Archive
eCard #116 – Toodling Around Uganda
I had organized a car and driver/guide to take me around to some of the national parks in Uganda after hiking in the Rwenzori Mountains (eCard #115). I used local (Kampala) agent Churchill’s Tailored Safaris – great front-end experience via email and WhatsApp with Ether (EHT-air) putting together an itinerary.
Having bailed out of the mountains trip unexpectedly early, Ether was able to extend my itinerary at the front end very quickly. (It was the low season for tourists.) What was originally a look at the national parks in the southwest of the country became a grand tour. Brighton, picked me up the in the expedition Landcruiser the day after I returned to Kasese from the mountains, and off we went.
The pics on flickr are in two albums:
Queen Elizabeth National Park, Part I
I’ve never hired a guide just for me alone for any period of time, so I thought it was going to be a bit weird. The potential weirdness was compounded when checking into the Buffalo Safari Resort in Queen Elizabeth National Park it became apparent that I was the only guest there . It’s a really nice place, and was staffed for a full house. I had the impression that everyone were recent graduates of hospitality training and anxious to put their skills into practice. Four people checked me in, three showed me my room, etc.
This lodge (as for most places I stayed) was within the national park boundaries. There were mongoose and monkeys outside my room. Elephant poo on the walkway. I was instructed to call for an escort to/from my room between 7PM and 7AM. He carried a big flashlight, swinging it around checking the brush on either side of the walk, and he carried a big billy club. I’m not sure what use a billy club is against a charging elephant, but I felt safe. At least he didn’t carry an AK47.
After lunch we headed off for the first game drive of the trip. I told Brighton that I had been to Africa in 2000 for six months and saw many animals, but never saw a leopard (one of the BIG FIVE – lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, and buffalo). As all guides do, he made no promises, but said we would have several chances to see them on our trip. We hit the road about 3:30PM. At 4:10 we saw the first lion of the trip relaxing from the heat in the branches of a tree. At 4:45 we saw a leopard in a candelabra tree. And at 4:50 saw a second leopard in another tree… Um. Wow! There were loads of elephants, a few hippos and countless antelope-like critters. Not a bad first afternoon.
The overly attentive service didn’t end with check-in. I was told that meals were a fixed menu since the kitchen would be cooking just for me. No problem, I’m easy. Then the waitress listed several choices of appetizer and five choices for the main course for dinner. The meals were superb.
Some of the best food I’ve ever had. Anywhere.
And it wasn’t just due the elephant poo ambience. We were only here for two nights, but I could have luxuriated between the dining room and the pool looking across the valley to the Rwenzori Mountains for quite some time.
Geologic Digression
The valley I looked across to the Rwenzoris is a rift valley. Normally we hear about tectonic plates crashing into each other, either pushing ground up to form mountains (like where the Indian plate crashes northward into the Eurasian plate forming the Himalayas), or where plates slide along or under one another – fault lines and subduction zones like the west coast of the Americas forming chains of uplifted mountains and volcanoes. And all this gnashing of plates generates earthquakes.
Rifts occur where the tectonic plates are pulling apart. As they pull apart they make the crust thinner leaving lowlands between them, and this also allows volcanoes to appear (Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya are on the Eastern African rift). Iceland is still forming this way – it’s at the northern end of Mid-Atlantic Ridge – the separation line of the continuing expansion between the North and South American plates as they pull apart from the Eurasian and African plates.
As a rift valley expands, water intrudes to form lakes and further expansion results in outlets to the sea, or a sea forms. The Atlantic Ocean is the end result of this process. In east Africa this process is in a younger phase (only 20 million years old). The East African Rift extends for almost 6000km and has formed a chain of lakes – The Great Lakes of Africa.
The other Great Lakes are in North America. There are interesting comparisons. The most striking for me is that the lakes in Africa contain 25% of the unfrozen fresh water in the world. The N. American lakes contain 21% (though I don’t think that number includes the Great Bear and Great Slave lakes in Canada).
- Homework: What are the biggest fresh water lakes in the world in terms of surface area? Volume? Depth?
- Hint 1: One lake holds all three records.
- Hint 2: It’s not in Africa.
- Hint 3: It’s not in New Hampshire.
- Hint 4: In area it’s about 50% larger than New Hampshire.
(Reader Jim L. told me I was a frustrated teacher. That may well be. But my only frustration is with the quality of my students 🙂 )
Queen Elizabeth National Park, Part II
QENP is on the floor of the western part of the East African Rift Valley – The Albertine Rift Valley (I guess named for it’s proximity to Lake Albert). It’s elevation is low, and it’s on the equator. It’s hot. If not for the vegetation beyond the poolside umbrellas, you could see the 20 mile long Kazinga Channel from the pool at the lodge. This is a natural waterway connecting Lake George and Lake Edward. (Lake Albert is farther north near Murchison Falls.)
The next morning we did a drive paralleling the channel that took us through an area of low volcanic craters. Some of them contain saline lakes, and there is a minor salt industry collecting it. We passed a large herd of elephant in the distance hanging around near the water. (Suggested collective nouns for elephants include herd, parade, memory, trunkful, tusker. For hippos you can use bloat, herd, pod or crash, though I prefer to use “crash” for rhinos. For Tibetan momos I suggest “belch”.)
We turned around in the small town of Katwe after watching a bloat of hippos in the water. One female hippo was floating in the water dead, and several young hippos kept approaching her body and nudging it.
That afternoon I took a boat trip up and down a small section of the channel and saw elephants, hippos, and buffalo from the water. An iguana was prowling the shore for crocodile eggs. We didn’t see any Nile crocs.
There were a few colorful birds. My dad was an avid birder, and I know my folks came to Africa at least once to extend his list, but they didn’t make it to Uganda. There are 1000 native species in the country, plus about 200 varieties that migrate here from the European winter.
Queen Elizabeth National Park, Part III
Moving south to the Ishasha section of the park we did afternoon and morning game drives. The park is noted for seeing lions lounging in branches of the big fig trees. We went to all the fig trees Brighton knew of and didn’t see any lions. Didn’t really matter. It’s a pretty place. We saw some topi and a distant view of the big volcano, Mt. Muhabura, on the Rwandan border.
From Ishasha we had a long drive south and a climb in altitude away from the floor of the rift valley to the cool environs of Lake Mulehe which would be the base for a mountain gorilla trek.
One of the striking things about Uganda is how green it is. It’s incredibly lush, though a bit drier on the floor of the rift valley. But in the hills we’re talking Garden of Eden lush. Brighton declared, “Uganda is a poor country, but no one starves because there’s food everywhere!” This was certainly true in the southwest (definitely not true in the northeast…). Bananas are the staple food crop, and coffee and tea the major cash crops. You also see a lot of cassava/manioc growing.
Lake Mulehe Gorilla Lodge was perched on the south facing slopes above the lake with a great view of Mts. Muhabura and Mgahinga. This was the third lodge I stayed in, but the first place that had other guests.
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest
Returning to Uganda I absolutely had to see the mountain gorillas again. My previous visit in 2000 (eCard #9) ranked as the number one or two best hour-long experiences ever. It’s always a risk to go back to a place to try to re-live an experience. It’s usually different and not as great. And I suppose in the intervening 24 years I’ve become a bit jaded in my travels, and not apt to gush enthusiastic without good reason. But I do have to say being in the wild with large wild animals that can easily kill you is a thrill. Even if they are habituated to humans. So this trip, though different in details, was no different in the experience.
This year I saw the gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and we saw a small family with one silver back, a couple of females and a few juveniles. In 2000 I saw them in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park just a bit farther south right on the border with Rwanda – a group comprised of two big silver backs, females, juveniles and a 3 month old baby. It’s difficult to see them in the dense foliage, but that makes it more fun.
The old eCard noted that we got to within about 15 feet of the animals. Although the sign at the briefing hut says you have to stay 10m away, this time we were within just a few feet of them. At one point the tracking guide had lost track of the big silver back in the dense foliage, and he came rushing past me just a few feet away. Wowzers!
I mentioned in eCard #9 that I shot “several” rolls of film in the hour we had with the gorillas. So that’d be 108 photos (actually a few less). In the hour with the gorillas this year, now armed with a digital camera, I took a hasty 700 pictures and a couple of videos. I took no selfies.
I’ve posted photos from both visits on flickr
On to Murchison Falls National Park
From Lake Mulehe we had a long drive to Murchison Falls which is north of the Rwenzoris. We drove up and down the hilly terrain of the region with one final look back to the volcanoes marching south. The drive was broken up over a couple of days with one night spent on Lake Bunyonyi.
The standout sight on the lake commemorates a milestone in the subjugation of women. Punishment Island is where unmarried girls who became pregnant were abandoned to starve or to drown trying to escape. Single men unable to afford the bride price for an “untainted” woman could rescue them.
Pressing on, we were back to the heat of the rift valley, and we didn’t leave the heat for the rest of the trip.
All the water in the Nile River as it flows north out of Lake Victoria squeezes through a 20 foot wide cleft in a rock escarpment as it drops 150 feet, creating Murchison Falls. I took a boat trip up the Nile to view the falls. Unfortunately, we didn’t get as close as I would have liked, but there was quite a bit of wildlife to see enroute. After the boat trip, Brighton drove us to the top of the falls for the view from above.
The national park is a huge place, and on the game drives we saw many giraffes, elephants, hartebeest, patas monkeys, and baboons. Off in the distance we saw three lions hanging around in the shade, but no leopards.
A Long Jaunt to Karamoja and the Kadepo Valley
Departing Murchison, it was a two day drive to the remote Kadepo Valley National Park in Karamoja – the far northeastern corner of Uganda near the borders of South Sudan and Kenya. This wasn’t on my original itinerary, and I wasn’t too sure what there was to see here.
Security
I have an annual subscription to Global Rescue who will pull you out of a bad situation. I have this for mountain rescue. It is possible to buy coverage from them for extraction for security reasons. I don’t have that coverage, though perhaps I should get it. I generally don’t pay too much attention to travel advisories. But for some reason I felt the need to look up the Uganda “Destination Report” on their app to find out about Uganda:
“Risk Overview. The risk rating for Uganda is High due to a Moderate security risk rating and an Extreme health risk rating.”
So far, so good.
“The northeastern region, especially Karamoja, should be avoided due to banditry and weak law enforcement. The western border with the DRC is unstable.”
Glad I didn’t read this before leaving home! Just for kicks I checked the US State Department Travel Advisory. Uganda is “Level 3 – Reconsider Travel.” Too late, now. It lists general threats due to terrorism and crime, “… especially in the Karamoja region, and along Uganda’s western and northern borders.” Um, that would be Congo and South Sudan – where I was and where I’m going.
The Foreign & Commonwealth Office is responsible for issuing travel advisories for the UK. They are typically less hysterical than the US State Department (Brits tend to think of insecure areas as discount travel opportunities), so I checked to see what they had to say.
“FCDO advises against all but essential travel to: (among other places) Queen Elizabeth National Park.” Ooopsie. “There is an increased security presence in north-east Uganda in the Karamoja sub-region due to cattle theft. Military and civilians have been killed during security operations.” Hmmm.
I raised my concern with Brighton. “No, it’s very safe.”
“Oh. OK, then. Let’s go.”
Kadepo Valley National Park
During the drive we passed many traditional homesteads. Typically there’s a large central circular building made of sticks and mud with a thatched roof. This would be the residence of the first wife. Subsequent wives have smaller versions built around the center home. The compound may be surrounded by a thicket fence so cattle can be kept securely. A man’s income is dependent on the wives, for you see, the men generally don’t work. Wives make you rich. Unless you make the mistake of taking a wife in the city where she’ll end up costing you money, I’m told. I was thinking these people may have hit on it, but then I realized the fatal flaw in the arrangement. Marriage.
We stayed in a tent lodge overlooking Kadepo Valley with hills forming the border with Kenya and South Sudan off in the distance. My tent had ensuite facilities, but no phone. On the night stand there was a whistle I could blow in case of emergency…
It was hot and dry here. We were at the tail end of the dry season in Karamoja. The animals were suffering from it as the water sources were drying up. We did see many elephants and a huge herd of buffalo, hippos, zebra, giraffe, a group of wombats (collective noun “mob”) with a predator hyena eyeing them, and we also stumbled on a group of eland – very skittish and hard to get close to. No lions. No leopards.
My camera shut down one afternoon. This happens occasionally for some unknown reason, but it usually comes back up with a reboot. But it was out for the count one afternoon. At about the same time Brighton’s phone stopped working. We were in the shade, but supposed that the heat was causing the electronics to shut down. I looked up the specs for my camera that evening, and Sony says the max operable temp range is 40C/104F. It was hot, but I would have thought the camera would have been designed to operate a bit warmer than that…
I thought back to other hot experiences. Traveling in Xinjiang province in western China, John and I were visiting the ruins of Gaochang in the Turfan depression – the low point of Asia. It was 50C/122F. I looked down to read a map, and the lenses to my glasses fell out – the metal rims had expanded in the heat. I think the hottest temp I’ve experienced was in Death Valley in California. The temp was reported as 130F/54C. I came back to the campground one evening after being out all day, and I remarked to the ranger that it had really cooled off. He said, “Yeah. It’s only 105 now.”
Moroto and the Karamaojong
We split the two day drive to Kampala/Entebbe by spending the night in Moroto and visited a traditional Karamojong village. The whole northeast was very dry. Farming and agriculture look pretty difficult. The region is very flat except for a few mountains and rocky outcroppings that appear. There were signs for every international aid agency you could think of announcing their projects and involvement in the area. So although it might be true that no one in the southwest of Uganda starves, it is not true in the northeast.
The Karamojong people are actually several different tribes and descendants of the same stock of people who left Ethiopia a long time ago and became known as the Masai in Tanzania. Like the Masai, the Karamojong are semi-nomadic cattle herders. Their other main economic activity is cattle rustling. Your wealth is measured directly in how many head of cattle you own (indirectly by how many wives you have), and you need cattle to pay a bride price – typically 100 cows. This activity often involves murder, so it gives people the opportunity to form tight family circles and feuds.
A flood of guns became available when Idi Amin’s army fell into disarray in the late 1970’s. This transformed the traditional form of rustling using spears into a much more deadly pastime. Starting in 2011 the Ugandan government began disarming the locals and crime and violence has declined. Unfortunately, Kenya is just a stone’s throw away and they have not disarmed their tribes, so there is some cross-border rustling and the associated violence that continues. But there is a fairly large Ugandan military presence trying to keep things under wraps.
Our local Karamojong guide told us that a couple of years ago one of the richest men in the area was killed. He had 36 wives and an equally impressive number of cattle. His herd had been the target of rustlers, so he and his son got some military personnel (he was rich, so had influence) to confront the thieves and was killed along with his son and their escort. Hence the recent travel warnings.
This is the process for getting a wife. After the girl gets pregnant (I think I missed a step), the boy in the company of his friends has to slaughter a sheep at the entrance to her family’s compound. The girl’s family somehow accept this as a down payment for their daughter. The girl then builds two separate houses within the family compound, but somewhat isolated from the rest of the household. One house is for her and the other one for the boy and his friends when they come to visit. When the baby arrives, he’s expected to give her parents a few cows and 40 goats. Finally, when he can come up with 100 cows he can claim her as his wife.
But there’s a potential snag. Anyone else who can come up with 100 cows can come and take her at any time, though he also has to take the child under his care. So there’s a bit of an incentive to steal those cows in order to move the process along. In many societies it is seen as advantageous to have sons. You can see that in this culture daughters are preferred so you can trade them for cows. So I guess if there’s an unmarried girl with a female baby, she’s likely to be snapped up.
Jinja and Entebbe
Continuing the drive to Jinja, the region became more and more green. I wondered why the nomadic Karamojong didn’t migrate just a few hours south so they didn’t have to depend on foreign aid to survive.
Jinja is where the Nile river starts, flowing out of Lake Victoria. There used to be rapids here, but a hydroelectric plant was built in the 1950’s which submerged them. The reliable electricity has made Jinja the industrial hub of Uganda.
So you come here to see the source of the Nile. It’s pretty underwhelming, actually. And Entebbe is the suburb of Kampala where the airport is. It was the scene of the Israeli raid to free some hostages hijacked in an Air France flight in the 1970’s. When I was here in 2000 there were plans to convert the remains of the plane into a cafe, but this never happened. It’s still sitting around, having been stripped of everything but it’s outer skin.
eCard #110 – A Bit of the Balkans and then Vienna
I was in the Balkans in 1991 visiting what was then Yugoslavia just before it began to fragment and fall into war. (Tito died in 1980 and by 1991 his successors couldn’t keep nationalist tensions at bay any longer.) We covered what became the separate countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia & Hercegovina (BIH), mostly following the Adriatic coast with a foray inland in BIH to Mostar and Sarajevo and to Zagreb in Croatia.
Later, in 2004 during the final section of cycling the length of the Danube to the Black Sea, I went through some eastern parts of Croatia and Serbia. When passing through Bulgaria, I did a side trip by bus to get to Lake Ohrid which forms part of the border between North Macedonia and Albania. (At the time, Greece objected to the Macedonian part of Yugoslavia being called “Macedonia” – they were concerned of a push to unite their own province of Macedonia with that of the Yugoslav piece. So at Greek insistence the new country was referred to, officially, as FYROM – the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. (You could by t-shirts that said “Don’t FYROM me!”) Greece has since become satisfied with “North Macedonia”.)
Here’s a map of where we are:
I considered going into Kosovo at the time, but it was still pretty shaky. It was the main battleground between Serbia and BIH and where many Serb atrocities occurred which finally resulted in NATO intervention. It did not have the status of a country then – only a NATO occupied region. Serbia still does not recognize it, and NATO KFOR is still present, guarding some Orthodox monasteries after Christian Serbs attacked some mosques. In 2004, you needed to get military permits to enter the region and you may have been required to have a minder along – I can’t remember. In any event I didn’t go since it seemed too much trouble.
High Peaks of the Balkans – Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro
This year I joined a group walking trip that began at the airport of Tirana, Albania. The quest was the High Peaks of the Balkans (a KE Adventure trip). Pics here on flickr.
We immediately drove to a small village near the border with North Macedonia for the ascent on the following day of Mt. Korab, the high point of Albania at 2751m. The 1500m of ascent was fairly straightforward with many locals making the trip. The geology is limestone and fairly rugged in places (and got more so later in the trip). There are supposed to be some impressive caves in the region. Once we got up to the ridge that forms the border between Albania and N. Macedonia, we skirted in and out of the two countries as we made our way to the summit along the ridge. Nice views, then back down and an afternoon drive to Kosovo.
We over-nighted in Gjakova. I was pretty amazed at how affluent Kosovo seemed – it was a basket case when I contemplated coming here in 2004. I think there has been a huge amount of EU and NATO aid that’s poured into the country. In any event, we took off the next morning in Land Rovers to drive to the start of the trail to Mt. Gjeravica (2656m). We would be on the trail for a few days as we entered into The Accursed Mountains – the region where Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro come together. The hills became more rocky and the views more expansive. Gjeravica is entirely within Kosovo, but in the next couple of days we would be in and out of Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro – often crossing the border swaths where communist security forces used to patrol to keep people from fleeing their socialist paradise.
Going up Gjeravica was a pretty nice walk, passing a few lakes with a chance for a cooling dip. It wasn’t hot, but the sun can be pretty brutal at this Mediterranean latitude. The summit was marked with an Albanian flag – the muslim majority of Kosovo would like to be joined with Albania, but the political situation in the Balkans is a powder keg waiting for a match, and the present borders are the best that can be hoped for, for now.
The logistics for the trip were that we walked with day packs and our main bags were transferred by truck or horses. The night after Gjeravica we spent in what was billed as shepherd’s huts in a village on the Doberdol Plateau. They turned out to be rustic A-frames built for the tourist trade, but at least we weren’t sleeping with the sheep.
The next day was really the nicest walking – in and out of forests and on both sides of the Albanian/Montenegran border. The end of the day was an unfortunate 600m descent on a hot, dusty road down to Ceremi. But the guesthouse was nice and the food the best on the walking part of the trip. The tomatoes here are wonderful!
Back up 600m the next morning with a stop for fresh yoghurt with blueberries at a farmer’s cafe. The terrain became the most rugged on the trip, though not miserable. We were heading for the summit of Zla Kolata (2534m) – right on the border and the high point of Montenegro. I stopped about 150m short of the summit. My legs were tired and we had to do some exposed scrambling on the way up that would require a bit of down-climbing, so I decided to just hang out for a bit of solitude while most of the rest of the group went for the top.
We were supposed to camp that night, and everyone else in the group did. But just an hour and a half short of arriving in a village in the Valbona Valley with our guesthouse for the following night, I decided to continue on. I needed a shower more than a night of camping at a water-less site.
Departing the valley early, we caught the 6AM ferry for the 3 hour trip down Lake Koman and a drive into Tirana where I spent a few days after the group departed.
There were a few things to see in town, but I mostly just enjoyed chilling out on my own. Tirana is actually a pretty easy city to deal with and it has a strong cafe and outdoor restaurant culture. And pastries. I found a French patisserie! Unfortunately, they were fresh our of raspberry tarts, so I had to satisfy myself with a Belle Hélène. Not a problem.
Of the few things to see, the main square with the imposing statue of Skanderberg catches your eye. He was the man mostly responsible for keeping the Ottoman Empire from encroaching into Europe in the second half of the 15th century (more later in Vienna).
There’s the Et’hem Bey Mosque pictured above which has some original frescoes.
The tourist attractions Bunk Art I & II are former nuclear bomb bunkers cum art spaces built during communist times under dictator Enver Hoxha. He fell out with the Soviets, then fell out with the Chinese and everyone else and was paranoid that Albania was a target for nuclear attack. In all, over 160,000 bunkers were built around the country. The largest, Hoxha’s command center, is a half hour by bus from downtown. It became Bunk Art I. Bunk Art II was intended to serve the ministry buildings in the city center.
Bosnia and Hercegovina
I had 10 days to kill before flying to India for the next jaunt of this trip. My flight was scheduled from Vienna, and, though I like Vienna, I didn’t really want to spend 10 days there, so I cast about for a side trip and settled on going to Višegrad, Bosnia to see a bridge. I flew from Tirana to Sarajevo.
Album of pics here:
Sarajevo
In 1991 there were just two items on the tourist route in Sarajevo – it was the site of the 1984 winter olympics, and it is where Archduke Ferdinand (heir to the Austrian throne) and his wife Sophie were assassinated in June of 1914 – the event which sparked World War I. (I recommend Sean McMeekin’s book, “July 1914” which discusses how the war eventually evolved from the June assassination until the first shots in August. In June, no one thought a war would result – European economies were too intertwined. Everyone was happy. He lays more blame on the Russians than the traditional view of the Germans.) There was an inscription carved into the wall of the building that witnessed the spot where Gavrilo Princip stood as he fired the fatal shots into the royal couple as their touring car maneuvered. And there were brass footprints placed in the concrete to mark where Princip stood.
Humorous aside before some seriousness: While visiting Philadelphia shortly after returning from Yugoslavia, I visited the USS Olympia – a naval cruiser that served as Commodore Dewey’s flagship in the battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American war (1898). I believe Dewey’s footprints were welded onto the deck of the bridge from where history records he uttered his stirring words, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” initiating the battle. (Thus began a new collection – historic footprints. I have to remember to dig out the pics once I return home.) Later in Philly, visiting the Philadelphia Art Museum, I wondered if Rocky’s footprints would be immortalized on the steps…. they are.
A more pressing event than the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the destruction of Europe in WWI hit Sarajevo in the intervening years. From 1992-1995 Sarajevo was under siege by Serbian nationalist forces. The topography allowed the Serbs to occupy high ground all around the city, giving them a great vantage point for artillery shelling and sniper nests. This 1425 day siege was the longest siege in modern European history – three times longer than the siege of Stalingrad in WWII. There was only one leak in the net surrounding the city – an 800m long tunnel dug under the airport which allowed the residents to hold out. Numbers vary, but at least 11,000 were killed, half of them civilians.
The 1914 events are almost just a footnote, now. During the siege, the inscription and footprints in the sidewalk were destroyed as hallmarks of Serb nationalism. But the need for tourists caused a replacement inscription and footprints to be re-installed. Today most of the tourist sites are related to the siege – several atrocity-themed museums, a visit to the Tunnel of Hope, the cemeteries, shattered hospitals, etc.
The atrocities (mass murders, bombing of schools, hospitals, ethnic cleansing of areas, etc.) committed during the war in various sites around BIH and Serbia finally brought NATO to force an end to the conflict (Serb installations were bombed by NATO) and have the parties reach an uneasy peace agreement – The Dayton Accords of Dec. 1995. Many of the Serb leaders have been tried as war criminals – you may remember some prominent names in the news – Slobodan Milošević, Radovan KaradĹľić, Ratko Mladić, and others. Milošević died in prison awaiting trial. The other two were sentenced to life in prison. Serbs consider these men heroes.
And the peace feels uneasy. Tour guide monologues devolve into rants. Bosnia was de-facto divided into Bosniak and Serb areas. Half of the country is an “entity” created in the Dayton Accords called Republika Srpska which nearly encircles the Bosnian area. When you cross over the line, Serbian flags are flying. The Sarajevo city hall was burned during the siege and it’s library destroyed. There’s a plaque on the wall at the entrance reminding you of who did that and to never forget. (I think we’ve all forgotten to “Remember the Maine” from the Spanish-American war.) This region has been a mess for centuries; the people have memories that go back centuries. I’m afraid it will continue to be a mess.
One rather horrific footnote – during the siege rich foreigners were apparently invited by the Serbs to come into the hills overlooking the city and have the chance to shoot Bosnians. Look for the documentary “Sarajevo Safari”.
But I came here to see a bridge, remember?
Višegrad and the Bridge on the Drina
I found a day tour that headed off east of Sarajevo through Republika Srpska to Višegrad to see the Mehmed Paša Sokolović bridge on the Drina River. This bridge figures as the main character in one of my favorite books, “The Bridge on the Drina” by Ivo Andrić. The bridge dates back to 16th century Ottoman occupation, and it is used in the book to witness the events of the ensuing 500 years. Great book. Not for the squeamish, though – the opening scene describes in minute detail an expert executioner as he impales a victim on a stake to be mounted on the bridge. This region has been in turmoil for centuries and it hasn’t been pretty.
We also crossed into Serbia proper (a real border crossing) to see a couple of sites not worth bothering with. But I did find a good coffee and pastry.
Vienna
First things first. I was relieved to find that Vienna is not as clean as Kitzbuhel. Whew! It’s a dirty, filthy, grimy, polluted city by Austrian standards. Which means it’s clean, but not creepily so.
I like Vienna. It’s an easy city to manage with great public transportation (though I mostly walk around). Good pastries, though raspberry tarts are few and far between. Great coffee. I think this is the 4th or 5th time I’ve been here. When I visited Lisbon I wrote that it is my favorite European capital. That’s probably true in terms of it’s Mediterranean vibe, it’s situation on the water, and it’s food. But Vienna is very comfortable and there is much more to see and do here.
Pics of Vienna here.
The food isn’t as good as in Lisbon….
There are some great museums to assuage my addiction. I bought a six day museum pass and ended up hitting the first eight of them in two days. By the time I was done I had been to at least 20 museums. It was like old home week revisiting artworks I’d seen before. Most of the museums are former palaces of the Hapsburg Empire sited in beautiful or monumental grounds.
Two things were high on my list of things to see vis-Ă -vis my recent Balkans visit. First was the car in which Ferdinand and Sophie were riding when they were shot in Sarajevo now housed at the Heeresgeschichtliches (military history) Museum. It has been done up in a more informative display since I last saw it.
Then I wanted to see the helmet and sword of Skanderberg. Though information says it is at the Kunsthistoriches (art history) Museum, it’s actually part of the Imperial Armory that is housed in a portion of the former Hofburg Palace across the Burgring in the Weltmuseum (world/ethnographic museum). There are lots of knights in shiny armor along side it.
There are tons of art at the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Oberes Belvedere palace, the Albertina Museum and the Leopold Museum. It’s funny how you stumble on things that close loops while traveling. In the Belvedere I was passing through a room of monumental paintings of historic scenes that had little interest for me. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something that looked familiar. It turned out to be a painting of Sarajevo in 1883, and included the Latin Bridge which was near the spot of the 1914 assassination.
In other loop closings, at the Technisches (technical) Museum there was a display of cable cars. They mentioned the largest cable car system in the world in La Paz, Bolivia (I rode it in August of last year). They also had an 1894 glider from Otto Lilienthal – an early pioneer in aviation. Also on display in the aviation section was what was claimed to be the first rubber-band-powered-flight model (1877) by Wilhelm Kress. I guess someone had to be first.
Don’t forget to see the crown jewels at the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer (Imperial Treasury). Among the pieces on display is the crown of the Holy Roman Empire dating back to the 10th century. There is also a piece of the true cross….
Having the museum pass meant I could go into places I wouldn’t ordinarily pay to visit. One of these was the Museum of Music. Being in Vienna, I thought this would be heavy on batons from famous but unknown-to-me conductors and shrines to Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn. That was all there, but they had some pretty good displays on the physics of sound and some good interactive displays for kids and adults. There was one panel discussing what animals probably hear. The conclusion was that no species should ever be subjected to rap or disco at any volume.
Counting Countries
Clearly, Albania and Kosovo are new to me. So that’s 112 countries.
I’ve had this problem with countries in general that change hands, or are split off. Specifically this problem arises for Yugoslavia. So here’s my official way of dealing with it. I count Yugoslavia as one country (1991). And then I count any of the new countries that resulted in Yugoslavia’s fracturing as long as I revisit them after their new political reorganization. So I’ve counted post-Yugoslavia Croatia and Serbia from 2004. I was also in FYROM in 2004 so I count it. But “North Macedonia” is just a name change, so it doesn’t count as a new country. And Montenegro? I was there in 1991 when it was part of Yugoslavia, but this year I just walked over the line within a half mile of the border, so .. no. But Bosnia & Hercegovina? Yes. So that brings me up to 113. But I don’t think any of these adventures allow me to fill in another block on my Peters Projection map.
Speaking of which, I paid a visit to the retail store of Freytag & Berndt. I go there each time I’m in Vienna. Best map store I’ve ever been to. They had the maps of Georgia on the shelf that were a pain for me to find in the states. My purchase this year was a wall-sized Peters Projection of the world which has been unavailable to me elsewhere.
El Salvador
Longtime subscribers will remember that in the Central American Odyssey of 2003 (eCards 21-23), the international team of John, Steve, Lars and I did not visit El Salvador. At the time, El Salvador had the second highest homicide rate in the world (Colombia was just slightly ahead in the number one spot). As I recall we had run into another traveler who had problems in El Salvador or who knew someone who had. In any event, we decided not to go there.
This year I found that one of the travel companies I’ve used, Intrepid (no longer recommended), offers an 8 day trip to the country, so I decided to hook up with them to complete my Central America check list.
This link takes you to pictures on flickr: El Salvador 2019
As you can see in this 1973 NatGeo map of Central America, El Salvador, wearing yellow, is tucked under Guatemala and Honduras. (Note that Belize was officially British Honduras in 1973, attaining independence from the UK in 1981.)
Statistics
El Salvador still has the second highest homicide rate in the world (the rate increased 20% in the intervening 16 years), while Colombia has slipped to number 14 with a 40% decrease in homicides. Ups and downs in drug/gang violence are the principal reasons for the shifts. Number one is now Honduras, which was 7th in 2003 – I remember that Tegucigalpa felt pretty rough at the time. (If you look up these statistics to fact check me, keep in mind that murder rates and homicide rates will be different. Homicide includes intentional murder, manslaughter, accidental killing, and may or may not include war deaths or deaths by death squads…. you learn something new every day.)
Incidentally, the violence and economic issues in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are the main factors propelling families to attempt to migrate to the US. According to a recent NY Times article, Mexico has long fallen back as the source of migrants as economic opportunities in Mexico have greatly improved. (I don’t know this for a fact, but I suspect NAFTA had a lot to do with it.) Guatemala accounts for 90% of recent migrant numbers.
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America – just slightly smaller than Belize and about the same size as Israel and New Jersey. Many of my readers are familiar with Puerto Rico which is about 40% as large.
The country has the highest population density of any Central American country – 290 people/km² . This is roughly the same as Puerto Rico and most Caribbean islands, but twice the density of neighboring Guatemala – a cause of friction between the two countries as many Salvadorans cross the border to squat on underutilized land. (New Jersey has 467 people/km², but it doesn’t have the volcanoes, and I haven’t heard of any border friction with Pennsylvania or Delaware.)
HOMEWORK: Which Caribbean island has the highest population density?
San Salvador
I arrived a day before the group tour started so I could settle in at leisure. Unfortunately, my direct flight from Houston arrived after dark. I try to avoid this so I can get my bearings in daylight, and I feel it’s safer as I get the vibe of a place. But I quickly found a taxi (rather, he found me) to haul me into town and was installed in Hotel Las Magnolias – a nice little place with an enclosed garden and pool in the Zona Rosa section of town (a “leafy suburb”).
At 4:30AM I was awakened with my bed shaking due to an offshore earthquake and was reminded of Central America’s existential relationship to volcanism. The pool was undamaged.
One of my first acts was to Uber to a very nice, modern shopping center to buy a local SIM card for my phone. Arriving a bit before opening time, I settled into a nice cafe and pastry for second breakfast. Once they opened, it took just minutes for the efficient Tigo cell phone staff to set me up with a local phone number and mobile data enough for a month for just $2. (El Salvador dropped the colon as it’s currency and adopted the US dollar in 2001. I saw many one dollar coins in circulation – something you never see in the states.)
Now free to find Uber wherever I roamed, I headed downtown to the Centro Historico. Though the territory that is now El Salvador was an early conquest of the Spanish in the 16th century, earthquakes have wreaked havoc on the colonial architecture – nothing from the early period remains. But there is a variety of architecture in the city and it’s a buzzing place. The markets spill out onto the streets and make them one lane pedestrian/traffic arteries. A mango cart can cause a clot.
As I wandered around with my big Nikon in hand, I was aware of my uniqueness – on the first day I saw no one else I could peg as a tourist. The guide book warned of walking in the city at night, but it felt very safe in daylight.
The main sights are the old cathedral and the new modernistic concrete-reinforced earthquake-proof Iglesia El Rosario. In the basement of the cathedral is the well attended tomb and shrine to Archbishop Ă“scar Romero. He had been a voice of the poor and marginalized against corrupt officials, and called on military officers to ignore orders repressing the population and violating human rights. He was assassinated by the ARENA death squad by one shot through the heart while giving mass in March, 1980. The church declared him a martyr and he was canonized in 2018.
Iglesia El Rosario is most notable for it’s exterior ugliness and the beauty of the interior stained glass. I didn’t get a chance to wander around much inside due to a large ceremony in progress.
San Salvador is home to a small, but fine anthropology museum, not far from my hotel.
We didn’t cover much ground on the tour and missed some things that were of interest to me. The map below marks the places we visited and that appear in the narrative. Moving on from San Salvador our next stop was Suchitoto which, for me, was the highlight of this tour.
Suchitoto
The colonial town of Suchitoto was founded by the local Pipil people 500 years before the Spanish arrived. Due to tribal uprisings around San Salvador, the Spanish moved their capital here in 1528 where it remained for 15 years. After a large earthquake devastated San Salvador in 1853, many well-heeled families relocated here, enhancing and preserving much of the colonial architecture. The town was largely abandoned after the civil war of the 1980’s/90’s, but it has since been revived as an arts/culture and nature center.
Suchitoto overlooks the southern edge of a large reservoir, Lago de Suchitlán, formed behind the CerrĂłn Grande Hydroelectric Dam. The creation of this lake in the early 1970’s inundated many farms and archaeological sites, but has also contributed to making the country electricity independent, though geothermal projects generate more than half of El Salvador’s electricity demand.
The lake also supports a substantial fishing industry, though non-native sea birds have discovered this source of protein – the lake is at least 30 miles from the coast – and are aggressive competitors with the fishermen. The lake’s recreational potential has not been fully realized (fortunately).
We stayed three nights in town which allowed us to venture around the area a bit. I have no photos of it, but I took a guided sunrise kayak trip on the lake one morning. Really, really nice. All the pictures I have on the lake were taken during an afternoon/sunset cruise in a small boat. Also nice. The bird life is incredible. My dad was an avid birder and he would have been treated to over 200 species in the area.
One afternoon I joined a tour of town and the local area. Our first stop was to visit a waterfall that plunges over a columnar basalt cliff – Cascadas Los Tercios. Unfortunately, it was the dry season (January) and the tap was turned off. But it made for a nice little walk, and we could clearly see the basalt columns.
The earliest large commercial product that El Salvador had for export was indigo dye (añil in Spanish). In the middle of the 19th century, the German chemical industry developed the first synthetic dyes which crippled natural dye industries around the world. This is what pushed El Salvador into planting coffee, and, to a lesser degree, tobacco.
A local woman, Irma GuadrĂłn, began an artisinal añil studio in Suchitoto, and we were treated to see the relatively simple process. After knotting, sewing folds together, batiking, etc. the cloth was immersed in a tub of dye. I was surprised that initially the cotton cloth appeared green when coming out of the dye, but quickly turned deep blue when oxidizing in air. I looked around her shop for something to buy, but the clothing was mostly for women, and what was for men was too small. I didn’t need any table runners…. Then it hit me. My Tilley hat is made of cotton. So I asked Irma to see what she could do overnight to put me in a stylin’ hat!
The next stop on the tour was to visit Doña Laura, one of the last traditional cigar rollers. We got a lesson in how to roll a good cigar and in how poorly we neophytes could mis-manage it. Mine came out OK, but I would have starved doing it for a living. There’s a video of Doña Laura on flickr.
Our final stop of the afternoon was a visit to a former convent which was now an art and education center. The main purpose of the visit, though, was to sit in the adjoining cantina for a send-off shot of the local rot-gut, guazapa.
You can’t get out of El Salvador without eating a pupusa. These are an enclosed sort of tortilla made of corn meal or rice meal (for a crunchy one). You can put just about anything in them, but the most popular fillings seem to be chicharrĂłn (crackling pork skin), queso (cheese), spinach and garlic, or you can go all the way and mix them up. My favorite, however, were the chocolate ones. A local spot in Suchitoto, Comedor Los Angeles, invites you to see how they’re made and to make them yourself. You kind of wad up a ball of dough, make a pocket to stuff the goodies inside, close the ball and then flatten it out on a grill. I will admit that I am better at eating them than I am at making them.
Joya de Cerén
Heading west from Suchitoto, we made a stop at the only UNESCO Heritage site in El Salvador. This is a unique place. It is the only site where Mayan ruins of ordinary homes have been excavated. It is called Central America’s Pompeii because the Maya village here was buried by volcanic ash during an eruption in about the year 600AD. Everywhere else when you see Mayan ruins, you see big platforms or pyramids that were the bases for temples, or the famous ceremonial ball courts. Here you can get a glimpse of normal life.
And after an exhausting session of archaeological wonderment, we revived ourselves at a stand in the shade selling frozen fruit dipped in chocolate .
Santa Ana
Continuing west, we stopped for lunch in Santa Ana (1567) which is the departmental capital in a fertile valley producing coffee and sugar cane. The two main sights in town are a lovely neo-gothic cathedral and the Teatro de Santa Ana, both on the main plaza, Parque Libertad. The theater was built in 1910 and is claimed to be one of the finest theaters in Central America.
Continuing west to our evening accommodation in Ahuachapán, we took a brief stop to look at the ruins of Tazumal through the fence – we had too much fun at the previous stops and the site was closed by the time we got there. It was first inhabited around 5000BC. The heavily-restored-with-concrete temple pyramid you see today was constructed about 980AD.
Ruta de Flores
The main tourist draw in the west is the Ruta de Flores, the Route of Flowers – a collection of colorful colonial towns with cobblestone streets amidst rolling hills with coffee plantations. Coffee was overlooked in the bible, but could this be the Garden of Eden?
We stayed in a nice little hotel in Ahuachapán which was not an unpleasant town, but there was nothing of real interest. All of our excursions took us the same way out of town into the hills which begged the question, “Why were we staying here?” OK, there was a good cafĂ©.
ConcepciĂłn de Ataco was on our main thoroughfare in and out of Ahuachapán. It was the poster child for the region – cobblestone streets, colorfully painted colonial architecture, lots of art shops and cafĂ©s. The main plaza had some ancient gnarly trees.
Just outside town we toured the Ataco Coffee factory. It was a pretty large operation that took berries picked from many of the local growers and processed them for the individual growers or purchased them to be packed under the Ataco brand. It was interesting to see this process on a small industrial scale. After the tour we got down to serious business and had a coffee tasting in their lovely garden.
Sitting at an elevation of 1450m, nearby Apaneca is the highest town in the country, and it is noted for the wind. The nearby hills are blanketed with a checkerboard pattern of trees that were planted to act as windbreaks for the coffee trees.
The trail to a waterfall that we were supposed to walk to was in disrepair, so our alternate activity was to visit a labyrinth made of hedges. It was pretty complex and quite a bit of fun to make our way to the center tower… and back. I pretended to recognize intersections much more than I actually did. The local kids were having a blast.
The Pacific Coast – La Libertad and El Tunco
The drive down to and along the Pacific coast was very pretty. I was only able to catch a couple of glimpses of the volcanoes around, though, and didn’t get a single photo. One of the failings of the tour was the lack of a mountain on the itinerary…
By the time we trundled down the coast to La Libertad, we were only an hour or so from San Salvador. La Libertad is a low-key resort town, but we didn’t spend much time there. It has apparently gone through a clean-up transition in recent years and been made more tourist friendly with a modern pavillion-ish structure along the shore with restaurants, ice cream vendors, and mariachis. The main attraction is to wander out on the long fishing pier to see the day’s catch being brought in on the small boat fishing fleet. The part of the pier closest to shore was lined with fishmongers selling the catch of the day. It was a busy place.
We stayed just up the coast (west) from La Libertad at Playa El Tunco. The beach. Not a bad brain-dead-baked-in-the-sun town as these places go, but unless you’re into surfing it wasn’t worth the time. Rule #6 posted in my hotel room sums up my expectations for a place like this. I did find a good cafĂ©.
If you are into surfing it is the center for the best surf breaks in the area. It is an easy weekend trip if you live in San Salvador, or if you’re an expat with a beach place here it’s easy to get to – just 30 minutes from the international airport. But for an 8 day tour, spending two nights here was a waste of time. There were things to do in the mountains that we could have done, instead.
But the sunsets were awesome.
becklectic Tales 