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Let’s take a vacation – Israel and Jordan

Sitting here writing this while I am home from work sick, with a fever, I really would like to take a vacation.  Alas I’m not sure what we have in vacation plans this year and we are certainly unable to take one right now so I will reminisce about the most recent vacation we went on – Israel and Jordan.  This was perhaps the most interesting vacation we ever took.  No vacation ever had as many highs and lows as this one.  While in general I am very glad we did it, there were definitely lowlights (such as Nelya breaking her toe in the Dead Sea) and extreme highlights (being the guests of honor at a hip night club in Tel Aviv).  I won’t cover all the trip in one posting, but similar to what I did with the Manu Rain Forest I will go through the trip in the order we took it.

So let’s get started with the first destination in the trip – the holy city of Jerusalem.

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The solitude of the Musandam Peninsula

While staying in Dubai, we decided to head out of the city and go somewhere a bit more remote.  Therefore we decided to take a side trip to the Musandam Peninsula, in Oman.  We left on an organized tour early in the morning and the journey took around three hours.  On the way we had the chance to see other parts of the United Arab Emirates.  While Dubai is all about luxury and glamour, and Sharjah has become almost a suburb of Dubai, other emirates such as Ras al Khaimah and Ajman are a bit more remote.  Until recently, Dubai looked like these places – and for the first time we really felt like we were in the Middle East.

There, we boarded a traditional dhow boat and took a sail in the fjords of Musandam.

This really is a remote place.  The entire population of the area is around 20,000 and villages were small and far between.  This is a shot of the largest settlement we saw.

The following is a shot of a traditional dhow boat.  Ours was similar to this one, though a bit nicer.

The wildlife in this area was superb.  Several dolphins began following our boat and I tried to get a good shot of one.  The boat drivers, of course, drove the boat in a way to encourage the dolphins to follow and another tourist boat near us helped out.  I’m sure back in the states there are environmental laws against doing this, but out there it is whatever brings tourist dollars (or euros these days).

We also went snorkeling there and had an opportunity to see myriad types of fish.  Unfortunately the mask I had didn’t fit me very well and I wound up spending the time in the boat.  Although the snorkeling was nice, I think Thailand and Hawaii were a bit better.

Altogether it was a very nice day trip, though a bit long after we drove the three hours back to our hotel.  I would definitely like to see other parts of Oman some day, such as the old forts and the city of Muscat.  On a funny side note, the Omani passport stamp is huge and contains a lot of Arabic.  Upon returning to the US and coming back from our subsequent trip we had a lot of questions to answer when entering the country…

Hanging with the sheikhs in Dubai

Having covered my own favorite vacation in Manu, Peru, I thought I would cover the vacation that my wife has loved the most.  Without a doubt, this would be a trip we made about two years ago to the sheikhdom of Dubai.  I’m sure to most of you Dubai is a very familiar name.  The name pops up more and more these days.  However, it must be seen to be believed.

Imagine that someone woke up someday and thought.

“I live here in some desolate area of Wyoming, but I kind of like Chicago.  So, I’ll build Chicago right here.”

The scale of building in Dubai is matched by nowhere on Earth.  When we were there, every patch of ground in sight was the future location of some skyscraper.  The following shot gives you an idea.  This is part of the Marina complex, which is now complete.

Admittedly, the original reason we went to Dubai was for the shopping.  Dubai is well known as the shopping destination both of the Russian rich and famous as well as the bargain seekers.  Normally when we are bargaining for a price, Nelya and I will use Russian with each other to discuss what price we should offer.  This approach did not work at all there.  Neither did using Tajik, as the large persian population there understood it very well.

Although Dubai is known for its shopping, we weren’t really impressed by it there.  While every high end brand you can imagine is available there, the prices were not bargains by any means.  The silk souq did not really compare to the silk markets of Singapore and electronics and camera equipment were more expensive there than in the US.  We did however get decent bargains on gold and a beautiful silk Persian rug.  The quantities of gold in the gold souq itself was impressive.

Nelya and I both had fun at the spice souq, where you could buy vials of saffron for a quarter.  It was quite mind boggling seeing saffron for sale by the kilo.  The vials made great gifts for friends and coworkers upon returning. 

Malls in Dubai made the largest of our malls look tame.  They are currently constructing the largest mall in the world – far larger than the current largest mall located in Edmonton.  We went to a relatively new mall called Ibn Batuta, where each section of the mall resembled a different part of the world.  The following shot is of a ceiling in a mall, not a mosque or any historic structure.

The primary mistake we made with Dubai was not bringing our kids.  Like a lot of people, we were worried that the Middle East could be a dangerous place and was no place for children.  We could not have been more wrong.  Children are welcome everywhere there and there are many playgrounds and activities just for them.  Almost every hotel has baby sitting services.  Now I realize that the truth is the opposite.  The Middle East is one of the easiest places to take children, with children being far more welcome than they are in most places in the United States.

We started our trip in the Oasis Beach Hotel.  This was a very nice hotel and would easily qualify for at least 4 stars in the US.  Next to our subsequent destination it was a drop in the bucket, but for the price it was a very nice place.  The picture below was from our window.

Dubai is a very international place.  Tourist flock there from almost every corner of the world, with the exception of the United States.  We saw Germans, French, Russians, Indians, Pakistanis, Venezuelans, Chinese, Australians, and Kenyans there – but hardly a single American.  Although many signs are in Arabic, English is widely used there and most people understand it.  In fact I suspect more people understand English there than Arabic!

I will keep the highlight of the trip for the next day’s post though, where we had the chance to stay in the best hotel in the world.

A Trip to the Manu Biosphere Part III

I find it somewhat amusing that I meant to write a single post on my trip to Manu, but I am currently on my third one and I’m not sure if I’ll finish up in this post. From yesterday’s post, we were just departing from the Cock-of-the-Rock lodge and descending from the cloud forests to the jungle basin. Someday, if I come back with a private guide, I would like to spend more time at that lodge. It was very nicely equipped – with only the Manu Wildlife Center being better, and the wildlife in that area is quite different from that in the lowlands. Early that day we stopped at the last metropolis we would see for some time – this being the biggest town for miles there.

Finally, we ditched the bus and got onto our motorized canoe, which we used for the rest of the trip.

Some people have asked me what we did for food on the trip. Actually, the food was quite good and we did not go out and grab the ‘critter of the day’. In addition to our guide, we took along a cook, pots and pans, and the food for the trip. At each lodge the cook would prepare the meal while we were out and about. We also took a driver for the boat as the river could get quite low and you really need to have someone who knows the river. The boat doesn’t look that big, but it stored quite a lot. Once while we stopped at a patch of grass for a restroom we found one of the local spiders.

This one was actually holding an egg sac underneath it and despite its appearance was not aggressive nor dangerous. Our drive pointed this out to us.

Although I do not fear spiders, I did not volunteer to do this. Neither did anyone else in our group. Our guide later mentioned to us that, though the spider was not aggressive, this wasn’t really a smart move. Spiders are quite common in Manu and you can find all types there. However, none are considered dangerous to man. We found quite a few of these spiders around our cabins wherever we went.

One night my roommate and I found a rather large spider in our shower. It crawled up towards the ceiling and we decided that it shouldn’t stop us from each taking a shower. However, that night we made sure to lock the door to the bathroom in case it decided to go exploring at night.

More annoying were the tiny spiders that would build webs across the trails. Our guide was quite short and I am rather tall (6’5″) so I kept running into the webs. It was really quite annoying – especially when I got webs in my mouth. None of the spiders were dangerous though and I was not bitten.

Many people who have never been to the rain forest think that spiders and snakes are the things to fear. This is very far from the truth. During the entire trip I only saw two snakes – a dead false coral snake that I discussed in yesterday’s post and a rather large brown snake that I was told was nonpoisonous. There are two snakes in Manu that are feared – the Bushmaster and the Fer-de-lance. Of the two, the fer-de-lance is the more aggressive but the Bushmaster is the more poisonous. Both are quite rare to come across. As for spiders, as I already mentioned they are not dangerous – even the large ones.

What are to be feared though are the ants. For those who live in the south, think fire ants but much nastier. Army ants are common there and can be quite painful if they bite – which luckily did not happen to me or anyone in our group. For this reason it is highly advisable to wear long pants in the jungle and tuck them in to your boots. When we saw army ants we would walk quickly through them, making sure to not step on any, and then shake ourselves off when we stopped seeing them.

Far more feared than the army ants is the bullet ant – considered by some to have the most painful sting of any insect in the world. These ants are about an inch long and are more solitary – you generally see one at a time. However where you see one there are often more. These ants were quite common there and we ran across them often. We did not mess with them and they did not bother us.

In terms of photography in Manu, there are three types of places where you can get photos.

1. From the canoe when going through the river and on rafts on the oxbow lakes. Here you really need a good telephoto, which I didn’t have. On a full frame camera, I plan to return some day with a 600mm telephoto and extenders. A number of animals, particularly birds and monkeys, can be found high in the trees and require a good range. Still, this is the best way to get pictures as it is relatively light out and you can get a lot of interesting animals. For a number of animals, such as capybara and giant otters, this is the only way to get photos.
2. In the jungle canopy. To be honest, the only types of shots I would bother to try for here are macro shots. While I did see a number of mammals and lizards in the jungle – such as agoutis, peccaries, and even a jaguar, they tend not to stick around for very long and you are very unlikely to have time to get a shot off. Some birds can only be found under the canopy – such as a number of manakin species, but again it is quite tough. Insects, on the other hand, are in ample supply and are much more rewarding for the time.
3. From blinds waiting for particular animals. We visited three blinds in Manu.
   1. The Cock-of-the-Rock lodge, which I mentioned yesterday
   2. The macaw clay lick – impressive for watching hundreds of macaws and thousands of green parrots congregate
   3. A tapir blind – it is actually quite rare to see a tapir, but we managed to get lucky and see one

Here’s another other poor shot I managed to get of a critter in Manu.

For those a bit challenged with their out of focus mammals, this is a capybara. Image stabilization would have been my friend there.

A Trip to the Manu Biosphere Part II

In my previous post, I discussed planning my trip to Manu and arriving and exploring Cuzco. I didn’t spend very much time in Cuzco – taking the first day to acclimate to the altitude and the second to explore some of the Inca sites around the city. On the second day, I also attended a talk from my guide at Manu Expeditions, discussing what we will see on the trip and a detailed itinerary of where we were going. In general I liked Manu Expeditions. Their prices were very reasonable, their staff was friendly, and our guide was knowledgeable and knew a lot of the history and details of the area. My only complaint was the group was rather large at ten people. When traipsing through the jungle you really want the fewest people possible. Tour groups we saw from Inkanatura were smaller, but they did not offer the longer trip that I wanted. If I go there again someday, and I hope I do, I will likely hire a private guide.

Our first task was to get over the Andes mountains and stay the night at the Cock-of-the-Rock lodge in the cloud forests of the mountains. Below you can see the bus we took.

The bus was nice, but the roads were certainly very interesting. Not only could they get bumpy, but they were very narrow and I often wondered what would happen if we came across a vehicle coming the other way. Luckily, vehicles were very far between in the mountains. Few people there had them, and the handful we saw during the hours of driving were crammed full of people going from town to town – which themselves were quite distant from each other. It was an amazing experience – humbling for seeing the conditions in which the people lived. Children would follow the bus and wave as it came and old women stood by, hoping we would buy knitted alpaca goods they worked on.

On the way we stopped to see some burial chambers – calculated at approximately 2,000 years old.

The following is a shot of some of the locals. I stopped to buy some bracelets from the girls and was swarmed.

We stopped at one of the few towns along the way – actually the largest one for miles and one of the few with occasional health care (for most people though, care requires a long trip to Cuzco). One of the things I find most interesting when visiting other parts of the world are the strange fruits. We purchased a few to try them out for a few cents.

In the second picture, the fruits at the bottom were particularly interesting. You open up the hard outer shell and take out the “seeds”. You then suck on the seed and eat the pulp around it – an awful lot of work for a little bit of fruit.

One thing that many people are not familiar with this area is that jungles are not always warm. In particular, in Manu cold air sometimes can come down from the mountains and put the whole area into a big chill. The first two days we spent there were freezing. All of us know the effect humidity has when it’s hot, but when it’s cold humidity makes it even colder. Add in the rain and the speed of moving on the motorized canoes and we were quite cold. This parrot we found in the village says it all.

Eventually we made it over the mountains and began our descent into the jungle.

This is quite a poor picture, but at this point there were times when we could look straight down several thousand feet from the bus. It was a bit scary at times as it rained often and the narrow roads were muddy. Luckily the drivers were familiar with the area and knew how to drive these roads. This isn’t the area for rental cars – you need to know how to drive here.

Just before dark we arrived in the Cock-of-the-Rock lodge. The Cock-of-the-Rock lodge is named for the Cock-of-the-rock bird, which is the national bird of Peru. It is quite pretty and hangs out by leks for long periods of time, moving from perch to perch in the hopes of getting a mate. The males are the bright colored ones and move from perch to perch, trying to attract the females. Unfortunately I had a difficult time getting a good picture of one. You can find better ones on the Internet, but this was the best of my attempts.

We also had the chance to see a coral snake. Our guide believed this to be a false coral snake – meaning it was not poisonous. Unfortunately someone stepped on it before we got there, so this was the best view we got.

That night it rained like I had never heard before. Here in the Pacific Northwest we are known for our rain but the truth is when it rains it usually drizzles. Big downpours are rare here. Back in the East, where I grew up, storms could be heavy and strong. However, nothing prepared me for the deluge that can occur in the cloud forests along the Andes mountains. It literally felt like someone was dumping huge buckets of water on us. This leads me to digress to a useful principle of water I have noticed, particularly when spending summer days in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. I like to call it, the “Law of Wet”.

    At some point, you can reach a point after which it is not possible to get any wetter. Once this stage has been reached, any additional water will not make you any wetter than you already are.

I made great use of the law of wet while in the jungles of Peru. While many of the other group members (particularly the Americans) dressed up in their rain coats and protective hats (which they had to fight from blowing away), there really wasn’t anything you could do to fight such a large degree of water. I wore no rain coat nor any water protective clothing while I was there. Instead, I wore quick drying shirts and pants. When the rain stopped, due to the climate there my clothes quickly dried while the others, with their jeans and heavy pants, were still soaked until they changed. I also wore a jungle hat to keep the water from my glasses as much as possible.

That morning we woke up to a nice open air breakfast full of the most hummingbirds I have ever seen in my life. Some of the hummingbirds were simply incredible. The following is my poor shot of one with my point and shoot.

A naturalist was there with a much better camera and explained that he specializes in hummingbirds and was there because this lodge was the best place in the world to see them. He had spent the last several weeks trying to get photographs of each one. He would focus at a flower and wait for the hummingbird to reach there. Only one hummingbird alluded him when we saw him – an amazing blue hummingbird with a long tail that seemed like a sparkling blue rainbow following it wherever it went. The beauty of the hummingbird stunned us and frustrated him – as he had spent the last several days trying to get a single shot of it.

A trip to the Manu Biosphere Part I

Taking inspiration from Scienceguy288‘s blog on amazing travel destinations, I decided to blog about some of the favorite places I have been, with photographs. Rather than leave the best for last, I decided to start with my favorite vacation – the Manu biosphere in Peru. While this was clearly the most exhilarating adventure I have ever taken, I must warn you that the pictures are quite poor because at the time I only had a point and shoot camera. I will also save you from my description of an encounter with a jaguar there and my favorite photo from the trip.

For my birthday, my wife gave me the ultimate gift – a vacation to anywhere in the world within a reasonable expense. I quickly made a list of all the possible places to go. Africa and the Galapagos were some of my first thoughts, but the trips worked out to be too expensive. I have long wanted to take three wildlife trips in the world – the Galapagos, Africa, and the Amazon. Therefore I focused my search on the Amazon. My first attempt was to look at Ecuador – as it was already on my mind from the Galapagos. In particular I looked into the Kapawi tribe. After some research, though, I removed Ecuador entirely because the tribes still hunt animals there (meaning they are more scared of humans) and the oil interests have severely hurt the environment. The decision proved to be wise as several other travelers I met in Peru mentioned they could see the fires from the oil factories from the lodge (though they went to a different one than Kapawi).

I then turned my attention to Peru and quickly learned about the Manu Wildlife Center. Most of the posts on the bulletin boards had glowing praise for it – so I decided to make my trip there.

The slight problem with the Manu reserve is it’s not the easiest place to get to. There are two ways to get there – by small plane or by vehicle. Taking the small plane meant flying over the Andes. If you have good weather, the flight takes off and lands without issue. However, if the weather isn’t decent – then the flights are cancelled. Taking the vehicle meant a hair-raising drive over the Andes Mountains, where vehicles have been known to “disappear” due to poor roads and several thousand foot sheer drops. I liked the idea of the plane, but I was worried I would go all that way to have the trip cancelled due to bad weather. I chose to drive rather than fly over the Andes.

Getting over the Andes is just one step in getting to the Manu biosphere. The problem is – the road will take you only so far. Eventually the road ends and you must canoe the rest of the way. The entire trip from Cuzco takes several days. Therefore I decided to take a nine day trip in the jungle and fly back from Manu to Cuzco. To compensate for the possibility of a cancelled flight, I left a day at the end of the trip as a spare. I then booked a trip to Machu Picchu for that day in case the flight did take off and land as I hoped.

Finally with the trip booked, I departed in early September. Of course, getting to Cuzco itself was a chore. Getting to Lima was easy – with a short connection in Houston. However I had to spend the night in the airport in Lima. My flight arrived there at 10 PM and my flight to Cuzco departed at 5:30 AM. I was quite tired upon arriving in Cuzco.

Cuzco is an amazing city and definitely has that “You’re not in Kansas anymore” look. It is quite an old city, with many buildings built on Inca foundations.

Interestingly, during the last several earthquakes the Inca buildings survived while the Spanish buildings collapsed. The Inca were very aware of the volatility of the land where they lived and did a number of things to reduce the impact of earthquakes, such as building windows and doors in trapezoid shapes instead of the rectangles we are used to.

The Inca also made foundations consisting of thousands of small pebbles underneath their buildings. This enabled the entire building to move with the force of the earthquake, rather than be ripped apart by it. Notice the precision that they used for this – in particular how the windows line up. Also note that no mortar was used in their buildings.

I cannot imagine how much chiseling it took to get these blocks right.

Getting back to Cuzco, within a short time of arriving there it is almost impossible not to notice one thing – it is really high. Denver likes to call itself the “Mile High City” and boasts an elevation of 5,280 feet. Denver, though, has nothing on Cuzco – which has an elevation of 10,860 feet! This really gets to you – and when you first arrive it is difficult to accomplish anything. I saw very little my first day there and spent a good deal of time drinking coca tea and having coca leaves spread on my face – which actually did help. For those of you who are not aware, coca is a medicinal plant prized by the Peruvians and Bolivians for a number of reasons – one of which is to help with the low altitude. They are also used to create a little powder called “cocaine”. Actually, it’s a shame that coca leaves are prohibited here because they do have a number of health benefits and significant amounts of them are required to make even a tiny portion of cocaine. On the way to Manu, we had the chance to see a coca plantation.

The guide claimed that the leaves on this field were not used to produce cocaine. However I could not help noticing that we were not let out of the bus and the engine was kept running.

Well, my four year old is requesting that I lay with him so he falls asleep right now, so I will have to end today’s post. Tomorrow I will continue the adventure, beginning with the journey through the Andes mountains and the descent into the jungle…