Cuba...the first few days of our trip 

We hired a guide for half a day in Havana. here she and Juliet are walking down a typical street slightly off the main tourist area. Note the very narrow sidewalks, which have been mentioned by visitors to the city since at least the early 1800s (we bought a book with essays by travelers to Cuba through the years).

A building with a tree growing out of it is not a happy building. "Old Havana", which has buildings as old as the 1600s, is decaying faster than it is being restored. You'll see buildings that are falling apart (like this one) that still have occupied apartments.  

When a building does get restored, the results can be spectacular. This is the National Theater, where we saw a performance of "Cascanueces",  i.e. "the Cracker of Nuts." 

Alicia Alonso, the great Cuban ballerina who is now in 96 years old, came to the performance. The second act in particular was very colorful and the men were notably athletic. Phil said "it's not fair that the Nutcracker Prince is allowed to kill the Rat King with his sword, because the Rat King was kicking his ass in their dance-off."

Phil lost a chess game to this guy in the park. Phil says "I gave up a knight for two pawns and a strong attack, and everything was going great until I blundered a piece."

Phil also got a shave. The barber left him with long Cuban sideburns. Suave!

We also visited La Floridita, where Ernest Hemingway used to drink daiquiris. The place was stuffed with tourists like us, all taking photos of the jazz band crammed into one end of the room.

We had a few days in Havana and a few days scuba diving in a national park at the extreme east end of the country, then joined six other tourists and two guides for a birding tour of the central part of the country. Here everyone is looking at a pygmy owl.

This is the Bee Hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world. Juliet took the photo. If you're looking at this on a computer instead of a phone, this is larger than actual size: the bird is the size of a child's thumb, and weighs less than two M&Ms. 

A ride through the French countryside.

For the third consecutive year, I (Phil) have come to Europe to bike in the mountains with my friend Hal. In 2013 we did a Thompson Bike Tours trip through the Pyrenees (border of France and Spain). In 2014 we did another Thompson trip, in the Dolomites (Italy near the Austrian border) and the Italian Alps. This year, we are doing a "self-guided" trip in the French Alps, with two friends, Tom and Ted.

My trip started in Geneva, where I arrived a day earlier than the rest of the crew. I rented a bike, checked into my hotel, and then took the bus downtown to Lake Geneva to stroll around for the evening.

There was a big festival (or combination of festivals) lakeside, including some displays about local agriculture but mostly just lots of food and drink booths.

Tens of thousands of people were out enjoying the evening.

My friends' flight was delayed the next day, so I did a morning ride. Just five minutes ride from the Geneva airport and I was riding on a nicely paved bike route through farm fields. The sunflowers are a bit sad because it was raining. I biked out to the mountains behind the clouds in the background, and got in some nice climbing.

I will spare you photos of all of the mountains we climbed, but here's one of them: the mighty Galibier. It just goes on for miles and miles, topping out at 8600 feet. As you can see, it's rather barren at the summit, but just a few hundred feet below there are alpine meadows dotted with wildflowers.

I love this jersey, and I thought I'd get lots of compliments on it (or at least amused looks) here in France. Nope. One waitress asked "don't you know what that means? And you wear it anyway?"

At the base of Galibier, there's a town has a make-a-sculpture-out-of-straw festival. Here's one of my favorites. 

In addition to biking, we've been doing two other things: eating and sleeping. This was on the wall of a Turkish restaurant we liked. It appears to be a beaver praying to a butterfly.

This cool-looking climb is called "les lacets de Montvernier," and it was climbed on this year's Tour de France. It's not actually a hard climb, just a few kilometers at about 8% grade...a midget compared to the big climbs. Looks great, though.

At the top of Les Lacets, there's a beautiful plateau, including this lovely view.

And here's the crew: Hal, Ted, and Tom. 

And here we area again, at the top of Col de la Madeleine. This was a beautiful, difficult climb through forests and then above the tree line. The weather looks forbidding but was actually quite nice: cool and overcast beats hot and sunny when you're climbing.

 

In April 2014 I (Phil) went on a "birdathon" trip, part of a fundraiser for Golden Gate Audubon Society (anyone who wanted to go on the trip is supposed to raise at least $500, although they cut you some slack if you miss the mark). Pinnacles is a bit far for a day trip from Berkeley --- about 3 hours drive each way --- so I had never been there before. Beautiful place, though heavily visited

Richard, the guy on the left in the vest, is a volunteer with the California Condor recovery project. He came along for part of the trip and told us lots of great stuff. Rusty Scalf, the trip leader, is behind him in the blue shirt. 

We saw our first (and only) California Condor before getting out of the car!

Condors were down to the last 22 individuals in the world before the recovery program started in the late 1980s. There are a couple hundred in the wild now. Without constant work they would be wiped out again: when they eat remains left by hunters they ingest lead shot and bullet fragments, which poisons them. Twice a year, every condor is trapped and tested, and if their lead level is too high they are taken in for treatment. The solution is to get hunters to stop using lead shot…and FINALLY, after years of the NRA successfully fighting a forced switch to copper, California is banning lead shot (the ban starts next year I think). I'm afraid hunters will simply import it from other states.

Talk about a face only a mother could love. And look at those talons. Really, this bird looks like Death incarnate…which is fitting, I guess, for an obligate scavenger.

Condors are huge. I'm tall and my arm-span is even longer than my height, but this guy has me beat by several feet.    You can see the radio transmitter on his wing 

At the start of the trip we also got a look at some acorn woodpeckers. These gregarious, clownish-looking birds cooperate to create a "granary tree", in which they drill holes to store acorns.

Same photo as the previous, cropped so you can see the acorns in some of the holes.

The group hiked up the trail, looking at birds, wildflowers, and geologic features as we went. Rusty Scalf, the trip leader, is a really good naturalist.

The yellow thread-like stuff is a type of dodder, a parasitic plant that feeds off the stems and leaves of its host. The orange flowers are Indian Paintbrush, a parasitic plant that feeds off the roots of the host. This host plant is really getting it from both sides.

I love the fractal look of the trees and bushes on this hillside. Almost impossible to judge scale, isn't it?

The park has lots of drought-tolerant species like Blue Oak, but there has just enough rain over the winter to green them up

After the rest of the group turned back, another participant and I continued along a loop up to the ridge top. It had some steep sections like this, plus some other somewhat difficult bits. But man, there were a lot of people out there…dozens and dozens on this moderately strenuous 6-mile loop. If you go to the park, go on a weekday.

Up near the top, we hung out for an hour and a half with Rose, an intern with the Condor project. Every fifteen minutes or so, she cycled through the frequencies of all of the condor transmitters and recorded direction and signal strength. 

Here's one of the pinnacles for which the park is named. Note the people at the bottom right. These are pretty cool geologic features.

We hung out waiting for condors to show up in the thermals, and were hopeful when the sun came out and lots of turkey vultures and ravens started soaring around, but alas, no condors showed up for us.

It's a beautiful place, and I'll go again. But not on a busy weekend.

This is probably how most tourists think of Belize, and there's no doubt the beaches are beautiful.

Lots of friendly kids and friendly dogs around too. 

Tourists who aren't here for the beaches are often here for the diving. Us too! We did four scuba dives, and all were good. Belize, where all the diving is above average!

And of course there's the opportunity for fruity alcoholic drinks on pleasant verandas, or, as Juliet discovered, for a massage and manicure.

In addition to the water activities, there's stuff inland too...such as caving.

This trip was surprisingly technical, lots of climbing, squeezing through narrow passages, etc. No lights except the ones on your heads (or your camera flash).

These caves were used for Mayan ceremonies hundreds of years ago, as these pot remnants attest. Some people don't know that Mayans are still around: the civilization that built the temples collapsed hundreds of years ago, but the people are still here, still speaking their Mayan languages. Several of our guides were Mayan.

Here's an interesting way to transport a canoe. Oncoming traffic handled it with aplomb. There are lots of potholes so cars are used to weaving all over the roads anyway.

This (non-Mayan) guide took us on a great tour of Monkey River.

We split our Monkey River time between the boat and a walk in the forest.

You've gotta be careful where you put your hands. Lots of trees have some kind of protection.

See? 

We looked for jaguars. We did see lots of fresh scrapes and tracks, but this is the closest we got to a jaguar. (This is at Cockscomb Jaguar Refuge).

Of course we did lots of birding and looked for wildlife. We saw tons and tons of birds, but fewer mammals than we expected...but (as we will show in a subsequent post) we had some great looks at howler monkeys. We also saw kinkajous at night, which was pretty great.

Try a Maine Coaster, the delicious cocktail from the State of Maine

Fresh lime juice, fresh mint, maple syrup, and light rum. These are the principal ingredients of a Maine Coaster. A bit of club soda finishes it off. (The photo above shows enough to make several of them).

The inspiration of the Maine Coaster (which I, Phil, invented about 6 years ago) is the mojito. A mojito, as you know, is made from lime juice, mint, simple syrup, rum, and club soda. A Maine Coaster simply replaces the simple syrup with maple syrup. Although to make a really good Maine Coaster you also want to adjust the proportions slightly differently from those of a mojito. 

Try this:

4 mint leaves

3 oz lime juice 

2 oz light rum

1.5 oz Grade A maple syrup (or 'Fancy' grade works too)

1 oz club soda

a few ice cubes

Muddle the mint in the lime juice very thoroughly. Pour into an 8-oz glass, add everything else, and stir. That's it!

The goal is a drink in which you can easily taste each of the principal ingredients. If you find yourself saying "well, I mostly taste lime, but I _think_ I can taste a bit of maple" then you need to use less lime next time, or more syrup. As long as you can distinctly taste all four main ingredients, you have yourself an officially recognized Maine Coaster, and you may feel free to adjust the proportions to make it relatively minty or limey or rummy or maple-y. The recipe above makes for a rather strong-flavored drink, which is the way I like it. Obviously you can use more soda and less of everything else, and get a lighter flavor. That's the way they make them at the Nebo Lodge on North Haven, Maine, which is the only bar or restaurant where you can get a Maine Coaster at the moment. Unfortunately this is not a drink they can mix for you at your local bar, unless you bring your own maple syrup.

One thing that ought to go without saying, but doesn't, I fear: if you don't have maple syrup, you can't make a Maine Coaster and it is not worth trying. Using maple-flavored corn syrup is simply a waste of rum and lime and mint, whether it says "real maple flavor" or not. If it didn't come out of a maple tree, don't use it. 

Now, go make yourself a Maine Coaster and enjoy!