Archive: Posts about Travel
January 6th, 2009, 7 Comments »
When I lived in Yaletown, I would frequently see sweater-clad chihuahuas being walked by their Lululemon-clad owners. If it wasn’t the dog days (sorry) of August, these poor beasts would often be shuddering and shivering with the cold (and, no doubt, the threat posed by larger dogs and humans).
As such, it’s always seemed a little cruel to own a chihuahua in Canada. They are, after all, Mexican, and not built for the cold. If your dog frequently needs a sweater to go outside, maybe it’s not well-matched to the climate in which you live.
While in Panama, I happened to see a very content-looking chihuahua, and it sparked an idea.
Julie and I decided we should open a chihuahua reserve somewhere in Central America. We’d stalk the wintry streets of Canadian cities for shivering, be-sweatered chihuahuas. We’d mace the owner, snatch the dog and bring it south to the sunny, humid climes of Ecuador or Panama. There it could romp and breed, sans doggy clothing, with its liberated brethren as it was always meant to. We even devised a bad URL: www.sweaterfreechihuahuas.com.
Alas, the usual problem arose:
1. Liberate dogs
2. ?
3. Profit!
Getting venture capital for this operation shouldn’t be a problem, should it? Maybe Bootup Labs can help accelerate my dog-snatching start-up?
Photo by ‘SeraphimC
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January 4th, 2009, 9 Comments »
We took two cameras to Panama: our trusty Nikon D-70 and Julie’s awesome old Pentax K1000. We shot three or four rolls of film (some of which were expired) with the Pentax.
I haven’t had film developed in Canada for, oh, seven or eight years. In fact, the last roll of film I had developed was in Dublin in 2003 (by, if memory serves, the most delightful French girl on Baggot Street). In that case, they provided prints and also wrote the photos to a CD.
What should I do with this film in Vancouver or Victoria? Do you recommend a particular film developer, now that it’s become a kind of horse-and-buggy industry? What form should I expect to receive the digital files (in addition to the prints) in? On a CD or uploaded to the web somewhere, maybe?
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January 3rd, 2009, 1 Comment »
Every street and avenue in Manhattan is mentioned in a song. Okay, that’s technically not true. Well, it might be true, but I don’t have time to prove it. Still, in my time wandering around lower Manhattan, every street seemed to remind me of song lyrics. A few examples:
- Delancy Street - “Hey remember that time I found a human tooth down on Delancy” - “That Time” by Regina Spektor.
- Lafayette Street - “Well, I’m standing on the corner of Lafayette” - “That Was Your Mother” by Paul Simon (though, admittedly, this may refer to a street elsewhere in the country).
- Mulberry Street - “I’m a big man on Mulberry street, I play the whole part, I leave a big tip with every receipt” - “Big Man on Mulberry Street” by Billy Joel (also references a bunch of other Manhattan streets, for example, “Houston to Canal street”).
- Sullivan Street - “Take the way home that leads back to Sullivan Street” - “Sullivan Street” by Counting Crows.
Wikipedia lists a (Circle Line) boat load of such songs. That would be a fun crowd-sourced Google Maps mash-up. Get people to identify songs, mark them on a shared Google map and link them to an audio file on the web. You’d end up with this groovy musical collage of the city. Then, of course, you could expand it to the whole planet. Somebody get on that, would you?
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December 18th, 2008, 6 Comments »
It’s the holiday season, and I’m down near the equator. I thought it’d be a great idea to try to raise some money to make a Kiva loan to somebody in the region.
I’m using ChipIn to collect the money, and then I’ll choose an entrepreneur on Kiva to donate it to (suggestions will be welcome). I’ll follow up in the new year with details of where the money went.
If you’ve enjoyed my blog this year, here’s a good way of saying thanks. Skip your mochaccino and pumpkin scone this morning and donate five bucks to the cause. It’ll go to good use, and as it’s a loan that can be used over and over again once it’s paid back, it’s money that will, as the kids say, keep on giving:
If you’re unfamiliar with Kiva, they’re an extraordinary success story in micro-lending to the developing world. Instead of donating money to a charity for food or development aid, you loan money to an entrepreneur who pays it back over a specified period. It’s that old teach-a-man-to-fish thing, writ large. They’ve loaned $1.2 million dollars in the last seven days. Seven days!
I’d like to post, as the kids once said, shout-outs to those who made donations. Feel free to leave a comment here, or in the payment process, or drop me an email. Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I should have mentioned that once the first loan is paid back (the default rate at Kiva is 2.8%, so the odds are good), I’ll loan the money out again. And again and again.
6 Comments »
December 17th, 2008, 3 Comments »
We’re back in Bocas Town for some internet access and a few days’ change of scene after a week out at Punta Laurel. I just uploaded sixty photos from the trip (here’s a slide show). If I had to pick three favourites, they would be:
Punta Laurel is essentially a series of thatched huts connected by walkways, built around a big rock and above a coral reef. It’s designed for groups of up to about ten people, but we’re the only people here.
It’s a bit like camp. Things are kind of rustic–there’s a generator for lights in the evening and recharging our laptops, a composting toilet and an outdoor rainwater shower. There are simple activities–swimming, snorkeling, reading, sleeping like a teenager. And somebody cooks for us. Two local women come over in a little boat from the nearest island. The food is simple–fish, lobster, shrimp, lots of rice and fresh fruit–but very satisfactory.
The weather here is as changeable as I’ve ever seen anywhere. The sun shines, it rains, the wind whips up, the sun shines, all in the matter of an hour. It’s been mostly bright, with occasional intense showers.
Muchos Flora y Fauna
It’s a joy to be surrounded by so much wildlife. I spotted my first ever moray eel (I mean, aside from the local aquarium) while snorkeling the other day. I was floating about three feet above some coral, and he unfolded out of a crevice. He rose toward me, all freckled and the bright green of an under-ripe tomato.
I’m man enough to admit that I panicked a little. His snout was easily as big as a small terrier’s. There was no doubt about who was the resident and who was the interloper. He stopped after a foot or so, though, no doubt intimidated by my manic thrashing. I’ve returned to his nook on several occasions to observe the eel, but I’ve kept a little more distance.
I’ve seen dozens of other species of fish whose names I don’t know. Big schools of them. I also saw bioluminescent algae for the first time in my life. Little clouds of it floated by one evening, looking rather like (I searched for a more decorous metaphor) irradiated semen.
There are also flocks of seabirds who regularly circle our little island. Pelicans skim over the waves, frigatebirds wheeling overhead, big white egrets fish off the rocks and little terns spend their evenings perched on the dock. We also saw a harpy eagle, Panama’s national bird.
We’re headed to a different, waterborne resort for a couple of days, and then back to Punta Laurel for another five or six days. On Boxing Day it’s back to Bocas Town, then back to Panama City the next day. We’re going to explore Panama’s capital for a few days before it’s on to Manhattan for New Year’s, and back home in the first days of 2009.
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December 17th, 2008, 3 Comments »
As we’re kicking it Robinson Crusoe style in a remote corner of Panama, I’ve got an unusual amount of time for reading. I brought several books, but I suspect I’ll be through those before we get back (my FOLORM, fear of lack of reading material, is kicking in). Fortunately, there’s a bunch of books here at Punta Laurel, swollen with the humidity. Some of them even look quite promising. There’s a memoir by Nicholas Sparks, for example. Or, if I’m looking for lighter fare, there’s Julia London’s hilariously titled The Hazards of Hunting a Duke.
In any case, I wanted to write some brief blurbs about the books I’d read. I always feel out of my depth when this site touches on literary criticism, but bear with me:
Foreskin’s Lament - A memoir by Shalom Auslander about growing up an orthodox Jew in New York. If you’re a regular listener to This American Life, you’ve probably heard Auslander tell stories of his ultra-conservative upbringing. It’s a quick read, and terrifically funny. Here’s a quick excerpt:
My family and I are like oil and water, if oil made water depressed and angry and want to kill itself, so Orli and I decided to hire a doula to help us with the birth. Her name was Mary, and she came over a few afternoons later to get acquainted.
“We don’t speak to our families,” I said.
“That’s sad,” said Mary.
“Not as sad as when we do,” I said.
Netherland - A masterfully-written novel by Joseph O’Neill. I first head about it via the gang at the Slate Audio Book Club, who fell all over themselves in praising the book. Stephen Metcalf called it “the best English language novel I’ve read in years”. I’d have to agree. It’s an extraordinarily well-observed story of a troubled marriage, post 9/11 New York and a passion for cricket. O’Neill’s writing reminded me of Nabokov more than once. Consider this sentence that opens a chapter early in the book:
As a teenager I often bicycled into the center of The Hague, a half-hour’s effort of pedaling made both more difficult and more pleasant by a girlfriend who, in accordance with local romantic traditions, sat leggily sidesaddle on the rear seat and accepted this modest transportation with a stalwartness that has, I’m sure, stood her in good stead in later life.
Read more…
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December 10th, 2008, 1 Comment »
At the moment, Julie and I are shacked up in a little casita on Isla Carenero, a tiny island opposite Bocas Town, the largest town (with all of about 3500 citizens) in this far flung province of Panama. This is our third night here. We’ve been settling in, exploring and we’ve begun making deposits in our overdrawn sleep debt account.
Our place is on the water, surrounded by the shacks and tin houses of the local community. The setup provides a great view into how the locals live–they outnumber the tourists by at least twenty to one. Young couples chastely walk by, long motorized canoes deliver wood and kids play soccer, all outside our front door.
In terms of tourism, this region is relatively under-developed. I was talking to the house manager, and he said the region was like “Costa Rica, 25 years ago”. That’s the feeling you get when you walk down the main drag of Bocas Town. There’s a few rickety hotels, a bunch of open-air restaurants over the water, and a handful of eco-tourism services and surf shops. There’s also one nightclub–the only downside we’ve spotted thus far. The club’s rumbling bass carries across the strait all too well.
There’s a Subway restaurant in town–the only franchise I recognized. It feels like the advance guard of a wave of international money that’s likely to visit the region in the coming years. Hopefully they can retain as much of the local character and charm as possible.
An Ethnic Stew
This region has a fascinating ethnic mix. The Spanish never consolidated their hold on this part of Central America, so while there are plenty of ethnically Spanish Panamanians here, there are also many descendants of Afro-Caribbean immigrants. Combine those with the (sadly declining) people of several indigenous tribes and a smattering of grizzled gringos, and you’ve got a interesting ethnic stew. As you might expect from a Caribbean town in the middle of nowhere, everybody’s extremely laid back. I don’t think race relations are an issue.
The Latest End of the Earth
We are apparently attracted to places that feel like the end of the world. I know I said that about Gozo, but where we’re headed tomorrow might top that. Check out this Google Map:
View Larger Map
That’s Punta Laurel, a little group of buildings built on pilings about 1500 feet off the coast of Isla Popa. A mostly unpopulated island in the southern most part of the Bocas archipelago. Our guidebook gives the island a single sentence:
Isla Popa is crawling with fer-de-lance and other poisonous snakes. It should be visited only with a good forest guide.
We’ll stay out on the water, thanks. We’ll be there for about two weeks, off and on, and plan to do a whole lot of nothing (besides, you know, writing a book). To my shock, they usually have satellite Internet access on Punta Laurel. I was pleased to hear that it was out of commission at the moment–I’m trying to disconnect for a while.
I’d upload more photos, but we’re using a pretty dubious web connection at the moment. I’ll just post one for now, and save the rest for a fatter Internet pipe.
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December 6th, 2008, 4 Comments »
As I mentioned, we’re off to Panama. Our flight leaves later this afternoon, and it’s a multi-stopover red-eye through the night to Panama City.
We’ll be there until late December. Then we head northward for a few days (and New Year’s) in Manhattan. We’ll be back in Victoria on or about January 3rd.
Posting will thus be light around here for the next month. We (joyfully) won’t have regular web access for at least the next two weeks. We’ll probably visit an Internet cafe or two, though. In the meantime, there’s a couple of other pages on the Intarweb for you to look at. For example, I just discovered Is It Funny Today–kind of a Digg for web comics.
Have a good December, and, you know, be nice to each other.
Photo by Keven Law.
4 Comments »
November 28th, 2008, 5 Comments »
A reader named Miranda (who, sadly, recently lost her camera on a trip) sent along a link to the terrific blog Found Cameras and Orphaned Photos. The concept, as you might imagine, is pretty simple: people who find cameras or memory cards email photos to the blog, and the photos get posted. If you’ve lost your camera (or if you recognize anybody in the photos), you can contact the finder through the blog to get your photos back.
I might have done the implementation differently (enabling people to search a database by location, date lost, etc), but it’s a good start. The site will become more invaluable once photo-matching and recognition technology becomes more available.
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November 26th, 2008, 4 Comments »
But that’s what you get when you visit Central America in the rainy season. I’ve traveled to its neighbour Costa Rica twice around this time of year, and managed to have a good time, so I’m not overly worried.
There has been extensive flooding in the region we’re visiting, but it’s from rain-swollen rivers. Hopefully the place we’re staying (out in the ocean on stilts) will stay dry.
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