To Timbuktu and back, 1: Bamako

It turns out the only way to get to Mali is through Paris, and the best way to get to Paris from Calgary is through Amsterdam. So that's what I did. But if I'd done that at any sort of civilized hour I'd arrive in Paris 30 minutes after the flight to Mali left. So I started off a day early and spent the night in Paris.

Any reasonable person would have gone to Paris days early and taken in the sights of the City of Light. But Paris doesn't hold a lot of appeal for me any more since the last time I was there I broke my wrist. All I did this time was sleep - for 14 hours straight - and hang around the airport. Charles de Gaulle airport has about as much charm as Heathrow with a few high-priced designer shops thrown in. It was a relief to get out of there.

Three of the eight of us on the tour arrived in Bamako together at 9:15 in the evening, Saturday January 22. We got out of the airport about 11:30 after our bags finally made it off the plane and into the baggage retrieval scrum. It was hot, it was crowded, many of the people we were jammed in among hadn't bathed in recent memory, and it was all very strange. Fortunately the great Barou, co-leader of the tour along with his American wife Cynthia, tracked us down and assured us that everything was going to be all right. And it was.

We drove through dark and mysterious streets to our dark and mysterious hotel: Hotel Comme Chez Soi, one of the highest-rated in Bamako. To me it seemed at first to be a little quirky and primitive, with a toilet that left puddles and minimal lighting, but viewed in the context of other places it was fantastically luxurious. And it had air conditioning (and a swimming pool).

Sunday, January 23
We woke to the sounds of donkeys, roosters and motorcycles - the background music of life in Mali. I met the others on the tour at breakfast:
- Ann from Port Townsend, Wash. (actually I'd met her the night before - she was my roommate)
- Liz from Tacoma, who'd sat beside me on the plane from Paris
- Susan and Steve from Brooklyn; she a retired therapist, he a retired teacher who had worked in Nigeria in the 60s
- Dianne from Toronto, a retired nurse
- Anne from California, another retired nurse and good friend of Dianne's.
And we met our leaders and their helpers:
- Cynthia from California
- Barou, her Malian husband
- Papou, Barou's near-cousin and lifelong friend
- Dra, driver of our van.

As soon as we could get moving we set off for the National Museum of Mali and its textile exhibit for a preview of all we were about to see. There was a sculpture outside the museum that we particularly enjoyed: a lifelike version of the dominant form of transportation in the city.

A fine lunch in the museum restaurant, and we were off again to the Donniyaso Centre where a master marionette maker trains young people in art and music (and literacy). Their marionettes are really life-size costumes worn by dancers. They put on a spectacular show for us - my Flickr page has a video I made there.



Monday, January 24
We hit the road early to go to the Grand Marché, the huge marketplace. Our mission was to get some bazin, cotton damask that we were going to dye using traditional methods; the rest of our visit would take us to see some of the craftsmen who turned the bazin into the clothing every fashionable Malian wears. We visited a man who folds and ties and wraps the fabric so some areas are protected from the dye, and another who sews tiny, tight stitches into it to protect it.

And then we went upstairs to a room on a roof where an acre of men with sewing machines do intricate embroidery on nearly-finished outfits. I honestly don't know how they manage to do such work so fast.

And finally we got to rest at an instrument-maker's stall while he demonstrated his drum and Liz (a retired music teacher) got lessons on the kora's little sister.

Lunch at a Lebanese café (all good restaurants in Mali seem to be run by the Lebanese) and we were off again to visit Tantou, Mali's most famous dyer. We watched tied and untied bazin being swihe pounders' hut, where strong men spend the day whacking the daylights out of nearly-finshed and soaked in vats of intense color, rinsed and swished again in starch. Then to tished fabric. The desired end result is something that looks like coloured wax paper, stiff and shiny. Once you're looking for it everyone seems to be wearing clothing made of this stuff.

And that was Bamako. Tomorrow we're off to Ségou.

To Timbuktu and back - my trip to Mali

Mali. The third poorest country in the world. Home of Al-Qaeda and Tuareg terrorists. A place you need at least 8 shots before you visit; where you have to take anti-malaria medication daily while you're there and for a week after; where you're crazy to eat the lettuce and almost certainly will get gut-twisting turista anyway. Why would anyone want to go there.

I did.

Last November I was browsing through Piecework magazine, a lovely little magazine about fibre arts and crafts around the world and through time, and I saw an ad for Behind the Scenes Adventures and their tours of parts of the world of interest to textile people. Something about their trip to Mali seized my imagination and wouldn't let go. A few hours later I'd signed up.

So that's how it came to pass that on January 20 I found myself, all on my own, flying across the Atlantic to Amsterdam.

Over the next few days I'm going to show and tell you something about my adventures.

Our Pacific voyage

Here's a summary of my Facebook posts from our trip to New Zealand, Australia & the South Pacific. Sorry to all my friends who rely on this blog instead of Facebook to see what we're doing.
Photos are on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesliel/sets/72157624107939831/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesliel/sets/72157624109084617/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesliel/sets/72157624201407911/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesliel/sets/72157624415481150/.

Touristing in Alberta

It seems shocking that we've covered a large part of the world's surface and hadn't (until last Thursday) been north of Red Deer in our own province. So we decided to deal with that.

A couple of months ago we reconnected with Ron's cousin Ralph at a family reunion. When Ron was growing up Ralph was one of the old kids and not part of his circle at all. Funny how 50 years can change all that. Five years don't make any difference at all now. So we were delighted to discover how well we clicked as friends.

Ralph and his partner Raymond live in Edmonton. I'd been to Edmonton on business in 1989, but that doesn't really count as a visit. We needed to see the place, and Ralph was eager to show it to us. So last Thursday we drove up that way via Custom Woolen Mills, an extraordinary fibre factory in the middle of nowhere somewhere east of Carstairs, giving us a chance to get off the highway and into some real farm country. I picked up a Turkish spindle and some slubby, bumpy wool to spin with it.

I'm afraid I'm hooked on spinning now!

Friday we discovered that Ralph missed his true calling: he should have been a tour guide. He drove us all over the place, showing us the Edmonton he loves. We shared lunch with two of his lovely daughters, Judy and Jodi (we'd met Judy at the reunion, too) at a fine sushi restaurant, and then "did" the West Edmonton Mall - you haven't seen Edmonton unless you've seen the Mall.

Ralph's daughter Shelly came over after dinner to share my birthday cake (apricot-pistachio torte: yum!).

Saturday morning was a trip to the Edmonton farmers' market, where I picked up more wool to spin - actually hand-dyed kid mohair from the supplier's own flock. Oh dear, I'm going to have much too much spinning to do, just like I have far too much to knit. Then, off to Mannville and cousin Charlene, via Vegreville's giant Easter egg.

Charlene had arranged a tour of a Hutterite colony for us that evening. What an interesting place! About a hundred people share the work and earnings of a large piece of land, making everything possible and living almost completely self-sufficient lives together. They were completely open and willing to answer every question we could think of about how and why they live like they do. And they gave us some awesomely delicious pie to finish off the evening. I don't think we could live that life - you have to work too hard - but I think they're the richest people we've ever met; they have more than enough of everything a human being could ever need.

Sunday Charlene, Paul and the two of us visited the Ukrainian village near Edmonton. Interesting place - old buildings rescued from destruction and set up in groups as they would have been in the 1930s or earlier. Each building is staffed by a young person who acts in character for the time and place, very knowledgeable and able to answer all sorts of questions. Definitely a place worth another visit.

Sunday night we spend with cousin Gay and her husband James near Wetaskawin. After moving from High Prairie last winter they lived in their RV for a couple of months. It worked out so well for them that they bought a 5th wheel to live in permanently; they have their two homes parked next to each other in a small RV lot just outside Millet. They put us up in their RV that night, leaving us full of admiration for their ability to get along together for a long time in a very small space. We're certainly not made of such stern stuff!

Monday we made our way homeward via Rocky Mountain House, where I picked up more fibre for spinning - bison this time, from a couple who raise bison and non-allergenic horses just outside of town. I envied their two little kids who had the run of the place and looked full of health and life. Every child should have that much fresh air and sunshine!

Rocky Mountain House reminded us of pre-tourist boom Canmore, very plain and not at all affluent - but you wouldn't call it poor, because it was tidy and well-kept. Its greatest treasure is its historic site, well worth the couple of hours we spent exploring it. The Canmore museum has been celebrating the bicentenary of mapmaker David Thompson, who was based in Rocky for some time, and I found their display on his life interesting in comparison.

We were going to spend the night in Lake Louise or someplace like that, but the weather began to turn rainy, so we retreated to our own mountain resort home. It's still the most beautiful place in the world, but the rest of Alberta isn't too shabby, too.

We're home

As usual, I neglected to let people know we made it home safely. I didn't know there were that many people reading this blog, but several have expressed surprise at seeing us around Canmore - "Aren't you still travelling?" So this is formal notice that we made it back home.

And the picture to the right is what we faced in Toronto. We knew there would be a bit of a temperature difference - we left Santiago on a 35C day - but did it have to be this much?

Canmore is its usual beautiful self and much less wintry than Toronto. Thank heavens for chinooks!

I've just finished uploading pictures to Flickr, so have a look.

Do we gotta go home?

So here we are in Santiago, within hours of having to leave for the airport, and I really don't want to go. Chile is very much to my taste (in every sense of the word), and I'd love to spend more time here.

To continue our voyage north from Antarctica...

We made our way through some of the fjords on Chile's coast, dropping in to visit a glacier, heading out to the rough Pacific beyond Chilean waters so the gamblers could have their casino, nipping back in to see the Darwin Channel – and there we were met by a pod of porpoises playing in our bow wave and wake. Oh wow! Wonderful. Amazing. Awe-inspiring. There were cameras going off all along the starboard rail, but I don't think any of us got a good picture, not even the ship's photographer. You just couldn't tell where they were going to come up. I have a few splashing tails off at the edge of one of my pictures, and that's the best I've seen. Never mind; the images will stay clear in our minds for a long time.

Landed again at Puerto Montt, still in southern Chile but in a more temperate climate – rather Vancouver-like from what I could tell. We'd signed up for the “Traditions of Chile” tour, which turned out to be the best I've been on. They took us out to a small resort town, Puerto Vargas, in an area originally settled by Germans in the mid-19^th century. It's a pretty town on the edge of a lake with a view of two only slightly dormant volcanoes not too far away. So that took care of the requisite shopping opportunity; then they took us to an estancia (ranch) owned by a former Chilean rodeo champion who is dedicated to preserving the traditions of the Chilean huasos (cowboys). They greeted us with food and drink (setting the tone for the afternoon), folk dancing by a group of talented teenaged girls and boys with music on guitar, paraguayan harp and tormento (a percussion instrument kind of like a washboard with a sounding box). They showed off their Chilean horses – a special breed that's probably very close to the original Spanish horse, intelligent, gentle and nimble, and able to run sideways. Then they took us out to the rodeo corral and gave us a demonstration of the Chilean rodeo – kind of a bullfight that does no damage to the bull except to his dignity: the idea is to get him running around the ring several times in a perfect circle and then stop him with the horses. There's a lot of skill on the part of the horses and riders, and the sideways running comes in handy. There was more food, music and dancing, and then we had to leave. Alas!

On up the coast for one more day at sea to give us a chance to pack. As we were moving about the cabin trying to fit things back into the suitcases we'd take the occasional glance out the window, and twice we saw whales right beside us. Just a glimpse of a fin or two, but definite whales. There were fishing boats out there, too, so I assume the whales and the people were after the same thing.

Landed in Valparaiso and got bussed through pretty mountainous scenery to Santiago. The next morning we navigated the metro system to the Plaza de Armas to experience the Mercado Central. We saw more kinds of seafood than I ever suspected existed and had some abalone (not all that good) for lunch. Prowled around the area some more, seeing the wool shops close for Saturday afternoon just like in Buenos Aires, and found the Museum of Precolumbian Art that Evan's friend had recommended. It is indeed a lovely place full of objects collected mostly by one man on the basis of their beauty and artistic merit, not scientific interest. They were well displayed with bilingual signs giving all kinds of useful information about what they were and the cultures they came from. Definitely a place we're glad to have seen. In the evening we went up a small mountain that's a park near our hotel and had dinner in a fine restaurant with a view of the city and the sunset on the mountains opposite.

The next morning we picked up the car Evan had reserved for us and drove south to the Colchagua Valley wine district, finding our hotel in the pretty town of Santa Cruz with no trouble at all. We enjoyed the brunch Evan had arranged for us, then booked a few wine tours for the afternoon and next day.

We saw four totally different wineries – I never suspected they could be so different. One was new and modern with its building designed along feng shui principles and its premium wine ageing in casks to the sound of Gregorian chant. Another was in an old estancia; they treated us to a horse-drawn carriage tour of their fields and a sampling of raw wine from one of their vats (smells like baby poo, one young mother in our group commented). A third had a lift to carry us up the mountain side to their display of native Chilean cultures (including Easter Island, which of course belongs to Chile) and their observatory with a collection of meteorites. The fourth, my favourite, was just a competent winery in beautiful old buildings, although the owner did like to display his collection of antique cars there, too. They have an elegant small hotel attached; my idea of a good thing to do would be to stay there during the wine festival around the second weekend in March.

It was wonderful being able to get out into the countryside and see a few things on our own. It was my first time in South America when I didn't feel like I was in Turkey. The old farm buildings are definitely sui generis, unique to Chile – long, low brick buildings with wide roof overhangs, one room thick, enclosing a central patio. The ones we were in felt cool and breezy even on a hot summer day. There were gardens full of flowers everywhere, and orchards of apples, pears, peaches, citrus fruit – whatever, all ready to be shipped to wintry Canada. It was all quite lovely.

Back to Santiago pretty well uneventfully, except for some fun trying to get back onto the highway after we got off to fill up the car, and more fun when we turned one street too early to get to the hotel. Never mind. I don't think divorce is immanent.

So today, after we've found some way of packing our souvenir wine safely, we'll leave our stuff at the hotel and head off into the city again, back to the Plaza de Armas area to find my wool shops and see what we missed there (handy hint: in South America look for the Plaza de Armas in whatever town you're visiting; that will be the old and interesting part of town), maybe back up the mountain to have one last look, and then (alas!) off to the airport for a day of flying and waiting to fly.

Final impressions of South America: don't miss it, but learn some Spanish first. Surprisingly few people speak useful amounts of English here. Fortunately Spanish is not all that hard, at least at the basic bodily needs level, but I sure wish I knew more. And I'm going to learn more. I must come back.

To Antarctica and back

So Ron made it out of quarantine in time for the Falkland Islands and our first view of penguins in the wild. Our ship couldn't get into the inner harbour at Stanley, so we tendered in and were met by a fleet of minibuses to take us on our tours. We chose to go to Bluff Beach Cove and its Gentoo penguin flock. That was a half-hour trip along nice roads and another half hour in landrover over tussocks and bog. What the Falklands lack in trees (thanks to the eternal, everlasting wind) they make up for in peat. Until recently peat was the main fuel on the islands. Now they use bottled gas and wind-generated electricity.
We had an hour to walk among the penguins, most of which were this year's chicks waiting for mom and dad to get back from their 50 km daily swim in the ocean. Most of the parents set out on their fishing trips at dawn; some fish at night and hang around to babysit during the day. The chicks are almost as big as their parents – just about knee high – and losing their fluff, but they've got a couple more months of hanging around on the beach being fed – lucky clucks.
It was good to meet some of the Falklanders, too. The guys who drove the minibus and the landrover were basic salt-of-the-earth sheep farmers but full of opinions and snippets of information. I get the feeling you've got to be both tough and gentle to live as they do. The Falklands seem like a place full of good and caring people. And they love their Queen and their Britishness. One guy told us, “When the Argentinians landed in 1982 they thought they'd be greeted as liberators. Boy did they get a surprise!”
After the penguin visit we grabbed some fish & chips at the pub and prowled around the town. It's the same latitude (south, not north) as Canmore and many of the same things grow there – potatoes, peas, lupines, poppies. And they love their gardens. I could feel at home on the Falklands, I think. I found a few balls of Falkland Islands wool (spun in England and shipped back for sale there) to make Ron a hat and scarf.

Then we headed off to sea for almost a week away from “civilization” as we cruised around Antarctica. We were hugely fortunate in the weather. We were told our ship was able to sail places no other vessel our size had been able to visit before. For most of the time the weather was clear, the winds were calm, and the icebergs were relatively small. So we saw scenes of beauty that are beyond description. Even photographs just skim the surface. It was utterly lovely. Glaciers, ice sheets (disintegrating), penguins, whales – the whole deal. Maybe when I get a chance to upload some photos to Flickr you can get some idea, but really you have to go.
It wasn't all smooth sailing, of course. Our first evening in Antarctic waters we experienced a real gale with winds as strong as any I've ever experienced. I really thought I was going to be blown off the deck. Bits of the ceiling of the promenade deck were ripped off, leading to a violation of the Antarctic treaty by our ship – we actually left a few strips of aluminum behind in the water, and maybe a few deck chair cushions. Holland-America takes the Antarctic regulations so seriously that people aren't allowed to smoke on the deck (making the smokers' areas of the ship even less pleasant to pass through) in case they drop cigarette butts into the ocean. And instead of treating and releasing grey water, which they do everywhere else, they asked us to reduce our water consumption so the ship could store all its wastes. And we were warned not to let our hats be blown off into the water.
I was struck by the number of other ships we met on our travels there. They were all smaller vessels; the largest was the Marco Polo carrying 400 passengers instead of its usual 800 (and our 1300). That was so everyone could get a chance to walk on Antarctica. The regulations allow a maximum of 100 people to go ashore at once, so the Marco Polo spends a day letting people off in batches of 100. We, of course, never got a chance to really touch Antarctic snow, except the flew flakes that blew into our faces one evening.
For three days we sailed through fjords and past ice and islands. Air temperature was about 3C, and the water was just above 0. For three nights it hardly got dark with sunset at 9:50 and sunrise at 3:45. And then we headed back north to Cape Horn.

We got an idea there of why the ancient mariners wanted to find some other way of getting past the tip of South America. About an hour before we got within sight of land another mighty gale blew up and fog enveloped us. We had a dim view of an island with a big cliff on it (that was Cape Horn), and then we continued east towards the entrance to the Beagle Channel (named after the ship that carried Charles Darwin around the world as he mulled over the origin of species).

Yesterday morning we found ourselves in the Argentinian town of Ushuaia, which calls itself the most southerly city in the world. But I don't think so. It can't be a city because it doesn't have a cathedral, and there's a Chilean town across the passage that is more southerly. But never mind, it's awfully far south. It was warmish – 14C? - but certainly didn't feel much like midsummer. Ushuaia used to be a penal colony – much of it was built by prisoners, who also stripped the trees from the mountains around and constructed a little railroad. These days there are government subsidies for things like the natural gas people use to heat their houses, but the town still has a frontier feel about it. It doesn't look all that prosperous, either, with abandoned construction projects even downtown Lots of tourist-oriented businesses though, with emphasis on outdoor activities. It's the jumping-off point for many trips to Antarctica, but there are lots of wilderness activities in Tierra de la Fuego too – camping, hiking, climbing, and in the winter skiing. It's kind of like Banff, but less prosperous.
We had a look around town and a bus and train ride through the countryside – so nice to see green things again! But no pines or spruces, just 2 or 3 kinds of southern beech - and then explored the town a bit. Found some more wool in a tourist shop, locally grown and spun. And we had some fantastic king crab soup and some great locally-brewed beer in “the Irish pub at the end of the world”. Then off again through the Beagle Channel to see yet more stunningly beautiful glaciers and mountains – the southern end of the Andes.

Today we're in Chile, in Punto Arenas on the Straits of Magellan. It's a bigger town than Ushuaia and a little more prosperous-seeming. Before the Panama Canal was built it was a major stopping-off point for shipping, and now it does a lot of tourist business. Prices seem lower than in Ushuaia. Got myself a nice handwoven jacket for $28 and a cute sweater for Dima for $12 that would have been $30-40 in Argentina. And they have superb king crab here, too – I had a huge crab salad for lunch.
But the wind! I could hardly stand up against it, and really did get blown around. The air temperature was quite warm, but the wind was so fierce and cold that I was glad to have my winter jacket on. Our taxi driver said there was just a little wind today. There are some trees around, but most of them seem to be carefully tended. It's not an easy place to be a tall object.
I didn't find any wool myself, but at dinner I met someone who'd found a store full of it – hand spun, hand dyed – and got 2.5 kg of it. Lucky thing!

Tomorrow we continue our journey north, back to the land where summer feels like summer.