Rescheduled

Finally. The tour company called. They can’t get us into Thailand for our tour as scheduled (later this week), and now we’re scheduled to take that trip in March.

The political protesters are moving out of the Bangkok airports, which will eventually reopen for business as usual. I hope. I understand that PAD, the group that moved from occupying Government House to shutting down the airports, has the backing of the country’s elites – businesses, academics, the royals. I wonder if PAD may have overstepped that support when it seized and shut down the airports, which has had a huge negative effect on the nation’s businesses of all kinds.

On the other hand? Maybe the country’s elites are totally OK with the mass confusion and economic destruction that the airport seizures caused. It’s certainly true that neither the armed forces nor the police showed any real interest, enthusiasm or competence in either preventing the airport takeovers or ending them, or even keeping the masses occupying the airports from growing. Apparently because they understood that PAD is backed by the royal family, among other very important entities.

I hope I haven’t made a big mistake in keeping the booking for Thailand instead of selecting a tour of another country. The Land of Smiles isn’t likely to be stable politically in the near future, but its political uproars have been internal matters, not involving widespread violence or hostility to tourists. I hope that remains true.

New landscapes, new eyes

This is cross-posted on my main blog, Suz at Large.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

– Marcel Proust

True enough, but sometimes seeing new landscapes in the company of new people gives us – or lets us borrow – new eyes.

I wasn’t a world traveler when I was young. I got my first passport 13 years ago. Since then I’ve shaken the Denver dust off my feet and headed out for foreign places eight times. Six of those trips were to England, mostly London. Last year I went to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Peru.

Last week I met up with four of my fellow travelers from the ANZ (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji) trip. We spent 26 days together on that escorted tour, and had stayed in touch by email since then as we live in different places. As we laughed and ate lunch and adjourned to look at pictures in albums and on DVDs, I was struck again by the truth of our tour director’s comment on our first day together. He noted that there were 47 of us – the 46 group members and himself. And we would be taking 47 different journeys, together.

Last Friday, my fellow travelers – and now friends – several times mentioned things I’d forgotten. Not just details of what we’d seen but some of the funny things that happened along the way. I’m lucky to have traveled with so many people who really enjoyed the journey and were so much fun, then and now.

 

Although I take my same old eyes along, I’m enriched by sharing what my fellow travelers’ eyes take in.

I’ll find out more about this in December. I’ve just booked a 14-day trip to Thailand. Also in our group (this time a max of 16 instead of a 40+ contingent): two of my fellow travelers from the ANZ trip. Not some of the bunch I met up with last Friday – 2 others I’ve kept up with by email, and am happy to travel with again.

I found these pictures on the Lonely Planet website (here and here) – where there are many lovely things to see.

Zenfolio

I have moved my online picture-sharing from flickr to zenfolio.  I love zenfolio’s interface.  It’s elegantly simple without ads and other such distractions.  It’s just about the pictures, thank you very much.

This is a photograph I took inside the Sydney Opera House last May.  It’s in my “Sydney” gallery at zenfolio.

(And I’m crass enough to add this:  If you like zenfolio enough to get a paid account, email me first for a promo code that will save you five bucks on the spot and give me five bucks credit toward my annual renewal.)

Only a 3.8

At about 9:25 pm a few nights ago, in Cuzco, I was just dozing off in my hotel room after a long day sightseeing – and climbing around the historic ruins – in the Sacred Valley.   I came wide awake when I felt the bed moving, and saw the curtain pull rods swaying gently despite the lack of any breeze from the window.

The next day at breakfast, our fellow traveller from San Francisco said it was probably only about a 3.8 quake.  She should know.  We heard later that the epicenter was about 100 miles away, no damage reported. 

Now I can add earthquake to my list of life experiences. 

Notes from the road

Over at the Wonder Wander Log, a report of this bumper sticker spotted in the US South:

I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables.

I’m lovin this blog anyway.  Check it out.

They are serious about the vaccination

From the “Enjoy Peru” website, which one reaches from a link on the home page of the Embassy of Peru – Washington website, information for travelers includes this:

 . . . Have a vaccine, at least, 10 days before arriving at the jungle. It is necessary to carry your vaccine certificate with you, as you will be demanded to show it along the excursion to Puerto Maldonado.

In case you arrive to our country without having taken this vaccine, you may be shot at the Jorge Chávez International Airport, the Hospital 2 de Mayo or next to the Hospital del Niño.  . . .

Ten Dirtiest Hotels, USA

Those wags over at tripadvisor.com published this list of the ten dirtiest hotels in the USA back in January, on their blog, “We Are Not Making This Up”:

1. Tropicana Resort Hotel – Virginia Beach, VA
2. Hotel Carter – New York City
3. Days Inn Downtown / Port – now known as Travel Inn Civic/Medical Center – Port Miami, FL
4. Budget Inn – Knoxville, TN
5. Red Carpet Inn – Fort Lauderdale, FL
6. New York Inn – New York City
7. Poindexter Ocean Front Resort – Myrtle Beach, SC
8. Ramada Inn Miami Airport North – Miami, FL*
10. Sea Club Resort – Fort Lauderdale, FL

*Holy cats! I may book a night at a hotel near the Miami airport soon, to make a connecting international flight. But not this one. Not now.

Diversions

We were in Sydney on a lovely fall Sunday, which was also Mother’s Day. [Remember: Southern Hemisphere = seasons opposite from the US.] Our group got off to an early morning start on our walking tour of the Rocks, and we encountered few other people then. But by mid-day the streets, plazas and parks were thronged with locals and tourists out for fun.

At lunch time some of us stopped at an ATM in a covered plaza area which provided a passageway from the street to the docks, and which contained shops and other amenities. The ATM was near the street, next to a staffed currency exchange operating behind a glass walk-up window. (We were nowhere near Luna Park, by the way; I just like this picture I took later that day.)

Just then our attention was drawn to an argument occurring a few feet away from the ATM, out near the sidewalk. A middle-aged woman (whom I had noticed a few minutes earlier in the crowd around the corner, given her heavy makeup, messy red hair and overall look that was notably unique in the crowds) was loudly berating a slight youth (he was probably in the late teens but hard to say), who was giving back as good as he got. The subject of the argument wasn’t clear; she was gesturing with one hand and holding a plastic carrier bag, contents unknown, in the other.

We stood there, about a dozen bystanders in a rough line, beginning to watch and listen to the argument. And immediately my devious little mind – trained (or warped)

Note to self

After our traveling companion has a better picture of the fall litigation schedule – probably in about 10 days from now – book a trip, solo or with TC, to Britain. 

Those bleeping wanna-be terrorists are at it again over there.  

I’ve been wanting to go back there for a couple of years now.  And it’s a good time to show that we’re not afraid. 

Powwow

I mentioned below that I attended part of the 2007 Plains Indian Museum Powwow. I’ve now posted my set of photos from the Powwow to zenfolio – here.  [They were originally at flickr but I've moved it all to zenfolio as of October 2007.]

I’d never been to a powwow and wasn’t sure what to expect. No worries, it was fun. It was held in an outdoor grass-covered arena with a building and announcer stage overlooking a central circular performance area, which was surrounded by lawn sloping away upwards. There were a few sets of bleachers up near the top but otherwise the area was free for people to set up chairs or spread blankets. Vendors had set up tent-sheltered booths around the perimeter to sell Indian arts and crafts. I was disappointed that all around the inner circle – the performance area – fabric shelters had been erected which partly blocked the spectators’ views of the events in the ring. But otherwise I had no complaints.

The Master of Ceremonies was Leo “Chico” Her Many Horses.  He did a wonderful job. He explained the dances and some of the history of the powwow along with all his other announcing duties, and never lost his cool or sense of humor. He made me feel that although not an Indian, and not a veteran of powwows, I was a welcome guest. Not by mentioning me personally, let me say, just by the way he handled the event.

I learned that the modern powwow has a definite tie to warriors, old and modern. Part of its origin was with families greeting their soldiers at the train stations during WWII. Native Americans have a proud history of valor in the US armed forces.

The powwow session opens when United States flag is brought in with a color guard and dancing to the Indian “flag song” – and it’s not over until the flag is taken out with equal ceremony.

Saturday night at the powwow there was a “social dance” in honor of a young man who has enlisted in the US armed forces and who was going to report for duty on Monday. His brother had recently come home from serving in Iraq. All military veterans present, whether or not Indian, were invited to greet the young man and his family, wish him well, and join the procession around the arena.

You’d have to be made of something tougher than I am, not to be touched and impressed by that.

Wyoming, Part 1

I’m writing this in my hotel room in Jackson, late in the afternoon. We head for home tomorrow.

The short version:

• I enjoyed my quick stay in Laramie and the drive across Wyoming to Cody.
• Cody was surprisingly likable. Once you get past the name, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center is well worth a day of your time. Five museums, including the Whitney Gallery of Western Art and the Plains Indian museum. We were there for the annual Plains Indian Museum Powwow, which was worth the trip in itself.
• I loved Yellowstone even more this time than the first time I visited, 18 years ago. We stayed at Flagg Ranch Resort, where the view from my cabin was 100% nature and 100% wonderful. I expect to post more about Yellowstone later.
• Then after all that wonderfulness and fun, we came to Jackson, Wyoming, commonly called Jackson Hole. I’ve been thinking of it as “hellhole.” A great location, just at the Grand Teton National Park. But a very plastic tourist town. One of our bunch – no, not me – got sick after dinner last night and the only fun I had was outside town when we went to the fish hatchery. Okay, that was whiny. The main purpose of this trip is to get a couple of older people out and about to see things they haven’t seen for awhile and wanted to see again, and things they had wanted to see but never had. Imagine that; it’s not about me.

This town is crawling with the “rustic” or “lodge” type of decoration. You know, logs with bark on used for furniture and twigs stuck into stuff. How utterly preciously totally faux and stupid.

And don’t forget the ultimate obscenity: antlers as lamps and chandeliers. If God had meant antlers to have light bulbs stuck onto them, then cattle, elk, moose and deer would have been born with wiring and would have handy electrical outlets right under their tails.

Look, if you are out in the boonies surviving on your wits and you have log furniture with the bark still on because you made it so that you would have something to sit on and something to sleep on, great. However. If you are in 21st Century North America and spent five thousand dollars for a couple of pieces of crappy looking furniture made out of logs with the bark still on – well, then in my opinion it’s just as well you weren’t around in the 1800’s because if you had come out to the Wild West you would have died of sheer incompetence.

More later, and pictures too.

Serendipitous artwork

How to create an art work without paint or canvas:

Take your little old Nikon Coolpix 7900 digital camera to the viewing point at Ayers Rock Resort from which you can see Uluru, just before dawn. Set it to the landscape mode. Hold it as still as possible and click as the sun rises.

Oops. You didn’t hold still enough and you didn’t bring a tripod. You end up with something rather nice though: a somewhat impressionist or plein air Uluru Dawn.

Airports

So, call me a pervert, but I really like airports. Even the crummy ones are interesting to me.

The lovely surprise on my recent trip was the Queenstown airport (ZQN). A new jewel in a gorgeous setting – okay, that’s a cliché but that’s the best I can do here.

I was never so happy to have an hour to wait for a flight as I was at ZQN. I pushed hard against the limits of my little old digital camera in taking some of the pictures there.

The whole batch can be seen in my Zenfolio “Airports” group - look for the ZQN gallery.

Our Lady

Our Lady of Snows – Love and Mercy, says the sign over the door at 468 Pitt Street, Sydney.

It was closed when I walked by, or I might have dropped in. You can never have too much love or mercy.

They serve free meals, next door but one. Tangible love and mercy.

Souvenirs

The good, the bad, the ugly, the serendipitous and the regrettable, I have these in addition to the usual bits of clothing, jewelry, postcards and such.

From my ANZ-Fiji trip:

1. Two pair of socks brought from home and indelibly stained by red Outback dirt, at no additional charge
2. A reusable Woolworths grocery bag; $.99(AU)
3. Habit of eating more fresh fruit every day than I used to; prices vary
4. Really cute black and white beaded thong sandals, purchased in Fiji for a price I won’t discuss
5. New understanding of how long (about 24 days) I can tolerate wearing nothing but practical shoes that are suited for walking long distances and have zero girly glam factor – see No. 4 above; priceless

From my road trip in April:

1. Car repairs: replacement of both CV joint boots which had broken and were leaking grease onto hot engine parts; $426.19 and a residual burning grease smell which will eventually go away
2. Memories of driving – for the first time in my conscious life – through Okarche, the town that’s on my birth certificate only because my mother was sent to their hospital after our nearby town was hit by a big flood; cost of the gas.

Perfectly inept

Had a mental rummage through the lexicon while out walking this morning, from which emerged this assortment: ineptitude, lack of aptitude, thick as two planks, invincible ignorance, eucalypt, monkey puzzle, hopeless.

You can talk to me all day about botany – species, habitats, all of it. And for all the details I retain, you might as well have been talking to – well, a tree.

Although hopeless at the finer points – okay, at most of the points – of botany, I did focus on these perfect roses, hanging with their buds on a mild autumn day in Melbourne, May 4, 2007.

Pink beret

You can take this city girl out to the country, and she’ll darn near love getting dusty and sweaty and swatting the black flies – if it’s in the course of seeing new and interesting things. They did, and I did. Even better, a few days later I was delighted to be on the crowded sidewalks of Sydney. A little of that red dirt about the person does go a long way, after all.

Sunday in Sydney was another of the loveliest days of my trip, though this really isn’t about all that. It’s about people-watching on our famous “20 minutes walk” back to our hotel Sunday afternoon from the ferry dock near the Aquarium. An uphill walk, more like 45 minutes. After we’d walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I didn’t mind, really. Just don’t tell: it was fun to join the others in tweaking our Fearless Leader about it as we puffed along behind him.

Along the way we shared the sidewalk for awhile with a fascinating couple, not young, holding hands. He wore a pink shirt and pink beret and she wore blue, including a decorated blue straw hat. They seemed focused on a goal, but whether it was getting home with the shopping or finding a bar or getting to sit down and light up a smoke, I of course didn’t know. There was something tender in the way they were holding hands, as if he were very consciously protecting her. I didn’t take a picture of their faces but I took this one of their hats.

Did I mention that I loved Sydney?

Fried Okra

There were 44 group members and one tour director on our trip last month – which means there were 45 different journeys occurring in the same time and general space. Without getting into the physics or metaphysics of that fact – which anyway is beyond my competence – I will say that my journey was just lovely, thank you, and I hope that everyone else had a good one too.

I had thought that it would do me a (literal) world of good if shortly after the monumental step of retiring from The Job, I got very far away from home for more than two weeks. Especially if I went to Australia, which has fascinated me all my life.

I was right.

It did help enormously, of course, to have such wonderful traveling companions. It’s much easier to relax and laugh when you are with pleasant people and all the gory details of transit, lodging, and itinerary are in someone else’s competent hands.

About a week into the trip I started to relax more completely. And to dream. And to find that my thoughts were less often doing their usual squirrel cage workouts, whirring around the same old stinkin’ subjects. I think I smiled more and I know I worried less.

On the flight from Queenstown to Auckland (and maybe from Auckland to Nadi), I listened on my iPod to the recording of music my cousin Rick sang last September – at her specific request – at the funeral of his grandmother, and my beloved aunt, Imogene.

Imogene, who lived all her life in rural Oklahoma and died at 90 after a year of home hospice care, was an extraordinary woman, one of the world’s rare deeply good, kind and loving souls. She also probably saved my life.

21,956

That is the grand total air mileage I racked up during my trip in May, according to the itinerary from Grand Circle.   Details below the fold if anyone really cares to know.

Mystery

If you research too much, maybe you won’t get surprises.

You might not turn a corner in a new place and feel your sense of perspective shake.

Your jaw might not drop.

You could forget that life is bigger than your hard drive or your library or your wide-angle lens.

I’m glad I didn’t get around to reading much in those guidebooks I bought before my trip. That might have diminished the wonder and fun of the day we went from Queenstown to Milford Sound, and cruised the sound.

Thank goodness for the rain – which created astounding waterfalls from the stone mountains.

We were dwarfed by them on land and water.

I got drenched by rain or spray more than once and spent most of the day at least damp around the edges.

It was chilly.

We spent a lot of time riding in a bus (that would be “coach” to the locals).

It was one of the loveliest days on my trip.

Sky

For three weeks, traveling through three countries, we were shown one marvelous thing after another unexpected thing after another stupendous thing. Too many to remember all at once.

Today I’ve been thinking about the sky. On the plane to Melbourne from LA, the young Aussie guy sitting next to me spoke simply and eloquently about lying in a sleeping bag in the Outback looking up at the night sky, that there’s just no other sky so deep and strong and beautiful anywhere.

So I watched the sky along the way – day and night, in all three countries. I wasn’t disappointed. On clear nights the stars looked bigger, brighter, closer and at the same time shining from a deeper setting, than I recalled seeing before. When we were out of towns in the daytime, the sky was big and usually interesting. And of course, in the Outback the sun worked its own changes on the landscape.

Here are three pictures, one from each country. I didn’t try to capture the night sky, so I suppose you’ll have to trust me on that.

I took the first picture just at sunrise at the Ayers Rock Resort, close by Uluru. The photo is just as it came from my camera, except that it’s been reduced in size.

The second picture was snapped on our road trip from Christchurch to Queenstown in New Zealand. The clouds are reflected in one of the heart-stopping blue mountain lakes we saw along the way, in an area molded by glaciers.

And finally, Fiji. Each night we were there, I sat on the patio outside my room, in darkness and silence, and gazed at the stars, and listened to the water. Maybe it didn’t quite equal the Australian Outback star display, but you couldn’t tell it by me. The third picture is an early morning snap of the sky and water at the resort in Fiji.