Sinking of the Titanic by Henry Reuterdahl, drawing based on radio descriptions, courtesy of Wikipedia

On April 2, 1912, the ship that was called “the new wonder of the world” left her slip in Belfast, where she was built, for the final trial before her maiden voyage across the dark waters of the Atlantic for New York City. She was designed to be the largest, most luxurious ship in the world, with a swimming pool, gymnasium, squash court, Turkish bath, ornate wood panelling in the first class cabins, and much more. She also had the latest technologies and safety features, and was believed to be unsinkable. She was the glamorous, ill-fated RMS Titanic, and everyone knows how this story ends.

The ship left Belfast on April 2 for Southhampton, England with a limited number of crew and an interim captain. A surveyor from the Board of Trade was on board to check that everything worked and that the ship was fit to carry passengers;  everything appeared fine and he deemed the ship sea-worthy, signing an ‘Agreement and Account of Voyages and Crew’.

On April 10, with Captain Edward J Smith at the helm and most of its passengers on board, the Titanic with much fanfare left her dock in Southhampton for her inaugural voyage. Some of the most prominent people of the day were travelling on the ship — White Star Line’s managing director J. Bruce Ismay, millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine, the owner of Macy’s Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida, United States presidential aide Archibald Butt, industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, and millionairess Margaret “Molly” Brown from Denver.

There were forebodings even before the ship hit the ocean. Banker J. P. Morgan cancelled at the last minute. Departure from Southhampton was delayed for about half an hour because the wake from the Titanic caused the SS New York to break from its moorings and almost collide with the Titanic — they came within 4 feet of early disaster. After a short voyage across the English Channel to Cherbourg to pick up the remainder of the passengers and a brief stop at Cobh, Ireland (then called Queenstown) before hitting open sea,  a 23-year-old stoker named John Coffey, who had a bad feeling, jumped ship in Cobh.

Finally the Titanic set out across the ocean on April 10th with 2201 people on board. There were lifeboats for only 1178, but no one expected that the great ship would need to use them. Millennia before this day, the ancient Greeks had a word for extreme pride or arrogance — ‘hubris’. It was the greatest crime in ancient Greek society, and not only were the perpetrators shunned by their fellow Greeks, but the goddess Nemesis usually inflicted disaster upon them, more often than not fatal. It’s a concept the creators of the Titanic should have remembered.

Titanic gymnasium, taken by Robert John Welch (1859-1936), official photographer for Harland & Wolff, courtesy of Wikipedia

For the wealthy first class passengers on board, life was a gay whirl of activity for the first few days of the voyage. Lady Cynthia Asquith commented later, “It must be admitted that a very large fraction of our time was spent in dressing and undressing. We were forever changing our clothes, a custom that necessitated travelling with a mountain of luggage.” It’s been estimated that the ratio of non-navigational staff to first- and second-class passengers was about 1:1, and those staff spent all their time catering to the needs of their passengers.

The pay of the head chef was almost equal to that of the captain, and his kitchen facilities included a larger amount of storage space for foodstuffs than had ever been built before, to house items like 5 tons of sugar and 1221 quarts of oysters.

One of the first-class passengers, Mrs. Walter Douglas, described the scene in the Ritz dining room for the last supper on board on April 14th : “It was the last word in luxury. The tables were gay with pink roses and white daisies, the women in their beautiful shimmering gowns of satin and silk, the men immaculate and well-groomed, the stringed orchestra playing music from Puccini and Tchaikovsky. The food was superb: caviar, lobster, quail from Egypt, plover’s eggs, and hothouse grapes and fresh peaches. The night was cold and clear, the sea like glass.”

Over the previous few days Captain Smith had received iceberg warnings by wireless and had already adjusted his course southward. On the afternoon of the 14th, the wireless operators had receive a message from the steamer Amerika that large icebergs lay directly in Titanic’s path, but because they were employed by Marconi and had instructions to mainly relay messages for the passengers, that warning, and another later that evening from another ship in the same waters, apparently never made it to the bridge.

Captain Smith saw clear waters ahead, and, after a gala evening during which he’d dutifully abstained from alcohol, he chatted with the bridge crew and went to bed, saying, “If it becomes at all doubtful let me know at once. I will be just inside.”

At 11:40pm, just 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, lookouts spotted a large iceberg directly ahead of the ship. They sounded the alarm, and the first officer gave the helmsman the order to veer left. It wasn’t enough time – 37 seconds later they hit the iceberg, scraping the ship’s right side. The entire collision lasted only 10 seconds, but the damage was dramatic: the hull buckled in several places, and 299 feet of rivets below the waterline popped out.

There were many contributing factors to the death of the ill-fated ship, among them the fact that the captain for the most part ignored warnings of icebergs in his path and ran the ship at too high a speed to avoid collision, and the use of steel for the hull whose manufacturing process made it turn brittle in cold water, allowing 6 forward compartments to flood when the ship had been built to float with a maximum of 4 flooded compartments. The majestic ship took less than 3 hours to sink into the depths of the Atlantic. Over 1500 people died in the disaster, most of them from hypothermia in the freezing waters. More could have been saved if there had been more lifeboats, and if the sinking hadn’t been so fast that most of the existing lifeboats left less than half full of people.

Hard lessons to learn for the shipping industry, and the disaster has continued to live on in our imaginations ever since. If you’re as fascinated by it as I am, you can visit the place that the journey began: Belfast. Our May adventure to Ireland will spend a day in Belfast, and there are many ways to explore the ship’s story — walking tours, guided tours by cab, and several museums, including a new one built specifically for the centennial, the Titanic Belfast Museum, which opens this April. You’ll find more information about the Belfast activities and exhibits at www.the-titanic.com, and you can check out more about our trip at http://ncexplorersclub.wordpress.com/2012-ncec-voyages/. The next Information Session for the trip takes place this Saturday, January 14th. Contact me at 905-735-2211 ext. 7848 or ejurus@niagaracollege.ca for more details and to register for the free session.

*Quotations courtesy of Last Dinner on the Titanic, Madison Press Books, 1997

The beautiful lights of Diwali, courtesy of Wikipedia and user Indianhilbilly

The Hindu festival of Diwali, or Deepavali, began on October 26th, and if you get a chance to experience some of it, do take the opportunity.

Diwali, popularly known as the ‘festival of lights’, generally takes place around the end of October and into November. It’s one of the most important festivals in the Hindu calendar and is celebrated in locations throughout Asia. The name of the festival means “row of lamps”, and the traditional activity in homes is to light numerous small clay lamps filled with oil, which signify the triumph of good over evil. However, the entire festival is an exuberant celebration with devotion, fireworks, new clothing and the sharing of food.

The impression that my hubby and I got when we were able to enjoy Deepavali a number of years ago in Singapore, which has a significant Hindu population, is that this festival is somewhat akin to our New Year’s Eve, symbolizing the turn of the year and a  fresh start. Deepavali is an official holiday in Singapore, as it is in many cities in Asia, and the friendly, colourful festival gave us the opportunity to see another side of the famous city.

Singapore is a lovely and very clean city, but we found it to be rather sterile — not a lot of its original roustabout character left, and a very restrictive government. It’s also quite expensive.

When Sir Stamford Raffles in the mid-1800s created the city of Singapore more-or-less as we know it (now a city-state with its own governance), he segmented the various ethnic populations into their own district, including a large and vibrant Indian section.

The Indian section was a blast at Deepavali: colourful Hindu temples with lots of ceremonies taking place, wooden walkways with innumerable racks of clothes and accessories, tiny shops selling enough gold jewellery to float Fort Knox if it ever runs out of bullion, lots of people wandering around happily. It was the untidiest section of the city, but it definitely had the most charm.

We also wandered into a beautiful Hindu temple in another part of the city the next day, and we stayed to watch the elaborate ceremony that was being performed. One of the statues was ‘dressed’ in a yellow silk cloth and was being anointed with a series of edible materials: milk, mashed up mango, etc. We had moved over to the other side of the temple to get a better look when a film crew entered, set up, and began filming the ceremony. They also panned the audience, including Mike and I – the only non-Indians in there at the time and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I had visions of someone perhaps in India watching the film some time later and wondering who the heck we were!

You can check out the Diwali festival in Singapore at http://www.diwalifestival.org/diwali-in-singapore.html and find out more about Diwali in Canada at http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/canada/diwali.  The British love their Indian food, and you can find delicious recipes to make on the BBC Good Good website: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/.

The best and spookiest night of the year is almost upon us!

Here’s a recipe for a yummy spiced pumpkin carrot cake that you can make for Halloween night at home, or any other fall celebration. I assembled it from a number of other recipes I found online, and the end result is a moist, deeply flavoured sheet cake that’s very easy to make. Warning: it does need to be made at least a day ahead to allow the flavours to blend. Sorry, no photo – I made it for a work group and it all got gobbled up.

Pumpkin Cake
serves 12 to 16

Cake ingredients:

3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed old-fashioned style brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tsp real vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsps ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
3/4 tsp sea salt
2 cups grated carrots
1 cup canned pumpkin puree (not pie filling)
1/2 cup toasted and chopped pecans (optional)

Icing ingredients:
250g cream cheese, softened
85g unsalted butter, softened
100g icing sugar, sifted
zest of 1 orange
juice of 1/4 to 1/2 orange

Grease a 13″ x 9″ metal cake pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 C).

In large mixing bowl, beat together the first 5 ingredients until smooth. In a separate smaller bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and baking soda, spices and salt, then add to the egg and sugar mixture and combine just until evenly moistened. Add the carrots, pumpkin puree, and nuts if using.

Spread batter evenly in cake pan and bake in centre of oven for about 40 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed. Let the cake cool completely in the pan. Cover and store for up to a day.

Before serving, make the frosting. Combine the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and orange zest until creamy. Add enough orange juice to give the frosting a nice spreading consistency. Spread evenly over the cake, swirling decoratively.

Once the cake is finished, you can decorate it for Halloween in any number of ways: use a Halloween stencil to sprinkle a light dusting of cinnamon over the frosting, cut the cake and stick little Halloween picks in each piece, sprinkle coloured sugar  in a design on the cake, pipe a chocolate web over the frosting, decorate the cake with Halloween candies or some of the new candy appliques in Halloween shapes…

Have fun and enjoy Halloween!

1910 image of Halley’s Comet, courtesy of Wikipedia and the Yerkes Observatory

If you’re a fan of old sci-fi movies, no matter how cheesy, you’ll appreciate this!

It’s  my favourite season once again — Halloween season, of course! The season of shivers down the spine in the chilly night air, the scent of woodsmoke and fallen leaves, new Halloween decorations in Home Sense and old sci-fi and horror movies on Turner Classic Movies… I love coming home on a cold day to a toasty house and a hot cup of tea. I tend to bake more in the fall — it seems the perfect time for some spiced cakes and anything with pumpkin in it.

It’s also time for our second annual Halloween Dance to benefit the United Way. The theme this year is Dead Man’s Party. Anyone who comes dressed up as their favourite dead person or creature gets in for $10 instead of $15. All the info is available on the Special Events page of the NCEC website. The dance is open to the general public, so bring your friends and enjoy some thrills and great spooky music with us — it’s an easy way to help out a great cause that benefits so many people in our Niagara community, and it’s all the more crucial at this time of ongoing recessions and cutbacks.

There are numerous organizations trying to help that desperately need our contributions. If you haven’t made a donation yet, the Explorers’ Club urges you to do so. Here are just a few of the organizations you can get more information from and make a donation to:

• United Nations World Food Programme
• Doctors Without Borders
• World Vision Canada – up to September 16th, the Canadian government is matching donations made by us
• Unicef Canada
• Samaritan’ Purse

This article on CNN News gives an extensive list of organizations as well. You can also read the interesting comments at the bottom of the page. I understand why people may be reluctant to make donations if they’re unsure how much of their money will actually make a difference, and yes we do have many homeless and poor in our own country who need help — the list of people in the entire world who need help on the local front is massive. We can’t solve every problem by donating to foreign crises, but it’s a start. Even if a fair portion of my donation doesn’t make it straight into a starving person’s mouth in Somalia, it’s a start. Great things happen from small starts!

Full-strength hurricanes are frightening things to be in the middle of. Hubby Mike and I went through Hurricane David while we were on our honeymoon in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1979. David was a powerful Category 5 hurricane that became one of the deadliest hurricanes in history — we know how to pick ‘em!

We arrived in St. Thomas on the Monday after our wedding, to beautiful clear skies and gorgeous blue-green waters lapping gently at the island’s soft white-sand beaches. On Tuesday we borrowed one of our resort’s cars (free for use for a half-day at a time, plenty for tooting around the small island) and went into town, Charlotte Amalie, to explore. We had a great time exploring the duty-free shops in old brick warehouses and buying alcoholic beverages from street vendors (made Mike much happier about the whole shopping thing), but we began to hear talk about a storm coming in. We didn’t think much about it until that evening, when word circulated that a hurricane was on the way on Wednesday.

I remember thinking “You’ve got to be kidding me!” We’d just been in California that January visiting friends and had an earthquake. We were not amused. No where to go, though, so our only option was to make the best of things. On Wednesday morning we were back in town, and the sun was still shining brightly while business owners started taping their windows and all the cruise ships made a beeline out of the harbour for safer waters.

That evening, our resort gave us instructions about what to do in the face of the approaching storm: open the big glass sliding doors a bit to prevent the build-up of pressure from the winds (all units had a full 24 ft frontage of glass overlooking the Caribbean), stay in our bedrooms at the back of the unit and keep the louvered doors closed, and if things got really bad to head into the bathroom into the tub and shut that door, as each building of 4 units was set into the hillside, with the bathroom at the rear being the most protected room.

We’d met another honeymoon couple from Michigan and had dinner with them. Afterwards, the wind really began to pick up, and their unit was quite far down the hillside past a construction site for new units that had a lot of loose timber on the ground. As there were no phones in any unit, we were worried that something might happen to them on the way to their room and they would have no means to check in with us that they arrived safely, so we convinced them to stay with us in our unit, which was one of the closest to the restaurant and main building, for the night.

We got to our unit and set everything up as specified. It was very dark outside, so we couldn’t see much other than the lights along the paths to all the units, and the wind whipping around the leaves of the palm tree overhanging our balcony. Thank god for king-sized beds – Brad, Nancy and I tried to relax on the bed, while Mike chose to flake out on the floor. For a while we chatted nervously about the 4 of us having to cram into the normal-sized tub in our bathroom and tried to listen to what the wind was doing. Eventually those of us on the bed managed to doze off, only to bolt upright when the window air conditioner over the bed kicked in – Mike, who was still awake, said it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen.

The night passed without event — no stampedes for the bathtub. When we looked out, rain was coming down heavily and we couldn’t see the island of St. John in the distance. There were no longer palm fronds over our balcony – the tree had been blown down, and a number of cacti near our unit had had their heads lopped off. When we walked up to the main building for breakfast, there was vegetation debris everywhere, but that was about the worst of it. We learned that the hurricane had chosen to change direction about 50 miles south of St. Thomas and head due west to ravage Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As it happened, we’d chosen the best resort possible, on the north side of the island buffered by the mountain that forms most of St. Thomas.

No one was allowed on any of the roads on the island while emergency crews were sent out to clean up all the storm damage, so most people congregated in the restaurant to have some pina coladas and play cards or other games. We met two couples from the U.S., one from Georgia and one from North Carolina, and ended up both having dinner with them and staying on to play cards afterwards.

The restaurant at the resort was all glass on 3 sides, with even bigger sliding walls. Darkness fell, and we were sitting at a table just a few feet from the glass when the wind started to pick up again. No one seemed to think much of that until the wind began howling and plants started to fly past the glass. I saw the glass next to me actually bow inwards by at least a foot – I couldn’t believe my eyes! The wind shrieked, a palm tree trunk flew by, we all gasped and the lights went out. Everyone dove under the nearest table, although I did see a few hands go up to retrieve their drink from the table top.

The wind settled back down and we all cautiously got back up off the floor. The bartenders lit some candles. Management asked us to return to our units and gave us all hurricane lamps — the first time we’ve ever had to use one for its real purpose — to light our way. The wooden steps were wet and slick, and it was tricky to be able to see by the lamps (holding one in front of you was actually blinding), and Mike slipped and banged into a railing, ending up with bruised ribs that bothered him for months afterward. The two couples from the U.S. were also way down the hill, so we spent another night with even more people in our room; Mike and I joked afterward that the resort staff must have wondered what kind of kinky honeymoon couple they had in our room.

We found out the next  morning that a tornado had passed just on the other side of the hill from us, along the road. It had missed us by yards. A couple of units had their windows blown out, but no one got seriously hurt. We were told that in the Caribbean, tornados often follow hurricanes. I think we were glad that we hadn’t known that ahead of time.

The rest of our week was uneventful, with gorgeous weather. We lazed on the velvety white sands of Magens Bay beach, had dinner in town with the 2 American couples (an adventure in itself best saved for another post). We called home to reassure everyone that we were fine; my dad said some of the news media had reported that everyone on our island had been evacuated, so our families were a bit frantic, particularly because no one outside the island was allowed to call in. With much relief, I think most of our relatives went back to the partying they’d been doing since our wedding reception.

On the following Monday, when we were due to fly home, we heard that another hurricane was on the way – Frederick! We caught as early a flight as we could on the short hop to Puerto Rico so that we could definitely make our connecting flight back to Buffalo — one hurricane per vacation was enough. On the long leg our pilot made a point of dodging all the massive thunderheads we came upon, so he must have been worried about unusual turbulence.

After we got home I saved copies of some of the newspapers articles about the hurricane; they’re tucked away in one of our memorabilia boxes that I keep meaning to put into scrapbooks about our rather adventurous life together. We got plenty of ribbing from our families and friends. I generally love storms, but a howling wind creeped me out for quite a few months. If you’re a bucket-list type of person, you might consider that to have been an item to cross off, but it’s not one I’d personally recommend. We got lucky and lived to tell the tale. In fact, Mike and I have come out on the best side of a variety of strange things on our travels, so word to the wise: if you’re going adventuring and want to keep safe, you may want want to stick as close to us as possible!

NASA has been tracking Hurricane Irene from space — check out the views of the eye of the storm on Space.com.

On a previous expedition 3 years earlier, Bingham had visited the ruins of Choquequirao, which at the time were thought to be the lost site of Vilcabamba, said to be the last resting place of the Incas.  The Inca civilization began around 1200 AD in the area of Cuzco, and would become a vast empire connected by an advanced system of roads through the Andes. Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s invaded the area and were given rooms full of gold and silver to free their ruler Atahualpa. The gesture was futile, and the Spanish took over the throne, eventually ending one of the greatest civilizations in history. However, the incredible architecture and the magnificent textiles, ceramics and gold and silver artifacts that escaped destruction by the Spanish fascinated later archeologists and historians.

On Bingham’s return in 1911, a local farmer named Melchor Arteaga told him about some fairly extensive ruins at the top of a mountain ridge opposite the camp; the farmer called the mountain Machu Picchu, which in native Quechua meant “old peak”.

On July 24th, Bingham left camp around 10am, accompanied only by the farmer and a local policeman who served as his interpreter; no one else in the expedition was interested in going, particularly on such a cold and wet day. The trio braved the wet and steep climb up the mountain, crossing a bridge so decrepit that they had to cross on their hands and knees. They rested at a hut belonging to a group of locals who talked about an extensive system of terraces with very fertile soil on which they were growing their crops. One of the group, an 11-year-old boy named Pablito, led Bingham up to the spot.

View of Hiram Bingham III standing atop ruins at Machu Picchu in Peru. Hand-colored glass slide, from original image by Harry Ward Foote, courtesy of Wikipedia user MarmadukePercy

When they arrived, Bingham was amazed to find over a hundred terraces surrounded by jungle. Pablito showed him some of the granite walls amongst the vegetation, and despite being almost consumed by the forest, the stonework was judged by Bingham to be some of the finest he’d ever seen. He later wrote:

“I know of no place in the world which can compare with it. Not only had it great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead; gigantic precipices of many-coloured granite rising sheer for thousands of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids, it has also, in striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty of luxurious vegetation and the mysterious witchery of the jungle… Above all, there is the fascination of finding here and there under swaying vines, or perched on top of a beetling crag, the rugged masonry of a bygone race; and of trying to understand the bewildering romance of the ancient builders who, ages ago, sought refuge in a region which appears to have been expressly designed by nature as a sanctuary for the oppressed, a place where they might fearlessly and patiently give expression to their passion for walls of enduring beauty.”

Bingham returned to Peru in 1912 and again in 1915 with the support of Yale and the National Geographic Society, excavating around 40,000 artifacts, including mummies, bones and ceramic pieces. In recent years the university has made an agreement with the Peruvian government to return many of the artifacts. You can read the original 1913 National Geographic article about Machu Picchu on their website.

Today Machu Picchu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and receives up to 400,000 visitors a year. Because of the impact of so much tourism, the site is deteriorating and may be closed to the public in a few years – I’ve heard rumours of closings in 2015, but nothing substantiated. In order to see this incredible place while it’s still available, the Explorers’ Club is running a 3-week trip to Peru and Bolivia next year, in May 2012, that will include Machu Picchu, the Amazon, the Nazca lines, Lake Titicaca, and an even more mysterious temple high in the Andes called Tiahuanaco.

Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put on your Indy hat and explore the fascinating Peruvian jungles and mountains with us! The dates and itinerary are available here; pricing to follow.

There will be an Information Session for this trip at the beginning of October, detailing the pre-trip preparation, including a list of inoculations and an overview of the gear needed for our adventure. Once all bookings have been finalized, there will be an Orientation Session for all of our travellers to meet each other and to get more details about packing and what to expect. The trip will offer several options on how to get to the Machu Picchu site — a full 4-day Inca Trail hike, a modified easier 2-day trail hike, or a day visit by train; final pricing will depend on the option selected. In the meantime, please feel free to contact NCEC Coordinator and trip host Erica Jurus for more information at 905-735-2211 ext. 7848 or ejurus@niagaracollege.ca.

Samburu National Reserve, early morning - photo by E Jurus

In Kenya, you really get a sense of the age and vastness of Africa. In areas where there’s no one else around and where there are mountains striding off into the distance as far as the eye can see, it feels like you’ve stepped back thousands of years, to when the world was first formed.

The Great Rift Valley is one of the defining geological wonders of Africa. It actually begins in northern Syria in the Middle East and runs southwest for a distance of roughly 4000 mi. to Mozambique. The Rift Valley is formed from a fracture in the earth’s surface that formed millions of years ago (estimates vary) and continues to stretch each year.

In eastern Africa, particularly in Kenya, 2 branches of the rift have formed. The western branch contains the African Great Lakes, created when the rift filled with water at some point. These lakes are some of the oldest and deepest in the world. Several of them are “soda” lakes with varying degrees of alkaline water, which produce salt-encrusted shores and species of crustaceans that feed millions of pink flamingoes.

Flamingos on Lake Nakuru - photo by E Jurus

We visited two of them on our trip: Lake Nakuru, the most famous of the flamingo habitats, and Lake Naivasha, a lake that’s often overlooked but that has incredible wildlife and some of the most beautiful light I’ve ever seen.

There was  a bush fire in Lake Nakuru National Park when we were there – you can see smoke rising upwards over the hills in the background in this photo.

After 2 previous trips to Africa, my hubby Mike and I fnally saw our first rhinos! We saw a mother and baby grazing in the bushes but couldn’t get a good look at them. Luckily, though, a mother and older child were moving about in full view on the shores of the lake when we got to it, so we were able to get quite close and take some great photos, leaving the duo to continue grazing on the salt-crusted grass – a memory like that is far better than any trophy brought home by hunters.

Mom and child hippo, Lake Nakuru - photo by E Jurus

Lake Nakuru park is a sanctuary for rhinos, which have been hunted almost to extinction.The park is home to about 25 black rhinos and about 70 white rhinos. It also has a lively population of olive baboons that entertained us for quite a while in the late afternoon.  The bird life is amazing, so this would be a fantastic spot for bird watchers.

Lake Naivasha was remarkably beautiful, with lots of bird life, and the most placid hippos Mike and I have ever come across. You can hire a boat and driver for a reasonable fee, and on the water you can get quite close to most of the animals, including the hippos, so I was able to get some intimate shots of the hippos at their most relaxed. This is another great spot for bird watchers, particularly since visitors can get so close. The boat pilots carry pails of fish with them as well, so if the fish eagles are hungry you may get to catch them swooping in for a free meal tossed from the boat.

One of my favourite shots of a hippo, looking very content, as it lazes in Lake Naivasha - E Jurus

 In the Samburu reserve we saw some animals that are unique to northern Kenya: the reticulated giraffe, which has rich ruddy spots separated by well-defined creamy lines, and Grevy’s zebras, which have more stripes than the more common Burchell’s zebra, and the stripes are very distinct and very black. It’s not possible to take a bad photo of either of these gorgeous creatures.

We also saw gerenuks, which are thin antelope with long necks – a bit like a cross between an impala and a mini-giraffe. They stand up on their hind legs to graze in the trees; it’s a unique sight.

A gerenuk stretches way up to get some leaves in Samburu - photo by E Jurus

Samburu was my favourite reserve, but it was an amazing experience to visit the famous Masai Mara reserve, which flanks Kenya’s southern border, becoming the Serengeti on the other side in Tanzania.

The Rift Valley series on Oasis focuses quite a bit on the Masai Mara, and although visually it’s not as dramatic as a place like Samburu, the sight of animals wading through the tall grasses across wide rolling hills against a flawlessly blue sky is an experience not to be missed.

Even though we were there in the hot dry season, there was a lot of activity going on. The Mara River was frequented by numerous hippos, and a regular population of crocodiles waiting for the great migration in July & August. We were lucky to come across the largest pride of lions I’ve ever seen – 16 lionesses and cubs – feasting on a zebra they’d killed. They were so engrossed in their dinner that they paid no attention to the group of safari vehicles parked several metres away, so we were able to watch all the interactions that played out as the sun began to set. The adult lions were in a closely packed huddle, with the occasional snarling if one got too close to another’s piece of zebra, while the cubs crawled all over the place and sometimes made off with their own piece of meat. A couple of the adults got tired of group eating and carried off a hunk of leg or other part to a quiet spot a few feet away. The lions who had finished lolled lazily on the outskirts, often rubbing affectionately against each other, while jackals and vultures began to prowl the edges looking for a safe opportunity to score their own meal.

Our Mara lion pride in the afternoon, resting but very much awake - photo by E Jurus

We ran into the same pride twice the following day, in the morning when they were snoozing by a watering hole, and in the afternoon as we returned from the Mara River, when they were much more alert as they relaxed in the shade. They definitely noticed us that afternoon, so we were quiet and still as a  mouse then. Lions see a safari vehicle as a single big creature, but if the occupants move around too much and make a lot of noise, the lions will realize that there are smaller creatures inside and may decide to investigate – not usually a good outcome for the safari-goers.

The game reserves in Kenya are magical places, especially those in the Rift Valley, framed by the mountains and hills that edge the ever-expanding fissure. It would be interesting to see what the Valley looks like in a thousand years, but in the meantime you can watch the shows on Oasis, or view some video clips on the Oasis HD website – click here for more information. The Explorers’ Club will run more trips back to Kenya in the future, so stay tuned on our website. In the meantime, upcoming trips are our Celtic Spirit trip to Ireland in March 2012, and our Mysteries of the Amazon & Andes trip to Peru and Bolivia in May 2012 – check out our website for more details as they become available.

Photo of the new billboard in Manila by Lory Tan for the WWF

1) Living Billboard in Manila Reduces Pollution
In a great example of recycling, the Coca Cola company in conjunction with the World Wildlife Federation, has installed a living bulletin board in Manila which cleans the atmosphere while it advertises for the company.

The billboard is composed of 3,600 Fukien tea plants planted in discarded Coca Cola bottles. Fukien tea plants aren’t the beverage type of tea plant – they are a flowering shrub in the borage family, and are mainly used in bonsai. When fully grown, the plants should absorb about 47000 pound of carbon dioxide from the polluted air of Manila.

The project is part of Coca-Cola Phillipines’ Live Positively sustainability program. Click here for more information.

2) Women in Saudi Arabia and Their Battle to Drive
As strange as it seems in modern times, women in Saudi Arabia are missing a basic right that we take forgranted in the west: they’re not legally allowed to drive. Recently one woman, Manal al-Sharif, was arrrested for driving, but after several campaigns on the website Change.org and petitions to Hilary Clinton and European ambassador Catharine Ashton, the charges against Manal have been dropped! You can find more information about the issues facing women drivers in Saudi here.

3) Another Victory to Prevent Animal Cruelty
In the aftermath of the devastating news that 100 sled dogs were killed in B.C. when their owner had no more use for them, actor Ian Somerhalder created a campaign on Change.org to get the province to change its policies governing the treatment of animals. According to Change.org, over 67,000 people signed the petition, and British Columbia just adopted the ”strongest anti-cruelty laws in all of Canada! ” In addition, proving that you’re never too young (or old) to work for change, a 7-year-old girl named Devon Haas teamed up with Ian’s organization, the IS Foundation, to to launch an offshoot, the ISF Kids Army. Devon asked children to draw a picture of sled dogs or of their own dog,  and to send it in – with a letter telling BC public officials how they feel about the killing of the sled dogs and the need for better animal protection - to the ISF foundation, which then delivered the letters to the right officials at the right time for the campaign. Click here for more information on the Ian Somerhalder Foundation and all of the work that it does for animal rights in North America.

4) Bad News for Our Oceans/Some Good News for Sharks
One of the most feared predators in the world is ironically on the endangered list because it can’t protect itself from humans. Shark attacks on humans are rare – many more people die from water-related activities in a year than from shark encounters – but the media loves to play them up. However, over 100 million sharks are killed each year, and a creature that has been in existence for over 4 million years is now in danger of becoming extinct. However, a recent study in the Pacific nation of Palau found that a single reef shark is worth an estimated $1.9 million in tourism revenue over its life span, while revenue from a dead shark is only around $100, making sharks worth 17,000 times more alive than dead. In response, Honduras has already announced that commercial shark fishing will be banned from its 92,665 square miles/(240,000 square kilometers of national waters. To learn more about sharks and the recent study, visit the Dorsal Fin website.