This blue marble

– and yet it spins

Category Archives: Travel


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Where is the surf?

Bahiahonda

How lovely the sun feels on my skin, tortured by the December chills back home. How gorgeously turquoise the water is, and how white and fine the sand on the beach. And how eerily quiet the ocean is: flip-flip-flip little wavelets grace the edge of the dry sand as the tide rises. A thought gently nudges the back of my head until I lift it out into the light: “This is the Atlantic ocean, and Cuba is the next piece of land, far in the distance”, it says. “So where is the surf?”

Indeed. The little timid wavelets do not even pretend to be a surf.  The mighty Atlantic is showing off its force several miles seaward, at the great Florida reef, which stills every swell wishing to pass through. There is no surfing in the Keys because there is no surf. And where there is no surf there are no waves breaking rock into beach sand. Bahia Honda key is the only proper, naturally sandy beach and here I am, smack in the middle of a pocket-size paradise.

The quiet flip-flip-flip calling of the waves is irresistible. I roll up my jeans, never-minding they will get soaked anyway, and wade out thigh-high into the endlessly blue, endlessly shallow, liquid sunlight.

(Florida Keys, USA; December 2013)


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Quick dip into Dublin

dublin

The Dublin face of the Celtic Tiger is still impressive even if the stripes have temporarily faded. The congregation of half-empty, glitzy, glass-steel-strict-design apartment buildings at the docks cast a glow of once-high hopes of masses of wealthy young and hip people moving in for a fortune. Considering the size of Ireland and its population, the calculations must have been a teensy bit on the optimistic side. One cannot help but wonder how much the apartments were supposed to sell for, or how many real estate development companies lost their lives in the downfall of the economy. Or how many families lost their dinner on the table because mommy’s or daddy’s dreams did not pay off.

For a working weekend visitor, what is gone is gone. Taking the docklands at face value, the excellent service, interesting design, and wonderful spa of the Marker hotel on the docks is a good consolation. But what’s with the neon lights everywhere?

(Dublin, Ireland; November 2013)


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So strict, so gray, so gorgeous – be mine!

Rosersberg

Can you hear the hooves clicking on the cobblestones? Do you see the steaming horses and the bustle of a departing riding party? Do you hear the clattering in the kitchen, later resulting in a celebratory Sunday dinner? I did, as I peeked out through the window into the courtyard.

And I sank into the bubbles of my heart-shaped bathtub and dreamed I was a princess.

(Rosersberg palace, Stockholm, Sweden; October 2013)


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Purple moment

wasinibeach-2

Do you know that moment when day breaks into dusk, and when it is too late for the sun, yet too early for the stars? Up north we call it the blue moment. On Wasini Island the fiery hot sun slowly fades into an orange afterglow, finally washing into a purple watercolor sky. Plain blue would be too simple and subdued after a white-hot day.

(Mkwiro, Kenya; September 2013)


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Once a scout…

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“Lighting a fire with two sticks? Why, it’s easy, just like one-two-three!” And I cringed at the recollection of a 13-year-old desperately trying to rub a stick on a piece of wood to prove she is really a scout. Shrugging the frustrating memory away I sighed, grabbed the stick and began to twirl it between my hands. “More pressure, come on, every woman in the village does it!” Clearly I have no strength in my deltoids and triceps because I could not produce even the slightest wisp of smoke.

“Oh never mind, give it here” the Maasai sighed. He gave the stick perhaps ten well-targeted twirls, and puff, it began to smoke at the base. A couple of quick blows, a little kindling, and voilá, a little fire. Easy peasy, yes?tsavo-33

(Tsavo East National Park, Kenya; September 2013)


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Sharing a moment with our house mantis

Shimoni-1

While I did the dishes I was rooting for the praying mantis on the kitchen wall. A fly was walking right into her reach. It stopped to contemplate the world, without noticing the mantis with her claws frozen, ready to attack. “Go grab it!” I cheered. “It’s your dinner, and it looks delicious!” But the mantis sat still, without unraveling her long, spindly, strong front legs into a split-second killing grip. And the fly, finishing its meditation with a quiet “om shanti”, flew off into the night.

Perhaps she is lacking stereo vision, I thought, and inquired, “OK what just happened?” The mantis turned her head slowly and looked at me. Together we shared the regret of dinner gone amiss. Disappointment shone in her eyes, but did I also catch surprise?

Our mantis is not the sharpest tool in the shed, I am afraid.

(Shimoni, Kenya; September 2013)


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The Ghost and the Darkness

tsavo-18

The Maasai warriors claimed not to see the lions. Instead they saw dark shadows of pure evil. The Ghost and the Darkness owned the night – and the day, too. In 1898 they killed dozens of railroad workers before they met their own fate, by the hand of John Henry Patterson. Tsavo lions are huge and fearless. What unspeakable terror it must have been to come to strange, hot, foreign Africa to work on a railroad – and to be dragged out of one’s tent at night, just to satisfy a man-eating lion’s thirst for blood.

Graceful, beautiful killers.

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(Tsavo East National Park, Kenya; September 2013)