Penguin Rookery, Ushuahia, Argentina

The trip was advertised as a catamaran adventure to a penguin rookery.  On the ship you have a ticket that tells you the meeting place and time and someone with a white paddle held high walks you down to the motor coach or boat.  In this case by the time we got there another group ad loaded before us, so of the 225 seats not many were left.  Greg sat on the top of the boat which is like sitting on the top of one of the hop-on hop-off coaches – pretty windy when the wind motor is started and the trip heads off for a 2 ½ hour ride up to the rookery.  We were promised that there would be places that sea lions slept out on rocks and told that we were to watch for whales, but all of that would be dependent on the animals.  “Which side of the boat to the whales like,” someone had asked.  “If you are on the starboard side, they are on the port side,” was the answer.  Truthfully, we saw a family of beautiful orca whales, which is unusual for that bay.  And the sea lions could be smelled first and seen later.

The trip reminded me of a trip I took on the barge at Shuswap in the early 1960’s.  The hills and mountains roll by.  The water changes colour.  The pace is leisurely.  We watched an albatross fly back and forth over the tail of the boat, swooping down, turning, flying back over us – magnificent for those who braved the cold outside the deck:  Wyona, Greg, me, a German traveler and his dad who came out occasionally, a disabled woman who tucked herself  into the corner where the cabin met the deck.  She only moved when someone would help her get up.  After an hour Wyona and I had everything we had brought in the way of clothing, wrapped around us, and she was sharing one of her gloves, so that we both had one warm hand and one cold hand.  The art teacher from the boat huddle between the three of us for a while, since we were using the body heat that would transmit itself hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder between us.

“Do you want to go inside yet,” Wyona kept asking.  I like the adventure to all of the senses: the wind on my skin, the sound of the water, my hair blowing across my mouth or flying straight behind.  Greg went inside and bought a sandwich – just one, for old time’s sake.  It was $5.00 and must be a sandwich that is well known, since it is the one that we ate when we went to the other penguin rookery.  “No.  You can’t make me eat that.”  I could still remember the first one I ate.  “This one is different,” said Greg. “No mayonnaise.”

Wyona, today with a buffet tucked away in her travel bag, provided cheese, rye bread, cake, Coke.  Any surprise I can think of she can pull for somewhere.  “I bet you don’t have any chocolate.” 

“Oh yes, I do.”

Those who had the preferred seat in the cabins were 4 across on each side of a table with no room to bend or move.  They sat that way for 5 hours – worse than an airplane.  Now we froze on the outside, but had all of the other advantages – really living in nature!  Our toes so cold we didn't know if we would ever feel them again, our faces windburned from the sun, our best logical powers heightened as we tried to figure out how to maximize a blanket we borrowed from someone inside, making a blanket for one cover all three of our legs.

In the elevator and then again at a pre-dinner reception, I asked people what trips they took today.  Both couples had taken the Penguin Rookery Adventure and said politely, it was nice but I don’t think we would do it again.

Not us.  We would do it again.  With more blankets.

Hong Kong

We took the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong today.

The journey is about 5 minutes.

The ferry goes as fast as a well paddled canoe.

We emptied our pockets of change, trying to find enough money to get on the ferry: $2.50 HKD each way. That is the equivalent of $.40 a ride for the Upper Deck. The lower deck is cheaper. “Did we ride first class when we were here ten years ago, Greg?” Neither could remember. 

... the bottom half of the building ...
... I couldn't get it all in one frame ...

The walk over the foot bridge to the city, proper took us past a construction site.

We leaned over the rail and watched a long time.

Wyona spotted a digger, not at ground level, but one at the bottom of the excavation. Greg watched an 18 wheeler taking earth away from the construction site. He was curious as to why all of the wheels were washed before the machine went out onto the road. 

... Not the Hong Kong I remember ...

“This is not the Hong Kong I knew,” he said.

The shopping consisted of Armani, Dior, Cardin ... all of the big French and Italian designers.

I won’t say that the windows were not breath-taking. We had shopped a bit at Harbour City, Kowloon before we left. The Star Emporium, which Wyona and Greg remembered from the past, is not up-scale. I stopped to see the jewellery in a window, where the sign in its bottom left corner said, and “Sorry. We do not sell zircons or silver.” Whoops to anyone who wants silver or something that looks like a diamond, flashes like a diamond, sparkles like a diamond ... but is a zircon. 

... China, always under construction ...

Greg stayed in Hong Kong.

“Don’t hurry home to join us for dinner. We will probably just eat the fruit in our room. Enjoy yourself wandering the streets of Hong Kong to the very last minute,” Wyona said as we left him, turning ourselves back to the ferry.

She has a good sense of when to turn back. I want to go on with Greg, but I know that I can’t do 18 hours straight with no rest. Greg stopped to take out a map and give us detailed instructions as to how to get home. We both listened, for walking the streets has been easier when he is out in front. 

In Chna this is smog in the air
In Dubai it would be sand in the air

“Oh no,” Wyona said later. “We are half way beneath the underpass that leads to the subway, just the way Greg told us not to go. Oh well, at least we know where we are. Grab the map and let’s make some corrections. He never needs to know how we failed. New route -- down Salisbury, up Handkow, across Peking and up Lock Street,” she murmured. “How could we have followed so exactly the very route he told us to avoid?” 

We came home to rest, something she got none of yesterday.

We want to go back to the equivalent of the Chinese Five and Dime tonight where there is stuff piled in all of the isles, good hanging on high hooks from the ceilings, shelves partitioned and then crowded with merchandise still in boxes – no high end designers for us.

Not even looking at anything as low as zircons or silver. Tonight we are going right to the bottom. 

... a double decker bus goes one way ...

This can only be matched by yesterday’s adventure at the Temple Market. 

For the best purchase of the night, Wyona found the lazer light she had been admiring in London – one similar to the mirror ball. The best price at the front of the market was $60. By the time she got to the end of the market, she found the same model for $20. Now that was fun.

... a second double decker ...

I even loved it when the rain started to fall. 11:30 pm and Greg said, “Let’s get out of the rain and take a taxi home.” Every empty taxi window that rolled down for him rolled right back up.

... images of buildings in buildings ...

 “What is wrong?”, Wyona asked.

“They won’t take us. They want fares that are going to the Hong Kong side and we are only a few blocks away.”

So we ran in the rain, me just a few feet behind them – which is why my pedometer finally measured 8,524 steps last night. If our hotel had been a little further away, I would have made it to my 10,000 step daily goal.

Arta

Vaikom, India

... velour ceilings and a fan ...

The most popular trip was sold out -- boat rides through the islands.

We were told that they were trying to arrange more excursions, but the problem was finding enough small boats.

Since that was out of the question, my second choice was to visit a village.

Because I live near a small village in the summer and am always interested in what is going on there, I thought a small hamlet in India would be of equal interest to me.

Greg, Wyona, Moiya and David felt the same way so we signed  up for the same trip.

... river crossing on the way to the village ...

The ride to the village would be an hour, we were told.

Greg said afterwards how surprised he was, since an hour ride to a village seemed to us to mean that we would be seeing the countryside.

Instead there were stores and houses along the road, almost until we arrived at the village.

People were walking along the streets, families drove by on bicycles, and trucks whose cabs were psychedelic works of art were parked by the sides of the road.

... drumming before getting into tuk-tuks ...

We were met by village drummers.

And then we transferred to a tuk-tuk (auto rickshaw) for the rest of the journey to the village.

The transfer did not happen without resistance.

I have been warned so many times not to engage in conversation with anyone approaching me with an offer of a local tour, that I walked by the first 6 tuk-tuks, thinking it was my job to walk to the village.

I would have never made it in the heat.

Afterwards someone said, "The bus tour guide should have explained to us that we were to get into those vehicles."

I didn't agree because no one could get enough explanations to take care of all of the vagaries that happen along the way of such a trip.

... Moiya's markings begin to melt ...

... three sisters pause in the heat ...

I do not know which was more surprising to me of the following three things.

First a small boy motioned to me that I should put down my head, 

and he put a flower lei around my neck.

Then a woman came by and made a red mark on my forehead.

Then a huge cocoanut with a straw extruding out of the top was thrust into my hands.  

I could just hear myself thinking ... boy, this is already a lot of fun and we haven't even entered the village, really.   Three more hours of this.  I am going to die from happiness.

... a candid in the jungle ...

The general theme was to show us the village: a woman making clay pots, another woman weaving baskets, and a third preparing herbs to cure headaches. We saw a  man doing silver smithing; we watched women preparing lunches for their families.

... Am I in the picture? ...

I am having some trouble with the text of this post, since one part of the tour felt like we were going from station to station, as we would if we were going to see a group of students displaying their science projects.

On the other hand, there was this amazing feeling of being in the jungle, hearing the sounds of the birds, being overwhelmed by the humid air, observing the details of the jungle growth, walking on the dirt paths and turning corners around trees and walking over planks that crossed tiny streams.

... now everyone make a funny face ...

The little boy who had put the wreath around my neck followed me along, asking my name, practising his English on me.  Finally I caught on and asked him his name.

I began taking pictures of the flora and fauna, but their little faces were far more interesting to me.

Wyona said to me, "Where are the girls?  We haven't seen any of the girls."

"I noticed that too," I said.

Wyona asked one of the women where the little girls were.

And soon the little girls appeared -- so sweet, hanging onto their mother's hands.

I was carrying a worry that I would not be able to fully experience everything around me.

I was taking pictures of clay vases by the side of the road, of the washing hanging by the houses.

Why am I always taking pictures of that, I thought.  Venice.  Rome.  Egypt.  Alexandria.  Now India.  Is it because I want to see that invisible work of how people really live.

 

... Greg pauses in the jungle shadows ...

But somehow it is more than that. 

I want to see how they hang the bananas by the side of the store, where the little stream runs to, ask why there is only one bucket by the well

I am charmed by the 3-person toilet that has been set up for us. 

"You aren't going to use that," a woman said to me.

"Are you kidding.  I am trying everything whether I need to or not," I reply.

I am working at taking in every moment of this adventure. The village is working hard to show us how they live.  I want to do my part to take enough in that I can work out the bits and pieces I don't understand when I get home.

... serenity by the stream ...

When I saw this quiet stream running beside one of the paths, I thought it captured what the village must feel like when it is quieter ... not on display.

So beautiful, the cottage on the other side, the well tended paths, the hedges carefully planted and trimmed.

... a complimentary snack ... 

Coke or coconut shell with straw

Complimentary snacks -- that is what the tour guide told us about the L-shaped table.

Coke or cocoanut milk.

Your culture or ours.

I have been running my set of photos from the village on my desktop since I got home.

I stop each day to take another look at the magic of a small Indian village in the province of Kerala.

Arta

Notoriety

Wyona and David in bare feet,
splashing in the water in
front of St. Mark's Cathedral

“Why might the photographers on the boat know you”, Bonnie asked.

I told her I would tell this painful story.

To begin with, I have a nice hand held Canon SX220 HS – purchased because my arms would get too tired carrying my larger Canon on day trips off of the boat.

A lovely purple colour and I can tell it apart from Moiya’s camera, for though hers is the same camera, it is a turquoise colour.

David and Wyona with their shoes back on.

One afternoon while the boat was docked, David came rushing down to have Moiya and me come up to the veranda view from the 14th floor and look with him at another boat that had docked, people streaming off of it.

It seemed there was no organized way to pick up luggage and both he and I were busy taking shots of travellers sitting on huge piles of luggage while their friends were still off gathering more cases of goods.

That night I downloaded my pictures, and then a little later picked up my camera and erased everything on the memory card.

I was careful.

I saw the first picture that said, do you want to erase all, and it was a picture I recognized from the afternoon shoot, I said yes.

Moiya and David at the canal

When the erasing took longer than normal I had my first clue as I thought, how odd.

That took longer to erase than usual.

Then I looked at the camera and thought, hey, I thought my camera was purple and not turquoise. Whoops.

When Moiya came back to the room, I asked her to lay down on her bed while I talked to her.

David and Arta looking over the
Grand Canal in Venice

She said she wasn’t tired. I told her she might be when I was finished my story.

I began by telling her that I have seen David all over the ship, taking pictures for days now; I would see him in an easy chair, looking over the ocean in some lounge, erasing the pictures he didn’t want, then I would see him down in the Centrum doing the same thing a few hours later. I told her that he doesn’t have those pictures anymore.

I have erased them all. Moiya was pretty cool about it, but they weren’t her pictures.

Then David came into the room.

I had to start my story again. When I began to retell my story, Moiya took the bedsheet and pulled it slowly up over her head so she only had to hear and didn’t have to see.

“You erased them all?”

“All.”

“Do you know any way to get them back?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I am going to the ship’s photography department and maybe they can help me.”

All of the above pics were those recovered
from David's camera
due to the magic of the Celebrity Photo Dept.

This may have taken Dave 5 trips, over the course of three days. Each time they felt they were getting a little closer, but hadn’t had success yet.

“Your sister-in-law.”

“Are you still staying in the same room with her.”

“Is walking the plank legal?”

He would come back and torture me with what they were saying.

The department eventually accessed a program that would bring Dave’s 1000 pics all back. The department was successful because I didn’t know to format the disk every time I erased it, something I have now learned.

That is how everyone in the photography department got to know me before I won their special prize of $100 of free pictures.

Greg and Wyona just bought a new camera yesterday – exactly like Dave’s and mine, but Greg’s is fuchsia.

When I saw the new camera I asked Greg if he had anything he wanted me to erase on it.

Arta

The Local Bread Confection of Kuala Lumpur

After our tour of Kuala Lumpur's Little India, and back at the elegant market, we had ten minutes to get to our bus coach.

Moiya and Wyona had ringgit that was unspent.

Both of them know how to move the last few dollars out of their purses and pockets and into the local economy.

The women pool their money to see how much must be spent.

They buy carbonated beverages to take onto the boat, a soft ice-cream cone for all and with the money left Wyona and Moiya begin to pick pastries out of glass display cabinets, asking the clerk to wrap them separately so they don’t get squished.

Afterall, when we were dropped off we were told to go have lunch, but food was not anywhere on our agenda.

Now there would be a 1 and ½ hour ride back to the boat and time to eat. 

I am hungry and snap pictures of food I wish I could eat.
I don't buy. 
If I take the time to figure out the conversion on the ringgit,
I won't have time to take pictures.

 Two women picking out food is enough.

I idly take my camera and try to catch the look of the small bakery.

Fast lunch ... or would that be fast dessert

Once onboard, Wyona distributes the food among us.

I am a few isles away.

The nicest looking pastry of all is handed to me – one with a popsicle stick in it.

 I am sitting by the boat photographer, since I am always alone on the buses and when the seat is taken, it is often by some of the people who work on the boat and who are allowed to accompany the excursion.

I turn to her and say, please have some.

Which would you like?  One lightly dusted with icing sugar
  Or the chocolate icing with candy sprinkles

"Oh no," she counters.

She is sitting there soaking wet, having been caught in the 4 pm Malaysian downpour.  I brought my umbrella for the occasion, but left it in the bus, so I didn't have to carry it all day. Because I am "old" the bus driver lends me an umbrella so I won't get wet.

"Well, I can hardly eat it all.  Just take a bit.  I haven't touched it and you will get to see what the local pastries taste like."

She takes a piece and we take our first bite together but do not chew.

She turns wide-eyed to look at me and says nothing.

I spotted that fancy stick in the pastry and 
wondered if Wyona and Moiya would buy it.
Note the attractive covering on the bun, upper right corner.

I am horrified and burst out laughing, saying, “I think that this feathery lacy toasted coating is dried translucent fish and not cocoanut. Be my guest and take it back out of your mouth.”

Then I turn to the tour guide who is now handing out key chains of the Petronus Towers to everyone. She has come to give us ours.

“Could you tell me the name of this pastry.”

She gives me the name of the pastry, tells me it is a local trademark of Kuala Lumpur, confirms that the coating is dried fish and continues down the isle.

“Congratulations,” says the young ship photographer to me. “You got me to do something my mother couldn’t get me to do growing up in England. Eat fish.”

She puts her piece in our garbage bag.

 I continue to eat mine.

“Don’t do it. Don’t do it," she says.

I am compelled to. At each bite I am trying to figure out what it is that people like about these 3 flat rings with a stick through them, and finished off with dried fish. The sweetness of the bun reminds me of pork buns in China town. I taste the brown sticky topping that holds the fish flakes to the pastry: soy sauce.

Later that evening I go up to the Photography Studio to pick up some pictures from a prize I won on the boat. She is there arranging the shots: 8 1/2 by 12's  --  one from each of the 3 formal dining nights, taken from the gang plank as people go ashore, from informal sittings – all posted in the open for people to see.

I know she is working.  I go up to her and say quietly behind her back, “Fish breath.”

She turns to me and says in an equally quiet voice, "I told all of my friends about you at dinner and that you continued to eat the bun, even after knowing what it was. They know who you are.”

She is right.  They do know who I am.  That is for another story.

Arta

Naples, a Second View

The tune to which we sing, the ants go marching one by one, is the tune of the rally song that we heard from the unemployed, marching by us in a public protest.  We were trying to get back to the ship before it left, and while we didn’t want to retrace the path that had led us to the wholesalers street for the sale of scarves, that ended being the best way, when Wyona stopped a passerby to enquire, first, do you speak English, and then, which is the best way back to the port.

We parted with Greg earlier.  He went left to explore the older buildings of Napoli.  We went right to explore local markets.  Greg has a good sense of mapping each town we enter, and he set us off on a main street.  I am slower these days for two reasons.  When the city is new, there is so much more for me to be aware of: the right way to cross a street, the weave of the pavement, in the case of Naples, the disintegrating buildings, the laundry hung from balconies, the dry dusty smell of construction as wheel barrows are loaded with sand in the middle of the sidewalk, and pushed into the foyer of buildings that have been gutted and are being refurbished from the ground up.  The local pastries were layers of phyllo, loaded with fruit or creams or even meat fillings.  The median price point of the confections hovered at about one euro, the price at which I want to try buy five and take just one bite of each.

Wyona had passed by a street market where she bought a beautiful watch when we were in Naples with Mary.  Now we were back, and looking again for that market, but stopping along the way to inspect the goods that were out on the streets and to get a sense of what prices people were paying.  Ten euro someone asked for a scarf that we had bought elsewhere for five euro – and with that we passed on, but couldn’t find the street market.  Finally we saw people closing up their stalls and followed them, which was the right thing to do, for they led us to the wholesaler.

The Bangladesh retailer spoke only his own language and Italian.  My English and Wyona’s French were no good to him, but a friend of the retailer with limited English was hanging out in the shop and he translated for us – all scarves were 5 Euro, the right price.  We began to pick out new patterns we wanted to buy.  We asked the friend, “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four,” he answered.

“How old is the shopkeeper?”, we continued.

“Twenty-three,” he said.

“A mere baby,” we said.  We had watched him when some Italian customers came in.  “All Bangladesh are good.  All British and Canadian are good.  All Italians steal,” they told us in broken English

Wyona laughed.  “No, there are good people and bad people everywhere.”

“No,” said the young shopkeeper.  “I have to keep my eyes on the Italians when they come in for they will shoplift from me.  I had to keep my eye on both of the customers for they come in together, for one tries to distract me and the other puts stuff in their shirt pocket,” and he pantomimes how that is done for us. 

“You mean like this,” Wyona says, and she tucks some jewellery in her pocket, holding her pocket way out so he is sure to see, and making him laugh.  I ask myself the question, how does she keep doing this and never ending up in jail.

“And how old are you?” the guy with some English asked.

“Sixty-seven and she is the old one at seventy-one,” said Wyona, pointing at me.

“Jesus Christ!”  

I don't think the shop keeper was really swearing.  But the English swear words from his mouth rang between the shop walls expressing utter amazement at what he was seeing -- the two of us shopping as though we were 20 year olds.  Maybe it is a sign that Wyona and I should work at fitting the usual stereotypes, which we aren't read to do yet.

I expressed some anxiety about food this morning.  For two mornings in a row, I have been ready to eat breakfast, just at the 45 minute space during which the four large dining rooms are closed because they are getting ready to serve their lunch menu. The three boats have been different – but none of the other two every close the dinning

Bravo, bravo, brave, said three times.  That is what the captain says to begin and end the noon hour drills that occur for the staff.   I have seen cooks in their white hats, and plumbers in their blue jump suits going to their assigned stations when I have been on the ship at noon and this happens.

The passengers have their first and only drill immediately after coming on board and before the ship debarks.  We all go to our assigned stations without our life jackets, to get a feel for what we would do in an actual emergency. 

As well, I have watched them take lower the lifeboats and do obligatory drills with them.  Further, we used some of them to taxi us in from the boat to the port entrance when we were in Croatia.  But today ... things were different.  

... dummy on floor, successfully raised out of water with a big hook ...

“What is that out in the water, Greg?”, I asked.  “A boat?  It looks like a body, which isn’t making me feel all that good?”  We watched for a little longer, and the object floated closer to us – a dummy, floating in the water.  Then we heard the staff emergency drill begin with Bravo, bravo, brave and watched a lifeboat lowering into the water.  “This is what a balcony is for,” I thought, “to get to watch procedural drills that I never imagined I would see.”  

The dummy kept floating to the east.  The life boat began to speed to the west.  

Passengers from all of the balconies began to wave, yell, whistle and shout, “No, not that way.  Over here!  The dummy is over here.  You are going the wrong way,” all of us imagining now that we were that dummy floating in the water and that the lifeboat was headed away instead of toward us. 

The orange boat circled back around and someone with a long stick that ended  with a sharp hook reached out to bring in the dummy – it looked to me like if I didn’t die from drowning, I might die from infection  from that stick scraping against my body in the rescue.  The exercise ended when the captain cried out again, “Bravo, bravo, bravo.”  

I am not all that sure that the crew should have been congratulated in that way today, given that it took all of us in the balconies to help them find the dummy in the water.  And it never did get CPR -- which I am sure it needed!

Arta