Fuddland

Photos from holidays [originating in the UK].

This category is a subcategory of Photos.

Summer has hit Suzhou 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 Hainan.

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 Sanya are lavish hotels and resorts with private beaches, but being a man on a budget I stayed in the Dadonghai 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.

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.

Read the rest of “Out of the Yungas—days four and five”…

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.

Read the rest of “Into the Yungas—days two and three”…

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.

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.

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.

Read the rest of “Some more photos of Ireland”…

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.

Read the rest of “Photos of Ireland”…

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.

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].

my recent trip to wales also gave me a chance to test the usability of the handy little camera on my new phone; it was fairly cool to be able to email people from the middle of nowhere and attach a photo of my surroundings.

Read the rest of “tiny photos of wales”…

anyone know the welsh for ‘road trip’?

a visit from my uncle, who now lives on nantucket island, prompted a trip to wales at the weekend with his girlfriend, her daughter and my mother to see a bit of family history.

Read the rest of “road trip”…

i’d never been snorkelling before, so was excited to discover there was a coral reef just up the beach from the resort, and we could hire the equipment for a very reasonable price. rob, andrew, svenja, jeremy and i planned to go one afternoon after the day’s conference activities had ended. i took a nap beforehand, but i had misheard or misremembered the time we were all to meet up, so when rob came in harassing me to get ready [“come on, quick david, quick!”] i got in a just-woken-up grump and let them go off without me. luckily they enjoyed it so much they wanted to go again in a few days, so i made sure i was awake for this one.

photo © svenja lowitzsch 2003

it took me a while to get the hang of snorkelling: the impulse to breathe in through my nose was quite strong, so the first few times i submerged my head, my mask vacuumed onto my face as i attempted to take a breath, before filling with water as i counteracted the suction by exhaling. once that was overcome, i had to contend with the temptation to adjust the position of my mouthpiece — too much movement resulted in a mouthful of seawater and much spluttering.

whilst i was dealing with all this, the others swam out to the main reef — jeremy came back to see how i was getting on, bless him, but there wasn’t much he could do so he went back out again. although i eventually got the hang of wearing the snorkel, i still occasionally needed to stop and adjust it above the water, so i decided not to go out of my depth. i don’t like not being able to touch the ground in the sea at the best of times, and having to use my hands to mess about with the snorkel instead of keeping afloat made life even more difficult for me. it’s funny, i used to love swimming, and was a pretty strong swimmer, but i stopped going regularly years ago and am way out of practice.

still, i managed to find a mini coral reef near the coast, and was perfectly happy swimming around it. i discovered that by swimming round to the ‘ocean’ side, the current rushing over the reef pulled you along and over it quite nicely. there’s a worrying part in the middle of this, when you suddenly realise there’s only a couple of inches of water supporting you and you wonder if you’re going to make it all the way over — you’re not allowed to touch the reef — so you desperately try and use your arms and legs to carry you over before your run out of buoyancy. i particularly enjoyed watching rob discover this for himself: he began gliding over the reef smoothly, then suddenly erupted with wild splashing-about as he tried to clear the reef — jeremy and i laughed for ages.

as time when on we all noticed our feet were getting stung by some kind of nettle-like plant on the seabed — none of us were wearing flippers — so soon after that we got out to dry off. i really need to get my confidence in the water sorted out, because from what the others said, it was well worth going further out: fish of many varieties; networks of coral reef; underwater passages. next time i’ll be ready!

a detailed history of the mayan ruins at chichén itzá can be found on the mysterious places website, so i’ll just offer a brief description of each set of pictures here.

upon passing the ticket booth, you are greeted by the first of many explanatory signs, and a ruin whose identity escapes me.

the observatory, also known as the caracol, enabled the mayans to keep track of both their solar calendar, the haab [consisting of eighteen months with twenty days each, plus five empty days], and their ritual calendar, the tzolkin. from the observatory tower they observed solar, lunar and venusian cycles, and were able to predict ecllipses of the sun and movements of the constellations.

the ossuary, or tomb of the high priest, is in quite a state of disrepair, but you can still make out the carvings of serpents at the base of the steps.

the great ball court is where slaves were given the opportunity to die an honourable death in a popular ball game; the captain of the losing side was beheaded. whilst the game had important religious meanings, symbolising the struggle between light and darkness, it was also the local entertainment, and required great skill: players could only use their arms [not hands] or hips to get the ball through the stone circles on either side of the pitch. the arena was constructed so that priests’ chants would reverberate off the walls of the temples at each end, allowing them to communicate over long distances.

the castle, or pyramid of kukulcan, was built to symbolise the decent of the god kukulcan to earth to begin the agricultural cycle. on the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun falls in such a way as to create a series of triangles that lead down to the stone serpent heads at the base — this gives the impression of an undulating serpent descending to earth from on high. standing in front of one of the staircases and clapping results in the sound bouncing back transformed, making a strange ‘quacking’ noise the mayans associated with the serpent.

climbing the castle is well worth the effort.

the temple of the warriors was the setting for many of the ritual sacrifices the mayans conducted. the group of columns beside it held the joists supporting the rubblework vaults.

the temple of the carved panels.

this complex was mistakenly given the name ‘the nunnery’ by the spanish in the sixteenth century, simply because its numerous small rooms are reminiscent of those they were familiar with. the outer walls are decorated with carvings depicting chaac, the god of rain, with his nose turned up towards the clouds, and his mouth turned down towards the ground — where the water runs deep.

a detail from the tzompantli — the ‘wall of skulls’.

for the first couple of nights, we stayed in a youth hostel.

when the conference began, expenses kicked in and we transferred to the westin regina resort.

our room had a view of the lagoon…

…and the beach was on the other side of the hotel.

the huge mirror in the room relieved moments of boredom.

other boredom-killing activites were playing pool [just about the only thing that was free in the resort!] and learning to waltz.

on wednesdays the hotel put on a show of traditional mexican dancing, music…

…and food!