Maun & Pom Pom Camp

Tswana is a melodic language, and I noticed that Tswana speakers speak English with a melodic flair. R’s, for instance, get a hard roll-almost like a series of rapid D’s. It may be that Tswana speakers have trouble distinguishing between D’s and R’s. If that is the case, it would explain why so many people have trouble with Madeline’s name. Since so many people have issues with the pronunciation, Madeline, in certain situations, refers to herself as “Maddy.” Then, with the D sound becoming an R, “Maddy” becomes “Mary.” Thus, Madeline, in concession to the linguistic difficulty, refers to herself as Mary in those situations.

One of those situations is when she deals with taxis. She maintains a list of numbers for taxi companies on her cell phone. When she needs a taxi, she calls one of those numbers and says, “This is Mary. I need a taxi to go from the University to River Walk.” A half-hour later, if the taxi hasn’t shown up she calls the number again and says, “This is Mary. I called a taxi a half hour ago and it isn’t here yet. Sorry?... Sorry?....No, Mary. Sorry? To River Walk. Sorry? No I’m GOING to River Walk. Right now I’m at the University. Sorry? No, Mary. Ten minutes? OK.” Then in a half hour if the taxi still has not arrived, she will call a different taxi company and start over. Taxis, we soon discovered, have reliability issues.

Thus, I was more than a little concerned about our ability to get to the Gaborone Airport. Our scheduled flight to Maun on this day departed at 7:15, which meant a taxi pickup around 5:45. We had arranged a taxi the previous day, but if it didn’t show up, we would have no way of calling the taxi company, since we didn’t have cell phones and the Lolwapa’s phone could only receive calls, not call out. So I fretted about that periodically, but needn’t have. The taxi was outside the hotel a few minutes before we were ready and we got to the airport in plenty of time, and then we were airborne on a small Air Botswana prop-driven plane for the hour-and-a-half flight to Maun.

The flight took us north across the edge of the Kalahari Desert and then into the unique riparian phenomenon known as the Okavango Delta. Maun is located right on the edge of the Okavango. The Okavango River flows south out of Angola, across the Caprivi Strip of Namibia, and finally into Botswana. Shortly after entering Botswana, the river spreads out into a maze of channels and marshes until it is finally totally consumed by the sands of the Kalahari. It is referred to as “the river that never finds the sea.” In the wet season, much of the delta is marsh. As the dry season progresses, the marsh gradually shrinks to individual waterholes, some of which dry up completely. The Okavango is a haven for wildlife, and as the dry season advances, the wildlife becomes very concentrated around the remaining sources of water. The Moremi Game Reserve takes up much of the Okavango, but there are also numerous private concessions surrounding Moremi. We were headed for one of them.

At the Maun airport, we were met by the pilot of a small four-seater plane. We transferred to his plane for the twenty-minute flight to Pom Pom Camp. There are no roads in the Okavango, so flying is the only way to get there. From the air, we could see the marshes, channels, and islands of the Okavango. We also saw numerous towering termite mounds and (gasp!) elephants and giraffe.

We were met at the gravel landing strip by Peter and Paul, two guides from Pom Pom. This apostolic duo hoisted our bags into a Land Rover and we followed a dirt track for a ten-minute drive that ended by crossing a narrow wooden bridge onto the island where Pom Pom camp is located.

Pom Pom has an open-sided thatched main building that contains a small lounge area, a large table for communal meals, a bar and a small gift shop. Guests stay in nine luxurious platform tents. Our tent opened onto a small deck that faced the lagoon. There was a king bed in the tent, a wardrobe for our clothes behind that, and in the back of the tent, a toilet and sink. A door at the back of the tent opened into a shower area that was enclosed on all sides, but open to the sky. There were small electric lights in the tent, which would work when the generator was running at night.

Since we arrived around 9 AM, we had time to ourselves for unpacking and getting situated before the 10 AM brunch. Brunch was yogurt, fruit juices, salads, coffee and tea, home baked bread, and made-to-order eggs, bacon, and sausages cooked over an outdoor griddle. The food at Pom Pom was phenomenal and plentiful. Game viewing activities occurred when the animals were most active, at sunup and sundown, and the rest of the time was filled with five meals. The schedule ran something like this: 5 AM, get up & eat breakfast; 6 AM morning activity; 10 AM brunch; 11 AM siesta; 4 PM tea; 4:30 PM afternoon activity; 6 PM, break in afternoon activity for sundowner drinks and snacks; 8 PM supper.

After brunch, we sat on our deck, read our books, and photographed the friendly arrowhead babblers (birds) and vervots (monkeys) that lived in the tree above our tent. The babblers would fly down to our deck and babble at us, while the monkey would sometimes jump onto the roof of the tent and scamper across and other times sit on a limb and watch us.

There was a self-service bar in the main building, so I ambled down there at one point for a beer. There are a number of beers made in southern Africa. St. Louis beer is brewed in Gaborone. Windhoek, an interestingly yellow pils is made by Germans in Namibia. South Africa makes any number of beers. I was not enamored with any beer I quaffed on this trip. Perhaps because of the climate, all the beers I tried were light-bodied lagers. Most of them had the flavor of your average Bud. Disappointing any way you look at it.

On my foray to the bar, I met the managers of the camp. They told me that they were a little confused because they had received two sets of reservations with the same last name & first initials. And they were not duplicates—another couple sharing our last name and first initials was staying in another tent at the same camp as we were, at the same time! Doppelgangers!

At four, we had tea and then went on our first game drive. Our guides for our stay at Pom Pom were Partner and Dalton. When Peter and Paul had picked us up at the airstrip, they had informed us that our guide would be Partner, but because of their accent and the unlikelihood that his name was really Partner, we weren’t sure what his name really was. Were they saying, “Padma?” Was he Indian? No, he was African, and his name really was “Partner.” I suspect that the names we called our guides were not their real names, but perhaps English names and words that somewhat approximated their real names, because we would mangle the pronunciation of their real names—the reverse of the Madeline/Mary phenomenon.

The game drive was in an open-sided Land rover. The other couple with whom we shared the vehicle were a young couple from Australia, Ryan and Kirsten. Our Doppelgangers! The other guests at Pom Pom were French and German. We didn’t run into many Americans. Africa is just so far away from the U.S.!

On this drive, we saw photographed many birds including a hammerkop, large, colorful saddlebacked storks, cattle egrets, blacksmith lapwings, and a host of others. We also saw red lechways, kudus, and tsessebes, all large ungulates, as well as zebras and giraffes. No lions. At six, we stopped for sundowner drinks, and then continued for a couple hours in the dark looking for leopards. At one point Kathy yelled at Partner to stop & back up, sure that she had seen a leopard. When Dalton swung the spotlight, there, looming out of the darkness was a stump. Kathy is convinced to this day that there was a leopard there and if we had backed up further we all would have seen it.

Gaborone

While there are a substantial numbers of cars in Gaborone, not everyone owns a car, so there is a fair amount of pedestrian traffic everywhere. It seems like a good thing to me, for several reasons. For one thing, it reduces crime. Crimes are less likely to happen on a busy street than when the potential victim is alone. Also, the more humans, the more humanized the environment becomes. Everywhere you go, small entrepreneurs have set up kiosks, stands, and even tables along the street selling all sorts of goods. People out walking around are potential customers while people zooming by in cars are not.

Can you imagine this in the U.S.? People would get out of their cars, get some healthy exercise, meet their neighbors, and find interesting things at stands along the route to their destination. They wouldn’t get there as fast, which is also OK. Living life at a slower pace would only be a good thing for all of us.

If you don’t own a car and have to travel a long distance in Gabs, there are taxis. There are also combis, which are very reliable, very cheap, and a great place to strike up a conversation. Combis are small white vans that can hold a dozen passengers when they are (very!) full. They run specific routes and you can ride for P2.70 (about 35 cents).

On this day, we met Madeline at a combi stop near the University and then took a combi to Tlokweng, a town outside of Gaborone where she volunteers at the SOS Children’s Village. An Austrian named Hermann Gmeiner founded the SOS Children’s Villages organization in 1949, while he was still in medical school. His original mission was to help alleviate the suffering of the many orphaned and abandoned children in Europe after WWII. From those beginnings, SOS-Kinderdorf International has grown to become an organization that is recognized around the world, and in fact was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

SOS Children’s Village began working in Botswana in 1986. The village in Tlokweng has 15 family houses, and each family has between ten and twelve children whose range in age from babies to 16 year-olds. In addition to orphans, the village also takes social welfare children brought to them by the government social welfare program. Children from the surrounding community also attend the kindergarten at SOS. Kids living at the village go to the nursery school and kindergarten on site until they reach school age when they attend the local schools. At age 16, they children move into a youth house where they stay until they are old enough to be self-sufficient. Also, a vocational training center teaches skills and vocations such as tailoring, welding and carpentry.

In Botswana, of course, many of the children who live at SOS have been orphaned by AIDS. One can hardly begin to imagine the suffering these little kids have gone through to lose both parents, and perhaps siblings to this disease. Some, no doubt, are HIV positive themselves.

Madeline spends her time helping in a class of nine two and three year-olds, as well as supervising general activity on the playground during recess. And when Kathy and I were there, we helped as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed working (playing) with these kids. I don’t know what they made of me—a “teacher” that was helpful, but obviously of limited intelligence & unable to understand anything they said. I was in demand on the playground, however, for lifting, twirling, and pushing swings. I was constantly surrounded by an eager group of kids yelling “Teacha! Teacha!” Trying to get my attention, approval, or assistance.

After recess we washed hands, prayed, and had lunch: On this day, lunch was chicken gravy over rice, “pumpkin” (actually some type of winter squash), and beets (Tswana word for beets: “Debeetirooti”—I love it!) Then we rode the combi back to Gabs & did a quick tour of the University of Botswana campus and Madeline’s dorm.

The University is contained on a large, well-maintained campus filled with modern buildings. The large number of covered walkways and covered courtyards reflect the fact that the summers are hot, and that there is a rainy season. Madeline’s dorm room was a typical dorm room. There were maybe eight double occupancy rooms clustered around a common room on her floor with all of those rooms sharing a bathroom. Her room contained a desk and a bed, and she and her side of the room was separated from her roommate’s by closets.

After the tour, we went for dinner at an Indian restaurant. It didn’t take many days for Kathy and I to discover that local cuisine was essentially not available in the local restaurants. Restaurants serve “international cuisine” but restaurants celebrating Botswanan fare were at best rare and probably nonexistent. Local food, however, can be found in the little stands along the road, and I’m sure in most people’s homes—perhaps even the homes of the people who worked in restaurants serving pad thai, shahi korma, or hamburgers.

Jo'berg & Gaborone

Madeline at the Main Mall - Gaborone

A little about Botswana. It is a landlocked country just north of South Africa and shares borders with Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the east and is separated from Zambia to the north by a narrow panhandle extending from Namibia called the Caprivi Strip.

It was formerly Bechuanaland, a British “protectorate.” It received independence in 1966, at a time when South Africa was suffering under apartheid and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was moving toward civil war. Botswana, first under the wise stewardship President Sereste Khama, and then under the leadership of the Presidents that followed him, has steered a moderate, progressive, democratic course. Diamonds are the main export and the main source of revenue for the government. The government has managed this resource well, and has invested the diamond revenues in infrastructure, health, and education.

Botswana has undergone tremendous change since independence as it has modernized and educated its youth. There has been an exodus from the rural areas of the country to the cities, and it has become one of the world’s most urbanized societies with over half of its population living in urban areas.

The problem that ruins what would be an otherwise promising outlook is AIDS. Sub-Saharan Africa contains 11% of the world’s population, but more than 70% of the world’s HIV cases. Botswana has not escaped this epidemic. The current population of the entire country is about one and a half million and it is dropping due to this scourge. The birth rate has dropped from 3.5% to 2.3% in the last ten years. Life expectancy at the time of independence was 49 and moved up to 70 by the mid-1990’s due to the improvements made throughout the country. Had that trend continued, it would now be around 74, the same as the U.S. Instead, it is 33, and is expected to drop to 27 by 2010. The government is fighting this battle with education, promotion of condom use, and free antiretroviral drug therapy to all HIV positive citizens.

Americans are, for the most part, unaware of Botswana. Most exposure to Botswana here has been through the somewhat inaccurate movie, “The Gods Must Be Crazy” and the excellent “Number One Lady’s Detective Agency” series of books by Alexander McCall Smith.

We arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa (referred to locally as Jo’berg) at 7:30 in the morning on this day, then, after a four hour layover, flew for an hour and a half to reach the airport at Gaborone (pronounced “Hob’ o ron eh” in Setwana, but referred to by the locals as “Gabs”) a little after noon.

Like much of Gaborone, the airport is a combination of first and third worlds. Passengers deplane on the edge of the runway and then walk through the tropical heat to the small chaotic terminal. But a gleaming new terminal is under construction next to the old one.

Madeline was not waiting for us, but did arrive in a taxi after we'd been waiting a short time--she had been at a friend's and had lost track of the time. She asked us if she looked different. She looked like the same old Madeline to me--I imagine that she feels like she looks different after all the experiences she's been through the past few months.

We tossed our luggage into the taxi and rode to the Lolwapa “Not the Ritz” Lodge, a small hotel across from the University where Madeline had reserved a room for us. The Lolwapa has a friendly welcoming staff, six rooms in varying states of repair, an empty swimming pool used for drying laundry & a fair number of cockroaches. Our room had interesting cracks in the bathroom tile, half a soap dish in the shower, and dirty shoe prints on the wall & ceiling—somebody using their shoe to kill roaches would be my best explanation for that phenomenon. There was a TV, which was capable of picking up only the channel that the lobby TV was tuned to. There was no shower curtain, but there was a mop so you could mop all the water off the floor when you were done with your shower. All of this for less than 30 bucks a night. I have stayed in worse.

My immediate impression of Gabs was that it is growing and modernizing at a rapid pace. In some ways it is a third-world city—roads in bad repair, unkempt vegetation and litter along some of the main roads, large numbers of people walking along the sides of the road in the middle of the day—perhaps an indicator of high unemployment (estimated to be around 40%), while goats, chickens, and cows wander down the road on the outskirts. On the other hand, there are many good roads, many nice buildings, and an amazing number of buildings under construction. And everybody I saw was clean, and neatly, even fashionably dressed. While the infrastructure for landline phones does not exist on a large scale, it seems that everybody has a cell phone.

After checking into the hotel, we walked to the Main Mall, an outdoor shopping area that is normally filled with outdoor kiosks selling every kind of goods imaginable. Since this was Sunday, however, it was mostly deserted. We did find a small grocery store open where Madeline bought a meat pie, since she hadn’t had lunch. We found a bench on the mall where Madeline could eat.

As we sat there, an eight or nine year old kid came along to beg. He was kneeling before us with his hands extended begging for money. I had forgotten about third world beggars. We were about to get up and move on to get rid of him when a teenager came along and chased him off. He seemed concerned about the impression we foreigners were getting of his country. "Don't give him any money," he told us. "He'll just use it to buy glue for sniffing."

Something I noticed at the Main Mall and elsewhere: Tiny, fast moving ants seemed to be swarming practically everywhere. If you would stop walking and stand still in the midst of one of these swarms of ants, they would immediately crawl onto your shoes, up your legs, and start biting you. When I mentioned this to Madeline, she shrugged and said, “Oh yeah, the ants. They’re everywhere.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon settling into our hotel room, and then at dinnertime took a taxi to Riverwalk, one of the many modern shopping centers in Gabs. We ate at a bizarre restaurant called Apache Spur; I suppose it could be described as a theme restaurant. The theme would be the American West as visualized in the mind’s eye of some African designer who has never been there. All the stereotypical Western and Native American themes are mixed together freely with African design elements. We could consider this payback for the decades of inaccurate and stereotypical American-made African jungle movies and TV shows. The menu was the African version of American fast food. The burger was good. The enchilada was not an enchilada. There was a strange bottle of something called “chip sauce” on our table that shot its contents into the air and all over the table when Kathy opened the cap. As a microbiologist, I was intrigued.

After dinner, we taxied back to the Lolwapa for a long night of jet-lagged slumber.

London

We originally came up with the idea to vacation in Africa when Madeline chose the University of Botswana as the place where she would study abroad for a semester. Macalester College encourages its students to study abroad and Madeline was interested in Africa because African Studies is one of her minors. Also, she had already spent last summer in Germany, thus was less interested in another European experience. She looked at several programs in Africa but finally settled on, and was accepted into the University of Botswana through a program offered by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. For an account of Madeline’s experiences in Botswana, visit her blog.
She left for Africa in January along with three other students from Wake Forest University in Chicago, and the University of Chicago, and a professor from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. About the time of her departure, we started planning our itinerary. We ended up booking a five day safari in northern Botswana through Island Safaris and securing two grueling redeye flights—a Minneapolis to London flight, then a nine hour layover in London, followed by a London to Johannesburg flight, a short layover and a hop from Johannesburg to Gaborone, Botswana where Madeline was attending the university. We planned to make the most of our nine hours in London by taking the tube into the city and doing a short tour.
It was raining when we flew out of Minneapolis. It is always easier to leave when the weather is bad. A raging blizzard would have been OK, but then maybe the plane wouldn't have been able to take off.
Nothing exciting happened on the flight over. I read Time Magazine, and listened to podcasts of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" while Kathy watched movies and worked on crosswords. We both slept a little and tried to be comfortable in seats designed for midgets with no pain receptors.
The weather in London was cool and sunny--somewhere in the mid-30's at 10:30 AM. Spring had definitely arrived here, though. The grass was green and the daffodils were blooming in great profusion.
The trip into the city of London did not happen. There was a snafu with our one checked bag. We managed to pack light and had everything in carryon luggage, but since Madeline needed various supplies, we put all of her items in a bag that we checked all the way thru to Gaborone at Minneapolis. Checking that bag took a long time--the slowdown was mostly due to the fact that we're using paper tickets--something we had to do due to an interface issue between Northwest and South Africa Airways.
At Heathrow, we had to switch terminals, which meant taking a ten-minute shuttle ride and then going through security again. Then we had to present our paper vouchers at the South African Airways to get boarding passes. During check in, the clerk commented that we had no checked luggage. We replied that we did, in fact, have checked luggage. "Where's your checked luggage tag?" she asked. "Woops." we replied.
The next thing you would expect to happen in this scenario would be for the clerk to phone Northwest Airlines and ask them for the tag number for our checked bag. That would have been logical. That is not what happened. What really happened was the clerk informed us we would have to get the checked luggage tag number from the people at the Northwest desk. "But that will mean that we'll have to take the shuttle back to Terminal Four!" I said. "That's right." she smiled. "But then we'll have to go through security again to get into Terminal Four," I said. "That's right." she smiled. "And then we'll have to go through security again to get back into Terminal One." I said. "That's right." she smiled.
So we did that.
At the Northwest desk in Terminal 4 the Northwest clerk wondered, "Why didn't the South African Airways clerk just call us to get the luggage tag number?"
I set off the metal detector alarm both times on the foray between terminals and was patted down both times by delighted British security agents.
Other than that and the fact that the terminal is under renovation, so they recommend being at the airport three hours before your flight, and the fact that the tube ride into London takes an hour and a half, there's no good reason not to go into London (subtle sarcasm).
So we found a bench at Terminal 1 for the duration of the layover. I read Time magazine and listened to podcasts of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" while Kathy worked on crosswords.
That was London.

Palisade Head, MN - September 21, 2008

Before leaving Grand Marais, Kathy wanted to pay one last visit to “World’s Best Donuts”, the little red store just off Wisconsin Street. One activity one can participate in at “World’s Best”, other than eating donuts is to sign up as a “registered donut eater.” If you sign up, and remember your number when you come back the next year, they give you a free donut.

Then we drove home. We only made one more stop before leaving the North Shore—a nostalgic stop at Palisade Head—one of my favorite fally-down spots. This time we were there with no dog and no kids. So I only had to keep track of Kathy.

-At Palisade Head_

Thunder Bay, Canada - Amethyst and Solitude

Kathy ran. I slept. Then Marie served us a big hearty breakfast of fresh fruit, oatmeal, and cheese omelets.

During breakfast, Marie helpfully listed possible activities for the day. We knew that we would barely get a taste of the Canadian north shore, since we had reservations in Grand Marais that night. I did want to visit an amethyst mine and had downloaded information on a couple nearby mines from the internet. Marie suggested that the mines that had websites were too commercial and that we should visit a mine nearby that a friend of hers owned. She also suggested a visit to nearby Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, a huge park that filled Sibley Peninsula, a peninsula extending into the lake that formed one side of the bay. From a distance, the topography suggests a prone human form, hence the name.

Getting to the Blue Point Amethyst Mine required a long drive down a dirt track with potholes and protruding rocks—well worth the price of admission in itself. The couple in the trailer-towing car ahead of us were not enamored, however, and were discussing it between themselves at great length and in colorful language when we arrived. “Arrived” in this case, refers to arriving at a clearing containing a shack devoid of any sort of human presence. The shack shared the clearing with a decrepit school bus, an ancient cement mixer and various other pieces of mechanical detritus. Blue Amethyst was definitely not commercial. A hand-lettered sign directed us down another path with the words “mine path.” I was only slightly worried that it was a warning sign and that the path contained land mines. The owner eventually appeared. I secretly hoped for somebody leading a mule and looking and sounding like Gabby Hayes. In fact, he was in a truck and looked and sounded like a Minnesotan—not surprising, since he was from Silver Bay. We paid him the requisite twenty buck in exchange for a couple of gallon ice cream buckets. The mine was “open pit”—a ten-foot deep hole in the ground about the size of a football field. It was not hard finding the vein of amethyst. We spent the next couple of hours, not looking for amethyst, but rather finding the best specimens to fill our buckets.

Amethyst

We only had a couple hours to spend sightseeing in Sleeping Giant Park. Considering the size of the park, that meant we mostly just had time to drive through it. The park supposedly contains great vistas, waterfalls, beaver dams and lodges, scenic overlooks, and unique plant life. Unfortunately, we pretty much saw woods through the car window.

At the very tip of the peninsula we found a small cluster of houses, one lone store with a sign proclaiming “Store”, and lots of solitude.  This is what remains of a small town named Silver Islet that supported a silver mine on a small island of the same name located just off the peninsula. Silver was discovered on the island in 1868. At that time, the island was only 150 square feet in size and was only a couple of feet above the water level. Silver Islet Mining Company was formed in 1870 to extract the silver, which was so rich it was practically pure. The company built wooden breakwaters and increased the island’s size by a factor of ten. In 1878, they were considering shutting down operations since most of the purest ore had been removed. Then they discovered a second vein. By 1883, most of the highest quality silver had been taken out of that vein as well. The mine’s deathblow came that year when a coal shipment didn’t show up in time. The mine, by that time, was almost a thousand feet deep and pumps were needed to keep the mine dry. Without coal, the pumps shut down and the mine gradually flooded. In the 16 years it was in operation, 3.25 million dollars worth of silver had been extracted from the mine.

Today, the public is not allowed on Silver Islet, and all that remains of the mining operation are the buildings scattered around the tip of the peninsula. The store is open as a store and the remaining houses are used as summer cabins. All of the structures rely on wind and solar for electricity since there is no power on that part of the peninsula.

We were running out of time since we had a long drive to reach our lodging for the evening, back in Grand Marais. So we headed south toward Grand Marais, stopping only once, at the beach at Kadunce River where we picked up a few rocks and took some pictures.

We arrived at the Aspen Lodge in Grand Marais at dinnertime, checked in, and ate dinner at the Gunflint Tavern. We ate there based on our previous good experience and were not disappointed this time. I had tomato Romano soup and chicken mole with a nice fresh salsa, good rice, and black beans. The hotel was a step down after staying at B&B’s but the room was pleasant and we could hear the waves lapping on the shore all night.

Grand Marais, MN - September 19, 2008

Another morning and still on vacation! Breakfast at the Inn this morning was smoked salmon in scrambled eggs. A little cream cheese in the eggs made them creamy and wonderful. Also, there were strawberry smoothies and asparagus. We checked out and drove to Grand Marais. Kathy found a quilt shop. I looked for coffee—couldn’t find good coffee, so had to settle for fudge instead. We went to the little bookstore by the shore, Drury Lane, and browsed. I picked up “Grass Roots: The Universe of Home,” the last book written by the late great prairie kid, Paul Gruchow. I’m looking forward to reading it someday when I catch up with life

We had lunch at the Angry Trout, a nifty restaurant that sits on a jetty extending into the bay in Grand Marais. There’s additional outdoor seating on docks that are on two sides of the jetty. It’s a great location for a restaurant and a great restaurant. One of the restaurant’s claims to fame is the bathroom. Since the entire restaurant sits over the lake, plumbing a bathroom within the restaurant was an issue. So the bathroom is located in a small building on the shore. It is unique in that way, and in the fact that it’s a unisex bathroom. Finally, it is unique in that it has a really cool tiled mural covering the walls and floor. The problem is actually getting into the bathroom. Since there’s only one serving the restaurant, there was a line. I suspect that many of the people standing in line didn’t need to use the facilities, but were there to scope out the tiles. I was amused that one of the servers wore a t-shirt with a message printed on the back that said, “Through the front door. It’s the little building with the green door.” I assume she got tired of telling customers where the bathroom was, and this way could just turn around.

Also cool & worth noting: The Angry Trout tries to buy locally—produce, locally caught fish, and hand-harvested wild rice. They also advocate sustainability—they are powered by their own windmill.

After lunch, we got back into the car & headed north. We stopped at Judge Magney State Park and walked a mile and a half to the High Falls Cauldron. Actually Kathy walked. I gimped. My knee was still being problematic. On level terrain, it wasn’t too bad, but going up or down was painful and the mile and a half was pretty much down, except when it was up. And going back it was generally up, excluding the down places. The foliage was very green though, with undertones of red and orange where fall had tinged the leaves. And the water rushed, roared, and created a mist around the cauldron. My knee survived.

Getting back from the walk, we realized that it was late and we had a long distance yet to drive to reach our next B&B by check-in time. In addition, I had more or less forgotten that the time would change when we crossed the border into Canada. Getting through the border check slowed us down a little, and then, once we were across, we realized that we still had to drive quite a distance past Thunder Bay before we would get to the El Dorado Beach Bed and Breakfast. Once we were into Canada and beyond Thunder Bay, we discovered that the character of the Canadian north shore was quite different from the Minnesota side. The lakeshore had collections of summer homes in spots, but beyond the lakeshore, even on the highway, gas stations, restaurants, or any kind of retail establishment were rare. Gone were the kitschy little souvenir stands, and the plethora of other stores catering to tourists that line Highway 61. We drove for nearly a half-hour beyond Thunder Bay before we finally found the turn-off that took us down to El Dorado Beach.

We arrived well beyond check-in time. The El Dorado Beach B&B was not eye-catching. It was a house. The setting, however, is wonderful. The hostess, Marie Harding, also happens to be the El Dorado Beach mayor. Our spacious room faced the lake, but unfortunately, since we were there mostly at night, and just for one night, we didn’t get to appreciate the view.

It was well past the dinner hour and quite dark when we ventured out for dinner. Marie had suggested we go to a truck stop that we had passed a few kilometers back on the highway, so we ventured back there It was good, I suppose, for local color, but the food was forgettable. We took an incredibly circuitous route back to the B&B from the truck stop, drove down lots of tiny winding roads along the lake, and turned around at a lot of dead ends so Kathy could develop a running route for the next morning. When we finally got back to El Dorado, we went right to bed so Kathy could get up early to run.

Minnesota North Shore of Lake Superior

Our Baptism River Inn breakfast was good. Are B&B breakfasts ever bad? This particular morning the menu included French toast with orange cream. We left after breakfast with plans for a day of hiking. We first had to stop at a little quilt shop Kathy had noticed in Illgen City in a little ramshackle building—one of the few structures contained within this “town.” Kathy perused fabric while I waited in the car. Eventually, she seemed sated, and we drove to Tettagouche State Park for a hike. Our hiking route took us over some moderately rough terrain through mixed hardwood and pine forests and along a couple of lakes. We revisited the Baptism River High Falls and then hiked to Nipisiquit Lake, followed the north side and west of the lake & then cut down to Mic Mac Lake. We followed the shoreline of Mic Mac to the Tettagouche Camp & then hooked up with the Superior Trail and went through some hilly terrain back to where we started. It was starting to get dark by the time we got back to the car. The whole hike was probably seven or eight miles and took us the whole afternoon. I was worried beforehand how my foot would hold up and in fact the foot did OK, but my knee gave out and was sore for the rest of the trip. I’m not sure what the knee thing is about— I had issues with it in Miami in January when we walked around a lot. I probably just need to use it more frequently to build up some resiliency - too much sitting at a desk!

Getting Started on Tettegouche Hike

After our hike, we drove back to Baptism River Inn for a rest. It was getting dark and we were tired, but since it was my only opportunity, I took a short walk down to the river behind the B&B to take a few pictures and also took a picture of their unique sauna.

Then we drove down to Beaver Bay for dinner at the Northern Lights. I always enjoy eating there. We ate in the open area in the back and it was a little chilly, but I warmed myself with some spicy wings washed down with a South Shore Red Lager. I followed this with soup and the salad bar. Kathy had the hunter’s pie; elk meat and vegetables in a rich gravy over mashed potatoes, covered with a layer of Monterey Jack and baked. It looked good, and I would have sampled it, but I was having problems handling all of my own food.

Then it was back to the inn for another night. After the hike and the big meal, our sleep was sound. Were there wolves again? We will never know.

Baptism River Inn

Even though we got a late start, we still stopped, as required by tradition, at the Lester River information booth on the north side of Duluth to get the first look at the lake and skip a few rocks. We ate a late lunch at Rustic Inn, which had been recommended by one of Kathy’s co-workers and we found the service friendly, the surroundings unpretentious, and the food good. I enjoyed the vegetable beef soup a lot and I told the server so. She shrugged and said the chef put chili powder in it. I also ordered a walleye poorboy, which came in focochia rather than a bun. I bought a blue cup with the Rustic Inn logo as a souvenir. It was all good and I would like to go back.

We stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse and got our first look since the recent remodeling. I didn’t have a vivid memory of what it was like before, but mostly noticed that the visitor’s center didn’t have the worn look that is so typical of state park visitor’s centers. We watched the requisite historical movie, toured the lighthouse and other buildings, and walked down the path that goes steeply down to the site of the old dock on the lake. I took the same picturesque photos that most other tourists get.

After Split Rock, we drove on to the Baptism River Inn where we were going to spend the next two nights. We turned off Highway 61 at Illgen City, one of those little towns that exist on maps, but in reality hardly fit in the category of “town.” We drove away from the lake on Highway 1 for a few miles and finally turned onto a winding gravel drive that took us through the woods across a small wooden bridge built over a rushing stream and finally to the large log house that was the inn. The inn has three guest rooms and a suite, a guest parlor with a fireplace, and an atmosphere of relaxation and solitude. We found dinner at a little bar/restaurant down the road that had the baseball game on a large screen TV—one of those adequate, forgettable meals. Then we went back to the inn, opened the windows to let in the cool, fall air and the night sounds, like the mournful far-away howling of wolves. It is possible that the wolves were really dogs, but howling dogs wouldn’t be in keeping with the north woods experience that we were seeking.

Baptism River Inn

Back to Reality - October 11 & 12, 2006

This was a travel day. We got up and ate breakfast at the hotel then took the hotel shuttle to the airport and left Greece. At least on this trans-Atlantic flight we would be gaining time. We landed at JFK, went through customs and then flew on to Atlanta. It was evening when we got to Atlanta. We booked a room in a little run-down Day’s Inn near the airport; $50 per night and no ambience, no view, and no good food.

The next morning we took an early shuttle to the Atlanta airport and ate breakfast there. Then on to Minneapolis and back home again with our dirty laundry, souvenirs, and memories. Travel is food for the soul, but home is a good place for digestion. Now it's back to work and back to reality and time to think about the next adventure.

Santorini - Hiking to Ia

Breakfast again on the patio and then we checked out of the Astra. We had a full day on Santorini before our flight left, so we stowed our luggage in the office. We told Electra, the concierge, that we would walk to Ia and spend the day there. She seemed impressed at either our fortitude or foolhardiness; I’m not sure which. Apparently, not that many tourists walk to Ia.

It did turn out to be quite a hike. After we got outside of Imerovigli the path turned to dirt with a lot of rock and gravel and wound up and then back down two large promontories. We hardly met another person on the whole walk. We did overtake a German woman and her two children along the way, all of whom had backpacks. One of the children, a teenage girl, was sobbing and crying the entire time we were within earshot. This, apparently, was not her idea of a fun Santorini activity.

It took us two and a half hours to get to Ia, and by the time we got there I was getting pretty sunburned. As soon as we hit the outskirts of the town, I found and bought the first sunscreen I could find. It cost 16 Euros. Wow.

We found lots of fun shops in Ia. Other than the sunscreen, things seemed reasonably priced. Kathy was happy with the variety of “cute puppies and kitties” wandering the streets. At one point there were seven dogs lying in one spot on one narrow little street.

Ia (not to be confused with Iowa)

We had pizza for lunch at an outdoor rooftop café. The pizza was great—thick crust with feta cheese, tomatoes, and olives. The pack of cats hanging out there scored big at our table with pizza handouts.

Late in the afternoon, we stopped for ice cream at a little café. The proprietor told us “I have the best ice cream in Europe!” It turned out to be Hagen Daaz. As we were eating our ice cream, we noticed clouds moving in from the horizon. They darkened and produced thunder and lightning as they neared us. While we had originally planned to walk back to Imerovigli, we decided that being on the path in the rain, or worse, on one of the promontories during a lightning storm, would not be a good idea. So we paid 1.20 Euros for the bus ride back.

It did start to rain while we were on the bus. When we got back to Imerovigli, we holed up in a little café—not quite indoors, but under an overhanging roof. We had coffee and read the Herald Tribune until the rain tapered off. Then we took the walking path to Firostefani and had dinner at another good café, Remni. I had cheese stuffed peppers and spanokopita, my last meal in Santorini.

We caught the shuttle to the airport and flew back to Athens. Heavy rains in Athens delayed our flight, so we stayed longer in Santorini than we had planned. Unfortunately, the small, Spartan terminal was not the pinnacle of Santorini ambiance.

It was becoming clear that Greece was entering the rainy season. It had rained in Santorini after we had been told by the locals that “it never rains here.” Athens was experiencing heavy rains, and central Greece, where we had been a week before, was getting torrential rains. Floodwaters washed out a bridge that we had no doubt recently crossed on the main road between Kalambaka and Athens. We, fortunately, seemed to stay one step ahead of the rains.

Our plane finally arrived and we flew to Athens, and then took a taxi to the Holiday Inn near the airport where we spent the night.

Santorini - Kicking Back + A Skaros Ramble

I woke up not feeling well and we decided to lay low for the morning. But what a great spot for laying low. I spent the morning hanging out on our patio reading Hemmingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and enjoying the view. By early afternoon, I felt well enough that we decided to take an amble out onto Skaros. It turned out to be more than an amble. The path became quite rough with a lot of steep ascending and descending. We didn’t ever get to the very top of the peak. The climb became quite steep—literal climbing, not walking. Since the footing was loose gravel and there was nothing between us and the sea below except hundreds of feet of air, we decided to forgo that experience. We did enjoy poking around in the ruins, though. Kathy discovered a hole on the bank of the path that was the entrance to an intact room right under the walking path. There was enough sunlight filtering into the room that we could see an interesting passageway. We left the passageway and whatever it led to unexplored. We also found a little white stuccoed church tucked away at the very end of Skaros. We also discovered that there was fennel growing wild along the path. Chewing on a few fennel seeds as we walked was refreshing.

Sundown

It was late afternoon by the time we trekked back to the main part of the island and then we settled on our patio to watch the sunset again. This sunset was not as spectacular as the day before. While the previous day had been cloudy, the clouds had separated at the western horizon just in time for sunset. This day had been partly cloudy and the clouds actually congealed at the horizon just before sunset. Thus ended our second day on Santorini. It was low-key, but enjoyable.

Santorini

We had one final Achilleas breakfast before leaving Athens for Santorini. It was Sunday morning. This morning we retraced our steps from exactly one week previous. We carried out luggage out of the hotel and down the narrow little street to Syntagma Square, then across the square and down the stairs to the metro. Then we rode the metro the airport and flew Olympic airways to the island.

We could see the whole island from the air as we landed. The island is shaped like giant letter “C”, and is so shaped because it is part of the cone of an extinct volcano. It is the eruption of this volcano that likely destroyed the Minoan civilization of Crete, which may have given rise to the legend of Atlantis.

We had arranged to be picked up at the airport and the driver from the Astra Apartments was waiting for us. We had to wait for a bit for another American couple who was staying at the Astra and had just flown in from Rome. The airline had lost their luggage. They had just spent a week in Italy and the airline had lost their luggage on the way to Italy from the US as well. We commiserated and thanked our lucky stars that to date our luggage had stayed with us. The driver drove us across the island and dropped us at the Imerovigli “town square” which looked suspiciously like a parking lot. There were some stairs descending from one edge of the parking lot. The driver told us to go “down and to the left.” “Down” took us over the edge of the caldera where a plethora of white stuccoed building clung to the side of the cliff. “To the left” took us onto the walking path that traverses the caldera from Fira, near the center of the “C” to Ia on one of the tips. A sign on the path announced the Astra. We descended some more steps that led to a little plaza that ran the length of the Astra Apartments. All of the apartments either entered directly onto this plaza or entered onto stairs that went down to the plaza. The office was located next to the stairs and at the opposite end of the plaza were a pool and an outdoor bar. The edge of the plaza opposite the apartments dropped down to the next level where there was another small hotel. Below that level was nothing but hundreds of feet of precipitous cliff and then the sea. We checked in at the office and then were escorted to our apartment, which was located near the pool and had its own little private patio on the plaza and faced west toward the caldera. The apartment had a small kitchen/living area, a bedroom, and a bathroom that was nearly as big as our Athens hotel room. The shower was so commodious that not only could you bend over, but you could run laps.

Projecting into the caldera from the edge, and directly in front of our hotel was a small promontory of land called Skaros. There were ruins of a castle at the peak of Skaros. From the Middle Ages until the mid-1800’s this castle and its associated buildings on Skaros housed the island’s administrative offices. It eventually fell into disuse and time, combined with several earthquakes, has reduced it to ruins. It is difficult to tell even when you are among the ruins that an elaborate complex of buildings once existed here.

After checking in, resting, and enjoying the ambience of the hotel for awhile, we walked a half-mile or so down the walking path to a little seafood restaurant hugging the side of the caldera with a great view of Skaros. The restaurant was appropriately called Skaros. Kathy and I split a Greek salad and I had a Mythos and some calamari along with tzatziki for dipping. The calamari was huge and was fried with a coating of fava. “Fava” is not fava beans but rather is a local legume that resembles a small yellow pea. Each pea is about the size of a grain of barley. The tzatziki was pungent with garlic and the whole meal was wonderful in every way.

Unfortunately, since it was a 3 PM meal, I was not a bit hungry when we went out for dinner at 8 PM. We had followed our 3 PM lunch with more wandering on the hiking path and then several hours of watching the sunset from our balcony.

Dinner was at the world-famous Selene, located on several terraces overlooking the caldera in Fira, and presided over by the world-famous Selene, herself. The setting was beautiful and the food was imaginative and thoughtfully prepared. Since I was still bloated from my hearty late lunch, I tried to pick light items off the menu. I had a dry Santorini white wine, and Selene’s version of a Greek salad, which was attractively presented with crunchy croutons, a local variety of cherry tomato, wild Santorini capers and grated (gasp!) feta. I followed the salad with a bowl of fish ball soup with a very mild fish stock broth. I finished with a cantaloupe sorbet served in a slice of cantaloupe. What was a memorable occasion unfortunately became all the more memorable due to the acute gastrointestinal distress that followed--not in any way due to the food, but more than likely due to the quantity consumed. I have witnessed cows suffering bloat from overeating fresh green grass on a spring day, and that's the way I felt. The day ended with my chugging some Kaopectate and going to bed.

Athens - October 7, 2006

We had an Achilleas breakfast and then walked to the National Archeological Museum. This is one of those museums that you could spend days at and still not see everything. We spent half of a day there. The museum’s collection simply surpassed our stamina. Some of the outstanding items we saw there included gold death masks from the Mycenaean excavation. Walked back to the hotel and rested before heading back to (where else?) the Plaka for another fine meal. We settled on an early dinner due to the need to get to bed early because of our early flight the next morning. Early, in this case, meant six rather than our usual eight pm—proof that we’d fallen right into a European rhythm. I had wanted to eat at Platonos since both my on-line resource and my Frommer’s guide had recommended it, but we discovered that they didn’t open until seven, so we went back to Xani. It wasn’t quite as happy the second time. We ate in the very back room of the restaurant because all of the sidewalk tables and tables in the front room where the musicians sit were taken. The restaurant was overflowing with an American tour group—retired Midwesterners. I had chicken souvlaki that was mediocre; it was dry and didn’t have a lot of flavor. It was a utilitarian meal that had more to do with filling the stomach than enjoying the experience. After our meal, we went back to the Achilleas for a final night with the stone tablets otherwise known as beds.

Athens - October 6, 2006

I crawled out of bed with a certain sense of freedom. Our tour was over and now we were free to explore Athens on our own time and do whatever our whims dictated we do. My whim dictated that I shower. I lead a spontaneous and fascinating life. The shower was so tiny that if one would drop the soap, one would not be able to bend over to pick it up. I can proudly report to everyone that I did not drop the soap. Breakfast was self-serve on the mezzanine level. The victuals that the hotel provided ranged from good to bad: Good Greek cheese, tasty brown bread, hard-boiled eggs, fresh fruit, yogurt, fake Tang-like orange juice, and instant coffee.

We decided that this would be our day for the Acropolis, so after breakfast we headed in that direction. First, we walked to the Plaka, then to the ancient agora and up the hill through the Propelaea, the 5th century BC entrance, and onto the hill. It is all still there as it was in 1980 when I had last been there, but even ancient ruins change. Most of the buildings are under repair, so there was a lot of construction material, and scaffolding covered many of the old buildings. Still it was good to see these ancient structures again: The Parthenon, the large temple dedicated to Athena; the Erechtheon, built as an honorary tomb to Erechtheus, legendary king of Athens, and containing the famed delicate Caryatids, columns in the female form (these are replicas—the real ones are in museums), and the temple to Athena Nike, the small temple to Athena built in 424 BC. Totally new to me was the Acropolis museum, which included some great recovered statuary. It also held all of the Caryatids from the Erechtheon that are in Greek possession. Another new thing I noticed here that I also noticed at the other archeological sites is restrooms. A very positive step! The Greeks used the British designations and have them all labeled as “WCs.” A rosebush grows by the ladies room door at the Acropolis. I noticed a woman holding one of the blooms gently to her nose and sniffing. Another woman came by and asked, “Is it fragrant?”

“Smells like a loo,” the woman replied.

From the Acropolis, we peered down into the Theater to Dionysus where an orchestra and operatic soprano were recording—never found out who they were. After we were done at the Acropolis, we found an outdoor café for more Greek Salad, and then visited more ruins.

Our post-lunch ruin was the vast ancient agora, the ancient original Athens marketplace at the foot of the Acropolis. In ancient times, the agora, the Acropolis, and the theatre of Dionysus made up the entirety of Athens. The sacred way ran through the agora and up to the Acropolis. The best-preserved ancient temple in all of Greece is located in the ancient agora: The Temple to Hephaestus. It never fell to ruin because it was in constant use through the centuries, first as a church then as a museum.

-Parthenon-

We also visited the old Roman agora. The Roman agora is just off the ancient agora and was constructed contiguous to the ancient agora beginning in the times of Julius Cesar. Much of the Plaka lies between the ancient and Roman agoras and probably covers innumerable undiscovered ruins. Archeologists want to start digging, but so far, the Plaka merchants have held them at bay. The most outstanding building within the Roman agora is the Tower of the Winds. It was originally built in the first century BC as a combination water-powered clock and giant sundial. Under the Turks in the 18th century, it was a Sufi center for whirling dervishes. Nearby, and within the Roman agora is an old mosque, one of the few signs of the 400 years of Turkish occupation.

After looking at the ruins, we did some souvenir shopping in the Plaka. Kathy bought some jewelry and I bought a lightweight white cotton shirt, some Greek Delight to bring to work, and a nice bronze Athena holding an owl and a spear.

We ate at Xani Taberna (XUNI) in the Plaka. It was great sitting at our little street-side table listening to the taberna’s guitarist and bouzouki player while I sipped my Mythos beer. I had another fine Greek salad: cucumbers, purple onion, green pepper, tomatoes, olives, a little olive oil, and a slab of feta sprinkled with oregano. I followed the salad with grilled octopus, something I maintained I would try when I was in Greece. I got a tentacle. It was a little weird eating the little suction cups, but it was good. It tasted like a mild fish, with a firmer texture. I had expected that it might be tough like calamari, but it wasn’t. With all the good food and relaxation, I had my cold on the run. Cold viruses don’t stand a chance in a happy body. We strolled back to the Achilleas and went to bed. Another fine day in Greece.

Kalambaka

Kalambaka is an old Turkish town located in Meteora—the land of the giants. Meteora is located in a fertile plane at the confluence of two rivers. It is notable for the towering columnar rock formations that rise above the plane. The ancient Greeks say that after the giants lost their battle with the gods, the gods turned them to stone in this place. In Christian times, hermits climbed these formations to live their lives in simplicity and solitary prayer and contemplation. Eventually groups of these aesthetics banded together into monastic orders and built monasteries perched atop the rock towers. We spent our morning viewing the monasteries and visiting two of them. In the past, the only way into most of the monasteries was by being hauled up in a basket attached to a rope. Now, in all cases, stairs access the monasteries and some have had roads built to them. They all pretty much have electricity and plumbing now, too. Monasticism isn’t what it used to be. Many of these beautiful old buildings are now empty, or at best have one monk caretaker. Two have become convents. There just aren’t enough monks to go around. Monasticism, as I mentioned before, isn’t what it used to be.

Both of the monasteries that we saw were filled with beautiful examples of Byzantine icons and art and many are in the process of renovation and restoration thanks to tourist dollars. In addition to the amazing art and architecture, the scenery itself was fantastic and awe-inspiring. We took lots of great pictures of all of that plus some cat pictures—Kathy’s particular fascination. At one scenic overlook, we came upon two cute waif kittens that hungrily devoured two crackers, the only food our group had to offer them.

A Meteora Monastery

We drove back to Kalambaka for lunch and ate at a traditional Greek restaurant where, in traditional style, we went into the kitchen to tell the cook what we wanted. The cooks were Mama Kate, the proprietor, and her daughter, who spoke English. I was tempted by the chicken and peppers in retsina wine, but settled for the meatballs, rice, and beans.

After lunch, we went hunting for some Vitamin C to treat my cold. Because a green cross marks all apothecaries, they aren’t hard to spot; but since no two seem to carry the same things, finding a specific item can be an adventure. In the first one we tried, the clerk didn’t speak English. I tried several variations of “Vitamin C” but we were not communicating. Finally, we both just shrugged. As I turned to leave, I spotted a small box on a shelf that had written on it, amidst all the Greek writing, the English phrase “Vit C.” I happily bought it. The box contained two vials of tablets. I promptly opened one vial and popped a tablet in my mouth. An immediate “fizzy-in-the-mouth” reaction allowed me to determine quickly and astutely that these tablets were meant to be put into a glass of water. I found my way to the nearest garbage can, and with my mouth foaming like a rabid dog; I spit the tablet out.

The next apothecary sold me some fruit flavored lozenges that actually proved to be quite effective in relieving my sore throat and making my cold go away. Then, to get the fizzy tablet taste out of my mouth we went in search of a taverna where I could have coffee. We found a little outdoor place on the main street where another member of our tour group was despondently sipping coffee. From previous encounters with this person, I had him pegged as one of those middle-aged American white guys who wanted the whole world to be like his hometown. “I tried to tell them how to make American coffee,” he told us.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Tastes like shit,” he responded.

My first interaction with the Greek coffee hater was the day before when we stopped at an ice cream place that served, according to Irini, the best ice cream in Greece. He was despondently eating ice cream when I sat down next to him. “Where you from?” he asked me.

“Minnesota,” I told him

“You got Cold Stone Creamery there?

“Yes, we do.”

“Well, they sure as hell don’t have it here!”

Eventually, we got back on the bus, left Kalambaka, and spent the rest of the day on the road, driving back to Athens. It rained a little on the way back. Later in the week, Kalambaka and the surrounding area got torrential rains that resulted in flooding. The flooding washed out a bridge on the main highway between Kalambaka and Athens that I assume we had passed over just a few days before.

By the time our bus got through Athens traffic and dropped us at Syntagma Square it was after seven pm. There had been demonstrations that day in central Athens. Irini had been worried about how those demonstrations would affect traffic and if agitation by anarchists would turn the demonstrations to riots, but by the time we arrived, all seemed quiet. The demonstrations were evidently due to the current state of political turmoil. There is much polarization regarding the best economic course for the country. While we were in Greece, the secondary teachers were out on strike demanding a 45% pay increase and local elections imminent, which increased the public discourse. The demonstrations were part of that process.

We walked several blocks from the square to our hotel. This time we were staying in the Achilleas, which was another old, classic hotel, like the Astor, but smaller. The Achilleas, shoehorned between other old buildings on a side street, has around 30 rooms on six floors. After we checked in and unpacked, we walked down to the Plaka and found some Greek salad at an outdoor café called the Hydra (in Greek YDPA), situated in a shaded square. It was dark when we got there, and the café lighting was dim—a few light bulbs fastened to trees. At one point, I put my hand down onto the bench that I was sitting on and felt something tickle my hand. At first, I thought it was a bug and tried to brush it away, but when I looked down, I realized a cat had curled up next to me on the bench. He was not shy. I petted him a little, but when he put his paws on the table and started to show interest in the feta on my salad, it was time for him to go.

After we had eaten, we went back to our little old room, crawled into our little old hard-as-rock beds in our little old cramped home away from home.

Delphi - October 4, 2006

We drove maybe a half-mile from the town of Delphi to the ancient site of Delphi. When the early Christians destroyed the holy Delphic site, because it was pagan, earthquakes had already damaged the temples. The one building that still stood after the Christians finished their work was the Roman agora, the market building built by the Romans below the temple to Apollo. This remaining building became a Christian church, and as is often the case, where there is a church, a town eventually grows up around it. In this case, the town of Delphi was built right on top of the forgotten ruins of the old temples. It wasn’t until the last century that archeologists began to imagine what might lie beneath the town. They actually were able to put together a fund and offer the townspeople money to move to a new location so the site could be excavated. Nobody wanted to move until an earthquake caused extensive property damage. At that point, the offer of money to rebuild made complete sense and the town moved to its present location.

When excavations began, they found that beyond the Agora, and up the mountain were the treasury buildings—each city-state had one to both guard and flaunt their wealth and the spoils from their conquests. Statuary abounded. Above the treasuries was the large temple to Apollo where, in ancient times, the earth was cracked open and fumes emanated—a mysterious and holy place. There in the dim basement of the temple, the priestess would breathe in fumes in an ecstatic, hallucinogenic state while fondling the stone that represented the center of the world. She would babble in tongues and one of the temple priests would interpret her strange incantations to the pilgrims who had come to seek their future or find the answer to their dilemma. The priest always answered the pilgrims’ questions in an ambiguous way to not risk being wrong. Also, a network of spies gained information from the pilgrims as they traveled to Delphi, which helped stack the odds in the favor of the Delphic Oracle.

-By Temple to Apollo, Delphi-

Above the temple was an amphitheater and above that was the stadium—games were held at Delphi as they were at Olympia. At the base of the mountain was a temple to Athena. All of the ruined temples were still located at the site, but any statuary had been relocated to the either the museum at Delphi or the National Archeological Museum. Irini, as usual, gave a great tour. But, as usual, she talked for too long—thus the time we had to look around on our own was a mere 15 minutes. After touring the site, we spent time in the museum and then drove back to the town of Delphi for lunch. After lunch, we made the long drive to Kalambaka.

We arrived in the evening at the Amalia Inn just outside Kalambaka. I’d been fighting a scratchy throat all day and by bedtime, it was obvious that I’d contracted a good old Greek rhinovirus. I took a little stroll around the hotel grounds that evening after sunset—through a small grove of apple and pomegranate trees and then took my cold to bed.

Olympia - October 3, 2006

If there were nothing else in Greece, the trip would be worthwhile just to see Olympia because of the history surrounding it: The site of the original Olympic games; the original stadium, the ruins of the Temple to Zeus, the Temple to Hera, the Phillipian Temple built by Phillip of Macedonia. The games were run every four years from 776 BC until 393 AD. Then the games ended and eventually the site slipped into disuse and ruin. When the site was finally excavated, it was covered by ten feet of dirt.

-Phillipian Temple, Olympia-

There is a great new museum, new since I was there before, with a wonderful collection of statuary and other artifacts recovered from the Olympian temples.

After spending the morning at Olympia, we drove on to Delphi via the new bridge over the Corinthian Straight at Patra. We stopped at a Greek version of a truck stop in Patra—a BP gas station and a snack shop. Impressively, they served cappuccino in real cups and had a second floor area to relax and enjoy your cappuccino while looking at the straights and the new bridge. Plus, they had waiters to pick up your cups.

We got to Delphi in time to watch the sunset over the Ionian Sea from our perch in the mountains—another Amalia Hotel. We did some shopping in Delphi—Kathy bought some earrings, a bracelet, and some worry beads. She bought me a pig—a little pink porcelain porcine. Might be the only pig in Greece. She bought several decks of mythological playing cards and I got some woven bookmarks for gifts.
We had a buffet dinner at the hotel—all the standard Greek fare: Dolmadis, spankopita, calamari, mousaka, pestitsio, and all sorts of other good things. The hotel was nice, and the view, as I mentioned, was fantastic. The town was fun—there were two very steep main streets running more or less perpendicular to the slope and parallel to each other and there were stairs connecting these two streets. The slope was so steep between the two streets, that there was a mere building’s width separating them but what was the main floor on the upper street was the second floor on the lower street—and the main floor on the lower street was the basement for the upper street. The drop-off was so steep on the lower street that buildings built along the other side of that street were six stories high and you entered the sixth floor from that street level. There was a little terrace at the base of those buildings, but no street and then there was another even more precipitous drop-off.

CHAT Tour - October 2, 2006

This was the first day of our CHAT tour. A CHAT person met us at 8 AM in our hotel lobby. The tour bus couldn’t make it down our narrow little street, so we walked out to the square to get on the bus. The bus was big and contained about 25 other tourists. Our tour guide’s name was Irini and our driver was Socrates. We found our way out of Athens during rush-hour traffic and finally picked up one of the new roads that the Greek government built for the influx of Olympics tourists. We drove across the bridge over the Corinthian canal into the Peloponnesian peninsula and made our first stop at the bridge for refreshments. Then we drove on to Epidaurus, an ancient center for healing. The acoustically perfect amphitheater there is still intact and still in use. We drove through beautiful countryside and stopped at the port of Naufplia long enough to take pictures of the Doges island palace and the Venetian fortress on the hill. A variety of foreign powers has occupied Greece from the time of the Romans until the mid-1800’s, and Venice controlled this particular corner of Greece at one time.

Then we drove on to Mycenae to look at the Mycenaean citadel and beehive tomb—dating back to 1250 BC. Homer told the story of how the Greeks at Mycenae under King Agamemnon went to Troy and fought the Trojans for ten years to reclaim Helen from the Trojan prince Paris. The German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann found and excavated Troy in the late 1800’s proving once and for all that Troy was not just a mythological city. In 1874, he began to excavate Mycenae and found a city that matched Homer’s descriptions perfectly. He also uncovered a treasure trove of artifacts, including gold death masks that are now on display at the Archeological Museum in Athens.

We stopped in Megolopoli for coffee in a nice little town square park, then drove on to Olympia. We got to the Amalia Hotel in Olympia late, had an 8:30 dinner (so-so fish, rice, and vegetables), and then went to bed—a long day.

Athens - Puppies in the Temple

I’m not sure exactly when the day started—somewhere in the dark over the Atlantic when I advanced my watch from Eastern US time to Greece time, I suppose—a seven-hour time difference. Eventually the sun rose and we flew over Europe and landed at the Athens airport. We disembarked, got ourselves to the luggage pickup area and rejoiced that our luggage actually arrived with us after switching planes twice. We were waved through customs, changed money, found the metro to Athens, and boarded without a hitch. There was some confusion regarding if we were on the right train. There didn’t seem to be anybody in charge there. The only passengers were tourists—perhaps because it was early on a Sunday morning. I asked a few if we were on the right train and they seemed confused as we were. A few people asked us, too, and we no doubt seemed confused as they were.

Kathy slept on the ride into Athens and I looked at the landscape until we went underground. We arrived in Syntagma Square, the large square in front of the Greek Parliament building in central Athens, got off the train and found our hotel without too much trouble. At first we got a little lost & confused among all the little streets that meandered willy-nilly off the square. We were at the point of finding someone to ask for directions when a gentleman decided we looked like confused tourists and pointed us in the right direction. We thanked him for his help and when he started promoting his tour services we told him that we were not interested since we already had one booked..

The Astor Hotel was about what I expected—a little worn about the cuffs, but clean, more or less, the staff was hospitable, more or less. Regardless, it was nice to have a bed to lie down on after having been cramped in the cattle-car environment of the plane for hours and hours. We felt dirty and wanted to shower, but had no towels in our room and the hotel could apparently only provide towels on their schedule, not ours. We took a nap and then, still grimy but somewhat rested, we went out to explore Athens.

We ate at a little nondescript outdoor restaurant on Syntagma Square—I had a beer and a sandwich, and then we looked at the ruins excavated from the site of the Syntagma Square subway station. It is amazing that pretty much anywhere you excavate in Athens, you’ll not only find artifacts, but you’ll find artifacts from a variety of periods. I guess that goes along with Athens having been continuously occupied for over 3000 years.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

After looking at the Syntagma Square artifacts we went back to our hotel for a rest and then went hiking through the park behind Parliament—the National Garden. We wound up down by the ruins of the Temple to the Olympian Zeus. The temple was one of the largest temples in the ancient world and the massive columns scattered on the ground bore testament to that. The Greeks started building it in the 6th century BC, but it was not until 700 years later that the Emperor Hadrian oversaw the completion of construction. The temple at one time contained two large statues, one of Zeus, and one of Hadrian, who obviously had ego issues. The ruins now are home to some feral looking dogs. One of the dogs had a den with six puppies beneath some collapsed columns. The puppies weren’t at all shy. Kathy ooed, cooed, and made friends.

We took puppy pictures and ruins pictures and pictures of Hadrian’s Arch, which was also located there. Hadrian built the arch as another way for him to demonstrate his claim on the city. The inscription on one side reads, “This is Athens, the ancient city of Thesus.” The other side is inscribed, “This is the city of Hadrian, not Thesus.” We walked past the arch, once the official entrance into the city, and entered the ancient city. The area of steep winding streets on the slopes of the Acropolis is the Plaka, and is now home to millions of outdoor restaurants and souvenir shops. We wandered around the Plaka looking at touristy souvenirs, ate at a little sidewalk café, and finally found our way back to the hotel after dark.

Puppies!

The hotel had a rooftop (10 stories up) restaurant with a great view of the Acropolis, which is illuminated at night. Our final activity before calling it a day was to have apple pie and coffee on the roof while looking at the view. The coffee was OK, the apple pie was a little suspect, but the view was incredible and will be one of those images that I carry with me the rest of my life.