We visited a crocodile farm near Victoria Falls, which was actually pretty boring, but I did get to simulate what it would be like on the business end of one of these things.
In short, I didn’t even like putting my head in the mouth of a stuffed one of these monsters.
We got a chance to spend some quality time with a few of these in the wild a few years later, and my appreciation had increased by that time.
Taken on the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls, this is a photo of an elephant preparing to charge us while we are on a horse riding tour of a park near the river.
We got a little too close to the elephant, who turned toward us and started to act aggressively. Thankfully, our guide was there to help us slowly back away from the situation.
The scale of Victoria Falls is difficult to convey. Those little dots over my right shoulder are people on the opposite side from the falls.
When the wind is blowing, the mist lifts up and shrouds the entire canyon.
These monkeys just wandered along the edge and posed for photos, hundreds of feet up from the river below. This shot, taken in 1999, shows one stopping to pause while a rainbow appears to hit him in the head.
Is the monkey a pot of gold?
Kath got right up on the edge of the cliff overlooking Victoria Falls, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Kath and I took a “tour” of Soweto, in an effort to learn more about this famous slum in Johannesburg. The place was a complete maze of ramshackle tin structures. If not for the cell tower in the middle of it all, I would have been completely lost.
This look means, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
This is one of my favorite photos of Kath. I took this as we were doing a beach walk at sunset in Knysna, South Africa.
We went to an elephant sanctuary near Knysna, South Africa, in 1999 and got up close with a few of them. Most of the elephants we saw were only babies. Sweet, pushy, 1-ton babies…
Kath took this photo of me while we were kayaking around a bay in the Southern Ocean, off the coast of Cintsa, South Africa, in 1999.
This was before I watched the various great white shark specials on the Discovery Channel. This area has around the highest number of reported attacks in the world, per capita. Shark Week might have me thinking twice about this these days…
Along the southern coast of South Africa, many of the hostels have this great tradition, called a sundowner. Basically, it involves buying a few boxes of wine, taking out the bags from the boxes, tying a rope to two corners of the wine bag (making it easier to sling over your shoulder), grabbing some cups and a dozen or so of the total strangers hanging around the hostel, marching up the highest sand dune you can find, and downing a few cups of wine while watching the sunset.
The only person from this photo that I remember is the guy with the stormtrooper shirt behind us.
Another photo from our South Africa trip in 1999. (I’m really seeing these for the first time in over 10 years, as I’ve just scanned them in from negatives as a part of converting all of my photos to a digital format for long-term preservation.)
We took every chance we could to ride horses on this trip. I think this picture was taken while on a sunrise ride near the town of Cintsa, along a coastal region called the Garden Route.
Kath took this picture of me in Camps Bay, on the western side of Cape Town, in August 1999. We left a hot New York City and found ourselves in the middle of a chilly and windy southern hemisphere winter.
Yesterday, I posted Jeff and Larry in NYC in August 1999. This is a shot of Katy and Kath, taken at the same time.
I don’t think that Kath’s hair has been that short since that time.
Kath and I were in NYC in August 1999, preparing to fly down to South Africa for a month. Jeff and Katy put us up for the night, and I snapped this photo of Jeff and Larry after a long day of work.
I love the matching shoulder bag straps…
I’m wrapping up a personal project of digitizing all of my photos, mostly going back to scanning the negatives, and in these dark days of winter, I thought I would share a few of the better ones that I’ve come across.
The photo above was taken on our honeymoon in August 1997, while we were in Istanbul. I think it is the Ayasofya Mosque behind us, and beyond that, the Bosphorus Strait. (Click on the photo for a higher resolution version.)
It is now pretty easy to pick out our house from space.
My mom tipped me off to this. The satellite imagery in Google Maps for my neighborhood was updated sometime in the past few weeks. For the longest time, we only had images from 2004, and now, they appear to be updated to early-2007.
Slightly before that time, I had to do some roof repairs on a flat area of my roof. I had a bit of extra tar when I was through, so I put it to use to beam some goodwill to space. I was hoping that the various satellites would pick it up, and now, finally, my favorite mapping site has caught up. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we had our roof redone a year or so after this image was made, so our next roof pic is likely to be more boring.
I don’t know if this is a good thing or not, but the NY Times has an article on their site that basically hits most of the cool spots around midtown Memphis.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/travel/31next.html
Some choice quotes from the article:
Damn. I think they pretty much nailed it. Does anyone else have some suggestions for spots they missed?
For the third year in a row, some friends and I have headed out from the cobblestones at the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis and walked, more or less, in a single direction. After going east in 2007 and south in 2008, we headed north-ish this year, looking to take in the northern reaches of the city, such as Greenlaw, Frayser, Raleigh, and then the suburbs beyond, such as Bartlett and Lakeland.
One big difference about the walk this year had to do with the temperature. I’ve had an unusually busy past few months, and this was the first weekend where it was possible to find a weekend day to do the walk. Unfortunately, it is also December, which usually means cold, even in Memphis, so it was a bit more brisk than the other walks, which were done in October. At sunrise, when we set off, the temperature was still a few degrees below freezing.
Despite the cold, some of the trees are still turning colors, like this one in front of the city government building on Main Street. We left the cobblestones and headed up into the hill into downtown, taking a left on Main Street and following it until we could cut over to Chelsea.
Did I mention that it was cold? It is hard to see in this picture of Richie and Robert, but there actually is steam coming out of the sewer, which is relatively rare, even in the winter in Memphis.
Chelsea is one of the more interesting, and disadvantaged, streets in Memphis. Sights like this Ford Explorer with a missing window and back tire are common. One could wonder which one went first.
Abandoned infrastructure was abundant, like this abandoned railroad bridge near Chelsea at Watkins.
Walking up Watkins toward Overton Crossing, we stopped to check out the trollies that looked as if they had been used for parts for the current MATA downtown trollies. Interestingly, all of these were covered in Spanish. It wasn’t clear if they has previously been in service in Mexico, Spain, or somewhere else.
A lot of the route was long and straight, such as this stretch of Watkins as it crosses the Wolf River. We talked about having seen this bridge from our Urban Wolf trip several years ago.
The small community of Rugby in North Memphis provided some of the most interesting sights of the trip, such as this large brick post that marked the entrance to the area.
Rugby is pretty disadvantaged, as is the neighboring community of Frayser. We came across several houses (and apartment buildings) with the doors kicked in and who knows what going on inside of them. At least the number of random loose dogs running around was pretty low, though the cold may have helped with that. A number of properties in the area are in bad shape. I wonder how much this one goes for…
I can never pass up a chance to get a picture of myself next to an interesting topiary. This one is outside a pet grooming place on Frayser Blvd.
One unexpected thing was the abundance of wildlife. We got a photo of this deer in a field right off of Frayser Blvd, while it was down in a field, searching for food.
The town of Bartlett marked the edge of Memphis and brought with it long stretches of stretches of Yale Road, where there was nothing to see but suburban houses, churches, schools, and more churches.
As we prepared to turn off of Yale Road and head up Summer Avenue toward Appling Road, Robert and Richie took a short rest. We didn’t take much downtime during this walk, just a coffee break in Frayser and a BBQ meal in Bartlett. The rest of the time, we were on the move.
Dave was out riding his motorcycle nearby, so he joined us for a bite at Fat Larry’s BBQ in Bartlett. They serve a very good representation of Memphis bar-b-que, and while not the best I’ve ever had, I was famished, and it really hit the spot.
Being winter, the sun started going down pretty early, so we tried to make up time by crossing fields, with the hope of getting to Lakeland by dusk.
We crossed the Memory Hill cemetery at sunset, and I got this shot of the fountain and ducks in the last few minutes of sunlight.
After crossing through some woods, we were eventually turned back by the growing darkness and the desire not to be shot by the wacky cul-de-sac McMansion owners whose yards we were going to have to cut through. By the end, we had Lakeland in sight, but a fence and some horse standing the woods marked the last point of our advance, and fearing a trespassing charge, we headed back the road and out to Germantown Parkway, for a gracious pickup by Dave, who had gone home for his car.
The total mileage for the walk was 22 miles, which easily makes it our longest walk to date. We were all sore and stiff at the end, but I found myself contemplating the route of next year’s trip on the way home. There is simply so much left of the city to explore.
Yesterday was the 5th annual Rhodes CajunFest, and it was probably our most successful one to date, if the speed in which the food was devoured was any indication. CajunFest was started by Bud Richey and Joby Dion, a couple of Rhodes alumni and employees that call Louisiana home and wanted to share the joy of cooking and eating Cajun food with the Rhodes community. The event is held every year on the day that Rhodes College plays football against our main rival, Sewanee.
The day is a long one, getting started about 6:30, setting up propane burners, fetching water, chopping a lot of veggies and meat, and cooking, cooking, cooking. This year, Kath came to help out, and she even got to stir the gumbo.
Bud has been our organizer for the past couple of years, doing a magnificent job at what must feel like herding cats at times. Bud always makes sure we have authentic ingredients, even to the point of driving to the Gulf and picking up fresh seafood and Andouille sausage, straight from the source.
Rhodes Professor Jack Streete really got into the spirit and probably had beads on before anyone else.
Sometimes, I forget what a beautiful place Rhodes can be. This is the scene in front of the library at 7 AM, with the campus deserted and the sun just peeking up over the treeline.
I like this photo of Wisch and his daughter, Toshie.
Oh, and Rhodes did win the football game, in overtime, 19-16.
Kath displayed and sold her pottery at a booth at the Vollintine-Evergreen Community Association (VECA) Forest Faire yesterday.
This year, Forest Faire, which is held a few blocks down the street from our house, was held in conjunction with a Wolf River Conservancy event nearby, resulting in more foot traffic than in years past. Kath sold quite a few of her new pieces, but I snapped a few photos of some of them before the sale really got rolling. Here is a nice bowl.
This is a swirly bowl with almost marble-like colors.
Kath made some pretty nice shot (or saki) glasses.
Here is a classic blue bowl.
Here is the multi-colored marble effect on a coffee mug.
The Forest Faire made for a long day, but the rain stayed away. (Thanks to Melissa and Gary for the use of the pop-over tent, just in case. Also, thanks to Marci for the offer of space to display the wares at the event.)
In other news, learn some advanced DOS strategies, follow Death on his blog, try to avoid laughing at things his dad says, and find out why I won’t read your script.