The Great Journey~ Pt. 1

I love recording things here and sharing images.  But sometimes it’s really, really hard to find enough lag time during the actual living part to allow you to step out and write things up.  I’m not even going to try to do the  pithy, brilliant thing.  I don’t have it in me.  I have to use words – lots of them – millions of them.  But today,  I can’t think of much to say.  So I’m going to post images.  Lots of them.  Millions of them.

I have tons of other stuff to show off – stuff that took the place of writing about the stuff we did just before the other stuff.  Clear?  So I’ll have to go backwards a little bit later, because we’ve just come back from a great journey, which means I pretty much have to start there.  And for free, I’m going to throw in a little esoteric photographic information.

The Great Journey

We went here:

Armed with a conveniently small and proportionately adequate camera, I loaded my family  into a vehicle something like this:

To go see these:

Here, you can see the effects we are able to achieve as we travel the rough jungle road in lowish jungle light shooting a tiny lens with fixed programming: a family of giraffes, including a baby.  Uh-huh.  I’m rethinking the convenience part of the camera.

Family offended and in retreat.

And we saw this: a white one of its kind.

And this little family:

And this: (tiny lens painfully zoomed)

Next, we went to this place:

I mean – wait – yes, THIS place – 

 – the gateway into this village, peopled, as you can see, with sherpas and tourists.

And walked along this path ~

till we got to this sign ~

which led us to these people:

There were actually two of them.  This one is a sista’.

She was trolling along, panting in the heat, and came upon this pool – into which she 

dove.  And swam –

and swam – 

and groomed – 

and finally sighed in contentment and disappeared.  Almost.

This previous study was a perfect demonstration of the effects achieved while standing still on a smooth path. shooting in lowish jungle light with a tiny, fixed programming lens.

When we went back to the village, we stumbled upon this primitive parade:  note the iconic costuming – 

 

The dancing alligator.

The elephant, crowned with ceremonial drums.

A bird of some kind I don’t recognize at all.  A really big bird.  Below, I offer a diagram that might help you identify its essential physical characteristics:

Hippo.  The water horse.  Hippo = latin for “horse,” (which my mares would not be pleased to hear). If you want to see more hippos, go here.

Dancing bird and horned thing.  The primitive, ritualistic costuming is richly detailed and brightly colored, as might be expected when we are dealing with aboriginal peoples.

Another really large bird.  Notice I have been leaving the heads out of these pictures; the wings don’t give me nightmares.

Camel.  If you want to see more camels, go here.

A large and reticulated iguana.

The loveliest of all – the leaping antelope.  As the woman rides her bike, the antelope, which is cleverly hinged, leaps agilely along the pathway.

Wait.  Wait.  I know what this is.  Like an armadillo, except not from Texas.

Wildebeest.  Which is Old English for “wild beast.”  I bet it is.

And last, but not least, the closest thing in this jungle to a real horsie:  the zebra.

And finally, the day over, shutters thrown up over the windows of the shops, and lights showing in the houses – we take a long look at the tour de force of this place:

The Tree of Life.  More on this later.

We made our way along the path, looking for our car back to the lodging and I took this shot, proof that I am not completely without the ability to hold a camera still in low light:

Just as we reached the gates, we were surrounded by this family of jackals, attracted by Frazz’ shiny necklace of pins.  They circled for some time, fascinated by the brilliant child and his treasure trove of wildly expensive and extravagant ornament:

Did we survive it?  Tune in for Part 2!!