Santa Barbara Mission

 On our drive from Los Angeles to Monterey, we stopped in the town of Santa Barbara to visit their Franciscan mission (click on the image below to enlarge it). Various iterations and improvements on this place of worship have been underway since 1786 and it represents just one of the missions dotting along the California coast.

 The main courtyard houses an enormous fig tree which really benefits from a wide angle lens to try and capture just how completely it fills the area and provides a delightful cooling shade. This courtyard was also home to several species of birds and a number of small lizards which could be found sunning themselves on trees or rocks.

 This side gate was a small feature of the entire mission, but for me captured more of what I had expected from an early-settlement California "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" sort of holy place. While the modern mission is very appealing, this part of the wall felt a bit like looking through time to the original building of long ago.

Squamish Peak Gondola

 In early June, Kathryn's parents came for a nice visit and we took a day trip to Squamish to ride the very new gondola up to the peak of a nearby mountain. This is in the same area as 'The Chief', but does not share that peak or impose on the people that are out for a hike rather than a day trip.

 The top has a very nice new building with a restaurant/gift shop and that hallmark of standing in high places in BC, a suspension bridge. Kathryn is noticeably more comfortable with suspension bridges than our first visit to the Pinawa suspension bridge and now gamely trots too and fro hundreds of feet in the air.

 The view is certainly worth the effort with a selection of viewpoints out over the valley and Howe Sound. You can click on the panorama below to enlarge it. There were also some very talkative but hard to photograph Sooty Grouse up in the trees and an assortment of short but pleasant hikes around the peak.

Get off my lawn!

Dang kids. Every year like clockwork they show up for this fireworks thing that the city has to have on my front lawn. With their noise and their trash and their rappitty music.  Ok. Except for the huge amount trash (pick up after yourself if this is you) people leave behind on the beach  and sea wall and the odd excessive noise very late at night I love the Celebration of Light. See!

And this is why! Look at that! Crazy! And all set to music. The organizers could do a much better job of setting up speakers that those not paying a huge amount of money for the right to sit in a bleacher could hear. Fortunately they put the signal out on a radio and I have a little hand held that can sometimes pick it up. This year for Vietnam they did a poor job of signaling when it was going to start so I had to chance to find the signal. Found it for Brazil and random people next to us hooked it up to their speakers so we blasted it and everyone all around could hear the Batucada!

So early it is in the picture below. The sun is not quite down. By dark there is no green space left and people are on top of each other. No exaggeration in that. Geordie and I are lucky to live one block away from this so as soon as it is over we bail and watch the crowds swarm by from the apartment balcony overlooking Denman while the Blade Runner helicopters sweep.  'Hee hee.... suckers...' we chuckle as we drink our wine overlooking the streaming mass of humanity. 

Click on the panorama above to enlarge it.

Panoramic Parliament

 One highlight of Parliament Hill for me was the visit of the interior. Since it was summer and the royals were in town there was no danger of anything being closed off to us as all the politicians were on break. All the pictures below are panoramic and can be clicked to enlarge.

The House of Commons has a green motif, likely as a throwback to the times when people would meet in the village square. At the back is a viewing gallery where the public and press can sit and watch when the house is in session. This is where our elected representatives endlessly butt heads.

 Below is the library with its huge selection of books. Each shelf has a provincial crest on it, and there's a statue of Queen Victoria in the middle since she was monarch at the time the library was constructed and since people seem to like wedging her likeness into pretty much everywhere. The most expensive book in there is apparently one of Audobons books of birds with original paintings.

 The senate is more regal and red than the house of commons and the walls are decorated with paintings commemorating the First World War. Again there is a viewing gallery at the back. The senate is appointed rather than elected and seems to primarily maintain the status quo to stop whatever party is in power from changing things too much and to take on real issues.

Nightboarding 2: Electric Boogaloo

Its been awhile since I got up to Cypress Mountain and out snowboarding, but this week my friend Mike and I got back in our weekly groove of fitting in a few evening runs after work. It was particularly foggy and there were a few times I took wrong turns and nearly found myself on unfamiliar runs, but those problems were quickly solved.
And before any parents or in-laws go fussing, I got myself a proper helmet this year along with the padding, goggles, gloves and snow pants I have from previous years, so I am well insulated and warm.
It was so misty at the top that most of my pictures don't really show much and with any luck I'll get better ones in a week or two, so I'm finishing off with a panorama (click it to enlarge) of Vancouver that I shot from a viewpoint part way up the mountain. You can see Lionsgate Bridge in the middle at the bottom with Burnaby on the left and Kitsilano on the right.Everyone that has been making noise about coming out to visit for snowboarding officially has no excuse to not be out in the next few months ;)
SPECIAL UPDATE: The following week Kathryn came up the mountain with us and not only had a great time but greatly improved her skills and seems to have gotten the snowboarding bug in a major way.

Manitoba Legislative Building (inside)

Back in the days of the railway, Winnipeg was situated right in the middle of the country and had high hopes for becoming a transportation hub and all around huge city like Chicago became. Time didn't play out the way they'd hoped, but a very elaborate legislative interior was part of the payoff for thinking big. Tours of the interior are free to anyone passing by and if you've never done it, its certainly worth a look. The main entry plaza (click panorama below to enlarge) is pretty spectacular and those giant bronze bison were brought in without scuffing the marble floors by using giant pieces of river ice to slide them through.
The assembly chamber itself is a goodly size and filled with statues of philosophers and paintings of saints with seats on both sides for the ruling party and the opposition. There was no session going on the day I passed through but if the politicians are meeting there is a gallery above here where the public can watch.
And this is the interior of the giant dome at the top of the building looking up from the middle. There's a hole in the 2nd floor that lets light all the way down to the ground floor where there's another neat room below.

Manitoba Legislative Building (outside)

Canada lacks castles in general and Manitoba falls particularly short to that challenge, but it does have a very nice legislative building near the downtown core. As far as I can tell, most of the parliament buildings were built to the same general design but I guess if it ain't broke you don't fix it. The Manitoba legislative is made from Tyndall stone which is a sedimentary stone quite often filled with fossils, so the exterior of the building is full of neat worms and shells if you look closely. (click on the panorama below to enlarge)
On top of the central dome is the golden boy; holding a sheaf of wheat in one hand and a torch in the other, but apparently forgetting to wear pants, he shows how Canadians are always charging forward to greatness without perhaps thinking things through properly.
And since it was designed and built by The Masons there are all sorts of weird things like sphinxes on the building. Traditional Canadian sphinxes. A part of the heritage of the European settlers, indigenous natives and the metis all rolled into one: sphinxes. Okay, I really don't get them either...

Samburu

Samburu was wonderfully unlike many of the other places we went as it was nearly all desert with a thin river running through in. There were a great deal of unique animals here such as painted dogs, beisa oryx, gerenuk, grevy's zebras and many more. We also had an unforgettable encounter with a family of elephants crossing the river; although there are crocodiles in the water, they have nothing to fear from them.

Music: "Discworld Theme" by Keith Hopwood & Phil Bush

The lodgings at Samburu were very nice little cabins. You can see me resting on the front porch of ours below and during the day young vervet monkeys would delight in climbing the spindly tree on the rigth and then either dropping down to the ground or running around on our roof.

This panorama (click it to enlarge) is the front view off of our patio. It both contrasts the dryness of the mountains beyond with the greenery flourishing along its banks. These picture should also help illustrate the incredible flooding that can happen in this area; a few weeks after we had left the river flooded so badly that people were having to take shelter on the roofs of the cabins to avoid the rising water and crocodiles. The lodge itself apparently sustained quite a bit of damage which is certainly a shame as it was a lovely place and everyone working there was so friendly.

Nairn Falls

We just had a very busy weekend and with a few camping pictures to share from the weekend before there'll be a bit of a local backlog before we get back to Africa. While in the interior we camped at a site called Nairn Falls which had a very nice campground and a pleasant but short hike. The trail lead up to Nairn Falls themselves which were a series of whitewater falls as you can see below.
There were also spots closer to the river further from the falls where you could dip your toes in the glacial melt and enjoy the sun; but even on a hot day I would be hard pressed to want to get too far in the water. People had entertained themselves in other ways by making little inukshuks out of stray river stones.
The view just from our campsite was quite striking with a lovely view up into the mountains. There were jet boat tours running through the rapids and up to the falls but we didn't find the time to take one in. You can click on the panorama below to enlarge it.

Whistler/Blackcomb

Redirecting from Africa again briefly, our friends Anne and Yves were in town for the past week and we took a weekend camping trip up through the sunshine coast. We were actually double-booked that weekend and Kathryn was attending a friends wedding in Seattle. Anne had lived in Vancouver years ago so we headed out to Whistler to comment on how much its grown and take in some epic mountains.
Whistler is a very popular spot for all manner of sports both summer and winter. Snowboarding and skiing are the main draw, having been a host site for the Winter Olympics, but BC has a very dedicated downhill mountain biking crowd. These guys were just running a short stunt course but were about 3 meters apart and doing jumps that made me dislocate my hip just thinking about it.
There's also a rather insane gondola running between the peaks of Mt Whistler and Mt Blackcomb that we took a ride on. Below is a panorama (click to enlarge) from the peak of Blackcomb looking down on the town of Whistler and Garibaldi Lake.

Telegraph Cove

Our friends in Telegraph Cove run a little company renting their cottage to vacationing visitors, and were very kind to put us up there. As you can see from the picture below, "cottage" perhaps means something else on the west coast then it does elsewhere. Needless to say we had a wonderful stay and heartily recommend their business to anyone else in the area.
Telegraph Cove seems to largely be a tourist town with a small dedicated year-round populace and an inflated population during the summer. There is a large camp ground near where we were staying and most of the business in town seems to be tourist-centric, but there is still some fishing going on in the area as shown by this fellow and his halibut.
Telegraph Cove itself is going through an odd transitional phase. The two halves of the town seem to be owned by different developers. The old half of the town is all historical buildings, museums (far left) while the new half is being developed with spacious multi-million dollar homes by the sea (development on the right). The Whale Interpretive Centre can be seen in this photo as the long red building on the far side, and the boat infront of it is the one we went on our tour in. Click the panorama below to enlarge.

Oldupai Gorge

On a drive between parks in Tanzania we were fortunate enough to pass through Oldupai Gorge. For those of you not married to archaeologists, this might have been less of a treat, but it was very interesting for us as its a site of numerous early human discoveries and is considered by many to be "the cradle of humankind."
Often called Olduvai gorge, we were told its actually a mispronunciation of Oldupai which is a kind of seisel plant common to the area which was recorded improperly by early explorers. Given that its African and not European we're trying to be proper and use the correct spelling, and now that you know better, you can too ;)
There was a very nice little museum at the same spot and a covered area we could escape from the heat, eat our packed lunch and listen to a talk about the area at. We passed through the area on my birthday as well and it was a fun contrast to start my 32nd year in the same place that mankind was getting his first steps 2.5 million years earlier.

The Maasai Mara

The final place we visited in our tour was the Maasai Mara which makes up the northern tip of the Serengeti in Kenya. Every stereotype about Africa that Disney brought to The Lion King and nearly every documentary about migration has its roots in this preserve. The word Mara in the language of the Maasai people means 'spotted' and the picture below illustrates how the savanna is speckled with vegetation as far as the eye can see.
The Maasai Mara is also the location of the Mara River which is the famous crossing made by the wildebeest migration every year as millions of the animals come north from the Serengeti to graze and mate. The waters were quite low when we were there, but the banks looked quite rocky and treacherous as it was and neither of us envied the wildebeest their crossing.
As there's so much to see and do there, we had 5 days there and in that time we had wonderful encounters with elephants, lions, cheetahs, topi, leopard, warthogs, jackals, hippos, cape buffalo, dwarf mongeese, and birds of all shapes and sizes.

Sweetwaters

At the base of Mount Kenya, Sweetwaters is a private nature preserve (rather than a park) which was enclosed by fences and had quite a varied range of terrains to explore. As a preserve it also had a few enclosures of animals which were protected but not indigenous such as a troop of chimpanzees which Jane Goodall had setup a refuge for.
Because it was fenced and fully enclosed, Sweetwaters also felt a little more restrained than many of the parks we had visited, particularly with regards to big cats. We did have a nice encounter with some cheetahs on one drive, but they were pretty scarce throughout. That didn't stop us from seeing some nice elephants, go-away birds, crowned cranes, black rhinos (one of which Kathryn got to feed), hippos, bush babies, and an assortment of gazelles.
Believe it or not, by this point in the trip we had nearly had megafauna overload and it was getting increasingly difficult to amaze us with new displays of animals, but luckily some of the best views were to be had at the waterhole right in front of our tents (shown below). From here we could watch giraffes, rhinos, impala, waterbuck, zebras and warthogs come in for a drink and a mudbath without having to do all that arduous driving and standing we were used to.

Samburu

Making about as radical a shift as possible from the Ark our next stop was Samburu, a lowland desert some 12000 feet lower in altitude than the previous night. In a single mornings drive we went from hoodies and long pants to t-shits and shorts.
Samburu has a very striking and unique landscape and is a haven to a number of animals we didn't see anywhere else. Such animals included the genernuk, beisa oryx, reticulated giraffe, grevy's zebra, and african wild dogs. The area was also home to elephants, dikdik, leopards, swarms of baboons, and a great variety of birds.
Stranger still to think of, especially when looking back at these pictures, the Samburu area experienced extreme flooding (as it is proned to do seasonally) on a few weeks after we left. During that flood the tourists and staff of the lodge that we stayed at (on the banks of the low river in the picture above) were forced to abandon many of their possessions and take to the roofs of their cabins to avoid the rising waters.

The Ark

Changing the feel for our lodges entirely for just a single evening, we spent a night at the Ark, which is in the Aberdare moutains some 12000 feet up and accessible only by lodge-owned shuttle. We arrived in the early afternoon and wandered down a wooden catwalk to the building shown below.
Being tucked deep in the woods and accessible only at certain times, the Ark is a very mellow and quiet place to stay. I had been there in '96 with my dad and looked forward very much to showing Kathryn the area. While we were there we saw lots of cape buffalo (including an epic fight, sure to get its own post eventually), giant forest hogs, tiny gazelles called Suni, genets, and a wide variety of birds including swarms of speckled mousebirds at the nearby feeder.
The feature of the Ark which I enjoy most by far and wish other lodges went further to copy is the underground bunker where you can watch the local waterhole at the animals level and without too much of a feeling of anything between you (other than a reassuring 3ft of concrete when the animals get a bit too intense).

Lake Nakuru

Lake Nakuru is an alkaline lake in the Rift valley created by large salt deposits in the soil being left behind after evaporation. While prolonged contact can irritate the skin in many animals, they are a haven for flamingos which feed on the resident shrimp and gain protection at the same time. We went down onto the mud flats at the lake edge and got a look at one of the flocks, though we were told there are typically millions more in the summer.
The area wasn't just a lake though, there were lots of hills in the area and some expansive forest/plains surrounding the area. Nakuru is a huge bird haven and we saw several species of flycatcher and starling here along with the flamingos and many other birds. Its also a great rhino sanctuary and the first place we saw white rhinos along with buffalo, baboons, leopards, impala, striped hyenas and the usual assortment of gazelles and zebras.
Like nearly everywhere else we went on this trip, we would have loved a little more time at Nakuru, as arriving in the mid-afternoon and leaving the following morning didn't give us as much time as we would have liked. But I can't think of anywhere else we would have liked to miss a day to make up another there, so we'll just have to try and spend more time there next time.