Fuddland
Category: Holiday
Photos from holidays [originating in the UK].
This category is a subcategory of Photos.
Summer has hit (苏州) with its full force, which means several days of sweltering heat [pushing 40°C] followed by torrential rainstorms which, although a welcome break from the sun, turn the streets into dirty rivers and bring sticky humidity when the temperatures rise again the following day. It’s a far cry from the refreshing change of the final week of my holiday a few months back, which I spent on the southernmost shores of the southernmost part of China, the provincial island of (海南).
I admit I was fairly dubious about visiting a beach resort out here, and while it wasn’t quite up to the standards I’ve seen while visiting Nantucket or Cancun, the water was clean enough, and the beaches were kept rubbish-free despite the generally carefree Chinese attitude to littering. [Some days it’s all I can do to pick up the sweet wrapper that the kids in front of me have just thrown on the ground and thrust it back into their hands, but then a street-cleaner usually sweeps it away before I have a chance to move. This obviously works for them, but for someone with a deep-ingrained aversion to dropping litter, the lack of convenient bins every few hundred metres means I sometimes walk for miles with a sticky ice-cream wrapper flapping about in my hand.]
All along the south-east shores of the town of (三亚) are lavish hotels and resorts with private beaches, but being a man on a budget I stayed in the (大东海) area, home to two youth hostels, the better of which I found to be the Blue Sky International Youth Hostel. It was right around the corner from a very nice stretch of beach, with plenty of restaurants overlooking the sea and lots of street vendors peddling deliciously fresh fruit — I’ve never tasted better mangos.
The area is apparently astoundingly popular with Russian holidaymakers — so much so that most of the shops and roadsigns are displayed in both Chinese and Russian, although a Ukrainian woman that I met at the hostel told me that the Russian was mostly as amusingly wrong as much of the Chinglish that can be seen all over the country.
Walk a few hundred yards away from this vibrant, luxurious district and you find several huge hotels that have gone out of business. It was quite eerie walking around these deserted places, which looked as though everyone had simply walked out one day and never come back: through the padlocked glass doors, I could see plants that had wilted and died in the lobby, newspapers on the coffee tables; the adjacent restaurants still had their tables and chairs set out. [I half-expected the Chinese name of the hotel to translate as Mary Celeste.] A large smelly skip was thankfully downwind from the currently-populated areas.
Between these two areas were small groups of local fisherman, whole families catching crabs and molluscs, and — to be expected — more than a few wedding photo sessions taking advantage of the scenic backdrops. Despite not being much of a beach person, I did enjoy my week or so walking with the soft sand between my toes, my breakfasts of coconut jam on toast, and the surreal experience of Chinese taxi drivers and waiters trying to speak to me in Russian.
In: Photos / Holiday & Photos / Sinophotos & China / Travelling in China / Yunnan, Guangxi and Hainan Island
2008 / 07 / 27 – 19:59 | Comment [0] | Top
One of the [many] highlights of my holiday was the afternoon we spent visiting a series of stunning rock formations just outside Cafayate.
Los Castillos — The Castles.
[View the entire collection of rock formation photos in the Flickr set.]
Day four
As had become expected by now, leaving Roberto’s home was not a simple matter of waking up shortly before our scheduled leaving time, packing up and jumping on the horses — for one thing, our guide Horatio discovered that the horses had wandered rather farther than he’d anticipated during their rest day, so Jo and I sat around for three hours with absolutely nothing to do whilst Horatio enlisted his friends from down the mountain to get the horse back. This was particularly frustrating as he had been up and about for at least two hours before we emerged from our tent, and didn’t use his time effectively; his lack of experience was beginning to grate, especially given the quite considerable [for Argentina] amount of money that we were paying him.
Meet Roberto, our gracious and very friendly host for days two and three of our trek. He lives deep in the forests of the Yungas, in a very muddy and quite steeply-inclined clearing. All of his accommodation is constructed from the trees that grow all around, and consists of four huts: one for sleeping, one for cooking, and two for storage. He was tremendously excited to have visitors from another country staying with him, and made a real effort to show us how he lived. Within minutes of us arriving I had been given a hot drink made from boiling the blossoms of a nearby tree — a traditional pick-me-up, I was told. Unfortunately I can’t report on its effectiveness since he laced it with so much sugar that I can’t be sure it wasn’t just that which got my blood flowing again.
For five days my friend Jo and I trekked up and down the mountains from the east of Ticara, heading southwards towards Jujuy [pronounced choo-chooey, with the ch as in loch], led by our Spanish-speaking guide, Horatio.
We started early on the Tuesday morning — scheduled for a six o’clock start, but our guide was about half an hour late turning up with the four horses. We learnt as the week progressed that this was the norm; whatever time we were told we’d be setting off, the actual hour of departure was no sooner than thirty minutes later than stated. After fifteen or twenty minutes of trotting along on our horses we’d left the town and begun to ascend the west side of the mountains, the landscape being largely rock-strewn, fairly barren, but quite beautiful in its own way, and very warm as the sun rose high in the sky. We stopped for a simple lunch at one of the more level regions, gazing at the stunning views.
A short time after lunch we had reached the summit and started to descend; for whatever reason, the clouds from the east do not generally rise high enough to travel up and over the mountains, and instead sit quite happily on this side, so we were now trekking down into cold and misty — and subsequently much more fertile — valleys. I found that I enjoyed the afternoon more than the morning; not only do I prefer being too cold to being too hot, but at many points we had to dismount and lead our horses along the mountainside pathways, because it was too dangerous to ride them — either it was too steep, or the path too precarious and we risked being thrown if the horses slipped. Great fun!
At the end of a very long day — twelve hours of trekking, all in all — we arrived at our first night’s lodging: the remote home of a family of five [plus their lamb, cat, and some chickens], friends of our guide. It consisted of four or five small buildings, with loosely-fitting stone walls and straw- or corrugated iron roofs. The family were quite quiet — the young children in particular — but this had a lot to do with the language barrier, and Jo managed a bit of small talk here and there. She soon had the oldest boy demanding that she take more photos of him and the surroundings because he loved to see the instant results on her digital camera’s screen.
After a simple but welcome dinner of potatos, goats’ cheese, and a lamb-based soup, we were shown to our sleeping quarters — two sleeping bags on the floor of the storeroom — and soon after dark we settled down to sleep in our cold but dry accommodation.
In: Travels / Argentina & Photos / Flickr & Photos / Holiday
2005 / 12 / 12 – 10:43 | Comment [4] | Trackback [1] | Top
Poking around my bulging sacks, I see I’ve received no less than zero letters begging me to reveal the answers to my extraordinarily popular “Where’s David?” mini-quiz. Well, beg no more. Now lie down … roll over. There’s a good reader. Choc-drop.
Check out the bigger images to see the entirely-obvious-in-the-first-place answers.
In: Photos / Holiday & Local News
2004 / 07 / 15 – 18:09 | Comment [3] | Top
The lupins were in full bloom, and I took a whole bunch of photos of the garden on the days when the sun shined brightly, as well as a few more when I was out and about.
2004 / 06 / 24 – 15:02 | Comment [3] | Trackback [1] | Top
Photos from my visit to the west of Ireland last week.
Fixing the turf shed
Using the iron salvaged from those ripped off by the wind, plus some spare bits from storage, I think we did a pretty good job despite the working conditions.
2004 / 04 / 02 – 22:50 | Comment [3] | Trackback [1] | Top
In lieu of anything to say, here are a few more snaps from my recent holiday.
The university campus and town centre both had what I thought was a large number of modern sculptures; there were several bicycling-themed ones at various roadsides, some abstract figures, and this rather large metal one of a notepad with its pages flapping in the wind. [I forget what the text stenciled on the visible pages said.]
The college football team’s stadium was pretty impressive; as you can see they take their college football seriously — I can’t imagine even the first team at my university getting anything so grand. Me, I’m more impressed that I managed to get the handrail of the bridge I was standing on to run straight down the right hand side of the photo.
As I saw to a much greater degree on the flight home, passing over Chicago in particular, snow doesn’t present anything of a problem to these well-equipped towns and cities. I could see gardens and parks still entirely covered with freshly-fallen snow, yet all the roads [and thankfully, the airport runways] were clear and traffic was running smoothly.
I had to take a photo of this guy as he waffled on about the importance of something or other — he had the most amazing comb-over I’ve ever seen. It was entirely apparent that he had classic male pattern baldness, yet had somehow managed to grow thick, wavy hair up from the sides of his head that, at first glance, resembled a full head of hair.
2004 / 01 / 19 – 21:27 | Comment [2] | Top
Here are a few photos of the local area; the snow is only a few inches deep but it’s chilly enough to make me regret not putting on my hat to cover my ears.
There are plenty of scraping noises to be heard as people uncover their cars and driveways. Back home I’m sure the AA would be issuing “drive only if absolutely necessary”-type warnings, but here driving in snowy conditions is all part-and-parcel, and everyone is well-equipped with de-icers and shovels.
It must be fairly dingy in those bedrooms with the fir trees blocking out most of the light, but they probably provide some shelter from the draughts [and from annoying tourists taking photos of private property].
In: Photos / Holiday & Local News
2004 / 01 / 05 – 10:46 | Comment [4] | Trackback [1] | Top
2003 / 09 / 02 – 10:36 | Comment [5] | Top
2003 / 09 / 01 – 19:10 | Top
2003 / 05 / 07 – 21:20 | Top
photos from the day-trip to the mayan ruins at chichén itzá in mexico.
2003 / 04 / 27 – 08:00 | Top
2003 / 04 / 21 – 01:17 | Top
photos from a visit to my dad’s place in brackloon, county mayo, ireland, january 2003.
2003 / 01 / 13 – 22:27 | Comment [1] | Top
2002 / 06 / 25 – 00:00 | Top
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2002 / 06 / 25 – 00:00 | Top
