ICEBOX PLUMS: Moments, sweet and cold
travel blogs and more
We landed in Beijing at 7:00 on Friday night, and even though I had sent the budget tour company the wrong arrival time, our guide met us anyway, a tiny young woman in the shouting airport throng, wearing a bright red hat and scarf and smiling a smile that took up most of her face. She …
I DID see a leech. I found one in my pants during lunch. I stood up to get a cup of coffee and my thigh itched. When I scratched it, a soft tootsie-roll-thing slid around under my fingers. I thought at first it was the spare toilet paper that I keep tucked in my wasteband …
Even on vacation I struggle with goal-setting and achievement. I love to bird watch. But what sort of spotting should give me the most satisfaction? A half- glimpse of what what might possibly be a rhinosaurus hornbill or a face to face conversation with what definitely is a common sparrow? And if I see …
Afiq arrived in his van the next morning to take us to the jungle. Afiq is an earnest young man who was born in a village alongside the Kinabatangan River. He is affable, but intense about his job as a jungle guide. Once he and his father caught malaria on a hunting trip because …
We flew from Brunei to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, an easy on twenty-minute Royal Brunei Airlines flight, half-full of serene passengers enjoying their free newspaper and plastic cups of apple juice. From the airport we took a “Grab”, which is the Asian equivalent of Uber, downtown to our hotel, a giant pink monstrosity of condos. The …
We flew from Portland to San Francisco to Tokyo to Singapore to Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city of Brunei. During the SFO-Singapore section our seats in the very back row jiggled like water balloons on a trampoline which led to some uncomfortable vomiting, but luckily Japan Airlines supplies plenty of barf bags. Traveler’s note: …
We booked rooms at the La Quinta near the airport the night before we left, not because our first flight was particularly early, but because we didn’t want to add any knots to the string of transports that needed to come together to get us all to Borneo. I stress, before we leave for trips. …
Banos, Ecuador Monday, January 19, 2015 Maybe the Galapagos would be better off if we all just left it alone. I can't get around the irony of hundreds of thousands of people paying a bunch of money to come to a place that is special because it is "untouched", and then touching it …
Buccaneer's Bay, Galápagos, Ecuador Friday, January 16, 2015 Here we are in the Galapagos. I'd envisioned the Galapagos as a kind of modern day Eden, where giant tortoises and sea lions snuggled on white sand beaches, framed by waving grasses and gently chirping finches. I imagined Darwin twirling among them all-- a bearded …
Fernandina, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador Tuesday, January 13, 2015 We're on a National Geographic/Sven Linblad boat called the "Islander" cruising through the Galapagos Islands. I would like to see an albatross, though we probably won’t get far enough south. I'm reading a book called "The Lifeboat" in which a Titanic-like boat sinks, leaving …
ICEBOX PLUMS: Moments, sweet and cold 