Africa.
It is a great read, even if slow sometimes in the beginning, but this is a diary and there were many days of just waiting for something to happen. The author, Stuart Stevens, have a great way with words and was one of the writers for our favorite TV series Northern Exposure. I want to read more by him! I am so amazed at their persistence to actually do this trip, despite all the problems along the way. Including a car that you can't turn off and that can only run in one gear, through Sahara.
Sunset on mountains in Kenya. (cc) Clairepants on Flickr.
"Ahead of me lies a land that is unknown to the rest of the world and only vaguely known to the African - a strange mixture of grasslands, scrub, desert sand like long waves of the southern ocean. Forest, still water, and age-old mountains, stark and grim like mountains of the moon. Salt lakes, and rivers that have no water. Swamps. Badlands. Land without life. Land teeming with life - all of the dusty past, all of the future. The air takes me into its realm. Night envelopes me entirely, leaving me out of touch with the earth, leaving me within this small moving world, of my own, living in space with the stars. "
West with the Night is the autobiography by Beryl Markham (1902-1986) about her childhood in the early 1900s on a horse farm in Kenya among African hunters and cheetahs. She became a horse trainer (first female licensed one in the country), and she later learned to fly and became one of the first bush pilots in Kenay, a dangerous and lonely job. Karen Blixen's husband Baron von Blixen was an elephant safari organizer and hired her to scout ot where the elephants where, and she had an affair with him (but this is not mentioned in the book). She does talk about him as a tall Swede that wasn't afraid of anything. Later she flew to Europe and was the first woman that flew solo over the Atlantic from the east (Europe) to the west (North America) in 1936. Other had tried but died. All of these topics are spectacular, but what is even more spectacular is her writing. Gorgeous, detailed, emotional, like impressionist paintings but with words. It is one of the best books I have read in a long, long while. It wasn't published until 1942, and then forgotten and republished in 1983 to great acclaim. There is some question if she wrote the book by herself, but I choose to believe so, if nothing else because it feels like she telling her story in a way that only someone that experienced these amazing, scary, and intensive things could.
Ernest Hemingway liked her book too and said in a letter:
"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West With The Night? ...She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen."
He wasn't bad with words either. :)
She also has a crater (Markham) on Venus named after her, quite an honor. Just read this book. I loved it and know I will read it again later in my life.
On our last day in South Africa we went on a little roadtrip to four wineries. You can visit the wineries themselves, taste the wines (sometimes for free), and then they hope you will buy a case or many. The area we visited was around Franshoek, an old French-inspired villages nestled in a valley, and around Stellenbosch, another old colonial-looking cute town.
My favorite winery was Fairview Estate. They had the best wine (Viogner, mmm!) , incredibly amazing cheese made by them and sold in their cheese shop together with balsamic glaze, fruit jams, and marmalades. In the middle of their garden at their entrance they had their signature feature - a tall tower for the goats to climb up on. This is a wonderful place, you have to go here when you visit South Africa.
We also went to Graham Beck Estates, which is housed in a long modern building with a lot of black, leather, sharp angles, and stainless steel inside. Behind a full-length glass wall you could see the conveyor belt of bottles being washed and labeled. Two bottles fell off and broke while we were watching. The wines weren't as good, but still good, except for the Merlot that I didn't like at all.
Tokara Estate is situated on a hill, overlooking rows and rows of olive trees and grape bushes. The view is absolutely fantastic, and they have the best restaurant I went to in South Africa. Here you could see the giant stainless steel fermentation vats, and by this time I didn't want any more wine, but I tried their amazing olive oil. I should have gotten some oil to bring home, but I already had too much weight in my bags.
At the last stop, Spiers, we didn't even go into the wine tasting place, but headed for their area where they keep cheetahs. Spiers has a giant parking lot and is a tourist trap with a craft market, play ground, a little zoo, and is not really my kind of thing. But the cheetahs were fun - they are part of an endangered species program. We saw them being fed raw chicken pieces, and they crunched through the bones like it was tooth picks. It was worth a visit just to see the cheetahs.
Cape Town is a true cosmopolitan city. It is influenced by its history shaped by the San people, Portuguese, Dutch, Germans, British, Americans, blacks, and today by the Swedes of course. The harbor was filled to the brim with Volvo and Ericsson signs because of the worldwide Volvo Ocean Race - Life in the Extreme. It is strange to go to a place on the other side of the Earth and hear Swedish (skånska) at the breakfast table next to you.
The craft market at the Green Market is amazing. Lots of jewelry and baskets, bowls, fabrics, prints... Many animals and things made out of recycled material, strings and beads. The mosquitos on the table are made from recycled insecticide cans, DDT maybe?
For the rich tourists there are carved ostrich egg lamps. In the aquarium you can see giant spiny sea urchins.
The kelp forest in the aquarium was impressive and dizzying, but hard to photograph. The starfish photo is especially for AREA. They had a giant tank with sharks and other fishes too. The aquarium is at the Victoria and Albert Waterfront, the old harbor area which was dilapitated and run down years ago but now has been turned into a tourist and shopper's paradise. Not much for the locals here, just fancy shops and pricy restaurants.
This man tried to sell me a homemade wire radio, but it would have been turned into a wreck in my suitcase. I bought a mosquito and spider from recycled material instead. What do you think about the drapery? All made from recycled plastic bottles, lids, and so. If you look on Flickr, you can see the closeups.
I am back home in the US after my South African adventures. Finally I can post some more photos! I had a wonderful trip, and I strongly recommend South Africa as a destination. I only saw the Cape Town region, but at least that part is wonderful. More on details later, now I just want to indulge you in some more photos from the Cape of Good Hope.
In order: Sunset rays at Hout Bay. Everlasting flowers (eterneller in Swedish). Wild zebra. Yellow flowers on the cliffs at Cape of Good Hope (Cape Point's lighthouse is in the background). Ostrich at the beach at the Cape, see the baby chick? (The floatings things are kelp, seaweed.)
UPDATE: More photos can be seen on Flickr, at this link.
Sorry guys - here is the video again:
I removed it because I misunderstood a comment and thought it was offensive, but now it is back, with my deepest apologies. I couldn't watch it here in South Africa because of the slow internet connection, so I didn't really know what it was about. Once again, I am sorry AREA and PP.
I am a land of unique fynbos flora, horror-filled racist history, and magic vivid scenery for the first time in my life. We will only visit the area around Cape Town (Kapstaden), and since South Africa is much larger than you might think, there is a lot that I won’t see. No elephants, lions, and Kalahari for example. But here at Cape Town the Cape of Good Hope Peninsula and National Park is very close and that is where we spend today. It was amazing, and I wished all of you in my close and extended family had been there to see everything. I am going to try to upload photos here too but this connection is very slow, so we will see how it goes.
The Cape of Good Hope and its sister Cape Point, are the most southwestern points of Africa. South of it is just water and the Antarctic. At the airport there was actually a departing flight listed with destination ‘Antarctica’; I have never seen a whole continent been a flight end point before. But back to Good Hope.
This peninsula is famous for its winter (June-August) storms and hundreds of ships are wrecks along the coast. It is rugged, dramatic, and windy. The peninsula has large mountains covered with the typical fynbos flora with geraniums, proteas, and ericads (blueberry relatives), and we saw lots of flowers in all colors. There are giant bird cliffs with black and white-breasted cormorants, seagulls, and Cape Fur seals, sea lions, and giant white sharks in the water. We actually saw a giant shark fin in one bay, swiveling around on the surface of the water. Our hole day was spent on shore, not in the boat, but we also saw at least 10 southern right whales, big plankton eating peaceful monsters that were blowing air and water, diving, frolicking by laying on their backs and flipping their flippers, and a few times we saw them breaking, which is when they come from deep below and cut straight through the surface and up in the air, with nearly ¾ of their giant bodies above the water for a short time. None of the whales were very close, but with my great binoculars (I am so happy I brought them) you could see quite a lot.
We also visited a penguin colony, where the penguins were totally unafraid and in their molting phase, so all they were doing was sitting still for three weeks until their old feathers had fallen off and the new ones have grown out. It is strange to see penguins in the wild, it was like a zoo. Down in the national park we saw an ostrich family along the beach, Mommy Ostrich, Daddy Ostrich, and about ten little ostrichlings. The beach and ostrich in the same view was not what I had expected. Not zebras either, but they were also there, as well as antelopes. We saw a Rock Dassie, a kind of hyrax which is a small animal related to elephants (but without trunk, tusks, and tail). Black lizards with fat bellies were skittish.
The flora is so different from anything else I have ever seen. Giant-flowered proteas are everywhere, as are geraniums and Aizoaceae (ice plant family)plants, from one of which they make Sour Fig Jam, and I bought some to have at home with cheese and crackers. There are lots of bushy Asteraceae (sunflower family), and we also so a parasitic mistle toe. Small bushes were flowering with everlasting flowers (eterneller in Swedish) with papery-thin and papery-dry petals.
Lunch was at an outdoor terrace looking out over False Bay, and I ordered Cape Malay Seafood Curry, a fantastic dish. They have lots of good fish and seafood here.
When I was standing up by the light house at Cape Point and looked out over the treacherous seas I was thinking about my grandfather who must have rounded the cape at least once during his years as a merchant marine in the 1910s to 1920s. I should ask Dad about when my grandfather was sailing here on his steamships, and if he ever visited Cape Town. It is strange to be in places nearly a hundred years after one of your relatives was there. I had the same feeling when I visited the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro, where he also walked the paths and even bought a little guidebook I now own. Tomorrow we are going to Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, which is supposed to be one of the ten best gardens in the world. It will be botanical overload and ecstasy, I am sure.
Do extraterrestrial aliens exist on Earth?
Do ghosts exist and if so, what are they?
Did human civilizations make the Nazca lines and the Giza pyramid, and if so, how?
Questions inspired by conversations with LA. What do YOU think?
Only a few ships are left at Penn's landing by the piers on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, and most can't even sail or move anymore. . Penn's landing used to be settled by Swedes and Dutch and Indians, before it became a city. Here is the largest 4-masted sailing ship still in existence, Moshulu, that has been transformed into a fancy restaurant. It is from the late 1800s and rounded Cape Horn no less than 56 times, and was kept in Finland for many years until it was sold to the owner in Philadelphia. I liked the restaurant, and you could imagine the leaning and creaking as if it was sailing outside of Africa.
Next to Moshulu are two military ships, the WWI ship U. S. S. Olympia (white) and a WWII submarine called U.S.S. Becuna (after a fish). Both are museums now. PP and I had a discussion here of what would be most tolerable - being underwater in the submarine or on the surface of the water on a sailing ship in a storm. I voted for the sailing ship, I think the submarine would be too claustrophobic. I have seen too many submarine movies...
The "New Market" is very old, and no longer used as the market. Imagine this place bustling with fishmongers and sailors a hundred years ago. I like all the old brick buildings with their wooden doors and window shutters.
Three entrances to a house - door, window, and coal shoot (?) to the basement. This is also an old museum building in the Old City.
Henning Mankell (wikipedia) is famous for his excellent books about the Swedish criminal detective Kurt Wallander, an overweight, slightly depressed, and disillusioned police man in southern Sweden. If you haven't read those books, do it!
This book however is about something completely different. I read it during my trip to Ecuador, and it takes place across the world in southern Africa and in Sweden, in the late 1800s. A failed young Swedish scientist travels to Namibia to collect insects, especially new species, to finally become famous and be someone at home. While in Africa he adopts a young African boy from the Kalahari desert, who he brings home to Sweden and teaches Swedish. There is a string of sadness through the whole book - of course the boy is miserable, and Sweden is full of racism and discrimination. The scientist is also unbalanced and the book does not have a happy ending. But it is a good book. The book is being translated into English, will be titled The Son of the Wind, and will be released in 2012 (why does it take 5 years to translate it?).
My only main problem with the story is that Mankell could have done a little more research into how taxonomy and systematics is done. First of all, people that work with insects are entomologists, and do not get degrees in botany. Second, it has been considered bad practice to name a species after yourself for hundreds of years, and this simply isn't done, but this is one of the premises for the book. Finally, finding new species, especially in the late 1800s, was easy. You don't have to travel to Africa to do it, and probably the worst place to find one would be in the Kalahari desert. Go to any rain forest and you find dozens of new species, especially insects. In the 1800s new species were reported by the thousands every year, and still is. A new species isn't really a big deal (says someone that has described a few). Mankell should have done a little more research and talked to some taxonomists. But the book is a good read and he describes the poverty and misery of the lower class in Sweden very well.
A friend of ours is in Africa right now, and she is taking the most beautiful photos. Nature, people, food, monkeys, orphans, truck butts, birds, elephants, mountains, you name it. "I-am-amity" (link to photo site), keep up the photographing, we love it!
This stamp is a map of the island of Teneriffa/Tenerife, part of the Canary Island Archipelago in the Atlantic. The islands belong to Spain, just like Madeira to the north. EH posted a picture of the week of the volcano El Teide (Tejde) in the background, and here it is on the map too. Teide is 3700 m tall (over 12 000 feet), the tallest point in Spain, and has often snow on top despite being in the subtropical area of the world. 4 million years ago there was just see here, and the island has been created by volcanic eruptions since then.
When we were small we had a children's book about Barna Hedenhös (The Children Hedenhos from 1953), who took their stone age timber raft and sailed to the Canary Islands, where people sailed in boats made from giant banana peels, and all were afraid Tejde would wake up and spit out lava, people climbed ladders to reach their houses on the steep cliffs, and people communicated by whistling in the valleys. I have very vivid memories of this book.
At Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, they recently had a fantastic exhibit of contemporary stone sculptures from Zimbabwe, called Chapungu. The artists use several types of stone, and typical is that by making it either very smooth and polished or a rough surface, they enhance the shapes of the stone.
" Chapungu, pronounced cha-POON-goo, is a metaphor for the Bateleur eagle, Terathopius ecaudatus, (right) a powerful bird of prey that can fly up to 300 miles in a day at 30 to 50 miles per hour." (link)
"Animals, families, and creatures of legend spring to life in these monumental hand-carved sculptures from Zimbabwe. Carved from opal stone, cobalt, and springstone, the statues depict their African creators’ traditional close bond to nature and the environment."(link)
I found the interplay between smooth and rough fascinating,
Two stone giraffes.
