by admin | Jan 22, 2012 |
Our cruise on the Amazon in Peru from which we recently returned (see Los Ribiernos 12 Mar 2012) falls generally in the category of adventure/eco-travel. There are many sub-categories as well, but suffice it to say that we tend to opt for the segment which is long on luxury and somewhat shorter on adventure with a nod to the ecological wonders of the world. We’ve done Antarctica, and our only real adventure was when I had level five seasickness while we were navigating the Drake Passage, and our time on the Yangtze river was punctuated only by our choice of whether to have one or two cocktails before dinner. We’ve done the safari thing in South...
by admin | Jan 21, 2012 |
The Amazon, as we know it, begins at the confluence of the Ucayali and Maranon Rivers in Loretto, Peru and proceeds east north east into Brazil and gathers strength as it is fed by numerous tributaries of the Amazon basin until it exits into an estuary on the Brazilian coast one hundred sixty miles wide. At that point it is flowing three hundred thousand cubic meters per second into the Atlantic. My grasp of flow rates is at low ebb, so to speak, but suffice it to say that the Amazon discharges more fresh water into the world’s oceans than the next seven rivers combined. Just a few other stats are in order if only to titillate your imagination. As you...
by admin | Dec 13, 2011 |
Technically it’s no longer bird watching, it’s birding. I don’t know that there’s a big difference, but birders are pretty sensitive types, and I, for one, don’t want to get on their wrong side of one. To answer my own question; I don’t know why I do it. Furthermore, if you would have accused me forty or thirty or even ten years ago of becoming a bird watcher (birder) I would have guffawed and maybe taken a swing at you. BTW, in the UK, birders are called twitchers, but we all know they have a tough time with the King’s english. I am, and I do, watch birds that is. Worse yet, I try, mostly in vain, to take photographs of them. They are harder to get in...
by admin | Oct 21, 2011 |
As you know from Part One of this posting, I was in Singapore for business (read that all expenses paid) and thought to double my pleasure by hooking on to the end of my Singapore sojourn a side trip to Bali. Why Bali? Well, it’s in the neighborhood, so to speak, and I’d never been there, and everyone wants to go to Bali don’t they? It’s an easy and short flight from Singapore to Denpasar (you knew, didn’t you, that Denpasar is the capital of Bali). It’s a semi-chaotic medium sized metro area that only hints of the real pleasures and treasures to be found further afield. I had deliberately chosen Ubud, in the central highlands of Bali, as my home base so I...
by admin | Oct 15, 2011 |
I had been looking forward to this trip for some time. An all expenses paid trip to Singapore is nothing to sneeze at these days, even if I had to work a few days for it. Singapore, as you know is on the other side of the world. Well, it’s not exactly the other side, but it might as well be. The world’s circumference is about 24,000 miles and it’s about 10,000 to Singapore as the crow flies, but no one ever flies like a crow. My plan, developed after far too many hours on the internet, was to fly DFW to LAX, and after a short layover, catch the Singapore Airlines non-stop to Singapore. Three hours to LA, two hours of layover, and sixteen hours of food,...
