Francie Royce

Swimming with a Swan

2011-08-02T18:34:00.000-07:00

Ten days in hot and muggy Washington DC was relieved by several visits to the swimming pool. Aidan loved the swan, and when not on the bird, sometimes called the "white goose" or "the turkey" by kids splashing in the pool, he learned to swim. Elena is an adventurous paddle swimmer and she started swinging her arm overhead for a crawl.

Love birds at 7 Mile Hill

2010-08-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Our resident love birds, a male and female, have been fascinated with Noel and Alan installing the solar array on our 7 Mile Hill House. They twist their heads with curiousity when one of the guys whistles.

Michael discovered these feathered friends living in the scupper a couple of weeks ago. Their colors radiate green when they fly off chirping to a nearby field. The scupper and top of the down spout are full of bird poop and downy feathers; I think they cuddle down in the down spot. We are worried that they will become a tastey morsel for a hawk, or that the cold weather coming will do them in. But, they survived a frost yesterday morning.

A thoughtful person on Craigslist identified them as peach cheeked love birds. I had posted the picture of the male love bird looking out across the field on Craigslist hoping that someone who lost the couple would come to retrieve them. One woman on Gorgenet, a local on-classified website, contacted me that they might be hers. Maybe she will come get them, but I will miss their sunny chirping and flash of color.

Around Siargao Island by Motorbike

2010-03-08T04:30:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, on a another sunny March morning, we rented a Honda motorcycle from a man nicknamed Dodong and drove around Siargao Island. The two lane road around the island is clay, sand and rock, with some smooth concrete pavement in short stretches.

The scenery was of course, beautiful. Jungle edged the road, the interior dark and tantalizingly tropical. Where the road traveled along the coastline, tidal lagoons at low tide exposed rough, dried out coral in ornate formations, some high enough to be silhouetted against the horizon.

Pilar, a town of weathered gray wood plank and nipa roofed buildings on stilts above a black muddy, mangrove tidal flat is the turn off point for Magpopongko Rock Pools. At low tide a white sand beach slopes down to the Pacific, a tourist kiosk stood empty in this off season. Waves crashed against the coral reefs that had created the lagoons.

Further down the road, we stopped at a small fishing barangay, so small and poor that there was no cafe, so we bought Cokes at a little store in front of someone's home through the chicken wire fencing that separates customers from the owners in all of these shops. As we hung out in the narrow shade someone appeared with plastic chairs to sit. As we drove along, boys walking in the road called out, “hey Joe" to Michael, an expression left over from WWII.

On the far north end of the island, there are crews working to lay concrete, all hand work. Next to these layers of wet concrete are billboards with a photo of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (commonly known as GMA) wearing a hard hat proclaiming that she brought Siargao the paved road. Philippine elections are soon.

On a sheer limestone cliff past the northern most point of the island, covered with heavy growth of tropical foliage, a fresh water stream seeps into a man made pool at Taktak Falls. We drop down into first gear and make it up the steep incline to take a dip in the pool. The small cascade refreshes.

Shimmering green rice fields nearly harvest ready are on one side of the road, sloping up to steep limestone cliffs. In some fields, traditional tall gray wooden houses with narrow balconies sit overlooking the farmer’s hard worked crop. On lower land, rice farms already harvested are being tilled for the next crop by carabao (water buffalo) and wooden plows with a strong, wiry farmer pushing behind. Rice is planted and harvested by hand in the small plots carved out of the jungle between jagged green hills

In the hottest part of the day carabao are taken to wallow in mud holes to regulate their body temperatures. A leash rope tied to nose ring, ears and snout may be all that is visible above the soothing mud.

In a larger town, San Isidoro, a concrete bridge passes over the San Isidoro River, lined with the same type of houses we saw in Pilar, this time hanging over the river rather than a mangrove swamp. The town has a municipal building decorated with a large banner encouraging people to be patriotic and pay their taxes. An “internet café” turns out to be a room full of old computers used for video games. We find out from the Filipina owner during another Coke break that the internet provider isn’t able to reach the storefront after all.

People on the island make their living from fishing, rice and tourism. Copra and other side ventures help make ends meet. Drying copra and rice are just as important for the use of the road as motorcycles, jeepneys, bicycle carts and the few cars in the traffic mix. Drivers and walkers swerve in a routine manner to avoid the copra and rice that are laid out on one lane of the road to sun dry.

This is also coconut harvesting time. Yellowed green coconuts hang in clusters under their protective spray of palm leaves at the top of the tall trees, ready for harvest. We pass many places with piles of rotting coconut husks, the white meat already gathered for the copra buyers. Smoke drifts up from thatched huts used to heat dry the copra. Other farmers spread their copra out on the road to sun dry.

Dapa is the largest town, with a dock for ferries to and from Surigao City, a covered market where fresh fish, vegetables and meat are sold and many shops in the surrounding streets. Some shop fronts are decorated with curtains made of intricately hand folded candy and cigarette wrappers. Driving out of town, we paused at a corner, unsure of which direction, but a couple of men took care of us, shouting “GL”, and pointing in the right direction. Dapa doesn’t hold foreigners for long, and the locals know it and know where we go.

Coming back toward our Cloud 9 beach cottage, we pass through the nearest town, General Luna (GL) and by the large Catholic Church that dominates the center of town. A fleet of double outrigger bancas line the beach, some for fishing and others doubling for tourists’ island hopping. That’s for another day.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Deventurer/AroundSiargaoIslandByMotorbike#

Hospitality of Friends on Dinagat Island

2010-02-27T23:54:00.000-08:00

Our flight from Silay-Bacolod, Negros Island, was preparing for take off to Saragao City, on northern Mindanao Island, Philippines, when we got the second text on our cell phone, “My cousin Ding-Ding will meet you at the Gateway Hotel.” The first text had been, “a cousin has reserved the Gateway Hotel for you in Saragao City.” We knew we were in for hospitality and would go along for the adventure. Sure enough, the next morning a middle aged woman walked into the Gateway Hotel lobby and swept us away in a motorized tricycle to the Dinagat Island ferry. Shirley, nicknamed Ding-Ding, had caught the ferry from her home town of Loreto, Dinagat Island at 4:30 am that morning and made the four hour crossing to Saragao City just to collect Michael and me. We stopped by a market on the way to the ferry dock to buy fruit--mangoes my favorite!- for the four hour trip back. The ferry boat was a long wooden double outrigger with a diesel engine. Two covered compartments for 180 passengers were lined with wooden slat benches. Open windows providing natural air conditioning on each side of the ferry could be closed against sea spray by sliding wooden boards closed. Cargo of steel rebar, and other construction material was loaded onto the side outside boards. Two massive logs, the length of the ferry, were braced to opposite sides as outriggers to stabilize the boat in rougher water. Our crossing was smooth across passages and along steep rocks that plunged into the sea on the edge of various islands that we passed on the way to Dinagat Island.

Arriving in Loreto, Fely, Shirley’s cousin, met us with a foot pedaled tricycle for our luggage. A short trip into town, we were taken to the Tourist Guest House, next door to Shirley’s mom’s house, where a room had been reserved. All of this generous treatment came about from Nonoy Cacayan, our friend in Davao City who had made the arrangements with his friends Shirley and Fely when he found out by email that before coming to visit him, we wanted to spend some time on Siargao Island. He thought we would like a detour to Dinagat Island and initiated the actions of Shirley and Fely.

For the next four days Shirley and Fely were constant companions, striving to make sure we were comfortable, fed and that we saw different parts of Dinagat Island. One night we stayed in a municipal guest house at Black Beach, 16 kilometers down the rocky coast road from Loreto. The beach is well known on Dinagat for a landing of Mac Arthur’s troops in 1944, before the more famous landing in Leyete, to begin driving the Japanese occupiers from the Philippines. Two habal-habals-motorcycle taxis- took all four of us, plus Charne, a young man motor cycle driver who also stayed with us. Standing on the beach, with a coral reef just off shore for snorkeling fun, I tried to imagine the beach when the troop ships landed and anxious soldiers splashed through the surf to the palm treed shoreline alert for Japanese fire. Although they probably knew from Filipino guerilla fighters that the enemy was down the coastline several kilometers it must have been frightening to land on a strange island. Shirley said that all of Dinagat residents hid in the hills while the Japanese occupied the island and many became guerilla fighters willing to help the Americans when Mac Arthur fulfilled his famous promise of “I shall return,” following the disaster at Corregidor.

Lunch and dinner miraculously arrived on other habal-habals, pre-arranged by Shirley. Fried fish, fired pork bits, lots of plain rice, a vegetable dish of carrots and ube, a purple root and tomatoes. Dinner was augmented by a two foot long dog-so fish that a local fisherman presented for sale to us. Women at the guest house cooked the dense white meat several ways, including a ceviche type of dish made with coconut vinegar and ginger. Delicious.

Some of our meals were taken in the house of Shirley’s mother, Carolina, a feisty widow who went to school for the first time when her children were also in grade school since she had been denied that right by parents who didn’t believe in educating girls. Her husband had constructed their home with beautiful mahogany plank floors. The nipa (palm thatched) roof covered one large room partitioned off into two bedrooms, the rest of the open area a kitchen, work room, washing and toilet area, sala and eating area. The focus of the sala was a constantly on TV that mesmerized various grandchildren and neighborhood children who dropped by. In her younger days, Carolina sewed clothes for income on her old foot pedal sewing machine standing in the work room. A rice farm where they used to live is rented out to another farmer that supplies her with a portion of their crop as payment. One evening she pulled out a small supply of precious “black rice” to treat us at dinner.

Fely wanted to show us her barangy, or neighborhood, of about 1,000 residents, where she is the kapitan. As an elected official, she has a budget of about 700,000 pesos to use for community needs. By habal-habal we traveled over a rocky dirt road up and over steep hills to the other side of Dinagat to Mabini, a barangy of the coastal town of Tubjon. Mabini is a farming community in the hills, surrounded by rice fields. The income of residents is from farming and copra, dried coconut. In addition to being kapitan, Fely is also the head of a peoples’ organization, Alagad kalambuan ug kingaiyahan Inc. or AKKI for short. She and Shirley are organizing 20 other women to hand make paper to sell, starting with stationary then moving into lamp shades. They will take a class this March on how to make paper and market it.

Fely took us first to her house in Mabini. Though simpler than Carolina’s, Fely’s house is also a gathering place for family. Fely’s wheel chair bound mother, an older aunt, nieces and nephews sat around in the sala, with the TV on. We chatted for awhile in broken English and Visayan, with some sentences translated for us. Laughter swelled when auntie’s was translated, “she thinks you have big noses.”

Fely took us to the high school that she started 5 years ago. The yellow concrete block compound sits on a cleared hill top on the outskirts of Mabini. The school site overlooks a hill side that AKKI attempted to replant with native trees sometime ago, but lost all work due to a forest fire. Their small hydro project built with the assistance of Yamog, Nonoy Cacayan’s organization, no longer works either, due to a drying up of the stream by an upstream chromium mine. Dinagat’s landscape is scraped in a large number of places by chromium and nickel mines, a sign of the corruption in the Philippine government with foreign companies extracting resources from outlying islands from Luzon that have little economic or political power. Still, Fely is not deterred in her attempts to make improvements for the people of Mabini. She left for Saragao City a day ahead of us for a class on refrigeration, since she applied for and won a small refrigeration system for Mabini farmers to store fish and vegetable products for sale. Her hope is that they can hold their products for better prices, in the fluctuating market. The refrigeration system was to be delivered to Mabini this week.

On our last day on Dinagat, we took habal-habals to Esperanza Spring, a fresh water swimming park owned by the Loreto Municipality. The water was clear and refreshing. At 3:30 am on the very last day in Loreto, we were outside Shirley’s house with our luggage ready for the ferry to take us back to Saragao City and onto Siarago Island where we plan a two week flop vacation. Shirley insisted on escorting us to Siarago Island. Then to surprise us, Fely, with another cousin met us at the Dinagat ferry for the transfer to the Siaragao Island ferry. Now we know the power of respect that Fely and Shirley have for Nonoy Cacayan, to respond valiantly to his request to take care of his friends Michael and Francie from Green Empowerment. It’s a really nice feeling, even if a little embarrassing for all the trouble that they went to in taking care of us.

Hearing the Sound of Clean Water Delivery to Anangue

2010-02-16T23:51:00.000-08:00

We climbed into the back of the Suzuki four wheel and opened the windows for air conditioning. Sweat was already dripping down my back after walking out of shade of AIDFI’s workshop and café. Auki and Liloy were taking Michael, my husband and me to the village of Anangue, about 20 kilometers away, towards the center of Negros Island on the shoulder of Mt. Mandalagan. Liloy, our driver and community organizer for the Anangue sitio ram pump project, that we were on our way to visit, picked his way carefully along on a rock rutted road, while we bounced and jarred our teeth. Once the “road” played out, we climbed out and started walking up a narrow rut track to Anangue. We came to a house set on the hill above the rut track and stopped for a chat. One man was chopping a red log with his machete attempting to spit it. I stared aghast thinking he would surely chop off his foot. Several other people stood around offering supervisory suggestions and joking with Auki and Liloy. The four of us moved on up the hill and came to a man loading up vegetables for market on a simple homemade wooden cart pulled by a carabao, the Filipino water buffalo beast of burden. A farm to market truck would be coming tomorrow where the road ended. The cart was made of split wood, long and narrow to fit along the rutted track we walked up. The rims of wood disc wheels were covered in old tire rubber strips. Further up we came upon children who would stick their head up and through the bamboo fencing around house yards, curious of the strangers walking in their village. Auki and Liloy greeted them in Ilocano, the local language.

The first household had complained that the water was not reaching their stand pipe, only a trickle by 9:00 in the morning. Auki and Liloy suspected that someone was diverting water intended for all 45 households, so we walked along looking to see where that might be happening. Liloy was going to need to call a water committee meeting to go over the water policy again, to make sure that all in the village got their share of water. Each household pays 20 pesos a month for a quantity of water.

Sweaty young men stripped to their waists, their shirts tied onto their heads for sun protection, slashed sugar cane for the harvest. One young man stopped to chat, Auki and Liloy joking easily with him. I stared at the young skinny farmer marveling at how strong he must be to slash the cane with his machete and stack the stalks all day.

Small vegetable plots were planted in the cleared side yards of houses, and a few houses had big leafy shady arbors surrounding their houses. Only the pale green squash hanging down gave away that the arbors weren’t grapes. We passed another wooden cart piled high with vegetable for market. The picture was getting clearer of how the water was being used.

At the top of a steep slope, we looked down into a narrow canyon of green and heard the rhythmic metallic clank, clank, clank of the ram pump below. Auki smiled; that sound was music to his ears. I followed the men down the steep hill, slipping occasionally, but catching myself on palm fronds. At the bottom a beautiful stream flowed from an abundant spring down the canyon. The ram pump system diverted some of the flow in a pipe set up for a drop to two blue ram pumps that raised 32,000 liters a day of the precious water up hill 90 meters to a tank for distribution to the community stand pipes. All was functioning well, so Auki and Liloy knew that the supply of water was not the problem down the way. Auki explained that when Green Empowerment staff Jason Selwitz and Northwestern University students arrived next June, they would be helping to install more ram pumps in the same location to serve Tres Hermanos, another village above on the hillside.

As I climbed back up the canyon wall, using my hands to pull me up the next step, I mused how different life in the village for the children and women must be without having to make this climb twice a day for water to drink and bathe.

Later, as we stood and listened to women chatting with Auki and Liloy, then visiting with Roger, the water committee secretary, over instant coffee in his house, we picked up that the greater number of vegetables that the farmers are now growing could be the source of less water making it to the last stand pipe. Roger talked about what was different from before without water, “…being able to raise pigs, and children being able to bathe before school.” The water committee is already talking about using some of their extra funds to buy piglets, rotating a starter stock for households to begin raising pigs, another source of protein and cash.

As we walked back by down the rutted track, we mused out loud about the surprising things we learn from people who tell us what is important about having clean water in their community. When the children had to walk down the canyon hill to collect water, it was too precious a commodity to bathe in before school. Now they can go to school clean, reducing the number of skin ailments. Auki talked about how Liloy would attend a community meeting next Monday so they could talk about scheduling water so all get their share. I am excited about the Northwestern student coming and learning from these hard working farmers and installing more ram pumps to deliver clean water to Tres Hermanos.

Valentine's Day and the Year of the Tiger in Manila

2010-02-15T01:28:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year fall on the same day this year, when we move into the year of the Tiger. Here in Manila, teenaged Philippine Chinese dance teams writhe with rhythm and a dragon’s head around a shopping mall. In the street below our hotel, the drum beat accompaniment for another dragon dance ends in loud explosions of fireworks. In the evening we walk down the street to the posh Makati Shangri-La Manila Hotel to sit in the lobby and watch St. Valentine celebrators decked out in red dresses or red ties, sip drinks and enjoy an orchestra, also dressed in red, play American romantic love songs. Arriving celebrants pose for photos in front of a giant flower sculpture resembling Tony the Tiger in marigolds, before moving past the entry way into the hotel. A number of couples come with children in tow, some with nannies, all celebrating St. Valentine and the Tiger.

Further along Makati Avenue at the Peninsula Manila Hotel, a huge topiary of red roses greets guests in the lobby once a security guard swipes them with a wand and they’re given the once over by armed guards and a sniff by K-9 unit dogs. Guests enter through the same glass doors that the Philippine Army ran a tank through to end a protest by opposition leaders in November 2007. That was the last time I was in the Philippines and I and others stared at TV as a broadcast camera abandoned by smoke bombed and arrested journalists continued to relay the stunning scene to a national audience.

In the days leading up February 14, stores displayed Valentine gifts and banner reminders to buy something for your sweetheart. We could tell it was going to be a big deal. On the following afternoon a dozen red bras and red panties hang out as laundry to dry from a window slit behind a strip club in the alley street down from our hotel.

SIBAT Friends and Their Organic Farm

2010-02-15T01:10:00.000-08:00

Landing in Manila on February 11, after a 22 hour trip from Portland, to LA then through Seoul, Korea, we headed to our Quezon City hotel, the Fersal Inn, for a nap. A basket of sweet yellow mangoes, a bunch of bananas, raw sugar and a jar of honey sent by Shen Maglinte of SIBAT, a Green Empowerment partner, surprised us at hotel reception.

The next day we met our friends from SIBAT for lunch at a near-by restaurant, The Tree House. Shen had ordered in advance, so as soon as we sat down, the food started coming. Tilapia, milk fish, sautéed greens in oyster sauce topped with tofu, stuffed lettuce rolls, roasted chicken, hot and sour flavored soup, and on it came. After a filling lunch, we all loaded into tricycles for a short ride to the SIBAT office to meet Ileene the marketing manager of the SIBAT organic foods store and for Michael to begin his interviews with Executive Director Vicki Lopez.

The next afternoon the SIBAT driver picked us up and after collecting Ileene and Vicki, then Vicki’s friends all on slower-than-planned Filipino time, we headed two hours north to TarLac to visit the SIBAT organic farm.

It was past sundown when workers at the farm greeted us with boiled cassava, (filling) and lemon grass tea (refreshing) as we chatted and got to know Vicki’s friends. Back into the van, we headed out to dinner. We were the only customers at The May Farm Restaurant, whose menu heralded organic vegetables and rare meats. Mounted on the wall, heads of small deer looked down on our table and an array of photos showed off the hunting prowess of the owner and his son. One was a photo of a younger man carrying a hoary wild boar on his back with blood dripping down his legs. A brief allusion to the mysterious death of the owner and his son and suggestion of a political murder added to the hunter’s mystic and the weirdness of the restaurant. The soup was tasty, though.

Back at the farm---- Raised beds are planted with a wide variety of rotated crops of leafy greens, peppers, tomatoes and other vegetables. Deep purple egg plants hang from their plants ready to harvest. Farm workers make sure there is enough harvest each week to provision the small organic food store in Quezon City. The farm is a teaching opportunity for surrounding farmers to learn sustainable agriculture. SIBAT’s goal is to teach the teachers to help farmers learn how to farm sustainably, without being dependent on commercial seed and fertilizers.

The main farm building is built of decorative woven palm panels over bamboo poles with a palm thatch roof. We slept soundly on a foam pad laid out under mosquito netting on a split bamboo floor. Roosters all over the country side competing with each other woke us before dawn, early enough to sit outside and watch sunlight creep over the green rice fields of the adjacent farm, shining on the farmer who was already working in his field. A farm worker showed me where hot cups of coffee sat on a counter waiting for takers. The coffee was thick and sweetened with raw sugar. After daylight I found three gently curled, soft downy feathers lying on top of our mosquito netting. Rooster noise woke us but the sparrow flying through our bedroom didn’t.

In the Watery Wake of Early Discoverers: Paddling the Lewis & Clark Columbia River Water Trail

2009-05-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

The bow of our yellow kayak slides through the water, small waves gently slap its sides. Nineteen feet long, sleek yet stable, our tandem kayak easily holds food and gear for several days of touring. My paddling partner husband and I wanted to view the Columbia River along the trail of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, 200 years after they had paddled the same waters.

Dams, cities, highways, rail roads and the near eradication of native people along the shore line are obviously the most pronounced changes in 200 years. The journals of the discoverers allow us to know some of what the river looked like during their exploration of the Columbia. We can only imagine what the men of the Corps of Discovery would have thought of the river today.

Our four early summer days on the Lower Columbia Lewis and Clark River Trail begins at the Hamilton Island boat ramp, past the foaming turbulence below Bonneville Dam. Two hundred years ago, when Lewis and Clark passed by what was then the tail end of Cascade Rapids, native fishers speared salmon, precariously reaching over the foaming spray from platforms. Lewis and Clark dubbed the area Strawberry Island. Hamilton Island boat ramp is on a flat piece of land, no longer an island. During the construction of the second dam powerhouse, dredge fill and grading attached the island it to the Washington mainland. From the boat launch, sterile rip-rap lines the bank downstream from the now flooded Cascade Rapids. A few rickety and wobbly wood slat fishing piers jut out over the river, remnants of tribal treaty fishing rights.

Paddling downstream with the current is relaxed, except for wind gusts blowing up river. High basalt formations trimmed with evergreen Douglas Firs line the wide Columbia River as we paddle down from our put-in. Though wary and on the look out for barges pushing tugs in either direction, the only boats we encounter the first stretch are hopeful sturgeon and steelhead fishers casting their lines as they bob in the current. Intense fishers rarely smile or wave in return to our greetings as we glide past.

A frequent singing "eeek" of an osprey soaring above breaks up the constant rush of the moving river and wind. Every human made high point within sight, from rotted wharf pilings to sturdy river navigation signals are topped with huge tangled masses of sticks: ospreys’ nests. I muse if ospreys have lost the skill of building nests in natural habitat. Sometimes four nests are within a few hundred feet, surprisingly close for this wide winged, black and white raptor. Ospreys dive into the current, coming up with their prize, a fish latched by their talons as they fly away. In a tight grip, the fish points forward, perpendicular under the osprey belly, looking like a pontoon below a winged craft.

At the end of day one, we pull into Beacon Rock State Park, tucked into a cove hidden from the main channel by the enormous volcanic Beacon Rock, ready to find a camping space close to the shoreline. None. As the sky darkens, and drops of rain add to our dampness, we have no intention of paddling further. We pitch our tent on a soft grassy area, not an official camping space, deciding that our excuse to the ranger who is likely to show up, is that we are too tired to go on and what else is a kayaker to do? Sure enough, after a rainy night, a ranger walks up in the overcast morning. She gives us the obligatory four sentence lecture on park rules, “camping only in official locations,” but kindly understands that there was no other space for weary kayakers and collects the regular $19 camping fee. Snug in our tent with crossword puzzles and books, we pass the morning under pouring rain. Perhaps this was the type of morning that Meriwether Lewis was able to write in his journal.

By late afternoon the rain stops and sun begins to peek through cloudy skies as we point the bow downstream towards our next camping spot, Skamania Island. To our left on the Oregon side, waterfalls cascade down cliffs, sunlight fractured in the spray. We had been so confident that we knew the Columbia well, that our map is only a simple sketch rather than a chart and we don’t have a GPS. We disagree on whether we are looking downriver at Multnomah Falls or another cascade, but the majesty of Crown Point on the Washington side, leaves no doubt where we are.

Our camp ground on Skamania Island is a sandy beach just above high tide line; dense cottonwoods block our way inland. We have the island to ourselves, except for geese and mergansers, and a raccoon who left hand prints in the sand throughout the campsite.
The next day is also leisurely as we eat breakfast, break camp, load up to head downstream again, keeping to the Washington shoreline for close up views of Cape Horn. The sheer towering basalt cliffs, sprinkled with shoots of hardy green vegetation, are awesome in their straight steepness soaring up from some deep underwater base. The water against the basalt is glassy smooth as we silently float along the edge of the towering rock face. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail tracks parallel the Columbia on the north side; Union Pacific on the south. We are surprised at the frequent number of freight trains that click and clack along the tracks. At Cape Horn workers long ago blasted a long tunnel through the rocks. Sun light shining through a moving cloud cover flits along the cliffs turning the south shore into a rusty shade and the northern shore into darker shadows. After Cape Horn we aim towards low lying Reed Island, our destination for the night.

Circling Reed Island we pass campers with fast, loud ski boats beached on a sandy bank. Pink, sunburned children splash on the shoreline, and shirtless, large bellied men stand knee deep keeping a parental eye on them. We’re greeted with friendly waves and calls that there is space to camp, but desiring solitude we wave back and keep paddling. On the western tip of the island we find an overgrown Washington State camp ground. A plaque commemorates the Reed family who with their livestock homesteaded the island till a major flood before Bonneville Dam was built, wiped out their farm. Tall grasses hide picnic tables and fire rings, stinging nettles zing our legs and arms as we trounce through the area before we pick a spot close to the eroded shoreline. A sand free cooking surface on a picnic table brings the pleasure of hot, non gritty food. Sitting in our low slung camp chairs atop the embankment, we enjoy a glass of wine, looking out over a rosy sunset. At sun set, mosquitoes buzz hungrily, so we climb into our cozy tent for a calm sleep.

Our final kayaking day is warm and sunny. We cross the main channel from the Washington side towards the Oregon shore. Our stable kayak rocks with the waves as we quickly paddle cross current to clear the shipping channel. In and out of low lying Greg and Flag Islands, we slide close to the willow and cotton wooded shore watching for song birds and mammals. An otter slips into the water and expertly swims along the shore finally eluding us when it dives under a gnarly rooted downed tree. Past Flag Island and out into the main stream of the Columbia we head towards the confluence of the Sandy River. The Sandy River spreads gently into the Columbia after flowing down a wide, flat reach. The mouth of the Sandy is marked with huge downed trees, and constantly shifting sand bars giving us an up close understanding of why Lewis and Clark called it the Quick Sand River. Paddling with strong strokes against the Sandy’s current, past wide sand bars and eroded shore lines we feel like adventurous Lewis and Clark, not exactly sure where we are going. The major difference, of course, between our float and the explorers of 200 years ago, are the pylons and high tension wires strung overhead across the river, marching from Columbia dams towards Portland to serve the electricity hungry cities.

On the shore a dejected looking man sits on the bank staring into the water. Something about his sadness floats across the water. We paddle towards him and chat for awhile. Out of work, hitch hiking cross country, he says he’s been camping in the shore grasses. Guardedly assured that his stares into the water are contemplation, not a death wish, we allow the down stream current to take us away. Back-paddling a few strokes and the bow reverses direction, pointing back to where the Sandy flows into the Columbia.

At the wide slow moving river’s mouth we turn westward again along the Oregon shore of the Columbia. A working dry dock and rusty, grounded barges line up along thick wood plank wharves. One barge looks like a giant, flat bottom planter with wild bushes and flowers sprouting in soil that has been deposited in the hull over time by decaying plants and eastern winds. A slick modern yacht sits in a small dry dock, its name Royale Casino painted on the stern. These scenes and the loud zoom and spray of ski boats as we float closer to our pull out at Chinook Landing lets us know that we’ve reached the urban area. Our yellow kayak bow plows through the ski boat wakes, towards the triple wide boat ramp. We pull our kayak out between the zoom and exhaust of dozens of motor boats idling at the boat launch, sure that none of the Corps of Discovery members would have imagined this when they paddled the Columbia.

Monarch Butterflies: a Michoacan Miracle

2009-02-26T09:26:00.000-08:00

Every year millions of Monarch butterflies migrate south to spend a winter hibernating then reproducing on oyamel pines, cedars, spruces and live oak trees in the high mountains north of Mexico City. After mating, they start their annual return trip to North America.

On a winter trip to Mexico, my husband and I decided that we could not miss this wonder of nature. The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is made up of four sanctuaries. In our rented car, we headed to the small Cerro Pelon Sanctuary in Michoacan.

Rancho San Cayeteno, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, was our luxurious base for visiting the Monarchs in Cerro Pelon. Comfortable rooms are surrounded by expansive grounds planted with flowering trees, attracting a resident vermillion flycatcher and hummingbirds. A well tended rose bed provides cut flowers for guest rooms and a greenhouse grows fresh vegetables for the dinning room. When mornings are warm desayuno, or breakfast, is served on a lovely garden patio. We ate dinner at tables surrounding a large stone fireplace in a brick-walled great room with Spanish colonial furniture and timbered ceiling. A stunning woven tapestry and stained glass window based on an abstract design of Monarch butterflies set the mood of a resort designed to show off the local natural phenomena.

San Cayetano’s Lizette and Pablo Span arrange butterfly tours using a local bi-lingual guide. After a full breakfast of fresh fruit and chilaqueiles, we drove with Marcelo, our guide, up twisting mountain roads, careful to reduce our speed over the frequent Mexican speed bumps, or topes, to the remote village of Macheros. There, a co-op of local villagers had our horses saddled and ready to go. Young men led our horses up the steep, rocky hillside holding rope leads for the inexperienced riders in our train of four horses. For over an hour we swayed in our saddles as our horses picked their way up the dusty trail. At first just a few of the distinctive orange, black and white butterflies appeared soaring overhead. Within a few more minutes of climbing, we saw thousands of Monarchs fluttering their wings against the clear, cerulean sky. A rickety wood slat and wire fence with hand painted signs advised visitors “no tire basura,” or don’t throw trash, announced our entry to the Cerro Pelon Monarch Reserve.

Our horses turned and climbed even higher as the sky revealed many more fluttering Monarchs. At our guide’s direction, we dismounted our horses and started a steeper climb on foot. At 2,800 meters the climbing was slow and breathing labored. However, our effort was immediately forgotten as the breathtaking whisper of fragile wings surrounded us. The soft sound of millions of wings fluttering reminded our guide of falling snow. In the sturdy mountain trees, huge clusters of Monarchs with folded wings weighted down limbs. We passed another hand-scrawled sign warning visitors “silencio.” Immature butterflies, clinging to trees and not ready to fly, would be disturbed by loud noises. If they attempted to fly, they would drop to their deaths by the thousands. We whispered and walked softly.

A flat rock at the edge of the rutted trail made a good seat while we clicked our cameras and quietly “oohed” and “awed,” at the marvelous colors and shear numbers of delicate orange and black wings. White clouds sailed across the sun, the shadows slowing the butterflies flight, but as clouds passed and sun rays returned to warm the trees, swarms of Monarchs now back to flight temperature flitted into the sky again. The bursts of wings lifting and soaring filled the sky and looked like autumn leaves falling on a windy day.

Attached mating Monarchs danced as if the sky were their ballroom. A silhouette of a single soaring butterfly, back-lit by the sun, the orange sharply outlined by black, must have inspired stain glass artists.

Marcelo told us that the Monarchs would land on us if we were wearing white. A couple of us stripped down to our T-shirts and stood as still as possible hoping to be a landing spot. The sensation of a one-half gram, four inch wing spanned insect landing on an arm was such an enchantment that we sat there for over an hour hoping for more. As the afternoon wore on, dark clouds from the east moved in over mountain peaks in our direction. As we finished our packed lunch and began our walk down the mountain, lighting and thunder preceded heavy rain drops which turned to hail. Surprised by this out of season storm, our guides hurried us down the hill. The cold rain followed us all the way back to Macheros. Everyone was soaked and cold, so it was hurried “gracias” all around, with tips for the hard working horse leaders and guide.

Back as Rancho San Cayetano, Mexican hot chocolate, and hot showers warmed us up before a relaxing evening of sharing our stories with others who planned a butterfly tour the next day.

About the Monarchs migration:
The Monarchs’ migration from Canada by the multi-millions to mountainous Mexico lasts from the end of October to the middle of March. At spring equinox they start leaving the Mexican mountains and are gone in two weeks. Hibernating during the coldest park of winter, and then mating in early spring, Monarchs return to Texas and lay their eggs on milk weed plants. In all it takes 4 generations, with each life span lasting about one month, for the Monarchs to make it across the USA to Canada for the summer. In mid-September, marked by the fall equinox, the migration to Mexico begins again. The trip to Mexico from Canada is one 8 month life span; the Monarchs making the trip having never been to Mexico before and separated from their migration by several generations. How this migration occurs is one that makes scientists still scratch their heads.

Valtice to Vienna

2008-09-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Greenway Trail from Prague to Vienna travels through Valtice, Moravia, the site of the baroque winter palace of the Leichenstein family. A side bike trail loops 7 kilometers north to Lednice, site of the family's summer palace and fabulous gardens and lakes. One of the Leichenstein's, a general in the Czech Army fighting against Napolean's Army, had his minions back at the summer palace in the 1800's build a series of Follies in the wooded park surrounding the palace. The Three Graces, a Roman Arch of Triumph cum hunting lodge, an Apollo statue, among others are along the trail hidden in the woods. I imagined as we rode our bikes along the trail, a Leichenstein gentleman trotting a horse with a companion and coming upon the Three Graces, and in a surprised tone, "Oh, my dear, there are the three graces! What d'ya think they are doing here?"

After pedaling the 20 miles through the gardens and wooded park, we ended up at the railstation in Breclav to board a train for the 94 kilometers to Vienna to make up for days lost due to rain.

Vienna is a totally different city that any Czech city, including Prague. Grander buildings, more crowded shops and resturants, and double to triple the price of everything. Austria is on the Euro, while Czech is still on the kroner. EU investment funds in Czech are obvious with the rail station upgrades to platforms and the new train cars on some runs.

Telč, Moravia, Czech Republic

2008-09-22T00:36:00.000-07:00

We have been on the Prague to Vienna Greenway for five days riding about 25-30 miles a day. Each town or village we pass through is another wonderful place to look about and see how the buildings are built with stucco and slate or tile roofs. The country side has been hilly, with pine tree groves on the higher ground and fertile fields of corn, sugar beets and potatoes. The Prague to Vienna Greenway has been well signed, with a small yellow sign with a number, bike symbol and the logo for the Prague-Vienna Greenway on the one we follow. There are numerous bike trails that loop around the countryside, so we often have to stop, scout ahead and consult our map before heading down the trail. So far all of the trail has been on either narrow paved roads or short links of packed gravel and dirt through a park like setting.

Each town we have come into where we want to stay, except the first night, has had accomodation for all five of us. At first the food was blah, potato and bread dumpling and pork, sausage smothered in gravy. In the past few day we have found more interesting fare. The beer and wine are good. Moravia is a wine growing area, and the Czech beer, pivo, is a Pilsen and good.

From Slavoniče we took a short modern train for an hour to Telč with our bikes for about 3 dollars each to spend the night and have a look around this UNESCO World Heritage Site. The roofs on the pastel colored houses surrounding a large cobblestoned square are all gothic gabled, looking something like a roccoco Alamo roof. An covered arcade runs along in front of each house, with gracious arches. All of these buildings are at least 250 years old. The original building having been burned earlier after several invasions.

Prague to Vienna by Bike

2008-09-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

For my birthday I wanted a memorable trip with special friends. Pedaling the Praha-Wien Greenway seemed a perfect adventure: visiting two great cities and the physical challenge of traveling under our own power. Seeing the countryside from a bike saddle seemed like a good idea and it was. Our route was well signed and maps that Daniel Mourek gave us in Prague made it easy to figure out how to get from one place to another. We learned there are many signed bike routes that criss cross the Czech Republic as well as signed long distance routes from Budapest to Prague or Warsaw.

What we didn't expect was how cold it would be in September. Unusual weather, everyone said. Train stations in most towns of any size made it fairly easy to catch a train to skip ahead if we were behind schedule, it was pouring rain or to venture up to Telc, 40 miles off our route.

The language barrier between English and Czech was broken by smiles, nods, sign language, pointing or using a limited travel glossary to struggle through Czech pronunciations without vowels. We found accomodations by pedaling up to the offical tourist offices in town squares that were usually staffed by an English speaker who would telephone ahead for us. Our meals were usually meat, potatoes, bread dumplings and beer. Once we found a Chinese restaurant for a needed infusion of vegetables.

We bikes 30 to 45 miles a day, after a filling Czech breakfast stopping to tour castle ruins, peeking into Gothic churches, and pedal into Renaissance town centers. Most of all we enjoyed looking around the rolling Czech farmlands cultivated in corn and wheat. The variegated browns, yellows and greens, depending upon what had been harvested, were a soft background to the red roof tiles of nestled villages.

For the first few days we would stop for lunch in a cafe, later just coffee or beer and a snack since we were so full from breakfast and in anticipation of the large dinner at night where we would stay. If we were hungry for a snack while we rode, we would grab and munch on juicy apples hanging from loaded trees edging the farm fields lining the country roads.

An Easy Walk to Begin Guanajuato Exploration

2008-08-04T12:44:00.001-07:00

One easy walk to start with is along Paseo de la Pressa, a wide boulevard that sweeps down a valley toward El Centro with a gentle grade from the Pressa de la Olla, a dam holding back the Guanajuato river to make a reservoir. (Dams further up the narrow canyon serve the purpose of diverting the river to a subterranean system under the center of the city.)

Paseo de la Presa has some of the widest sidewalks in the city, albeit a few cars which intrude with bumpers. In one stretch there grand art deco houses with stained glass and mansions converted to government offices. Stucco buildings line the street, their solid wood or dark metal doors are entries into living spaces, court yards and the secrets of their residents. Some doors are open to allow a step down over a stone threshold and find a small shop selling potato chips, then with a surprise, a beauty shop in the next room. The adventure of walking down the length of the boulevard is that it brings the curious into a real exploration of Guanajuanese city life. Along the way giggles and music from upstairs windows with reach your ears. Colors are everywhere, from the Bougainvillea splashes over tall walls to the rounds of bright ribbons for sell hanging on the open door of one of many papelerias, or small shops selling everything from pencils to hosting an internet café. Fruterías display their wares of papaya, mangoes and tomatillos, piled neatly on boxes in front small dark doorways onto the sidewalk.

This is a walk best done in the morning, but any time of day will do. Hop onto any bus reading Presa de Olla, or take a taxi. Start above the Parque Florencico Antillion, just below Presa de la Olla, the name for the dam and reservoir. The spot is a good place for bird watching in the late morning, after the sun rises over the mountains and is at your back. Stay to the outside of the park itself, make a circuit of the park, pausing to follow the tap-tap-tap sounds and look up to see the brilliant flash of a resident Golden Fronted Woodpecker.

Once finished with the birding, start walking slowly down the boulevard. Keep an eye out for that treasured peek into an open doorway. You’ll see court yards with inviting landscapes of palm and cactus, stone benches and the traditional stone pillars with stripped green, pink and grey colors from local quarries in the hills that lift above the city. Most of the buildings are constructed to the sidewalk, with thick brick walls covered in stucco to preserve the privacy valued in Mexican family life.

If #77, a long two toned pink and rose stucco building on the left hand side has its wide wood doors thrown open, walk into the cloistered garden of the Association of Retired University of Guanajuato Faculty a breathe a sigh in the calmness of the courtyard.

Laughing children will draw your attention over a low wall topped with wrought iron railing to a child care center. Juicy oranges hanging from the front yard tree match up nicely with the green and orange paint of the building.

Further along a long pink stone building with exquisite carvings and flourishes on the Corinthian columns and a crest above the arched doors gives this teacher’s college, Escuela Normal Official, a grand entrance. From the grand awe inspiring to the simplest detail, notice ceramic plaques embedded in stucco house walls like: Aquí Nacieron, Sylvia y Apa Corona Cortés, or here was born Sylvia and Apa Corona Cortez.

Watch for #21 and bright orange, pink, green and blue crinoline costumes, specked with sparkling sequins, hanging outside, announcing Senora Rosys’ shop. She creates children’s costumes, every thing from mariposas with wings, flowers with petals to a shiny red and blue Spiderman.

An S-curve along the edges of Plaza Luis Donaldo Colosio with his sculpted bust in a small playground with park benches, marks a wide curve west, so follow the boulevard on around along the right side of the street and cross over Calle San Sebastian as the boulevard becomes Paseo Madero.

Follow more curves and cross a busy side street with vehicles emerging from a tunnel and enter shaded Los Embajadoras, a park with wide sidewalks shaded by clipped Laurel trees, their trunks painted white in pure Mexican landscaping style. Los Embajadoras is a park well used every day of the week. Just sit in one of the wrought iron park benches and watch life go by. Lovers will snuggle on one bench, a child will wiggle from her parents on another and an old man sitting and snoozing will come awake to ask politely, ?Donde vive? Where are you from? Come by on a Sunday and Los Embajadoras is crammed with food vendors selling everything from pickled pigs feet and shredded cabbage to nopales, a cactus leaf delicacy, fruit of all sorts, cut and cubed and healing herbs. The aroma of gorditas, fat handmade tortillas stuffed with cheese frying on flat iron grills will catch your nose’s attention. Blue tarps are strung from trees to shade vendors and customers. At sundown every night Los Embajadoras’s Laurel trees come alive with the sounds of thousands of boisterous iridescent purple and black grackles as the fly in to roost for the night.

At the end of the park turn left at El Toro Carnecería onto Calle Sangre de Cristo, pass swinging saloon doors of La Cubana just before crossing the brick Puente Sangre de Cristo, Bridge of the Blood of Christ. Look down at the subterranean road. Wood timbers hold up window boxes in Spanish medieval style, heavy stone walls of the old city with buttresses to hold tight are visible, some incorporated into 20th century buildings.

The sidewalks narrows as traffic flows towards you on cobble stoned streets. As the street curves and the name changes again to Calle Sostenes Rocha, Check out the Teatro Cervantes in an ancient, squat stone building and the statues of Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza. Cross the street to an inviting pedestrian zone where the street will lead you to Jardin Union, the central park of the city.

In Guanajuato: Explore Callejons

2008-03-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

One favorite off the beaten track is up into La Alameda colonia to the Church of Guadalupe. Start at Plaza La Baratilla, a lively place in the daytime with students, children chasing pigeons, vendors and people out doing their shopping. A fountain is the centerpiece, bouquets of white cala lilies and a mixed pallete of zinnias surround flower sellers against one wall, boxes of oranges and lemons are stacked on the steps of a frutería on a another wall. After a nice rest people watching, move on up the callejon that exits the plaza to your right beside Frutería Torres. You’ll pass fruit, pepper and mole vendors lining the street for the first hundred yards then merge into Calle Alameda at a tiny plazuela. Cars coming downhill veer off into a tunnel just as you walk under a bridge. It’s still more up to Calle Cuacamaza where you turn left, walk past a lavender house with yellow window trimmings, and enter a callejon that leads straight up to forty two concrete steps where a cross and a shady plazuela greet you at the top. The aroma of baking bread from La Infancia Panadería wafts across the plazuela. Catch your breath and move on towards the corner with the mustard gold house and continue up, left again at your first calle. Up this steep winding road, and when you reach the top and another small plaza you’re in view of your destination. Turquoise tiled belfries and a clock tower top the soft rose colored stone Church of Guadalupe.

Make your way back down Calzada de Guadalupe for a breezy view of the city below walking past residences and small shops with their walls straight against the stone sidewalk. Open windows and doors provide glimpses into ordinary life. Further along pass under three short tunnels below university buildings and come to Subida Hospitales. The small façade ruin of a 1565 hospital chapel is just up the lane. Back track to Calzada de Guadalupe and continue down one block along the side of massive university steps to Calle Pozitos.

Turn right, past Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato (worth a visit) then past Callejon La Condesa. Cross Calle Juan Valle, the Diego Rivera Museum (also worth a visit) and go up the slope to Callejon Cantaritos and turn left. At one of the several twists and turns you pass Clave Azul a bar decorated with Mexican movie star posters and old radios. Past the blue building you’ll enter the funniest portion of a callejon in the city, molded to fit the hips and shoulders of a body, then spill out into the best plaza in the city, peaceful Plazuela San Francisco. Any number of the outdoor cafes surrounding the square will serve you to a well deserved limonada or cerveza.

A tip for walkers: Feel free to explore the callejons on your own, or wander off the described routes. If you get lost, keep wandering, try your Spanish or use sign language. The city isn’t that large and eventually you’ll find your way. Buen Viaje.

If There is a Cross at the Top, There's a Trail

2008-02-26T08:03:00.000-08:00

After a few days of acclimating, it’s time to explore some of the hills in El Campo around the city. La Bufa looms above Guanajuato, an obvious destination for walkers and climbers. A white cross place firmly on the summit and some trails cuts visible from below, make it clear that there is a trail to the top. All mountain peaks around Guanajuato seem to have white crosses placed on visible rocky outcrops. “If there is a cross, there is a trail.”

Walkers can start their climb at the bottom of El Callejon Saucillo, up from Paseo de la Presa. Expect a two to three hour hike. Once at the top, walk across La Panoramica, through the Clínica ISSSTE’s parking lot and follow the red rock road as it passes by an electrical transformer station. Another way to get to the start of the trail start is to take any bus from El Centro that says, ISSSTE and get off at the end of the ride at Clínica ISSSTE and follow the directions for walkers.

The red rock single lane road rises at a steep but grade doable for a healthy walker’s normal climbing stride. Some huffing and puffing may be necessary as you climb higher past 6,500 feet in elevation. On weekend mornings healthy Guanajuantese run up this grade, sometimes with their coffee cups.

The route swings around the base of the mountain, and continues to rise. Over the ledge and above the road cut, Agave cactus with their sharp pointed asparagus looking blooms shoot ten feet high in the sky. Mesquite bushes with sharp needle points and some other high desert ground covers are the local plant life. A herd of cattle roam the road, a farmer occasionally can be seen driving his pickup up to drop bundles of hay and fodder. Walk gently past the soft switching tails, the gently munching and soft bovine eyes will follow you inquisitively. Talk softly and don’t make sudden moves to avoid panicking any nervous cows or bulls.

The road widens at a cave that has been turned into a shrine, with statues of saints and Christ tucked back in the crevice of the cave. Past the shrine the trail narrows but electrical infrastructure construction, concrete boxes and orange covered cable, let walkers know they are not in unexplored territory. For walkers that are uncertain of hiking on narrow mountain trails, turn around and enjoy the walk back.

If you are a more adventurous hiker, ready for some steeper climbing, carry on. Follow the obvious trail; it is more of a hike at this point. The trail follows a ledge and curves around to the back of the mountain. There are many side trails, so pick the obvious one with a grade going up that is comfortable. Stepping over rocks and following the trail, will take concentration, but pause every so often to take in the sweep of the vista below. If you have a city map in your pocket, pull it our and try to figure out urban landmarks below.

A large fallen rock makes a bridge over the trail, walk under remembering that rocks can fall at anytime. The trail becomes steeper with sandy scree between larger rocks in some places. Some orange trail makers help point out the best trail, but use your discretion and place your feet carefully. Under another fallen rock, there is a cool breeze through the wind tunnel, look up to the left, and follow the trail up to a wide shoulder.

Once up on the shoulder, the considerate hiker has left large orange arrows pointing up. Across pot marked rock there is no specific trail, just go up. A fire ring or two and and some broken bottles will give you the idea that lots of people have come this way. A small cross honoring a climbing professor who died on La Bufa, gives somber reminder to be cautious while climbing.

At the cross, climb up a narrow gap, and follow vague trail marks around to a sheer rock wall down. Steel rebar make hand holds for toe steps into the rock to climb down. Then it is up again for the final climb to see the white cross. The view on top is really not more wonderful than ones further below, but there’s a great sense of accomplishment when you tell your fellow travelers, “I climbed La Bufa!"

At 6,500 Feet, Walking in Guanajuato

2008-02-23T16:05:00.000-08:00

Hills and climbing, more hills and more stairs; up and down. Narrow callejons with ninety four steps to the top, some are cracked, and one step holds a flower pot. Walking will not be a quiet stroll. Alertness to where you put your feet is a must with uneven cobble stones, cracked concrete, stairs with various step heights, and traffic on some streets all require a walker to pay attention. At about 6,500 feet elevation, it will take new visitors several days to acclimate for vigorous walks. A good back up to walking is a public bus system with all buses ending up back in El Centro (4 pesos a ride) and any green and white or white taxi can be hailed to anywhere in the city for 30 pesos.

One easy walk to start with is along Paseo de la Pressa, a wide boulevard that sweeps down a valley toward El Centro with a gentle grade from the Pressa de la Olla, a dam backing up the Guanajuato River, holding back a reservoir. (Dams further up the narrow canyon serve the purpose of diverting the river to a subterranean system under the center of the city.)

Paseo de la Presa has some of the widest sidewalks in the city, albeit a few cars which intrude with bumpers. Stucco buildings line the street, their solid wood or dark metal doors are entries into living spaces, court yards and the secrets of their residents. Some doors are open to allow a step down over a stone threshold and find a small shop selling potato chips, then with a surprise, a beauty shop in the next room. The adventure of walking down the length of the boulevard is that it brings the curious into a real exploration of Guanajuanese city life. Along the way giggles and music from upstairs windows with waft to your ears. Colors are everywhere, from the Bougainvillea splashes over tall walls to the rounds of bright ribbons for sell hanging on the open door of one of many papelerias, or small shops selling everything from pencils to hosting an internet café. Fruterías display their wares of papaya, mangoes and tomatillos, piled neatly on boxes in front small dark doorways onto the sidewalk.

Best done in the morning, but any time of day will do. Hop onto any bus reading Presa or take a taxi. Start above the Parque Florencico Antillion, just below Presa de la Olla. The spot is a good place for bird watching in the morning, after the sun rises over the mountains and is at your back. Stay to the outside of the park itself, walking along the Boulevard, and make a circuit of the park, pausing to follow the tap-tap-tap sounds and look up to see the flash of a resident Golden Fronted Woodpecker.

Once finished with the birding, start walking slowly down the boulevard. Soon on the right is a place to taste coffee brewed with cinnamon, Café de la Olla, while sitting on the terrace overlooking the street at Mexico Lindo y Sabrosa. Fortified with caffeine, carry on down the boulevard and keep an eye out for that treasured peek into an open doorway. Court yards with inviting landscape of palm and cactus, stone benches and the traditional stone pillars with stripped green, pink and grey colors from local quarries in the hills that lift above the city.

All the buildings are constructed to the sidewalk, with thick brick walls covered in stucco to preserve the privacy valued in Mexican family life. A weird blue house with a red steep roof quasi-Victorian building, known locally as the Casa Bruja, or witches house, is an exception that houses a Spanish and English language school.

Note for the future, a small boutique hotel on the right with potted plants marking private space extending beyond the curb line. The Marie Cristina is an expensive hotel worth a visit to the dining room to sample divine tasting ceviche.

If #77, a long two toned pink and rose stucco building on the left hand side has its wide wood doors thrown open, walk into the cloistered garden of the Association of Retired University of Guanajuato Faculty a breathe a sigh in the calmness of the courtyard.

Laughing children will draw your attention over a low wall topped with wrought iron bars to a child care center on the left. Juicy oranges hanging from the front yard tree match up nicely with the green and orange paint of the building.

At #21 look for bright colored costumes for sale hanging from window iron bars. Señora Rosy creates mariposa, flowers, spidermen and other fun children costumes. Hundreds of bright orange, pink and blue crinoline and taffeta creations hang from the ceiling of her taller.

Further along a long pink stone building with exquisite carvings and flourishes on the Corinthian columns and a crest above the arched doors gives this teacher’s college, Escuela Normal Official, a grand entrance. From the grand awe inspiring to the simplest detail, notice ceramic plaques embedded in stucco house walls like: Aquí Nacieron, Sylvia y Apa Corona Cortés, or here was born Sylvia and Apa Corona Cortez.

An S-curve along the edges of Plaza Luis Donaldo Colosio with his sculpted bust in a small playground with park benches, marks a wide curve west, so follow the boulevard on around along the right side of the street and cross over Calle San Sebastian as the boulevard becomes Paseo Madero.

Follow more curves and cross a busy side street with vehicles emerging from a tunnel and enter shaded Los Embajadoras, a park with wide sidewalks shaded by clipped Laurel trees, their trunks painted white in pure Mexican landscaping style. Los Embajadoras is a park well used every day of the week. Just sit in one of the wrought iron park benches and watch life go by. Lovers will snuggle on one bench, a child will wiggle from her parents on another and an old man sitting and snoozing will come awake to ask politely, ?Donde vive? Where are you from? Come by on a Sunday and Los Embajadoras is crammed with food vendors selling everything from pickled pigs feet and shredded cabbage to nopales, a cactus leaf delicacy, to fruit of all sorts, cut and cubed. The aroma of gorditas, fat handmade tortillas stuffed with cheese frying on flat iron grills will catch your nose’s attention. Blue tarps are strung from trees to shade vendors and customers. At sundown every night Los Embajadoras’s Laurel trees come alive with the sounds of thousands of boisterous iridescent purple and black grackles as the fly in to roost for the night.

On most days, however, small groups of vendors set up their seasonal offerings on the sidewalk next to the permanent Mercado de los Embajadores. At the end of the park turn left at El Toro Carnecería onto Calle Sangre de Cristo and cross the brick el Puente Sangre de Cristo (Bridge of the Blood of Christ) to look down at a sample of subterranean traffic. Wood timbers hold up window boxes in European medieval style, heavy stone walls of the old city with buttresses to hold tight are visible, some incorporated into 20th century buildings.

The sidewalks narrows as traffic flows towards you on cobble stoned streets. As the street curves and the name changes again to Calle Sostenes Rocha, look for chess players in open windows of Café Tal, their wrought iron sign swinging with a cat in a cup up a callejon on the right. For cappuccinos, conversation and newspapers, this is a comfortable gathering spot.

Fueled up again, head in the same direction and cross the street to an inviting pedestrian only zone, at the sign La Michoacana. Or, delay crossing and check out the Teatro Cervantes in an ancient, squat stone building and the statues of Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza. Taking the pedestrian zoned street will lead you back to El Centro, near the Jardin Union, the central park in the city.

Preview

Views of Guanajuato

2008-02-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

From a comfortable casita window, I look out on clear blue skies that sharply outline tired, rocky hills. Some hills have rounded tops and others show their weathered sides beginning to form plateaus from eons of erosion. Small pines and clumps of determined oak are separated by patches of prickly pear cactuses, their flat pods pointing spiky barbs. At the base of the fold of these hills lies El Centro de la Ciudad de Guanajuato, its houses and other buildings crawling up the hillsides with bright splashes of color. Canary yellow, yam orange, lime green and turquoise walls, stand up flat against the brown sun scorched grass and grey rock hills. Flat roofs topping stucco walls line narrow alleys, known as callejons.

Guanajuato has a unique to subterranean road system created from a diverted river following the great inundacion, or flood, of 1905. The flood was one of a long line of devastating rushes of water through the city. Cars and buses use the tunnels, removing a good chunk of city traffic from surface streets. Narrow streets with even narrower sidewalks make walking on those streets above ground that do carry traffic less than perfect, but traffic is slow and drivers generally cautious and surprisingly courteous to pedestrians. Also, there are a good number of streets barricaded to traffic which adds to the enjoyment of walking in Guanjuanto.

To reach the colonias, or neighborhoods, an extensive system of callejons twists and turns up and down along the contours of hillsides. The cobble-stoned and concrete pathways, some with hundreds of stairs, have numerous branches leading to individual houses and shops. A detailed map of the city shows hundreds of squiggly lines of callejons.

Each of the callejons has their resident pack of dogs. They lie stretched out sunning themselves, and will occasionally be roused to watch or even follow curiously, and harmlessly, sniffing you or your bags. Unlike other Mexican communities, I have never seen anyone throw a rock or yell at one of these dogs.

Our rented casita sits high off the Panoramica, a several-mile circumferential paved road. True to its name, the Panoramica runs up and down from high ridges with fabulous views of the city, then dips down and wends its way on cobblestones through colonias and back up to another ridge with sweeping views from a different angle.

From our casita, the walk to El Centro down El Saucillo Callejon is an experience between rural and urban. Near the top, several horses live in a small stable fenced with disguarded rusting bedframes. Burros graze on roughage in the steep canyon that drops off below the houses that line the callejon to the east. A corregated roof next to a freshly plowed plot shelters a farmer who tends his burros.

One afternoon two men stood in the middle of the callejon shoeing a lovely brown horse. The horse patiently waited standing on three legs during the operation. As one man soothed the horse from the front, the other hammered nails into its raised hoof. The gentle horse never moved despite the sharp hit of the shoeing hammer.

El Saucillo Callejon has many hundreds of steps, requiring cautious footing on the uneven concrete. Metal sewer and water pipe lines follow the plunge down along the edge of the concrete. Part way down the pipe moves to the center of the callejon adding another little challenge to walkers.

Further down the steps, several tiendas with open doors offer their wares for sale, while old men sun themselves on stone door stoops. Women lug plastic bags of groceries, slowing making their way to their houses, but pause to exchange “buenas dias.” Children bounce balls, and at a graded flat area down a side callejon, there's a grassed soccer field with goal posts. Tin cans hold plants in small gardens, set on top of concrete steps before wooden doors. Houses are stucco, brick or plain concrete, some painted while others are left to the weathered grey of concrete.

Closer to the bottom, a house painted bright blue with yellow wrought iron railings trimming two small balconies requires a tall person to stoop in order to pass under. A uniformed delivery man walks along rythmically calling out in a deep voice, "gas?", meaning who needs a refilled propane cannister for their stove.

Spreading out wide with three final series of steps, El Saucillo Callejon meets Paseo de la Presa, a busy urban boulevard with buses, trucks and cars moving along a lovely cobblestone street bordered by government buildings and a commercial center.

Walking the Greenway Trail on Swan Island

2008-01-19T19:40:00.000-08:00

A well edited version of this story appears in Walk About Magazine Jan/Feb 2008

Swan Island, an industrial hub in North Portland, home to heavy industry and distribution warehouses, would seem an unlikely location for a trail for wildlife viewing on the Willamette River. Those who do walk this flat one mile trail of the future North Portland Willamette Greenway Trail will be pleasantly surprised to find a nice mix between viewing wildlife and a working river. It is one of the few locations for public access to the Willamette River in North Portland.

On a sunny but chilly October afternoon as I walk along and look out on the north flowing Willamette River, black and white ring necked Canadian Geese calmly sit on the water in floating formation, tug boats chug by, and fishermen in small pleasure craft dangle their lines into the water hopefully. A wide concrete trail starts on the south end of Swan Island, with a branch trail connecting to the street. After parking my car in a gravel lot off North Port Center Way, I stroll down this short branch towards the riverside trail. Marked with a simple “Trail Access” sign, it winds past a sewer pumping station, and joins the riverfront trail. The pumping station is part of the massive effort to clean up the river by reducing sewerage overflows every time Portland gets a downpour. From there I turn left, or upstream for a short exploration to the end, peering through the chain link fence marking the end of the trail, for now, and see a large ship, docked at a concrete plant wharf.

Then I turn around and walk downriver, looking out across to the green hills of Forest Park, and the long wharves of a barge company at the shoreline on the west side. The sandy beach below the trail is littered with logs and assorted flotsam left over from the last time the Willamette reach flood stage in 1996. Occasionally beavers have been spotted paddling along the shoreline. For beach explorers and those who want to dip a toe in the water, a fifty yard gravel walkway leads down to the beach and water line. The path passes by a glass windowed office building. Landscaping, well established oak trees, and wooden slated benches on low stone walls line a curved overlook that invites a pause to soak in the view and is a good spot for snacking, especially if walking with children. On this late afternoon the sun streams through the oak tree leaves and shimmers light on the water. The rhythmic sound of waves gently splashing the sandy beach, join with the louder pulse and buzz of various river boats cruising by.

Still walking downriver, going north, a wooden arched bridge marks the place to turn right and wander through the lower level of an office building, on this public path. Going into the ground level courtyard, I head toward a brick arched exit onto a sidewalk along a parking lot for a few steps. At a clock tower, it’s a left turn and onto a path again, officially McCarty Park. As the path reaches the river again, the sight across the river is the active industry of barge and large iron truss construction, currently a new bridge to be floated down river to replace the Sauvie Island Bridge. In a small niche along the path, stands the first of two historical interpretive signs next to a couple of old iron ship dock anchors that give the place a nautical theme. In the 1930’s Swan Island became Portland’s first airport, and some photos are worth a look. I glance down the bank at some fishermen leaning back on logs, lines out, casually sipping coffee waiting for a nibble.

Moving on further, pass a canoe launch and I edge past another parking lot and aim for a small grove of sequoias staying close to the river. This stretch of trail is landscaped to screen another office building but the trail will be your own on most days.

Another historic sign tells the story of thousands of women who came to work in the Swan Island ship yards during World War II. A 1978 photo and of the largest floating dry dock in the world coming up the Willamette River to Swan Island deserves a relaxed look. The liberty ship yards are gone and the dry dock was sold off, but the ship yards produce ocean going barges these days. At the north end of the trail, a peek through another chain link fence, past semi truck trailers, you can see the huge cranes used in building these barges.

I turn around at the north end for the walk back, and get a whole different view. The skyline of downtown Portland and three bridge in a row spanning the river: the high arched green Fremont, the red Broadway and workhorse black Steel.

Some geese fly over, honking their way south. Winter is coming but and this path will still be one of my favorites. Bundling up with a warm fleece hat pulled over ears against cold wind, Gortex jacket and rain pants, this paved Swan Island trail works even on really muddy days.

Take a Ferry and Slip Away to Anderson Island

2007-10-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

The best part of a visit to an island in Puget Sound is the trip there. Mainland worries disappear as the ferry glides through the water toward that floating land in the distance.

Anderson Island, a two and a half hour drive north from Portland on I-5, is ideal for a day trip or week-end get-a-way. If you love to roam back-roads looking for good locations to launch a kayak, take your bike out for a spin, or for ferries to ride, Anderson Island is your place.

To reach Anderson Island, take the short ferry ride from Steilacoom, the oldest incorporated town in Washington State, perched on a sloping hillside overlooking Puget Sound south of the Tacoma Narrows. The Christina Anderson, with capacity for about 65 cars and passengers, alternates service with a newer, slightly larger ferry. The ferry landing with ticket office and small waiting room for walk-on passengers is at the base of a hill, across the Portland to Seattle Amtrak tracks. Cars loading the ferry will often need to wait while a speeding passenger, or freight train, whizzes by.

Park your car then walk onto the ferry with your bike or kayak or drive on, relax and head for a slower pace of life as the ferry crosses to the rolling forested hills and former pioneer farm land of the island. During the 20 minute crossing, you will feel the mainland slipping away as you look back at stunning views of Mt. Rainer on a clear day, or ahead to the green hills floating in the Sound. The ferry captain has been known to slow down to point out whales surfacing within view from the deck, one time between the ferry landing and the island shore to the oohs and aahs of passengers.

Once the ferry docks, walk on passengers with kayaks can walk up the ramp and launch their boats into the water beside the island ferry dock. A stairway from the road level down to the rocky beach requires two people and a little work, but is well worth it. You can also drive onto the ferry with your kayaks or bikes, and park near the island ferry landing.

It is an ideal island for kayaking with relatively calm waters, a varied shoreline of beach and steep cliffs topped with Douglas fir and red barked Madrona trees. Harbor seals bob in the surf and curiously, but cautiously, follow paddlers. A slow, easy-going way to see the island for the moderately experienced paddler is by hugging the shoreline. We’ve often made the comfortable paddle around the 13 mile circumference in four hours and been rewarded with bald eagle and numerous other shore and sea bird sightings every trip. Paddle at a slower pace and stop to enjoy jelly fish floating just under the water surface with their gangly tentacles and pull out your binoculars to watch sea birds that ride the gentle waves. Amsterdam and Oro Bays deserve more time for explorations, depending upon the tide levels.

Island residents Chuck and Kelly Hines recently opened Anderson Island Kayaks www.andersonislandkayaks.com) from the garage behind their house with a sweeping view of the Nisqually River reach tidal flats. They rent kayaks and lead day tours with advanced arrangements. If you bring your own boat, bring along a tide book and chart of Southern Puget Sound. Respect private property; there is no landing except at public beaches or docks.

The island was nearly cut clear of timber to feed the Mosquito Fleet steamboat engines that served Puget Sound islands and shore communities between 1850s and 1930s. Some small groves of old growth survive dotting the green fields of bottom land farmlands and tree covered the hillsides. Houses line a few rocky beaches, and inland there is a partially developed subdivision with a marina dock, a golf course and a club house restaurant open to the public overlooking one of two island lakes. Most houses are tucked away in the woods; some sit on the edge of open meadows sloping down to a view of island bays. The 900 full time residents are served by a congenial community general store, a wood framed community center, and grade school. The ferry serves as school bus for high schoolers who commute in island fashion to the mainland.

A few B&Bs and a some private home rentals are available for visitors. The island has several parks, some signed private for residents and guests of the golf course subdivision. Several of the public parks have narrow forested trails, and one, my favorite Andy’s Marine Park, allows primitive camping on a beach that fluctuates in size with the tides, accessible by boat or a two-mile hike through the woods.

Paved two lane roads crisscross the island, with some steep hills for the determined bicyclist. Whether you drive or bike, stop by the general store and gas station up the hill straight from the ferry landing after you have passed the community center. There you can ask for directions to one of several public parks with walking trails, pick up a snack, ask about island events and chat with island residents.

The general store is the center of island community news with a reader board sign in front announcing island weddings, birthdays and other local events easily visible for anyone who drives past on their way to or from the ferry. A lively schedule of community events is often open to the public. The Anderson Island Historic Society hosts a barbecue each July 4th and annually the Tacoma Symphonic Band plays on the grassy meadow in front of the Historic Anderson House. The Island Arts Committee brings together residents and fortunate visitors for occasional music events at the Anderson Island Community Center.

On Sundays you may be fortunate to find a volunteer docent who will lead you on a tour of the pioneer farm at the Anderson House and the wooden barn chock full of turn of the century farm implements. On one of our visits the grandson of Christina Anderson, for whom the ferry is named, was checking out the abundant community garden spread in front of the farm’s chicken coops. Island life makes for tight community. As one island resident reflected, “Living on an island, you get to make friends with a wider group of people than you would ever know in a city.”

If you go tips:

Driving directions from Portland: North on I-5 to exit 119 towards Steilacoom. Drive west through North Fort Lewis for several miles till the road dead ends at the ferry landing. Follow signs and park behind the last car, obeying island protocol for ferry queuing. If you want to be a walk-on passenger, park in the fee parking lot adjacent to the loading line. Walk to the ferry ticket office and buy tickets before loading. Restrooms and coffee for a donation in the walk-on waiting lobby. Fares are $15.00 non peak season, $18.00 peak season for car and driver, passengers extra. Walk-ons encouraged with only passenger fares.

Bring your own bike as there are no bike rentals on Anderson Island or Steilacoom.

Websites: http://www.andersonislandhs.com/links.html
http://www.andersonisland.net/
http://www.co.pierce.wa.us/pc/abtus/ourorg/pwu/ferry/ferrymain.htm
(253)798-2766 24 hour ferry schedule recording

Thirty Mile Windy Bike Ride

2007-05-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

Portland’s big secret is when it's grey, cloudy, raining and chilly in the city, a forty five minute drive east gets you sun and blue skies. For several years this is exactly where we have gone for a good day-long bike ride in the spring or fall. Fulton Canyon is our favorite. Never in summer or winter, only spring or fall, when the weather is cool, skies are blue, the sun warm and the air dry. My husband and biking partner and I pack a snack, grab helmets, snap the bikes into the car rack, then hit the road driving east on Highway 84 through The Dalles to the Deschutes River Park exit. From there we drive along the frontage road, over the Deschutes River as it flows into the Columbia River to Fulton Canyon Road and park the car at an undesignated parking area: a wide graveled area at the intersection, the kind of place that state road crews store piles of gravel in freezing weather.

Once the bikes are off the car, and helmets adjusted, we head up Fulton Canyon Road pedaling a slow, steady pace for the climb. The road follows the narrow canyon that cuts down through the Oregon Columbia Gorge hills, to the wide Columbia River below. The climb is steady but not too steep on a road without much traffic. This gives me time to think, look around and wonder. Two lanes of asphalt with a freshly painted yellow dash separate each direction. It makes me remember the words of Jim Hightower, the politically outspoken Texan, that in his state the only two things in the middle of the road are, “yellow stripes and dead armadillos.” So, when a pickup truck passes on the other side of the road, I start to wonder if the rancher driving will take exception to our parked car’s bumper stickers, and if our parked car is safe. Instead, drivers are polite, giving us wide space and often giving a friendly wave. As I ride slowly up the now steeper grade to the Columbia Plateau, fresh green wheat fields flow and wave with a light wind on one side while Tuscan brown fields on the other show tracks of recent tilling. An urban person, I wonder as I ride what it would be like to live on a farm, to know when and what kind of wheat is planted. Even though we have biked this route often we see only a snap-shot view of the hillsides for a few hours each season. On a recent spring Sunday, crisply painted and trimmed farm houses with front porches and freshly mowed front lawns stand facing the road. Second storey front bedroom windows stare out to the road and hillsides beyond. Houses, farm yards, barns, equipment, but no people are visible this day. Butler bee hive shaped corrugated metal silos, John Deere tractors and harvesting equipment stand idle in side and back yards. As we pedal upward, the wind picks up, pushing from behind, making the eight mile climb easier and faster.

Down to plain wood with no paint, a clapboard one room school house stands by itself; its windows open without glass, inviting birds and mice. The steeple rises forlornly above a broken roof, weather and vandal beaten and alone by the side of the road. Pedaling further up the grade the wind blows harder as we come over a rise. The road curves east towards Highway 97 and in the distance is the small town of Wasco. In front of us, the road stretches ahead, rising and falling with the land over hills and down ravines. The yellow lines dashes in the center rising and falling with the road. When we reach the top of the next rise, silver flashes of giant wind propellers twirl in the distance, part of the newest crop on Columbia Plateau farms. The flashes disappear as we coast down into the next ravine. Up to the top of the next hill, we pause to look around: Mt Adams with a full snow cover and its north humped back shines above the Washington Columbia River hills. Mt Hood glistens in the sun light in a backward view on the next rise. This is big wheat country, few trees, wide views and big spaces. Occasionally a car or truck passes, swerving politely out of our lane. Down the hill into Wasco, the town park is a patch of soft green lawn, a couple of picnic tables, and water from a hose to fill those now empty water bottles.

We have the park to ourselves, eat our snack of dried fruit and nuts and lie back on the park lawn and gaze up at the trees and clear blue sky. After the leisurely rest, we’re up on our bikes again and turn into downtown Wasco. On this Sunday the streets of Wasco are empty, no people walking around and most buildings barely, if at all, used. A few brick buildings, one with a mercantile sign stand empty in a town too far from freeways and too close to bigger stores. An old two story wooden building, once a travelers road house and rooming house, purchased a few years ago by an urban couple, now stands with a for sale sign posted out front. This is knowledge from an earlier snap view and brief conversation on another spring or fall ride the exact year lost in memory. The sign made me wonder what it would be like to own a building in Wasco. The owners had hoped to run a weekend business and rent rooms for guests and family gatherings. There isn’t much for visitors to do in Wasco, except look at grain elevators or wind turbines spin in the distance. The population of about 300 people doesn’t support a restaurant or movie theater, and in fact the town is listed as a ghost town on one website.

The loop back, following Scotts Canyon down to the Columbia River, is longer, with steeper hills and deeper troughs, and the wind much stronger in the later part of the afternoon. Morning wind reports had said gusts, but pedaling along I begin to wonder if gusts meant being blown off, as I lean my bike sideways into the wind, nervous, and imagining the worst. The image of the author of Miles from Nowhere who describes being blown from her bike in high winds runs through my brain as I grip my handle bars tighter and concentrate on the road directly ahead and miss the views for several miles. Shoulders tight and strained, head down, eyes intently the road, I miss the sounds of meadow larks tweet-tweeting and their golden yellow breasts catching sunlight as they sweep across fields on either side. The Columbia River wind is great for wind surfing, but for bikes more a challenge when the wind hits at a ninety degree angle. A narrow stream dropping with the grade is about all I notice in this intense part of the ride that seems longer and steeper than the road up.

Once back to the Columbia River and the road junction at Rufus with a road side café and gas station, we stop to laugh about the wind and pledge that next time we’ll get out of Portland earlier in the morning. Back on our bikes we head west for the final 8 mile leg along the old highway road to our waiting car.

Glimpses of Peoples' Lives in Kerala and Karnataka

2007-03-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

It is the people that we meet and their stories that make any place special. With a population of roughly eighty million in Kerala and Karnataka, there many people you could meet, but here is just a just a slice of life of some of the people we met in one month and their stories.

A photographer with a show coming up in Paris, who laughed when I offered him some old New Yorkers saying he had photographed for them. A man taking the revenue flow from his dad’s Delhi circus and investing in property and hotels. A woman building day spas aimed at the high tech crowd and international guests. A number of auto rickshaw drivers who are lucky to clear four dollars a day. A favorite auto rickshaw driver for several days who wouldn’t accept any extra rupees, but did finally agree to let us buy his daughter an English Dictionary. Another auto rickshaw driver who questioned why tourists always pay hotel bills without quibbling but bargain for less than one dollar with taxi drivers.

A family sleeping on the floor a derelict tea trader's building after their house was destroyed by the Tsunami but served us tea. A child who invited us in to the derelict building who simply, and proudly wanted to show off his homework. A man who invited us into his home, served us tea and wanted us to take some of his soy beans home and plant them. A former coffee picker who now runs a small resort and who announced "tonight I am chicken making” then prepared a luscious chicken tika masala meal. A town planning manager for Mysore who didn’t have a functioning computer in his entire office. Young waiters who also worked in call centers.

A young man who aspired to earn enough to take his widowed mother to Brazil where she would be with family who also spoke Portuguese. A woman owner of a guest house who thought there could be disturbances if the film Water were shown in India. A uniformed police officer at a long line waiting at a pre paid taxi stand that insisted we walk instead of taking a taxi, which of course we did, laughing aloud at how the taxi business was losing with help like that, as we wandered lost around the city. A writer, who encouraged visitors to the touring photography show his writer and artists group had sponsored using a portrait of Sadaam on their poster, to write their opinions of the show in a guest book. A group of young journalists who wanted to interview us in a lovely park, asking “what did we think of India?” and exchanged email addresses with us.

Wildlife Viewing and Poachers

2007-02-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

South India is loaded with wildlife refuges, national parks, officially protected forests and bird sanctuaries; many with public access were former plantations during British colonial times, or former maharaja hunting grounds. In the last number of years, with the increased number of tourists, state governments, as well as private companies and individuals have built guest houses, hotels and in some locations luxury resorts on or near these properties for international as well as internal tourists.

Local people are often available, and in some cases entrance fees include a mandatory guide for foreign tourists. Some guides get excited about showing you animals and birds, others seemed bored and obviously lack training. It is possible to stay away from large cities and move from one wonderful wildlife viewing location to the other by hired taxi or bus. In a one month visit it was difficult to choose which of the wildlife preserves to visit and enjoy in a relaxed pace, for several days at each, sit back, take out binoculars and watch the animals and birds.

Beginning with Kumarakom, a bird sanctuary, about sixteen kilometers from the mid sized city of Kottayam, on the Malabar Coast in Kerala, is a former rubber tree plantation, at one time owned by the British Baker family. Several years after Indian independence in 1947, the state government bought most of the property. The Bakers sold some land to former employees at a nominal cost. We stayed in one of two lovely, simple, stucco and stone cottages, on property owned by the great-grandchildren of a former boat man for Mr Baker, according to the cottage owner, Mr. Gopakumar. The last Mr. Baker left Kumarakom in the 1970s. There are also a few tastefully designed large resorts, including one that the state of Kerala has built, and three luxurious resorts. One, The Taj Garden Retreat features the large Baker family bungalow that serves as a restaurant and reception, surrounded by well appointed cottages, a landscaped garden and swimming pool. Arundati Roy is said to have played in the house when a child, as her hometown in nearby. Another resort, the Coconut Lagoon sits on the edge of Lake Vembanad, and serves a fabulous buffet of over forty dishes and a sunset cruise on a boat sent to pick up guests. The lake is the source of water in a partially natural and partially manmade canal system that was used for irrigating the former plantation, and now provides habitat for thousands of water and shore birds. The canals also are used by locals in small boats for carrying goods, fishing and general transportation to small communities around the sanctuary.

From our small front porch, overlooking a narrow canal with dense jungle beyond, we pulled out our binoculars, sat back and spent hours watching and listening to the variety of tropical birds and other jungle sounds. Boatmen paddled by in small wooden canoes and one morning at sunup a dhoti clad man showed up to take us out for bird watching. He had little English, was more interested in the cost of the luxurious resorts, which is phenomenal by average Indian standards, but enjoyed showing us the birds. Between sitting on our front porch and the canoe trip, we saw hundreds of tropical and migrating birds. Siberian storks, fruit bats and snake darters roosting, soaring white headed Brahminy kites, darting iridescent blue kingfishers, stalking paddie herons, sunning cormorants, strutting chestnut and black greater coucals, brilliant yellow flashes of black headed orioles, just to name a few. The only disappointment was the lack of an Indian bird book or materials to identify birds at any resort, small trinket shops, or at the sanctuary entrance gate.

Next was a three day stay at the remote 345 square mile Wayland Wildlife Sanctuary, part of a larger Nilgiri Biosphere that straddles the borders of three states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. An old teak plantation, the sanctuary has dirt roads, old stone bridges, huge bamboo groves and teak trees for wild animal and bird habitat. There are several small villages nearby in the coffee, tea and rice growing area. Three jeep tours into the reserve provided great views of wild gaur, three types of deer, a sun bear, langur monkeys, numerous tropical birds, and a tiger. The bird highlight was Asian paradise-flycatchers with their small black headed bodies and long wispy white tails.

Unfortunately there was no walking allowed within the sanctuary due to some “incident,” (despite Lonely Planet and Rough Guide reports) but walks in the surrounding slow roads provided ample bird viewing, big smiles and happy waves from school children as we disrupted an entire school. An invitation into a home for tea and friendly conversation, from an elderly village man, who proudly showed us his soy and coffee beans was a bonus. Other villagers quickly stuck their heads in the door once our camera was pulled out, lining up to have a “snap” too. The area is fairly remote, requires a bone jarring taxi ride off the beaten track, although it is listed in the Lonely Planet. There are no large hotels or resorts and one of the few places to stay is the Pachyderm Guest House, immediately adjacent to the sanctuary entrance where we stayed in a lone bamboo and palm thatch stilt house perched above coffee plants. Venu, a former coffee picker took excellent care of us, endearing himself to us one morning by saying, “Madam, I am chicken making tonight,” and then presented a delicious curry chicken, coconut chutney and rice dinner later that night. He arranged all trips into the sanctuary, and a night prowl along the road for animals, but alas, had no bird identification books.

Officially, the Indian governments takes preservation of the animals seriously. A large non-profit organization manages some tiger preserves and there are TV commercials and newspaper advertisements to save tigers. For years the Indian Army had a well publicized effort to track down a notorious poacher of elephant tusks until he was shot dead. Some claim that the poacher was only able to prosper as long as he did with bribes to officials. Despite the notoriety, and hoopla, of protecting wildlife, there are still problems. Corruption is apparent in the Forest Department, charged with assuring protection within national preserves. On a drive along a 32 kilometer road through the Nilgiri Biosphere, we passed through several individual wildlife preserves and parks, demarcated by gated check points and uniformed guards. At a cluster of Forest Department buildings, we saw several chained elephants. Our driver pulled over and asked one of several lounging men, who watched us carefully, if we could take pictures. A cage, carefully constructed of logs, held one elephant. As we walked back to the car, our driver insistently whispered several times, “Put the camera in your pocket.” After some persistent questioning he described how the Forest Department team would train the elephant and rent it to temple festivals and if pictures got to journalists or politicians there “could be trouble.” Down the road, as we passed through the next gate manned by a lone uniformed guard, our driver urged that we hide the camera because he could be fined. In India, fines are typically paid in cash, on the spot. This is clearly not the implementation of preservation laws. Elephant rental to temple festivals, by the way, is lucrative. Earlier we had been told at a large temple elephant rental lot, home to nearly one hundred elephants, that an elephant can fetch up to 40,000 rupees (about $500 USD) a day, depending upon it’s beauty. (Elephant beauty is very specific, high forehead, long legs and good bones, according to one taxi driver.) This in a country where there is a tradition of elephant processions at hundreds of temple festivals throughout the year.

Later relating this story to an owner of a Mysore hotel spa, she simply dismissed it with, “Oh, that happens all the time. There are poachers everywhere.” And that these men may have been government employees? She gave a look of even more disdain.

Without a doubt our favorite bird viewing spot has been in the Karanji Lake Nature Park, near the Mysore Zoo. Originally a man made water supply one hundred years ago for the royal family, posted signs tell visitors that the lake was restored as a bird and butterfly sanctuary with an Asian Development Bank grant several years ago. Well maintained paths around the lake with carefully designed signs showing the birds found in the park, make it a pleasant refuge in a busy city, away from honking horns. There is an unexpected bounty of tropical birds. Nesting painted storks, anhingas, and white pelicans are just a few of the delightful birds you can spend hours watching from the edge of the lake, an observation tower, or in rented paddle boats. And, in Mysore, a well stocked book store had several birds of India books!

Religion Under Kerala's Communist Government

2007-01-28T02:06:00.000-08:00

The State of Kerala, widely reported to be the first elected communist government, would seem an unlikely place for so many temples, Hindu and Jain, mosques, churches of numerous denominations, even a basilica or two, and synagogues everywhere. Religion, is seems, is infused into daily life, from personal identification and diet, to celebrations and knowledge of gods. Festivals are held in various temples at different times throughout the year, some with small and huge elephant processions. Music and chanting wafting (or blasting, depending) from temples sometimes wakes us early in the morning, and the Arabic call to prayer from mosques can be heard in the late afternoons. Small and large temples are gaily decorated and streets in towns, villages and larger cities around temples have colorful banners lining and hanging above the road leading to the local temple at festival time.

“What is your good name?” seems to be one way of asking our religion, with Michael winning nice smiles from Christian Keralans, who have familiar names like Matthew, Abraham, Joseph and Mary. One yoga teacher assured us that “Jesus was in our hearts and has the power to heal,” which we would have thought an odd statement from a yoga teacher before coming to Kerala. Other yoga teachers silently meditate beneath paintings of Shiva and other Hindu gods with photos of gurus hanging from their studio walls.

In Cochin, The Koder House, now a small hotel, was until recently the home of the Jewish community’s patriarch, Mr. Satu Koder, until his death. In Mattancherry, a well known synagogue has barely enough men to hold Friday night and Saturday services, but is open for tourists, except Friday and Saturday. The Lonely Planet reads that it is open except for Saturday, but one of the many Kashmiri merchants with shops clustered on Jew Street told us that there was an argument between members of the congregation on cleaning before services, so now a sign is posted, “Closed Friday and Saturdays.” The same merchant told us vivid stories and the significance of the animals that gods are portrayed riding or standing with for the various apparitions of the Hindu gods Shiva, Durga and Krishna. His face was so intent in his telling, that when I asked him, “Are you Hindu?” he looked surprised, and said, “No! I’m Muslim, but I know these stories from films and I read.”

Sarah, an older Jewish woman, owns a shop on Jew Street and buys embroidered towels from “poor Catholic convent girls.” She speaks English and Malayalam, responding with a little disgust to my stupid question, “of course I speak Malayalam, these people aren’t educated,” as she gestured towards the crowded street. She was born in Cochin and has lived her entire life in Kerala.

In Fort Cochin, guest house owners Leslie Fernandez, and another named Aijai Matthew Abraham who with his mother Mary, run a lovely large Dutch colonial houses turned into guest houses, or “home stays.” Mary, obviously proud of the culture, arranged for us to see a mercifully abridged performance of the Kathakali, the ancient dance form based upon the Mahavharata, Ramayana and Bhagavata, the stories of the gods Rama and Krishna. Traditional temple performances are said to go six to nine hours, or last all night.

Ashams are scattered around the countryside, usually named for a leading swami, and they attract hundreds if not thousands of visitors. Passing a huge one on an overnight backwater houseboat trip between Kollam and Alappuzha, a bridge connects a temple complex with two concrete residential towers on the other side of the canal. It is the home base ashram of the famous female guru, Shri Amritanandamay Devi, the Hugging Mama. A French woman who stayed there told us that the towers housed 3,000 residents, and that when HM travels, she is accompanied by 300 devout followers. (More about our mountain forest ashram experience in the Searching for the Perfect Yoga School posting)

The annual pilgrimage of thousands of male devotees dressed in orange and black dhotis to the Hindu temple, Sabarimalla, is said to be the second largest pilgrimage in the world, implying that it is second to the Haj in Mecca. (see The Temple Scene in Trivandrum posting for some eye witness details.)

Religion, tradition and government have some seemingly odd contradictions from an outsiders view point. An article in a recent edition of the Hindu Express reported that the film Water, by Deepa Meta was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film by Canada, and may be shown in India after being banned following “violent protests by fundamental Hindus” during her first attempt to film it in India four years ago. Guest house owner, Mary, quietly acknowledged that there will be “some criticism,” if it is shown in Kerala because non explicit scenes of a widow seventy years ago forced into prostitution may offend. Scenes from the erotic Kamasutra are popular in paintings, sculpture and readily available in books sold in the busy book shops in any city. Another article reported the government suspension of a private satellite TV station for showing inappropriate programming, meaning a “documentary” entitled “The Sexiest Commericals in the World,” that offended the national censors who are sensitive to religious pressures. Kerala is recognized as one of the most religious states in the country. It seems that the Keralan communist parties and intermittently elected government skipped the part of Marx’s writing that “religion is the opiate of the people.”

Searching for the Perfect Yoga School

2007-01-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

Up the Malabar Coast in Search of the Perfect Yoga School

Chandra sat cross legged on the roof of the Kovalam Jeevan Aryvedic Beach Resort and led his three students through breathing excercises called pranayama, then moved the group into standing positions. As the sun broke above the coconut palmed hill to the east, the students practiced namastar, or sun salutes. The rhythmic breathing, with eyes closed, was in time with the rolling of Arabian Sea waves crashing onto the beach below. The yoga teacher gave us directions to the school he learned his craft, in Trivandrum.

In Trivandrum, the Sivananda Yoga School is tucked into a neighborhood house. Above the din of music and speech from huge speakers set across the street for an annual neighborhood residential meeting, two teachers explained the history of the school, which they said originated in India and is now world wide with it’s headquarters in Canada, north of Montreal in the Laurentian Mountains. Pictures of two swamis, hung above an eclectic altar, that included a picture of Jesus, a picture of one of the swami’s elderly mother, flowers, oil lamps and bright fabrics. Classes are given at the school for people who stay elsewhere, since there are no accommodations for students at this branch. The teachers, one a red head originally from South Africa, explained all teachers are volunteers, accepting donation from students. The donation amounts are listed in the school literature.

Moving onto our first ashram

A moderately crowded, winding, two lane road following a couple of different small rivers leads up from Trivandrum, through coconut palm forests and rubber tree plantations. A hired driver deftly swerved between buses and trucks coming down, passing slower vehicles in pure Indian style. In some stretches, market stalls were clustered on either side of the road before the steeper climb into the tea and spice growing Agastya Mountains. The well known Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwastari Ashram sits on the edge of a man made lake, on a hill above the Neyar Dam. The complex has separate men and women dormitories. Each cubicle has two cots, with mosquito netting and bedding provided. Huts are available for a few students. A large, two story covered open air teaching pavilion doubling as an eating hall, kitchen, temples and various other out building are within a pleasant garden. Since we arrived unannounced on a Sunday, we were placed in the dorms for the minimum three night stay. There are set times for yoga and meditation classes, meals, Karma yoga (which means light work around the place) lectures and lights out. A signature is required on one page list of mandatory rules at check in. In addition to the Yoga Vacationers, like us, we discovered that an international teacher training here has brought one hundred and sixty seven yoga students from twenty-two different countries. We’ve met students from England, Switzerland, Uruguay, Spain and amazingly, Iran. The head swami, who flew in from Canada with some other teachers for the course, announced that chants will be given in various languages in the next few days. There is a chant book, all in Sanskrit with the notable exception of the gospel Amazing Grace. Staff prepare huge quantities of vegetarian food which several hundred students devour with fingers off of metal plates, silently (it’s another rule) twice a day while sitting cross legged on the floor of one of the great halls. Ten Hindu gods, Siva, Ganesh, and Sarawati in their traditional postures and accoutrements (tigers, snakes) included, all in bright painted colors look down from the walls. At the end is a large stage with statues and hung hanging photos of the two founding swamis, and burning oil lamps. The day officially begins before light with a gong at 5:00 am, but Bollywood movie music from a nearby village radio and lions roaring from a “wildlife park” across the lake wake us earlier. After morning yoga classes, one by the lake with the Western Ghats looming in the distance, we sneaked away and found a lovely place behind the kitchen, near staff dormitories, under trees loaded with birds I’d never seen before, to read our stack of New Yorkers. Reading is supposed to be limited to spiritual literature. So, on to the next yoga school, perhaps in Kochi.

Sampling Ayurvedic Treatment

2007-01-19T20:11:00.000-08:00

Ayurvedic treatment clinics and hospitals abound along the coast of southern Kerala, within each community they are attached to numerous resorts, attracting tourists for one to twenty eight day stays with various treatment packages. A legitimate clinic will have an Ayurvedic doctor in charge and offer massage and herbal medicine treatments. An initial consultation with the doctor who will go through a series of questions to diagnose your disease or whatever ails you. She will then prescribe a specific treatment. For example, for shoulder arthritis a poultice of turmeric, lemon and sometimes fenugreek in heated coconut oil to be lightly pounded along your naked body while you are lying on a massage table. For some ailments a hot steam hose is gently sprayed after the oil massage, for others a steam bath with only your head above the wooden box is prescribed. Yet another treatment is warm oil dripped from slowly on your forehead as you lie prone on a table. Warm oil with various herbs is the mark of an Ayervedic massage. Some tables are wooden, looking something like an oval embalming table with a trough and lip bordering the sides to keep the oil contained. Other tables are the more typical standard massage table covered in thick vinyl that westerns are used to seeing. (That is, if you are a massage affectionato.) Regardless, you need to check the facilities each time for cleanliness, because standards vary and some are filthy with dirty towels and enough leftover oil on the table to be deep fried. Other tables are clean in an antiseptic hospital clinic type room, complete with drab painted green walls.

The doctor at one of many Ayurvedic resorts in Yarmaka, a relaxed tourist beach hang out built out of coconut palm plantations on a cliff overlook the Arabian sea with scores of Aryvedic treatment centers, sat at her desk in her neatly wrapped sari and questioned my general health. For a sore back she had a specific treatment in mind, but when I revealed that we were staying only for two more days, her eye brow arched, she tried to hide her slight disgust and suggested two back massages. When I asked, “for one hour?” as is typical for most treatments, her eye brow arched again, and she replied, “Half body, half hour massage.” Two half body massages later at 300 rupees each, the back feels pretty good. The exchange rate is roughly 45 rupees per US dollar. Anjee, one of the massage therapists is one of four who works for the good doctor’s clinic. She spent one year in a massage school in Kochi, up the coast. Now she takes two busses for one hour each way from her home 20 km away from the clinic and says she does seven massages on a normal day. A tour group from France was expected the next day so she would be busier.

During three nights at the Sivananda Ashram, which also had an Ayurvedic doctor and massage therapists, we met three young men from Kerala enrolled in a yoga teacher training with about 160 others from Europe, Iran and the Americas. They had just finished a year long course in hotel management and had stopped on at the ashram for a month long yoga teacher’s certificate training. A certificate and English, the language of business seems to be a perquisite for a decent paying job. Malayalam is the language of Kerala and many people are bi or tri lingual, Hindi being the legal national language.

On the road, or boat, again looking for that next massage further north on the Malabar Coast.

The Temple Scene in Trivandrum

2007-01-16T00:24:00.000-08:00

The narrow lane leading up to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple is lined on one side with dozens of small stalls selling small toys, souvenir trinkets, tea, roasted cashews and other products for those headed for the temple. The other side of the lane is bordered by a long straight white wall topped by a wooden roof tipped up on the ends, characteristic of Keralan architecture, that is the Puthe Maliga Palace of the Travancore majarajas, and now a museum. Ahead, the temple looms about eighty feet above the road with its intricately stone carved figures of Hindu deities. Larger statues from the pantheon of Hindu gods stand on pedestals or reign from thrones beside the arched entries set on a stone platform reached by steep steps. To the side of the lane, behind the stalls is a city block sized open stone reservoir of water, known as a tank, where a few stone steps lead down to a narrow platform from which the devoted could pay 5 rupees to bathe.

On a Saturday evening near sundown, hundreds of worshipers made their way towards the temple, some milling around by the stalls and in the lane chatting and visiting each other, others walking together, many holding hands or by themselves. Women wore bright, colorful silk saris. The saris with flashes of red, gold, emerald green and peacock blues, some bordered with gold thread, flowed gracefully around dark skinned bodies. Some men wore simple white cloth dhotis, and bare chests. A sign in English warned that only Hindus were permitted to enter the temple itself, but as a couple of tourists we were not bothered by anyone as we walked around the outside platform of the temple, then bargained briefly with a vendor for a bag of delicious spiced roasted cashews. Part of the throng of worshippers were a group of about thirty male pilgrims, stopping off on there way to a major, all male annual temple festival in another part of Kerala, that gathered around one of several Land Rover vehicles to chant and pray to a small oil fire placed reverently on the hood of one of the cars. These men were distinguished by their black and orange dhotis. Their Land Rovers carried small temples mounted on their roofs in front of the loaded luggage racks. The cars presumably traveled in a caravan since all flew bright orange flags in each side of front windows, sticking into the air like escort vehicles. The story is that thousands of men in this sect traditionally walked through the jungle for days, braving tigers and other wild animals to reach the sacred temple high in the mountains. In modern times Land Rovers seem to have changed the mode of transportation for the more affluent part of this sect.

On another corner in downtown Trivanduram is a low lying half block sized temple of Ganesh, the elephant figure in Hinduism, where a group of dhoti wearing men could be seen just inside the dark entry throwing coconuts into a rectangular stone tub. A young English speaking man outside the temple explained that the men were making an offering with their prayers, like a better job, or whatever wish they hoped Ganesh would fulfill. One man labored with a large wooden rake to mix up the smashed coconuts. Throngs of men and women entered the temple, stepping down a few steps below the street level. The main street in front of the temple, known as MG Avenue, for Mahatma Ghandi was crowded with auto rickshaws, motorcycles with two or more people, new and old cars, including the ever present Ambassador taxi, open window local buses spewing black clouds of exhaust, and walkers dashing between all the vehicles in the noisy din.

Meeting up with Portlanders half way around the world actually happens

2007-01-11T05:33:00.000-08:00

Walking out of the Trivandrum airport yesterday morning was another miracle—low and behold there was a driver waiting with my name on a sign. It was a little unclear how he knew to be there at that time, but later we discovered he was sent by a Portlander, the friend of a friend with whom I established email and phone contact, staying in Trivandrum in the house he and his wife had built on family property. They have come to Trivandum each year for about a month, for the past sixteen years. Later, after a good swim in the warm water of the Arabian Sea and a fresh fish dinner, our good friends and neighbors from Portland arrived at our hotel in Kovallam beach from Kochi, and within a few minutes another driver and car came to take us to the home in Trivandum to meet the other Portlanders. (While in the car, our friends told us they had dinner with mutual friends from Portland who they had arranged to meet via email.) We met a several family members, had beer and home cooked Keralan snacks prepared in wonderful hospitality by the sister-in law of our new found friends. He regaled us with some good stories. He told us that on the day that Sadaam was executed, the road south of the airport was blocked by Keralans who demonstrated their displeasure of American hypocrisy and would slap a picture of Sadaam on foreigners’ cars windshields. Foreigners were not in any danger, but many people didn’t go to work that day according to our new friend. Kerala is known as the first elected communist government and literacy and trade unionism is higher here than in other parts of Indian.

Kolavallam Beach is a mile long strip of shops, restaurants, small hotels, and yoga and massage centers full of European and Australian tourists. Indian women selling cut fruit and men selling trinkets roam the beach. Beach chairs and umbrellas rent for twice a typical Indian wage. Crews of fisherman share the beach launching their large wooden 10 person fishing boats to row off shore and drop nets. Crews of 20 or more pulling hand over hand on huge gauge rope haul laden fishing nets to the beach chanting songs to make the work easier and keep the rhythm of pulling together. It is a traditional style of fishing you can imagine being hundreds of years old. The catches are silver sardines that fill roughly two or three slightly large than a milk carton box. This amount of fish is the result of hours of work for what we are told is 2000 rupees a box—about $44. For us it is a romantic and beautiful scene, but then our hands are not rope burned and we can buy delicious fresh fish dinners overlooking the sea.

Sim Card Sagas

2007-01-11T05:28:00.000-08:00

Many times I have enjoyed shocking American friends telling them that cell phones in India (Iran, Morocco too) are prevalent and much cheaper to use than in America. However, I have discovered that although this is still true, the bureaucracy to actually reactivate the Indian cell phone that we had purchased last visit to India is a labyrinth of rules, and of course, I only discovered each rule one at a time, thinking each time I returned to one of many Air-Tel shops first in Bangalore then in Kovallam Beach south of Trivandrum in Kerala having accomplished the needed requirement, there was another to meet. The general rules, and there were exceptions in each shop, are that a copy of your passport front page and the page with the Indian visa, a head shot photo (called a snap by English speaking shop workers) proof of a local address (which hotel desk clerks are loath to give) will allow the sale of a new sim card which expires in one month and some air time. Air time can easily now be added (at least that is the theory) After several days and fulfilling all of the rules, signing many forms and paying 200 rupees we now have an activated cell phone and I was able to call my mom briefly last night. These rules are apparently part of the Indian government requirements to track cell phone use by criminals and terrorists. Just who keeps the records of all the hundred thousands of forms and snaps would be one interesting thing to know. Presumably if a cell phone is used for nefarious purposes, the police would come looking for the owner of the sim card, so you can be sure that if my cell is ever stolen I will certainly report it to Air Tel!

Arriving Miracles

2007-01-11T05:26:00.000-08:00

Well, we made it, arriving right on time into Bangalore airport at 1:15 am on Tuesday January 9th. Miracles of miracles, there was actually a man among the small scrum of taxi drivers and waiting relatives outside the airport exit door holding a placard with “Ballal Residency Hotel Francie Royce” waiting patiently for us when we walked out after easily clearing immigration and customs and our hour plus wait to successfully claim our bags. There is nothing so comforting than to know that someone is actually expecting you when you are ready for a bed. A quick drive to our hotel, reserved via their website, and a sigh as we finally laid our tired bodies flat and slept for several hours. Except for feeling like I really wanted to just lie down and sleep for a brief period in the Frankfurt airport and couldn’t fit comfortably on those waiting room seats designed to discourage just that, the flight does not seem to have been miserable. The Bangalore airport surprised us somewhat that it is old, one baggage claim belt and not the high tech entry into this city that set the pace for India to be the world’s second largest exporter of computers and the location of call centers for numerous multi-national companies. (Next time you need help with your cell phone, computer or soft ware, ask the service representative on the other end of the line where they are and there is a good chance Bangalore will be their answer.)

Our first introduction to Lufthansa employees on this trip, and we have made several on that great connecting flight that opens up Portland through Frankfurt to hundreds of cities in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, was the obviously German supervisor at the PDX counter who was annoyed with her co-worker for politely asking us to come forward from the line and check in since the supervisor had wanted to help someone in another line. We looked around and a woman waiting in another line, smiled knowingly and we smiled back. Later in Frankfurt, during the unsuccessful attempt nap, Lufthansa check in crew announced over the loud speaker that everyone needed to clear the waiting room, and line up to one side in the hallway so we could be checked in. As a couple of hundred tired passenger confusedly moved to get in line, another Lufthansa employee gruffly barked that we were in the way of the 300 passengers that were deplaning at the gate next to us, and to move to the other side. Lufthansa is a comfortable airline to fly, the full tasty meals with choice of beverage, including wine, are served twice and departure times were fairly punctual. Some of their employees, however, seem to think that the airline would run smoother without those pesky passengers. We kept a good humor and laughed quietly at the national stereotype.

Can you meet half way around the world using email to find each other?

2007-01-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

This trip starts out with weeks of planning and getting tickets on Lufthansa, flying Portland to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Bangalore with scheduled arrival January 9th. We had intended to meet our good friends who are in India touring after a couple of weeks volunteering at a clinic near Mysore at Mysore. So, going to Google, I found a great hotel in Mysore and made reservations, confirmed by email. Several days later our friends emailed to say they are ready to leave Mysore and how about Kerala. After numberous emails we think we will meet in the city of Trivandrum on the coast of Kerala, miles away from Mysore, not even in the same state. Through another friend I have an email address of her co-worker who is currently visiting his family home ivandrum and who has offered to send a driver and car to pick up us at the airport, and of course stay at his house. Our other Portland friends don't want to do that since they feel they have had enough freeloading in Indian family homes, so we declined the generous offer. I do hope that we will be met by a car and driver in Trivandrum, get to visit the friend of a friend and his home, and meet up with our friends. It will be exciting to see if we end up in the same hotel, let along the same city half way around the world in two days from now. Stay tuned.