Spain

Spain isn't necessarily famous for wildlife, but in case you missed seeing animals from our Africa blogs, we thought we put in a picture of some ducks that were in the grounds of the "Cathedral" in central Barcelona.

Spain is known for its tasty cuisine, and did not let us down! Spain is popularly known for its tapas, which is variety meal of sampler sized dishes. However, the Spanish are also the most voracious fish eaters in the Mediterranean. We loved the fish dinner pictured above! We were a little worried if we were paying $12 for each the enormous and delicious salad, drink and desert that accompanied the gormet fish dish, but our sketchy understanding that it was all included in the fabulous lunch special turned out to be correct. Phew! And Wow!!! One of our best meals on the whole trip - including a reasonable price and all.

Barcelona also had an amazing market. After getting addicted to the fruits and fresh fruit juices of EVERY assortment, we wandered around, staring at the grotesque (our oppinion of course) animal parts for sale. It's hard to imagine the delicious Spanish foods originating from such strange origins!

Please note in the picture of the heads, there are brains for sale in the plastic containers. In case it's hard to tell right off, the following picture has tongue and tripe (stomach lining). We tried tripe soup in Bali and Rusty may like it... Kelsi does not.

Barcelona is blessed with a plethora of street performers . This twiggy guy was superlative with his crystal ball magic. We also enjoyed the many art displays and flower shops with blue roses and lots of beautiful to see and smell selections.

Spain is also renowned for its artists (Picasso) and architectural masterpieces. Foremost among the elite architects is Gaudi. A rather bizarre person himself, his modernist architecture adorns Barcelona in many places and ranks among the top attractions. Pictured below is the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's masterpiece church. Construction was initiated well over 100 years ago, and might take still another hundred years to complete. When finished, it will be addorned with 12 towers dedicated to the Apostles, four to the evangelists, one to The Virgin Mary, and a 560 foot tower in the center dedicated to Jesus.

We also took time to visit several residences constructed by Gaudi. All of them have unique contours and interesting adornments of metal work.

Below are picture's of Gaudi's Park Guell, which Kelsi likes to think of as something out of a Dr. Seuss book. We enjoyed several hours strolling around the various lanes and arcades of the park.

After Barcelona we headed down south to the Andalucian city of Granada. The bus ride down south is worth a brief mention. It was particularly eventful due to one young mother and her children. She fed her little 5 year old boy and baby girl a lunch of Doritos and chocolate milk. The baby girl loved the food, but it wasn't long before it came back up all over her mother in a torrent of nastiness. The mother asked the driver to stop and wait while she fished out a new outfit from her luggage under the bus. The driver was a bit impatient, which worried the mother and upset the little boy. When the mother and children climbed back into the bus after changing clothes, the boy was so angry that he walked straight up to the driver and began screaming and waving his hand to lecturing the bus driver on patience. His mother could only laugh and pull him back to his seat. However, the boy hadn't quite hadn't quite had his fill of yelling, though, so as soon as him mother released him, he rushed back up to the bus drive for round two of his cussing out! The other passengers couldn't keep from laughing at the audacity of this little boy...

It is hard to capture the enormity and beauty of Granada's Alhambra, built in the 14th Century by Spains Muslim conquerors, the Moores. In any case, but here are a few pictures attempting to show some of what we enjoyed.

Our final stop in Spain was the sweltering city of Seville, the provincial capital of Andalucia, and home of the famous Real Alcazar (royal palace.) Seville has had several rulers, so the Real Alacazare was a hodgepodge of styles. The overall effect was quite nice, though.

The Royal gardens were particularly nice, and we enjoyed getting lost in the Royal maze, created from various bushes and hedges.

Seville is the center of Spain's passionate dance and music style known as Flamenco. Flamenco music and dancing features incredible percussion, including tap dancing, clapping, and guitar. The male dancer in the performance we attended tapped so vigorously that he sounded like a drum roll at times.  It was a dramatic and passionate production to say the least.

We stayed near the beautiful Cathedral in Seville's historic jewish quarter.

And now, a short history on the Spanish Lisp. We had heard rumor that the lisp was a result of the popular emulation of a speech impediment of a popular King, Pedro of Castile. However, Pedro lived in the 1500's, and the lisp didn't widely appear until the 1700's, two hundred years later. More likely, the lisp developed as a result of other regional linguistic forces, although the impact of one popular man on the development of a language can be enormous. In the English language, Chaucer and Shakespeare come to mind! Like the Spain lisp or not, it is addictive. We're doing all we can to avoid catching it ourselves. We're now off to the final leg of our trip, Portugal! Looking forward to seeing you all then!

Books: Updated List

Here's a follow up list of what we have been reading since we last posted our books list:

Novels:

1. White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (Both)
2. The Flood - David Maine (Both)
3. King of Torts - John Grisham (Rusty)
4. The Bretheren - John Grisham (Rusty)
5. Palm Sunday - Kurt Vonnegut (Both)
6. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates (Both)
7. 'Tis - Frank McCourt (Both)
8. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini (Rusty - Kelsi read back home)
9. Beloved - Toni Morrison (Both)
10. Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella (Both)
    

Travel:

1. Getting Stoned with Savages : A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu - J. Maarten Troost (Both)

Science/Social Science:

1. The State of Africa - Martin Meredith (Rusty)
2. Chaos - James Gleick (Rusty)
3. The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Thomas Friedman (Both)
4. When Elephants Weep - Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson & Susan McCarthy (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)
5. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)

Spiritual/Philosophical:

1. A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle (Kelsi-second time)
2. The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck (Both)
3. Life Ahead - J. Krishnamurti (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)
4. The Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)

Our Favorites:

1. A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle
2. White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
3. 'Tis - Frank McCourt
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
5. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
6. The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck

Not sure if The Flood was quite on the favorites list, but it was a very engaging historical fiction about Noah's Flood (for a more complete review: http://www.textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/the-flood/).

We happened across Confessions of a Shopaholic at a hostel and found it to be quite a fun read, actually. Rusty read it in one day - like a long movie. We'd have to say it was better than Twighlight! :) Just had to comment on it since it was our least intellectual book of the list . . .

Morocco

Morocco is a colorful, hot, deserty, African, former colony of the French. It was a total delight, but seriously hot. It hit 125 degrees one day, but we were lucky to find the local water guy in the crazy hat above. He was happy to dump cool water on the head of anyone willing to pay

Morocco grows oranges like Utah grows weeds. They even plant them as shade trees along the streets of Marrakech. The main square had dozens of orange juice stands, and we tried them all in our attempts to stay cool. We drank at least 4 glasses per day. One night that's all we had for dinner along with the dish pictured with Rusty below . . .

Kelsi accidently got a tatoo. Since Kelsi doesn't remember her high school French, we resorted to communicating with the French/Arabic speaking Moroccans by Rusty using Franco-English words in a heavy, mock-French accent. It only worked 50% of the time. The tatoo artist just didn't under stand Rusty's request for "non-permanent." It's a good thing the design is neutral and Rusty talked Kelsi out of doing the tatoo on her face like the local Berber women customarily do.

Rusty's first time trying escargot (snails). They are quite common in Morocco due to the strong French connection, and they served it up by the bowlfuls for 75 cents. However, we only shared one small bowl, which was more than enough for us!

Rusty atttempted to take a lovely picture of the old trading fort in Essaouira Morroco, but Kelsi wanted to make sure that you knew she was really there.


We enjoyed winding our way through the shops and locals in the narrow streets of Essaouira's medina (old town). The town came noisily to life with locals catching up on gab and shopping each evening just about the time we were trying to lay down to sleep!


We enjoyed several meals of fresh fish from the catch of the day. Mmmm! Kelsi's dad will be happy to hear that we have had a few amazing meals along the year journey - not always only super cheap eats. Although $20 for a meal is quite a splurge for us, that included so much seafood (shrimp, calamari, sol, sea bass, fresh sardines - only had canned before, but fresh isn't much better . . . ) plus salad, bread and a drink for both of us! We also tried sea urchin, but can't say either of us became a fan.


Essaouira is blessed with tons of wind. While not ideal for the sun bathing crowd (which we are decidedly not a part of due to our fluorescent white skin), it is excellent for windsurfing and kite surfing. Rusty decided to take kite surfing lessons for a few days.

Mastering control of the enormously powerful kite proved to be the most difficult task involved. If you are considering this sport, don't have a friend teach you! Kites can be well over $2000, and before you gain good control of it, you will definitely slam it into the ground several times, risking a totally ruinous blow-out of your friend's kite a number of times. Not to mention the fact that these kites are powerful enough to lift you up 50 feet in the air and slam you into a nearby building. Definitely a sport where it's better to be taugh by a professional while abusing their gear. Rusty researched these facts online before deciding he was definitely interested in taking lessons rather than asking his friend to teach him.

Once Rusty got adequately in control of the kite, his wake boarding experience took over, and he had no problem standing up on the board and riding around. With Rusty's newly acquired skill, Kelsi had a hard time trying to convince him not to attempt to board across the ocean to Spain. She ultimately succeeded in talking him into taking the ferry across... as you will see in our next blog.

Tracking African Primates

Africa is full of primates. Included among them are several close relatives to human kind, known as the great apes. We couldn't visit Africa without saying hello to our cousins. Although many primates are seen in abundant numbers in Africa, it was necessary to visit Uganda's famous Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to spot the prize of all primates; the elusive mountain gorilla. When we first heard the name of the park, we didn't really get the "impenetrable park." After machete hacking our way through the dense jungle and clambering down near verticle precipes for 7 sweaty hours, we better understood the meaning.


In addition to rough terrain, finding gorillas requires tracking. Tracking primates requires that you look for footprints, nests, and feces from the animals. Even finding signs is no guarantee you will find the animals. In Uganda's Queen Elizabeth park, we were foiled from finding chimpanzees by a band of foraging elephants. Luckily, our guide was well armed with a rifle and was able to scare them off, but the encounter ruined our opportunity to see the chimps.

Below, a chimpanzee nest in the tree; no one home, though!

Kelsi pointing out some gorilla poop... she smelled it out without trouble!


As we scanned the jungle floor for signs of gorillas, we became aware of life that we might have previously overlooked, including ant colonies. Safari ants, also called army ants, swarm in huge numbers in militaristic, agressive food gathering campaigns, and have been known to devour animals and even people who are unlucky enough to get caught in their way. At several times during our hike for the jungle, we had to pry them off of our skin as they bit into our skin. Interestingly, this also allows use of these ants as stitches for closing up wounds. The Masai tribes (depicted in our earlier safari blog), have also found a beneficial relationship with Safari ants. The Masai leave them alone in exchange for the ants performing something akin to biological pest control on Masai lands.


Fortunately, for the gorilla treking, we hired a knowlegable guide to accompany us, and he helped us to find the animals. Our reward upon finding the animals was being immediately charged by a 500 pound gorilla Silverback. The noise alone was terrifying, not to mention the chest beating and snarling.


Adult male mountain gorillas are called silverbacks because a saddle of silver-colored hair develops on their backs with age. Mountain gorilla groups are dominated by one dominant silverback, which can reach 5-6 feet in height, with an arm span over 7 feet, and weigh in at a massive 450–500 lbs. In addition to the gorillas, we also saw several other varieties of primates. Following are a few snapshots of them.

Baboon females love little baboon babies with bright crimson butts and black fur so much that they try to steal them from eachother. A baboon mother must very carefully watch over her baby.

The black and white colobus monkey is shy, and rightfully so. He is often the prey of choice for not only tree climbing leopards, but also for meat hungry chipmanzees.


Below is a male blue monkey. See if you can figure out why he is called "blue"...


In addition to primates, we enjoyed simply being in Africa and watching the women carrying home the loads on their heads. All of Africa is a rich collage of cultures, including many indigenous tribes.