Cameos - Stories
Scroll down through these word images to trip around the world, visiting memories, escapes and escapades which could not be captured on film.
Other cameos:
Puerto Rico
listening to the Chirp of the Coqui frog after a heavy rainfall in the El Junque rain forest ...
diving into the shallow lagoon of La Parguera, and watching the bioluminescence shimmer in the spray of the boat motor and my delighted splashes, by moonlight.
The first time I discovered the phenomenon of bioluminescence I was 17, I had jumped off the back of the sail boat into a protected bay off the Coast of Marmaris, Turkey, and I couldn't believe such a marvel could exist. I saw it again, in the Galapagos Islands, night diving with the sea lions and nurse sharks.
Scroll down for linked world map
Kiawah Island, South Carolina, watching the newborn green baby sea turtles emerge from their nests and head toward the waterline, chased and apprehended by big lizards and hunting seabirds
Fiji - Suva to Taveuni Island
Swimming freestyle alone in the Channel between the Nigel Edward family resort and Laucala Island, owned by Malcom Forbes, and being shadowed by a giant manta ray, so large I didn't know they existed, and being frightened to become this unknown (at the time) gentle plankton eating sea creature's meal.
Diving vertical walls of beautiful purple and yellow gorgonians and sea fans.
Sangalakki beach in Borneo
Sangalakki Island, Borneo - meeting my first school of giant manta rays
Palau - Koror and Rock Islands, Jellyfish Lake
Flying in by tiny seaplane. Dense reefs filled with color and marine life.
Spending 2 hours - using up the last ounces of oxygen in my dive tank suspended underwater with the jellies.
Kingdom of Tonga
Tongatapu lagoon, Vavau lobster tacos, and meeting Tui Malila, the iconic radiated Madagascar sea turtle given to the Royal family by Captain James Cook in Nuku'alofa.
Tu'i Malila - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu%27i_Malila)
Guilin China
Navigating the misty, extraordinary Li River, seeing the karst formations.
Almost losing an eye to a nighttime fishing cormorant.
Seeing Buddhist monks use the high speed internet in Yangshuo during a torrential downpour when the rest of the town's power supply had gone out.
Longsheng Terraces,
Losing our path and traversing the terraces by lantern, among some of the most extensive agricultural terraces on earth.
France: Paris.
Finding favorite styles and media, of art - ceramics and oils and pastels, in the museums. Musee D'Orsay, Champs Elysees. Learning about L'artisan Parfumeur, the perfumist to French Royalty, near the Rodin Museum and bringing home my first 400 year old line of perfumes. Walking through the Louvre til my feet ached.
Dancing in the French discos til 5 am
Tokyo - Rappongi
Tokyo discos all night long til the sun came up.
Having my mother and sister arrive into Tokyo, hopping onto a 10 pm bus, summitting Mt. Fuji on my birthday, cold and wet, not knowing enough about alpinism that we needed to have protection for the chill associated with altitude, or the rain. Seeing octogenarians make the climb.
And, seeing the pilgrimage climbs at Ishizuchi mountain.
Mt. Rainier, Washington State.
Making it past the Cleaver and sumitting Mount Rainier, picking through the sharp, jagged suncups, then dancing - hopping up and down excitedly at the shoulder hut on the way down, having never done anything as physically demanding as that in my life, and discovering that I could will myself to complete the climb and the trek down.
Sleeping 20 hours, and waking up feeling parts that I didn't know I could sense, from fatigue.
Lake Ohrid, Macedonia - crossing Central Europe's oldest and deepest lake
Chilean Lake District
Seeing the unusual tourmaline color due to mineral content of the runoff
Berlin, near the Helmut Newton photography museum.
Going to a goth laser light and punk rock music show in Berlin, with my 70+ year old mother, after seeing the Helmut Newton collection.
Discovering the Epic of Gilgamesh had a flood myth and seeing the Gates of Ishtar in the Berlin Museum
Carcassonne, France
Foundation dating to about 3500BC
The smell of the lavender fields, and discovering the campaign during the Albigensian Crusaders, to exterminate the Cathars, a rival, heterodox religious sect with varying interpretations of the Christian narrative.
Dordogne Forest, France (Monkey’s Forest)
Sampling a myriad of cheeses, mushrooms and mustards - artisanal gourmet delights, in the Forest manor houses and cave cellars of the French forests.
Chenonceau Castle, France Galloping a beautiful tall dapple grey horse through the bridle paths around the Castle, and mounting up in the Castle stables
Hang gliding tandem off the cliffs near
Sugarloaf, Rio de Janeiro
Northern lights - and the Fjords, in Norway
Saone River, France
Swans gliding silently
Balea Lac Hotel of Ice, Romania
Overnight, on blocks of solid ice, and Dracula's castle, Bran Castle, Brasov Romania
Harbin China
Being the only European tourists at the very end of season, 40 degree farenheit below zero, seeing scale size Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Kremlins, and other world features in Ice and Snow, snow sculptures, using sign language (only) to get help from the taxi drivers going to and from the winter showgrounds.
Mekong Delta
Trying to understand the hyperabundance of the brick factories lining hundreds, overall, of kilometers of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and verging on Cambodia
London - Swan Lake Ballet, and the Phantom of the Opera.
Viennese Opera, and, also, in Budapest.
Falkland Islands
Seeing tame wild penguins in the rookeries, including King, Macaroni, Gentoo, and Rockhopper
Beagle Channel, Straits of Magellan
Sea lions and light house
Guatemala
Sunrise at Templo Mayor, Tikal. Swimming laps, almost 3/4 mile one way, across an alligator infested lake, that I later found out was a mortal threat, and being so scared after the fact I couldn't sleep. Climbing Agua, the extinct volcano, swimming in Lake Panajachel, having tea with Sarito and listening to the sound of my friend's bongo drums, learning about Maximon, the cigar smoking and whiskey drinking effigy,
Guatemala - Poas Volcano - sliding down the deep ash slope, with cinder filling our socks and hiking boots, feeling the heat and the power of the sonic fumes, close enough to smell the sulphurous fumes, of the live active volcano.
Bosphorus Straits - Turkey.
Listening to a family friend, Rose Hayden, play the grand piano during sailaway, as the sunset and we had a history lecture of the region.
London
The Lion King puppets and music.
Kairouan, Tunisia
Taking a carriage drive around the rampart walls
Carthage, Tunisia
Learning about the 700 year Cult of the Baal, and the Romans sowing salt and burning Carthage to the ground, in revenge.
The Cothon, and the Carthage Museum, and, the Bardo.
Tibet
Seeing and learning about sky burial. Watching the faithful make a religious pilgrimage the monks chanting, and yak butter tea. three weeks on the Tibetan plateau.
Irian Jaya:
Flying in from Yogyakarta, and visiting Borobodur - learning about the life of the Buddha - and Prambanan temples, where we saw a live performance of the Ramayana, by way of Bali, talking the Indonesian police chiefs into giving us permission Passes, taking a missionary flight and landing in the Baliem Valley, that only less than 50 years prior western missionaries had experienced their first encounter with true headhunting cannibals.
Seeing the Michael Rockefeller Museum in Jayapura, learning of his fate, along with Dani, Asmat and Yali people, in the local vegetable and goods and local handicrafts market.
Seeing the phallocrypts everywhere. Hiking in, unaccompanied but for one trusted travel companion, into the Valley, participating in a roasted pig feast - spontaneously, not arranged for us, as we just happened to wander into this territory at the right time.
That night, we were given the chieftain's hut as a symbol of honor, for our brave arrival into this territory which still had outbursts of headhunting activity, and I remember distinctly, the conditions were so terrible, that we laughed until we cried. The mosquito nets, dirty, unmended, and suspended over a hard board bed rack, with no mattress or coverings of any kind, just a bare board...the nets that were meant to protect us, shook with the movement of the voluble rats' feet as they clambered across the eaves, raining down roaches and rat droppings, mites and lice into our hair and onto our sweat soaked hiking clothes. We had no place to bathe or change, so we slept in our mud soaked gear. I spent that cold night, shivering, awe inspired, humbled, worried about stomach trouble, and mostly sitting upright hugging my knees for warmth and to minimize the landing space for the lice and roaches that were falling and tangling themselves into my long hair.
Seeing the Dani war widows - when they lost a son or male relative, the finger bones, starting with the first joint, and then, if circumstances arose, the second joint of the fingers, of the female relatives, including young children, would be crushed and broken off with dull, terrible stones on the day of the mourning feast ritual. Smoking cheroots, and watching the women and children forage for pig scraps after the better tidbits were first thrown to the hunting dogs. I was allowed to poke my head inside a round thatch hut and see the half shadowed figure of the desiccated, smoked mummy of a revered chieftain, in rigor mortis in a sitting position, accompanying living male warriors who were passing an idle afternoon out of the heat of the day's sun, and asked that he be brought out and examined, so I could photograph him (whereupon a photo tithe was expected, and given).
Gozo, Malta
Making friends with a tame wild octopus during a check out dive in the bay.