Ferrari of course.
But most anyone I know can buy a Ducati, while NO ONE i know will ever own a Ferrari. (Prove me wrong people, please!) Both names evoke red, Italian, sexy, built for speed and expensive to repair. Both were born in, are manufactured in, and best yet, have museums in Italy's Motor Valley, which include Modena and Bologna. It was painfully poignant when the exhibit at Enzo Ferrari's museum and birth home was about stars and cars. Seeing Mick Jagger's F40, Clapton's custom, hearing of Nicholas Cage and Nick Mason as collectors kind of made my stomach feel like i drank tap water from Nepal and i got numb pretty fast, maybe from jealousy! The Ducati factory and museum was the opposite, where I smiled at seeing the workers slightly greasy from the day, end the shift and head to a long row of Ducatis parked outside. This museum had me thinking of my bike, its attainability with hard work, leaving me sniffing around at tailpipes and engines for those indelible hydrocarbon odors that just get the heart racing even more than practically fictional cars. |
Recently found, buried. Frozen in time. Bustling trade center, 11,000 people, 80 restaurants, streets worn with wagon wheels, paintings still visible after nearly 2000 years.
Millions of tourists cooked each year, children crying, family vacations cracking, peeling but holding together long enough to get out to the gelato. You would think we would be able to forget our "pains" and relate to the devastation and mayhem that must have happened back in 79AD, but honestly it is unimaginable. Vesuvius blasted ash and rock, not lava. It came nearly straight down from the sky, caving in all the tile and wood roofs, burying all in hot sand and rock, in an otherwise normal afternoon. The lost city was found in the 16th century and excavation (and tourism) began in the 1700's. We hear Echoes in the stadium. |
This is the view from our little Air BNB. I could easily live here. But keep in mind the road down to the sea is white-knuckle driving for more than 2,000 vertical feet, with the last 250 feet a staircase to the apartment...
The very salty, buoyant and clear Mediterranean Sea was only another 20 steps so we flopped in often, including one night til 11:30 pm, with locals listening to a live band on the beach. When life gives you such hilly ocean views, apparently you grow lemons. Lemoncello, a sugary alcoholic lemon syrupy apertif, closes most meals gratis and tons of lemon rind in the espresso is famous. Path of the Gods is a world-famous local trail hanging on the walls, bounding from lemon village to grape village, with some stone structures seeming to defy gravity hanging above the sea. |
To me these gorgeous little hilltop towns are the trademark of the Old World, and Italy sure has them. They immediately nudge their way past Morrocan Medinas and Nepali mountain villages as ancient, picturesque, clean and civilized.... But to me it is so much more about the actual village buildings and layout, since the people are more modern, whilst in the contrasted places, the people for sure are living a much older lifestyle.
These old towns look as if they precipitated and grew as crystals from the land; as if there was no more natural way to place each stone and building and no other way for it to more attractively have aged. HOW DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT? |
Sights, sounds, smells, taste and feel (involuntary stomach rejection ejection) were all part of the experience, but you only get the pretty pictures!
4:50AM Muslim Call To Prayer from the roof top, hearing a dozen Mosques surrounding me, was musical and at the same time animalistic, as if were hearing non-human group communication about something as commonplace as the darkness of the hour. Unforgettable. Then there are the many craftspeople, such as the welder with the home-made cardboard mask, the alabaster sculptor drilling holes by hand, the wood turner using his feet as hands. ... many horse and donkey drawn carts moving through the tight streets, the Hammam (steam bath) boilermaster I met and the Berber restaurants in the middle of the creeks in the Atlas Mountains. ...little boy begging 2 days in a row to play soccer in the Marrakech alley, the market vendors literally popping out of their piles of product, the fruit vendor weighing our bananas against his known weights, such as the spark plug on the end of the string. Hundreds more I have pictured and recorded, thousands I will forget, with only one memory for sure, that my jaw was often either open or saying wow. |
No doubt one of my favorite aspects of good travel is the sense that I am visiting another time. The Medina of Marrakech really can feel like traveling back hundreds of years, and in some ways even back to the beginning of the settlement 700 years ago.
The architecture and actual structures are original or at least continuously built in the old way, making a stroll down any alley an escape from the "other" world. The presence of craftsmen working and selling goods using very old tools is another cornerstone of said time travel that is NOT just for tourists, it is a real and current way of life. For example, handing out (modern) cigarettes, I got myself behind the scenes into the dreadfully pungent leather tanneries and was amazed at the unimaginable magnitude and authenticity of the work. I must have seen thousands of skins being moved manually through the 2 month process by some seriously battered leathery tanners. They don't do this for tourists, they do it because they must and that is how it is done, period. Additionally, the traditional Muslim Jalabas and Burkas imbue an effect Williamsburg could never achieve with colonial costumes. |
This impressed me, so I had to share.
The road dust turned black and we ended up in the middle of an open pit coal mine. Ugly, but the blood is on most everyone's hands including mine. It was impressive and dangerous with huge trucks whizzing around, deep pits right off the road and why was the ground smoldering? |
Vic Falls, as it is now called, is the largest in Africa and arguably in the world. Many are higher, some have higher volume, another is wider, whatever, it is a lot of water and when it is running, visitors such as us are DULY IMPRESSED!
Danger Point in the first pic has no railings and really allows a person to make a mistake if they are foolish. The mighty and beautiful Zambezi River separating Zambia and Zimbabwe is behind the show. When the local lava flow cooled 180 million years ago huge fissures were formed in the basalt skin in the area. Gondwana land break up further cracked the land. Now there is a zig zag canyon over which the water falls 300+ feet down over a mile's worth canyon rim. There are many selfie people, baboons and also curio touts that add to the roar. |
Smiles and kindness were the first and consistent impression of the Zimbabweans we encountered. It seemed no matter where I looked, every conversation or interaction involved a big toothy smile from at least one participant.
The people of this country have been through a lot. 1980 saw their liberation from white control as they changed from Southern Rhodesia to Zim (Zambia, previously Norther Rhodesia) had already completed the task. Mugabe quickly took control, as he was greatly respected and ultimately turned the country around. He, like Mandela, had a 10 year tenure studying while exiled to prison. The country became the African continent's leader in education and economic growth. Paradoxically it sustained considerable modern genocide, infrastructure breakdown and ultimately the worlds most extreme inflation, with the proof as the 100 trillion dollar bill now being sold to tourists for $5. |
Imagine being told to be afraid of the dark, not get out of your car or hike while paying to sleep within an industrial electric-fenced compound only to be woken up by "what was that sound ?!?" The fences mostly keep elephants and hippos out, but it became obvious big cats and snakes were free to enter camp.
Elephants were the noisy ones that startled us out of sleep more than once thinking one was charging or another was eating our tent. While accomodations range from $100-easily $2,000 per night, we tested the low-end with much success. Often, warm water was not in the plumbing scheme and one night a pack of elephants marauded and tore out the entire water supply of our lodge complex. Another place had no less than 5 frogs randomly distributed about the interior and and was completely festooned with the all important, jail-like monkey bars on all the windows and doors! |
Painted dogs were Not on our wishlist because we thought it impossible. They are endangered and out of the original 400,000 in Africa there are only 7,000 left.
These guys likely saw and heard us long before we knew they were there. They are pack hunters that will chase an animal to absolute exhaustion, then they move in to complete the circle of life... Their ears rotate fully forward and backward and independently so they can both accurately survey their surroundings and even adjust them to maximize cooling during runs. This Zimbabwe pack is well studied and was tracked as having covered 43km in 2.5 hrs on one hunt. The large male Kudu shown below was found next on our safari, was in the path of the dogs as they left and is most vulnerable due to its being relatively trapped in the sunset forest. Zy did not want to stick around for ANY of this action. Watching them play, relax, communicate and even yawn impolitely was an honor. |
I open with a picture Zylus took, with his special effects, I liked especially for the accidental red heart in the center of our rustic Ger home.
Getting there was a crazy bumpy breach of our car rental contract and a drive we did not want to do more than once. These are the summer grazing grounds. Nightly the herd was brought in to the corral where the calves were separated from the moms after their day of milk access so the milk would be easily available for the herdsman' wife to milk from 530am to about 10am, after which the calves were allowed to get back on the boob. Some calves were only days old with umbilicals still dangling in the wind. Nuttin' but Mutton for meals, but they do make excellent Yak Yogurt right there in the Ger before shipping 45 liters of milk to market daily. For the winter 6 months, the Yaks take it upon themselves to wander up over the mountains because it is supposedly warmer there... Random bones were scattered about any rural surface I managed to tread, really setting a very strange feel to the land. Reading accounts about Mongolian history said that the occasional bone might actually be human... |
Mongolia via this train was my request. Zy got me into trains since he was 2. On this trip I told him he dropped trains like Jackie Paper dropped Puff the Magic Dragon and later that night he wept telling us he did not want to grow up; we are here to help him in that!
The train was cushy with a clean communist feel. Midnight to 3am the cars were separated and lifted in a shed to fit new wheel trucks for the wider Mongolian (Russian...) track. See the video on Zy's page for a time lapse. Sunrise over the Gobi kept me glued to the window in awe of the desert life and shear expansiveness. Only a day in a Ger NOT in the desert made me realize I would not last a day in the Gobi. It was nearly impossible to imagine the Kahn's empire here and expansion from here, but surely they went the right way: to some WATER. (They even tried to conquer Japan by sea but quickly failed for total lack of sea-manship). |
The Yin Yang balance was never so evident as in China with amazing experiences effortlessly balanced with skull splitting frustrations. The language barrier was 10x worse than expected, so shame on us for that surprise...
If America was built on innovation and drive for freedom, modern China seems to grow on a common willingness to follow the crowd not with question but with extreme fervor. It is the only place in the world we saw and understood the value of the tour group of 50 people in matching shirts or hats following the leader with the flag. I am the first to admit I am an uneducated observer, but my take away is that the world economy will more likely track the ""Chinadollar"" of the future vs the USD that currently assures our rest. Their formidible power may also come from their long history of advanced civilization coming to fruit again but this time in the modern global situation. Strange example stories: 1. in Thailand we saw a cave guarded by squatters with guns so they could harvest swallow nests for soup we saw on the Chinese menu, 2. Meanwhile in Zimbabwe we hear from the upper class that Chinese are silently infiltrating and scooping up local opportunity in ways that make them uncomfortable. (Our upcoming Zim posts and stories should have you understand no Zim citizen is weak in any way; they have been through an incredible ringer) |
The plank trail for me was a bucket list item starting some 15 yrs ago when email first dropped a picture of it on my screen. It is a ridiculous 2-way traffic "trail" on a granite face well over 1,000 feet above the valley (probably 3,000 ft, but past 500ft, does it really matter?)
The 7,000+ft mountain, a Taoist pilgrimage, hermitage and site for 60+ temples has been key in Chinese art and philosophy for over 2,000 years. There originally was only a 12km trail to the top but now, true to Chinese style of unparalleled tourism, it has several trams, hotels and restaurants that really just boggle the mind (there's even a mini roller-coaster from the tram base to the bus station). Supplies are all carried by porter. Still, it is awe-inspiring every hand-carved granite step of the way with natural beauty far outweighing relatively tasteful modern impact. The experience was holy even for us westerners. |
This is the mausoleum of Emporer Qin Shihuang, who was the self-proclaimed first emporer of China 220-210BC. He unified the existing kingdoms thereby creating what has become modern China.
Sure, he made enemies, so he HAD to have an army buried with him to protect him in the afterlife. The army includes over 7,000 life-sized ceramic warriors, scribes, attendants, horses, etc. with over 10,000 pcs of battle-ready bronze weaponry, many still sharp due to advanced chrome coating technology. I was wrong in thinking they were buried in dirt. They were placed in trenches with log roofs over them, then a several feet of soil on top. Can you notice the imprints where the long-gone logs had been? With no historical record of the burial site anywhere, it was a shock when in 1974 some farmers discovered the first soldiers while digging a well! (Terra=earth, Cotta=baked) |
This walled "city" of nearly 1,000 buildings housed emperors and their governments from early 15th to 20th centuries. Forbidden were commoners and in some areas, all men but Eunichs. Some concubines had palaces of their own within the walls and in some cases were critical to continuity of the emporer's lineage.
The walls would have often been filled with considerations of at least international trade and at most, war. It is extensive, like China and Chinese tourism. On a sunny day, like we experienced, it will drain any good tourist just walking 1.5 hrs down the center "axis" from entrance to exit. It dessicated Heather and Zylus in an hour and they ran to the hotel pool. But throwing a couple more hours and seeing the contents of many of the side gardens and hidden museums really brought it to life. Wood, metal, gems, stone and even CERAMICS (roofs included) displayed throughout highlighted profound craftsmanship. |
Zylus had one request for the whole "180" trip and that was to camp on the Great Wall. The weather really cooperated and this overnight was magical.
"The Great Wall" is really a network of many walls spanning many dynasties, centuries and even purposes. Though some walls existed pre 250BC, Qin Shi Huang (see terracotta warriors), the first emperor of China, demanded the first formal defense wall. Later in the 14th to 17th centuries walls were fortified and unified. Though 13,000+miles, it probably cannot be seen from space and they probably never actually physically kept out invaders. They acted more as a boundary and psychological tool. For us, it was one of the best camp sites and a spectacular hike. There are sections that are shockingly steep, impossible to imagine building and even harder to imagine in use back in the day. |
Nepal was amazing: jaw dropping from the start to the finish - sometimes physically and emotionally gut wrenching. The awe for me came from the beautiful Himalayas coupled with virtual time travel to ancient villages locked in old ways, juxtaposed with a society where nearly everyone has a cell phone and barely anyone has any idea what to do with their junk food wrappers. It is India-lite's million Hindu gods set in the rubble of the Indian subcontinent's 55 million year-ago crash into Asia. Any time I opened my eyes, listened or sniffed the air, the sensations pegged some new grey matter with an emotion of some sort, seeming permanent. I want to come back.
|
Staying in the heart of this city of antiquity made it all the more difficult to face leaving Nepal.
The mostly pedestrian wood and brick old city invokes imaginations of time travel to the valley during the midieval era. The 1934 and 2015 earthquakes hit this town very hard, with many lives lost. You can see many buildings being held up by beams wedged into walls, others crumbled and even more being rebuilt. The town is alive with very active Hindu and Buddhist devotees, many of whom are craftspeople or residents quite proud of their home and heritage. Wood carving is very important to the Newari of this town and is evident everywhere. The city started as a religious / tantric city, a city of devotees, and was the cultural and political capital of Nepal, sustaining attacks from the Turks and ultimately rule by the nearby Nepali Gorkha of current British mercenary fame. Millions of gods, or maybe less, exist within Hinduism and the devotion to many by many in this town lead to the claim that the earthquakes spared many buildings including the 3 tiered pagoda in this picture and the much taller 5 tiered pagoda from which I took the picture. |
I really find the people here colorful, beautiful, open, curious, sometimes melancholy or weary but always ready for a smile, wildly jumping in front of the camera sometimes, in short: photogenic. Here are some favorites from people we either spent days, hours, minutes with or even were just photographed in passing.
|
The Himalayas are the highest range on the planet. The Indian subcontinent was once a free land until it crashed into Asia, causing the uplift.
You can see Everest making it's own weather. Land is terraced by the locals for grazing, agriculture and dwelling. The abnormally pointy beauty is Machepuchre (Fishtail), surrounded by the even taller Annapurna peaks. |
Nepal is like nothing else. Dense clutter and dust welcomed us on the ground in Kathmandu. Quickly we are dizzied with sensory overload and tire of saying "wow".
Recovery from the earthquake 2 yrs ago appears very complete though it is difficult knowing what we are really seeing. Every time i think I see the damage and ask, the answer is yes, it is from the quake. Roads, housing and life are rough but again most of the people smile laugh and live through it all. |
We had the opportunity to stay at a floating hotel anchored at a Mon Village. The Mon have inhabited the Thai Burma area for 2,000 years, became Buddhist in our 5th century, ran from Thai Burma wars, and often remain in small simple villages such as this.
Living is basic but happy. Houses are on stilts as many know the life living in he Irawaddy river delta. Here in the forest they had an open air school, and long interesting walkways with covered roofs for rain. About 75 people live here. I talked with some 3rd generation locals. Those that try Bangkok often return and are much happier with the village life. Thanakha is the face paint made from ground bark, originally for sun protection then evolved into the royal world, then religious, then cultural and now seems to even be an artistic expression. |
North and Central Thailand are mostly Buddhist, with the South being Muslim.
Temples are everywhere. We saw remote rarely visited bat cave temples, with a dead, preserved, third-eyed baby cow, (be prepared for the picture). Also saw some classic popular temples with the reclining Buddha. Twas surprising how they are sacred, but divided in that we non-devotees can go certain places with certain protocol while there are other places we can barely learn about. Amazed when inside one temple village kids dragged Zylus into a soccer game! Crematorium is the tall-stack building; you can see urns of those in the community. The spires are called Chdi or Stupa and underneath each is either remains of an important Monk or another religious relic. Garuda, of Hindu fame, has his beak adorning the gables of temple buildings, the link between Hindu and Buddhism remains after over 2560 years since Buddha's death. Gold leaf is applied to a new Buddha statue in one pic. It was a great festival I randomly biked into, you can see in Zylus' latest video. Buddha is classically shown in 3 stages: young, jolly/fat, and old; old Buddha is the only one we have seen getting gold leaf dedication. |
Didn't taste like chicken...
Zylus ate the scorpion stinger for me and I ate the tarantula's surprising spikes on the feet. Heather was a champ as she was the leader. I was sure she did not leave any scraps as it is bad enough Karma to eat the buggers but probably worse to push them aside JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T LIKE IT!!!!!!! |
The long boat is the way to go, Most have turbocharged diesels on a see-saw gimbal with a dangerous prop on the end of a 15' shaft.
People live along the canals, mostly very modestly. Swimming and fishing are done by people and wild life alike along the extensive canal system. . The 3' lizards surprised us. |
Used for everything, carrying everything, multiple people.
Driving and riding in Bali is an amazing view into how people CAN behave. Very much like ":social" animals such as bees or swifts, they never never seem to even bump into each other, just randomly agreeing to changes in flow of traffic. Sorry I did not even try to capture that aspect, it was just too amazing. There is only ONE traffic light in "our town" yet intersections, alleys and sidewalks teem with scooter riders in absolute agreement, only honking to warn of blind spots NOT out of aggression. "Distracted riding" is legal, check out cellphone girl. |
This one is simple and rough, but says so much blatantly.
Rice fields are being converted to tourist housing too fast and it is shaking the culture a bit. Balinese embrace the economic income but recognize the losses that come with it. It is painful to watch and be a part of it. Many of us tour exotic places and want to spend 2 hours here and there getting the culture during our 1 week vacation. Invariably our interest in the culture affects the culture itself. Bali is so far the most culturally rooted place we visited. Music for example is ALMOST NEVER anything but traditional and live, never will you find a boom box or loud car stereo. The sounds alone take you to another world, thankfully. |
I share it because you might not otherwise ever see this amazing art.
Very detailed and in many cases you can see how Bali is known for tattoo art. Where the Wild Things Are... Very clearly Sendak's art style was visible in Bali before the book was written, but it was far more graphic so I could not show most of it. I wonder about the relationship here. Reading up says there is no relationship! Co-invented... In one painting from the Mahabharata Hindu epic, 2 brothers of equal power transform into multiheaded creatures and fight. Glad they are not in my backseat or I would have to stop the car. |
Demons, effigies, called Ogo-Ogo, 2 to 20 foot tall, all scary, hand made, taken to the village crossroads and clattered around until midnight to scare away demons.
This row of 10 footers outside the palace was particularly scary, but I tried to make them small and in your head.. Below you can see some sights, including the starriest of Bali nights I have seen in a month. That night of Nyepi, the night afer the celebration the island really shuts down, including all lights. Zy's video captures it well, please check it out. |
Nyepi is the Balinese New Year (March 28), based on the blend between old Bali Animism and Hinduism. It is only celebrated here, not even in India.
Today, Nyepi Eve, many Ogo Ogo, which are crazy demonic sculptures, are brought around town to scare away demons. Tomorrow is the real holiday, which is a completely SILENT day, no cars, no electricity, the AIRPORT even shuts down. It is a day for family and meditation. Tourists also must follow the silence and are not allowed to leave the hotels. The only folks on the street are holiday patrol, being sure no one is on the street. You can see below an early artist rendition and final work, you can see a procession of offerings being carried to the sea, and the purification of those offerings at a seaside ceremony. The offferings are then brought back to the village for the celebration. |
Pura = Temple
Goa = Cave Lawah = bat The Hindu temples sometimes center around an animal. In this case, it clearly was the bats. We could hear them outside the temple. The devotees pray at the temple, but do not worship the bats. The cave and temple is more of a sanctuary. The purpose is to be in harmony with one's self, God and Nature. We got help with our temple sarongs. |
it is a long journey from sea to our fancy salt shop, but here is one of those sources!
"Hard work" is what our driver says it is. The first step is to get the sea water repeatedly coating the beach sand, in the sun. After concentrating the salt in the sand, the salt flakes and sand are taken into the beach hut for settling in the tanks you see, that are carved from palm tree trunks. The sand settles out and water slowly evaporates and concentrates from tank to tank, then finally it is sun dried out on the tree trunk troughs. |
This area is known for snorkeling and it was impressive. Clear water and coral off all beaches.
Coastal villages mainly subsisted on fishing of course, rice and salt making (later post), but now tourism is big. Tourism growing pains are evident everywhere, particularly in this area, where too many investments are made making excessive unfilled resorts. You can see below happy locals, men working an fishing net, and a blown out resort where school kids hang after school. In Bali, in such p[ace, i felt totally safe, in such a place in nearly any other country, I would have surely way more worried about alcohol and drug related trouble, but i just cannot see ANY of that here. Discussions with locals suggest their village community structure is THE reason for such minimal visible crime. Remarkable. |
Traditional dance in Bali is exciiting for the ears and eyes. But it sure is tough to relate the story to what we see.
An easier one is the fire dance, incredible all vocal for over an hour, no instruments. Part of the plot was a trance dance where an horsemen was put into a trance enabling him to walk through fire, and he did! We were really surprised when he kicked flaming coconuts into the audience for 5 minutes. |
This is a beautiful forest hidden amongst town, lush, with temples dedicated to the monkeys.
600+ Macaques in 6 bands live the full life cycle before your eyes, daily. We did not see an actual birth nor death, but we did see EVERYTHING in between. Including babies, males fighting over a female, and blood on the path, then an accidental wandering into the cemetery. The monkey is not a god, but revered for their mirroring and reminder of human tendencies similar to the monkey. In particular, ancient knowledge of the monkey's paw stuck in a jar whilst holding a sweet in the jar typifies the correlation. The monkey is a reminder of frantic energy and narrow focus that one should acknowledge and possibly manage. |
As expected, Bali is amazing right out of the gate, literally.
I have never seen that many drivers waiting, must have been 100+. Humid! Pulling into the gate the windows fogged completely. Staying at a place owned by a new friend, Imade Sumaradana, introduced by an old friend, living in a rice paddy, the adventure starts with just being present. Imade designed and built an amazing place. A Hindu island, Ganesh welcomes us into his courtyard at the house. Spiral staircase and the whole property were decorated, randomly one day with over 900 (Zy counted them) marigold blossoms. Attention to aesthetics is a major trait of the people. |
Millepedes don't sting, but our guide advised it will STINK our hands, hence i held on a leaf. Feeling the feet all moving through the leaf was truly a tickling experience.
Flying Foxes, bigger than 2 foot wingspan were fun to watch nightly but difficult to photo. Night snakes at the beach were spooky. Cockatoos and parrots could be seen in and around Sydney. Kangaroos were an absolute adventure finding in the wild, nearly got automatically locked into a national park at sunset, no joke when they say gates close at 7! Skin-eating fish in Bali are a major attraction for Zylus. As they nibble your skin, it feels like an electric current, not my favorite! |
Sorry, the picture of the spider really said it all to me.
I could write a page on that thing. Short story: A Bure (BooRAY) is a traditional Fijian dwelling, wood, thatch roof, some screens, no electric, has crabs, mice and other critters. A sound woke me up, I look over and there 3 feet away is a 3" spider massacring a large beetle, maybe that thing made the sound. I thought it was the mouse. Spider stayed put with a flashlight in it's eyes, but WHOA I nearly peed my pants when I moved and it jumped 2 feet to the wall in a second... then it ran around the whole wall, i stopped it, got out of my mosquito net with laser flashlight entraining spider and HAD to get the picture. Then went back to sleep amazingly. Spider gone in the morning. Where? |
Beautiful, remote, on Nacula Island of the Yasawa Group.
It is a village of about 70 people. I estimate that there are 30 similar villages in these islands, all linked by the Yamaha 40hp outboard on a fiberglass tub of a boat. As always in the maritime third world, they don't think twice about crazy oceanic swells in a boat little more than a skiff. The people welcomed our home stay as tourism is their #1 source of income. Typical of Fijians, the villagers were VERY sweet and we were VERY sad to leave. |
Fun day trip to volcanic area with hot springs and some super slick mud.
The mud is therapeutic for the skin particularly upon drying, then a rinse in a series of hot spring pools is the local tradition. It dumped massive rain (super fun) right after and we were lucky to have been the last few to even get the mud to dry before soaking. Local gardens had spectacular plants. an unplanned day went magic. |