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May 31, 2005

New Monkeys!

New species are just appearing left and right! First there was the new rodent species found in the Southeast Asia market. Now Science has covered the discovery of a previously unknown species of primate. Again, this is another case of the locals being aware of a creature, but the scientists not necessarily knowing about them until they ask.

A previously unknown monkey species has been found in the mountains of southern Tanzania.

The animal is believed to be a critically endangered species, with no more than perhaps a thousand individuals remaining.

The highland mangabey, as it is called, lives in the trees and is thought to be closely related to the baboon family.

More at: BBC NEWS | New African monkey discovered

This also underscores the need to protect the wilds of Africa from deforestation and other human factors. Who knows what other flora and fauna exist in these areas that we don't know about yet. I think the reason a monkey gets so much press compared to a new insect or star, is because these human cousins could shed more light on our own evolutionary path.

The discovery of a new monkey species in the mountains of Tanzania highlights the potential for uncovering a trove of as-yet unknown fauna in Africa, scientists who reported the find said.

The identification of the "Highland Mangabey," the first new monkey species discovered in Africa in more than 20 years, also underscores the need to protect such areas from human encroachment

More at: New monkey find in Tanzania suggests wealth of undiscovered African fauna

Another good article about the monkey and the rodent: New Mammals: Coincidence, shopping yield two species

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Some Facts About Africa

I'm always looking for interesting information about Africa. We didn't study much of Africa in school, and I'd be hard-pressed to name all the countries and their capitals (although this is shortly to be remedied).

Fact: Current research has led scientists to believe that the earliest human beings came from Africa. The Olduvai Gorge, located in the eastern Serengeti of northern Tanzania, is a noted archaeological site for human development.

Fact: With the exception of the Mediteranean, Europeans did not begin to explore Africa until about 600 years ago (late 1400's). Before this time, the Arabs were the primary explorers there.

Fact: Northern half of Africa is primarily Muslim.

Fact: The eastern coastline of Africa, as far south as Madagascar, is also Muslim, primarily due to the spread along the Islamic trade routes by sailors and merchants.

Fact: There are about as many Christians as Muslims in the whole of Africa. Christianity was brought by Missionaries in the 1800's.

Fact: Very few people still practice the native religions, about 13%.

Fact: Northeast Africa is refered to as the "Horn of Africa", due to its shape.

Fact: Safari is a Swahili word meaning journey

Source: Cultural Atlas of Africa

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72 Hours In San Diego

Shane and I wanted to get away for the weekend without spending too much money. Since we have a yearly membership with the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, we decided one of the most affordable three-day weekends we could do would be to do the following:

• Drive down to San Diego
• Stay at a Starwood Hotel on points
• Spend the weekend at the San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park
• Eat & Drink well but cheaply

I picked up Shane at the airport in San Jose at about 3pm, and we immediately headed out of the Bay Area on Highway 101 towards Los Angeles. With minimal stopping, we made it to hotel in San Diego around midnight. We checked in and crashed.

The next morning we woke up, showered, packed a lunch and drove the 8 minute drive to the San Diego Zoo. Shane had misplaced his membership card, but luckily we had the free passes that came along with our membership, so we still both got in for free. It was supposed to be partly cloudy in the morning and sunny in the afternoon but it did exactly the opposite. I wore the Samsung pedometer that I got at CTIA in New Orleans a couple months ago, and by the end of the day, it had registered over 18000 steps - that's about eight and a half miles.

After the park closed, Shane and I walked over through Balboa Park, past the Prado theater, the manicured gardens and reflecting pools filled with waterlilies and ducks. We stopped at the Prado restaurant, where numerous weddings were going on. We walked right into the Prado lounge and had one of the best mojitos ever, as well as some excellent chips & salsa and a pair of mahi mahi tacos. The bill was a total of $30, but we were quite full, regardless. Exhausted, we walked back to the car and drove back to the hotel. We considered going in the hot tub, but it was a bit crowded. Instead, we watched National Treasure on TV, which was amusing, while we drank a nice bottle of pinot noir (David Bruce '97) and ate brie and rye toast until all hours.

The next morning we were up and off to the Wild Animal Park in Escondido. The weather was hot and sunny, and we ended up with a bit of a sunburn. We noticed, not for the first time, that both parks attract a lot of local wildlife as well - great blue herons, egrets, bunnies, squirrels and mule deer. As we walked along in a forested area near the Heart of Africa, a very young spotted fawn ran in front of us and charged up the hillside. While we were still gawking in its wake, it came tearing back in the other direction again. We've both never seen one so little, or alone. While the zoo had been busy but not crazy, the wild animal park was a bit overcrowded. After walking another 7 miles around the park, we went to take the train around the large open enclosures, only to find a 2 hour line. We decided it wasn't worth the trouble - we'd seen it all before. Not that it's not a fantastic exhibit, it's just that we were already tired, hot, and not feeling like dealing with upset and angry tourists and their bawling kids for 2 hours to get on it (especially considering the park closed in 2 hours and it was a 50 minute ride so we weren't even guaranteed a spot!)

Instead we left around 4pm and went back to take showers and go out on the town. We dressed up a bit and then went down to Old Town. We got a reservation at the Old Town Mexican Cafe and then walked around the historical site. It was a nice warm, night. We visited the apothecary shops and the mexican trinket carts before heading back for a mojito and getting seated for dinner. The mole we had wasn't bad - but the tamales and chiles relleno were excellent. The mixed drinks were strong but not particularly well-made, but they had lots of great beers on tap and by bottle - including two different Dos Equis brews - yumyum! We left with as much leftover food as we had managed to eat, the portions were huge!

After dinner it was another night of movies and a yummy room service dessert - a sweet cinnamon tortilla with fried apples and cinnamon and vanilla ice cream.

In the morning, we woke up and packed to leave. Instead of stopping for breakfast, we used the delicious handmade corn tortilla leftovers and made mole-tamale-chile-relleno tacos. We got home with very little traffic, despite hitting LA at midday on a holiday.

All in all, San Diego was great fun - and all for basically the cost of the gasoline to get there.

Our Favorite Activities

San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park
Browse Old Town
Walk Around Coronado Island
Dine In The Gaslamp District

Our Favorite Restaurants & Bars

Prado Lounge
Old Town Mexican Cafe
The Beach

Our Favorite Hotels

The W San Diego
The Sheraton at the Marina
The Sheraton San Diego Hotel, Mission Valley

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Warthogs

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Zebras

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Galápagos Tortoises

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Tigers

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Snakes

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Primates

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Meerkats

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Lizards

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Lions

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Koalas

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Gorillas

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Japanese Serow

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Giraffe Faces

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Feeding A Baby Antelope

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Flamingos

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: African Elephant

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Duiker

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Crocodiles

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Ankole Cattle

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Takin

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Camels

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Birds

o·ol·o·gy - noun
The branch of zoology that deals with the study of eggs, especially birds' eggs.

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Bighorn

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Bats

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San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park: Antelopes

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DO NOT TALK TO MY PARROT!!!

Wanda's dishwasher quit working so she called a repairman. Since she had to go to work the next day, she told the repairman, "I'll leave the key under the mat. Fix the dishwasher, leave the bill on the counter, and I'll mail you a check."

"Oh, by the way don't worry about my bulldog. He won't bother you. But, whatever you do, do NOT, under ANY circumstances, talk to my parrot!"

"I REPEAT, DO NOT TALK TO MY PARROT!!!"

When the repairman arrived at Wanda's apartment the following day, he discovered the biggest, meanest looking bulldog he has ever seen. But, just as she had said, the dog just lay there on the carpet watching the repairman go about his work.

The parrot, however, drove him nuts the whole time with his incessant yelling, cursing and name calling. Finally the repairman couldn't contain himself any longer and yelled,

"Shut up, you stupid, ugly bird!"

To which the parrot replied, "Get him, Spike!"

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May 26, 2005

He Wants To See The Cheetahs

So I asked Shane if there was anything he particularly wanted to do on our East African honeymoon. He thought about it for a minute and then said:

"I want to see the cheetahs."

That was all he said.

Cheetahs are either really easy or really hard to spot in the wild. In South Africa, I saw them on two seperate occassions. Once in Kruger National Park, and once in Pilanesburg National Park. We were on a night drive in Kruger, near Shimuwini bush camp, and it was just after sunset. We came upon three cheetahs - a mother and two cubs almost old enough to be left on their own, laying together and rolling about in the grass. They had finished hunting for the day and were settling in for the night.

The second time I spotted a cheetah, I was driving and I happened to notice one hiding in the shade of a bush on a hot day. The only reason I saw it was that she passed within my line of site as I drove (carefully watching in case animals ran across the road).

I have never seen them run. I have never seen any cubs. So I am hoping that Shane and I will not only see cheetah - we will see cheetah running, eating, and with cubs.

Cheetah means "Spotted One"

Cheetahs are the fastest land animal, topping off at sprinting speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. They can go from standing to 45mph in two seconds. At one time, the highly adaptable cheetah lived all over Africa and the Middle East as far as India. There's even some evidence that humans once tamed them and trained them. The Indian emperor Akbar the Great kept 3000 cheetahs he used for hunting. Over time, cheetahs were killed for their coats, and now they are an endangered species living only in a few protected nature preserves in Africa.

Female cheetahs are relatively solitary, but the males hunt in packs and can bring down larger creatures like wildebeests. All cheetahs are vulnerable after they've made a kill because they tire from sprinting, and their kills are often stolen by lions or hyenas. Cheetahs hunt during the day and rest at night and during the hottest parts of the day, in the shade. Cheetah's predators include lions, hyenas, leopards and humans, but have never been known to attack humans.

Cheetahs communicate several key times: to warn away other cheetahs, to communicate within their family over long distances, and to communicate between mothers and cubs. Litters are between 1 and 4 cubs, and newborn cubs are blind and clumsy. They don't growl and purr, but make chirping noises when they're happy. Mothers stay with cubs for a long time. As they get older, mother will hunt and then call her cubs to her to eat. If a mother cheetah calls to her cubs and they do not come, she will often leave a large kill and go retrieve her cubs. This is another way a cheetah may lose her kill, making it difficult to feed her young. Because of all these factors, only 1 in 20 cubs survives to adulthood.

Young cheetahs will often role-play "Hunter & Prey". These mock hunts serve a purpose, to train the young ones to feed themselves when they are older.

Sources:
Endangered! Cheetahs by Shona Grimbly
My Cheetah Family by Matto H. Barfuss
Cheetah Conservation Fund

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May 24, 2005

The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans

You may remember last week when I wrote about the The Earth's Last Wildernesses. In particular, I mentioned the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, with it's man-eating tigers. You might remember that I suggested further reading on this subject...

The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans opens with a chilling narrative of some Indian honey-collectors slipping illegally into the Sundarban Tiger Reserve to make their living. I've run across these stories everytime I find a source on the Sundarbans, where tigers reside in unparalleled numbers. Men risk their lives to collect honey and chop wood to bring to market. On this particular night, a huge tiger swims up to the boat and makes off with one of the men! Thus opens this book devoted solely to these unique man-eating tigers.

The Sundarbans are a tangle of flooded tidal forest, and only (somewhat) accessible by boat. Tiger footprints are everywhere along the banks as you float along. Pink dolphins swim along, and crocodiles gape. This is a tidal forest, and changes so drastically that mapmakers must survey and redraw their maps every three years! If you think the tiger is your only worry - you're wrong. The saltwater crocs are the same color as the water, venomous sea snakes slither about and many dangerous sharks swim in the murky waters.

Author Sy Montgomery attempts to discover the answer to the question: Why do these strange saltwater-drinking tigers, who love to swim, eat people? What makes these tigers man-eaters, unlike their relatives? They display several behaviors unlike other tigers in the wild. For example, they always seem to attack from the back, leading villagers to wear masks on the back of their heads to help confuse the tigers. Is it a matter of encroachment of people into tiger territory, the decline in other food sources? Are the tiger populations sickening and looking for the easy meal? Regardless, the tiger populations are declining so much that many of the species are endangered or extinct.

This book has a lot of great information about the Sundarban man-eating tigers as well as the people who live with them. It covers not only the ecosystem in which they live, but the myths, legends and real-life encounters of the people; this makes The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans special. The only disappointment I had was that although the book contains superb photography, the Royal Bengal tigers photographed were all captive tigers (zoo!). I appreciate that some close-ups of man-eating tigers might not have been wise, but after going on about how prevalent they are in the Sundarbans, I expected to see a picture or two of our striped friend in the wild along with the other Sundarban footage.

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May 23, 2005

Uninvited Guests - The Effects Of Wildlife Encroachment

Suburban wildlife encounters are on the rise, says one expert. This isn't news to me.

My parents live in rural Vermont. They've seen all manner of wildlife in their backyard - bears, moose, deer, raccoons. Wildlife encounters in Vermont are not surprising - people expect such things.

In California, even natural areas like Yosemite have a more urban feel - and so you're often surprised when you see an animal. California has such a population that new development is constantly encroaching on wilderness territory; the animals being displaced have to go somewhere. A couple different things seem to happen - the animals are pushed farther into the uninhabited areas, they find a way to live within the developed areas, or they die.

It can be heartbreaking to watch new construction on previously undeveloped areas. Shane and I once came upon a new housing development and golf course being developed in what was previously a livestock farm in the mountains seperating the San Francisco Bay area with the Central Valley. Most of the homes were still just numbered plots, but the golf course was just about ready to open when we drove through on sunny day. What we saw was very disconcerting. Previously, the area had had your typical Central California look - golden fields, hot, hazy sunny days. The heavily watered golf course cut a heavy green swath through the otherwise dry and golden valley. Large snakes - both rattlers and gopher snakes, lay dead all over the newly paved roads. Rabbits darted back and forth, reminding me strongly of the day in the field in The Secret of NIMH. A lone deer walked past our car, and weaved its way between two large, silent bulldozers. The wildlife was fighting to keep its home, but clearly the habitat had been severely shaken. What really sent the message home for us though, were the squirrels. We parked alongside one of the lush fairway of the golf course and watched hundreds and hundreds of squirrels munch away on the new growing grass. Any small noise we made caused literally a hundred little heads to pop up and listen to us. We counted 35 little guys on just one green alone. This, we saw, was a recipe for disaster. Given all the money devoted to development of the golf course, these furry residents would ultimately be relegated to pest status, despite being the initial resident of the area. Frankly, we think that all these little critters deserve to stay - and if they dig holes or steal balls, well it should be just part of the golfing experience, like it is at Riverside Golf Course in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada.

Golfers often have to deal with the frustration of watching their golf balls swallowed up by sand traps or water hazards.

But at Riverside Golf Course in Edmonton, players have another type of obstacle to watch for — squirrels.

The furry critters regularly sprint from the bush, scoop golf balls from the green, and run off with them, particularly around the 10th and 18th holes.

More at: Thieving squirrels par for the course for Edmonton golfers

It's one thing when you're displacing deer, bunnies, squirrels and raccoons. It's a whole different ball game when you're doing it to predators. When I first came out here to California to attend university, one of the first things I was warned about were the mountain lions in the hills above campus. Residential development pushed deer and other smaller animals up into the mountains. The denser populations of prey make the perfect habitat for the mountain lion. Humans - on bikes and on hikes - make their way through mountain lion territory, resulting in more and more incidents. Humans are also another possible food source for the mountain lion. In the past several years, there have been several high profile incidents of mountain lions attacking people, including bikers and joggers, even from main roads which border undeveloped areas where the lions roam.

While they'll warn you about the possibility of encountering a mountain lion, it's still a bit of a rarity to encounter a black bear in suburban California. But not for this neighborhood down near Los Angeles...

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A 140-pound bear wandered into a suburban neighborhood and took a dip in a swimming pool before being tranquilized and returned to the wild.

More at: CNN.com - Wandering bear takes dip in family's pool

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May 22, 2005

The Ultimate X-File: King Tut's Demise

How cool is this? National Geographic has just released its new virtual tomb of King Tutankhamun. Especially surprising to me - the Royal Wrapping feature shows that King Tut wasn't resting in one sarcophagus but more like a set of Russian nesting dolls. Sarcophagi inside sarcophagi inside boxes, inside boxes. I suppose it's a preventative measure - makes it difficult for the mummy to get out and go on the rampage.

Since his tomb was discovered in 1922, King Tut has been a great favorite of those interested in Egyptology - the posterchild pharoah, if you will. Recently, a lot of new evidence has also come to the fore regarding the details of the youthful king's short reign. New forensic evidence is showing that the original thoughts on how the king of the 18th dynasty perished may actually be childhood wounds he recovered from, and surprising new possibile reasons for his death.

More at: National Geographic Magazine - Unraveling the Mystery of King Tutankhamun

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May 20, 2005

Chocolate Fountains: A Catering Necessity

Shane and I have been discussing the catering of our wedding reception. So far, we have made several decisions. Decisions are great! Finally, decisions!

The Cake

We've decided that the cake will be catered by a Santa Cruz bakery called The Buttery. This was also the bakery used in Shane's father's wedding, and so you could almost call this a new Conder tradition. We haven't yet decided on the filling(s) but it will likely be decorated in the wedding colors of orange and green. I'm currently leaning towards Italian Rum as at least one of the fillings, although we may also include the hazelnut buttercream as one of the tiers. Note the only decision made is which bakery. I am hoping we can go samples some of the fillings before we make our final decisions on content.

The Food

So we've decided that the reception will be a rather informal affair food-wise. We will be having some dishes catered, and others we will be doing ourselves. We have decided to serve "our favorites". It will not be an elegant well-assembled combination of flavors for palate pleasure. Instead it will be more of a choose-your-own-adventure. Shane and I have already selected the dishes we wish to serve, but we don't want to give away anything, so I'm not going to tell you any of the details here really. I will say, though, it will not include any foods we dislike - for example, shockingly, "a mess of eggs" will not be appearing on the menu. Also, Dad, there is a grange in Norwich, Vermont.

Where's The Chocolate?

When Shane and I attended a conference last year, they had this really cool catering job with chocolate fountains. Basically, you serve lots of chocolate-dippables like strawberries and rice crispie treats and pretzels and such, and you rent yourself a chocolate fountain. It looks like a champagne fountain from a classic film, only it oozes chocolately goodness instead. The lucky attendees use fondue forks to spear the goodies and then swipe them under the river of chocolate. Shane insists on having one, and I heartily agree. When are we going to have another opportunity to justify such decadence? Thus we will likely be using San Jose Chocolate Fountains to help cater dessert!

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The Earth's Last Wildernesses

I recently read The Atlas of Wild Places: In Search of the Earth's Last Wildernesses by Roger Few and noted the places worthy of adding to my list of places to visit before I die.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, most of the wild places covered in the atlas are barren, isolated and not very inhabitable. I find that I am more attracted to the areas with wildlife, interesting cultures, or really stunning views as opposed to large empty spaces no one shows much interest in.

Each plot of wilderness is accompanied by some stunning photography of local wildlife and landscape, as well as maps and diagrams of the area.

The Pantanal of Brazil
Amidst photographs of cute baby capybaras and swampy pools of the croc cousin, the caiman, Roger Few illustrates how the landscape of the Pantanal transforms with the seasonal floods. Piranhas patrol beneath the murky water as large waterfowl like the jabiru stork patrol above it.

More reading: Brazil: Amazon And Pantanal (Traveller's Wildlife Guides)

The Tibesti Mountains of Chad
The Saharan Desert is not just a barren land of sand dunes. The Tibesti Mountains cover a wilder area than Switzerland, a landscape of sandstone rock towers and ancient volcanos. Few creatures can live in this hot, dry place. Cute litte birds called sandgrouse live here. One self preservation tactic: they can use their belly feathers to soak up water to carry to their young.

More reading: Michael Palin's Sahara

The Serengeti of Tanzania
No fences. No boundaries. The Serengeti is one of the last places on Earth where African game seems to thrive. Like a shot out of the Lion King, the grasslands of the Serengeti are food for the one and a half million wildebeest that make their great migration across northern Tanzania annually. Talk about a circle of life, the grasslands teem with wildlife - zebra, gazelle, buffalo, elephant, lion, hyena, and more!

More reading: Mara-Serengeti: A Photographer's Paradise

The Okavango Delta Of Namibia and Botswana
Nestled between Namibia and Botswana, the Okavango Delta is a floodplain of the Okavango River. But the area is slowly drying out, and someday the delta will no longer exist. For now, the lush oasis, with its brilliant wildflowers and lush green vegetation, attracts thirsty game from far and wild, making it a great place to spot wildlife.

More reading: Frantz Lanting's Okavango: Africa's Last Eden

The Swedish Lapland
Jagged peaks, glaciers, snowfields and fjords make up the expansive mountain range of the Lapland, which separates Sweden and Norway. Some elevated areas are so rugged that nothing will grow but lichen, and some areas north of teh Arctic Circle allow no plant growth at all. The Swedish Lapland is also a great place to view the Northern Lights. The Sami people are nomads that live in the northern regions of Lapland fishing and herding reindeer.

More reading: Adventure Guide to Sweden

The Bialowieza Forest of Poland
Ancient forests used to cover most of Europe, filled with game and fowl and, unfortunately, lumber. the Bialowieza Forest is one of the last, small plots of old growth. Small herd of buffalo, wild tarpan horses and wild boat now roam in this sanctuary of briar and bramble.

More reading: The Rough Guide to Poland

The Royal Chitwan National Park of Nepal
In southern Nepal, nestled between the Indian border and the snowcapped Himalayas, the Royal Chitwan National Park is a marshy wetland. This is a haven for abundant waterfowl - hornbill and ibis, storks and herons, and my personal favorite - the kingfisher. In the marshy waters, you'll also find the unique water-loving Asian rhinoceros and a rare fresh-water dolphin. And let's not forget the tigers!

More reading: Royal Chitwan National Park: Wildlife Heritage of Nepal

The Sundarbans of Bangladesh
Speaking of tigers, the jungle along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, where mangroves and brackish swampy marshes is called the Sundarbans. This is an area governed by the tides and has similarities to a Louisiana bayou with its shrimps, lobsters, crabs, snakes and frogs - not to mention some serious predators: saltwater crocs, massive pythons and more Bengal tigers! Some locals believe that wearing a face mask on the back of the heads helps keep them safe from tiger attacts.

More reading: The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans

The Highlands of Irian Jaya
Irian Jaya is the western half of New Guinea in Indonesia. Roger Few depicts this wild place as relatively uncharted - an area of significant geological interest not to mention a Mammalogist's dream - where new species of mammals are still being discovered.

More reading: Islands in the Clouds: Travels in the Highlands of New Guinea

The South West National Park of Tasmania
Lastly, it's marsupial madness at the South West National Park. Here, we zigzag our way through jungle-like forests that seem to grown horizontally, and encounter duck-billed platypi, Tasmanian devils and perhaps even the Tasmanian tiger!

More reading: National Parks of Victoria, South Australia & Tasmania

* Note about the pictures: With the exception of the platypus, which I snagged from the Australian government wildlife program, all pictures were taken by me, just not in or of the locations mentioned. I made my best attempt at matching pictures I have taken to the locations we are talking about here, to illustrate what lives there and what the landscape is like.

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Living With Predators - Crocs

First they thought the disappearances were the result of the tribal war being waged in the area. Then they thought the bizarre occurrences the work of a serial killer. Lake Tanganyika in Burundi is home to Gustave, proported to be the largest freshwater croc in Africa - some seven meters long. The locals rely on the lake as a water source - for drinking, washing, fishing, and bathing; but they live in fear of the great beast. More than three hundred deaths have now been attributed to Gustave's hearty appetite - not to mention that he supposedly once ate a full-grown hippo. Some even claim he pulls fisherman from their very boats! Repeated attempts have been made to capture Gustave, who may weigh as much as a two tons, but all they've managed to capture is a bit of video.

People live with crocs throughout the world, but while the people of Australia and the United States think of them as a bit of savage wildlife that might occassionally swallow a pet, the people in Africa have a much closer relationships with this predator. The tender meat and rough skins have significant value to the villagers, and the removal of these creatures can often increase the safety of the peoples who live along the rivers and lakes of Africa.

This tenuous relationship between people and crocs makes it difficult to work for conservation of crocs. Few people feel warm and fuzzy about these snaggle-toothed lizards. Now many species of crocs are declining, threatened or extinct.

The crocs are not doing anything wrong. They are just being crocs. In that area, their historic food supply is gone. People have overfished the lake.

We saw very few fish of any size. And a big croc isn't going to make a living by just eating fish. It will sometimes pull down an antelope or a baboon—something like that. But we saw no animals there—literally none—other than people.

The crocs are survivors, so they've turned to the next available food source. Unfortunately, that means humans.

Of course the people [there] are just trying to survive as well, so it's a delicate situation.

More at: Croc Capture Offers Lessons on Living With Killers

Many people deal with crocs and gators everyday. Read the latest news at Underwater Times. You can also learn more about crocs at Crocodilian Biology Database.

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Living With Predators - Hippos

Most people think hippos are fat, squat docile creatures that bob up and down in the rivers and lakes of Africa much as the manatee, or sea cow, does off the coast of Florida. Cute pastel versions are portrayed in the Milton Bradley pre-school game Hungry Hungry Hippos.

But do you know what African animal kills more people per year than any other? Surprisingly, it's not the lion. Hippos are the most feared animals in Africa. Each year more people are killed by hippos than by all the other animals combined. They bite people, trample people, flip boats, and otherwise inspire fear in people throughout Africa.

On my last visit to Africa, I got to experience these creature - up close and personal. During one rather foolish encounter on our part, we left the safety of our vehicle to look over a rise, only to see a herd of hippos grazing on the other side of a river, about 1/8 of a mile away. We were standing upwind of the herd, and within seconds they had scented us, and went charging into the river in such a violent fashion that we also went charging - straight back to the car. Another day, when we were taking a guided walk in Kruger National Park, South Africa, we walked quietly along a riverbank (quietly so as not to attract the crocs) and came upon some rather disgruntled hippos in the water. Despite being trained otherwise, the armed guides braved the hippo's displeasure and approached very close - ignoring warning signs like snorting, wiggling their ears and showing teeth. Our party hung back, poised to bolt for safety. Yet another experience involved an adult female hippo and a newly born calf. Just after dusk, a rather foolish lioness attacked the pair, only to be thrashed soundly by mama.

Hippos are very fierce and very misunderstood. For example:

Claim: Hippos stay in the water all the time
Fact: Each evening, hippos leave the water and graze on the land, sometimes miles from their primary water source. They also like to sun themselves during the day, but don't often stray far from the safety of the water.

Claim: Hippos are excellent swimmers
Fact: Hippos don't actually swim very well. Instead, they bounce off the bottom. Young calves often bounce on their mother's back in order to breath more often, and in deeper water.

Claim: Hippos are slow & clumsy.
Fact: Hippos are agile both in and out of the water. Outrunning them is often futile.

Claim: Hippos are very fat
Fact: Although they're barrel shaped, they actually have very little fat on them.

Claim: Hippos yawn because they're tired
Fact: Hippos show their teeth as a threat gesture

Male hippos are highly territorial and actually have rather complex rituals for confrontation between challengers. I've also seen adult hippos (very likely mothers) mock-fight with their young. In National Geographic's Most Amazing Moments, they included a rare scene of an alpha male killing a young hippo calf because it was not his offspring.

But one of the most affecting features of the hippo for me has always been its vocalization. I spent some time at Shimuwini bush camp on the banks of the Letaba River. A heard of hippos lingered along the banks, not 100ft from our backdoor, making the snorts and grunts.

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Check out our Frolicking Hippos podcast - a video program highlighting these playful animals!

Check out our Kenya Waterhole podcast - a video program experiencing a sunrise in Africa!

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Killing More Than 3000 African Children A Day - That's 1 Every 30 Seconds

Go to the doctor before a trip to Africa, they'll tell you a couple of things:

• Get immunized for Hepatitis, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever
• Don't drink the water, or eat raw foods
• Wear your seatbelt - the last thing you want is a blood transfusion
• And whatever you do, protect yourself from mosquito bites

They'll give you preventative meds, which a lot of people scorn, but that's really not good enough nowadays. When I was in South Africa, I always wore long pants and long sleeve shirts, I took my meds (Mefloquine at the time), and I sprayed DEET insect repellent all over my stuff and stunk the whole trip!

It's an insidious disease, malaria. Despite its far-reaching effects, this relatively well-understood and somewhat preventable disease has reached pandemic proportions. Victims suffer not because we don't have the answers, but because they have been inadequately implemented. Some people conjecture that half the world's deaths over the course of all time may be attributed to malaria. Depending on your source, today malaria affects between 10% and 40% of the world's population.

According to a World Health Organization report, more than 3000 African children die daily from malaria, most of them under the age of five. That's one every 30 seconds - and that's just Africa. Malaria scientist, Professor Kilama has compared this to loading 7 Boeing 747s full of young children and then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro every day. It's also a serious problem in Asia and the South Pacific.

Here's a map from the Center for Disease Control (CDC):

According to Scientific American, malaria doesn't just kill, it causes all sorts of other, less obvious repercussions as well. According to some economists' estimations, malaria costs more than $12 billion dollars a year - in the form of health costs, lost economic productivity, and depressed foreign investment. But now malaria has been linked to over-population, which brings about all sorts of other ramifications.

The link from malaria to underdevelopment is much more powerful than is generally appreciated. Well beyond medical costs and forgone income, the disease encumbers economic development indirectly. A high burden of malaria encourages a disproportionately high fertility rate--parents want additional children to replace the ones they are likely to lose. A high fertility rate, in turn, can lead to smaller investments in education and health for each child. And malaria can stifle foreign investment, depress tourism and hinder the movement of labor between regions.

More at: Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: A Death Every 30 Seconds

Yet very little money goes towards malaria prevention. I've had a hard time determining what the world spends on fighting malaria per year. I've seen numbers like $100 million, where the estimates on what is needed to combat malaria is more like $1-2 billion a year. Two factors that seem to make this calculation rather difficult. One is that many aid organizations combine their funding for AIDS, TB and malaria. The other is that some organizations seem to be exaggerating their funding efforts - sometimes single grants are portrayed as annual grants, and such.

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May 19, 2005

Where Are You Registered?

Boy, oh boy! It's time for the wedding registry! I have to say, this concept was initially disturbing to Shane and I, but we are warming up to it. *laugh* We want to do something different (shocking, I know) so we want to offer our family and friends several options... traditional registries and a different spin - giving us memories. Here's our list:

• Our Wedding Registry at REI
• Our Wedding Registry at Amazon.com
• Sign Us Up for Bonny Doon Vineyard's DEWN Wine Club
• Sign Us Up for Ridge Vineyard's Z-LIST or ATP Wine Club
• Help Us With Our Honeymoon Memories - See Below!

So what do we mean by help us with our honeymoon memories? Well, we got to thinking. We have been living together in our house in Santa Cruz for more than five years, and frankly, we don't need the stuff that traditional couples need when they start out in married life. We have all the linens we could need, and every kitchen utility imaginable. So we started thinking about alternative things we could say when our close friends and family demanded to know what we wanted for our wedding. What we came up with was to make a list of specific activities we planned for on our honeymoon that people could help "sponsor". So Shane is working on the ability to donate ($10, $50, $100, whatever) to specific activities using Paypal online payment. In return, we'll send you postcards and post photos from our journey in thanks for helping us realize some of our travel dreams! Some examples would be helping sponsor:

• A Gorilla Trek in Bwindi National Park, Uganda
• A Scuba Dive off Zanzibar's Coral Reefs
• A Camel Ride in the Egyptian Desert
• A Night Game Drive on Safari in the Serengeti
• An Authentic Egyptian Dinner in Cairo or Thebes

Anyway, more on this later when Shane finishes implementing the Paypal side of things!

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ROUT - Rodents of Unusual Taste?

It's always refreshing and amusing when you hear stories that reenforce how people were pragmatic long before they became analytical and scientific - and really, they still are.

So what happens when a bunch of brainy biologists go shopping in a third-world food market? They find that some people don't care about identifying and cataloging a species so much as feeding themselves.

Scientists who went shopping recently at an Asian food market got more than they bargained for—a rodent unknown to science was being sold as meat.

Discovered in Laos, Southeast Asia, the animal is described as an "oddball rodent" with long whiskers, stubby legs, and a furry tail.

More at: New Rodent Discovered at Asian Food Market

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May 18, 2005

Interspecies Surrogacy - From Feral Children to Tigers Suckled By Dogs

How much of who we are and what we become is due to our genes and how much is due to how we are raised? This is the essence of the nature/nuture debate.

It's interesting how far we've come with various forms of the nuture - both before and after birth.

Surrogates within a Species

Whether it's wetnurses for aristocrats or polar bears adopting orphans of their own species after losing their own, there are many cases when animals have taken care of their own, even if they were not related. The more advanced civilization becomes, the less the coupling between blood relatives seems to become. Sometimes it's within a species, but not a breeding pair, for example the two male vultures who have successfully raised several chicks at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, ironically. Read more about the Gay Birds Of A Feather Parent Together At Israeli Zoo at CNN.com.

Surrogates with other Species - Accidental

Then we have the cases where, for some reason, an animal has come to care, feed and raise an animal of another species. I'm not talking about pets here in the traditional sense - I'm talking about becoming the parent of a creature. There are many fewer examples of humans becoming parental figures for animals, and it generally results from imprinting. However, this can go both ways, can't it?

This got me wondering about children raised by wolves. Did they really exist? I guess the answer is yes - feral children do exist. They're not a hoax. One site I came upon was for feral children documented throughout history. They catalog children raised by animals, children who've lived on their own, and children who have been forcefully confined and not allowed to interact socially. They've got accounts of children raised by dogs, chimps, monkeys, goats, leopards, wolves, apes, bears, gazelles, cows and even ostriches. Some may be far-fetched, but clearly animals can occassionally show compassion for human babies. For example, just this month, CNN reported on a stray dog cared for an abandoned baby in Kenya.

Surrogates with other Species - Deliberate

Scientists have only recently realized that using surrogates can sometimes help species under threat. Some examples include:

• Dogs Nursing Tiger Cubs in China
• Jersey Cows as Surrogates for African Water Buffalo to avoid Bovine TB
• Using Chickens to Hatch Waterfowl Eggs

And some have inanimate objects as pseudo-surrogates, including stuffed animals. This method has worked well for Orphaned Humboldt Penguins and Baby Callimicos.

And then some more farfetched scenarious - Humans may already play surrogate parent roles after birth, but now some are considering Human surrogate mothers for great apes, too.

Surrogates with In Vitro and Embryotic Transfer

Surrogacy extends further now that scientists have found that they can sometimes use common animals to carry the embryos of less common animals, birth them, and sometimes even raise them. The success of these procedures often relies on the fact that the surrogate species be closely related to the species being bred. For example, endangered African Wildcats were born from house cats surrogate mothers only recently. This is only one of many such endeavors.

Surrogates with Cloning

Of course, recently, there's been cloning - with the saving of various endangered and extinct species being a prominent point in the ethics debate. Cattle-like Asian gaur have been cloned, carried and raised by your common cow, and now a prominent cloning company is attempting to clone endangered pandas, using black bear females as surrogates. This may even go a step further, with the concept of "Frozen zoos" or genetic sample banks for the animal species of the world. This has immense repercussions when you consider not only the animals under threat, but those that are already extinct.

Jurassic Park, here we come? Already, Asian scientists are planning to clone some wooly mammoth and set up a prehistoric Pleistocene park. We've got some juicy T.Rex flesh... are they next?

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Roadtrippin' Oz

Australia is definately on my short list - a place I haven't been that I would really like to experience. I'd like to go great white shark diving in the Southern Ocean outside of Melbourne, and scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef. I'd like to see the fence that was erected across the nation in an attempt to protect farmer's crops. I'd like to see the creatures found nowhere else in the world - not just the giant saltwater crocs, but endangered marsupials like the duck-billed platypi, and kangaroos, wallabies, and koalas.

But as much as I want to visit Australia for the ecological aspects, I'm just as excited about meeting more of the people of Australia. Over the years, I've had Australian penpals, friends online, and other close friends from Australia - and I've come to think that Australia produces some of the most unique people - with very strong characters. I have found many of the Australians I've known to be easy going, very friendly and vivacious.

Rather embarassingly, most of my knowledge of Australia comes from movies like Crocodile Dundee, Muriel's Wedding, Strictly Ballroom, Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Man From Snowy River, Mission Impossible II, A Cry in the Dark (Dingo ate my baby), and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (there's a roadtrip for you). Ironically, these movies do not always portray the people of Oz in a very positive light... but you can't say they're not strong personalities.

Australia is big enough and wide-open enough that it seems to me to be the perfect place for a roadtrip.

The walls inside most of the bush pubs along the highway are stapled over with bras, underwear, foreign currency, and business cards—a few of mine included—left by visitors from around the world. Basic rooms cost about $35; given the volume of cold Victoria Bitter on tap, by bedtime most customers aren't in a state to quibble over thread counts. Just about every pit stop is run by someone who could pass as the main character in a novel. The

More at: Fill'er up, mate! - Budget Travel - MSNBC.com

Also, here's a great site where you can practice Ozzie slang for your trip!

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May 17, 2005

Mountain Gorilla Habitat Under Attack

Shane and I are planning to go gorilla trekking as part of our honeymoon. I am always looking for more information on the region, especially considering the fact that you go with an armed escort - and it's not to protect you from the animals, but the human element - poachers and the like.

It seems like the area where Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo meet is a hot-spot for trouble. It's also the only place in the world where you'll find the mountain gorilla.

From all my research, it seems like Uganda is the safest place for us to seek out our primitive relatives. Although magazines like National Geographic have had articles recently regarding gorilla trekking in Rwanda reopening, you still need a fairly significant military escort, not to mention driving through a bit of a fire-zone on your way to and from the park.

While Africa is, in general, embracing a tourism economy, it is still not particularly safe. You'll hear stories about armed escort abandoning the very people they're hired to protect and such - and really I think this is more a matter of understanding what you're paying for with your typical armed escort. An armed escort discourages human troubles, and has the possibility of helping a situation in an unpleasant animal encounter. The guides are not there to actively protect you when something goes pear-shaped. When it hits the fan, it's every man (or woman) for themselves.

And so, it's especially important to be well informed about the areas you plan to visit. This particular account of Rwandans mutilating a National Park in DR Congo was particularly disturbing, as are the park officials fatality statistics...

The illegal settlers, allegedly paid by Rwandan land speculators, clear-cut the forest and turned it into agricultural land. In less than a month, they destroyed more than 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of prime habitat for one of the world's most critically endangered species, the mountain gorilla.

...

The illegal settlers in Virunga, estimated at 6,000, were seen being trucked in from Rwanda and ordered by Rwandan military commanders to cut down the forest in the Mikeno sector of the park. Cattle were later introduced. Each person was allegedly paid the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day for the work.

...

The most famous resident of Virunga is the mountain gorilla. More than half of the species' population, estimated at 700 to 750, is found there. The rest live in Rwanda and Uganda.

...

"Loss of habitat is the worst threat to this species," said Marc Languy, coordinator of World Wildlife Fund's program in the Albertine Rift, where Virunga is located.

...

Conservation has come at a high cost. Ninety-two Congolese park officials have been killed since 1996. At least two rangers have been killed in recent weeks. On the night of June 25 one park station was looted and burned by 300 militias.

More at: "Gorillas in the Mist" Park Slashed by Squatters

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If You Can't Give A Man A Fish, He May Resort To Lion...

Many people seem to think that distasteful subjects like the bush-meat trade as an African problem. What they fail to realize is that every thing we take from Africa tends to have a profound effect. Fishing has long been a way many poor countries have been able to feed themselves. Foreign fishing vessels from the European Union find fishing off the waters of Africa too tempting to pass up. Often they're given carte blanche in terms of quotas, and overfishing has become a serious problem. Now Science magazine has published a study that shows a strong link between overfishing off the coast of Africa and the increase in the bush-meat trade. This is not just a matter of hurting the small fishing communities along the African coast. Large fish often feed the locals there, but smaller fish like anchovies and sardines are often dried and traded to inland communities for rice, corn, bananas and timber. In short, overfishing has far-reaching economic effects in these poor African countries.

So next time you're eating tuna at a bistro in Paris or Rome or London, consider where that fish may have come from. By making wise choices on the menu, you can help avoid supporting overfishing of threatened fish species, not to mention exploitation of third world countries and the perpetuation of the bush-meat trade, which affects lions, leopards, hyenas, zebra, monkeys, hippos, giant hogs, and antelopes!

The European Union's taste for West African seafood may be causing more Africans to kill wild animals for food—including lions, leopards, and hippopotamuses—a new study suggests.

Researchers say dwindling fish stocks due to trawling by foreign fishing fleets is a key cause of the increase in the "bush meat" trade in Ghana.

The study, published tomorrow in the journal Science, claims to be the first to provide strong evidence of a link between local fish supply and bush-meat hunting.

...

"If people aren't able to get their protein from fish, they'll turn elsewhere for food and economic survival," he said. "Unfortunately the impacts on wild game resources are not sustainable."

More at: African Bush-Meat Trade Linked to EU Overfishing

See Also: "Bushmeat Hunting, Wildlife Declines, and Fish Supply in West Africa" in Science - 12 November 2004 Issue.

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The Tainted Food Chain Of The Arctic

Sadly, there doesn't appear to be any such thing as pristine wilderness anymore. Even in the far reaches of the Arctic, the pollution we make is having a serious impact on the wildlife and the people. It's also interesting to note that most animals, as well as the people of the Arctic, rely on large fat stores in order to live comfortably in the cold environment. It's a sad fact that many hazardous pollutants accumulate in fat cells. Also, these accumulations can be passed from adults to their young as well, when you think of the super-rich and fatty milk that baby walruses, elephant seals, polar bears, seals and whales get through nursing.

The more you think about this, the more disturbing the problem becomes. Pollutants are continually going into the water, and the little fish are continually becoming contaminated. The larger fish feed on the smaller fish, and the predators like the walruses and whales feed on the larger fish. Since many of these pollutants are cumulative, this problem isn't going to get better without drastic measures.

Let's just hope it's not already too late.

Sadly, it may be the human aspect of this story that will spur people into changing. At the top of the Arctic food chain are the native Arctic peoples like the Eskimos, Inuits. They hunt the Arctic predators like the whales and now they, too, are exhibiting symptoms of pollution sickness.

For many, the Arctic is synonymous with a pristine, albeit harsh, environment. So it is an unwelcome irony, perhaps, that the region's indigenous peoples and animal predators are reportedly among the most chemically contaminated on Earth.

Various studies in recent decades have found that animals from polar bears to killer whales, not to mention native peoples like the Eskimos, or Inuit, carry unusually high levels of human-made chemicals in their bodies.

These toxins include industrial pollutants like dioxin and PCBs, which gained notoriety during the 1970s, and newer compounds like those now used as flame retardants and stain guards.

The chemicals reach the Arctic borne north by wind and ocean currents.

More at: Toxins Accumulate in Arctic Peoples, Animals, Study Says

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Call of the Wild?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? So it's always interesting to see who is mimicking who.

Sure, we know all about talking parrots and mimicking dolphins - but what happens when it's unintentional?

Now, African elephants are mimicking the sounds of trucks that drive on the highway by their habitats!

Zoologist Joyce Poole was the first to notice some rather unelephantine noises emanating from a group of semiwild, orphaned elephants in Tsavo National Park, Kenya. She managed to track the sounds to a female named Mlaika.

...

Poole said others in Mlaika's group have been heard to make a similar noise, which is quite different from any call previously recorded in elephants.

Poole suspects Mlaika began mimicking traffic on the busy Nairobi-Mombassa highway because she got bored in her nighttime stockade located two miles (three kilometers) away from the road. "It was a sound she heard every night. Just after sunset sound travels well on the savanna."

More at: Elephants Can Mimic Traffic, Other Noises, Study Says

Also, long before Star Wars, Minke Whales were making light-saber sounds to attract their mates. This is more a case of art imitating life, though. Isn't it?

Ever since Luke Skywalker fired up his lightsaber, the sounds of Star Wars movies have been mimicked by battling boys the world over. Now, a scientist believes male dwarf minke whales may make a sci-fi sound to attract females.

More at: "Star Wars" Sound Traced to Dwarf Minke Whales

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Puggles - The Baby Platypus

They've got webbed feet, a duck bill, and they lay eggs... but they're not a bird. The duck-billed platypus is one of the most interesting mammals around. It defies many of the "rules" originally put forth to define a mammal, and when scientists first discovered them, they were considered a hoax, and you can't blame them! After all, the males also have venomous back feet with enough poison to kill a small child! With a beaver-like tail, the platypus swims in freshwater on the eastern part of Australia, but their numbers are dwindling due to pollution and other factors. But they're so damn cute!

Did I mention that platypus babies are refered to as puggles? Puggles is the generic term for all baby monotremes, including those in the platypus family (see comments for details) because no official baby name exists for them (although "platypup" is favored). How come this little tidbit never comes up on Jeopardy or Animal Planet?

Now an Australian zoo has finally managed to breed some of these funny-looking creatures in captivity - and hopefully more zoos will eventually partake in a breeding program to help save these creatures from extinction.

The pride of Sydney's Taronga Zoo, platypus twin girls named Samantha and Binari, find themselves in the same situation of which many Sydney women complain: Try as they might, neither twin can find a good male with which to settle down and have babies.

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For 20 years attempts at breeding platypuses in captivity had gone astray, for reasons that may sound familiar: The conditions weren't right; the participants didn't get on; or one platypus just wasn't in the mood.

More at: Sydney Zoo Plays Platypus Matchmaker

Perhaps some help from Japanese scientists could help? Supposedly, they've managed to make mice reproduce without needing any male involvement whatsoever!

Dads, in the mammalian branch of the animal kingdom, are often out of the loop when it comes to producing progeny. After that initial contribution of sperm, they are excluded from pregnancy and are all but superfluous even after birth, when nurturing falls to Mom. Now Japanese scientists have streamlined reproduction even further—they have eliminated fathers entirely.

Scientists led by Tomohiro Kono, a biologist at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, have created baby mice without the introduction of sperm.

...

Amphibians, fish, and insects are able to reproduce from eggs alone—a process called parthenogenesis. But under normal circumstances mammals, including humans and mice, cannot. They need genetic contributions from mom and dad.

More at: The End of Males? Mouse Made to Reproduce Without Sperm

Funny that last paragraph... since duck-billed playtpi are mammals and do lay eggs.... but I digress. Getting these creatures to reproduce can't be easy. The normal reproductive methods used by zoos - like in-vitro and such - might work well in most mammals, but the platypus reproductive system is quite unique.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Photo of platypus by the Environmental Protection Agency of Australia.

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Deer - Not Just Prey Anymore

Wasn't it Jurassic Park that had the line, nature finds a way? I guess it should not be surprising that the deer of Scotland would find a way to get their vitamins by eating flesh, but digestion is an area I always felt was exceptionally sensitive to evolutionary pressures. How could a noted herbivore ever just spontaneously "go carnivore"? What about all the digestive organs necessary to process foods that way? Has this deer changed biologically in order to adapt to eating flesh or what? Then again, many mammals all originated from a couple prehistoric creatures that were likely rat-like opportunists, I bet it's more likely that all mammals have the necessary equipment to process flesh as food, but years have passed and mammal species have focused on specific foods (like plants for deer). Therefore, this new carnivorous deer is just reaching back into it's past in order to leverage evolutionary traits it always had.

Red deer on the Scottish island of Rum may be eating the heads and legs of live seabird chicks as a way to get minerals they need to grow their antlers.

More at: Scottish Deer Are Culprits in Bird Killings

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May 15, 2005

Wedding Wine

So we went wine tasting at one of our two favorite vineyards - Ridge Vineyards.

We've decided on a rather sweet red wine for our wedding. We've narrowed it down to:

• 2003 Dusi Ranch (100% zinfandel)
• 2001 York Creek (78% zinfandel, 20% petite sirah, 2% carignane)

Both are very good and I'm thinking that the York Creek is the better of the two - the late picks tend to be less complex than their other varietals, but the York Creek is subtle but enjoyable for most people. We don't want to alienate people by chosing too "weird" of a wine for our wedding reception, but at the same time we want something we really like, something with character. We tasted the Dusi up at the Monte Bello Vineyard, and it was quite good, but we've had the York Creek Late Picked before and really liked it. So we've bought a bottle of each to crack open, taste and make our final decision.

That said, both are worth a try, if you ever have the chance!

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May 13, 2005

Shark Cage Diving - Sketchy?

A couple of years ago, I went cage-diving with Great White Sharks in South Africa. At the time, I thought it a pinnacle of my short but exciting diving career. I have mixed feelings about repeating the whole experience - not that it wasn't fantastic. I want my fiance to experience being in the water with the apex predator, and I wouldn't mind taking some more pictures and video. [Read more about my shark diving: Great White Sharks - The Chance in a Lifetime]

Now, however, I am growing increasingly concerned about how easy access to these wonderful creatures is becoming. I guess this is really a concern with "eco-tourism" in general - by providing access to these fragile environments, we introduce the very corruption that causes damage.

Also, I'm concerned with the safety aspects of it. Getting in and out of a shark cage is not a particularly easy or safe endeavor. I ended up with bruises all over my legs from clamboring in and out of the cage, which basically involves climbing over the side of a boat, and sliding/jumping into a small metal cage that bobs along side the boat, whilest large predators swim about you. You don't want to miss. Getting out of the cage is another lesson in bravery - you climb up the side of the cage like a ladder, and hoist yourself up to fall back into the boat. You do not want to fall backward by accident, or you're in trouble. As if this isn't enough of a problem, lately the shark diving industry has heated up, and more people than ever are going. The quality of services provided varies greatly - and safety concerns may come second to the tips garnered by maximizing the thrill.

And now, what with monstrous great whites attacking cages literally a handful of miles from where I did my diving...

Mark Currie, 32, from Barrow-in-Furness, was inside a metal viewing cage in the water when the 18ft Great White suddenly attacked the cage.

As the shark began tearing at the cage, Mr Currie managed to scramble on board the tour boat while the captain beat the shark on the head.

The expedition took place off the port of Hermanus, near Cape Town.

More at: BBC News: Man relives shark attack escape

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Sharkwatcher I Am

The other day I was lured to a smart-looking blue book at the local library. The Shark Watcher's Handbook: A guide to sharks and where to see them by Mark Carwardine and Ken Watterson is an interesting new twist on wildlife viewing. Well-researched, it covers not only the general guidelines for shark diving but gives a directory of shark species.

For example, if you want to see a Thresher shark, you may want to check out the Daedalus Reef in Egypt or Malapascua Island, Cebu in the Philippines. There's also a fourth species, not yet named, which may swim in the waters of Baja California, Mexico. Head to the Isle of Man, Cornwall, UK for a close encounter with a Basking Shark.

In a clear and concise fashion, The Shark Watcher's Handbook provides pictures, ID checklists, biological information, relative danger, distribution of spcies and best places for a close encounter, by species. It also includes a detailed directory of shark-watching sites, with maps, locations, viewing opportunities, best seasons, dive depths, visibility, water temperatures and other useful notes. It's a fantastic resource for divers and shark enthusiasts alike.

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May 12, 2005

Triskaidekaphobia

We went to the Top Of The Mark in San Francisco for Mother's Day brunch. As we were speeding up towards the rooftop dining, I noticed that there was no 13th floor. I thought this rather strange. Shane then told me that no buildings in the United States have a thirteenth floor. I expressed my skepticism. He must have been bamming me, I thought, but then he sends me one word today: Triskaidekaphobia.

So I looked it up.

Triskaidekaphobia is an irrational fear of the number 13. It is usually considered a superstition.

It has been linked to the fact there were 13 people at the last supper of Jesus, but it probably originated only in medieval times.

Triskaidekaphobia may have also affected the Vikings - it is believed that Loki in the Norse pantheon was the 13th god. This was later Christianized into saying that Satan was the 13th angel.

The Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1686 BC) omits 13 in its numbered list. This seems to indicate a superstition existed long before the Christian era.

Some buildings number their floors so as to skip the thirteenth floor entirely, jumping from floor 12 to floor 14 in order to avoid distressing triskaidekaphobics, or using 12a and 12b instead. This is sometimes applied to room numbers as well.

A specific fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia.

More at: triskaidekaphobia: Definition and Much More From Answers.com

I find this hard to believe, but I guess a lot of superstitious people do feel uncomfortable with the idea of living or being on the 13th floor. But really, how is that any different from living on the truly 13th floor (or the 14th in Europe) and having it being falsely called the 14th/15th? That just seems devious - like the work of the devil himself!

This is actually quite a common affliction - not just affecting the silly superstitious masses, but also some of the greatest minds of history.

Napoleon, J. Paul Getty, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were all practicing triskaidekaphobes, Fernsler said. "FDR might have been our most superstitious president," Fernsler said.

"He was scared to death of the number 13. When luncheon or dinner parties numbered 13, he would ask his secretary to join the guests to make an even 14."

That is a common fear, Fernsler said, adding that, in Paris, superstitious diners can hire a quatorzieme, or professional 14th guest.

Mark Twain once was the 13th guest at a dinner party, Fernsler said, and a friend told him not to go because it was bad luck. "It was bad luck," Twain later told the friend. "They only had food for 12."

Roosevelt's fears extended far beyond the dinner table, affecting even his travel arrangements.

"If he was going to travel on the 13th, often he would make the conductor leave at 11:50 p.m. on the 12th or wait until the early hours of the 14th," Fernsler said. "He died on Thursday, April 12, 1945—it was his final trip, and it was almost as if he said, I'm not leaving on the 13th."

More at: No fear of Friday the 13th for triskaidekaphobia expert

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Kenya and al-Qaida

Until quite recently, I did not have a very refined understanding of the geographic of Africa, especially Eastern Africa. I didn't quite realize how close countries like Kenya were to the Middle Eastern troubles. I assumed embassy bombings of the area were just because they were easy targets in third world countries, but I did make the connection that it's but a hop, skip and a jump from the terrorist hot spots we are generally familiar with. Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan make up the northern border of Kenya - and that's practically the gateway to the Middle East. In fact, the northern half of Kenya is relatively unpopulated,and much is basically a no-man's land. It's not covered in guidebooks much, and travellers are highly discouraged from visiting these zones. Now the PM of Ethiopia is warning that al-Qaida is very active in Kenya's neighboring Somalia. What does this mean for travelers and trekkers in Eastern Africa, especially Kenya? The southern and southwestern corners have all the foreigners traveling through, being the most heavily populated area, near Lake Victoria.

Ethiopia's prime minister warned on Thursday of the danger posed by a "very active al-Qaida cell" in Somalia's capital and said a stable government is the best way to eliminate the terrorist threat in the chaotic Horn of Africa country.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in an interview with The Associated Press days ahead of an election in which he is seeking a third consecutive term, said his government supported the Somali transitional government formed in neighboring Kenya last year and would do everything possible to help it take power and eliminate the terrorist threat.

"Wherever there is distress, wherever there is acute poverty, social dislocation, the potential for a terrorist state exists," Meles said. "We have a very active terrorist cell in Mogadishu, which has been involved in terrorist activities in Kenya."

Kenya has been hit twice in recent years by major terrorist attacks that killed hundreds. In 1998, the U.S. Embassy was destroyed by a car bomb, and another exploded outside a tourist hotel on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast in 2002.
Despite reports that the masterminds of both attacks — which were claimed by al-Qaida — fled to Somalia, most Somalis reject the charge that there country is a base for terrorists.

More at: Ethiopia: al-Qaida Operating in Somalia - Yahoo! News

I think I overreact in my concern for traveling there - but I'd rather be aware of the risks than do something foolish. Part of me wants the comfort of having a guide - someone who knows the area and generally will only expose me to as much as I can more than reasonably handle. But that's not seeing the real Africa, you know? Sitting on an English-speaking tour bus might be more comfortable, but it's certainly not more authentic. Now I see those same comforts as easy targets for terrorists - big, obvious, and on a predictable schedule. I want to have my freedom to make my own trek through Eastern Africa - and I like the idea of being unpredictible, without a set itenerary. However that makes it harder to track us down if something goes wrong, you know? Safety in numbers doesn't always apply anymore.

Then again, I'm not as crazy or die-hard as another trekker I know. He just walked across the desert region of the Kotikipi Plain of Kenya into Ethiopia (north of Lodwar) - alone - despite that being a vast empty area where the pastoral ethnic groups such as the Pokot, Turkana and Marakwet have regular conflicts, toting AK47s.

This morning, I rushed away from the police post with my thoughts focused on avoiding the heat. Yesterday, I walked without a guide and had no problems, and this morning the police let me go without a guide. Somehow, I assumed that it would all be safe. Suddenly, I really wished that I had a guide with me.

The Merile was unarmed, but he was stronger than I am. Plus it's his home turf. I certainly don't want to get into a fight with a nomad in the middle of his desert. I concede, and decide to give him a shirt.

...

He puts on the shirt and seems very proud of his acquisition. Then he craftily grabs the beads, which I had previously offered him, out of my pocket.

With my backpack released from his grasp, I continue on my way. The nomad follows me. He's a pain in the ass, constantly asking for money as we walk. The conversation isn't solely about money though, we share some stories through pantomime. He tells me one story where is fighting a Turkana. He motions that he was running zigzags as he was firing, and then shows me the scar where a bullet hit him. I guess that he killed other guy though, as he was the one telling the story.

He's an annoyance, constantly asking for money, but I quickly decide that I'm very glad to have him with me. We pass by several herders who are armed with AK47s. Any of them could have asked for my entire backpack and I would have had little choice in the matter. My "guide" talks with them and we continue on our way.

...

All in all, I think that I did pretty good. I had a run-in with a murderous bandit of the nomadic Merile tribe, and all he got was a dirty t-shirt, a string of beads and $0.30 in Kenyan change.

Read more from Adam at: Adam Katz - World Traveler (Geekeasy.com)

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May 11, 2005

Cichlid Intelligence & Diversity

My father has always populated his aquarium with cichlids - African ones. They're fascinating creatures, and to date there are more than 1300 known species, making up more than 5% of all species of vertebrates. Much smarter than your average fish, these guys show some really interesting behavior, especially when you take into account their generally small size. Most aquarium fish are boring, but when you see a tank of cichlids, you can tell they've got significant cognitive abilities just by the way they react to you.
For example, most fish do not respond to much outside the tank, but wiggle your fingers in front of a cichlid tank and you'll have everyone's attention and interest. Here are some of the other interesting behaviors of cichlids:

• Unlike most fishes, both parents care for their young. Some even lay their eggs in abandoned snail shells and then guard the entrance.
• They're highly predatory. They often live together in flocks or tribes of like species, in the same environment. They are not hospitable to other fish, including other cichlids of different species.
• They're often ambush predators - yet omnivorous
• They're big diggers and excavators
• They often express timidity and dominance through color - a pale fish is a stressed or submissive fish, and a bright fish is an aggressive or dominant fish
• They're extremely territorial
• They express themselves with specific movements for fighting and flirting
• Sometimes when a male loses his territory, he loses his bright coloring. However, sometimes he goes into hiding, turns on the color signals of dominance, and pretends that he's still dominant for several more weeks, in hopes of attracting mates before they figure it out

I guess there is a huge problem with non-indigenous species of fish populating lakes and rivers throughout the world and messing with fragile ecosystems. Sometimes this is purposeful introduction and sometimes it's accidental. One cichlid that's been introduced a lot is the Tilapia - which you may have been seeing on the menu lately as part of the white fish healthy food push of many fast food restaurants. Scientists are still speculating on why there are so much diversity of species within the Cichlid family. The diversification seems to happen over an extraordinarily short period of time. Is the adaptability of cichlids going to cause even more serious problems to the environment as they spread into new ecosystems?

Ironically, as prolific as these fishes are, my father never seems to be able to keep more than one alive in a tank at a time. He originally named his cichlid Beast, and he's on at least Beast III at this point. Either they fight each other to death or they dig under rocks and then die in cave-ins.

The cichlids, a family of tropical freshwater fish, have evolved an astonishing array of forms in Africa. Their diversity is perhaps most impressive in the Great Lakes of East Africa, where a handful of colonizing fish species have multiplied over thousands of years into many hundreds of species found nowhere else in the world.

...

The study team found that cichlids found today in rivers such as the Congo, Zambezi, Okavango, and Limpopo originated from a massive lake that dried up some 2,000 years ago. Known as Lake Makgadikgadi, it once covered an area larger than Switzerland and was centered north of the Kalahari Desert in present-day Botswana.

...

"The high rates of speciation [evolution of new species] observed in these African cichlids are almost beyond belief, but the evidence is clear," he added.

More at: National Geographic News: Lost African Lake Spawned Fish Diversity "Beyond Belief"

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We're Sorry, but It's a Small World After All

Speaking of how small the world has gotten with fast flights, up-to-the-second news feeds and various forms of media available... I found this little tidbit on CNN rather amusing. While I can applaud the fact that monster media company Disney acknowledges some of the cultures of the world, the continually repeated song are more than a little bit trite and it kind of sickens me to think of how many people's only exposure to foreign cultures is that of 300 Audio-Animatronic(r) dolls fashioned for the New York World's Fair in 1964. Thank God the ride is only 5 minutes long - although the lines without fastpasses force queues and ride operators to listen to the song for considerably longer. It has interesting health repercussions - if any song could cause mental distress - it's this one.

It reminds me of the time when, at the tender age of 12, a good friend and I drove her older brother crazy singing The Little Drummer Boy and Mary Poppins' A Spoonful of Sugar over and over again...

Richard and Robert Sherman are the authors of the most-played song on Earth, and for that they would like to apologize to some of you.

The song is "It's a Small World (After All)," the tune that plays on a continual, multilingual loop every few minutes at Disney theme parks across the world -- a fact that Disney employees are only too well aware.

"They must go out of their minds," says Richard Sherman.

"We've driven teenagers crazy in every language," says Robert Sherman.

More at: CNN.com - They wrote the songs that made you sing

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May 10, 2005

Creepy Creatures At Our Door!

When we watch those oceanography shows on TV and they have the crazy deep-sea footage of the monsterous spikey glow-in-the-dark fishes, I always think these deep caverns are in far off, exotic locales. Like perhaps some deep trench in the mid-Atlantic, or farther, like the Indian Ocean or the waters off Australia.

Now I find out they're in my backyard - the Monterey Bay! I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised. The Monterey Canyon is one of the deepest regions of the Pacific Ocean - more than two miles deep. Creepy monstrous fish, nibbling at my toes when I'm diving! Eek!

 

Off the coast of California an undersea canyon harbors an array of deeply strange creatures.

More at: Monterey Menagerie @ National Geographic Magazine

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Hunt for the Narwhal

When I was about 10 years old, I went on a Narwhal hunt. Obviously not based on any scientific reason, my mom's church sponsored it. An aspiring marine biologist, I spent the evening running around in the dark, in a county park area near the Long Island sound in Branford, Connecticut. Now I find that narwhals, which do exist, only really live in the deep, cold waters of Arctic. An almost mythical creature, narwhals are very much under threat of becoming just that - a myth. Despite some compelling conservation efforts on behalf of marine life like whales and dolphins, they're still being targeted by whalers. Add to that their susceptibility to pollution in the form of chemicals and sewage.

As far as I know now, the only narwhal in Connecticut is the USS NARWHAL (SSN-671), a quiet class of submarines first commissioned in New London, CT.

The narwhal—a small Arctic whale known for its six-foot-long (1.8-meter-long) tusk—has dropped in numbers by an average of 6 percent per year during the last 17 years

More at: Narwhals: Photos Show Decline of "Unicorn" Whales

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New Zealand - Land of the Kiwis

About the size of the state of Colorado, New Zealand wasn't much of a tourist destination until Peter Jackson really put the country on the map by filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy - insisting on using local resources.

Surprisingly, the land of the Kiwi is one of the few places in the world where one can encounter a great variety in terms of geography. New Zealand is riddled with active volcanoes, craggy mountaintops with great ski slopes, bubbling hot springs, geysers, mud pots, and glaciers. Not to mention wildflower blanketed pastures.

Speaking of pastures...

The Claim:

There are more sheep in New Zealand than people.

The Truth:

People (Src: CIA Factbook)
4,035,461 (July 2005 est.)

Sheep (Src: Statistics New Zealand)
39,700,000 (2003 est.)
70,300,000 (1982 est.)

Thus, there have been between 10 and 20 times as many sheep as people in New Zealand, and that's a fact!

---

National Geographic has a great special feature on New Zealand. Check it out: New Zealand: Pictures, Maps, Travel, Wallpapers From National Geographic

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Baby-Faced King Tut?

It almost sounds like an X-File, how modern technology is being used to give us a new perspective on an ancient time. Forensic artists and scientists are using facial reconstruction to determine not only if those bones found along the highway belong to some poor soul on a milk carton, now we can know something of what King Tut might have looked like.

a baby-faced young man with chubby cheeks and a round chin

More at: CT scans reveal King Tut's face - Science - MSNBC.com

I find it fascinating the types of jobs that are leveraged in certain fields. For example, the use of sculptors in paleontology has been around for quite a while, but now that we've got some soft, fleshy tissue of a dinosaur - a T-Rex no less - to play with AND some of the first dino eggs in the womb discovered. Who knows what new vocations will be sucked in?

A Tyrannosaurus rex fossil has yielded what appear to be the only preserved soft tissues ever recovered from a dinosaur. Taken from a 70-million-year-old thighbone, the structures look like the blood vessels, cells, and proteins involved in bone formation.

More at:
National Geographic News: T. Rex Soft Tissue Found Preserved

Scientists have discovered for the first time a dinosaur with shelled eggs inside her belly. The find yields insight into how dinosaurs made babies and supports the theory that modern birds and dinosaurs are close relatives.

More at: National Geographic News: Dinosaur Eggs Discovered Inside Mother -- A First

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Mexico Roadtrip by Sportsmobile

Some of our friends are planning the great North American roadtrip by Sportsmobile - a van conversion for 4WD.

Smaller than a mobile home - self contained, perfect for a couple, with high clearance and all sorts of possible amenities. While I've never been interested in a winnebago-type vehicle, this does interest me a bit. I'm looking forward to seeing our friends' when they visit. The varied layouts make it as exciting as outfitting a house!

Here's the account of another roadtripping group with a Sportsmobile, who has been rumbling around Baja and beyond:

The strong rain from the night before continued through the day. Driving to La Paz was rain, rain, rain. Still, we were not prepared for the way the we found La Paz: flooded! The roads were filled with water. The manhole covers were popping up, splurting brown water from the storm drains below. Rivers of water were filling the intersections and there was no way to escape it. Fortunately, our van is a high clearance vehicle so we had no problems, but we watched efforts of the small city cars as they tried and sometimes failed to navigate the water.

More at: Mexico Road Trip 2005

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May 9, 2005

Skip The Guidebooks?

I'm always frustrated by the apparent lack in high quality, up-to-date and photograph-rich guidebooks. This past few weeks I've been greatly annoyed when I go into a bookstore and they don't have a single travel guidebook for any African, Arab or Asian country. They've got the Mexican Riviera, the most basic of Europe, and individual US states. I have heard in the past that less than 10% of Americans have passports. I chalked it up to the fact that the United States has such a diverse landscape that people couldn't handle exploring their own country, let alone another. It does make one uneasy, though. I've listened to so much narrow-mindedness that in the past I've ventured to suggest that everyone should take at least one significant trip abroad during their lifetime. It changes one's perspective on the world and on our own country. We may have given up isolationism but we certainly have kept the thought that the world revolves around us Americans firmly intact. Spending some significant time abroad helps you discover some of the other voices and opinions out there with unique views of the United States you'll rarely hear at home.

Tired of clinging to that guidebook like it's a security blanket? Try reading something that tells you how to appreciate the art of travel rather than how to spend money. Here are ten insightful travelogues that will inspire rather than dictate.

The Beach, by Alex Garland
First-Time Around the World, by Doug Lansky
Globetrotter Dogma, by Bruce Northam
Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Mecca, by Sir Richard Francis Burton
The Practical Nomad, by Edward Hasbrouck
Traveler's Handbook, edited by Amy Sohanpaul
The Traveler's Tool Kit, by Rob Sangster
Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, by Ibn Battuta
The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo
Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts

More at: National Geographic Adventure Mag.: On Guidebooks

There's also a list of National Geographic Adventure's top adventure books of all time that I'm going to try to work my way through:

Extreme Classics: The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time

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Obi-Wan Goes Trekkin'

Not only is Ewan McGregor a tremendously handsome man, he's passionate about trekking! (A man after my own heart!)

The 6-part TV series will be shown on BRAVO and hopefully will also come out on DVD so we can rent it on Netflix...

In April, with a handheld camera and the occasional support crew in tow, McGregor, 33, and actor-friend Charley Boorman, 38, set out from London atop matching BMW motorcycles. The pair crossed the English Channel by train and began a three-and-a-half-month eastward tear through Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Alaska, and Canada. This adventure ended July 29 in New York City.

...

What was the loneliest stretch of highway you encountered?

McGregor: The emptiest stretch of road was between Irkutsk and Magadan in Siberia. It's called the Road of Bones because of its history, its remoteness, and its state of disrepair. Stalin sent [countless] political prisoners to die building that road. At the time of year we rode it, the permafrost was melting, so there were trees, bogs, bears, washed-out river bridges—and absolutely nothing else. Except for really [screwed-up] roads.

More on: Actor Ewan McGregor on Globe-Spanning Motorbike Adventure

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Airports' Worsts

Here's another article I originally read on Adventure. I have to keep telling myself that the fact that we're considering flying into Kampala, Uganda (which is where the Entebbe hijacking took place) is not terribly distressing. It's not like there haven't been hijackings in the United States, and England, and other places I've flown. Still, it kind of creeps me out a bit. But then that's why we're doing this trip before we have kids.

WORST ANTIQUATED AIRLINE: Afghanistan's Ariana Airlines. Called "Scariana" by many, it's the only airline with more planes crashed on the ground than flying in the air. Be prepared for ancient 727s with half the seats missing. Upside: legroom.

WORST AIRLINE, PERIOD: Pakistani International Airlines. A true Third World experience. Runaway snack carts; passengers eating spaghetti with their hands; and the crew gathering in back to smoke cigarettes as the plane comes in for landing.

WORST AIRPORT: Bamako Mali's central airport is a crowded, smelly shack next to a potholed runway; only slightly worse than Karachi International.

WORST STOPOVER DIVERSION: Kampala, Uganda. Grab a snack in dictator Idi Amin's old jet and then admire the site of the 1976 Entebbe hijacking.

WORST AIRLINE FOOD: Uzbekistan Airways. You know it's bad when the president of the country, Islam Karimov, complains about the food. I was sitting next to him.

WORST BAGGAGE HANDLERS: Conakry, Guinea. Baggage handlers throughout sub-Saharan Africa will rifle through your bags, but the guys in Conakry lifted a shoulder-mounted video camera right off the tarmac next to me.

More at: National Geographic Adventure Magazine: Robert Young Pelton's Worst-Of-The-Worst Awards

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Staying Alive in a Dangerous Place

I originally read this article in National Geographic Adventure (one of my favorite magazines of all time) months ago, but now I'm very focused on safe travel and not making yourself a target in areas where tourists - especially American ones - are targeted for bombings, kidnappings, and such. This article gave me some insight into what things are like in Iraq right now - practical advise delivered in an amusing and yet disturbing fashion.

Can you spot an insurgent?
On our runs through downtown, some folks would smile, some would frown, and others would just watch as we rolled by and mouth the word "boom." Instead of scanning individuals, you have to intuit the pre-ambush ambience. If the street is suddenly deserted, if traffic patterns turn weird, if people look frightened or are running like hell, it's about to get ugly.

...

Is Iraq ready for tourists?
Yeah, there are about 150,000 of them and they're all wearing fatigues. Not even I would travel without a security detail in Iraq. Tourism still needs a few more years to ripen.

IRAQ Dos & Don'ts

DO take your Dramamine. To avoid groundfire and to touch down on a single-runway airfield, planes landing in Baghdad make a gut-wrenching corkscrew approach.

DON'T walk the streets at dawn or dusk. Twilight throws off the night-vision goggles used by helicopter patrols. Insurgents prefer these times to lob mortar rounds into the Green Zone.

DO bring a "ditch" bag for quick exits—a small daypack with a medical kit, a GPS unit, spare food and water, and a GSM phone programmed with the phone number of the First Cavalry Quick Reaction Force.

DON'T drive a Chevrolet Suburban. These are government cars and every insurgent knows it. If you have to drive—God help you—a BMW 7 Series is fast, handles well, and seems to blend in.

More at: National Geographic Adventure Magazine: Life in Iraq's Green Zone

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Great African News Feeds

I'm trying to keep up with foreign affairs in Eastern Africa and Egypt in order to be better informed for our honeymoon next year. Here are some of the news sites I plan to try to check regularly.

General Africa

Africa Confidential

allAfrica.com

International Committee of the Red Cross

Amnesty International

Kenya

CoastWeek - Mombasa

Daily Nation - Nairobi

The East African Standard - Nairobi

Egypt

Al-Ahram Weekly - Government affiliated leading Egyptian newspaper

Egypt Daily News - A News Aggregator

Cairo Magazine - News, Business & Leisure

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BBC East African Border Crossings

A very interesting recount of driving from Kampala - the capital of Uganda, through Kenya and into Tanzania. We're considering a driving safari in Eastern Africa and I am always looking for specifics on driving in Africa, across borders, and through military and customs checkpoints.

We drove from the capital Kampala right up to the Kenyan border without a single police officer waving us down - and that is despite the Kenyan number plates on our car.

In Kenya, you would need a wad of notes to achieve the same feat.

...

In Kenya, bureaucracy seems to grow freely on trees.

...

Suddenly the rushed and business-like Kenyans are slowed down into the polite, time-consuming etiquette of the Tanzanian.

It is not enough to ask: "How are you?"

Read On: BBC NEWS | World | Africa | East African road trip

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May 4, 2005

Año Nuevo State Reserve - Male Elephant Seals

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Año Nuevo State Reserve - Baby Elephant Seals

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May 3, 2005

General Travel Photography Tips

Here are some tips for general travel photography.

• Always carry-on your camera equipment. Never check it. Keep your film in clear ziplock bags for easy hand-searching.
• The postcard trick: Buy a whole bunch of stamps at the airport when you arrive. Bring a page of labels with preprinted addresses - yours. As you move from place to place, mail yourself postcards with notes on where you were, the date, etc. This information can jog your memory and keep track of your pictures taken.
• Keep your lodging costs down by hosteling and camping.
• Bring several plastic bags and ziplocks to protect your equipment from bad weather.

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Travel Photography in Asia

Here are some tips for travel photography within the Asia, for visitors.

• Bring a macro lens for pictures of the culture
• Make sure you bring a bilingual atlas - by this I mean one that has the local character symbols AND the roman alphabet one. This makes it much easier to navigate.
• Japan has an excellent train and bus system which reaches just about everywhere. For individuals, the trains are likely your most economic option. For more than three people, a car rental will likely be cheaper. You'll likely need an International Driver's License.
• Subways and trains are clean, easy to use, and generally very safe.
• Bring a tripod or monopod for long exposures like nightscapes and waterfall shots.
• Lodging: In Japan, make sure you try a traditional Japanese Ryokan and Onsen.
• GPS navigation in many of parts of Asia like Japan and Korea are phenomenal.
• Don't underestimate the monkeys.

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Nature Photography in Europe

Here are some tips for nature photography within the Europe, for visitors.

• Monopods are great for travel photography. They are inconspicuous and easy to double as a walking stick. Great for taking pictures in churches and museums where flashes are not allowed, and long exposure nightscapes.
• Film and processing costs more in Europe than in the United States, so bring extra film of the type you prefer.
• Make sure you bring your wide angle lenses - they're great for architecture and landscape scenes.
• Consider renting a GSM cell phone if yours does not work overseas. It's great for calling for more info and changing plans on the fly.
• Consider a rail pass if you plan to travel extensively in Europe - you can often hire a car at train stations to get out into the country.
• Definately try a Bed * Breakfast for the local specialties, and a hostel for meeting other adventurers.
• Bring semi-formal attire. Many places in Europe have dress codes - including restaurants, some museums and churches.
• Don't underestimate the pickpockets. Be aware!
• Inter-continental flights are very affordable.
• The subway systems of many of the larger cities like Paris and London are easy to use and very affordable. They go just about everywhere!

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Nature Photography in Africa

Here are some tips for nature photography within the Africa, for visitors.

• Bring more than you need - it's difficult to find professional camera equipment in film.
• Consider a beanbag mount and a window-mounted tripod for in-car photography.
• Make sure your car and clothing are in earth tones. Bright colors like red tend to scare animals.
• Consider some video footage to capture animal behavior and the sounds of Africa.
• You'll need at least a 300mm lens for wildlife closeups. A 500mm or a 600mm is ideal.
• Stay in your car in national parks, unless you're with a designated armed guide. Take this rule seriously. Everytime you underestimate wildlife, they'll surprise you.
• Bring maps and field guides for the plants and animals you might see.
• Don't underestimate the hippos.

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Nature Photography in the United States

Here are some tips for nature photography within the United States, for visitors.

• If you'll be visiting national parks, consider a National Park pass or a Golden Eagle pass. It lasts for a year and pays for itself after two or three park visits! Check them out here.
• Don't underestimate the distance between locations. I'm always amused when I'm abroad. I tell someone I'm from California, and they say something like 'Oh, I've been to Florida once! Do you know...'. If you're visiting, make sure you budget travel time.
• Get yourself a road atlas that shows national park and wildlife rec areas. Also the national geographic book series on National and State parks has some great information, including sidetrips.
• Get roadside assistance like AAA if you plan to drive around a lot.
• TMobile in Starbucks and Borders make for regular internet access stops.
• Consider house swapping or the free camping available in many National Forest lands.
• Gasoline is cheap compared to much of the world.
• Subways on the east coast are quite grand, but west coast subways have never really made it big.

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