Richard's Travel Blog

Hello everybody. Happy Easter.
Ever since leaving Argentina last week, I´ve been moving pretty slowly, spending a couple of days in the border town of Chile Chico, then taking a couple of days to come around the lake there and getting to Coyhaique. There´s nothing particularly interesting to report, so I´ll just post a few pictures of the area. These first are from spots along the lake whrre we stopped.

I stayed a couple of days in the tranquil village of Puerto Tranquilo on the way. The thing to do there is to take aboat ride to some interesting marble formations.

The rest of the pictures I´ve taken since blogging last are less good versions of that same stuff. So, be well, all of you. I´ll leave you with a picture of a rainbow over the valley Coyhaique is in.

Hello again. I´m wending my way up north and stopped in Puerto Natales again to see Torres del Paine, one of Patagonia´s most beautiful parks. As I expected, it was too cold and windy to attempt a hike of several days out in the bitterness. So I took a minibus tour. I have been able to upload four pictures, but some some technical reason I has yet to figure out, cannot upload any more at this time. Here are the four. The animals are called guanaco. They are relatives of the camel and look like them in the face when you see them up close. The next are two of the many beautiful mountain scenes. The last is of a lake with icebergs calved by Grey´s Glacier which can be seen in the distance.

If and when I find out what is happening with my memory card or whatever is the problem, I´ll post some more pictures. I have time. The next bus for my next destination doesn´t leave until tomorrow night. Meanwhile, I´ll get some professional help if I can find it. Hee hee, maybe I should get professional help in more than one way

Sir Earnest Shackleton slept here. This house is in Punta Arenas.

That name may mean nothing to you, but the story of his and his crew´s heroic failed effort to reach the South Pole in 1914 has enthralled millions over the last century. Those who know of it know why I took this picture. He stayed here while organizing the rescue of the crew men he left behind on Elephant Island. Do yourself a favor and look up the story on Wikipedia. Go ahead, do it now. I´ll wait.
Better still, go to Barnes and Noble and look at ¨Endurance. The Incredible Journey of Sir Earnest Shackleton¨ by Alfred Lansing, or any of the other many books with the photographs taken at the time. A couple of the pictures on the Wikipedia site are worth noticing. One is of Shackleton on South Georgia Island after two years stranded in the Antarctic. He was only 42 at the time. Also look at the picture of the James Caird, the lifeboat in which he crossed Drake´s Passage between Antarctica and South Georgia Island (no tropical paradise itself). Another lifeboat left behind at Elephant Island was named the Stancomb-Wills after Janet Stancomb-Wills, a tobacco heiress who helped fund his expedition. I didn´t know that.
I´m sure 90% of you are now bored to tears.
I rode part way back here to Puerto Natales with an Antarctic researcher who, now that fall has arrived and it´s cold, was returning to deal with all his data. So all that stuff is fresh in my mind and imagination. That was an interesting conversation.
It´s not exactly balmy even here in southern Patagonia. It´s the wind that gets you. It never stops.
I just returned here after seeing Myung off to northern Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. Her flight left from Ushuaia in the Argentine portion of Terra del Fuego. It´s the southernmost city of any size in the world and real pretty. Here´s a overview and some pics from the ¨beach¨.

The next day after getting Myung off, I went for a nice 14 km walk in the nearby national park. It was rather nice out, considering. I have a couple of nice pictures. The second is of a huge beaver dam. I didn´t see any beavers, though they say they are around. The people say, that is. I didn´t stay around long. Too windy.

It´s interesting how when you travel alone you talk with different people. I like talking with Myung of course, but couples naturally talk to each other a lot and less than they would with others. I walked in this park with a chemical engineer for a US Air Force subcontractor. I learned more about the plusses and minuses of US and other air forces planes than I ever knew before.
That kind of brings me up to the present. I came back up here to Puerto Natales thinking of walking a popular 4-5 day hike, but have thought wiser of it. I´ll take the bus tour. After this, I´ll head north again. There are no roads through southern Chilean Patagonia, so it´s a two or three day haul around to Coyaique. From there I´ll take the supposedly scenic Carretera Austal road to maybe Puerto Montt and Chloe. I don´t know about after that. There is a beautiful four day ferry ride from Puerto Natales to Pueerto Montt, through the remote glaciated fjords of the Patagonian archipelago. I had thought the ticket was almost 700 USD, but I find out it´s only 336 USD. Unfortunately the ship sails tonight. So I was thinking of taking it the other way around and coming back here yet again from Puerto Montt. The price even goes down to 300 USD after April 1, for obvious reasons. But there are some other places I want to see north of Puerto Montt. Oh well, everyone should have to face decisions like this, right?
I don´t know when I´ll be done with South America. I´m toying with the idea of just taking busses all the way up to the States. More likely I´ll burn out down here and fly to Korea. After that?… We´ve entered into negotiations.
That´s about it for now. Be well, all of you.
Here´s a last shot from the ferry across the Straights of Magellan. Many passengers. About 20 of us were human. That´s three levels of sheep in that truck. baahhh

Greetings.
Click on any picture you want to see bigger.
We finally left Buenos Aires and headed first for the lake country, on the eastern side of the Andes Mountains southwest of Buenos Aires. The main city, Bariloche, is a quite developed tourist destination with every lind of convenience for the many foreign and Argentine visitors. We hung out there for several days, kind of getting our traveling sea legs again. The best thing to be able to do there would be to rent a car and drive around looking at the many lakes with their mountanous backdrops. As is so often the case when traveling on a shoestring, we decided to forego that and take in some scenes we could do easily on public transportation. I may go back there and maybe go in with a group on a car, but for now I´m satisfied.

You can go up in many places to vistas like that above. We went to the most popular spot from where that picture was taken. I took the tram. Myung walked up. She´s a great hiker, stronger than I am, really.

If you are rich, there are plenty of high end accommodations to be had. I walked around on the grounds of a five star resort complete with golf course and took the next two pictures. My guess is that these cottages cost about $1000 per night. We passed on that. Over the hill was the view in the second picture.

I say ¨I¨ walked around because Myung was intercepted by security. They tried to make her leave the whole resort even though she didn´t know she wasn´t supposed to go on the grounds. She then only wanted to go to the hotel´s public areas to look at the shops and restaurants. Man, that screaming Korean gave everybody all the way up the food chain a ration of shit! Woke up a few dozing millionaires, she did. Their little umbrella drinks had whitecaps.
We took many pictures of Bariloche and the environs, but you get the picture. From there we took an 18 bus ride down to southern Patagonia, to a place called El Chaiten. That was the first stop along the way we are taking to see the wonderful Patagonian scenery. There is very little population on the Argentine side, which is mostly semi-arid steppe. They are in the process of paving the highway, but a lot of it is like this.

Once you head back into the mountains, it is truly beautiful. And that´s coming from a pretty jaded traveller. There are many trekking routes. The two most popular, because they are only all day hikes, are to the bases of two glaciered mountains, Cerro Torre and Mt. Fitz Roy. Here´s on the way to Cerro Torre.

It looks like a nice little walk when you look at the glade pictures but, boy, was it cold up there. Actually, it may have been about 50 degrees F, but the wind was about 70 Km an hour. We took some pictures and headed for the more sheltered lower areas. This next pictures are of Mt. Fitz Roy. It wasn´t sucessfully climbed until the 1950´s and remains what is considered one of the most difficult ascents in the world. Unlike Cerro Torre, it was nice up there by the lake at the base, no wind. By the way, Fitz Roy was the captain of Darwin´s ship, the Beagle.

From there we took another all day bus ride back down through the steppe to El Calafate. El Calafate is famous for one of the most fantastic, easily accessible glaciers in the world, Perrito Moreno. You can walk to within about half a kilometer from the face of it on a series of terraces. This place is jaw dropping. This first picture is from a viewpoint the bus stopped at. The spit of land on the right, in front of the glacier, is where you go.

At one point the glacier calved an iceberg about the size of 20 SUV´s. THAT would have been the money shot. Myung got on one of a piece of ice only the size of about four SUV´s, but for some reason I can´t upload her pictures. I don´t know what´s up with that. About ten minutes after the one berg fell off, another bigger one floated to the surface. Apparently they break off from below the water level, too. Did you see a couple of weeks ago where an iceberg the size of Rhode Island broke off in Antartica? Hmm, ships for Antarctica leave from Ushuaia for another couple of weeks…. Ah, the old shoestring problem. It´s be nice. Hmmm.
A mere four hour ride got us to where the high Andes mostly peter out. You cross a low pass and 10 kilometers later you are in the Chilean coastal city of Puerto Natales. This is mostly known as the gateway to what Lonely Planet calls the best national park in South America, Torres del Paine. We are in Puerto Natales now. It´s a lot like the Alaskan panhandle here, in the midst of a similar archipelago and at about the same latitude south as Juneau. Fall comes early and the tourist season is just about over. It´s pretty cold and very windy. I don´t have pictures of Torres del Paine because we thought about hiking up there for a few days but Myung didn´t want to go. She took a day trip today to places you can drive to. I will probably come back and try it after Myung leaves from Ushuaia for Buenos Aires and points north in five days. I may not do it, though. It´s gertting pretty rough out there. The wind and the near constant drizzle are biting, to say the least, though at least it hasn´t started to snow at the lower levels yet. There are refuges, so you don´t have to camp, but still, five day hikes in this weather can be taxing for old guys like me.
Here, at least, is a view of the Pacific Ocean from the end of the lane where our guesthouse is.

The cruise ship up to Puerto Montt leaves from here. I´ve always wanted to take the Alaska cruise, and this would be similar, through the glaciered fjords, but the $600 for a dorm bed on that boat will probably stop me. I´m going to have to make some decisions.
That gets me to our plans. Myung is pretty tired of traveling and has decided to return to Korea. She´s flying out of Ushuaia in Argentine Terra del Fuego on the 19th. She plans to go to Bolivia and Peru. She has a ticket from Limsa to Korea on April 24. That´s too soon for me, so I´m staying on. I´ll go with her to Punta Arenas tomorrow, then then see her off in Ushuaia on the 19th. (The take off in this wind and weather in that twin prop plane should be an E ticket, I´ll wager.) I plan to come back here for Torres del Paine, then go north. Maybe I´ll take the famously scenic Carrera Austral in Chilean northern Patagonia. North of there is earthquake country, so I´ll probably come back to the lake country in Argentina and go from there to some places on the Atlantic coast. then I´ll probably tour northwestern Argentina before going to Bolivia. After that, I don´t know. Maybe down the Amazon or on up to Equador. I´ve been to Peru and Macchu Piccu is closed due to severe rains and mudslides. Or maybe Equador then down the Amazon from there. Or maybe I´ll just take a series of buses to California. That´s all in the future, though, and speculation that far ahead is almost pointless. I willl join Myung in Korea after that. She doesn´t know where she´s going to put down. It depends on her opportunities. She wants to work again, so I guess that will be the main basis for her decision. I hope it´s somewhere with a pulse, like Seoul, but she doesn´t prefer to go there. She may go to her hometown of Anyang, just south of Ulsan and north of Yangsan. I´ve been to Anyang many times. I can´t say I´m excited at the prospect of living there, but I´m willing to give it a try. We talk about this a lot. I´ll keep you posted.
So, until next time, be well all of you.

Hi everyone. Well, that idea of bringing nail art to Argentina fell through. To make a long story short, Myung looked into it quite a lot. She asked around, got a lot of information, and decided it just wasn´t going to work. We were hoping it would be easier, but it isn´t. She could have made it work with a great deal of effort, and put a few thousand dollars into it with the hope of it turning out eventually, but decided against it. I don´t blame her. This project was getting harder by the day.
She´s a little low on her readily accessible money and not hot to travel anymore, so she´s decided to go back to Korea. I´ll follow her after a while. The plan now is to tour around Chilean and Argentine Patagonia for 19 days. Then, she has an airline ticket from Ushuaia, down in Terra del Fuego, for Buenos Aires. She´ll go up to Peru for some indefinite length of time. Maybe she´ll go to Bolivia or Equador. In any case, her time frame is shorter than mine. She wants to be back in Korea in two or three months and I want to stay longer. So I´m going to move more slowly through Patagonia then northern Argentina. Then I´ll probably go to Bolivia and Equador, but I might change my mind and go to Brazil. I´ve been to Peru, but I could go again.
At the end of the month we´ll go first to Bariloche, to the southwest near the Andes Mountains and the Chilean border. From there we´ll go south through Chile to El Calafate and see some sights in southern Patagonia. For a preview, search Bariloche, El Calafate and Ushuaia. For now, we are just hanging out. Last week I went to Iguazu Falls, an 18 hour bus ride from here. Myung has been there, so I went alone. The ride was actually pretty good. The bus was dreamy. I had a top deck front row seat anad slept well. Iguazu is amazing. Some places are better than their pictures. This is one of them. I think this place is better than Victoria Falls or any others I´ve seen. It´s a UNESCO World Heritage Site that deserves the acclaim. Please excuse the quality of some of these pictures. It rained the entire time I was in the park. In fact it rained so hard, it drowned yet another camera. The couple of the clearer pictures are Myung´s from when she was there on her way here from Brazil.

You can walk along the top on a series of foot bridges. This was where my camera got soaked, though it did continue to function for the rerst of the day.

Then there is an upper trail and a lower trailfrom where you get different perspectives of the different parts of the falls. A couple of these are sort of duplicates because I uploaded Myung´s too.

There are animals there also, even some panthers and jaguars, but this isn´t Africa and the numbers are low and the cats especially are ellusive. Here´s a coati and coati family. Then there are bird pictures Myung took.

I´ve got a couple of pictures from one of the botanical gardens here in town. My new camera has different proportions, I notice.

That about takes care of it for now, I think. I may blog again before leaving on Sunday for Bariloche. If not, I´ll see you when I see you. Be well, all of you.

Well, I wasn´t really expecting this, but here´s the scoop to his point.
When I got here, almost the first thing Myung told me was that she liked Buenos Aires. There was more. She had an idea that maybe she could do business here. Okay, she has said that sort of thing before. It turns out that she was feeling me out about really staying to do business, about quitting traveling at least for a while.
I did some soul searching. The fact is that I´m not weary from traveling, but I was getting too jaded about the things I see and do. Nothing was really exciting. Honestly, I felt like I could travel or not, at this point. All I needed was a better idea. Alone, I wouldn´t have stopped life on the road. There is something about instability and change that is comfortable for me, even if the sites and sounds themselves aren´t exciting. On the other hand, when I saw the twinkle in Myung´s eyes when she introduced the, then, embryonic idea of doing business, I recognised in myself a kind of enjoyment that she could be happy doing it. She has gone with me where few women would go and dealt with a lot of adversity. She has also basically lost her desire to travel and was only following me around. We have been kicking the can down the road about what were we going to do when one of us had had it. So, I decided not to find out what the bitter end to that process was going to be and told her I´d stay with her here if she wanted.
It didn´t take long for her to get an idea. Actually, we both came up with it while brainstorning possible opportunities. It turns out that fingernail art is virtually nonexistent in Argentina. We were always chatting about what niches Koreans fill in the US, that one of them is in nail art salons. Myung has no real interest in that, per se, but it seemed obvious for us that maybe if there are opportunities to get in on the ground floor of something in Argentina, this may well be one of them.
There are a number of reasons why this may be a good idea. For one, there is no competition. That is always good. Secondly, it is not a particularly difficult skill to learn, though obviously the good artists are experienced. Thirdly, there wouldn´t have to be much capital outlay to get started. The downsides include: Though there is no competition, that means there is no market yet, either. Introducing this to a culture is ambitious, to say the least. Also, Myung speaks no Spanish and mine is inadequate, though improving. Also, there are licenses, taxes and other bureaucratic matters we are no only unfamiliar with but are complicated by us being foreigners. Finally, though the capital outlays are small, as start ups go, Myung´s ¨big money¨ is in Korea and she can´t get it without going there at a cost of around $2600 round trip. It looks like I´m in the small business loan business.
Myung is nothing if not headstrong. She has gone to another country and started up successful businesses before. She sees nothing so difficult about doing it here. She has many of the same challenges as she had in China. She didn´t know the language. The bureaucracy was daunting. She needed capital. But she´s taking concrete steps every day to solve the problems and learn about this particular industry. She´s furiously teaching herself to do the art, though she would never do that for long. She´ll hire people. She is more interested in owning/renting salons, or in concessions in beauty shops, or simply selling the materials if salons find they are making money and start going it alone. She would like it to take off and she could concentrate on distribution. She´s been in contact with a corporation in Korea, Konad, which is the world leader in quality nail art supplies. They connected her with their representative for five countries South America who is based in Santiago, Chile. Myung went to Santiago last week and met with her. She returned with a load of supplies and, more importantly in terms of making real money, sole distribution rights for Konad in Argentina.
You see where she is going. She envisons nail art being as popular as in the US and Korea and her being at the top of the industry pyramid. Now THAT is putting a twinkle in her eye. I´ve never seen her in this mode. Very interesting. More importantly for me, though apprehensive, she looks happy again. I´m happy that she is happy.
I´m willing to stay just for that. I recognise that I might go stir crazy. It´s fun talking shop with her about this, but it´s her thing. We are talking about what I might do and whether I will travel without her sometimes. I haven´t come to any conclusions other than if I don´t feel trapped I´ll be alright. I´ll do something; I don´t know what. In a way, it´s a good thing I´m a master at doing nothing. I guess my focus now is on learning Spanish. It´s coming along, but my comprehension of spoken Spanish is weak still. I read pretty well, considering I´ve been here only a month. It´s a good thing I learned Spanish when I was younger and some of it is wired into my brain already. As an entirely new language, Korean was proving to be nearly impossible.
That´s about it for now. Despite the energy Myung has put into this, it´s not certain she will see it through. She is wisely reserving the right to get out if it´s too hard or too risky. I´ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, what post would be complete without a few pictures. I have nothing special. Meetings aren´t photogenic. Buenos Aires isn´t that photogenic, to tell you the truth, but here are a couple of pictures of the Cathedral where Jose de San Martin is interred and a couple of that mausoleaum complex where almost everybody else who was anybody, like the Perons, is interred. Check out the map links on the right for Argentina and Buenos Aires. Be well, all of you.

Greetings from Buenos Aires. Things have been VERY slow around here during the New Year´s four day weekend. Almost everything closed on the afternoon of the 31st and just opened up today. Myung is off doing her own thing. That gives me a chance to blog.
We´ve settled in to our new apartment and are living about as straight a life as we are capable of. One of the really nice things about settling down is we have a refrigerator. That means we can have fresh food. AND we don´t have to cook over a fire.

So far on our few days here, we´ve walked and walked. The public transportation is great too, though the bus system is impenetrable, so far. On weekends and holidays many residents of BA, who call themselves porteños, flock to a touristy historical city near the Rio de la Plata called Tigre. We decided to do as the Romans do, and went. It was okay, not photogenic. Tigre was the capital once upon a time, but the old days are gone. The market sells tourist stuff and most of hte activity is tourist oriented. Cute enough, I guess, and we can say we went.
Actually, Buenos Aires doesn´t have much in the way of great tourist stuff. What´s good about it it is that it is so alive. There are things happening in the streets of any neighborhood, at least the ones we´ve seen so far. The action is a mix between utterly modern (straights in suits going about the business of business), to country people selling their wares on a blanket in the street, to performers and fun lovers of every kind. Everywhere they pass the hat. Tango is still a big deal here.

We happened to see these guitarists on TV the next day. They looked like such a big deal on the TV set, and here they were playing for change on the street.

There is an old, cobblestone quarter known as San Telmo. On weekends it is just nuts there.

Where we live in the city center looks like a set out of Evita. For sure, many scenes must have been filmed there.

Eva Peron would give her speeches to hundreds of thousands from the balcony of the old palace in the above picture. These demonstrators no doubt saw her in person.

And no self-respecting tourist would come here without going to her tomb.

Another tourist destination in Buenos Aires is a neighborhood, barrio, called La Boca. It´s the old port area and is generally quite run down and not a place to go at night. But in the daytime, people go to look at the colorful buildings, the street performances, and to eat. The story goes that it´s so colorful there because they used leftover ship paint to paint the buildings. They got it all dolled up now, like some kind of street in Disneyland.

I guess that´s about it for now. Most of our life is pretty mundane. Right now, I´m going to buy some coffee and a book to read. Also, I left my Spanish language book at my friend´s in Oakland, and I really should rev my Spanish up. That and lunch should do it for me. Myung went to the Korean cultural center for a book in Korean. So, be well, all of you.

… I didn´t make it. I guess I looked at the wrong chapter in Lonely Planet. I didn´t think I needed a visa for Brazil, but I do. They wouldn´t let me on the plane for the Toronto-Sao Paolo leg of my flight. So I applied that ticket toward one for Buenos Aires, then spent all day Christmas in the Toronto airport waiting for that midnight flight.
The good news is that I was only half excited in the first place about traveling in Brazil alone for two or three weeks. This way I met up with Myung on the 26th. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. We have nice reunions after this and that month apart. Brazil will be there later.
As you know if you´ve been reading my posts, Myung has been traveling hard since we left South Africa. While I was basically taking in Americana and fattening up on burgers, pizza and burritos, she went around as much of Turkey as she could in only two weeks, then pushed hard through southern Brazil. She had been in Buenos Aires for about three days when I got here. By that time, she had already decided she liked it here a lot and had begun inquiries into long term stays. My initial impression was good, as good as it´s been for a big city since Hanoi, ten years ago. So, just like that, we spent another day looking for a one month apartment rental. Then the next day we selected a fully furnished one. Now we are all moved in. Wow.
Buenos Aires is big and modern. It´s not exactly New York City, but it´s no third world dump either. I can´t help but remember when my friend, Mary, and I lived in Manhattan. That was lively enough. Now, as then, we were in the heart of the city. This time we are REALLY in the heart! Eight floors below is teeming. The nice thing about this apartment is that it is almost silent up there. We are in the back of the building. It´s also air conditioned. There is even weekly maid service. There are elevators and a doorman. Quite cushy, I must say.
It reminds me of NYC also in that there are no big stores or supermarkets, yet everything you need is a short walk away. There is a subway entrance about 10 meters from out front door, and about 20 bus lines begin withing about a half kilometer.
Oh, and the weather is lovely. We are at about the same southern latitude as Los Angeles is in the north. It´s generally sunny with a high of 80 degrees F (about 30 degres C).
This could turn out to be really sweet. There is so much to do. A third of Argentina´s population, about 11 million, live in or around Buenos Aires. Everything you could want to do eat is here. It is a true world city, with current visitors and past immigrants from all over the world. Its almost like the diverse cities in America. The streets are full of every kind of people and what they´ve brought with them. There is even a fair concentration of Americans. You don´t usually see that.
So far, Myung and I have done a couple of days of exploring, nothing terribly exciting. I´ll post what happens, of course. It´s New Year´s Eve, and almost everything is closed for a few days, including the internet places. ¨This place was open, but won´t let me upload photos. I´ll post some of those later.
I just wanted to keep up to date, unlike in Africa where I neglected to do that. I hope your holiday seasons have been nice. Be well, all of you.

I feel like I owe you all an apology. I haven’t posted an entry in months. True, there was no place we were in Africa, until the very end in South Africa, where I could upload pictures. However, I could have posted text and didn’t. I was in places where it was possible. When I finally connected with people I know, most of them said they wondered what had happened. Had I been eaten by a lion or what? Nothing happened. I just didn’t take the time to do any more than take care of some business and email a few people now and then.
I hardly know where to start. There is no way I can describe all that happened between Victoria Falls and now. Myung and I stayed in Africa until November 20. We decided to go to South America. First, I had to take care of some business in the States, so I came here. Myung didn’t want to spend the money on a short side trip to the US, so she went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, with a two week stopover in Turkey. Turkish Airlines had the cheapest fare and she got a stopover in Istanbul for, I forget, little or nothing extra. I have a ticket for Sao Paulo on December 24.
How do I summarize the last months in Africa. Whew! I guess I’ll just stick to the basics. We set out north from Vic Falls to a couple of parks in Zambia. The first day, we ran across these people in the road having a festival of some sort. No English was spoken around there, so I have no idea what was going on. We partied with them for a bit, though.

Then we went to Kafue National Park. By now we were getting a little jaded about parks and animals, but it was a nice drive through the countryside. The best thing there was a herd of thousands of buffalo going somewhere across our road.

When we got too close, they just stopped and looked at us till we got bored looking at them and went on our way.

We picked up a young Korean woman in Vic Falls and took her with us for a couple of weeks. She had had her passport stolen. She couldn’t go through with a planned overland safari trip because the Korean embassy would only give her a temporary travel document to get to Kenya for her return flight.

After stopping in the capital of Zambia, Lusaka, we went to a really nice park called South Luangwa National Park. That place was worth mentioning. What a lovely and wild place. It’s even wild outside the park. One night we were camping in our tent, and an elephant took a fancy to the tree foliage above us and trampled us and our tent while we were asleep. Fortunately, he/she didn’t stomp right on us. I might not be here to write this. I would have a good excuse to being late, though. We were fine, though the tent required a lot of duct tape to fix up the tears. And they said it was the hippos we were supposed to be wary of!

That was not “the” elephant. That incident happened in the middle of the night.
South Luangwa was beautiful, with many animals. Finally, we saw a lot of lions. Watching them consume a zebra was almost like watching a nature show in person. Maybe it was better because in that park, they didn’t mind us getting close.

There were all the usual animals in that park, including wild dogs and more buffalo.

Here is a nice picture of the river itself and one of a couple of fishermen herding fish toward their net.

After that, we went into Malawi. The Korean girl didn’t have a passport or visa, but $100 got her in. We parted ways there. She did some stuff on Lake Malawi and we took to the hills where it was cooler. There is a nice backpackers’ place near the northern part of the lake called Mushroom Farm. It’s on the road to Livingstone, which has historical interest and still serves as a large missionary outpost. They grow and roast coffee a few hundred meters from there. The view down to the lake is nice, and the campsites sit right on the edge of the cliff so you can see down. Or you can stay in a cottage.

The coffee sure was good.

So was the shower,

and the composting toilet, into which you just dump ashes and some leaves and it works perfectly.

Here were some kids in the next village pounding corn into cornmeal.

There is a nice stream and waterfall with a cave at the top. That was a needed escape from the heat.

From there we bounced along by the lake, getting in frequently to escape the heat. To tell you the truth, a lot of the time now I can’t tell the Lake Malawi pictures from the Indian Ocean pictures taken in Mozambique. Sometimes I can remember.

I’m pretty sure those pictures were taken along Lake Malawi. The next ones on our memory cards are definitely still in Malawi. This illustrates how hard some of those people work. Typically, timber is rough cut where it’s cut down. Then guys like this carry it down the tiny roads. In Malawi, this man gets about $3/day to load this on a bicycle and ride/push it many kilometers.

Malawi actually isn’t much to look at. There are no outstanding animal parks, views or sites of any sort. In my opinion, however, the nicest people are there. They aren’t as jaded about tourists as in many places. They talk to you without wanting anything from you. Unfortunately, most of the time, when an African starts up a conversation, eventually he’ll get to what he wants to sell you. Or he’ll come right out and ask for money or food.
Anyway, then we went to Mozambique. Here’s the border on the Malawi side. Typically there is all kind of trade going on at the borders.

Mozambique isn’t much to look at either. There is a long coastline, but South Africa’s is prettier and more majestic. The first place we went was Ilha de Mozambique, the capital of Portuguese Mozambique until the early 19th century. This is the view across the water to the island from where we camped.

The city is a crumbling relic of what it was. It’s a World Heritage site, but like most of Mozambique, it’s not being kept up well. By African standards, Mozambique is probably a success story. They haven’t fully recovered from the 20 year battle against the apartheid South Africa/Rhodesia/US destabilization campaign that began after the Portuguese junta collapsed in 1974 and they found themselves suddenly independent in a very right wing neck of the woods.
This first picture is of part of the fortress wall and some people walking by. All those places are largely ignored, while life goes on slowly slowly.

From there we stopped at a few places along the coast on our way back to South Africa. We were pretty spent from out efforts. The stars we aligning in such a way that it seemed like it was time to leave Africa, at least for a while. The rainy season was approaching; the tent was never quite the same after the elephant episode; the truck was getting a personality; the rest of our stuff seemed to be wearing out all at the same time; and we were just plain tired. 6 months of mostly camping, cooking over a fire and the general discomforts and inconveniences were getting to us. Plus, as always happens, things weren’t as impressive anymore. It was time for a break. The last highlight for me was some scuba diving. Then we went back to Nelspruit, South Africa where I sold the truck to a used car lot, hung out in Pretoria for a few days, and left back on November 20.
Since I got to the US, I’ve been able to take care of some business/money stuff which I needed to do sometime in the near future. Also, I’ve gotten to see friends and family. I thought the month would be far more than I needed, but I now think it was just about right. The highlight of my social agenda was getting to see my brother, whose health is much improved, his wife, his daughter who had a baby boy 6 months ago, and her husband. Here’s a family photo of them.

That’s the story, morning glory, albeit in highly abbreviated fashion. Myung is in Brazil already. I’m headed down there on the 24th. We haven’t formulated a plan yet. I would tentatively like to go to Patagonia while it’s warm in the southern hemisphere, then loop around to the north through Chile and Peru. I think Bolivia and Ecuador are are in the cards. Who knows, though?
I’m going to leave you with a bunch of people pictures. I think I will start a Facebook account. Many people have suggested that, saying they’d like to know when I’ve posted a blog entry and want to be more conveniently in contact. I’ll get that up some time this weekend.
Be well, all of you, and happy holidays.

Since I last wrote, we finally made it to Chobe National Park in Botswana. We first tried to get in from the south, but the main bridge was washed out and you should have seen the row of logs some guy said was the other way. Actually, I’d have tried it if I hadn’t just spent 2 weeks and about $1500 getting my truck going after the last time it went swimming. We went 600 km around the swamp and spent a day along the Chobe River. That picture above is kind of the money shot, taken as the sun went down before we headed on to Zambia.
Here are a couple of hippo pics. You see them a lot in the water, but it’s a little unusual to be able to see them ambling around on the shore.

Botswana and Zambia have a 750 meters long border, just wide enough for the ferry across the Zambezi River.

Victoria Falls is 30 km downriver if you go through Zimbabwe, and 70 km if you go through Zambia. For logistical reasons and because it wouold be a little cheaper, we went to Zambia. the Zambezi and the falls form the border between the two countries. Here’s a pic from the Zambian side. They aren’t as dramatic, as you look down the chasm where they fall instead of head on. Also, Southern Africa is in the middle of a long, terrible drought, and it is the dry season. So there is a fraction of the usual water going over, like 1/20th.

The Victoria Bridge goes over the river, and the border is in the middle of the bridge.

There is bungy jumping from there in the middle.

Here are some pics from the Zimbabwe side.

Those pictures do not do justice to one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Maybe you can picture Niagra Falls if it was a couple miles across and had 20 times as much water and fell into a deep, dramatic trench.
That’s it for now. We are probably out of here tomorrow, heading north to Kafue National Park, Lusaka, and points north. Be well, all of you.