Common Sense and Whiskey

Skyline and Ships HDR

Rainy Day at the Canal

Panama City Skyline at Night

Torrential tropical rain yesterday afternoon had finally wrung itself out by last night. Here's the view from where we're staying in Panama City, Panama. We'll hold off on the larger EarthPhotos.com versions until we get a chance to work on them a little bit more.

Panama City, Panama

Mostly overcast morning so far here in Panama City. The EarthPhotos team (which is the same as the Common Sense and Whiskey team) may not get much done. Maybe tomorrow. We may be forced, instead, to search out authentic Latin American food, and maybe a terrace café along he Amador Causeway.

Vignettes from Africa V - Around Victoria Falls

We're not in Africa. We're actually en route to Panama City, Pamana today. We'll talk with you from there shortly. Meantime, here's part five of a series of short vignettes from some of our past trips to Africa.

The Zambesi is the fourth largest African river after the Nile, Niger and Congo, at 2700 kilometers. It's the longest to empty into the Indian Ocean. It's mouth in Mozambique comprises a 120 kilometer wide delta.

Its source is in northwest Zambia. Above the falls it’s navigable by bigger boats to only ten kilometers upstream, at Kandahar island. It's a calm river with sandbars and islands. 84 species of fish, 415 of birds, Ebony, Fig, Mahogany, Waterberry and what they call the "Raintree" and the "Sausage Tree" as well as Ilala and Wild Date Palms.

A woman named Precious arranged us a Zambesi cruise. We climbed aboard a two-deck blue and white cruiser and found a seat with some agreeable gin-swilling Germans.

Upstream, hippos yawned, a croc lurked here or there, boats like ours chugged by. The sun ground us into the sundeck.

Long Weekend in Panama

Tomorrow is a travel day. We'll fly out of ATL to Panama City, Panama. While we're traveling we'll post another Africa vignette, "Around Victoria Falls," tomorrow and then we'll post from Pamana across the U. S. Memorial Day weekend. The Friday photo quiz will take a week off this week. May I commend to you some excellent holiday reading? Get yourself a copy of Common Sense and Whiskey - the book. Readers in the United States, enjoy your long holiday weekend.

Elephants Get the HDR Treatment

While we're spending some time on narratives from Africa, this week's Wednesday HDR comes from Uganda. These elephants live in the Queen Elizabeth National Park. The photo is a single shot re-exposed multiple times at different EVs and combined in Photomatix, then finished in Photoshop. Click it to make it bigger.

Vignettes from Africa IV - Day Trip to Zambia

ZNBC, Zambian TV was just a scream. At sign on at 6:00 p.m., Chinyama Mukuma, in a brown plaid jacket, and Bridget Nkhoma, brown blazer and a necklace with a cross, read us the news. It ran until they’d told it all, I guess. It started at 6:00 and ended at 6:18. Then some happy people down by a pool smiled and sang about how much they enjoyed "Saladi De-odorized Vegetable Oil." The next commercial was for the Gorilla, the Zambian equivalent of The Club anti-theft device.

The TV played videos on channel 4. They even played the warning against showing them in places like hotels.

•••••

We gambled. Three games available down at the casino, roulette, blackjack and Zambesi Poker - five card draw with no drawing. You just bet your hand. Mirja and I bought 100 Z$2 chips each and pulled up at the roulette table. Every single croupier was a trainee, and the trainer glared at all of them, all the time. I lost all my money straightaway but Mirja won about all of it back, and still we were in bed by 11:00.

•••••

While the sun rose over Zambia, white people disdained me over their cereals and fruit as I stuffed down sausages, bacon and cheese rolls. We changed hotels. Graceful, gracious, the Victoria Falls Hotel has a fine view over the fine back lawn, up the chasm of the Zambesi to the Zambia bridge and the falls' spray. Water costs more than beer.

•••••

The air parched, still, searing, we set out to walk to Zambia.

Vignettes from Africa III - Up to Victoria Falls

There's a band of five boys under a tree, all five playing xylophone-marimba-type things, their hands full of musical hammers, and a lot of smiling going on. Now there's more cumulus than blue and maybe, just maybe, rain will come. They need it keenly.

I asked a young boy, "How are you doing?"

"I am just waiting for rain, sir."

•••••

If there were no Victoria Falls here there sure wouldn't be any tourists. Flat, scrubby, hot-as-absolute-hell. Air completely still.

The instant we got to town Mirja and I did the walk down to the falls, in heavy travel mode, long sleeves and pants and all. What the hell?

We walked probably eight or nine minutes past salesmen (carved rhinos, hippos) and across the rail line that continues into Zambia. U.S. $2.50 admission was good for the day. Signs admonished you to keep strictly to the paths. In just a couple minutes, you were there.

It's hard to choose the right superlatives.

Some figures: It's seasonal, but at its peak, 12,000,000 gallons take the plunge every minute. 1,600 meters is a mile. Victoria Falls is 1691 meters wide.

It's carved from a shelf of volcanic basalt, chiseling zig zag down a fault line. It's been only 140 years - 1855 - since the first white man, David Livingstone, arrived. Grass-clad tribesmen told him of Mosi-oa-Tunya, but he named it for his queen back home. In 1905, exactly 50 years later, a rail line arrived from Cape Town on its way to Cairo. The bridge to Zambia began. By this time Cecil Rhodes was in charge, and Zambia was North Rhodesia.

We didn't care about any of that. We just lurched straight down to stand in the spray. Someone outside warned, "Oh, definitely rent a rain coat - you'll get drenched," and we did get drenched, without raincoats, and it was fabulous.

•••••

Victoria Falls has no parking lots, no dancing waters, no wax museums. Just stone pathways. We wandered the paths around the falls, through the fig and rhododendron trees. Two does teased us for awhile, and on the path back we squatted down to visit with a pack of about 20 curious suricates, sitting up on their hind legs, watching for danger, or maybe a dinner tidbit from the tourists.

At the end of the day  the spray tossed far up over the trees and the bridge to Zambia. The sky deepened pink into blue and black, and the southern cross pierced the black high and to the south. On the menu at the rooftop restaurant, crocodile thermidor for Z$45: "Enjoy a crock-tail with us."

Next: Day trip to Zambia

Vignettes from Africa II - Flying to Zimbabwe

Six-Thirty a.m., Kenyatta Avenue and Kimathi Street, Nairobi. Standing on the corner, waiting for a ride. The clouds were underlit by the rising sun, peach and blue. We were headed for Harare.

This was way back, 1995, before the world decided Robert Mugabe was a monster, and we though  “Ahh, Zimbabwe...the land of Bobby Mugabe.... Officially, His Excellency the Honorable President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, CDE Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

The "Sunshine City" lived up to its name...brilliant sun, no humidity - clear, crisp light. Harare perched atop the highveld, twelve or 1500 meters above sea level. We were speaking Shona now - thank you was datenda, beer was wa wa.

As we flew in, cumulus puffs played shadows across agricultural heartland. Occasional hillocks. The main crops were tobacco and maize, but there was also wheat, cotton, citrus, diary and what they call "commercial wildlife production."

The altitudes moderated the tropical temperatures. A perfect climate, and at only 650,000 people, a manageable size, with gracious wide boulevards, a compact center and prim, polite suburbs where properties were trimmed with hedges. It looked like Schaumberg, Illinois, or maybe a suburb of St. Louis.

We had business. We needed airline tickets to Victoria Falls. We needed a hotel there, to find the American Express office to buy money, and film. We took a room at the venerable Miekles (say nickels with an m) Hotel.

How else to start such a busy business day? We sampled the local beer at the Miekles bar. Listening to the Out of Africa soundtrack CD at the wood and wicker bar with Zambesi beers might sound hackneyed if you're used to it, but we weren't.

By three we had cash, film, air tickets and a room in Victoria Falls for tomorrow.

Because of the wide boulevards Harare didn't feel close and busy like Nairobi. But then, at 650,000 versus 2,000,000, Harare wasn’t as close and busy as Nairobi.

Department stores - Barbour's and Truworth's and Greaterman's. Between two extended stays in the bush, we went wild. The personal care section - Shield Zimbabwe deodorant. Some hair care product licensed by Clairol out of Johannesburg. Glent Lotion ("An American formula"). Preen soap.

Brentoni Italy expensive boutique. "American Express Cards Welcome" all over town. No begging except a few kids along the First Avenue pedestrian mall - and a policeman shooed them away. Some of these people did the shorts and high socks, Bermuda-style routine. It looked no less silly here. Trash cans to keep the streets clean. Smiling people. Good climate. Livable.

A (metered) taxi driver asked if it was our first time in Zimbabwe. I said yeah but don't drive us around aimlessly to run up the meter on account of that. He turned. "No, I would not. That would be stealing."

Kenya had had independence since 1962, Zimbabwe since 1980. Depending on how you looked at it, Kenya had more time to build infrastructure - or Zimbabwe had less time to let it fall in. The land of Cecil Rhodes was well built by the Brits and turned over in good shape when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.

•••••

Dinner wasn't very good. "Roots of Africa" boasted authentic local food. It couldn't've been served by a nicer, more smiling group of people. The setting was thatch and bamboo and traditional African print patterned tablecloths, open air with the grill visible through glass, out on the edge of downtown (Seventh Avenue). Chaka Khan on the juke.

But the food just didn't cut it. On the menu: matumbu (intestine), green grams (green bananas), sadza (thick porridge), rape and dovi (peanut butter). We both tried mokimo, a mash of potato, maize and beans, pry-your-lips-apart dry. Chicken stew, third world all the way, dark meat with a bone in every bite!

The most remarkable thing about Roots of Africa restaurant was their one, single, By God Urinal - a chest-high double-wide metal monolith.

Okay - maybe not a lot was happening in Harare back then. But Africa Unity Square was a sweet little green space between the parliament and the Anglican cathedral where they took Polaroids of rural folks who didn’t have cameras, standing and grinning by the fountain. It might not have been hip but it was gracious and it was sweet and I'd rather have been there than in Moi's Kenya.

Next: Up to Victoria Falls

Qantas QF32 flight from the cockpit

"Captain David Evans is a Senior Check Captain at Qantas with some 32 years of experience and 17,000hrs of flight time.... The other flight deck crew were Richard de Crespigny (Pilot in Command, 15,000hrs), Harry Wubben (Route Check Captain, 20,000hrs) Matt Hicks (First Officer, 11,000hrs and Mark Johnson (Second Officer 8,000hrs). With the Cabin Service Manager (Michael Von Reth) this team boasted some 140 years of experience and over 71,000 flight hrs – a significant factor in the successful outcome of the incident."

Fascinating interview, although it's pretty heavy on pilotese: Qantas QF32 flight from the cockpit

Friday Photo Quiz #115

The old town in the largest city in this country. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, known for its Art Nouveau architecture. Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is just below.

A good weekend from Common Sense and Whiskey and EarthPhotos.com.

Vignettes from Africa I - Driving to Nairobi

Here's a short series to be posted over several days, random short experiences in Africa. Not necessarily in any order, just observations collected over time.

Two hours 25 minutes beyond the lip of the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, we found a tarmac road. Open-backed, full-polluting Tatas tore across the flats outside town.

The run-up to Arusha was shady, tree lined, graceful. Then after the coffee plantations, ramshackle stalls like "Lucky Feed M ill." "Lucky Family General Store." "Moona Pharmacy." ("Moona is an obscenity in Finnish) "Beuty Saloon."

We got a driver in Arusha named Moses, and he said we'd make Nairobi by 4:00. Arusha called itself the halfway point between Cairo and the Cape. Maybe so, but I wondered, so what?

A few years ago a United Nations conference was postponed here because a snake fried the wiring of the Arusha International Conference Center. Made it too hot to use.

Over at the Mount Meru Hotel they’d be happy to arrange tickets for you on Air Burundi or Sudan Airways - whichever you’d like.

Moses stopped in at a little bar he knew for us to change the rest of our Tanzanian shillings into four Tusker premiums, and we sure did roll into Nairobi right at 4:00.

•••••

The most delicious thing in Nairobi was a three-day-old newspaper. It was nine days since we'd seen one. Walking back from the newsstand, a fight broke out right in the middle of Kenyatta Avenue. We stepped around the pile of people and settled into the ex-pat bar at the New Stanley Hotel, called the Thorn Tree.

Several cold Premium beers later, Maurice, a man from United Touring Company, came stridin’ in like the guy in those Keep On Truckin’ cartoons to settle a debt, clutching a one hundred dollar bill and a five.

Caught up, Premium braced and a hundred bucks richer, we felt like stepping out. They tell you not to brave the Nairobi streets at night. But the cabs wanted five bucks for two blocks’ walk, so we said screw 'em, and we walked to a place called Trattoria for Italian dinner, and then walked back. Most of the people on the streets were security men with clubs.

Next: Flying to Zimbabwe

Rwanda Gorilla: Wednesday HDR

Continuing this little run of wildlife from last week and Monday, this week's HDR is from Rwanda, where this endangered silverback mountain gorilla lives in Parc National des Volcans.

Perched on a slippery vine covered slope isn't maybe the best place to take several bracketed shots of living, breathing - and moving - wildlife, and so this HDR was produced from a single shot, re-exposed and recombined in Photomatix Pro, then finished in Photoshop CS5. Click it to make it bigger.

See related photos in the HDR Gallery, Rwanda Gallery and Animals and Wildlife Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Our silverback friend presents a good opportunity to introduce a series of posts we'll start here in a day or two. Over the course of a week or so we'll post several short vignettes from Africa, taken from previous safari trips.

Common Sense and Whiskey, the Book - Chapter Two

Here is Chapter two of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book. We'll publish each chapter over the course of the summer. You can order the entire book direct from EarthPhotos Publishing, or at Amazon.com. The accompanying photos, and additional commentary are available at The Common Sense and Whiskey Companion.

 

2 GREENLAND

You know those gauzy coffee commercials where cozy people savor their morning brew, steam rising in circles from the cup? In the midst of a scene like that, cradling our cups in our hands in Silva’s kitchen, with a great low rumble an iceberg broke apart just offshore from Ataa camp, Greenland.

Boulders of ice plunged into waves around the berg, now off balance, as it rocked side to side in slow motion. Silva stoked the commotion, cursing and scurrying for his video camera (he did this more than once). He was sure someday he’d be in National Geographic.

•••••

Silva ran the Ataa Holiday Camp. The tourist service down the coast in Ilulissat cheerfully recommended it, because Silva was a Man Of Some Repute in Ilulissat.

He was in year eighteen in Greenland, first as an itinerant musician from Denmark, invited up here to play hotels for a month, then three, then a year and one thing led to the next. Now he ran Travel Nature Touring Company and he was having a go at redeveloping this abandoned trading post into a tourist camp.

In 1915 Ataa boasted 59 residents: 58 Inuit and the station chief, the only Dane. They lived in six houses and three tents, with a school, the manager’s house, a workshop and a storehouse for seal blubber.

Seal hunting kept Ataa alive, and that year they collected 137 barrels of seal blubber, 42 barrels of shark liver, five blue and eleven white fox skins, 70 seal skins, eight and a quarter kilos of tusks and four and a half kilos of eider down.

Nobody lives there full time now. The nearest settlement today is at a place called Qertaq, thirty kilometers away.

Ataa camp sits at the base of ancient, rounded low hills of less than 1000 meters, Precambrian gneisses finally exposed only 7000 or 8000 years ago, when the ice cap most recently melted away. Ataa means “its lower part” - the base of the hills.

My wife Mirja (it’s Finnish, pronounced “Mir - ya,” sort of) and I got there by speedboat. A Quicksilver 3000 Classic bounced us across choppy water, under mean, lowering gray, 70 kilometers from Ilulissat to Ataa. Its pilot, Jergen, with his broad, expansive head, buzz cut and ready smile, was Greenland Man.

The wind kicked up. We spied the spray of a finback whale, spun around and saw him dive, and in the spinning spotted a seal.

Jergen pounded the Quicksilver’s butt into the tiny harbor at Ataa, where Silva bobbed aboard a Zodiac, perched uncertainly and growling. He wore the only clothes we ever saw him in, Nikes and a running suit.

Welcome to Ataa Holiday Camp.

Silva’s own hand, improbably, built the yellow plyboard breakfast and general headquarters shack where we warmed up over coffee. It perched on rocks some few meters from freezing, lapping water.

His sister Lilliana and her husband Filita were visiting from Florence, original Home of All Culture, and I suspect just maybe they considered Silva a bloody wide open, straight ahead idjit.

Loud and fifty, soft-hearted, quick to take a stand and quick to back away from it, Silva, with an impossibly full graying mustache and tousled hair, was a real piece of work, with eight bambinos - four in Italia and four in Ilulissat.

Silva shuffled across the kitchen, singing, whistling, posing, acting like supervising his sister Lilliana, who did all the cooking. What would he do when she went home to Italy?

Silva got caught up in the drama of the changing weather. We’d been there half an hour. Eyes widening, palms spread wide, he told us, “We cannot risk our lives to take you back if the weather is worse tomorrow!”

We sipped our coffee and watched him realize that since we’d just arrived he might be getting off on the wrong foot. He retreated behind his hand and allowed as how on the other hand his sister had to fly to Denmark on the same flight as us. When you can sit and watch a man think, his is a disarming guilelessness.

Schadenfreude and the French

Everyone with a little secret schadenfreude (to use a French neighbors' term) about the French - and we all know who we are - should read this piece by Adam Gopnik on The New Yorker's blog. It makes an important point, and it's timely:

"... it would be fair to say that while no one in Paris would have been shocked to find him sleeping with a chambermaid, most, if not all, would be stunned if he has really assaulted and attempted to rape one. The notion that France takes these things more lightly is false; adultery has different meanings, and fidelity different rules, but rape is rape."

And speaking of France's neighbors,

"But for lovers of France and French life, there is something deeply depressing not only in the apparent elimination of one of the more plausible alternatives, but by what many in Paris see as the “Italianization” of French life—the descent into what might become an unseemly round of Berlusconian squalor, matched by an inability to renew the political scene with new faces."

(Photo from the Stravinsky Fountain at the Pompidou Center, Paris, in the France Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Another Monday Morning. Problem?

HDR of a baboon at the Tierpark Hellabrunn, Munich. It's a single shot re-exposed +3 to -3 EV and recombined in Photomatix Pro, then desaturated and sharpened in Photoshop CS5, with effects applied from Nik Software. Click it to make it bigger.

See more HDRs, more Animals & Wildlife and more photos from Germany at EarthPhotos.com.

Friday Photo Quiz #114

 

This square at the center of this town's tourism was in the news a couple of weeks ago for all the wrong reasons. Can you name the square? The city? The country? The answer is after the jump. A good weekend to you from Common Sense and Whiskey and EarthPhotos.com.

Visit Greenland Next Week

•••••

"Now Willy stopped to drift as near to a berg as he dared, and went aft to dip a bucket into the water until he retrieved a bobbing basketball of ice that he picked into pieces.

We all shared martinis poured over glacial ice that popped and snapped as the relative heat of Willy’s boat freed oxygen as old as man.

“Zum Wohl!”

Three hundred thousand year old air popping in our glasses - it was the sound of Greenland."

•••••

Next Tuesday here on the blog, we'll publish chapter two of the book, Common Sense and Whiskey: Greenland. See photos in the Greenland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com and in the Common Sense and Whiskey Companion.

Unlikely Holiday

Spike Japan takes a Holiday in Fukushima: To the zone of exclusion.