The Agrinautica

Monday, February 19th, Devonport - the sky is slate grey and casts a dreary industrial look on the town around the waterfront. Across the estuary the Spirit of Tasmania ferry we'd recently debarked looks like a giant toy with its discordantly optimistic red and white. I'm standing under giant bronze statues of flowers. There's a nearby explanational sign, and informational signs always attract me like bees to a flower. These poppies, it informs me, are a monument to the importance to the local economy of legal poppy farming -- under close government regulation they raise opiate poppies for use in commercial pharmaceuticals. "Such sauce!" I say to mom. Dad returns from his quick dash to a better vantage point to photo the ship.

I've gone back and integrated pictures into the entries as well.

Last Sunday, November 5th, Echuca, Australia - Woke up in a swag on the banks of the Murray River. The Murray River is the border between the states of Victoria and New South Wales for much of its 1,500 mile length. Looking at a map it looks like it empties on the eastern coast but it actually begins in the "Victorian alps" over there near the eastern coast and flows across almost the entirety of the south-eastern bulge of Australia to empty into the Great Australian Bight. In the great age of steamboats it was navigable way past the point where I was encamped, and yet it looked to be no more than maybe 200 feet across here. It flowed slowly, a thick milk chocolatey brown, though I think Billie or Lek had noted reading an account from an early settler of the water having been very clear in days of yore.

   After a quick breakfast of oatmeal we packed up camp and headed into town. We headed across the Murray River Bridge to the New South Waleseran (New South Welsh?) sister city of Moama. Moama is contiguous to Echuca but it definitely seems most of what's going on is on the Echuca side. We perused a farmer's market which was afoot there and much to my surprise I found a magic artifact of at least +3 enchantment on a table of knick-knacks -- labelled as a "cannibal fork" (I apologize for picture quality, I think part of it's magic is defying attempts to get a decent picture of it). It looked to be just over a foot long, a glossy ebony colored wood, with a head on the top with African features, a twisty looking shaft, and then it flutes out to four spikes. There's intricate carving where the twist changes into the fluted part, as well as some inlaid mother-of-pearl. And the person only wanted $15 for this artifact of power?? Clearly I had to get it!! It would go great wit the cannibal spoon I already have!

   And then we went into a nearby "Op Shop" (Thrift / Antique store) and I was eyeing some clay goblets. There were 6 of them and they were $6 each, so I asked if there'd be a discount for the lot of them and the lady sold me all six for $12!! This was quite the unusual amount of shopping for me! But I'm very pleased, and last night back home here I drank mead from one of the goblets and verily it was good! (And in related news I drank mead out of my new drinking horn the other day, the only horn I have that's actually a drinking horn actually, and it definitely affected the mead taste negatively. ): ): Hopefully I just hadn't cleaned it thoroughly enough and it had chemical residues in it or something (it did taste chemical-ly))

   We went to book a ride on a steamship but the only sailing left in the day didn't have enough spots left for us so we booked for the next morning. Walked around downtown Echuca and it was touristy in the best way, if that's not an oxymoron. It was busy with tourists and everything downtown seemed to cater to tourists, but they had not lost site of the old timey quaintness that draws people, nor did they have to fake it, because it was already there. So they kept their stately buildings from a bygone era and didn't besmirch them with neon signs, but just filled them with nice restaurants, pubs, antique stores, candy shops and a camping store or two. By the steamboat dock was a working recreation of a steam powered saw mill which was cool. I wish I had a cool picture of the mill but my phone was dead at the time.

   Then we proceeded to an RV campground just outside of town to camp so that people could use the showers. We were able to get a campsite at the other end of the field from nearly everyone else which was nice, but still, the vicinity was just a perfectly flat field which wasn't very scenic, and the wind came in across it pretty wicked cold in the evening. River wasn't in sight from where we were but I think it may have been near the other end of the field where everyone else was.

   We went back into town for dinner to a Greek place that Lek remembered from an earlier time she was in Echuca for some work related purpose (she's an irrigation consultant or something along those lines), and it was actually extremely good.




Monday - After a quick breakfast at a restaurant across the street from the steamboat dock we went aboard the Paddle Steamer Pevensey where she was moored up to wooden landing on the steam riverbank. The bank being relatively high, the top of the landing was actually way above us and yet we came aboard the Pevensey on its top deck. As much as I'd like to think my writing skills can entirely paint a picture I'm not sure how to quite give you the idea of the size and shape of the boat but hey here's a good picture of it. One thing that surprised me was just how many boats there were. There were three more similarly sized paddle steamers moored up in front of us, one behind us (and I'm not sure if the Canberra in that picture is yet another or one in the previous picture), and one more a little way up the river. Just about all the boats were authentic 100+ year old boats with some degree of restoration, though only one was noted in the captain's running commentary to have never been on the bottom of the river. The Pevensey itself, which we were on, was built in 1911.
   Until eventually replaced by modern trucks, steamboat river trade on the Murray and other major Australian rivers was a major Thing, as they carried timber and wool from the interior to the big port cities on the coast. Apparently there have been two Australian TV miniseries about the steamboat era, All the Rivers Run, and "All the Rivers Run II."
   The boat was just over a hundred feet long on deck, with the main deck originally have been entirely space for wool bales, other than the engine, and in the middle a second floor housed the crew cabins and wheelhouse. In the middle under the superstructure was the magnificent steam engine, which I took a video of here and I rather fancy is worth a gander. The original engine! It was hypnotic to watch the thick gleaming pistons chug along. The engineer was happy to answer all our questions expansively. I asked if there were practical differences between stern-wheeler steamboats and side-wheelers such as all of these, and he said why yes, the stern-wheelers of the American West never pulled barges so the stern wheel wasn't a problem --"oh the stern wheel gets in the way of the tow does it?" I eagerly interjected,
   "Well, no, it's not that, it's that the load will be pulling right from the back where your propulsion is so you can't turn, and you can't put the towpoint forward for the propulsion or it will keep pulling you around ... with the side-wheelers the tow point is actually the very center of the vessel" and he pointed to the very sturdy supports that converged above the engine and connected to a very sturdy tow point above the deckhouse in the center of the vessel, "so we are very well balanced and can turn just fine with a load." Now that's a thing you know.

   We cruised up the river and back for a total of about an hour. The weather was nice, and because the front was entirely open (though covered against rain and sun) even standing next to the engine we got the nice breeze, and I think I did spend a significant portion of the time talking to the engineer and appreciating this beautiful engine.

   After we finished our cruise we strolled about downtown just a little bit more and then I bid my friends adieu -- they all had Tuesday off but I did not!

Wednesday, September 6th - around 10am the same driver who had brought me up from Managua to Somoto arrived in his red corolla to take me back down. He's a nice professional fatherly sort of figure named Luis. Doesn't speak terribly much English so we don't talk alot but he's very nice.

   Coming up, as we drove through the town of Esteli he had pointed out the cigar factories, apparently the major local industry. And he claimed they were as good as Cuban cigars and a lot of Cubans had fled the revolution there and brought their cigar making to Nicaragua. Since I wanted to get gifts for my friend Ben (for driving me the two hours to and from the airport), and Mick for his tech support, and they both smoke, I figured some high quality cigars would be just the thing! So I asked Luis if we could stop by a cigar factory.
 "You want tour of cigar factory?" He asked. Why, yes, sure, why not! Luis immediately set about calling a guy who arranged tours.

   Arrived in Esteli just before noon, and since the cigar factories are apparently all on lunch break till one the tour guide showed me around downtown a bit. Saw one building with a mural of rebels fighting during the civil war with raged 1978-1990 in Nicaragua painted the side of a building that was pockmarked with bullet-holes from that same fighting. While we were in the central cathedral the howling wail of an air raid siren began just outside, which I found quite startling. The news these days has been saturated with North Korean nuclear ambitions but I immediately dismissed my immediate area as at all a plausible target for North Korean nukes, but maybe they were volcano alert sirens??
   The tour guide seemed unperturbed as he continued to walk up the aisle toward the altars and many surrounding statues. "Uh, what was that?" I asked as soon as the siren had stopped.
   "Oh, that" he chuckled, "they do that at noon every day day so everyone knows to go to lunch. Noon at 6am"
   "They blow that thing at 6am???" I asked in shock, "it's so loud!!"
   "Yes, so everyone knows to get up for work"
   Then the church bells began to toll. "They also do that" he said nodding upward
   "It's much nicer I think" I said.

   Presently it was time to visit the cigar factory. We drove past a few of them before coming to the one we were to tour. I had kind of pictured there'd be cigar making machines in it, but instead there was a big room full of people sitting at desks making cigars. One thing that particularly impressed me was that the tour guide nodded to a guy who looked indistinguishable from everyone else, sitting at a desk busily folding leaves together, with a lit cigar in his mouth, and said, "that's the boss."
   The tobacco starts by aging for (six months?) in a room adjoining the assembly area. They say it ferments but I'm not sure if this is in the same sense as beer/yeast fermentation? Either way apparently they heaps of tobacco get extremely hot and have to be overturned every now and then to prevent the stuff in the middle from getting burnt.
   People at the first few tables were sorting leaves according to how dry/dark they were, then at another set of tables they were actually rolling up the cigars. I'm told one person can make 350 cigars in a day, and gets 1 cordoba per cigar (30 cordobas = $1, so they're making around $11 a day), but between the drying and aging and all each cigar is about a year in production. After watching the cigar maker make a few I was given a chance to try my hand at making one ....... I'm not about to make it rich as a cigar maker.
   From there they go to a shaper who smooths them out into the perfect shape and then to people who put the little label rings on them.

   Now of course after all this I was offered to try a cigar. And now, I'm quite proud to have never smoked a cigarette or... anything else except the nargile hookah things in the Middle East, but I figured since one isn't supposed to actually inhale cigar smoke it's not the same as smoking a cigarette so I thought I'd give it a go. I was also not terribly good at this, though someone took a picture of me and I like to think it at least looks relatively suave. The owner took a break from his work to come over and give me some cigar smoking pointers, as did the one security guard, whilst casually wearing his shotgun slung around his neck, and I have to give everyone in the room credit for not falling over laughing at my difficulties in sucking in enough air to keep it puffing without coughing on it myself. I'm sure they had a good laugh once I left.

   Continued on to Managua, with a stop at a grocery store to buy some of the Nicaraguan Flor de Cana rum. Got to the hotel around 6pm, which was after the hotel store had closed which made me very sad because I had rather fallen in love with a small painting of a toucan there that I had intended to buy, and since my flight was early the next morning before the store opened, I'd have no chance.

   That evening in the hotel bar there were a bunch of disgustingly wholesome looking young men, they type who look like they're all named Chad and play guitar at their church youth group, and they were enthusiastically comparing eachother's churches and discussing the pros and cons of churches charging for parking. I'm assuming they weren't drinking alcohol.
   At the airport the next morning another group of young men in suits with name tags approached the gate area and I at first assumed they were the flight crew but nope more religious missionaries. The power in the terminal went out for a good ten minutes. Beyond my airplane through the windows a large plume of white smoke rose from a volcano. While I waited I read the latest hurricane news, hurricane Irma had broken all sorts of records for size and scale and just mauled Puerto Rico.



   During my flight to Atlanta they served us a pitiful "ham sandwich" (just some ham in a beat-up looking roll), and my stomach, having survived the local water in Kyrgyzstan and Nicaragua all this time, had a bit of trouble with this questionable parthian shot of a sandwich -- such as that when I arrived in Atlanta with two hours during which I could have eaten at the Five Guys there I couldn't muster any appetite.
   Continued on to San Francisco and... that's another entry!


[in other news, posting this from back home in Australia! Where I finally arrived today!]

August 28th - September 1st, Somoto, Nicaraugua - The Hotel El Rosario feels like a sort of cross between a hotel and a bed and breakfast. The rooms are all in an L shaped row around a small courtyard in which they park cars at night, they are sparce and business-like. At the front the building is two stories tall with the office and possibly store rooms on the bottom floor and I think some rooms on the top, and in the fourth side the dining area and kitchen are kind of enveloped by a beautiful lush garden, and it is over here it seems more like a bed and breakfast. The staff seems to be all one family, the grandmother presides over the kitchen I think, assisted by her granddaughter and another woman or two who look like they are probably relations. The Middle aged maternal character seems to run the hotel. There is also a man of the younger generation, maybe around thirty, who is the only one who speaks English, and in fact the first time I met him I had to inquire,
   "Excuse me but you speak English with almost a perfect American accent, if you don't mind my asking did you spend some time in America?"
   "Oh yes," he laughed, "I lived in New Jersey ["New Joysey"] until six months ago." He wears a a thick silver chain around his neck which plays into my New Joysey stereotypes, but heas actually very friendly and nice. He commented that my hat looked jewish. I guess it's official. (I also find it a bit funny, that my mom just the other day completed the process to formally convert to judiaism, and this seems to coincide exactly with everyone mistaking me for a Jew, like there was an immediate cross-generational fundamental effect)

   Another funny noteworthy thing about the town is every evening there's constant drumming. The first evening I thought maybe there was a parade or event and followed the noise to what appeared to be the local high school a few hundred yards away where it looked like a drum-line was practicing, but the enthusiasm seems to go beyond simply a nightly drum-line practice. The next evening I was walking downtown and a smaller different group of very young kids seemed to also be having a drum-line practice in the central square. I've seen kids walking with drums out in the countryside. They seem to absolutely LOVE their drumming. It's funny because I've read accounts of traveling in rural Africa that described hearing nightly African drumming from the villages, but I've never heard it there. In general I've been having odd little bits of this-isn't-Africa culture shock since most of my projects have been in Africa and when there's no people in sight the scenery could totally be Africa, and I forget where I am until someone comes around a corner and they're not an African in colorful fabrics.



Saturday, September 2nd- Saturday morning I checked out of the hotel and Marcus picked me up in his blue toyoto pickup for the drive to the mountain town of San Jose de Cusmapa. His father was in the back. First we swung by his house on the outskirts of town and picked up his 12 year old daughter, who also hopped in the back, and as we were just leaving town he received a call and returned to town to pick up a friend who also wanted a ride to Cusmapa, commenting "it's a small town, everyone knows what's happening, and they hear I'm going to Cusmapa they want a ride because it's a very long slow journey by bus, taking three hours with many stops."

   The ride to Cusmapa took about an hour along a narrow winding road through the mountains. The road wasn't cobbled, per se, as that implies a bumpy road, but I suppose made out of paving stones? Flat concrete hexagons anyway. Much prettier than asphalt. The countryside was verdant and green, full of dramatic valleys and steep little mountains and pink tiled roofs among the trees. Marcus's old truck seemed to have a good sound system and his preference seemed to run to 70s rock ballads with the bass turned up beyond all ordinary preportion. We passed over one particularly high mountain pass where Marcus informed me "you can see the Pacific from here... or you could if there weren't all those clouds," and I noticed that almost immediately there began to be pine trees on the mountains, and wondered if they particularly liked salty air.

   Cusmapa is a tiny town draped over a mountaintop, with cute narrow roads also made of the hexagonal paving stones. Marcus delivered me to a guest house run by his organization, and sitting at the table just inside were two Spaniards (one male, one female) and a Frenchwoman, volunteers. They looked in their mid to late twenties, the Spanish girl (from Barcelona) was reading, the French girl (from near Bordeaux) was on her laptop working on her thesis, and the Spanish guy (from Mallorca) was strumming a small guitar in classic bohemian volunteer fashion. They were very friendly and Spanish guy (Alex, short dark beard (no hot water to shave anyway), lean, very friendly) showed me around the house, which is quite large, with several rooms having half a dozen beds in them each. They must bring quite a few volunteers through here some times! There was one small room with only one bed in it and what really appealed to me was a window that lit it well (some of the others seemed fairly not well served by windows) that I'm surprised no one else had occupied and claimed it. I'm told they call the house "the Mango House," from the large overhanging mango trees, and indeed every now and then through the night a mango would fall on the corrugated metal roof like a random hammer blow (fortunately my superpower is not losing sleep over random things that wake me up briefly in the night)

   After some initial conversation I settled down to read my book in the front room where the others were continuing to do what they'd been doing. In the early evening I set out to walk about town and struck off toward where a viewpoint ("Mirador") had been described to me, walking up the narrow streets. There's many pedestrians walking about in this tiny town and the occasional person on horseback comes trotting by with that delightful sound of hooves on stone. In the background there was the sound of ... drumming. Even in town you feel you are in a forest, the houses not being thickley set and big banana leaves overhanging them. Passed a building with a sign declaring it to be a "Ferreteria," which I had seen before and glimpsing the contents it seems to mean hardware store, but the name makes me whimsically think of a place that sells ferrets.

   I was almost to the Mirador (and the drumming, getting louder, seemed to be emanating from there) when a pickup pulled up beside me and the guy inside said something to me in Spanish. At first I thought it was someone offering me a ride and tried to motion to them I was fine but then I recognized that it was Marcus' dad in Marcus' truck, so I figured maybe Marcus had sent him to fetch me for something and got in. He drove me a few blocks down to the lower end of town to their house. When I got out Marcus was there but he was just like "oh hi. I'm about to take a shower." So I was like "oh, okay, I'm going to the mirador." ...apparently his father picked me up just because he saw me? I felt a bit like when you see a beetle walking and pick him up and put him somewhere else, and he must be like "uh wtf okay great."

   He did give me directions for another mirador on this end of town so I walked down that way until I came to where I'm pretty sure there would have been a great view if the valley below wasn't filled with cloud, and started heading back. With a crack of thunder it began to pour down on me, and while around me locals ran for cover I just took my hat off and held it over my camera, soon I was soaked but my clothes are all made of that stuff from REI that dries out ultra fast so I wasn't concerned about getting wet (and indeed I was mostly dry by the time I got back to the house). I did stop under a thick overhang of banana leaves during the heaviest part of the downpour, but it only lasted a few minutes.
   At the mirador at the top of the hill, which I had originally been headed to (and arriving there confirmed I'd been picked up 50 yards from it to be deposited a few hundred yards down the hill), I found a wet basketball court, gaudily colored playground equipment (see my instagram), some people still hanging out under the eaves of the bathroom and a small hall (though it was no longer raining), and what looked like a glorious view of cloud filled expanses. The sun appeared to be just setting, as far as I could discern from a golden glow in one part of the clouds. Despite the clouds obscuring the view it was still a beautiful view. Also, like all parks apparently in Nicaragua, this park had wifi (Alex mentioned it kind of eyerollingly as a colossol waste of money, and indeed I doubt wifi is the very highest thing on the pyramid of needs that the money could have been used for. Kind of like that "Akron Light Up Africa" charity that's been wasting millions putting lamp posts throughout West Africa (and what gets my goat is there was a meme going around about how "if Akron could light up X cities in Africa in X amount of time what have the other charities been doing all this time??" and when I see it I comment "actual useful things"). So while enjoying the view I took the opportunity to post some pictures to Instagram as well as directly to my parents and other interested parties.

   Arriving back at the guesthouse i found it dark and deserted. The three volunteers had invited me to play pool with them in the evening and I feared I had missed them. I found a lightswitch and read for an hour or two (found a book of Hemingway's collected short stories, I really love Hemingway!), and then walked to the bar that had been mentioned just down the block to see if they were there. They were not but there were at least half a dozen people at three different tables who seemed to be having quite a good time, one of the tables even seemed to have two cute girls hanging out by themselves (another difference from West Africa, where you never see women in the bars), but after quickly scanning the room and not seeing my friends I left and returned to the guesthouse.

   The three eventually returned, I never did catch where they'd been, but then we all set off to play pool at another bar two blocks down! This turned out to be a plane adobe-brick building like all the others, without even a sign over the door, but inside was a big room with two functional pool tables and two that appeared to be in disrepair and were now being used to sit upon and set drinks on, and as well some of the pool-cue racks on the walls seemed partially destroyed, giving the whole place this weird sort of post-apocalyptic-pool-hall feel. Some local guys were playing on the one functional table and the other was open for our use. We were joined by some locals they seemed to know. The game of choice here wasn't the pool I'm accustomed to (not that I play that much at all), but a game called "21" where you try to get the balls in the holes in the order of the ball number, and have to hit the next-numbered ball first. Since instead of having all of stripes or solids to choose from as pool is generally played in Southern California, one only has one ball one is aiming for so a lot more skill is required to get at it around any intervening balls.

   After a bit of this and of course some beers (local beer "Tona"), we went to the house of some friends (/coworkers with the organization?) of theirs for dinner and more beers and the local rum (Flor de Cana) and had an enjoyable sociable evening that went on into the early hours of the morning (well like 1, but I've been going to bed early so it felt pretty late). Alex apologized to me several times since everyone was speaking Spanish and it must be weird not to understand but the truth is that I'm very accustomed to being surrounded by people speaking languages I don't understand, but usually my projects are more of a solitary affair and I was greatly enjoying the opportunity to actually hang out with people in such a casual social and festive setting.

Wednesday, August 23rd, Melbourne, Australia - "Where are you from?" I ask the taxi driver in Melbourne, since he's mentioned his wife immigrating
   "Africa" he says as if that should be a satisfactory answer
   "Where in Africa?" I ask
   "East Africa" he says as if he doesn't know why I'm bothering to inquire further
   "Where in East Africa?"
   "Ethiopia" he says like it's an "I told you so" that it wouldn't mean anything to me
   "Where in Ethiopia?"
   "Addis Ababa" he says as if this is starting to get a little weird.
   "How do you like the new light rail in Addis?"
   "Oh. oh. .. Uh ... They should have repaired the roads first" I relish the look of shock in his eyes that I'm current on Addis happenings. Anyway it turns out he thinks the rail system is poorly planned. He thinks they should have improved the roads first. I think getting people off the roads and onto mass transit should be a priority in every big city.

   During my 14 hour overnight layover in Melbourne I crashed at the place of an American couple I know from the Americans in Melbourne facebook group.

Thursday, August 24th - Departed Melbourne for a (two?) hour flight to Sydney at 8am. Short layover there and then 15 hour flight to LAX. Flight very empty, had a whole row to myself (cue angels singing). Even though it was an entirely daytime flight they had everyone close all the windows and tured the lights way down to simulated night mode. I understand flights are more bearable if you're asleep and we bother flight attendants less when we're asleep but I hate it when they do that.
   Watched several not-very-memorable movies and The Accountant which I rather liked, it's like Rainman if Rainman happened to pick up being a badass cold blooded killer as a random hobby. Watched Episode 5 of the current season of Game of Thrones on my laptop and would have watched Episode 6 but apparently the version I downloaded turned out to be unreadable.

   Flight arrived late into LAX so I had only an hour to catch the continuing flight, and of course had to go through passport control, collect my luggage, go through customs, drop it at the transit luggage window, find ourselves popping out on the curb outside the terminal, go back through security again, and get to the gate. Those of us with flights in the next hour were given priority passes through passport control and customs but no help getting through security. My backpack got flagged for additional screening and as it sat getting ignored on the side table with fifteen minutes till my flight was supposed to LEAVE I implored a TSA agent if they could at all prioritize clearing my bag and they semed to relish giving me a very abrupt and cavalier "NOPE!!" I swear the US TSA is the worst and rudest in the world.
   Literally ran from there to my gate and found the aircraft had had a delayed arrival coming in from Sydney so it was still boarding .... it was my same plane!!!
   Also I was a bit confused to find the gate alternating listed destinations between "Managua" and "Atlanta." My ticket and itinerary hadn't listed Atlanta as a stop so this was the first I was aware I'd be going there.
   Also it was during this flight that I discovered the fatigue of this arduous journey had rendered me no longer able to read even with my reading glasses for more than five minutes at a time before my eyes hurt too much. Hopefully it was just the extraordinary fatigue but I also fear my eyesight it going fast. ):

   I don't know, some number of hours flight to Atlanta, also had empty seat beside me. It was only like a three hour flight but the guy with the window seat (I was the aisle) got up to use the bathroom like four times. Jesus people don't drink so much coffee, or whatever you're doing.
   Did have to change planes in Atlanta. Just enough time in Atlanta to get to the gate. I think there were only two of us from the LAX-ATL leg continuing on to ATL-Managua, if its not the same plane, not really the same passengers, I'm not sure why it even is "the same flight."
   This time didn't have an empty seat next to me, and having been traveling for over 65 hours, no longer able to read, no movie screens in this plane ... it was several hours of relative hell..


Managua, Nicaragua - first impression on stepping out of the aircraft door and being hit with the warm humid nighttime air (it was around 8pm) was that it smelled like a hedge. And then inside the terminal it somehow smelled like a winery. And out in front of the terminal it smelled like steaming spinach. Shuttle from the hotel picked me up for a humerously short trip to the hotel literally across the street.
   This area of town doesn't seem to have anything else in walking distance so anything I can't get at the hotel I trot across the street to the shops in the airport terminal.


Friday, August 25th - I had been recruited a few years ago for a project in Nicaragua I didn't end up doing, but I emailed the guy that runs that little organization before arriving and especially when I learned I'd have Friday free made plans to meet up with him. He happened to be going to the National Agricultural College just outside town for a beekeeping presentation being put on by a Dr Van Veen out of Costa Rica, so he picked me up in a pick up truck driven by a friend of his. He and I sat in the back -- Which I'd never actually done before since that's generally illegal in Western countries but it was really nice! Who needs a convertible when you can ride in the back of a pickup!
   The city doesn't seem to have any highrises that I've seen but kind of seems a vast sort of not quite suburban but, light-urbam? small urban? is there a word for this? Small cinderblock houses that barely have enough open space around them to call it a yard, but with trees and bougainvilleaa climbing the surrounding walls. We went down a bunch of residential roads rather than the bigger seemingly arterial road, I don't know if htat was to avoid traffic or what. There were a lot of little sort of bicycle-powered taxi vehicles where the driver sat behind a seat with room for two. The kind of thing you sometimes see on tourist boardwalks but this seemed to be a major source of local transport.

   Agricultural campus out outside of town to the north. Some thirty or so students in attendance in a building with lots of ceiling fans, while outside other students herded cattle past. It was pretty hot except directly under the fans. Presentation was in spanish so I could only barely get the gist of it by typing the words on the powerpoint slides into google translate. Seemed interesting, especially since he had a whole segment on the native stingless bees which I'd have loved to be able to understand.

   On our way back into town on the main highway traffic came to a complete and utter standstill. We were given Dr Van Veen and a colleague of his a ride to the airport so we were about anxious about this traffic. I'm told there was another highway they knew was also at a standstill and the only other way around would be an 80 mile detour. I don't know what's normal around here but I noticed a dark black plume of smoke had emerged from a nearby volcano, and it seemed ominous and possibly related but no one mentioned it so maybe not. After about an hour people had all gotten out of their cars and were talking to eachother and our driver got the down low of a secret route through back streets and we drove on the wrong side of the highway a few hundred yards (not a problem, no cars were coming from that way and plenty of others were doing the same as us) and drove into a narrow alley where we just barely barely fit after folding our mirrors in. Other cars had gone ahead of us and it seemed even more were coming behind, apparently word had just gotten out. There followed another interesting hour of proceeding down labyrinthine narrow back streets, sometimes having to back out of an impassible route. It was certainly interesting. Finally we got out on wide open back roads back out in countryside, where there were eerily few cars on the road, and always that thick black ominous plume of smoke ahead.

   But finally we came back into the city and actually got to the airport in time for the flight!!



   That evening I finally downloaded the most recent (Episode 6) episode of Game of Thrones and, not to spoilerize it, but I felt like it was markedly more badly written than previous episodes/seasons, in my opinion. Like nothing surprising happened, and that cliche thing where you think a main character has definitely died but it turns out they didn't happened several times (also happened in Episode 5 a lot). Later I came across an Onion article saying they basically no longer are following any script at all so I guess I wasn't the only one.
   After this my laptop battery was pretty much used up and I once again am unable to charge it since I still don't have a universal plug converter for the Aus plug on my laptop and now it needs to plug into US shaped sockets here!

Saturday, August 27th - The plan was that I'd meet with the country director on this morning and find out what the plan was. When he arrived I was surprised to find him to be a young fellow looking to be in his mid 20s -- usually the country directors are older and I imagine the job description calls for a masters degree and ten years of management or something like that, so I assumed he must be a real whiz-kid. As it turns out, I have no reason to doubt his competence but I guess it's just that they don't actually have an actual country director at the moment at he's the senior staffmember (of two, where there should be four) and therefore acting country director. Found out I'm not going to the Field till Monday. On past projects I might be upset to be cooling my heels for three full days before going out but I felt and feel like I needed the time to recover from that ordeal of a trip here.
   Apparently I'll be going north and it sounds like a nice area. I'm looking forward to it!

   I was also introduced to two volunteers who he had jut brought back from the field. An older woman (fifties ish?) and a younger woman who had actually just a few months previously finished her Peace Corps posting here in Nicaragua. They were working together on some marketing related coconut oil project.
   Spent most of the rest of the day with the women, in particular the former Peace Corps Volunteer (Eliana) was a wealth of knowledge about Nicaragua.

   Also of note, in the afternoon while I was swimming at the hotel swimming pool I made my 101st rescue. Having been a lifeguard through high school, I am forever imbued with an urge to yell at kids for running on the deck by the pool or diving in in the shallow end, and catching the merest hint of the distinctive jerky wallowed flail of a distressed swimmer out of the corner of my eye grabs my full attention and sets me to red alert. A "distressed swimmer" (ie someone who is attempting to drown), isn't like they are in TV with big splashes and calls for help, and as is too often the case even though she was in many people's field of view no one else seemed to take notice. I was swimming laps at the time and got to her just as her head disappeared below water, pulled her up, put her arms on the pool edge which was actually just right there, she slipped off again, put her back and held her there ... and several minutes later her family actually noticed and hurried over, got her out. Another misconception perpetuated from Baywatch: people NEVER shower you with gratitude for rescuing them. I think something that sounded vaguely grateful, in Spanish of course, but it might have just been "I just need a minute" or something.

   Last night at 11pm, an hour after I'd gone to bed, there was a pounding on my door like a god damn stormtrooper was there. As I pulled on some pants and opened the door I found someone from the hotel bar trying to explain to me I had to pay for the margarita I had had that afternoon that I thought I'd put on the room tab. I don't know why they couldn't have made it more clear at the time that I needed to pay it off that afternoon, or couldn't sort it out when I checked out like normal hotels, nor do I understand why this hotel seems to have nearly no english speaking staff despite being the premier tourist hotel in the capital. I found this nocturnal payment demand quite irksome. I'd complain to the front desk but... even the front desk guy doesn't speak English quite fluently enough that I'm confident I could make my complaint clear to him.


Sunday, August 28th - The two other volunteers left this morning and it turns out the older one was borrowing a laptop from the Organization, so now I'm borrowing the powercord from that laptop. Just taking it easy today, but starting to get my fill of "taking it easy" and really looking forward to shipping out for the field tomorrow!!


PS: I almost forgot, but for posterity, I find it's often interesting to recall what world events are going on at the time, because at the time it feels contemporaneous events are indelibly linked but of course they are not. So for the record, lots more people fled Trump's White House in the last week due to his bizarre support for white supremists, and just the other day he apparently pardoned the controvercial Arizona ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio and even a lot of Republicans seem pretty upset that he skipped the usual review process, that this seems to condone racial discrimination, and that Arpaio being a friend of his this seems pretty shameless abuse of power. Every week there seems to be more opinion articles claiming "this is finally impeachmentworthy."

Day 4 - as I lay in bed in the morning (updating LJ in fact) there was a steady roll of thunder outside and heavy thrumming of rain against the window and roof. I actually really like this weather.

Went out to meet Hamida at 8:20 but she didn't appear. Tapped on her door and I could barely hear her over the sound of rain even as she shouted through the door but I was able to gather that some relatives of hers invited us to breakfast at 9:30. So I returned to my room.

At 9:30 when we went to get a taxi in front of the resort the rain had petered off though the clouds still looked heavy. It was now that I learned we were going to a wedding! If I'd known I would have put on better clothes! Why am I always being tricked into underdressing for weddings??

It was about half an hour drive to the town of Karakol. Along the way I observed that Kyrgyz towns seem to have really extensive suburbs. Like there's barely a town center, no apartment blocks, pretty much0the towns entirely consist of suburb like cute houses set in quarter to half acre lots with a white picket fence around it. Frequently there's a thatched shed in the back, not infrequently there's pretty wooden scrollwork just where the walls meet the steeply angled roof. Also I saw a number of grain harvesters parked in front driveways. And then two ten wear olds would come down the road on a cart pulled by a horse like this is 1870 or something -- except the cart has rubber tires

I wonder if the reason their towns are so spread out is0because of the ubiquity of horse transport. Walking distance constraints tend to constrict housing in places where not everyone has cars but here you can always hop on your horse.

Arrived at a big house with many cheerful people in the front yard and festive decorations up. I felt a bit awkward at first being the only non dungan walking in and not actually knowing the wedding party, but almost immediately the groom greeted me and made me feel welcome. He was wearing a suit and red and green sashes crossed across his chest. He was very nice. He wasn't quite expansive in English but seemed able to say anything he wished to. He's apparently a dentist

Hamida explained to me that women and men eat separately and left me in the care of her ten year old brother, who soon escaped and spent the whole wedding out of sight in some interior room, apparently bored with it all. But I was quite alright everyone was very friendly and there were0two or three other people who spoke perfect English whom I met at various points.

First order of business was sitting down to a meal of meatballs in "Durgan vinegar" which were actually really good. None of the young men I was sitting with0spoke English but they were very friendly. I discovered that durgans, being a Chinese ethnic group, eat with chopsticks ... but this is a skill I have never been able to master and was provided with a fork.

The bride had a beautiful red Chinese style dress (see my instagram for a picture or two). Apparently they had fetched her from her family near Bishkek the day before. Though no one mentioned it this year I recall last year being told that brides are traditionally "kidnapped" by the groom, even if (fortunately) in modern times it is merely going through the motions.

The brides family and friends arrived in mid afternoon and then there was another round of feasting and dancing. MD particular note there were four teenage girls performing traditional dances that were very interesting. I got one picture up on instagram, but mostly I was taking them with the DSLR so you'll see them in a month.

Altogether the wedding was very fun and interesting and I was extremely grateful for the opportunity

Returning to Djety-Oguz, in the early evening we walked over to the Russian's house to talk about bees and all. After about half an hour the grandfather joined us exclaiming "why aren't you drinking?!" And immediately pouring everyone some homemade raspberry cider which was actually quite good. They kept refilling my glass but have yet to get me drunk! I fear soon they will break out the big guns and ply mewith vodka. We had dinner there, lagman, a noodle dish. Noted it was fairly different from the lagman I had in Bishkek, more soupy. By the time we left it was entirely dark but we only got a little lost crossing back to our rooms.

And now we're entirely caught up here!

Tuesday, May 30th, Charleston, Oregon -The magical power of deep paranoia woke me up. Which is to say I woke up and looked at the time every ten minutes till 6:40, and then every two minutes until it was finally 6:50. Since I was sleeping in the crypt-like darkness of a ship's forecastle, a dozen sailors crammed in a space the size of a walk-in closet, I had a terror of my alarm going off.
   Despite my great efforts to get up without using the alarm, to my great horror, I apparently forgot to actually disable it and while I was getting dressed it started to go off at 7:00 and I leapt through the darkness like a blind cat to shut it off as fast as possible.
   Said goodbye to my dear friend Kori, who was of course asnooze and barely woke up enough to mumble goodbye. I covered her cheek in kisses until she chuckled sleepily and told her I'd swing by on my way back in the afternoon for a proper goodbye.

   And then up the ladder, pushing open the heavy wooden hatch and wiggling out with my backpack. The couple who was giving me a ride was there waiting in the fresh morning air. Surrounding us was a marina full of fishing boats and a thickly forested shore. We hopped precariously over the side to the dock -- the gangplank wasn't rigged, tossing our bags to eachother over the chasm. And then we were up the gently swaying floating dock, passing, as I mentioned, a salty former captain of mine coming the other way, who gave me an icy look and merest nod, as he secretly brandished his proverbial knife to figuratively slaughter the current captain of the ship and take over.
   Short taxi ride from Charleston to Coos Bay, past cute wooden houses and blackberry brambles. Rental car from there to Newport two hours north, along the coast but mostly you're not right on the coast so the sea isn't visible. Mainly thick pine forest and occasional bridges over rivers or big inlets from the sea, occasional small seaside towns. The couple was youngish and from Portland. The guy was an army reserve nurse, about to be sent to Korea to train people there, I think the woman may have been a teacher?

Newport - The couple dropped me off by my car, which to my relief had not been towed or ticketed, was left where I left it just beside where the boat had been docked. Had biscuits and gravy at the adorable little cafe that's right there. It's one of my favorite places, I guess I could literally say in the whole world. Just a really cute little cafe in what sort of looks like a little victorian house, right on the waterfront, with really good biscuits and gravy.

   Then I went to Englund Marine, a marine supply store, to get a ten pound spool of seine twine, a tarred twine I've been wishing I had for some time A sailor can fix absolutely anything with seine twine! It's the duct tape of the sea! Also from seine twine you make your Turks-head bracelet that is the secret sign of belonging to the ancient fellowship of sailors. I've had sailors randomly greet me in all sorts of places including once on a bus between Tanzania and Kenya due to the turks-head. It is said you earn the right to wear a turkshead by climbing to the very very very top of the mast, but I think it's also just as much also being able to make it yourself. And because you weave it directly on to your arm it cannot be removed unless cut off. I had removed mine a few years ago over fear of my hand swelled due to bee stings it could be very bad, but since my hand doesn't really swell at all any more I'd been wanting it back, and so as soon as I had a moment wove on the one in the previous link. I'll have to take a new picture tomorrow when the lighting is better, because now that it's not quite so brand new black it looks better I think.

   Does your occupation have any secret signs by which you can recognize a member out in the wilds?

   And then I retraced the trip back down to Coos Bay in my own car (which, I haven't mentioned in awhile, so I'll note I was borrowing me dad's prius). Unfortunately, when Ii got down there, the Lady Washington was out doing maneuvers so I couldn't go make proper goodbyes. But in Coos Bay town itself the other tallship, the caramel-and-blue hulled ketch Hawaiian Chieftain was moored up behind "The Casino." There was a little festival afoot, which is what had attracted the tallships, and also "the world's largest rubber duck" had been conjured up. It's about as tall as maybe a three story building, and the were in the midst of filling it with air. I took a picture but of course my phone later lost it.
   The Chieftain, as it turns out, was actually rafted to a barge thing that was moored to the pilings behind the Casino, but no gangway had been put in place yet and the gap was way too far to even contemplate jumping it. The crew was very busy up on deck doing various things and I happened to see the current captain, Gary, whom I had sailed under on a different vessel (the rather large brig Pilgrim). I called out to him and he came over onto the barge to greet me and express surprise that I was in the country. Two other sailors I've sailed with also came to greet me across the chasm, "Mr Sunshine," a thoroughly amiable older fellow (who's last name is Ray, which combined with his sunny disposition gets his name), and Shane who I think is maybe just a little younger than me and is also pretty nice (and at one time had an LJ even!).

Friday, May 26th - This morning my plans experienced a last minute change. My dear friend Koriander was finishing a short course in the nearby town of Edmonds at 11 and proceeding immediately south to go get back aboard the Lady Washington, and I was going to catch up with her there on Monday, but since I was literally going to be passing right by Edmonds right when she was getting out we made plans to at least briefly meet up.

   Edmonds turned out to be about half an hour from my friend Mike's place, where I woke up. The entire trip was through urbanized space on raised multi-lane freeways full of morning traffic. I had been in Edmonds with the boat in 2010, and I recall people asking "so how do you liked Seattle??" and thinking "we're not IN Seattle, weirdo" ... it IS practically in Seattle if you have a car, but when we were boat bound with only our two feet for shore transportation Seattle may as well have been on another continent.
   I rather fondly remember Edmonds from my earlier visit. It has a small-towny little downtown of the seaside-tourist-destination variety, surrounded closely by sleepy suburbs. Perusing my 2010 entries I said of it "[it] isn't a miserable soulless place like Everett" (next town up the coast and previous place we'd been on that journey), and there was one bar we really liked of which I wrote "...and the bartenders consist of the owner, his wife, and his son. The bartender informed us 'treat this place like your livingroom and we'll treat you like family,' something that might seem like trite crap at a corporate chain but it feels pretty accurate here." I would have liked to pop into that bar this time but I couldn't remember and hadn't recorded the name, nor could I remember quite specifically where it was. Notable events of our stay here in 2010 were the boat's birthday, a zombie attack, waking up in the middle of the night and bolting out of my bunk as a crewmember screamed for help only to find he was having a nightmare, and one of our returns to dock, which required coming in in reverse was accompanied by the distance being called by crewmember Noah standing on the aft rail: "30 feet, 25 feet, 20 feet, 15, 14, ... 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 GET DOWN GET DOWN ::CRACK!!::" as we all dove for cover as the mizzen boom which overhangs the back shattered against some structure behind us.
   It was a beautiful sunny summer morning and as I came into the suburban streets of Edmonds the snow capped Olympic Mountains stood out clearly across the sound. Parked downtown around 10:50 and then googled "maritime training Edmonds" to try to figure out where Kori might be, and when Compass Courses, with whom she'd taken some of her other maritime license related classes (she has the 100 Ton Master's License! She's no longer merely "Sailor Cilantro," she's "Captain Koriander!") I knew it was the place so I started to walk that way. As I walked by a shop downtown a really cool map caught my eye that looked like a marine navigation chart very elegantly all decorated up (the above picture of the map portion showing Seattle and Edmonds is from the very map), but I had to keep steaming along to meet Kori.


I swear I parked and walked into the middle f the street to take this, really

   Kori claaims we haven't seen eachother in three years, I find that hard to believe but have been unable to remember a meeting that would contradict that timeline. She is Hawaiian, shortish, with large brown eyes. I was waiting for her in front of the place but she snuck out the back and caught me by surprise with a flanking maneuver. Greatbighugs ensued. She really was in quite a hurry so we hopped in her car, the SS Minnow, and proceeded to a Hawaiian fish/sushi restaurant nearby where she was gonna get lunch for herself and her grandparents whom she'd be immediately going to see. I really don't like fish and was sure there'd be something non-fish there despite her doubts ... yeah no she was right, there was no non-fish option so I decided just to eat later. The offerings looked very good though if one is into fish! So if you're ever in Edmonds looking for good fish... I can't for the life a me remember the name of this place and even googling and looking at maps isn't helping.

   All too soon she had to run, but we had plans for me to join her on the boat on Monday so hopefully it wouldn't be long. I then went back to the store where I'd seen that super keen map, and I purchased the heck out of it! It now graces my wall here and I am endlessly pleased with this reminder of all the beautiful places in the Puget Sound area that I've sailed to.


Picture from 2010, would have liked to see this statue again

   I had wanted to drive down to the marina to see the exact area I'd lived for a week or so aboard the Hawaiian Chieftain but for some reason there was insane traffic down there and I saw that it looked like if I went all the way to the marina it would probably take me half an hour to slog back out in the line of cars barely inching out of the marina dead end for whatever reason. So instead I got back on the freeway to slog through freeway traffic that was even at noon pretty congested. Headed north just a little bit, I think I was in Lynnwood which is also on the above map portion, when I saw the answer to my lunchtime stomach growling prayers ... FIVE GUYS burgers!
   People from the northwest are often heard to utter such blasphemy as that Five Guys is as good as, or ::gasp:: "better" ::crosses self in the manner of the In-N-Out arrow:: than In-N-Out. I will grant that Five Guys is extremely good, but my burger, fries (an obscene amount thereof!) and drink I think ran me like $18, whereas the same at In-N-Out would be like 5 bucks. So this is like comparing apples with ... much more expensive apples that are almost as good. That's almost as expensive as a burger in Australia! (But infinitely better than any burger I've ever had in Aus).