Sea Wolf

Poul Cadovius and Danish Furniture

2012-01-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

Whenever I go to Commercial Drive in East Van, I usually drop into to this 60's retro furniture store called Attic Treasures. Apart from having a lot of kitsch knick-knacks from that era, they have some cool, modernist Scandinavian furniture. I needed a bookshelf, as well as a sideboard for storage, so I picked up a Danish teak piece of each. Tired of my small oak table and chairs I eventually purchased a nice teak table with expandable leaves at the same place. I could now have dinner parties of more than four people.

However, I still needed similar chairs to go with it. They had some at the store as well but they were too expensive. I searched online and found a set of four that I liked. The man who sold them to me (at a good price) told me they were designed by Poul Cadovius, a famous Danish interior architect and furniture designer, and that they were from the late 50s - early 60s. The only problem was that the woven chord that makes up the seat of the chair was starting to fray after 50+ years. He told me he wanted to re-weave them himself but eventually gave up for lack of time and put them up for sale. He showed me a link he found on the internet that had a video showing a step by step way of weaving the Danish chord as it is called. I decided to take them and later purchased four bundles of the chord, a three strand paper product, at a bamboo store near Chinatown. It seemed a bit complicated looking underneath the chairs and, even with the encouragement of my neighbours, Carlos and Carolina, who offered to help me, I left it for almost a year until two of the chairs were fraying so bad you could no longer comfortably sit on them. It was time to carefully look at that video again.

The above photo is one of my same chairs but in excellent condition. They are made of either walnut or rosewood or a combination of both which, I believe, is the case for mine. The chord goes underneath and is held on by L nails that you wrap around. It is done in three parts, first the front and back needs to be wrapped around. This I found difficult especially because you had to deal with holding the entire bundle of chord and go around each time. I later measured out the length and cut the appropriate amount. Then you have to do the warp strands, the front to back chords that will support the perpendicular weave. Finally the weave itself. It was tricky, especially the first chair but then I got the hang of it. It took about 4 hours to do one chair and I was pleased to revive them in a condition that will last as long as I own them.

I researched a bit more on Poul Cadovius and learned that he also designed what is called the "Royal" shelving system. It's a flexible furnishing system that uses a variety of combinations from a set of standard elements. They are very modernist in appearance but are still relevant and look amazing. I only wish I had a house with a large room. Here are a few examples.

Muscle Cars of Venezuela

2011-12-18T10:32:00.000-08:00

At about half a cent per litre for the price of petrol, Venezuela is the cheapest place on Earth to fill your tank. Even if the country is going to the dogs in terms of the economy, jobs and violent crime, in the land of Hugo Chavez, gasoline is basically free. They don't bother advertizing the price at the pump. The parallels for having old American cars in a socialist state are obvious although what separates Cuba from Venezuela is a time span of more or less 25 years.

What my friend Brahm and I found interesting during our short trip there, was that most of these older cars were all 'souped up' as the old school saying goes; jacked up rear ends, wide tires and mags on the wheels and usually patched up body work. Walking in the streets felt as if we were on the set of a 70s Starsky and Hutch T.V. show. In regional cities and towns these behemoths are the taxis. Even in Caracas you see them around, although in smaller numbers. They are still desirable, not only because no one thinks twice about the amount of fuel a 440 8 cylinder engine guzzles, but because the price to buy a new car, say a Toyota or Ford, has sky-rocketed in the past few years.

Sitting in the huge rear seat of these cabs and looking at the dashboard gave me a flash back to my high school days, when cruising with some friends who had these same muscle cars, or with my father's own Pontiac or Oldsmobile family car. Even these automobile names brought back memories of another time; the Ford Limited, Chevy Malibu, Dodge Dart; the Gran Torino, the Nova, the Maverick or the long forgotten Javelin.

s/v Manta Ray

2011-10-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

I have often thought that if I really wanted to learn how to sail, I would have to get my own boat. I do know the basics, having raced a dozen times on other peoples' boats as well as going out on small lasers. Five months on a sailboat in the South Pacific also taught me a few things. However, having your own boat would really be the only way to truly learn all the intricacies of sailing. Last spring, checking Craigslist once again, I found and bought a 26 foot sailboat for only $1500. She's a Thunderbird, fiberglass on plywood, a classic, fast boat from the Northwest coast. See this for a brief history and description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_26 I was somewhat familiar with the boat as friends had one for a while.

The previous owner had her moored at a dock in Coal Harbour for the past year and had not sailed her for even longer. There were obviously parts that needed some TLC but the hull was apparently sound and the rigging looked good. There were also several extra sails that came with the boat. They say that the happiest time relating to sailboats is the day you buy one... and the day you sell it! They do require lots of time and $$... "an expensive toy" as a friend had put it.

According to sailor lore, it's bad luck to change the name of a boat. The owner had changed the name though and could not remember the original name from the man whom he had got the T-bird. As I did not really like what he called her, I decided I too would change the name. It took my a while, not easy to find a good name. I came up with Manta Ray, those flying creatures of the sea that I had seen several times in the South Pacific.

As I do not have moorage (waiting lists and too expensive in Vancouver) I would be anchoring my boat back and forth between Kits Point and False Creek. The latter is a protected inlet of water that is, unfortunately, regulated by the city of Vancouver. You can only anchor there for two weeks at a time out of 30 day period. The former is out in English Bay, open to the sometimes nasty North Western winds coming from the Georgia Straight. I had to get a good anchor, chain and some anchoring line. The spending started at Popeye's, a 2nd hand Marine store in North Van, a place I would be going back to several times. A friend of a friend hooked me up with an 8 hp 4-stroke Honda motor that just fit the motor well of the T-bird. The next step was to get her hauled out of the water at the Granville island boat yard to power wash the the hull and to apply a new coat of anti-fowling paint. I had her out for a few days and also did some repairs on the rudder and transom.

After buying a second hand dinghy and borrowing Erik's old Johnson Sea Horse motor, I was finally able to go for the maiden sail after having sorted out some of the lines and halyards. It took a few outings to get comfortable sailing with both the genoa and main sails. Thunderbirds have a fractional rig (or Marconi rig as they are often called) which means that the foresail does not go up the entire length of the mast but only 3/4 way up. The main sail area is quite large for the size of the boat as is the height of the mast. Still learning what exactly it all means as well as some of the terminology and characteristics of the different types of sails.

My friends were of course happy for me that I had this boat and I got several different small groups together to go out. Even though almost all of them do not know how to sail, the basics would be explained as we went, sometimes with anxious shouting if say a tack went wrong. I will need to practice sailing alone though, with both sails out.

It does not take long to get to know the community of boat owners anchoring in False Creek. Through my friends Erik and Naomi, who up until recently had their boat there, I met a few of them. One day, after anchoring in the Creek next to Albert, who lives on his boat, he asked me if he could check out my T-Bird. As he went inside the cabin, he asked me if I had a knife or screwdriver. Poking away, he then informed me that there were several rotten pieces in my cabin, one that was of crucial importance. I knew there were some problems but did not realize that one particular piece of wood was a block that supported one of the mast's stays. In other words, if the three screws that held together the chain plate attached to the stay were to rip off that rotten wood they were screwed in, while sailing, the mast could fall down ripping the cabin and deck of the boat. That would be the end of the boat. Albert offered to help me fix up my boat. What would transpire would be 3+ weeks of ripping out pieces of the cabin and deck, fiber-glassing and painting... It would have been preferable to do all this work with the boat on land, but that was not possible. Therefore much time was spent going from boat - dinghy - car - Home Depot - car - dinghy - boat... Another friend, Simon, let me use his generator, essential for all the power tools we used. I now understand why people like a grinder so much. The weather was perfect for working. There were a lot of man hours put in and I am grateful to Al for helping me out. I learned a lot about fixing things. There is another saying about boats... "whatever time you plan to work on a boat, multiply it by 3 then double it". A bit of an exaggeration, but yes, it does take a lot of time to get things done.

Once we got through the major repairs and after having cleaned out the cockpit and cabin of sawdust, fiberglass, scrap plywood and tools, we were able to go sailing. Albert has sailed all his life, so apart from being an excellent teacher for repairing sailboats, it was good to watch him go about sailing as well. There were still quite a few things to do on the boat but at this point they were mostly cosmetic. Removing several coats of marine paint on the coaming of the cockpit revealed the beautiful grain of teak wood, of which my boat, being built in the 70's, has a lot of. We also put the anchor line and chain at the front of the bow, through a hatch. While sailing, the anchor would now hang from the railing in the front. Before, I was dropping the anchor from the stern, then walking the line to the bow, because there was nowhere to put the heavy chain and line on the deck at the front.

I sometimes wondered what I was getting into... especially upon receiving some of my credit card statements. However, with the wind in the sails and the sound of waves... the pleasure of learning and having fun... it makes it all worthwhile. I will be taking the Manta out of the water soon for the winter months. Anchoring on and off in English Bay would be just too stressful with our many winter storms that roll in with the North West winds. There will be a few more thing to do in the spring, like painting the entire deck. This of course will be much easier with the boat on land. I'm looking forward to sail for days at a time, exploring the many islands and inlets of Georgia Straight.

Salmon fishing in kayaks

2011-09-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

The summer finally kicked in during the first week of August and the sun felt so good. Chris, a young Swedish guy I had met in the Yukon, was visiting me and I suggested we go kayaking on Vancouver island for 4-5 days. As he is an avid fisherman, we picked up an extra rod and put together some gear from a bag of reels, fishing line and hooks that I had. He had learned quickly how to paddle my skin-on-frame kayaks I had in Vancouver and even picked up how to roll after just one demonstration.

After picking up my friend Erik's touring kayak and some food we were off to Horseshoe Bay to catch the ferry to Nanaimo and arrived just after sunset. It's a five hour drive north to Telegraph Cove, so we stopped halfway, near Campbell River and just pulled over a roadside parking lot along the sea and slept in the Kaiser (my old Benz). The beautiful sunrise announced a gorgeous day ahead.

We arrived at our destination a few hours later and we were in the water by noon. Johnstone Straight was calm and a deep blue. The salmon were jumping all around us. We had bought a few extra buzz bombs, the favoured lure in this part of the world, and started casting toward wherever they jumped. After a quick lunch of salami and cheese on bread, I caught a nice sized pink salmon. He was a perfect size for a meal for two, so I kept him. I then caught another one which I released. Chris caught a few as well but they were really small and I could see he was a little envious of the fighting fish I had caught.

We stopped at a rocky beach to spend the night. I told Chris to go back out fishing while I would set up the tent and get dinner ready. The sunlight was golden and, as he was floating and casting fifty meters away from the beach, I heard the familiar "ppffffff" sound of a blow hole. The orcas were fishing as well. Several of them cruised by very close to shore between the two of us. They were surfacing close to his kayak and I was glad he was able to have that awesome experience, one I have had several times before. A few sea lions were also fishing a few meters from the beach, tossing salmon in the air with their powerful tails. A lesser blow hole sound was that of porpoises, joining in on the feeding frenzy and they were followed by several commercial fishing trawlers.

It was blue skies again the following morning. The water was calm so we crossed the Straight to Hansen island where we jigged our lures in deep water along some cliffs and quickly caught many rock fish, that we all released except for one that I figured would go well with the Indian curry we were having for dinner. We had to wait a couple hours before going through a narrow channel since there were tidal rapids and a current going up to five knots. Lunch on the rocks, bald eagles above and another blow hole blowing, this time a humpback whale who, at first was far in the distance but then appeared later some fifty meters from where we were paddling. Like a reef it surfaced and, thankfully, did not get too close. Once again a pod of orcas cruised by as well. The water was so clear, cold and full of life.

Our next campsite was in a bay, with a long shallow entrance to a creek coming from the forest. It's always a little challenging figuring out a good spot to land the kayaks as the water line of tides must be taken into consideration. You may arrive at one spot that seems easy enough to get out along rocks or a pebbled beach, but what does it look like at low tide? More than once I have been surprised by huge rocks full of seaweed that make it difficult, if not impossible, to re-load and launch your kayaks. Having a tide table is essential.

We pitched the tent in the forest and cooked dinner on the rocks. Another beautiful evening. The coastal mountains were lit by the setting sun. A few old wooden trawlers motored by then a couple of floating hotels, the massive 10 storey cruise ships heading up the Inside Passage to Alaska. We woke up to a foggy bay and set out on the water with a completely different feel; one of being suspended in nothingness, the horizon of water blurred with that of the sky.

We started fishing once again, me catching the first salmon, Chris the next one but then his line broke. It was 3 - nil for me at that point. Finally, he caught one, a Coho that was a good size and it gave a great fight, jumping out of the water several times. He was very happy. We decided that we would leave that evening so that meant we could keep up to four fish each, as we could put them on ice for the long ride back. Once again, we had to wait for a strong tidal current that was going the same direction we were but was too strong take a chance riding through. We kept on fishing but then we were slowly being sucked into the current even as we paddled further away. This proved a little complicated when Chris caught another salmon. It takes a good 10 minutes to land them to the kayak, before clobbering them on the head. On top of that, we pissed off two sea lions that were also fishing and they were aggressively following us, popping their massive heads out of the water with what seemed like an angry snort only a few feet from our kayaks. I got totally freaked when I saw one swim under water quickly next to my boat. Think of a fast swimming bull under water that could easily knock you upside down.

The current subsided and we paddled through the channel. The fog and clouds lifted as we crossed Johnstone Straight toward Vancouver island. The wind picked up and it was fun to paddle through waves with the sparkling diamonds of reflected sun light. A humpback was feeding ahead of us once again. A few trawlers motored by with their bounty of salmon and us with our three good sized fish, before we arrived back at the small town that is Telegraph Cove. Another stellar trip of wildlife and natural beauty from the sea of Vancouver island.

Yukon paddling

2011-06-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

It has been several years now that I have thought about and planned to canoe the Yukon river. However, it always fell through for various reasons until finally, this was the year to make it happen as I had two weeks vacation during the first half of June. My friend Shinyi was able to take a couple of weeks off work on short notice, so it was a go. It did not matter that she had only ever camped in car park campsites or had never been in a canoe, (she has paddled in Dragon boats though) she was eager for a wilderness experience up North.

A few years ago, as I was planning this same trip, I struck up a conversation with Sue, a passenger on a Toronto - Vancouver flight. Turns out she lived in the Yukon and had invited me to contact her and her husband Larry anytime when I would be in Whitehorse. Well I looked in my little note book and found her e-mail address. I fired off a "do you remember...?" email and she responded with an invitation to stay at their home! True Northern hospitality.

After writing lists of stuff to bring and getting all the gear ready, we took the flight to Whitehorse where Larry picked us up. We spent two nights with them with great food and conversation. They lent us their truck to get our groceries and we picked up a rental canoe from one of the outfitter companies in town. We were originally planning to put in the Yukon river which flows through Whitehorse, however there was an alternate river, the Teslin, which runs parallel 100 km to the east and joins the Yukon downstream a few days from Carmacks, about 400km away and our final destination. Larry was willing to drive us the 100 km to Johnson's Crossing, a bridge on the Alaska highway that crosses the Teslin and the put in point for paddling that river.

The weather was cool, mixed cloud and sun, with the occasional downpour. Shinyi got the hang of paddling pretty quickly. The first few days on the Teslin, the current was not very fast but it picked up considerably as the days went by. On our first night, we met another camper, a young man named Kris, from Sweden. He was on a solo canoe trip for 50+ days and going all the way to Dawson city. An avid fisherman, he would spend several days at one camp and fish most of the day (catch and release). He had found a great spot across the river from the campsite, in a shallow, swampy bay where the pike were biting big time. He took me there the next morning and sure enough, on the first cast, bang! a 10 pounder. I caught five of them, thanks in large part to his hand made floating lure that drove the fish crazy as it looked like a mouse in distress swimming on the surface of the water. We ended up keeping one for dinner. I thought of the canoe trips of my youth, with the filets fried in crushed cornflakes and flour batter that my Mom would make and that I had brought a bag of. It was that long ago too that I had last eaten Northern Pike, or "Jack" as we call them in Manitoba.

We kept on down the river, many sandy cut back banks, forests of black spruce and the occasional bluffs of alder. There were several mountains on the horizon, traces of snow on their peaks, melting as the days went by and swelling up the river that was noticeably getting a higher water level. The map that we bought at the rental store was very detailed and showed the many streams coming into the river as well as topographical features such as "hoodoos" (see first photo) naturally sculpted towers of sand and clay caused by erosion. Included were sites of historical interest like the relics from the Klondike days, mostly ruined log cabins. Campsites were also indicated. Although you may think you are in total wilderness, which you are... there are still quite a few people that paddle these rivers, especially the Yukon, and most of them are Europeans. There may only have been a day or two out of eight where we did not see or meet other paddlers and it was still early in the season.

There were many islands on the river and it was fun to paddle down narrow segments which made it feel like you were on a different, smaller river. It also meant that you were closer to both banks and better to see wildlife which, we did see... several moose with their calves, a couple of porcupines, beavers, many bald eagles, some osprey. Unfortunately, we did not see any bears. Not that I wanted to see them near the campsite, but from the canoe it would have been awesome. At one camp, where there were many firefighters set up to battle a blaze further downstream, they had seen a grizzly swim across the river and head up a steep bank.

By late afternoon of the fifth day, we were to say farewell to the Teslin river as it joined the Yukon river. This junction, called Hootalinqua, was a popular meeting and trading place between various first nations before the arrival of Europeans. It then became a village for miners working the area as well as a supply spot for those looking for gold during the Klondike. The Yukon was quite wide here and it almost looked like a lake. You could see the distinct two colours of each river, the Yukon being more blue than the darker Teslin. We camped on the western shore where there was an established campsite with outhouses and picnic tables amongst some old log cabins. As there was a large fire downstream that had already consumed 20 000 hectares on both sides of the river, there was a camp of about thirty firefighters. A few choppers came in and out, dropping off supplies. They told us it was ok to paddle down as it had subsided quite a bit with the cool weather and rain, but to paddle in the middle of the river for the following 40 + km. It was at this camp that I caught and ate my first Arctic Grayling, a small but very tasty fish.

Leaving the next morning, we had to stop at an island where there was the remains of an enormous steam ship, the 'Evelyn Norcom', that ran up and down the river in the early 1900s. It was like four barns long made out of similar wooden planks. The boiler room was impressive. As it was a historical sight, the firefighters had set up hoses and spray stations just in case.

Downstream, we entered the forest fire zone and there was a lot of smoke in the air, with small burning fires here and there. Some areas were charred, the relief of the shore and mountains completely visible.

We spent another three days paddling down the Yukon river, stopping at more historical sites, abandoned villages and a cemetery. It was fascinating to think of those people, often from far away, who had tried to make a go of it finding gold in the wilderness and harsh climate of the North. Each campsite we found was different than the next. The routine was the same, set up the tent, start a fire, put up a tarp if it rained. After cooking dinner, we had to put the sealed plastic barrel with the food between 50 to 100 meters away from the tent. Trees are too small to hang food from as we do in BC. Evenings, I sat by the fire and enjoyed reading The People of the Deer by Farley Mowatt, a second hand book that I had picked up in Whitehorse. A great story of his time spent with the last Inuit living off the land in the central Barrens of the Arctic in the late 40s. Never did see the sunset as we crashed and slept at around 11 pm, about an hour before it actually set. There was no need for the headlamp that I had brought along as it never got dark in the tent.

On the last day, about half an hour before arriving at the campsite in Carmacks where we were to leave the canoe behind, we got walloped by wind and rain. We got drenched. However, there was a warm dining hall for a restaurant to dry off and get organized while eating an excellent cheeseburger. I gave the rest of our food to a German couple that were on a 4 month paddle of the entire Yukon river, up to the delta in the Bering Sea. We hitched a ride back to Whitehorse, in time for some local beer and the third period of game 5 of the Stanley cup finals, then Larry picked us up for a last night in Whitehorse and in the land of the Midnight Sun.

Kaua'i

2011-05-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

It was a particularly cold and rainy winter in Vancouver. After having worked a long stretch over the entire holiday period, I had a week off in mid-January and, fed up with weeks of grey skies, decided to call my friend Jerry over in Hawaii and take up his offer of dropping by for a few days of sun to that jewel of an island I had heard so much about. The flights were open and within a few hours of having spoken to him, I was off to Lihue, via Honolulu. Jerry lives in Hanalei, on the North shore of Kaua'i and indeed it is as beautiful as everyone says. From his yard, you can see 'Bali Hai' (the mountain backdrop in the classic film "South Pacific") and the spit famously called "Puff the Magic Dragon" from that classic song. The waves were big and surfers were out. Unfortunately, I was a day late to see some monster waves that brought out Laird Hamilton and his jet ski crew. I saw him the next day though, out on his stand up paddle board cruising in and out of regular surfers.

Hanalei is in a large, spectacular bay, the other side of that natural wonder that is the Na'Pali coastline. The town has an interesting mixture of laid back, granola types, wealthy haoles from the mainland and so called "born & raised" locals... Of course, there are many expensive condos and hotels but no where near as developed as say on Oahu or Maui. Most people hope it remains that way. Still, it's an expensive place and one wonders how anyone can afford to live there. Seems that you are either wealthy or you work for the wealthy or you work in the tourist industry.

I met Jerry's friends and we had some great dinners, bonfires and movie nights. During the day, I hung out with Johannes who, like me, was there for the first time, visiting his sister. We tried surfing (not too successfully) with the rest of the gang who were riding the waves quite nicely. Went snorkeling with sea turtles on the reef and did a road trip to the South-eastern part of the island, the Waimea Canyon and the look out point to the Na'pali coastline. We were told more than once how lucky we were to have blue skies day after day as it usually rains a lot in the winter months, especially the mountain peaks tend to be covered in clouds.

One my way back, I stopped in Honolulu for a day to see my other good friend Robert and his family who live near Pearl Harbour. We had a picnic and, on my last day, the sunset was amazing, a lone sailboat on the horizon. Shortly after that sun had set and the stars of that tropical night came out, it was time for the flight back to the North Wet Coast.

Altered Book Project

2011-04-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, my ever-creative-artist sister of mine, Nicole, suggested an "Altered Book Project" between herself, our nephew Miguel, her good friend Lorraine and me. The guide lines were pretty straight forward and consisted of each one of us choosing a hard cover book and altering it before sending it on to the next person, who would then add something to it and send it on until we each contributed to doing some sort of art work in each of the four books, over the course of a few months until your book would return to you altered by everyone in the group. Any technique could be used, from drawing and painting to collage, adding or cutting out pages. Inspiration could come from the theme of the book, it's subject or from the previous additions or it could simply be viewed as a blank canvas to do whatever one felt like doing.

I went to my favourite second hand bookstore in downtown Vancouver and, in a section named "Maritime" amongst boxes and piles of tomes, I found a small, hardcover gem of a book over a hundred years old entitled The Voice of the Sea a collection of poems from various famous writers of centuries gone by. Here are some examples of the altered pages. All pages umarked are ones I did. (clicking on the image will enlarge it enough to read the poetry).

This last image is an artwork by a Newfoundland artist named David Blackwood. He makes incredible aquatints of East coast mythology. The next two spreads are by Nicole, who did an amazing set of pages with cut out waves, swirls and flying fish.

The next three pages are from Lorraine. Lots of layered, textured paper and collage. Nice!

One of Miguel's collage pages.

Here are a few examples from Nicole's book, an interesting dictionary of Western Canadian English originally published in the early 1900s and re-printed in 1977 from the University of Alberta Press.

Nicole's page where I added the Indian head

One of several of Lorraine's pages that had lots of cut out/collage with textured paper.

Miguel's page that reflects well the racist entry of that time...

The back page with pockets for each contributor to add their info.

l'Afrique de l'Ouest

2011-02-27T17:38:00.000-08:00

On the last day I worked before my vacations a colleague asked me where I was going.

- Mali, I said.

- Really? I hear they have gorgeous beaches there, he replied.

- Um... that's Mmm-ali, not Bali. In Africa.

- Oh... Are you going on a safari?

Not an untypical response really. For many people, Africa is still some distant exotic continent that conjures up images of safaris, AIDS, famine and war and not much else. It's often talked about as if it is a single country. Of course, news of Somali pirates, Darfur refugees or Mugabe's thugs does indeed reflect the sad reality of several of the continents failed and corrupt states. However, the recent World Cup held in South Africa or the economic boom of say Angola has shed some light on the rapid development and success stories of some countries. Some friends and colleagues are starting to wonder why I have been returning there year after year. In a few words, Africa, with all its afflictions, is a montage of vibrant peoples and cultures in a multitude of geographic settings and its humanity has a profound appeal.

From my days at university, when I hung out with some Senegalese students, to the stellar music of artists such as Ali Farka Touré, Salif Keita or Baaba Maal... West Africa has always been a place of interest for me. It's strange in a way that I had not traveled to the region earlier. To speak French as well was a big draw, as so many countries in West Africa are Francophone.

My experience of black Africa began in Paris, in 'le 18ième arrondissement', where I stayed at my good friend Yann's flat for a few days. You might as well be in Congo or Togo as you walk the streets of that neighbourhood, with its markets, food stalls and hair salons. Of course, it was great to be back in Paris, in late October, walking along the Seine, leaves falling in the crisp autumn air. A café here, an art museum there. I particularly enjoyed "Velib", their public bicycle rental system that enables you to cycle all over the city for all of a euro a day.

The Air France flight took me to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Once I left what is perhaps the shoddiest international airport I have ever seen (exit through a biffy-like plywood door into a dimly lit hall that looked like a car garage), I found a hotel in the city centre. The downtown looked more like a spread out village, then the capital of the country. It was a hot dry evening so I went out to an outdoor restaurant recommended in the Rough Guide book. There, I met Aida, Solange and Patricia, three lovely young women that are studying tourism at college. In all honesty, before they invited me over to their table they were sharing with an older Frenchman, I thought they were prostitutes and that there would certainly be a catch to me hanging out with them. Not an uncommon scene at establishments where tourists and ex-pats spend time. I was pleasantly mistaken. There happened to be the bi-annual SIAO (Salon International d'Artisanat d'Ouagadougou) a huge convention of West African art and crafts that draws people from the entire region, with many cultural activities. After some pasta and beer, they invited me to go out to a club, dancing. A couple of hours after landing, I was riding on the back of a mobilette, zipping through the dusty streets of Ouaga on a warm Saturday night.

The next few days I just hung out with these people I met, saw some spectacular jimbe drumming and dancing. Evenings were spent at the "Jardin de la musique" and outdoor restaurant-bar that had excellent live music in a leafy outdoor courtyard. The mosquitoes too were enjoying the show and the fresh meat on my ankles. I had brought some repellent but kept forgetting it my hotel room.

I then traveled south-west to the city of Bobo-Dialousso, Burkina's second city. A few days there exploring the old town, the mosque, and enjoying fresh made yogurt for breakfast. Once again, more drumming and live music in the evenings at several bars near my hotel. I found the Burkinabé people to be very friendly and most spoke an excellent French. However, I did get my share of guys that would approach me with some sort of ulterior motive, to either be a guide or to sell me something, or simply to get free beer for their company. It's a typical thing when in a poor country and I've experienced it many times before. Still, it takes a bit of time getting used to it though and it can get irritating when it happens a lot.

My next journey was to Mopti, in the southern central region of Mali, a city at the confluence of the Niger and Bani rivers. What was supposed to be a nine hour bus ride turned into sixteen. It took about three hours just to go through the border. Lots of negotiating and bribes from the driver to the customs officer. Who knows what was in those large bags piled high on the roof. I had an i-pod with me however I did not use it as there was always some excellent Malian music playing on the speakers. The bus was packed, but for a few francs more, I was able to get the passenger window seat in the front. I had a feeling of being a neo-colonialist for all of about one minute, until I looked at amount of people and their bags crammed onto the bench and fold-out seats in the back.

Arriving before dawn at 3 am, myself and several other passengers stayed in the parked bus for a few more hours of sleep. The first thing I noticed while walking along the river in Mopti were the elegant, long, brightly painted canoes. Some were small, mostly for fishing or transporting people to small village islands. Others were enormous, over 100 feet long, for cargo and passenger trips up and down the Niger. Once I got a room and left my bag at the popular "Y'a pas de Problème" Hotel, I set out to explore the town. It wasn't long before Oussa Traoré found me and offered me a tour with his "pirogue". So nice to be on the water and watch daily life... women washing clothes, fishermen poling or paddling their canoes, dock workers loading up bags of millet and rice onto boats.

There are several ethnic groups in Mopti; Bambara, Bozo, Fula, Songhai, Dogon and Tuareg. Although the majority are Muslim, there are different traditional styles in dress, hair ornaments or tattoos. With my guided pirogue tour, we visited a few different ethnic villages on small islands in the flooded delta.

The following morning was market day at Djenne, the ancient town with the world famous "Grande Mosquée". I got very early to get a 'bush taxi' for the 120km trip. Bush taxis are common all over West Africa and they are essentially collective mini-buses or cars that only leave to a destination when they get enough passengers. The ancient beat up Peugeot that I took looked like it could accommodate 7 adults. Wrong, we crammed in 11 including two French tourists that got a kick out of the old French cars on the roads. It wasn't long before we heard a bang and flap, flap, flap. A massive strip of rubber peeled off one tire. Stop, an inspection and the driver decides to keep going with the flapping sounding like a very fast and loud tam-tam drum. When it finally blew, we got out to change the tire.

The market was indeed impressive as was the mosque. Many stalls selling everything under the sun. The Frenchmen knew an Ismaili man from Paris who was there working on the restoration of the mosque, funded by the Agha Khan. After a phone call, it was organized that we could get a tour inside the mosque, which is normally forbidden for tourists or non-Muslims. It was quiet and cool inside, with a bit of a damp smell, shafts of light coming through small openings in the ceiling. The Great Mosque is the largest mud brick building in the world and is considered by many architects to be the greatest achievement of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style. Every year, after the rainy season, the walls must be re-coated by hand with a mixture of mud, straw and a tree bark butter.

Another major attraction to this region of Mali is "le pays Dogon". The Dogon people are mostly an animist tribe that was left alone when other groups were establishing empires and dominance throughout the last 500 years in Mali. There are around 700 villages spread out along a 200km arid escarpment. They are renown for their dwellings in and around the cliffs, as well as their art, particularly their wooden sculptures, masks and reliefs on wooden doors. To see these villages one must organize a visit with a guide. After having met a young British couple, Max and Laura, that were also staying at the same hotel, as well as Jainie an ex-pat Brit living in Côte d'Ivoire, we left for a 4 day trek with Seydou, a 30 year old Dogon man who spoke some English (as my new found friends did not speak French).

A bush taxi brought us close to the first village then we walked in the late afternoon to another village on the edge of the escarpment. There we slept under the stars on the roof of a small mud hut. Tourists have been coming to this extraordinary region for many years now so the guided walks and accommodation, although very basic, have been well established. We met up with several other groups that would converge on a village either for an extended lunch (it was too hot to trek from 11am til 4pm) or at an "inn" to spend the night.

Seydou explained the history of his people, their fascinating cosmology, how they migrated to these cliffs from another region and displaced another people, the Teleb, who had resided high in the cliff walls. The plains below used to be much more forested then they are today, with lions and elephants. One reason they lived in the cliffs was for protection from the animals. The last hundred years however, with population growth and agriculture, the forests have been cut and most animals have left. Dogon life is very basic and revolves around village activities... fetching water from the well, tending the fields of millet, the main staple of their diet. Everyday, you hear the pounding of it by women in the village.

Back in Mopti once again, I decided to take the public "pinasse" (long passenger/cargo boat) down the Niger river to Timbuktu (yes, it does exist!). It usually takes two days and two nights. After much waiting at the docks, and watching a loading crew stack over a hundred huge sacks of millet and rice on the boat, we were ready to leave. The men were at the front section of the boat, the women and children at the rear. I had bought a straw mat to place over the sacs of rice... which is your seat and bed.. and made myself comfortable. I was the only foreigner and it was awesome to be taking this kind of river trip, the same way that it has been for decades. The pinasse is entirely built from hardwood planks and was long, over a hundred feet, with about a 20 foot beam. It was powered by two old diesel engines at the rear that produced a lot of smoke and a noisy drone. Some passengers got on and off a few villages along the way. The boat also came close to shore where it was joined by canoes full of women selling fish and fruit. A meal of rice was provided twice a day with the boat ticket, but everyone shared other food bought from villagers along the way.

It was the day before "Tabaski" also known in Arabic as Eid al-Adha (عيد الأضحى‎) which is the festival of sacrifice celebrated throughout the Muslim world to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead. As it turned out, the Captain of the boat wanted to stop in his village (a hundred km short of our destination) for the evening and the whole day after for this family holiday that the entire country was celebrating. I was not really sure what I was going to do when one of the passengers I befriended, a man named Kola Touré, invited me to celebrate Tabaski with his family in his town. He was coming back from Spain, where he worked, to spend the holiday, so he called his brother (everyone has mobile phones now) to come pick us up at the side of the river some 50 km from Diré, where he is from. It was already dark when the boat stopped and a canoe came along side and Kola and I got in. Two boys poled the canoe for half an hour through reeds and small islands to the main shore. The moon was rising on the horizon and it was a hot African night. I remember thinking how amazing it was, being so far away and ending up on this un-planned adventure.

When we arrived at his house, I could tell that Kola, a man in his early fifties, was fairly well off. He introduced me to his two wives and there were five girls, ranging from 2 to 12 years old... as well as a 17 year old son living in the two building home. He has a few older children as well that were no longer living at home. The TV was on constantly and it was interesting to see the West African programing, with music videos and news on developments in neighbouring countries, especially the regional powerhouse of Côte d'Ivoire where elections were coming up. I was exhausted though and fell into a deep sleep on the mat they provided me. The next morning was the big day (Armageddon for sheep). A couple of them were slaughtered and cut up right in the courtyard that separated the two homes. Half an hour later, I was eating bar-b-qued sheep liver. Kola changed into his beautiful "boubou" the long patterned cotton robes that men wear so elegantly and after he went to the Mosque, he brought me to walk around the town, stopping in several homes and greeting family and friends. The sun was hot by midday and like most of the town, we retreated to the shade of the mud brick homes. The best time of day is late afternoon. Being the only "toubab" (white foreigner) in town, I was getting a lot of attention and I was invited several times for tea. Tea is almost a religion in this part of the world, a small pot is placed on a charcoal burning stove with two teaspoons of green tea, even more sugar, and then it's mixed between the pot and a glass several times creating a long arc of liquid in the air, to mix it up and cool it of. It's bitter and sweet at the same time. It's served in a small glass and there are always three servings each.

It was not long before all the neighbours knew I was there and once I took my camera out, I had a long request to take photos of everyone from toddlers to elders. The people are so beautiful, genuine and friendly and although their life is very simple, I could not help but think of the richness they had, the entire community all know each other, not the least bit of worry for kids on the street... something that can't be said of in our towns and cities. I am still in the process of making some hard copies to send by mail.

When it was time to leave, it was difficult to know when the boat would be passing by the dock, despite Kola's calls to the Captain. Therefore, I decided to take the last leg by bus. After waiting several hours in the dusty square of Diré, another sardine-packed bus ride for the last 100km toward the mystical city of Timbuktu. As we were approaching, I saw several Touareg, on the side of the road, on their camels, in their traditional indigo robes and turbans, an amazing sight of these famous nomads of the Sahara.

Populated by Songhay, Tuareg, Bella, Fulani, and Mandé people, Timbuktu is about 15 km north of the Niger River. It is also at the intersection of an east–west and a north–south Trans-Saharan trade route across the Sahara to Araouane. It was important historically (and still is today) as an entrepôt for rock-salt originally from Taghaza, now from Taoudenni.

Its geographical setting made it a natural meeting point for nearby west African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples from the north. Its long history as a trading outpost that linked west Africa with Berber, Arab, and Jewish traders throughout north Africa, and thereby indirectly with traders from Europe, has given it a fabled status, and in the West it has long been a metaphor for exotic, distant lands: "from here to Timbuktu."

Timbuktu's long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship. Timbuktu is believed to have had one of the first universities in the world. Local scholars and collectors still boast an impressive collection of Arabic manuscripts from that era. By the 14th century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the centre of a significant written tradition in Africa. This is why it has been called "Athens of Africa", "Sudanese Rome", "Mecca of the Sahara", and "Black Pearl of the Desert".

I ended up at a great hostel at the northern edge of town run by a Canadian woman and her Touareg husband. From there, it was easy to organize an excursion into the desert... well, not really the true desert, as the Sahara starts two hundred kms to the north. There are still large dunes however. Everyone has a brother, cousin or friend that is willing to take you out on camel for a trek. Firstly though, I wanted to explore the ancient city. Ali, a 16 year-old, acted as my guide and gave me some historical information on the famous mosques as well as old buildings in the heart of the labyrinthine town. The wooden doors were particularly beautiful. Despite a reputation of being a bit of a tourist trap (there are many 4x4 guided tour groups of Europeans and just as many touts trying to sell you souvenirs) I still found it to be a laid back and friendly atmosphere.

One evening, in the sandy streets of my 'quartier', I heard some hypnotic music, coming from a distance. Ali told me it was a wedding. He fetched me a long "boubou" robe and a turban and, in the darkness, I followed him. I was all of a sudden totally incognito and no longer a "toubab". The Touareg are mostly of Berber and Moroccan origin so as opposed to most other parts of Mali where the population is black African, here there were many North African faces. I blended in quite well actually, especially in the dim lit streets. There was a large circle in the intersection of two streets and the bride and groom were dancing along with other members of their family, people clapping, the mesmeric sound of a distorted, plugged in 'ngoni' (a sort of simple lute) played by a man sitting in the sand accompanied by many others that were singing and clapping.

The next morning I was off on the camel trek. A middle aged man named Jedou, a cousin of the hostel owner, came to get me and there was the camel. Just one. I mounted it, with the help of Jedou and promptly fell off as the animal rose to its feet. Lots of laughter form the kids gathered around. The saddle was pretty cool, made out of wood and cow leather. He taught me how to put a turban on, a necessity in the hot, bright Saharan sun. It's a 5 meter long by half a meter wide cotton cloth. Only the men wear it as they are the ones out in the dunes all day. Often known as "les hommes bleus" the indigo dye rubs off on their dark skin giving it a blue hue around the neck and forehead.

I must admit, it did feel like quite a touristy thing to do, especially as it was only me on the only camel and my Touareg guide walking. At one point he did hop on the back and instructed me how to direct the camel with the reins. We were gone for about an hour and a half, just on the outskirts of Timbuktu actually, when we arrived at what was his family's compound. There I met his wife and their three children. They had a small collapsible hut, basically some wooden poles with a thatched roof, at the centre of an enclosure made of thorn bushes, on a large sand dune, some scraggly trees here and there. A few goats, one cow, a couple of pots and a charcoal stove and that was it. I couldn't help but think of it as living your entire life as if you were camping. That's how basic it was. There were a few other families nearby and Jedou told me that when the tourist season begins, (from November until March) this is how they get some income. Other times of the year, he stills goes off on camel caravans across the sahara to get the salt tablets as they have done for centuries.

We sat around in the shade, drank some tea, ate some sandy rice with a few bits of meat and I sketched, while waiting for the intense sun to lower toward the horizon. It was fascinating to watch the countless scarab beetles going about their way as if they were construction workers scurrying about a city site. I was in luck as it was the full moon. Quite a sight to see it rise, pink-orange above the dunes. The night sky was filled with stars so bright. Jedou told me the name of several familiar constellations, all with their own, logical names. The 'big dipper' for example was a 'big camel', not the the 'big bear' as it's called in French. Sleeping "à la belle étoile" (under the stars) was awesome and no mosquitos as the temperature dropped to around 10 degrees from the mid 40s during the day. As with the mighty baobab trees in le pays Dogon, these sand dunes also made me think once again of my favourite childhood book: Le Petit Prince.

I returned to Mopti by land and saw the spectacular towering cliffs of the Gandamia massif from the window of the 4x4 jeep, bouncing on the washboard sandy road. It was then a 4 day odyssey by road back through Burkina Faso and south across Ghana to the coast and to a beach town near Accra called Kokrobite. I decided to spend my remaining 8 days in Africa there as it was the ideal place for some R&R. It was just what I needed after the full on travel and intensity of Mali. Kokrobite is pretty laid back. Although there are a few tourist-bungalow operations, it is still a local village, with many fishermen working on the beach, bringing in their catch every morning the from their massive dug out canoes.

I stayed at the most popular joint, Big Milly's and got myself a small room in a clean, thatched roof hut. It was fun meeting other travelers, most of them backpacker types like myself. This one older Italian got a kick out of my analysis when we were talking about travel and countries all over the world. He had been to Zanzibar in the late 70s and told me, at that time, he was one of the few white people around. I told him you can measure tourism's influence and transformation of a place by the degree of how many restaurants pop up and start serving "banana pancakes and muesli". Indeed, Big Milly's muesli was a nice break from my breakfasts of mutton tripe up in Mali.

One interesting feature of Kokrobite was the rasta scene. There were many of them, Ghanian mostly, but also from neighbouring Togo and Burkina, there to sell crafts and ganga but also to hook up with the large number of young European women, mostly Brits and Dutch that are in Ghana to do volunteer work (or what can cynically be called "voluntourism" by some). They tend to do a one to three month stint, then come to Kokrobite to get a break from eating local fou-fou and indulge in the party scene. I met several interesting people there and it was awesome to simply relax, do some watercolour paintings, read, have long discussions over beer and pizza at this one excellent Italian restaurant. I did go into Accra, the bustling capitol city, for a day to sort out my return ticket through Europe and to see one of West Africa's largest craft markets. There, I picked up two wooden masks, one from Côte d'Ivoire and the other, a classic from the Dogon. Although only 45 km away, it took almost 3 hours each way as the highway was so congested.

With time running out, I was taking in the sun and the sea on the beach. The water was almost warm and the waves erratic with a strong undertow. As the sun rose, the fishermen's sailing canoes would make their way back to the beach to sort and sell their night's catch. I was already thinking, with a touch of nostalgia, of the amazing things I had seen and experienced in the last 5 weeks in West Africa.

The Wonder of the Ethnosphere

2010-10-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

As we drift toward a more modern, homogeneous world, the loss and transformation of indigenous societies and their knowledge, myths and imagination is a indeed a blow to the richness of humanity's diversity. I just read Light at the Edge of Darkness: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures by renowned anthropologist Wade Davis. It's an eloquent and passionate portrayal of traditional peoples in remote areas and their different ways of thinking, living and being. I chose to simply provide you with a few excerpts from the book which, I hope, will inspire you to look into his work.

"Worldwide, some 300 million people, roughly 5 % of the global population, still retain a strong identity as members of an indigenous culture, rooted in history and language, attached by myth and memory to a particular place on the planet. Though their populations are small, these cultures account for 60 % of the world's languages and collectively represent over half of the intellectual legacy of humanity. Yet, increasingly, their voices are being silenced, their unique visions of life itself lost in a whirlwind of change and conflict.

There is no better measure of this crisis then the loss of languages. Today, of the roughly six thousand languages still spoken, fully half are not being taught to children, meaning that, effectively, they are already dead, and only three hundred are spoken by more than a million people. More than a cluster of words or a set of grammatical rules, a language is a flash of the human spirit, the filter through which the soul of each particular culture reaches into the material world. A language is as divine and mysterious as a living creature. The biological analogy is apropos. Extinction, when balanced by the birth of a new species, is a normal phenomenon. But the current wave of species loss due to human activities is unprecedented. Languages, like species, have always evolved. Before Latin faded from the scene, it gave rise to a score of diverse but related languages. Today, by contrast, languages are being lost at such a rate, within a generation or two, they have no chance to leave descendants. By the same token, cultures have come and gone through time, absorbed by other more powerful societies or eliminated altogether by violence and conquest, famines, or natural disasters. But the current wave of assimilation and acculturation, in which peoples all over the Earth are being drawn away from their past, has no precedent.

Each language is, in itself, an entire ecosystem of ideas and intuitions, a watershed of thought, an old growth forest of the mind. Each is a window into the world, a monument of the culture that gave it birth, and whose spirit it expresses. When we sacrifice a language, we might as well drop a bomb on the Louvre. The ultimate tragedy is not that archaic societies are disappearing but rather vibrant, dynamic, living cultures and languages are being forced out of existence.

Even among those sympathetic to the plight of small indigenous societies, there is a mood of resignation, as if these cultures are fated to slip away, reduced by circumstance to the sidelines of history, removed from the inexorable progression of modern life. Though flawed, such reasoning is perhaps to be expected, for we are all acolytes of our own realities, prisoners of our perceptions, so blindly loyal to the patterns and habits of our lives we forget that, like all human beings, we too are enveloped by the constraints of protection of culture. To dismiss indigenous peoples as trivial, to view their societies as marginal, is to ignore and deny the central revelation of anthropology.

In Haiti, a Voudoun priestess responds to the rhythm of drums and, taken by the spirit, handles burning embers with impunity. In the Amazonian lowlands, a Waorani hunter detects the scent of animal urine at forty paces and identifies the species that deposited in the rain forest. In Mexico, a Mazatec farmer communicates in whistles, mimicking the information of his language to send complex messages across the broad valleys of his mountain homeland. It is a vocabulary based on the wind. In the deserts of northern Kenya, Rendille nomads draw blood from the faces of their camel and survive on a diet of milk and wild herbs gathered in the shade of frail acacia trees. In Borneo, children of the nomadic Penan watch for omens in the flight of crested hornbills. On an open escarpment in the high Arctic, Inuit elders fuse myth with landscape, interpreting the past in the shadows of clouds cast upon ice.

Just to know that such cultures exist is to remember that the human imagination is vast, fluid, infinite in its capacity for social and spiritual invention. Our way of life, with its stunning technological wizardry, its cities dense with intrigue, is but one alternative rooted in a particular intellectual lineage.
The Polynesian seafarers who sense the presence of distant atolls in the echo of waves, the Naxi shaman of Yunnan who carve mystical tales into rock, the Juwasi Bushmen who, for generations lived in open truce with the lions of the Kalahari, reveal that there are other options, other means of interpreting existence, other ways of being.

Every view of the world that fades away, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life and reduces the human repertoire of adaptive responses to the common problems that confront us all. Knowledge is lost, not only of the natural world but of realms of the spirit, intuitions about the meaning of the cosmos, insights into the very nature of existence."

Wade Davis

Inuit Sculpture

2010-09-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

As long as I can remember (and even before I was born) there was an Inuit sculpture on the knick knack shelf of my suburban family home in Winnipeg. It's a heavy sculpture as it is a fairly big piece of soapstone, about 10 inches high by 7 inches long and 5 inches wide. It is a dark grey, a bit green, with a few lighter veins running through it. A typical piece of a daily routine, a woman breast feeding her child. We are not really sure where my father got it as he had traveled to the Arctic several times for work as a cameraman with CBC. One of his favourite places was Rankin Inlet, so we figured it had to be from there. He had also gone to Baffin island. However, that was quite a bit later than when he had acquired the sculpture, according to my sister who also remembered it being there as a child.

One day, while walking in a section of the Vancouver International Airport, I noticed amongst their Inuit art section, a sculpture that looked remarkably similar to the one we had at home. I took a photo of it. The name of the artist on the name tag was that of Mary Kunalik, from the community of Salluit, in what is now called Nunavik, (a part of Nunavut) which was previously a part of arctic Quebec. The date of that sculpture is 1954, probably only a few years earlier than when my father got his sculpture. That got the ball rolling for me to find out once and for all who was the sculptor of that piece.

There is no better place to find out about Inuit Art than the Winnipeg Art Gallery, as they have the most extensive and important collection in the world. After making a phone call to someone from their library/archives department, we were told to look for a number and possible name, in Inuktitut syllabics, on the bottom of the base of the sculpture. My father had glued a felt to the bottom of the piece to prevent it from scratching the wood it was sitting on for all those years. So we took it off and sure enough, there was the number and an Inuktitut script. On a side note, I also learned that numbers were actually like names given to people as they were being recorded by the government when the Inuit came off the land and into settlements. Part of that was to facilitate the recording of the high number of tuberculosis in northern communities. However, you can also imagine how priests, who found that most of their real names, besides being unpronounceable, were names of animals or spirits and associated with shamanism. Christian names were given, as well as the numbers, which also indicated from which part of the Arctic they were from. It was also a way to identify sculptors in the burgeoning art market for "Eskimo Art". Until Inuit began studying in the south, many didn't know that numbers were not normal parts of Christian and English naming systems. In 1969, the government started to replace number-names with patrilineal "family surnames". But contemporary Inuit carvers and graphic artists still use their disk number as their signature on their works of art.

The next day I visited the Winnipeg Art Gallery and gave the number to the librarian. She typed it in and came out with the name of the artist; Miaiji Uitangi Usaitaijuk, from Salluit, the same settlement as the other sculptor in the airport. I was shown a few books and catalogues with photos of other pieces from that time, the 1950's, and many of them had a similar style, not so polished, a bit rough on the surface and quite primitive looking. In a word, amazing!

Discovery Islands

2010-09-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

Hot sun, blue skies, warm breeze, short summer.... I needed a break from work and the city. So I threw my kayak on the roof of my car and escaped to Cortes island, part of the Northern Gulf islands between the east coast of Vancouver island and the mainland. After a couple hours of driving and three ferries later, I met up with my friends Erik and Naomi who had just finished building their outrigger canoe that they had been working on for a couple of months in East Vancouver. They had spent a few days motoring there from False Creek, up the Sunshine Coast and 'Seaweed', as the outrigger is called, still needed some work done. They were set up on a beach at Manson's Landing, one of the several picturesque bays and coves of Cortes island. Their friend Max, who lives nearby, was there to help put up a mast and rigging and was to join us for a week of cruising around some of the other islands further north.

I set up a tent on the beach and it was so nice to be back in the ocean environment, the rhythm of tides, the sound of waves, salt in the air. We asked the locals about red tide and it did not seem to be a problem, despite the warning signs put up by the government (they are there permanently I was told). There were thousands of oysters at low tide and a nearby lagoon also provided us with an abundance of clams. Fruits of the sea! We boiled the clams and they were delicious with some white wine sauce, onions, garlic and pasta. The oysters were almost too big and it was a bit hard going shucking them. They still tasted great though, raw with some hot sauce and lemon. We fried some up as well.

Cortes is a pretty laid back place. There is no real main town, not even where the ferry docks, just a few communities spread out throughout the island. It's probably not unlike what Salt Spring island was 40 years ago with some oyster fishermen, hippies and natives, each doing their own thing. It was interesting meeting some of the locals as well as visitors who lived on their boats. Unlike the marinas of Vancouver, there were not many of the huge, ugly modern yachts but rather old wooden ketches, converted fishing boats, homemade trimarans, sleek schooners. It was pretty much the same on Quadra and the other islands as well.

There was an opaque smoke in the air from the hundreds of forest fires burning all over BC. The haze made for a perfect red sphere at sunset, a sort of sun you see in the fields of India or industrial Japan. It finally cleared up with a stiff breeze and we motored (surprisingly fast) out to Heriot Bay, on Quadra island and had some brewskies at the local pub to celebrate Max's birthday. It was there that Erik's 30 year old 9.9 Envinrude outboard motor died the next day. There was nothing to be done until Monday so we hitched a ride on a boat to Read island to go to the locale "Surge Festival" near Surge Narrows. More hippies... but there was some great music in the community hall.

We returned the following day and Erik tackled the motor problem, with the help some nice guys we met at the campground in Heriot Bay. While he got a ride back to Campbell River for parts, I was asked if I wanted to help Dale, one of the guys, retrieve some prawns from his traps that were set out in the bay. He told me to bring my fishing rod and off we went in his big new power boat. We stopped out past the spit where the locals told us was the spot where the fish were biting. After the second cast I caught a 4 lb salmon which gave a good fight but we threw him back. Ten casts later, wham! I saw a big fish jumping 50 yards away. I reeled him in and had an 11 lb Coho into the net. Nice...! After helping Dale haul up six of his traps, he gave me a bag of jumbo prawns and I returned with the bounty, thinking of a good meal that evening.

I had brought with me some Japanese paper, block print ink and a brush to pull off a few fish prints and with Erik's help, in a strong wind, we managed to get a few good ones of that nice looking Coho salmon. I had practiced as well on a smaller rock fish the day before. Of course, once the print was done, you just wash off the water-based ink and fillet the fish to eat. We moored up next to 'Samsara' an old wooden ketch belonging to a pirate dude named Dan and, along with a friend of his, had an awesome dinner of prawns and salmon, with some Havana Club rum on the side.

The motor was fixed and we went back to Cortes, hoping to see some orcas that were reportedly cruising the Straight. We left Seaweed moored in the bay as they were returning for some sailing in September, and headed back home by car. First though, we got a bucket full of clams and some oysters to bring back.

The ferry crossing from Nanaimo was beautiful. The ocean was like glass and you could see way up the Georgia Straight (or the "Salish Sea" as it has recently been re-named) in a golden orange sunset light. As usual, it went by too quickly.

Gyotaku 魚拓

2010-05-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

"Gyotaku" (gyo 'fish' + taku 'rubbing') is a traditional form of Japanese fish printing, dating from the mid 1800s, a form of nature printing used by fishermen to record their catches. My sister Nicole and I had discussed it a while back and after having seen a few examples on you-tube, we decided to give it a go during my recent visit to her house in Winnipeg.

The selection of fish was not the greatest at the local Superstore, so we went with a frozen 'white fish' because it had a pretty nice pattern of scales. It's apparently better to use a freshly caught fish that has not been gutted because then you don't have to fill in the underside with paper towels to give it body. Once thawed, we dabbed some paper towels in vinegar to wipe off as much slime as possible, while drying it out. Filling in with bits paper tissue behind the gills, in the nostrils and covering the eyes (which are then painted in later) helps prevent wet spots of fluid blotting the ink. We also used plasticine underneath the fins to keep it propped up for when pressure is applied with the paper.

The next step is to paint the fish. We used a black block print ink. You dab the paint with a sponge or rag to make sure it gets into the surface but also to remove some of the ink where it is too thick. Using Japanese rice paper, you then spread a piece over the fish and and apply pressure with your hands and rub the paper with your fingers.

Et voilà! You then take a brush and ink to add in the eye as well as enhance some of the spots that did not pick up enough ink during the rubbing, like the dorsal fin and tail. I'm looking forward to trying it with nicer looking fish, freshly caught on my next camping trip.

Frame of Time

2010-03-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

Whenever I enter a second hand store or flea market, I can't help but notice old photographs and pictures that are in old frames. The other day, I picked up two identical gold wooden frames to put up some art I that I have on a wall in my bedroom, a layout of twenty or so odd pictures and photos... all in old frames.

When I took out one of the prints, a copy of the famous Blue Boy painting by Thomas Gainsborough, I thought about the time when this frame and print was put together. Who was it for? Who was the person that cut the glass or chose the print? Where was this store? Were they also mounting posters for war bonds, asking the public to support the fight in Europe against the Nazis? Or was it during the fifties, the era of Life magazines, Frigidaire and Cadillac automobiles that had wings and massive chromium bumpers. Where did the image hang? On some wall in a suburban house or in an old turn-of- the-century apartment, in the hallway or in a bedroom? How did it end up in that second hand store? Was it from a box that a dutiful daughter packed up the last of her parent's belongings from the family home, after the last remaining parent either passed away or moved to a senior's institution? As I took out the nicotine stained glass, the paper matte was brown and flaked away. I wondered in how many more quick years would someone else perhaps find this same frame, and perhaps think about this time, fifty years from now, how it must have been, when there was a war on terror and i-pods and i-pads were the now quaint gadgets that everyone had.

"Estamos Juntos"

2009-12-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

More than Coca-Cola, more than the FRELIMO posters for the recent elections... those were the two words ("we're together" in Portuguese) that I saw the most on billboards, T-shirts or painted, with bright yellow happy faces, on walls throughout the country of Mozambique whilst on a recent visit there. The entire country, like many others in Africa, has lept-frogged to the mobile telephone revolution and that was the ad campaign for one of the companies. It's not uncommon to see women, at the market, bags of food on their heads, take out a cell phone tucked away in the folds of their brightly coloured 'capulanas' (sarongs).

Maputo is one of the more pleasant African capitals, laid out on a the edge of a bay on the Indian Ocean, with wide avenues, a mix of colonial and 70s modernist architecture. Although there are still remnants of the socialist dream of Samora Machel, the country's first president after independence from Portugal in 1975, European, South African and Chinese companies have set up shop and there is somewhat of a construction boom going on. Despite still being a very poor country, Mozambique is seen as a shining star in Africa, on the road to a better future from its bloody 20 year civil war that ended in the early 90s and labeled it as being the poorest country on earth.

I enjoyed the sidewalk cafes and met many locals there or on the street, in markets, on the waterfront. Moçambicanos are easy going, friendly people. There are in fact many peoples in this country of 20+ million souls with over a dozen ethnic groups each with their own indigenous language. The country however functions in Portuguese and unless being in a remote area where perhaps education is minimal, almost everyone speaks it. I had to tweak my own Portuguese, with my Brazilian expressions and accent, even though they understand it with all the Brazilian tele-novelas on TV each night.

After 10 days in the south, going and coming back to the capital from a beach town called Tofo, I flew up to northern part of the country, to a city called Nampula and made my way to Ilha de Moçambique, an old Portuguese colonial town on a 3km long island. This was the first administrative centre of the Portuguese and it was an important link to their trade routes to Goa. They built a fort there in the late 1500s and it remained the capital until late 19th century, when they moved south to Lourenço Marques, what is now called Maputo. Ilha however was an important Arab trading port and boat building centre long before Vasco de Gama arrived. More than half the population is Muslim and there is also an Indian influence, even though the majority are African. Some people live amongst the crumbling ruins of the old colonial buildings but the majority are in the traditional reed huts of the local Makua tribe.

I decided to spend the week. The atmosphere was amazing. The light was very bright, a dry furnace-blast of heat from the sun during the day then the wind off the turquoise sea would blow steadily in the late afternoon. I stayed in a beautifully restored "pensão" done by an ex-pat Italian. It's across the street from the main mosque, which is on the beach where fishermen bring in their daily catch. It was here where I spent time with Rodrigo, a young Portuguese man I had met. We were both stunned at the beauty of this charming island and its people, particularly the happiness of all the care-free children.

I was impressed with the dhow sailboats, which came in many sizes, all built right on the beach in front of where I was staying. I spent several hours hanging out with a group of boat builders. The main man using his adze was so precise as he was hacking out square beams from large hardwood branches. These traditional Arab boats have been around for centuries along the east coast of Africa.

Rodrigo and I set up a one day sail on one of the dhows with a nephew of a boat owner and his friend. Like most men on the island, they were expert sailors as they are all fishermen, the main economic activity of the island. We sailed for the entire day to an islet out in the bay as well as to Chaga beach, across the bay on the mainland. Despite having borrowed some sun screen from a fellow tourist at the hotel (could not be found on the island) we still got fried in the hot sun.

Public transport in Mozambique is indeed a trip. Either mini-bus, a small van or the back of a pick-up truck, they pack them in like sardines. And, just when you thought it was completely full and should be ready to go, they will stop yet again and pick up more people with their cargo. There is no better way though to see the passion, laughter and friendliness of Africans than on these public buses. Babies will be passed through a window to someone on the roadside while mothers squeeze out from the back row. There is a constant chatter amongst passengers as the music is blaring while the driver is negotiating pot holes and dangerously over-taking slower vehicles on blind curves. Once on a slightly more modern bus, I was not sure if it was in my honour or not (being the only whitey-foreigner on the bus) that after playing some cool Tanzanian hip hop videos on the screen, they put on a dvd of Shania Twain and cranked up the volume.

Further north to Pemba, another magnificent bay on the Mozambique's long coastline, the rainy season was just starting and for several hours each morning, the heavens opened wide and torrential rain created instant streams and rivers on the cracked red soil. It would dry up later in the afternoon as the sun came out and the heat soared. On the way up to Pemba, I often thought of St. Exupery's The Little Prince as I saw many baobab trees, like majestic monoliths in an otherwise dry bush landscape.

As elsewhere in the country, there is an abundance of seafood. Grilled prawns, coconut curried crab, steamed clams, fish... I kept returning to this one local restaurant that served excellent grilled squid with 'matapa', a mash of cassava leaves on rice that could almost be considered a national dish. Everything I ate was complemented by Mozambique's famous piri-piri, their homemade hot sauce that was slightly different each time you ordered food. Some, mixed with either lime or mango, had a sweet/sour taste and reminded me of Indian chutney.

Pemba was windy and the dug out canoes that fishermen used varied from the ones further south. Not only did they use a small lateen sail with their canoes but they had a double outrigger, an 'ama' on each side. I spoke to a fisherman repairing his canoe and he told me it takes about a week to carve a canoe out of a single log. The wood used is a trunk from a 'cajueira', a cashew tree, which although a hardwood, is surprisingly light.

My last few days were spent on the beach

before flying back to the capital and then

home. As they say in Portuguese, "ja tem

saudade" - I'm already nostalgic - for the

warm people I met in Mozambique, a

fascinating, spicier and tropical feel, a more

laid back contrast to its British influenced

neighbours.

Summer Project: baidarka

2009-09-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

Craigslist can be a good or bad thing... Whilst perusing the site one day under the heading of kayaks, I came across a George Dyson style of baidarka for sale at $400. I couldn't resist calling the owner, went to his home, talked him down a bit in price and picked it up. Never mind that I already have two other skin-on-frame kayaks and not much room for storage.

For those unfamiliar with George Dyson, he is the man largely responsible for re-introducing the baidarka (a traditional skin-on-frame kayak from the Aleutian islands of Alaska) with an excellent book published over twenty years ago. It's part history of the boat, its design and use as well as the author's own recreations of them, using aluminum tubes and plates instead of wood. Skin-on-frame kayaks have become increasingly popular since then. Many of them are the Greenland style, from which the modern conventional kayak is modeled on.

The word 'baidarka' by the way is Russian for small boat. They were the first Europeans to explore and exploit the Aleutian islands and they basically enslaved the local indigenous people to hunt sea otters for their pelts. This they did with their kayaks. The Russians made them build many more, some of them modified to have three people in each boat. The distinctive feature of this kayak is its bifurcated bow, which is there for a combination of design, performance and aesthetic reasons. Most baidarkas have the lower jaw curl upwards past the upper jaw. This one is the version as drawn by the explorer James Shields in 1798, wherein it looks more like a sharks mouth.

click to enlarge

This particular kayak was built from one of Dyson's kits many years ago. The owner said his friend had built it and gave it to him. I doubted he used it much himself. When I got it on the water, not only was it extremely tippy, but the cockpit was way too high almost reaching under the armpits. The low stability I could deal with, but I could not see myself paddling more than 10 minutes as my arms got tired. I was somewhat disappointed and thought about selling it, once again on Craigslist, however, after talking to a few kayak builder friends, it did seem possible to modify the boat to what it most likely should have been in the first place. I decided to keep it.

I cut off the old gray hypalon skin, sawed off the deck stringer and removed the cockpit. A new 'masik' (forward deck beam) and back deck beam made of wood were added. Bringing the back deck parallel to the gunnels and lowering the forward deck beams brought the height down to a more logical profile.

Most skin-on-frame kayaks have their frames made of wood which, in my opinion, is not only lighter and easier to work with but smells good and has a more organic feel. I must admit though, this kayak did look pretty cool with the skin off and I received quite a few questions and a lot of looks while I was driving it to and fro my friend's workshop.

The next step was to sew on a new skin of nylon, stitch in a wooden cockpit rim and poly-urethane it which I did at Corey Freedman's baidarka school down in Anacortes, Washington. My friend Mara was there finishing up her own boat that she had spent a week learning how to build.

Back in Vancouver, I was almost worried that I would not be able to get in as the beam of the kayak is only 19 inches and I shortened the length of the cockpit considerably. My calculations were correct though and once in the kayak, the newly baptized "rocket" was extremely fast and much more comfortable to paddle.

Sketch book

2009-04-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Here are a few sketches and watercolours I did on my recent sailing trip. (click on image to enlarge)

Canoes of Oceania

2009-04-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

I love that word... "Oceania" the ocean continent. My recent sailing trip in the Pacific was truly an incredible adventure in many ways; being on the ocean, learning how to sail, group living in a small space, fishing, experiencing a variety of island cultures, their food, their music and dance, their hospitality; lush mountainous islands and windswept atolls; historical sites of ancient stone ruins or old bunkers and rusting guns from WW II; underwater worlds of coral and colourful fish, sea turtles, manta rays, sharks and dolphins; stars, sunrises and sunsets, warm tropical wind, shades of blue.

One aspect of the trip that I was excited about beforehand and was not disappointed was to see and experience the wide variety of canoes still used on most Pacific islands. Some were dugout from a single tree, others stitch and glue planks of wood and others still made from metal. Although each island or atoll had different styles and designs, they all had an outrigger off to the side of the main hull. Here are some examples of these canoes and the wonderful craftsmanship in their construction.

Fiji was the only nation where in fact there were not that many canoes. Most fishermen these days have aluminium boats with outboard motors. That's a bit of a shame as the Fijian outrigger canoes of the past, particularly the famous double hulled 'drua' was renown to be one of the most seaworthy of the Pacific. This was a quarter size replica of one found in the Museum of Suva. We met a group of kiwis that were interested in trying to revive the use of small sailing canoes for local use in the lagoons. An excellent initiative as the price of fuel keeps rising.

In Tuvalu, there were several types of outrigger canoes that ranged from a boxy plank type construction found on the island of Vaitupu to the elegant dugout from a hardwood tree called 'feitao' on the northern atoll of Nanumea. This last kind of canoe was very prevalent as there were almost no motorboats around. We came across a group of men that were constructing two of them at once, in the shadow of coconut trees.

In Kiribati, on the outer island of Abaiang, I was lucky to have met a local fisherman named Tekieri who brought me out in his outrigger to the reef to go snorkeling for octopus. With a sail made of a plastic tarp, we had speed of about 8 knots and it felt great sailing across the lagoon.

Being a wooden boat of planks, bailing is a necessity not just from water coming in through the seams but by the odd wave splashing over the front.

The Marshall Islands are famous for their sailing outrigger canoes. They are fast. I will simply copy what is written from a tourist pamphlet as they explain it better than I can. "The remarkable skill of the Marshallese seafarers to evolve their swift outrigger combined three inventions of the utmost utility in sailing. First the masters designed a watercraft that always keeps its main hull to leeward and its small outrigger counter-balance up on the windward side. Always keeping the main hull to leeward is possible as the canoe tacks because sailors pivot their mast and move their sail from one end to the other. Thus the canoe is able to sail with either end forward, thereby keeping the outrigger on the weather side.

With these reversible ends in mind, the Marshallese were able to further evolve their sailing craft. Their second notable design invention is an asymmetrical main hull which helps lift their craft to windward, much as a bird's wing lifts its weight into the sky. This asymmetrical main hull's two sides differ: the lee side (or side away from the wind) is flattened, while the hull's side which stays to windward is more shapely for lift like the top of a bird's wing. The flattened lee side of the main hull helps pull the vessel up to windward reducing the need for a deep keel, centerboard or leeboards.

The third notable design characteristic of the Marshallese canoe is the use of a lee platform. This extension lashed out to leeward of the main hull extends over nothing but the ocean. This seemingly precarious lee platform enables the voyagers to carry a greater quantity of cargo. Most voyaging canoes had small thatch house built for women and children. There is a sophisticated balance to these wide outriggers designed for ultimate windward speed and cargo carrying capacity".

On Kosrae, one of the Federated States of Micronesia, they do not have sails on any of their canoes as the reef around their island is close to shore and there are no islands nearby. We arrived there a few weeks before an annual island competition of outrigger paddling races. Therefore, everyday just off of our anchored sail boat, we saw teams practicing a few hours a day. Their canoes for racing are similar to the OC-6 canoes used in races in Hawaii and Polynesia except that they are carved out of a single long straight log. Unlike the atolls, Kosrae is a lush, jungle covered volcanic island with a large variety of trees.

Of course there are smaller canoes as well for fishermen going out to the reef and either throwing their lines or nets. The design is essentially the same as the long ones. I came across this man who was making a few paddles. Although he carved the largest part of the plank of hardwood with a chain saw, the rest he chiseled away using a machete. I was surprised at how precise he was with each whack of the blade. (I suppose a lifetime of opening up coconuts helps).

Sailing westward to Pohnpei, we stopped at the island of Pingelap. Here again, a different variety of canoes. An old-timer paddled out to greet us and informed us that we were lucky to be there at this time of the year because they would be night fishing for flying fish. Once the half moon set and it was dark, a dozen canoes set off from the beach. Each canoe had four people. There was a small platform in the middle where one man would stand up holding a massive lit torch made of dried coconut palms. Two more men would be standing at each end with nets attached to a long pole to catch the flying fish that were attracted to the fire light. The fourth would paddle slowly. The old-timer had lent me his single canoe so I was able to paddle along side this group of fishermen in the dark, fishing the same way they had for hundreds of years. With the firelight glowing on the water and sparks flying in the breeze amongst the half circle of canoes it was almost surreal.

Faces of the Pacific

2009-03-25T12:59:00.001-07:00

Beautiful people I met during a 5 month trip sailing through the South & North Pacific island nations of Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Kosrae and Pohnpei.

(click on image to enlarge)

Sailing North Pacific: Kiribati

2008-12-30T19:59:00.001-08:00

When I think of the North Pacific, what comes to mind are the mighty waves and storms of the Aleutian islands and the rugged, windswept coast from Alaska to British Columbia. Or, I think of the other side and the coastline of Japan, say Hokkaido or Vladivostok, Russia. I have never thought of the North Pacific as being just the other side of the equator from the South Pacific which, of course, it is... palm trees a blowin' in the warm tropical wind. That is where I find myself now, having just crossed the equator a few days ago and sailing into the remote equatorial Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati.

There is a tradition amongst sailors, so I was told, that when one crosses the equator for the first time sailing, one must perform a little ritual for the God of the Ocean, be it Poseidon or Neptune, or any other of the various names given by Polynesians, Micronesians or Melanesians. So on yet another sunny day of sailing, around 10:00 am, when Cedric noticed that the GPS had shown that we were at 0 degrees, he brought in the jib, turned Thira the sailboat into the wind and put on the engine to keep her straight in the big swells. It was time to get ready. I had to cut a lock of hair and throw it in the sea and offer some rum to Poseidon. It was cheap rum though so I opted for some Shiraz. Then I had to jump in, which I did, holding on to a line that we always put out while swimming from the boat on the open sea.

Several weeks ago, we had left Lautoka, Fiji after a favourable wind and weather report. We sailed through the southern tip of the Yasawa group at sunset and three days later, with a nice steady 20 knot easterly wind, we passed the last most northerly island of Fiji called Rotuma. Unfortunately, we did not stop. This was for two reasons. It was almost dark and when approaching a new island, you need sunlight to see the entrance through the reef and into the lagoon. Also, we had already cleared customs back on Viti Levu and technically, they do not want you stopping at other islands once you have officially been stamped out. There are ways around it however, like all of a sudden having engine trouble. However, we chose to stick to the rules this time.

That was the last island for another three days before reaching the atoll of Funafuti, in the island nation called Tuvalu. So the total was six days on the open sea and it was my first real sailing or crossing (apart from some island hopping in Fiji). It was awesome. No throwing up even though we did have some pretty big swells and chop. I think I have my sea legs now. The nightly watches were a little hard on sleep patterns. Average speed was around 5 knots. Cedric, the captain, does not want to stress the sails by going much faster (he still has 1.5 years to go and lots of time) Amazing skies as you can imagine... sunsets, bright stars, lots of squalls where the wind picks up real quick, then a massive downpour, then calm before we get out of it and back to wind we had. I have been doing a lots of 'helming' as well. Getting a feel for the boat and how she moves in the wind and swells. It's a great feeling, in the middle of the night, to pick a star on the horizon as a guide to the measurement of degrees to the wind where you want to go. There is also a constant parallel constellation, that being the trail of bright green phosphorescent in the wake of the sailboat.

The weather is hot but the wind off the water feels good, especially at night. We saw dolphins a couple of times zipping in front of the bow and also "dwarf sperm whales!" who were very curious going all around and underneath. We weren't sure what they were, large dolphins or porpoises but then Peter brought out his guide book on cetaceans and we identified them with a few good pictures I had taken.

The name Tuvalu means '8 islands' in Tuvaluan, even though there are in reality 9 islands in the group. Don't ask me which one got shafted or why. They were once part of the British mandated area of Gilbert and Ellice islands, them being the latter, the former, now called Kiribati, are further north. The main island, Funafuti, is only 8 km long and at its widest, not even one km. There are like 9000 people that live here and they are of Polynesian descent, similar to Samoan and Tongan peoples who apparently settled here centuries ago. You can also tell by their size. I mean many of the older women and to a lesser extent the men are absolutely huge. Think Hawaiian sumo wrestlers on a diet of spam. They have much lighter skin then the Fijian who are essentially Melanesian. There are barely any tourists that come here because it really is in the middle of no where.

There is not much to do on the main island. People just sit around during the intense heat of the day and the pace is really sloooow. Toward sunset however, things start getting a little more animated when half the islanders gathers at the air strip - built by the Americans for B-52 bombers during WW II (it takes up probably a quarter of the land of the entire island), to either play rugby, volleyball or just go for a stroll on the runway. The beaches are not really beaches but rocky, washed up coral and lots of garbage.

Vaitupu. There we met one of the two constables on the island named Lemali and who, after checking that we had the clearance from the capitol, asked us to come for dinner that evening at his home. We met his wife Elaine and their little boy and for the next 4 days, it was like our home away from home. Being there on a weekend meant that we were lucky to be able to check out the local "twist" or night club. Under a sheet metal roof, a dozen feet away from the surf, lots of young people were dancing to Samoan reggae and other Polynesian rhythms in their colourful "lava-lavas" (sarongs). The beer is Australian (Victoria Bitter) and the local grog that everyone drinks is called "kau", which is a sour toddy made from coconut palms. It is everywhere, and available all the time. You just need to climb up your coconut tree and take what the cut stem giveth. A small amount which is fermented by the sun is kept in the bottle to ferment the rest that oozes out of the cut palm. The smell is a bit sickly sweet but the taste is pretty good and you definitely feel it after a few glasses.

The fishermen still use many traditional outrigger canoes, some made of planks, others dugout from a hardwood tree called Feitao. Most of them paddle around the reef although I have also seen them using sails made form that all-purpose blue tarp.
We were lucky enough to join one fisherman in his boat with a 40 hp motor for some tuna fishing. You basically go fast and follow where the birds are feasting from the scraps of the feeding frenzy below. Once you catch one, it's hauled in by hand on a 200lb line that is spooled around a plastic ring. The bigger yellow fins are about 40lbs and the fishermen go out twice a day selling their catch to villagers at the pier when they return.

As it was a new moon, they invited us along at night to go for an additional catch, that of the flying fish. The guy has a light mounted on a construction hat and that is plugged into a car battery below. He sits at the bow with a net attached to a long pole and as his mate cruises along maneuvering the boat. The light sort of dazes the flying fish and he swoops the net then flicks the fish back into the hull of the boat. He let us give it a go and I managed to get quite a few once I got the hang of it. Tossing it back however, I managed to throw onto Cedric's chest a few times.

After our goodbyes, we were off to Nukufetao (one of seven out of nine that begin with the letter 'N'). Another beautiful island with a large lagoon. We stayed only 2 days though before returning to Funafuti to get clearance from immigration and continue our journey north. After 3 days sailing and halfway to Kiribati, we stopped at the northern most island of Tuvalu called Nanumea. We could not actually make it into the lagoon as the opening (which was blasted by the Yanks in WWII) was a bit too shallow for the draft of the sailboat. Therefore, we anchored just outside. A bit of a mistake because once the tide came out, it was like being in rapids of a river. The fishing was excellent though and I caught several jacks with the good ol' Canadian "Buzz bomb" hook.

We met this young girl named Judy and she brought us to her family where we were invited for the Christmas dinner of pork. The wailing sounds of pigs were heard throughout the village. It was on this island that I met two groups of men building dugout canoes. I hung out with them and the most senior of the group, spoke excellent English and explained some of the details of canoe building. These dugout outriggers were by far the nicest design I had seen yet.

For me, there is always a little pang deep inside when you a leave a special place and meet such nice people. Will you ever be back? Not likely. Three more days sailing and crossing the equator we arrived to Tarawa, Kiribati. The atoll island is much longer than anything in Tuvalu and the population is 5 times more. It's essentially a series of villages one after the other stretched out for 20 km, some are small islands that are joined by a causeway.

We moored off the jetty on Betio, the most southern part of the atoll and where you still see remnants of WWII with tanks rusting in the lagoon and massive mounted guns installed by the Japanese who had occupied the island. There was a huge battle when the US marines landed. Lots of lives lost. It felt eerie standing amongst some of the ruins of the many bunkers spread about. Many are incorporated into the crowded thatched compounds of an ever growing population.

We stumbled across a New Year's dinner for a delegation of Cuban doctors who had just arrived on the island and were promptly invited along for the dance demonstrations and the free food. This took place in one of the many "maneabas" that are everywhere on the island. A maneaba is a high roof that slopes down to about chest level, either made of pandanus palms or sheet metal, which covers a cement pad, which is then usually covered by mats. The basically function as a meeting place for the village or neighbourhood. Later on we met some ex-pats and joined them at a bar to celebrate the new year. Several days later, we left for one of the outer islands called Abaiang. Another long atoll. The lagoon there is also huge. While crossing it toward the village, we saw three manta rays cruising along. We put the engine in neutral (there was no wind that day) quickly put on some masks and snorkels and jumped in the water. The mantas did a loop around the boat and they were curious about the white dinghy we were dragging behind. So graceful to see as they seem to fly in slow motion through the water.

Abaiang was an amazing island. All the houses are thatched and made of pandanus and coconut trees. Life is simple and revolves around catching fish, getting the coconut sap for their toddy, eating breadfruit... Not much has changed here. I met Tekieri, an ex-seaman who had traveled to many countries on tankers. He spoke excellent English and had so many stories to tell. I hung out with him and his family quite a bit, setting up my hammock in his yard and sleeping off the boat for a few days. He brought me on his outrigger canoe and we sailed out on the reef to snorkel for octopus. It was very cool to see him sail it. Being a wooden boat, there was a lot of bailing water going on. I have never eaten such good octopus. He whacks it with a stick to tenderize it then it is cooked in coconut milk.

With my shipmates, we met yet another extended family, that of Ieaua. Her home was right on the beach of the windward side and outer reef of the island. That meant that there was a constant strong breeze blowing in under the thatched roof. How nice to do like the locals and take a long afternoon siesta, out of the heat and on the woven mats. As usual, their hospitality is such that you can not just spend time with I-Kiribati (the term for someone from Kiribati... which is actually pronounced Kiribass) without having something to eat. Before you know it fish, rice and fried breadfruit materializes, along with a refreshing drink of young coconut water.

Back in Tarawa, I am making use of this rather slow internet and we are trying to find a few fresh vegetables to buy for our next leg, a four day sail north to the Marshall islands.

Sailing South Pacific : Fiji

2008-11-20T17:41:00.000-08:00

It was a stroke of luck that, during one rainy evening in Vancouver, I was online and came across a website called "Find a Crew" where skippers look for people to help them sail and vice versa. I signed up and searched some of the many profiles listed. In my own profile, I had put the countries that interested me, (Fiji, Micronesia and Melanesia) and my experience in sailing (just a few times on the jib and spinnaker sails in a local race and a few times on a Laser).

I did this as the possibility of getting a leave of absence from my work was becoming a reality. The cards fell at the right time and in the right place when I received an e-mail back from this young Frenchman named Cedric, who was one quarter way into a 2 years sailing trip from California to the Mediterranean via the Pacific and Indian oceans. He sent me an e-mail then we later spoke on the phone and it was a go. I had sub-let my apartment and I was off to Fiji to join him on his 36 foot Jenneau sailboat called "Thira". A dream come true really.

I arrived in Nadi via Auckland, spent my first night in a hotel then took a 4 hour bus ride to the capital Suva on the south eastern side of Viti Levu. The hills are green, the ocean turquoise blue and the wind is hot and humid. "Bula" is the local equivalent of aloha and everyone says it to you. I was to meet my new mates and my new home at the Royal Suva Yacht Club. Cedric came up on the dinghy and brought me to Thira where I then met Peter, from Amsterdam (who has been on the boat since Mexico). I had a good feeling with the guys straight away. It took me a few days to get acquainted with the boat and all the do's and don'ts from Cedric the skipper. The following week was about getting to know each other as we prepared the boat for the next five months. This included some minor repairs, buying lots of food, wine, supplies... In the evenings, we watched Fiji play in the world cup of Rugby League at O'Rieley's pub. (I wondered how many Irish pubs there are in the far flung corners of the globe). We also ate lots of great curry at the many Indo- Fijian restaurants in town.

When it was time to leave, we sailed to Beqa island, just south west of Suva. It was indeed a reality as the engine was shut off and the warm wind filled the main sail and we were silently cruising along in the South Pacific. Along the way, one of the two fishing rods in the back trolling suddenly had a long whirling sound. Cedric reeled in a large mahi mahi that I was careful not to lose as I stuck the gaffe into his side and hoisted him onto the back of the boat. We had enough fish for 3 days... first night as sushi, then a ceviche, then in a curry sauce. Space is limited on a boat and it took me a while to get adjusted to the small cooking space, the sleeping cabins and the 'head' (toilet for landlubbers). Being a sailing instructor, Cedric will be good at teaching me how to sail, especially when we leave the Fijian islands and into the vast open water heading north.

We ended up in a small bay on the lee side of the Beqa island. Following the custom of offering some kava roots to the village chief, we were then invited to come and go as we pleased. We were asked to come to Sunday mass. Lots of harmonious singing in the Polynesian islander sort of way. We were then invited for lunch of fish in coconut milk along with the staples of the South Pacific; taro and cassava.

We spent a week there. The stereotypical image of a tropical paradise. Being Fiji, there are quite a few resorts on some of the islands. This one had two. We would anchor off some of them, go for a swim in their pools, perhaps a beer or two, fill up our scuba tanks before taking the dinghy back to the boat. We brought some of the village men on the boat with us and went out to the reef for a few one day excursions of snorkeling, scuba diving and fishing. I hadn't scuba dived for over 5 years, but all was good as Peter is a dive instructor who had just spent the last four years doing that in Mexico. After a couple of dives I got my rhythm back. It was amazing to snorkel behind the local boys and watch them as they free dive 10 to 12 meters and spear fish all sorts of reef fish. I saw several white tip reef sharks, some turtles and once, returning to Thira with the dinghy, a dozen dolphins swam around us. Nice!

The night before leaving, they made a "lobo" for us (cooked meal with stones in the ground, covered by leaves and soil) followed by an evening of kava drinking accompanied by lots of singing with guitars and ukeleles. As the kava is passed around from the large wooden bowl in a coconut cup, they ask you if you want "low tide" or "high tide"? i.e. half or full cup... you are expected to down it in a quick gulp as there is only one or two cups going around for the twenty or so people gathered in the dim light of an oil lamp.

We sailed overnight (lightning a flashin') to the Mamanuca group and stopped off at Musket Cove, a yacht marina. There is quite a bit involved when coming into a bay or a marina, particularly in a place like Fiji that is full of reefs around the islands. The GPS is monitored constantly but not to be trusted 100% therefore one of us has to be at the bow visually looking for the tell tale signs of lighter blue for less depth and dark patches for coral reefs. Wearing polarized sunglasses helps. Once arrived amongst catamarans and ketches, we signed up at the marina as is done, then later bbq-ed some more fish that Cedric caught spear fishing. At the bar, we met some other yachties, some of whom Cedric and Peter had met previously in Tahiti or Tonga. All types of people, with a range of boats as well. Most are Kiwis or Ozzies. Lots of sailing talk along with lots of drinking. Everyone is going south from here. Not us, we will be going north, cyclones permitting... One can spend months just in Fiji as there are 350+ islands.

Peter and I are now in Lautoka, Fiji's second largest city (feels more like a town) on the west side of Viti Levu, the main island. Cedric wanted to spend some romantic time with his girlfriend, Gloria, who joined us on the boat for two weeks. He will join us soon. It feels good to be off the boat as four people on board really is a bit too tight. In the meantime, there are Bollywood movies to watch, a couple of local bars to catch some music and play pool with the locals whilst drinking Fiji Bitter.

Paddles

2008-08-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

I grew up going on canoe trips in the Shield country of Manitoba and northern Ontario. Since living on the West coast, I have been mostly into kayaking. Having built a couple of traditional skin-on-frame kayaks, one also ends up making and using the Greenland style paddles. Actually, I'm interested in all forms of paddling whether it be the Dragon boat races, Hawaiian outriggers, dugouts or the recently popular stand-up paddle boarding. Lately, I have been attracted to canoeing once again. Sort of a return to my paddling roots. I did a canoe trip in the Amazon a couple of years ago and, before leaving, I made myself a Canadian style canoe paddle. It is the Voyageur style, as described in the bible of canoe paddle making books by Graham Warren and David Gidmark.

Made from a 2 x 10" plank of ash, it was definitely harder to use a plane and spoke shave than on yellow cedar, the wood I use for kayak paddles.
The grain was beautiful to see emerge as I planed away layer after layer of the blade and shaft. I had planned another canoe trip for this summer, down the Yukon river, but unfortunately it fell through. Before that happened, I had taken advantage of a friend's wood shop and carved out on the band saw two more paddles.

One is an Ottertail design out of cherry wood, the other a traditional North West Coast native dugout canoe paddle out of yellow cedar. The first one has a beautiful dark reddish grain and the blade has a nice snap to it when doing the J-stroke. The second one smells really good but I have yet to try its performance in the water.

I was checking out NW Coast motifs to paint on the blade when I ended up on this website on Maori canoes and paddles. I was fascinated by their Polynesian swirls and stylized wave patterns so I decided to paint one of those designs instead of the typical ones that paddles in this part of the world would have. Call it a hybrid of two paddling peoples from the Pacific.

The Holy Land

2008-07-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering Israeli airspace and due to security requirements, all passengers must remain seated with their seat belts fastened from this point onward until we arrive at the gate. Anyone who fails to observe this must be reported to authorities.” This was the announcement on the PA shortly after having flown over the Greek islands. The meaning of the word security, on many levels, would soon be evident.

I was easily swayed by my friend Erik’s invitation to his brother’s wedding in Tel-Aviv. It all depended on my schedule and getting the days off I had asked for. I had told another good friend of mine, Jeff from Seattle, (itching for a long overdue vacation) who decided to come along as well on one of my guest passes. He had been to Israel before and still had friends there. It was my first time and I thought it would be a great opportunity to check out Tel Aviv with friends and, of course, to visit that holiest of ancient cities, Jerusalem.

Erik and his friend Ivonne met us at the airport and we headed back to the apartment that his parents had rented and where we would be staying. We quickly dressed down and walked the two blocks to the beach. The turquoise water was perfect after a long flight as was the humus and German beer that we had with Richard and Wendy, Erik’s parents.

There was a wall at one end of the beach. We later realized that behind it was a segregated beach, alternating days for either men or women only, understandably for Orthodox Jews or anyone else for that matter. That particular day was women’s day. The pieces of the puzzle fit together when Erik, Ivonne and myself were walking along and we saw this guy jacking off whilst peeking in a hole in the wall, in broad daylight. No shame. That was a first for me, which I found somewhat amusing. Not so for Ivonne who, in all of her 22 years, had already witnessed the dirty deed several times. As a typically hot-blooded Latina, she was about to run over to the bloke and throw sand in his face while cursing him in English, Spanish and Dutch. Too bad neither of us knew Hebrew for “put it away asshole”.

Walking around Tel Aviv was cool. As with most Mediterranean cities, the prominent colour is white. There are many Bahaus and Modernist apartments and municipal buildings some renovated, others with peeling paint. Just next to our dwelling was the Grand Beach Hotel, a perfect modernist hotel of the 50s. Israelis are really fond of techno and trance music. This was the music of choice at just about every café and bar either on the street or at the beach.

The markets are as colouful as the people. Israeli women are renowned to be beautiful. Indeed they are. The guys too are good looking, in a sort of tough way. The bluntness or in-your-face of Israelis can seem rude on the surface to some. For me, it’s a characteristic that I actually like. At least people voice their opinion. They look you in the eye and let you know what they are thinking.

Jeff and I left for Jerusalem the next day. It was Friday, therefore “shabat” (sabbath) where, almost unbelievably, any public transport in the entire country shuts down from sundown until the following sunset. However, private “cabs” (a mini-bus), still operate. It was only a 45minute bus ride away. We stayed the first night at the Jaffa hostel, just inside the old city’s wall and the Jaffa gate. There was a rooftop deck with a view, although we could not see the dome of the rock, which was on the photo they advertised on line.

We walked around the narrow alleys of the old city and stopped at the Café Lina. This is where we ate what locals told us was not only the best humus in Jerusalem but in the entire country. It certainly was good. The Christian quarter and the Church of the Saint Sepulchre was impressive. The tomb where Jesus laid, had a long line-up of weeping Filipinos . There was this Orthodox Christian priest in a long black robe, a severe frown on his face, that was almost running from one end to the next shaking his frankincense as if purging the energy of blasphemous tourists gawking at the holy site.

On to the Jewish section, renovated and well maintained beige brick buildings with narrow alleys were full of fast-paced Orthodox Jews, in their 19th century European black garb. We had to pass an airport type security X-ray to get to the Wailing wall. There it was, the famous wall that is the only remaining part of a temple destroyed by the Romans 2000 years ago. Seeing the believers praying and swaying, as if on ecstasy, in a trance-like rapture made us wonder how intense (crazy?) organized religion can be. People were even walking down the street, reading the Tora. The Arab quarter for me was the most interesting as it felt much more lively, full of kids, graffiti,markets. The Damascus gate was impressive and that was the area that we ate our shawarmas most of the time as other parts of old Jerusalem were way too expensive. Outside the old city, lots of cafes and bars (more techno music and hot babes) and I noticed that all buildings, even new high rise hotels, had the same beige brick walls to blend in with the original colour of old Jerusalem.

Al Quds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem, is almost always represented with one of its holiest sites, the Dome of the Rock. Amongst the holiest of mosques in the Islamic world and one of the most beautiful in terms of art, it was open only one day a week for non-Muslims. Unfortunately, since the intifada, some ten years ago, the interior is closed to everyone but Muslims. It almost made me want to convert then and there.

A visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum was a must. Needless to say, it was a somber experience with photos, montages and displays. It was the taped interviews with survivors that kept me almost transfixed. Although I know the history and most of the facts, the unbelievable barbarity of it all hits you again when you see the rise of Hitler and Nazism to the final defeat in Berlin, the fascist infrastructure, the models of death camps, the piles of eye glasses, the yellow star of David sewn on a jacket, a badge for your death sentence. Even the architecture of the museum was so well planned that it lead you, in an underground zig zag that felt claustrophobic with only a prism of light above and eventually opened up, at the end, with a platform coming out of the mountain it was built on to a wide open view of the horizon and Jerusalem below.

Back in the old city, we moved to the Petra Hostel which had a much better rooftop view. We even had our own little balcony looking out onto Jaffa Gate. What I enjoyed the most was just hanging out at a café playing “shesh-besh” (backgammon) while having a Turkish coffee and smoking a grape-flavoured shisha bowl.

After a couple of days, Jeff headed down Aqaba, Jordan across the border from the Israeli resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea. He planned to go to see Petra, a few hours from there. I returned to Tel Aviv and met up with the gang for the wedding the following day. The wedding was outside of town, on a kibbutz. It was a beautiful location, on a cliff, over-looking the Mediterranean. The ceremony as well as the food was awesome and after some dancing and a whole lot of drinking we ended up back on a Tel Aviv beach until the wee hours.

I joined Jeff for my last two days in Aqaba. We went snorkeling in the Red Sea. I was not that impressed by the coral and was not inspired to go scuba diving even though it’s something I enjoy and have not done for quite some time. The water was surprisingly cool considering the temperature was in the mid 40 degrees Celsius and the afternoon wind felt like a thousand hairdryers blowing in your face.

More shesh-besh and shisha before eventually walking back across the border to catch the last bus (shabat!) back to Tel-Aviv, then a a taxi to the airport for the long flight back to Toronto. I got another dose of Israeli security at the airport when I was selected for a secondary thorough pat down and carry-on swabbing of all I had with me.

April March

2008-05-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

I was going through a stack of CDs on my shelf and came across one by a group called April March. They are a sort of latin lounge retro band from the States. An interesting name. It got me thinking of those same last two months that just went by and the places I have been, mostly through my work. In March, I had a couple of “pairings” (a group of flights on my schedule that start from and end in Vancouver) to London via Ottawa, both ways. There are long layovers in each city which give you enough time to go to a museum, walk around, go for dinner with colleagues or friends.

I usually fly domestic routes though I do a few international flights once and a while. These two months saw me go to four different overseas destinations. It still seems surreal at times to think I have been to so many different cities in different parts of the world, in and out, like as if in some sort of time travel machine, in such little time. Just a sliver of another reality, often familiar yet totally different.

Ottawa got walloped by a snow storm the day before I arrived. It was clear skies but very cold so decided not to stay outdoors and I made my way to the National Gallery of Canada. There was an excellent retrospective of the Saskatchewan sculptor Joe Fafard, famous for his bronze cows and horses. Outside the gallery, there is a huge bronze spider oddly called 'Maman' by renown sculptor Louise Bourgeois. There are a few copies around the world and I seen it once before outside a museum in Havana a few years earlier.

In London, I went to the Tate Modern. In the Turbine Hall, where there is usually some massive installation art, it was a negative piece of reduction by Latin American artist Doris Salcedo which consisted of a long crack in the cement floor, starting at one end, the width of a hair, and running the length of the enormous hall’s floor at a foot wide. I talked to one of the security guards who told me it was several months in the making, or rather breaking, of the concrete. Himself and several colleagues were hovering around making sure no one’s foot would fall into the crack and get sprained.

I also went for a long walk in the neighbourhood of our hotel, St. John’s Wood and Regent’s park. It’s quite the posh neighbourhood with grand old trees and detailed 19th century brick flats. Later, I went to Edgeware road with a few colleagues and had some excellent Persian food and Turkish coffee. I noticed that many more cafes now have shisha pipes next to their tables, the sweet aroma lingering down the sidewalk. With all the ethnic cafes and shops, particularly from the Middle East, it almost feels as if you could be taking a stroll in Damascus.

The following week, I went to the British Museum. I had not been for a year or so and, as always, it was impressive. I spent a lot of time in the Assyrian section. Amazing reliefs of the lion hunt. Kings on horses in full flight, arrows flying, lions dying... all carved into stone.

The last few days of March, I went to Beijing. We were one of the first flights to arrive in their brand new terminal 3. The size of the terminal is staggering. Apparently it’s the largest building in the world as far as square feet under one roof. The architecture and the speed at which these buildings go up in China’s booming cities is indeed impressive.

It’s difficult to stray from the usual routine as far as a 24 hour layover in Beijing is concerned. It goes something like this: Arrive at the hotel around 5:00pm, go for a bite to eat, perhaps a hot pot or Sichuan restaurant. Then, buy some DVDs at the Cotton market, a 15 min. walk down the street. This would be followed by a traditional body or foot massage at one of several spas in the area. ($15 - 20 one hour!) If you have not fallen asleep during the massage, then it is not long before you pass out back in your hotel room around 10:00pm.

The next morning, I always get a hot soya milk and a steamed bun at this local hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Then it’s off to the Pearl market for more shopping. Despite having a really low tolerance for shopping, since I only get to China a few times a year, I tend to go for it. This time was no different. I picked up a copy watch and a few jackets. I did manage to go for a stroll to Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven, a traditional Tang Dynasty building. It is situated in a large park, in a classic north - south axis. Walking toward the main complex, there are many people, mostly elders, doing tai-chi, playing cards or chess, singing opera or just going for a stroll. An oasis of calm amongst the wide, crowded and busy avenues of the capital.

Back to Vancouver only one day off before flying again, this time to Sydney. The flight is now direct, no longer going through Honolulu. It takes 15.5 hours and leaves at 12:00 am. We do get to take 5 hour breaks and can sleep in bunks for the crew in the aircraft. I was pretty wiped out from all the flying and it felt like I was coming down with something. After a long nap, I went to Manly, by ferry. It feels good to be on the water, passing by the famous opera house, seeing all the sail boats.

Sydney really is a geographically beautiful city. So much water, beaches, pennisulas and bays. I also love their coffee and cafes. They adopted full-heartedly, the Italian way of making lattes. I did not do much else returning to the hotel to catch some zzzz’s.

With a long stretch of days off in mid-April, I decided to see my family and friends in Winnipeg. The spring weather was gorgeous the whole time I was there meanwhile back in Vancouver it actually snowed. On one sunny day, I borrowed my niece’s bike and took a long ride along the Red river taking lots of photos of old brick buildings of the North End. I enjoyed too taking shots of many rusted out “beaters”, old cars that somehow seem to stay on the road longer here than elsewhere.

It was great just hanging out and catching up with my family and friends. One friend Dan, lent me his truck so that I could go see my other good friend Ray, and his family out in Treesbank, a 2 hour drive west of the city. I love driving on the prairies. It’s especially flat just west of Winnipeg, but then you get into some small hills and escarpments near Glenboro. Subtle changes in the vast landscape. Forever skies and clouds.

Ray is a bee keeper and they have a small house right on the banks of the Assiniboine river. He has a canoe so we went for a paddle down a few miles to where the smaller Souris river joins the Assiniboine. We pulled over at a high bank and had lunch in a section of un-farmed, tall grass prairie. There were croquis flowers all around, (the flower of Manitoba) and old oak trees, here and there a bluff of white birch and poplar trees. The current was swift so paddling up stream was a good work out.. we had to get out a few times to walk it with a rope.

A few more evenings of home cooked meals, the odd playoff hockey game on TV, an outdoor BBQ... it’s always good to be back in the place where I grew up. Is it still home? I guess it’s my hometown. Where is home? How long does one have to live in a place before it becomes your home? I have always thought about how people refer to where they are from as almost being an essential and important part of who they are. To me it makes no difference at all. I suppose certain cultural traits can be attributed to a country of course, even to a certain city. Suburban North America however, is pretty uniform.

The end of April saw me going to Hong Kong, with an extended layover of 3 days. That is one city that always blows my mind. The sheer amount of tall buildings, the density, the lights, the activity of people, cars, boats... It’s the true definition or urban jungle, especially when you walk around between the vertical monoliths in the alleys, were there all the wires and air conditioners are exposed. And with everyone on the move, all the time, it really is a rat race. The sound I associate the most with Hong Kong is that of the jack-hammer. No matter where you go, there is always construction, something being torn down and dug up, something being built up. I would not want to live there but still, the geography of sub-tropical mountains and water everywhere with all the skyscrapers for me, makes it one of the most interesting cities in the world.

Our hotel is in Kowloon, so I usually always take the Star Ferry across the water to Hong Kong island. The view is stunning. I walked a few hours around Central (the heart of HK’s business district) and into some of the small streets where there are many commercial art galleries and funky cafes. I then took a double decker bus to Stanley, a small village on the other side of the island. There is a market there, albeit a little touristy, some fishing boats. Nice to see the turquoise waters of the South China Sea. A few dragon boat teams were practicing their paddling skills. I also noticed some home made catamarans for laying out fishing nets. They consisted of two wind-surf boards joined together by bamboo and plastic crates as a platform.

After a few hours of quiet, it was back on the on the bus, up the mountain over the winding roads and back down into the land of towers. Hong Kong means "fragrant harbour" in Cantonese. The water between the island and Kowloon isn't so fragrant anymore. It is also shrinking as yet more land reclamation is being done. Several city blocks of Central along with the motorway are all on land that was once the sea. It looks like what is happening now will definitely be the last of it though as there will be a waterfront park and sea wall promenade, an improvement on what for years was just industrial docks and piers.

Sunday is "Nanny day". Like several other cities, there are many "caregivers" from the Philippines and Indonesia. It seems though in Hong Kong, the percentage is really high. As it is their only day off from their live-in domestic chores and baby-sitting, thousands descend into a few closed off streets to set up blankets and cardboard on the sidewalks and hang out, playing cards, singing and just catching up. Closing my eyes, the chattering of Tagalog, amplified by the glass of tall buildings, reminded me of being in a cave full of birds.

The majority are women, sending money back home. I met one, Maria, a 30 something year old mother from Manila, who has two young daughters back in the Philippines and only sees them once a year. She gets one paid ticket by her employer for a week. As it approached 8:00pm while we chatted along the waterfront in Kowloon, she said she had to leave soon before her curfew. I couldn't help but think how sad and even pathetic it is for these thousands of young women, spending 15 hours a day, six days a week taking care of wealthier people's family and homes while they are busy making more money. However, the alternative back in their home country is probably even bleaker. She told me that was her sacrifice so that her children could get an education and a better life.

Big White

2008-03-06T09:26:00.000-08:00

The end of February to mid-March. This is the time of year that will almost guarantee that you will have dump after dump of that dry, white, champagne powder snow up at Big White, Kelowna's ski resort. It has been several years now that a group of family and friends have been going up to Big White for one week of snowboarding. We rent the same log house, in the heart of the village, right on the slope

This year, we were lucky yet again. After almost three weeks of no new snow, 12 cm fell the night we arrived. It snowed a few more cm each night with blue skies during the day. The last couple of days, another 15cm then, unfortunately, the morning we left, another 35cm! My niece, Nathalie, brought with her a posse from Winnipeg coming by plane, train and automobiles.

Those that had not been here before were indeed impressed. It's difficult not to be with the size of the mountain and especially the awesome powder in the glades. I boarded a lot with my nephew Dali, my brother-in-law David and his friend Lloyd. We spent a lot of time flying in and out of the trees off the runs of the Gem lake chair.

Evenings were spent in the living room, near the wood stove, playing crib, the dice game of 10,000 or other board games. We had great food that everyone shared in cooking. There was a lot of moaning too with soar muscles and bruised butts. A few of the friends took a beating riding the rails in the terrain park. I got knocked about quite a bit too from branches scratching my face to a few bails from taking jumps. Before long, it was over, everyone psyched to do it again, next year.

Graffiti

2008-02-03T16:52:00.000-08:00

I usually have a camera with me while walking around town in different cities of the world. I have always enjoyed seeing the various forms of graffiti briefly on display in the alleys, on brick walls. It has now almost become mainstream what with several
hard cover books on graffiti and popular spray can artists from around the world being portrayed. There are also many styles ranging from the classic stylized letters and full blown murals to small stencil art and more recently sticker art.

Here is a sample of some of my favourites.

All of the above are from Toronto. I have no idea who made them even though, sometimes, the artists' names or pseudonyms can be clearly seen. Part of the appeal is the anonymity. That plus the ephemeral life of each piece.

The next two below are from a couple of Brazilian brothers called "Os gemeos" which means "the twins". They have an amazing and instantly recognizable style. The first shot is from a wall in Havana, the second from Sao Paulo.

A stencil from Buenos Aires

A 'photocopy paper cut out' (if that's what it's called?) type of graffiti from some famous New York dude, in NYC.

Vancouver

two shots of one massive wall with an awesome Arabic calligraphy inspired piece. Montréal

Halifax

13 months of sunshine

2007-12-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

-So I’m presuming that it’s bright and sunny most of the year but what exactly do you mean by 13 months? I asked the receptionist at the Itegue Taitu Hotel in Addis Ababa. I had already seen several tourism posters at the airport with that same slogan and now, in the lobby of the hotel, there were a few more.
-In Ethiopia, we go by the Orthodox Christian calendar. There are 12 months of 30 days and one month of 7 days, he said in a soft spoken voice.
- I see... It turns out that I had also become 7 years younger as Ethiopia was celebrating it’s millennium and where it is presently the year 2000.
-Should make me endure the jet lag a little easier, I hoped.
This was but the first of several aspects that seem to proudly show that this country marches to the beat of its own drum. It is also 6 hours behind all other countries in the same time zone. The logic goes like this: instead of the day beginning at midnight with a 24 hour cycle, it begins when the sun comes up, and 12 hours later, ends when the sun goes down. Night time begins with another 12 hour cycle at 12 (our 18:00). In other words, when it’s 7:00am our time, it’s actually 1:00am here. This is not a problem in a country close to the equator where the sun travels across the sky at the same time all year long. To avoid confusion when dealing with “farenjis”, locals would usually say European time or Ethiopian time or just tell you both.

It was with my friend (and now traveling sidekick) Erik Lyon that I came to the land once called Abyssinia. We were originally planning on going to Mozambique via South Africa. However, the cheap stand-by flights that I get as a perk from my job did not look good. All flights to Jo’berg and Capetown were oversold. Change of plan 2 weeks before my holidays and we ended up in Ethiopia, a country that had always been high on my list of places to see.

The Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Addis via Khartoum went over smoothly. It was interesting landing in Sudan’s capital, where the Blue and White Nile join to make up the Nile proper. It is a sort of desert grid with one story buildings, punctuated by the minarets of mosques. Unfortunately, we stayed in the airplane so I could not make a claim of adding another nation to the list of countries visited in the world. At the airport, there were a few old Russian planes and some even older military jets. I couldn’t help but think of this place as being the control center where their oppressive government would dispatch flights to bomb the infidel black villages in the south or now to the desperate region of Darfur. I had also just started reading Dave Eggers’ What is the What about the lost boys of Sudan and their ordeal of survival and refuge in war torn southern Sudan. No shortage of chaotic, corrupt and despotic regimes in the region what with Somalia and Eritrea on the other side. That is not to say that Ethiopia is a shining star. They have their problems too but at least there is peace and some sort of stability.

We arrived in Addis Ababa late that evening. There was a cool, almost cold breeze thanks to the high elevation. First impressions of the first few days... a sprawling city over a series of hills, lots of corrugated sheet metal shacks. Loopy script of Amharic signs. Old blue Lada taxis. The quivering electronic enhanced voices of their pop music. Old women carrying massive bundles of branches on their backs. Runners exercising on the empty main thoroughfares at 6:00am. The smell of roasting coffee beans and frankincense.

As a coffee drinker, this is paradise. It is after all the place where the bean was domesticated. Legend has it that sometime around the 5th century, a shephard noticed his goats acting erratically after having chewed the berries of a shrub. The goat herder gave it a go and also noticed an effect. A local monk thought of it as the
Devil’s plant until he threw into the fire and the out came the aroma. Buna, as it’s called, is drunk in a variety of ways. The traditional style, which involves roasting the beans, grinding by hand, then brewing in a earthen pot over charcoal and drunk with sugar in small cups (a little like Turkish coffee but less finely ground and not as strong) or, thanks to a brief occupation by the Italians in the early 1900s, there are espresso machines everywhere, even in the most remote hole-in-the-wall and you can get a machiatto for 20 cents. Some locals even mix it with tea.

Already, I noticed the variety in the people. Some dressed smartly, modern. Others had head scarves, bright shawls. Some men, (whom we later called “stick men”) had really short shorts, with sticks for legs, wearing plastic sandals and blankets folded on top of their heads. They all had long sticks for their cattle and goats. Some women had tattooed crosses on their foreheads and lower jaws. The variety in the braids in women’s hair is as surprising as it is beautiful.

It wasn’t long before we were approached by what I call ‘touts’, basically some hustlers who want to show you around for either free drinks and/or a tip later. This is a simple fact of life for all farenjis traveling in Ethiopia, a very poor country, and we didn’t mind going along with it. The first dude we met was Yonathan. Although I sent him packing when he first tried tagging along, he bumped into us later (more like he stalked us) and we warmed up to his charm fairly quickly. He was extremely funny and spoke good English (as do most Ethiopians from cities) and even better French. He brought us to a few bars and we were quickly reminded of the wise words from my well-traveled friend Brahm, who had been here 15 years earlier. “Every hotel has a restaurant. Every restaurant has a bar. Every bar has prostitutes.” Sure enough, the women, skimpily dressed in what is essentially a conservative society, were indeed gorgeous and gyrating to their hypnotic music. The place we enjoyed the most however was the local ‘araki’ bar, a bare bones room with a single light bulb where men sit on a bench to have some local barley moonshine. These were the typical local places that really give you a feel for what it’s like for the average Joe (or Solomon).

After a few days in Addis, we flew to Gondor (one of several Abyssinian place names, we were to realize, that J.R.R Tolkien ‘borrowed’ liberally for his Lord of the Rings). It was once a medievel capital city complete with stone castles and palaces. Walking around early in the morning felt like you could easily have stepped back in time a few hundred years with everyone wearing white shawls over their heads, sticks in hand, goats, sheep and cattle all around. Beggars and lepers near the churches and mosques. However, the chanting prayers on the scratchy loudspeakers as well as Indian-made auto-rickshaws and the odd white UN 4x4 Land-cruiser reminded us we were indeed in the the 21st century.

A day trip brought us to the edge of the famous Simean mountains. Along with a guide and several goat herder kids, we hiked up on some mountains and saw the large, furry Gelada baboons. There were the odd patches of natural forest in a steep ravines but for the most part, we were amazed at how much the countryside has been plowed and used for agriculture. Often for as far as the eye could see and on insanely steep mountain sides, the land is used, and there are villages and huts everywhere even though there may be no roads.

Ethiopia is one of the larger countries in Africa in terms of population, with about 80 million inhabitants in an area a little larger than the province of British Columbia. No wonder that where once elephants and lions roamed, there are now only a small number of big game in some of the remote parks in the south of the country.

Next stop, Axum. We soon discovered the mayhem of taking a local bus. All buses leave at 6:00 am. You must get there though around 5:00am and wait until they open the gate to the terminal, where a mob of people then rush to whatever bus (and there are many of them) going to wherever, depending on the destination that is screamed out by the drivers. Think crammed seats of an old school bus. Marvel at how many people can squeeze onto a bench. I managed to get a window seat and the 12 hours it took us to get to Axum, we passed some spectacular scenery. Up a winding, pot-holed mountain road, then back down into a a deep valley, then back up again... The average distance covered is about 40 km for every hour. The scenery changed several times and up in Tigray province, it was a lot drier with arid mountains here and there on a flat plateau.

Axum was also a capital city but of a much more ancient and important empire that flourished around 400BC. We did a marathon sight-seeing excursion the first morning, seeing the massive fallen down stelae or obelisks, a few underground tombs and a monastery at the top of a mountain. A donation is made to the monk and to the tour guide kid who explained the history and some of the classic Ethiopian orthodox
religious paintings in the church. Turns out the Brandt guide book has the exact same photo of the same priest, with his same expression, with the same crosses and robes.

We were content just hanging out after that, having machiattos at some cafes and enjoying the local food, “tibs” (lamb) with injera, their crepe-like bread made from tef, a local grain. Through the help of another ‘guide’ we drank some local brew made from sorghum called ‘tella’ (or ‘suwa’ in the local Tigrinya language). Another hole-in-the-wall with one light bulb, this time drinking copious amounts of brew in gourds. The alcohol content is quite weak therefore it would take liters of the stuff to actually get you drunk. It was sort of an earthy taste. A few more regular brewskies later at a bar and we noticed a pattern. The guys tend to all sit together and dance, their shoulders shaking, still sitting in their chairs while the women would stick together and dance, standing in front of mirrors. Perhaps it was because we never had stayed too late at these bars and did not see it getting more animated in the wee hours. The music of Tigray had a cool 1-2 beat and in the singing, it sounds more guttural, almost like Arabic compared to the softer Amharic.

Across the northern part of the country going east, we then went to Mekele, capital of Tigray, a thriving city with a laid back feel. Large palm trees, white walls, vibrant storefronts. We met a few farenjis, two Americans and one Canadian woman who had just come back from an organized excursion to the Danakil desert. Sounded very interesting, particularly the salt trade with camels done by hand by the fiercely independent Afar people. As well, an active volcanic lake. It was quite expensive though to rent 4x4s with armed scouts and guides. There are so many places to see in this country that even with our six weeks time frame, we could not do it all and, even what we did, was just scratching the surface. We decided to continue on back south toward one of the greatest religious historical sites in the Christian world; Lalibela.

We lucked out and got a ride from two ‘abeshas’ (Ethiopian or African) who were working for Unesco and were going there as well. Apart from the crowded buses, all other vehicles are 4x4s. You can appreciate why as most roads in Ethiopia resemble logging roads in BC. The landscape of mountains, high plateaus and eroded valleys apparently looked a lot like Arizona, Erik kept telling me. Except that there were no ATVs and Hummers tearing up the landscape and instead of shopping malls and people with baseball caps, there were village huts made of stone and mud with people carrying water jugs on their heads.

Often called “Africa’s Petra,” the rock hewn churches of Lalibela are indeed remarkable because they are not only carved into the rock but they are blocks entirely freed from it. There are dozens, all within a small area. Most were built during King Lalibela’s reign in the 12th and 13th centuries. There is no consensus between scholars and local legend as to who actually built the churches and in how many years. Apparently divine intervention helped erect the monuments in a very short time span of 20 years. Regardless, it was impressive and seeing the monks preaching and the pilgrims praying within the stone walls and candle lit vaults was yet another flashback to another era.

We scored again with another 4x4 ride back to Addis, paying only a fraction more than the bus would have cost. It was hilarious because we kept on bumping into the ‘girls’ (the two Americans and one Canadian) who were traveling the same route. One time, there they were having lunch at a roadside restaurant where their bus stopped, and we pulled up, stepping out of the brand new (and comfortable) Land-cruiser. Needless to say, we would always arrive to the next destination several hours ahead of them.

The following week was spent in the capital to extend our visas and this took several days to do. We checked out a few museums and art galleries, ate at fabulous restaurants (Indian and European... a nice break from the local injera and spaghetti). We met the ‘boys’ again, who brought us to a chat bar, charging us way too much (we later learned) for the bundles of leaves we chewed and the tea that we drank.

About chat... it’s an evergreen shrub in which the leaves are chewed to give a mildly intoxicating and stimulating effect. It’s grown in and exported from Ethiopia and has been chewed for centuries by peoples of eastern Africa and the Arabian peninsula. It’s somewhat bitter and you are supposed to stuff it in your cheek as you chew. Eating peanuts helps with the taste. Once we got the hang of if, we quite enjoyed it. Locals are always impressed and happy when farenjis join them for chewing chat. You usually drink tea with it, sometimes the traditional coffee. Often, people smoke shisha as well while chewing chat, all activities that revolve around the great social pastime of Ethiopians, that is talking.

As we waited for our passports, we were trying to organize a trip down south (i.e. hiring a 4x4 with driver/guide from a tour operator) with two other farenjis to share the cost. We had the impression that it was better to do this from Addis. We could have and would have preferred going by local buses. However, the roads and access to remote tribal villages would have required quite a bit more time than we had. We had a hard time finding two other travelers and we even enlisted the hustler boys to help us out. Finally, when we were about to go just the two of us, we found a Spanish couple from Majorca, Miquel and Marga, who came along.

Our driver was Mesfin, an Amhara from Addis, who had been doing this gig with tourists for already ten years. Our new home on the road was an older Toyota land-cruiser. Miquel is an avid birder and also does graphic design for work so he had brought a sketch book with some impressive watercolours. So with Erik, the resident artist and my own dabbling with a sketchbook, we made a good team.

We drove south along the main highway that heads down toward Kenya and the road was paved for the first day. Nice. We passed several lakes of the Rift Valley and stopped at lake Awasa for the night. The bird life was plentiful with huge storks, pelicans, horn-bills, kingfishers, herons, crakes, kites and plovers. Several species are endemic to Ethiopia. Onward to Arba Minch (great place names) we ate some tasty tilapia from lake Chamo. After a night in a hotel there we got on a boat for a few hours to see some “hiphops” and “cocodriles” (the former version was Mesfin’s, the latter Miquel’s). It was good to be on the water.

On the road to Jinka, the gateway town to explore the Omo valley, the scenery became much greener with classic African acacia trees everywhere. There was also more untouched land and less agriculture than in the more populated north. Along theroadside, we started seeing kids from various tribes that would run up to the car asking for ‘Highland’, the name brand of plastic water bottles that they re-use for holding water. Before leaving Addis, the tour operator had thrown in a few dozen empties in the back for precisely that reason. The weather got warmer and the locals wore less clothing.

We set up a tent in Jinka for two nights. The first day, we drove to Mago National park. Up over some hills and down into the Omo valley below which was covered forest as far as the eye could see. That morning, we were to visit the Mursi tribe, famous for the lip plates that the women ‘wear’, if you could say that. We had heard that they were somewhat aggressive in asking tourists for one or two birr (the local currency which equals 10 - 20 cents) per photo. Tourists like us, have been coming to see these tribes for several years now and their economy has shifted somewhat from depending entirely on cattle and some agriculture, to include money from tourism. Fair enough.

The image that stuck with me most was that of two elderly Europeans with their 4x4 tour guide. As they were driving past us in the opposite direction, just before we arrived at the village, they flashed us a thumbs down and shook their heads in disgust. What exactly were they expecting? That they would drive up to some pristine, “untouched” village and that the tribe would do a dance for them for free? To be sure, it was a little strange when getting out of the truck, you were accosted by these lip plate wearing women all asking for “2 birr, 2 birr” and more 4x4s would arrive in the small clearing of a dozen huts. That’s the reality of tourism. If this morally bothers you, there is always National Geographic.

We then drove to our next destination, the small village of Turmi, in the heart of Hamer country. This was to be our base for the next couple of days. On the way we stopped at a very colourful weekly market in the village of Kay Afar. Here there were mostly Hamer and Bana people, trading honey, goats, spices... the market being essentially a field in which people just set up mats on the ground to sell their products. Mesfin reminded us again to not take photos of people unless you asked them and I noticed that they are a proud people, especially the men, paying little attention to farenjis and their wads of birr and for photos, many refused when asked.

The following two days brought us to yet another few villages. One was of the Dasanech, very close to Kenya and along the Omo river (which empties into lake Turkana across the border). It was cool getting shuttled across the river in a

local dugout canoe. The water looked so inviting to jump in, especially when seeing all these kids swimming across. Unfortunately, after asking Marga, our resident traveling nurse, she pointed out to the mud banks and to the risk of getting Bilharzia, caused by a parasite carried by fresh water snails that seems to be in most bodies of water in Ethiopia.

Returning to Turmi in the early afternoon was a welcomed break from constant driving. We met up with Guy Weir, this older, unabashed Brit artist who spends half the year in southern France and the the rest of his time traveling around the world painting local people. He was extremely entertaining with his anecdotes of adventures and characters he met on his journeys. His story of being hired by the French embassy in Bangladesh and covertly painting scenes from the bordellos of Dhaka from a dentists office across the street was indeed a good one. He’s a fine artist as well, often hiring local tribal people to pose for his large watercolour paintings.

In the evening, we had some tej (honey wine) in a clearing outside next to a few huts. There we were, at dusk, amongst twenty odd Hamer men, all sitting on their tiny wooden stools, in expressive conversation. They wore their traditional “mini-skirts” and had clay and feathers in their hair.
Nobody paid attention to us. It was one of those awesome moments where it slowly sinks in, with every sense of awareness, that you really are in another world, another reality and yet people are just having a drink, like anywhere else, talking about the days events.

It was fun hanging out at night with the other locals at the hotel. Turmi had grown quite a bit in recent years, mostly because of tourism and this brought Ethiopians from other regions to the town. We had beers with Mesfin and his other tour guide-driver friends that meet up regularly. A joint of ganja was passed around and we sat at the bar laughing and singing to Bob Marley tunes as well as the current Ethiopian star Teddy Afro.

Mesfin had planned the itinerary so that we would be at the Saturday market in Dimaka, one of the more famous ones in the Omo region. There, he had heard that there would be a bull jumping ceremony in a village some 20km away. There were four or five other tourist 4x4’s and after the morning at the market, the convoy headed out on a dirt track to this village. A price per farenji head was agreed upon with the village elders and we spent the afternoon watching the spectacle.

This fascinating ceremony takes place when a young Hamer or Bana boy passes into manhood and is about to get married. Alot of singing, dancing and jumping takes place, not to mention drinking of local beer. Also young women beg to get whipped by other young men, to show their love for the boy in question. A lot of scars on their arms and backs from previous ceremonies, blood trickling down from this one. It all culminates with a lining up of a bulls in which the soon-to-be married boy must run naked three times over their backs. If he falls, he is whipped until he completes it.

We headed back northward the following two days, our tour winding down. Long days driving, we would listen to Ethiopian pop music and got to know the stars, chewing chat along the way. Driving along we spotted an elusive kudu, a beautiful animal Miquel was very keen on seeing.

We stopped several times along the road as Mesfin bought things for his family back in Addis. He was like a kid grinning at the low prices he bargained for things like coffee beans, pineapples or charcoal, half the price than in the capital.

Our last stop with the 4x4 was the city Nazreth, a couple hours south of Addis and the junction to the road going east to the town of Harar, where the four of us wanted to go. Our final goodbye to Mesfin was with a lunch of ‘tere sega’ raw steak with a mustard sauce that is cut in front of your eyes by the restaurant’s butcher from the carcass hanging at the front. It’s an Ethiopian favourite and a vegetarian’s nightmare. It tasted great.

It was nice to be on our own again and although we had to go through the early morning madness for the 7 hour bus ride to Harar, it was good traveling with locals. The mountain scenery was once again spectacular. Harar, close to Djibouti and Somalia has a completely different feel than anywhere else in the country. Predominantly Muslim, it resembles more a town from North Africa or Yemen because it’s a centuries-old walled city with a maze of small alleyways and dozens of white mosques. It was an important site for muslim scholars and was a commercial crossroads of Africans, Arabs and Indians. This is also the capital of chat, where in the surrounding hills, it is cultivated and exported to the rest of the horn, Yemen and even London for the ex-pat communities.

We quickly got lost in the streets and were as quickly spotted by a few local ‘guides,’ a couple of teenage kids named Fahami and Ali that we were content letting them show us around for the next few days. The first evening we checked out the famous hyena feeders, one of several men who continue an old tradition of feeding scraps of goat meat to hyenas every night. It’s not really a tourist thing, although for a few dollars, you can be part of it and actually feed the beasts with the meat at the end of a stick. Their jaws are pretty impressive.
We ended up seeing them every night out in the field behind our hotel. How I would have loved to see one take out some of the yappy mongrel dogs that kept barking at them all night.

As our trip was winding down, we decided we would spend the last 5 days in Harar, basically just hanging out. Apart from a morning going to a Somali camel market some 40kms away, that’s what we did.

Through the boys, we met a family in a small traditional house. At any given time, with the extended family and their neighbours, there were a dozen or so people in a room the size of the rug in my living room back in Vancouver. Shoes off, sitting on cushions, we chewed chat every afternoon, smoked shisha, drank the famous Harari coffee, watched DVDs of local pop stars with the odd football match from the English premier league. All Ethiopians will ask you which team you support. Manchester or Arsenal? They are fanatics. “Um... we don’t follow much football in Canada” we tell them, much to their disbelief. In this respect, I guess they realize that all farenjis are not the same.

Actually in Harar, there was a variation on the term “farenji”. It was always “farenjo”. Some travelers find it annoying or offensive, I found it quite humourous. Every time you walk by in the street, kids, even elders are always saying “farenjo” like as if they need to constantly remind you who you are, lest you forget as you stumble around with a backpack and a camera in hand. Sometimes we would reply “abesha” (African) back at them. Another favourite is the “you, you , you, YOU” kids will always scream at you. The Amharic word for ‘you’ is more a way to get someone’s attention and apparently not intended as rude or harsh as it can sound in English.

When it was time to return to Addis, we took an overnight mini-van. A bit of a mistake as it was so crowded and I had a bolt from the flip out seat near the sliding door rubbing into my lower back. That plus police check points looking for contra-band every 50 kms ensured that no sleep was had. We had gotten to know Addis quite well by then.

Back at the Olso cafe for their great machiattos or at a neighbourhood joint for breakfast of "ful" a typical dish of chickpea purée with bread. Although we wanted to do some shopping before leaving, it seemed that we were less excited about all the crafts and objects that can be had at a low price despite having some nice stuff. My biggest souvenir would be a few kilos of coffee beans.

As it often is, it was a little sad just before leaving a country and a culture that has made a profound impact on you. Sitting at the airport gate, I was reflecting on all the people we had met. And as you said your goodbyes throughout the time spent in their country, they would inevitably ask you if you would return someday, to which the answer could only be perhaps. Back in the tube, that is the fuselage of the airplane, already the reality of home had arrived.

Faces of Ethiopia

2007-12-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

Fascinating country. Beautiful people.

(click to enlarge)

Amazonas

2007-10-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

It's exactly a year ago that myself, my paddling mate Erik and another friend Manny did a canoe trip down the Rio Branco to the Rio Negro, in the northern part of Brazil's Amazon jungle. It was a great trip, completely off the grid, paddling in a local hardwood canoe from the town of Boa Vista to the mouth of the Negro. Along the way, we went through rapids, stayed with local villagers, caught and ate many different fish, slept on sandbars (crocs lurking at the water's edge), got pummeled by intense thunder storms, saw monkeys, parrots, a tapir, dolphins, hundreds of birds, got bite by a thousand mosquitoes, we ate turtles and wild boars hunted by locals, drank cachaça by the nightly campfire... In total it was over 400km of paddling, 4 weeks on the river, one week chilling in Manaus and another week getting ready in Boa Vista. Our canoe was made by a local boat builder. While we waited, I took out some watercolours and painted the local fish, most of which we ended up catching and eating, day after day down the river.

Mondo Condo

2007-10-05T23:13:00.000-07:00

“SUCH PLACES DO EXIST” is the sub-heading for “LIVING SHANGRI-LA” soon to be Vancouver’s tallest sky-scraper hotel / condo (or rather estates as they prefer calling them now). Full page advertisements in the newspaper: “Residences starting from 1.5 million to 12 million.” Like as if anyone who is reading the local paper while having their morning coffee will all of sudden think "Hey, that sounds like a bargain. I think I’ll give that Rennie Marketing Systems a call."

It has been a few years now, coinciding with the on-going boom in condo development here in Vancouver as well as in Toronto and Asia, that I have noticed and taken photographs of many large billboards, at various construction sites. They all announce the limitless possibilities of luxury living. Most of them have glossy photos of beautiful, modern women. They all have similar slogans revolving around key words such as exclusive, urban oasis, luxurious, lifestyle, green, vistas.

One of the more interesting ones was the famous Woodwards building on Hastings Street, in the heart of the skid-row that is Vancouver’s downtown east-side. The former department store had been boarded up for years and it stood as an icon of a neighbourhood gone seriously downhill. Developers eventually purchased it with a percentage required by the city for low cost housing as well as part university campus. A larger percentage however will be for a condo tower next to a small corner of the original building that is being kept and restored. The gentrification of Hastings Street has begun. The entire complex is called W, like the famous neon sign that was on top of the Woodwards building. The slogan was “BE BOLD OR MOVE TO THE SUBURBS”. Indeed, I can just imagine the boldness of the urban professional, sipping his latte as he sidesteps a passed out junkie on the sidewalk in front of his building.

This is one of the craziest billboards I have ever seen. It was for an enormous development in the hyper construction city of Beijing that stretched over three long city blocks. Another historic ‘hutong’ quarter was simply bulldozed down, its citizens re-located to the periphery, to make way for the nouveau riche and their dreams of modern living. The profound happiness of living in such luxury enables one to jump up high in the air and scream out in joy.

“The beautiful eye-catching scenery to be found in this area
is intimately linked to local history and provides a hearty
welcome to the visitor. The true face of our town and community is easily visible and is the shining beacon to a brilliant future.” Leave it to the Japanese to have cool advertising accompanied with their weird, dreamy English. This from a condo complex in Umeda, downtown Osaka.

Toronto's Queen Street West is another gentrifying part of town that is rapidly moving from second hand furniture shops and shawarma joints to upscale art galleries, Starbucks and re-vamped boutique hotels. The arrival of the pretentiously named "Bohemian Embassy" is yet another reason burgeoning artists and locals are lamenting the rapid death of an original and hip neighbourhood.

Kayaking 07

2007-10-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

I returned recently from an amazing 12 day, two-part, kayak trip to Vancouver island. The first part consisted of driving up to Oyster River, just south of Campbell River (east side the island) to meet up with my friends Erik and Max who were already a couple of weeks into their own little paddling odyssey up the coast. There we did a bit of a car shuttle to transport the boats, including Max's newly acquired behemoth of a cedar strip kayak, as well as a rental for another friend, Steve, up to the town of Sayward. Next day, the current was just right to head south down Johnston Straight toward West Pender island. On the way, we saw three orcas swimming in big circles, feeding. The water was crystal clear and calm like a mirror. We glided side by side to watch the show when one of the killer whales decided to investigate, his long dorsal fin heading straight for us. He surfaced about a car length away to the left of our bows, then we saw him swimming almost directly underneath, his high pitch vocabulary audible from under the surface. Wow!

We continued onward across the Straight through a very fast current, a few ripe tides and massive calm patches of rising water, as if navigating through an enormous vat of gentle boiling water. We camped on a small rocky beach and Erik caught a Ling cod for dinner. Tasty indeed. The next morning the skies were dramatic, low clouds twisting around the mountain peaks. On the opposite shore, a large, tight pod of about twenty killer whales were headed north at cruising speed. As we set out further south along West Pender island, at least five giant floating hotels were also cruising in the opposite direction, returning to Vancouver from Alaska. Another camp, this one on a long sandy beach, this time it was I who caught the Ling cod for dinner.

The following morning, Erik and I returned to Sayward, leaving Max and Steve behind. What took two days and about 7 hours of paddling south, we did in 3 hours coming back north, thanks to a 5 knot current. We flew along the edge of large eddies, deceiving because the current was going in the opposite direction along the shoreline. Looking at the rocks and trees of the actual shore however showed us how fast we were going. It was amusing if not idiotic, to see some enormous yachts (most likely American tourists) going in the center of the Straight at full throttle against the fast current. Why they did not take a cue from the local fishing boats that were much closer to shore and going with the current of the eddies is anyones guess.

Back at the car (the “Kaiser” as my old Mercedes is called), we put the newly baptized “Exxon Valdez” (Erik’s black hull oil slick look-a-like baidarka) and the “Bismark”, my kayak, up on the racks and drove across to the west coast of Vancouver island to the town of Zebellos. ‘You are now entering a tsunami zone’, the sign on the logging road at the entrance of town announced. We spent the night at Nick’s, a widower from Bulgaria, who rented us a room. An interesting character with an even more interesting accent. “I go out boat, catch it fish, no worry son-a-bitch current.” Nice to take a shower. Next morning after cooking up eggs in Nick’s ramshackle kitchen, we drove off toward little Espinosa inlet, a 20 minute drive north west from Zebellos. There, we put in after a bridge that crosses a river which flows into the inlet. Some old timers were picking up oysters at low tide from the shore and said it would be no problem for us to help ourselves. We filled a bag with about 3 dozen or more. Paddling out of the long inlet (“I hate fucking inlets!” I told Erik, which made him laugh) we finally arrived to Esperanza inlet, the swells breathing on the reefs, the wide open ocean on the horizon.

The names on Vancouver island are a toss up of British and Spanish, since they were the first Europeans that were charting these waters at roughly the same period. Into the mix are the various Native name places as well, many of the nations opting for a newer versions of spelled names using the alphabet but with many numbers and apostrophes.

We paddled up to Catala island and found that the beaches on the south and west sides, though long and wide, had a steep incline and the waves were crashing quite hard. It looked a little tricky, surf landings not being a skill that either one of us really possess. We found a spot tucked away behind some large rocks though and landed. Made camp in the forest, a beautiful moss covered area, protected by the wind. Catala island is a marine park therefore frequently used, obvious by the sort of makeshift lean-tos and fire pits and well used camp-spots. There
was no one around though while we were there. It was a gorgeous calm evening and we started shucking oysters, eating a few raw with lime, and opening most of them by throwing them on the fire to be then mixed in a tomato sauce with pasta and red wine. Fruits of the sea.

Being on the west coast of Vancouver island, it is essential to have a VHF radio. Listening to the marine forecast throughout the day is part of the routine. Sure enough, the forecast for gale force winds and small craft warnings came on cue for the following day. The south-westerlies were pounding the long pebble beach just around the point where we had settled our camp. I love the power of the wind. (I am, after all, a prairie boy). It was fun just hiking along the rocks and beach-combing. So much flotsam and jetsam, particularly from the fishing industry. Heaps of floats and plastic bottles from Japan, styrofoam, local “Lucky” beer cans.

A few times, deer came strolling by our tent, almost tame. A fawn (yes, Bambi was his name) was so close, the mother not too worried, not far behind. Two days later, with a more favourable forecast, we decided to leave the island for a bay on the on the northen part of the inlet. The after effects of the gale were still there though in the form of large swells and confused seas. We paddled through some rocks and reefs with 6-7 foot swells and rebound action, boomers a boomin’ to the left and right. On the lee side of Catala, finally in calmer waters, it was fishing time. Erik caught some sort of sardine and I caught a mackerel, both types of fish were jumping at the surface.

The beach we landed on was long, perhaps 4 km of dark gold, almost black sand. An enormous clear cut block scarred most of the mountain side adjacent to the bay. We hiked over to another cove and beach to the north, so many huge driftwood logs thrown way up from countless mighty Pacific Northwest winter storms. Back on our beach, at a distance we saw a mother black bear and two older cubs foraging in the sea weed. We promptly found a tree to hang the food after dinner.

The following morning was a cloudless blue sky and totally calm. We paddled back across Esperenza inlet, past Catala island to the Nuchalitz peninsula and stopped on a tiny island simply called #40 on the chart. We later named it “Flathead island”, in honour of our furry friends the sea otters. They seem to have somewhat of a flat head. At least that’s what it looks like when you see them chomping away on urchins, swimming on their backs. There is quite the colony around the shore of the island and they looked at times like they were either having fun or bored, whilst bobbing among the huge waves crashing all about the reefs.

The gales returned with a vengeance, this time the more common North-Westerlies. This made it somewhat difficult to do what we like doing best on kayak trips... fishing. The bigger fish tend to be where the drop offs are, past the reefs and rocks on the outside. That’s precisely where the water was in a fury of pounding spray and movement. However, we were still lucky to have it calm enough to go out a few mornings, before the afternoon winds picked up. I caught my first salmon as well as a black bass. The salmon, dark red filets, were fried in butter, nothing else but lime. The white meat of the rock fish was cut into cubes, battered and fried and became fish tacos. Sooooo goooood.

We spent 4 days on Flathead island as it was perfectly situated to explore the sheltered area of Nuchalitz. The winds were so strong and regular that it made it impossible to cross Nuchalitz Inlet and explore further south down the coast. It hardly mattered though as it was truly an awesome spot to be.

There were a few other people camping in the area. A couple with a double kayak who were on a small island across from ours (# 44 on the chart) as well as four guys with an aluminum boat with motor and a black aluminum canoe, camped on our island, on a point. We trekked around the island one evening and talked to them at their camp. I had earlier labeled them as ‘yahoos’, camped at ‘Yahoo Point’ because they had a massive fire, burning not just small pieces of driftwood, but entire logs! I found out they were all from Winnipeg, one grew up three streets away from me. One now lived in Costa Rica, another in Istanbul, the other two in Vancouver. They had set aside two weeks every year, twenty years counting, to camp together at different spots along the West coast of the island. They were lamenting the fact that these areas have since become so popular, particularly with kayakers... (We were cool though because we had built our own kayaks!) I sort of saw his point, especially with places like the Broken islands which are now, at any given time in summer, full of kayakers and tour groups, no campsites or islands where you can be alone. I felt like telling him that it’s probably not unlike locals in Costa Rica who are lamenting the fact that the beaches are no longer virgin like they used to be, but now full of foreigners buying up waterfront property and building houses and restaurants. At least they were into camping though and getting away from it all and appreciated the beauty of the wilderness. We talked about fishing and of pickerel back in the Shield country of Manitoba and Ontario.

On one particularly eventful day, as we went to fill up our water bags from an almost non-existent creek, we saw a large black bear on a rocky beach. We paddled to within twenty meters from the shore where he nonchalantly looked at us and kept on going about his business of finding food within the sea weed and shells washed up on shore. We then paddled to another small island and saw a Native burial cave. We did not stumble across it but were told where it was by the couple who, it turns out, had also been coming to this part of the coast for years. We landed on a small spit and walked clockwise around the entire island looking for a cave before realizing that it was almost next to where we landed our kayaks but in the other direction. It was amazing to see almost polished white skulls, placed in a row, as well as other bones, a vertebrae... amongst broken cedar boxes, and ferns, protected from the elements by a row of alders in front of the grotto. Undoubtedly, these are ancestors of the First Nation residing on the Indian reserve just across the water and they must come here fairly regularly to pay respect.

There was a spectacular point of rocks jutting out to the sea, just around our camp spot. It was the perfect place to watch the sunset. Two evenings in a row, I saw Grey whales, a mother and a young calf, surfacing. The large one breached several times, only her head popping out of the water.

The day we returned was clear and calm. We got an early start to fish as much as possible, to bring our harvest back home, on ice. I caught a couple of rock fish a few minutes out. The gaffe I carved out of an alder branch (thanks for the idea Erik) works much better than a net for hauling in larger fish from a kayak. You just slip the hooked part under the gills. Especially effective for getting a hook out of teethy Ling cod. There were several fishing boats on the water, trolling for salmon. We hoped to catch a few as well but no luck. I caught three Ling cod, including a less common Blue Ling cod, all a few inches shy of the legal limit (24" gill to tail) to keep. Erik caught a larger one however as well as a another rock fish.

The closer we got to the inlet, the smaller the fish became. They were all thrown back. The last stretch, as usual, seemed to take much longer than when we had started a week before. A strong wind from inland also made the going slow. Back at the car, as we gutted the fish, we noticed a small octopus in the Ling cod. We were already talking about the burger, fries and shakes we would be eating once back at Zebellos as we unloaded the kayaks and packed the car.

aurevoir été

2007-09-16T16:13:00.000-07:00

The metallic skies are back. A palette of grey shrouding the north shore mountains and silver shards of light off the water. I can feel it in the air. Our summer (what summer?) is gone. Just like that, from one day to the next. Headed down south, across the Pacific to Polynesia or down the spine of North America to that dry desert in Chihuahua, Mexico... Welcome back cool breeze of the N.W. Coast. I missed your drizzle. Enough with the Bermuda shorts and Havaianas flip flops. Give me my leather jacket and scarves, my late afternoons of darkness and reflected traffic lights on wet pavement.