Ercolano

I am on the Italian A3 autoroute, navigating some perplexing highway interchanges. Lisa is driving and I am manning Google maps on our way to Ercolano.  We are actually planning on visiting Ercolano's ancient relative which lies buried below the modern town. Herculaneum was obliterated nearly two thousand years ago, during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that also buried nearby Pompeii. We are in a sweet, little white Fiat 500 convertible - it seems that Hertz had run out of bad cars, and we are lucky to have the tiny car when it comes time to work our way through the insane, narrow surface streets of Ercolano.  It takes some adjustments to local traffic conventions, but Lisa soon determines when best to stop, and when it is better to speed up. The challenge comes from cars, delivery trucks, dogs, children leaving school with pastel colored schoolbags, motorbikes, and people stepping off curbs with cell phones to their ears.

Safely to the excavation site, we park in the new underground parking structure and are comforted that other cars are nearby - safety in numbers. It would be bad to loose our luggage, piled in the back seat - too large for the trunk. 

Looking at the site from above, we see layers; from bottom to top, we look closely and see the skeletal remains of the citizens who took refuge in the vaulted storage warehouses at the ancient waterfront. Above them, the buff stone structures of the town extend maybe a quarter mile to the rear of the excavated area. Above all that, on top of the ashfall that buried the landscape, are the modern, more colorful residential areas. In the distance is Vesuvius, which is still active and may someday bury the whole area again. Walking the ruins without a guide, it is easy to make up stories about what we see, but most is easily identified. Public baths are enclosed by vaulted stone ceilings with mosaic floors decorated with nautical gods. Residence walls are richly decorated with frescoes or glass mosaics. Public water fountains grace the streets. Small single rooms facing the street were individual shops, selling goods to the citizens of Rome. Where frescoes or painted surfaces have survived, I am surprised by the bright colors and I imagine how proud the owners might have been to outdo their neighbors.

 When we finally leave this amazing place, we are back on the A3 heading to Ravello. I check my phone and Google Maps and see a road that looks like a bowl of noodles, heading up the hill. Lisa calmly mentions that some advise not taking one of the roads around here because of the terrifying drop off, but we continue. Buses! There are huge buses on this narrow windy road - they take the whole road on the hairpin turns. And trucks! There are trucks the size of small houses on this road. Clearly this is not the road that was warned about because everyone is using it.

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An Unusual Flag

In two days, I am going to a part of the world that flys this strange flag. I look at flags as a way to gain some understanding of a culture, but this is a strange one, and may take some explaining. 

• That remarkable thing on the middle is the triskelion (with the legs), the head of Medusa (with wings), and three ears of wheat (for the fertile land). The symbol has represented the region for thousands of years.
• It is not an independent country, but is a separate autonomous region of a larger country.
• The region has been ruled at various times by the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Normans, French, Moors, Byzantines, and Spanish. I’m sure there were others.
• The flag was first adopted upon unification of the island after the Vespers Revolt of 1282, which took the lives of 5,000 French settlers after a French soldier made an unwelcome advance on a woman during the holiday festivities. 
• The flag is bisected diagonally into regions colored red and yellow, representing two primary communities that formed an alliance during the Vespers Revolt. Red - for the current capital of the region, and yellow - representing a what is now a smaller town but was a primary agricultural region at the time.

Borrego Springs in August

Borrego Springs is mostly deserted in August. The temperature is normally about 110 during the day, but if the nights are clear, it is a good time to photograph the stars. So I set my alarm for 11 o'clock and drive ten miles to a site that I had scouted earlier today, where the conditions should be good. When I get here, it is dark to the North, where I plan to shoot, but I turn around and realize that the view back towards Borrego Springs might just be the best. 

Wow, it looks like the mothership is getting ready to land.

 

When I do set up my gear looking to the North, I set a time exposure to track the stars as they circle the North Star. That means I am sitting with nothing to do but look at my watch for a half an hour, and I realize how absolutely silent it is. Not even any wind tonight - only an occasional yip from a nearby solitary coyote.

Now it is Thursday morning and the clouds are building over the mountains to the west. I spend time taking time lapse images of the cloud patterns but you never know what you are going to get. You just hope that you are pointing in a direction that is going to be interesting in an hour or so and this time I am fortunate – the clouds are churning and the shadow patterns race across the mountains and the desert floor. Towards lunch, it definitely looks like rain is on the way, and by the time I get to town, thunder and lightning are booming, preceding the rain. I stop at Borrego Outfitters and the shopkeepers are outside, looking at the sky and deciding whether to go home to prepare for the storm. They decide to stay, and I buy a few camping gadgets that I may or may not need some day, but a lightning strike nearby kills the power and they need to add up the sale in the dark by hand. With the power out I think that Kendall’s coffee shop might only have ice tea, but when I get there they are serving cold sandwiches too, and tuna salad sounds good. I see the cook in the back is having issues with the darkness, and I dash through the rain to my car and retrieve my camping headlamp, which is greatly appreciated. His friends joke with him, in Spanish, saying he looks like a miner.

 

After lunch I decide to try some more cloud photographs and head to a site with good views but what I see is a great column of smoke rising from across the valley – likely from a lightning strike into dead tamarisk trees that had been crop windbreaks before the desert conditions overtook them. I have plans to try a second night of star photography, but I see a great wall of dust moving in from the Salton Sea and I hurry back my room before the wind arrives, turning the sky pale brown. No chance of decent conditions for photography, so I have the night off. 

 

In the morning, I am rested and find a spot to see the sun rise and it is glorious, with the dust in the air adding a softness that offsets the glare of the desert sun.

Sierra Nevada

California’s Sierra Nevada range is home to stars. A lot of stars. I am camping with a group in the Lakes Basin area at the north end of the range. Here, the days are warm and typically a little cloudy but the nights are cool and clear. Hours after the sun sets, it is time to appreciate the night sky. Around the campfire, dinner is enjoyed with a ukulele sing-along, led by Nancy. Michael, who us officially our leader, is in reality the biggest child (bigger even than Iris - who is 9) and he entertains with a illuminated hula hoop. Moving away from the campfire, eyes adjust to the darkness and the light from the stars grows brighter and we lie on our backs to get the full effect. The Milky Way is strong this night, behind the silhouette of tall trees. A shooting star brings murmurings of appreciation from the group lying on the ground. Man-made satellites drift slowly through the star field and an occasional jet flys through too, on the way to some distant city.

 

 

Goodnight Irene / Goodnight Irene

On Hopi Lands

I'm up before sunrise and it's Easter Sunday in Holbrook, Arizona but I have no plans other than getting to Flagstaff later in the day.  I am at the Wigwam Inn (sleeping in a concrete teepee) on old Route 66 and Flagstaff is also on Route 66, but the old byway has been largely swallowed up by Interstate 40 and I want to explore back roads. My plan is to head north into Hopi reservation land and then to swing west to Tuba City before turning south to 'Flag'. 

Taking my time, I stop along the way for photos, and at one stop a black SUV pulls up to talk. The driver is a young man who notes that I am a photographer and asks if I had ever visited Blue Canyon, but I admit that I had never heard of it. He introduces himself as Alfred Lomahquahu, the Vice Chairman of the Hopi Tribal Council, and that it is a special place and he is glad to show me the way. I admit that I have brief thoughts of 'paid guide scam' and 'ax murderer' but dismiss them quickly because he is so kind and ernest. I follow him to an unmarked turnoff onto a dirt track through miles of ranch land to a spectacular canyon landscape. It is a chasam with soft white spires and fine red banding in the cliff faces. He says it takes on a blue tint at sunset and I suspect that generations of Hopi boys have been coming here with their girls to appreciate the setting sun.

I want to stay a while and as we say our goodbyes he mentions that he is headed to a Hopi Kachina dance ceremony at a nearby village and that I am welcome to visit (but no photographs).  Since the day has no agenda I do visit Moenkopi, just near Tuba City and watch the dancers - maybe over a hundred - along with about a thousand spectators. I look around and note that I am one of maybe three 'off reservation' visitors and, to myself, I thank Alfred for the second special introduction of the day. I catch an apple, an orange and a lemon as the dancers throw treats to the crowd.  As the day ends I still have Hopi chants rattling around my head.

Trinity

Kind of funny to have a national historical monument that is closed to the public 364 days a year, but that's where I'm headed on day number 365. I'm on the dirt track that's the back way in, based on directions from Linda who runs the ranch B&B where I am staying. The route cuts from the back of the ranch across scrub desert towards the paved road to the gate onto military land. It's a beautiful morning and I stop for a bit to climb a ridge for the panoramic view. A few grazing cattle reluctantly get out of my way as I pass. Bit of a backup now at the gate as MPs check identification and give instructions: 14 miles, stay on the road, no stopping, no photos until you get there. When I do get here, there is a modest crowd milling and taking pictures, although, in fact there is not much to see now. But on a July morning in 1945, the air temperature went from the pre-dawn chill to ten million degrees in an instant. When it cooled, the surrounding desert sand had fused into a sheet of green radioactive glass. Because it had never been produced naturally it was given its own name: Trinitite, for the first atomic bomb test at Trinity Site, New Mexico. What is here today is not much. A somber stone monument, security fences, and if you look hard enough, pieces of Trinitite, left after the government removed all they could in a effort to "clean up" the site in the 1950's. I handle some found today that after checking that it registers only a few clicks on a Geiger counter operated by a volunteer. Not much physically here, but what
does remain when you think on all this, is the legacy of what we did here. They say man lost his innocence in the Garden of Edan, and certainly lost a bit more when the first stone was raised in anger. What we did here was certainly a giant leap beyond that. It worries me that the people who did this, including the brilliant scientists - did this mostly just because we could. What will we decide to do next?

OK,  I realize that I am pontificating a bit and as I write this tonight I am finishing a cheeseburger and my second Carta Blanca  at the Owl Bar and Cafe in nearby San Antonio. Only place open on Saturday night, so it is without a doubt the best place in town.

Going to Church

It has finally dried out some after several days of lively afternoon thunderstorms and the rock outcropping behind our camp is no longer slippery.  It should be safe to climb, and Michael will take us up to see the sunrise over the Serengeti. Our head guide, Charles, has been friends with Michael for many years and with good humor he calls the experience 'Church of Mike'. So, just after first light I hear hands clapping as camp staff patrol and climb to make sure the area is clear of snakes, buffalo and whatever else. Last night there was a leopard in camp on the rocks above the kitchen area and that was a good reminder that we are not alone here.

At the appointed time we follow Michael single file through the grass and up the smooth rock slope to a spectacular overlook. Rising mist shrouds the acacia trees that dot the plain; canopy bottoms all neatly trimmed at 18 feet by grazing giraffes. The tall grass is green and certainly taller and greener than when we arrived a week ago.  Small hills in the distance,  more rock outcrops closer in. The sun has risen and its red glow is filtered by the morning mists. The sunlight washes the plain. When we reach the top we spread out and all find places to settle in silence to contemplate the coming of the day in silence.  The only sounds are birds calls, distant lions, closer heyenas, and when I strain my ears I hear breakfast being prepared below. For a half hour I am alone with only my thoughts, the feel of the cool damp rock under my butt, and the sights, smells and sounds of the Serengeti. Can't ask for a more spiritual experience.

Many Game Drives

After a week in camp, there is a daily routine morning and afternoon game drives. If they are all melded together it would look something like this:

Leonard is driving and Charles, Thompson's head guide is in the left seat as we follow the two rhinos who passed in front of our camp at dawn. This is amazing - there are only 32 of them in this vast park. They run fast and we parallel them for miles.

That same day Charles stops and announces that he has to check the tires and goes to the back of the vehicle. We soon realize what he is up to and later we all need to check the tires; girls behind the vehicle, boys in front.

Now Sampson is driving and we are hurrying back to camp,  fast - trying to outrun the thunderstorm behind us. We don't, and it is a wild ride.

One day we pass a tree, 50 yards from the road, and Charles says "there is a leopard in that tree". All I see is tree until Charles points the silhouette of two baby zebra legs hanging below the canopy - the leopard's prey. Still can't see the leopard until we set up the 60x spotting scope and we can just make out spots way back in the canopy.

We are driving with Sampson and come up behind another vehicle where Michael has hopped out to see the snake that had crossed in front of them. The short version of what transpires is that he manages to get a good picture with my camera and not get bitten. Green Mamba - deadly poisonous. 

Now we are driving through thousands of wildebeest with Fanuel behind the weel. The road is very muddy- like driving on butter and we sometimes find ourselves driving sideways. He drives well, but sometimes gives a little grin when the vehicle develops a mind of its own. Later we stop and Fanuel assists with a tow for another company's vehicle that wasn't so fortunate. Surely our drivers are the best in all of  Tanzania. 

Worst Road, Best Driver

We are going to the Serengeti and the day actually starts with an easy section of newly completed road, built by the French. We see some young boys, wrapped in red Masai cloth, herding cattle or goats along the edges of the road. Along the way, we also see others of the same age in school uniforms walking to class. Interesting contrast. We turn left from the French road onto the recently completed Japanese road, which seems not as smooth as the French road and already has sections under repair. From there things go downhill quickly as we enter the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and endure mile after mile of the worst bone jarring washboard roads I have ever seen or felt. Our driver is Mohamad - he is intently focused and handles our Land Rover skillfully, as he has done for 16 years. He is an experienced guide with knowledge of all wildlife in addition to his driving skills. His wide, Magic Johnson like face is a good setting for a broad smile. We manage to avoid cattle, goats, zebra, and wildebeest that are taken with the urge to be on the opposite side of the road. Passing vehicles stur up a fine dust that penetrates everything - some of us wear bananas, cowboy outlaw style, for protection and we get into a routine of opening and shutting the sliding windows. Relief only comes when we enter the Serengeti National Park and we find our way onto 'tracks' that are much smoother than the 'roads'. It's no surprise that we are extatic to reach our campsite after nearly ten hours on the road. This is to be our home for five days.
It is now later in the day and I am sitting in my tent in the heart of the Serengeti with a thunderstorm rolling in. During our first camp dinner we could see the lightning flashes growing closer from the north giving plenty of warning. After desert of pineapple tart, I dash to my tent just as the first drops start to fall, hunker down in bed and wait for the show. Doesn't take long for the rain to pour and for thunder to shake the sky. These are the seasonal rains that draw the migrating wildebeest heards south to feed on nutrient rich Serengeti grasses. Thompson Safaris has set up this temporary camp in the Moru Koppies area of the park. It is self sufficient and limited lighting is provided by solar panels, beer is on dry ice, and I haven't seen the kitchen yet to see how food prep is done,  but dinner was wonderful.  Overnight I am awakened several times as heavy rain comes and goes, but without thunder this time. The tent is a sturdy thing and it keeps me dry. It is a comfortable thing too, with a partitioned shower area and separate area for the camp toilet. 

Kilimanjaro Sunrise

I am sitting with coffee, watching the sun come up behind Mt Kilimanjaro. There are calls nearby of a rooster and also the squaking of hadada ibis birds - their call sounds like their name.  It is time for peaceful reflections at the  beginning of the trip. A few others are up and bringing coffee to their rooms  as it is still a half hour to breakfast. There is gentle laughter from the nearby parking area where Michael is giving hula hoop lessons to some of the staff. Other staff give soft 'good morning' greetings as they pass by my room. The morning is slowly coming to life at Momella Lodge. This turns out to be one of the filming locations of Hatari,  one of my guilty pleasures. The property was bought by Hardy Krueger, one of the actors in the 1963 John Wayne film, and opened to the public soon after.  It is a comfortable, but certainly not a fancy place to begin two weeks in Africa. Hot water is intermittent and power is on only in the morning and evening when the generator runs, but the staff makes up for any shortcomings by friendly courtesy.

Jambo!

If people know any Swahili at all, they will know Jambo, for "Hello". Getting ready for a trip, I am leafing through my phrase book to see what I can add to that.

The few times that I have visited East Africa I learned enough of the language to say hello, thank you, and "I don't speak Swahili" - as well as a few other phrases, but much has been forgotten. I started with a language CD from Pimsleur language courses, in addition to the little phrase book. The Pinsleur lessons are actually quite proper - telling you that the language is properly called Kiswakili, meaning the language of the Swahili people. It also teaches that the proper greeting is Hujambo, which is roughly, oddly enough, "Is everything unwell?" and the proper response is in the negative - Sijambo, for "Everything is not unwell", which has a certain ring to it. In practice, I suspect that only Pimsleur and language studies students ay places like Yale make the effort to be proper.

It is an interesting language: originally the language of the coastal fisherman, it actually spread further when early missionaries and soon Germany and other colonial powers wanted a language that could be used universally, to avoid dealing with the many tribal dialects. It incorporates some elements of Arabic from early traders, and later German, Portuguese, English and French from colonial influence. The obvious additions were, not surprisingly, for things that were not previously part of the culture: looking through my phrasebook, I find beer/bia, book/kitabu (from Arabic kitab), bank/benki, antibiotics/antibiotiki or car/motokaa. Oddly, the word for baggage claim is mizigo, so it's been around for a while?

It is one of those languages, like Hawaiian, where everything is pronounced as you see it - the written alphabet had been Arabic, but is now, thankfully, Roman. There are quite a few words that begin with a soft, humming "n" or "m" sound and pronunciation is helped if you remember that the accent is (almost) always on the next-to-last syllable: BEN-ki / antibio-TI-ki / mo-TO-kaa. When I hear "motokaa" I can't help but remember Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows, and his obsession with the vehicle.

A few years ago, I visited Uganda and Rwanda on a trip to hike and see mountain gorillas. Naturally, before the trip I studied up on my Swahili because it is spoken there and I wanted to make an effort and show a little respect. So, I was a bit surprised when I received a decidedly cool reception in Uganda the first couple of times that I used it. Turns out that the language is primarily used by the military as a common language for communication between different tribal groups. This is how I learned that the military is not well respected by most of the Uganda peoples. English was a much better choice for me to use. In Tanzania, English and Swahili are the two official languages.

I am intrigued whenever I come across Swahili in movies, which is admittedly not very often.

Highly entertaining to hear John Wayne use it often (and accurately, I think) in Hatari!, which means "Danger!". I saw that movie again last week and I loved it - it is so improper on all levels that I can't help but like it as a period piece from 1960-something. Wayne and his crew capture wild game for zoos - driving jeeps like teenagers through herds of giraffe or buffalo, generally ignore their black staff, show pretty simplistic views of the women in their lives, smoke nonstop, and drink 'til they pass out. The clincher is the nice Henry Mancini soundtrack with all of this.

I also recently saw Nowhere in Africa which is the sympathetic story of a family of Jewish refugees trying to make it in 1930's Kenya. The dialog was a natural mix of English, German, and Swahili - with subtitles for two out of three of the languages. Watching it, I discovered that I may know more Swahili than German. A worthwhile movie if you haven't seen it.

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of coming across one of my favorite phrases in a movie that includes an European explorer (maybe Stanley?) chasing off a lion by shouting "Toka". My little phrase book lists toka as meaning "Go away", or better yet "Piss off!", if used with expression towards an unwanted advance. It has become a private drinking toast used by certain family members - and sounds quite festive in that context.

From earlier trips to the region I remember a couple of phrases that we quickly picked up:
Twende! = Let's go!, group leader Michael says this a lot
Maji moto = hot water, if you brought your own coffee or tea
Asante (sana) = thank you (very much), always helpful
But, I think my favorite phrase is a very sweet, poetic, way of saying good night: Lala salama, literally: sleep safely.

TUSKER

A safari wouldn't be complete without Tusker, and I'm looking forward to sampling some soon. It is a really good East African beer and it has a wonderful logo, but it's only one of many quality African beers. The continent has many homegrown breweries; one of the few good legacies of colonial rule. When Germany, England, Belgium and others brought their brewing technology with them to support colonial tastes, Africans picked up the lager habit soon after. "In the bush", one of the common African background sounds is the distinctive call of the ring-necked dove and mothers always tell their children that he says "work-hard-er, work-hard-er", but may people swear he calls "drink-la-ger". 

Maybe ten years ago, Tusker was actually at the forefront of the African international beer wars when they worked to get a large South African brewer thrown out of Kenya, where Tusker is brewed. They worked a hard fought advertising campaign appealing to Kenyan nationalism and eventually managed to get SABMiller to withdraw from Kenya. Today, Kenya remains proud of the Tusker slogan “My Country, My Beer”.  I think that slogan dates back to the origin of the brand in 1922. The Tusker name has an interesting genesis - the story is that one of the founders of the brewery was killed by an elephant in a hunting "accident" shortly after the company started, and their first beer was named to honor him.

In truth, we will be in Tanzania, and SABMiller dominates the beer market here, with Safari, Kilimanjaro, Balimi, and Ndovu Beer, (which means roughly “Tusker” in Swahili). Although the Serengeti plain extends into Kenya, it is almost always associated with Tanzania but Serengeti Beer is actually brewed in Kenya, perhaps just to irritate the Tanzanians, and SABMiller. In any case, all beer brewed in Africa is guaranteed to have wonderful names and memorable labels.