I’m glad I’m an early riser. At 6am on this beautiful mid-May Sunday morning, therefore, I grabbed a mug of tea and my camera bag and headed west into the cool, slightly foggy Vermont. A few minutes later I pulled into the tiny Post Mills Airport just as the first balloons were about to launch, as part of the Experimental Balloon and Airship Meet. What a treat! Deep blue sky, a slight breeze, and happy faces all around as more than two dozen balloons were unfurled, inflated, and launched into the Vermont morning, slowly drifting east. I topped it all off with a wonderful pancake breakfast from Revels North. Great start to a beautiful day!
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing.
Although I started this blog as a place to describe my travels, sometimes I enjoy armchair travel as well. I recently had the chance to re-read Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, which has to be one of the world’s most incredible survival stories of all time. All the more so because it is a true story, chronicling the adventures of Ernest Shackleton and his men in their Antarctic expedition of 1914-1917. Launched almost exactly 100 years ago, their goal was to complete the first trans-continental crossing of the Antarctic from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, just a few years after the first human visit to the South Pole. As it happens, they never landed on Antarctica, being trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea upon arrival, then over-wintering on the ice while their ship was slowly crushed. In an astonishing quirk of timing, a modern ship was trapped a few weeks ago by ice in the same sea — requiring its tourist occupants to be evacuated by helicopter to another ship (as of last week, the ship is free but not yet out of trouble).
I’ve just returned from a quick six-day trip in India, visiting Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bangalore (each for two days) in support of our research on the use of mHealth technologies in India. I met collaborators at IIT Delhi, explored new research collaborations at MediCiti near Hyderabad, and presented a paper at the NetHealth workshop in Bangalore.
Children at a government-supported child-care center in the village of Rajballaram, near Hyderabad.
But I also had some time to get out and explore, by poking around the streets of New Delhi on Sunday afternoon, exploring the historic sites of Hyderabad, and visiting my favorite places in Bangalore. Although I enjoy snapping photos of the monuments and historic sites, I have to admit that it’s the people that I enjoy so much. I’ve collected about a hundred good shots in one slideshow, and (with great difficulty) whittled it down to a top-20 slideshow for those who just want a quick peek.
Last year was a busy and exciting year for us. Mara graduated from Crossroads and began 9th grade at Hanover High School (HHS), while Andy entered 7th grade at Crossroads and John entered 11th grade at HHS. David continued as Associate Dean at Dartmouth and Pam took a year off from medicine. We traveled quite a bit: we began the year in Bangalore, India, spent a February week along the continental divide in Costa Rica (photo above), and spent lots of time outdoors in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. I hope you enjoy the year-end slideshow of highlights, including some of my favorite photos from 2013.
Regards and best wishes for the new year,
David Kotz
The Lagoda, a half-size model of a historic whaling vessel.
I spent a quiet weekend in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which is along the coast next to the town of Dartmouth and across the straight from Martha’s Vineyard. I was there to attend a wedding, but had time to discover the fascinating history behind this town, now striving to become a tourist destination after what was no doubt decades of decline following the booming industrial whaling years in the nineteenth century. My hotel was directly opposite the pier where modern fishing boats are docked, and just a few blocks from the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Outstanding museum! At right is the Lagoda, a half-scale model of a historic whaling vessel, built inside the museum. Below is a photo of the docks at sunset. I posted a few more photos in my smugmug.
The kids were on spring break, and John was touring with the Footnotes in France, so we decided to take a long weekend. Weeks earlier, we had selected the weekend and were planning to spend it in Boston, but on Friday morning the news of the manhunt in Boston made it clear this was not the weekend for a visit. [Indeed, we later heard that the city went into ‘lockdown’ all day Friday, at the request of the Governor.] So we drove the opposite direction, to Montréal, for our own little taste of France.
Wonderful decision. Montréal is a beautiful city, and despite the windy gray weather (and a few snow flurries) we had a nice time. We stayed in the neighborhood known as Vieux Montréal, with cobblestone streets and old buildings, part of the original city enclosed by fortress walls. We were two blocks from Notre Dame Basilica, and two blocks from the St Lawrence River. Because of the chilly weather, we sought out indoor activities. We explored a series of simulated ecosystems at the Biodome, including a tropical forest then a series of temperate and arctic settings. We explored the underground city for a little shopping, and checked out some stunning pieces at the Museum of Contemporary Art. And, my favorite part, we took in some excellent French cuisine and Indian food.
I was fortunate enough to be in Washington DC last weekend, for a meeting at NSF. I have always heard about the beautiful cherry-blossom season, those magical few days in April when all of the cherry trees blossom together in an incredible display. On Sunday, a beautiful afternoon, I drove downtown, thinking that it would be easy to park somewhere and walk around the National Mall. Hah! With over a million visitors each year, the Cherry Blossom Festival is very crowded. I did manage to find parking near the Capitol and photographed some beautiful tulip trees.
I returned by metro on Monday afternoon, another day with beautiful spring weather. I headed straight for the Tidal Basin, a lake anchored by the Jefferson Memorial on one side and the National Mall on the other. The cherry blossoms were at their peak, with hundreds of families and office workers and tourists strolling underneath. Absolutely perfect weather, perfect trees. I’m so glad I finally got to see it. Check out the photos.
I had the good fortune of attending a conference and meeting at the historic Jekyll Island Club on Jekyll Island, a barrier island on the coast of Georgia. It is rich with history and wildlife, has a beautiful beach, and a wonderfully preserved set of historic mansions. Cool tidbit: this is the site of the first transcontinental phone call.
Jekyll Island Club, and croquet pitch
Check out my favorite photos, all shot on Thursday, except for the first shot of the clubhouse itself. Perhaps my favorite shot is of the osprey landing on its nest, at right.
Although our departure from Costa Rica was not until noon on Saturday, I decided it was risky to make the 3-hour drive from Monteverde to the airport on Saturday morning itself. There are few roads from Monteverde, all dirt, and only one that is realistically passable. (On our trip in 2004 we took a back road down from Monteverde and it was an unbelievably hairy trip.) Any sort of snag or snafu could happen to the road or the vehicle. So we called up Sergio and scheduled a return taxi for Friday afternoon. That left just the morning to capture one last exploration of Monteverde.
Panorama of the riding tripBlack Guan, high in the canopy
Kathy had also won – at the Friends School fundraising auction – a horseback-riding tour for two. So Pam, Mara and John headed off with Jim and Laurie and their two girls for a horseback outing through the pastural hills on the west side of Santa Elena, while Andy and I walked back to Bajo del Tigre in hopes that we might visit those trails again, this time in the daylight. It was another beautiful sunny day, and we had kilometers of trail all to ourselves. We followed the numbered self-guided nature trail, with the guidebook explaining the plant and animal life, history, and ecology of this non-profit forest reserve originally founded by Swedish schoolchildren (really!). Andy’s good eyes spotted a pair of black guan, huge turkey-sized birds up in the canopy.
Our final Monteverde meal (thanks Laurie!) was beans and rice and fresh salad, wonderful with the Costa Rican Lizano salsa that makes everything taste good – meant the end of a fantastic few days at Casa Hooke and with the our newfound friends, aka Jim & Laurie and their daughters. After a few fond farewells we were off again with Sergio, this time to be guided by his son Ricardo. There was a delay because the main road out this direction was being re-graded, and a couple of hours later another delay because the coastal highway was in use for a women’s bicycle race (circumnavigating Costa Rica). These are the kind of unexpected delays that triggered my instinct to move us close to the airport a day early.
Chapel on the central park in Alajuela
We arrived in Alajuela, a small city next to the San Jose airport, about an hour before sunset, and quickly headed out to explore. The central park was only two blocks from the hotel, and was bustling with people relaxing on this late Friday afternoon. Next to the square was a large Catholic church, preparing for Friday mass. Just down the road was the central market, a large indoor series of stalls selling everything from meat and fish to vegetables and herbal remedies to cell-phone accessories. I always feel these markets are a great place to get a sense of the local culture. This one was busy with customers on their way home from work, buying the necessities for a weekend with family. As the sun set, the market and most other shops started closing, rattling their heavy-duty gates into place. Even our hotel had such a gate across the entrance at all times, making me a bit uneasy about the nature of this town after dark. We found a friendly Tex-mex restaurant nearby and settled in for chimichanga and nachos.
Overall, it was a great week. Costa Rica is a beautiful place filled with friendly people. We learned a little about a tropical ecosystem, sustainable farming, chocolate production, and a different culture; we spent time with old friends and made new friends; we got sunburned and ate good food; and we had a lot of fun.
Thursday was our last full day in Monteverde, and we set off for the Monteverde Butterfly Garden. (We considered heading to a fancy new facility outside town, which offered a bigger butterfly garden as well as ziplines and suspension bridges among the forest canopy, and other attractions, but it was outlandishly expensive.) With no transportation readily available, we walked the dirt road toward town and down a long side-road to the Monteverde Butterfly Garden – the original, I believe, which came strongly recommended by the locals.
Mara examines a Julia butterfly
There we met with a young intern from Denmark who had taken a six-week internship as a volunteer tour guide in return for room and board. She said she was studying toward a biology degree, and her love of insects and arthropods was infectious. She first gave us a tour of the spiders and beetles and stick bugs and other fascinating creatures inhabiting the indoor terraria, before leading us through a series of four butterfly gardens. Each represents a different Costa Rican biome, with a range of different butterflies. I pulled out my big lens and tried to capture some images of these beautiful creatures. The tour wrapped up with an exhibit of a functioning colony of leaf-cutter ants. Cool! the kids loved that. For more photos, check out the nature gallery and start on page 4.
We walked into town in search of lunch and groceries. The town of Santa Elena is small – perhaps four or five blocks in the commercial district. Riddled with touristy shops, we stopped into the colorfully painted Morphos restaurant for lunch. The blue morpho is perhaps the most famous of Costa Rica butterflies, with an electric blue color tantalizing all photographers; its image was painted on every wall. The food was pricy and yet unremarkable, as one might expect in a touristy town :-(.
The day was capped by another beautiful sunset and a wonderful dinner of beans & rice for 11 back at Casa Hooke.
David Kotz 