The windswept Peruvian coast, aside from being a truly horrible place, has been home to fishermen for hundreds of years. Come see, little tourist, how they use their bizarre little fishing wire to hook single animals at a time, caring not for exploitative Western fishing techniques. See how the local women wait on the shoreline, collecting the catch in their traditionally-woven blankets for cleaning and skinning. See the men astride their little straw boats, shaped like donkeys, all made using ancient techniques which have served them to this day.
No, no, don’t look over there at the interior of a broken boat. Well yes, it does look a bit like it’s made out of polystyrene and aluminium, and then covered with straw. That’s not important. Would you like to buy an old shaman charm carved into half a seashell on a necklace?
Huanchaco, Peru - Saf
In Texas, there are BBQs. All you can eat BBQs in fact. But not just any BBQ -they have fire pits full of meat.
Now, L secretly made a video of me eating ribs, but unfortunately I just can’t figure out how to upload it. To nauseate/delight you until I can get this up, here’s a photo of the pit in question:
After the moss experience it seemed like a good idea to move elsewhere, to a place where there was much less chance of being absorbed into the forest. Bigfoot hunting seemed the ideal thing. Exactly where Bigfoot is meant to live is really rather vague here; there seems to be a commotion about it in California, but every national park boasts the big ape-y thing for its own. Thus, the Ape Cave in Washington seemed like the ideal place to start.
Unfortunately, the park rangers at the information station didn’t seem to think that the Ape Cave was a good idea for us. It’s still the off-season here, lots of things being covered in heaps of snow, and they told us that we wouldn’t be able to even get to the cave without snow shoes. Luckily, we had shoes of our own, and having put a bit of snow on them we began to make the hike.
It was indeed a very snowy place. Ignoring the drifts, the snow in the mountains came up to knee to mid-thigh level. Behold a bench that was:
Still, if Bigfoot could get through, so could we. It was less than a mile to the cave, and although it took us nearly an hour it was well worth it. The cave itself was Really Very Dark, and stank of sulphur (it’s really a lava tunnel formed when Mt St Helens erupted in 1980). It was also rather cold. A concerted search failed to reveal Bigfoot, though, or any bears or cougars in the cave. Rubbish. There were, however, some bats, and we were very good and did not throw things at them to make them fly again in case they gave us rabies. Oh, and it’s probably not good for them.
You know what Africa lacks? Notebooks. There are no bloody notebooks to be found on this damned continent.
Sometimes, you’ll see a sign saying “Stationary (sic) Shop” and get all excited and rush in. And what do you find? Lined school exercise books on that plasticky paper they used to make bog roll out of, and biros. Biros! It’s revolting.
It’s a good job Livingstone has a nice large ex-pat community, and the associated shops (you can imagine the type - Marmite and real Cadbury’s* and Hobnobs) or I might just have gone insane by now. If you’re going to come visiting, bring a good stack with you.
* Although Cadbury’s chocolate is available in Africa, it’s not really Cadbury’s. It’s made in Egypt, or sometimes Kenya, and has had something added to raise the melting point so that each bar doesn’t come out a big pile of goo. It tastes really weird, like cheap Easter egg chocolate. Thankfully, South Africa makes the real stuff, and it’s made it to Namibia. We’ll be reunited soon. Oh yes.
Right, if I haven’t made a big cock-up some photos should now be up! They have been uber-compressed (4.5MB to 16KB) to cope with the crappy Internet connection, so apologies for quality. There are also more somewhere, but compressing them takes a long long time.
Location, South America, Uncategorized | saf | 
July 16, 2009 2:25 pm | 
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