The Dark Continent

I had always wanted to go to Africa.  Since childhood those visions of steamy jungles or desert sands have kept my interest. When I finally got there, the Immigration Officials would not let me enter the country of Morocco. My trusted travel mate and I had not had our passports checked while on board the ferry from Tarifa, Spain.  How were we supposed to know this? Some sort of international telepathy, perhaps. We quickly scrambled back aboard the ship to find a disgruntle and rude immigration agent. He was quite rude and I had to remind Claudette that some sort of verbal rebuttal from us would be futile, if not detrimental to our cause.  I have always revered the man with the star regardless of the situation and fully realized that this sloven, rude, disgruntle little man could refuse us entry into his country.

  When we final got ashore a bearded little man in a robe and brimless hat approached us and asked if we were going on the tour and if we were English.  We answered yes to both questions.  We were used to being asked if we were English since we were frequently identified by the language we spoke.  He said. "Good! Good! and led us to a small Mercedes van obviously loaded with tourists.  We dutifully climbed aboard and a young man in a Yankee's baseball cap introduced himself as Ahmed. There were nine of us on the mini-bus plus the driver and Ahmed. He spoke to  the driver in Arabic and the mini-bus grudgingly started to move.  Arabic is the major language in Morocco followed by French, Spanish and then English.

No one spoke French on our bus but there were five English speakers: Claudette and me,  two recent college graduates, and a mechanic from Wales. The other four spoke Spanish.  As we bounced along a rather brisk clip, Ahmed told us about his country and city.  Tangier has over one million people, is the second largest city in Morocco and is building new hotels and modernizing its harbor to attract more tourists.  The driver brought the mini-van to a screeching half beside an open area between some buildings and Ahmed exclaimed , "Everybody, camel ride!"

Here we saw a bearded man in a t-shirt and baseball cap with two camels. He was offering camel rides for one euro. I thought I wanted to do this, but after I saw that there was nothing to hold onto, I reneged. A few of the people did.  One of the camels was very cantankerous.  Our next stop was the bazaar. Ahmet was dressed in western style so he was easy to follow. Some of the men were in the robes and brimless hads while others were in western dress.  We see very few women in less that ankle length skirts and usually with headwear such as a kerchief.  The typical long robe with hood and veil is common.  However, when only the face or eyes are visible, it is usually well made-up.  Some are quite beautiful particularly with "raccoon" eyes.  Also, some of the long dresses were of brilliant solid colors and are worn a few sizes too small. The streets were very narrow and crowded with people, push carts and frequent motorbikes or scooters but no donkeys or camels.  I made sure everything of value was in my money belt.  Our guide was quick to point out that although Morocco was a Muslim country we could readily see Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish houses of worship.  As we walked by the tiny stalls selling all sorts of merchandise and food stuffs, I could not help but remember some scenes from "The Raiders of the Lost Ark".  Thankfully I did not see a very large man dressed in black with a scimatar!  I had thought the streets in the medieval Europe were narrow, but they were wide compared to these.  In some places we walked single file. Vendors are constantly tugging at your elbow to buy their wares, usually jewelry of sunglasses  They love to bicker about the price. But if you complete ignore them and never make eye contact they will leave you alone. However, if you offer any kind of encouragement they will stick like glue until you buy something or leave the country. We visited one shop in which native handicrafts were sold, beautiful leather work and ceramics. In one shop I bought some spices for a barbecue rub. But the creme de la creme of things for sale were the rugs. They showed us many beautiful ones that were hand made with intricate colorful designs. If I had had the extra money I probably would have bought one. And, of course, they had no flying carpet. By the way, they accept any kind of currency in Tangier.  There is the probability that you could use Monopoly money, maybe?  We ate a meal at a local restaurant and it was good, cous-cous topped with vegetables and mystery meat.  The music was very interesting played by musicians in white robes and red fezzes. As we walked through the bazaar we could hear the call to prayer from the mosque, "Ashhadu an la ilaha ills Allah..." 

Our three hour tour was over.  Unlike Gilligan we did not have Mary Ann, Ginger and the Professor but did have two cute college girls and Welsh mechanic.  I should like to return to Tangier with more time or maybe instead to Egypt.  I understand that there aren't many tourists there now due to political unrest.

A Look Into The Past

It was Sunday, September 17, 2011, we  were

in Madrid, and I was fortunate enough to visit Naval Museo, the Spanish Naval Museum, located on a quiet street a few blocks from Spain's  famous Prado, one of the world's greatest art museums. The naval museum is operated by the Spanish Navy, and you must go through security screening before entering the upstairs exhibits. Lodged in 24 rooms, the museum traces Spanish maritime history from the fifteenth century until the present.  It houses some great "guy stuff" and my dear wife and travel mate indulged my musings.  While the exhibits are too numerous to mention, I will try to give a brief account of what we saw.  We surveyed the art and artifacts in chronological order which I believe is best.  

One of the many ship models.

There are paintings galore; some of them wall-size, about twelve feet by twenty feet and larger. They depict various ships as well as famous battles and famous events.  One wall has portraits of naval heroes exclusively.  Large maps and charts also abound.  The most famous is a map painted on leather by Jaun de la Cosa, a cartographer during the time of Columbus.  Actually de la Cosa made seven voyages to the new world, three of them with Columbus. There are also hundreds of model ships, some quite small, crafted by sailors at sea.  Others are ten feet long, and many have immaculate detail. One of my favorites is a model of the United States battleship USS Maine. You will recall it was sunk in Havana Harbor, a prelude to the Spanish-American War.  The models depict the transition from sail to steam as a means of locomotion for watercraft.   Some weapons depicted are rifles and pistols, not only of Spanish origin but other countries as well.  Some of the long guns of the north Africans were ornately decorated.  The inlaid stocks of fifteenth century pistols were quite elaborately inlaid with mother-of-pearl and semi-precious stones. Of course there are cannon, quite a few cannon.  One display depicts a cannon and the cannoneer's hammock hung within a few feet of his gun. I would be remiss if I did not mention the fine collection of figureheads mounted high on one wall overlooking one of the rooms full of models.  The carved wooden figures graced the prows of the ships of the great Spanish Armada was well as merchant ships. There is a section of a full scale model of a mast of one of the great sailing ships. It gives you an idea of the size of these great vessels.  And paintings illustrate the great ships at sea.

We found this to be a great place to visit in Madrid. You could almost feel as though you were a part of the age of discovery. Indeed, the great Spanish missions of the American southwest would not have been except for some of the men whose portraits adorn these walls.  Mel Fisher would never had found the sunken galleon, Atocha, had the Spaniards had not built those great ships to bring back the treasures  of the Americas. And the stories and myths of the pirates of the Caribbean would not exist with no treasure laden galleons to plunder. I would have never camped with the Boy Scouts in the Horspasture area of Pickens County, SC, had the Cherokee Indians not stolen Spanish horses and hidden them there.   Yes, we could feel the connection to history there and the Spanish Navy does a great job of presenting it.

Mock-up of gun port

Navigation Instrument

Mock-up of captains cabin

Around the Old English District

Do you remember “The Saint”? The British television series aired between 1962 and 1969 and starred Roger Moore prior to his run as 007. The show had an interesting title sequence in which there was and animated stick figure with a halo. Recently, I saw that figure again but not on TV, but as a tattoo. It was on the forearm of the man handing me his business card. He was about six feet tall and a two hundred pounds with a mustache and three day old beard.  The beard and mustache were flecked with gray and a battered baseball cap was pulled down low but his sparkling blue eyes were visible. I detected the sound of the British Isles in his voice as he spoke and I queried him about his homeland. “Twenty-seven years I’ve been here, off and on,” he said, “but born south of London.” 

“Doing this?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said, “I’ve only been doing this about four years. I was a pipeline welder in Canada as well as here”

We talked a bit about the similarities in the two occupations, welding and making pottery, such as eye-hand coordination. He showed be his pieces for sale and  I was curious about the almost exclusive use of earth tones.  He said he hadn't notice his use af earth  tones but the colors felt "right". We talked about how it could be very difficult to create the primitive look. I mentioned that Picaso had once said that it had taken him a lifetime to learn to paint as a child. We exchanged notes on our visits to the Louvre, the Prado, and the Tate. He did beautiful work and I did buy a piece, a vase with an oriental motif before saying “good-bye” to the Saintly Potter at The Rock Hill Pottery Center in the old Post Office and Courthouse building.

There was more to see in Rock Hill, this town of 71,000 plus , a short distance from the Charlotte, NC, metropolitan area. Like many small towns Rock hill has undergone a local facelift in the downtown area. There are new store fronts and interesting shops, restaurants and galleries.  There is also a telephone museum, the Comporium Museum. It's right off main street and offers an interesting look into telephone communications from the early 1900's to the present.  Many antique telephones are on display as well as a look at behind the scenes equipment usually never seen by the public. There are a lot of "hands-on" displays which are great fun as well as instructional. The technical displays were right up my ally but what really caught my attention was the truck. It was an 1927 Mack truck used for setting telephone poles and pulling wire and cable.  It had solid rubber tires and originally had gas headlights. Top speed on this truck was 11mph, so it took over twenty hours to drive it from Atlanta to Rock Hill. This truck was in service until the 1970's and was in the television mini-series, Chiefs, filmed in nearby Chester during the early 1980's. A friendly helpful guide made this visit to the Comporium Telephone very enjoyable. 

We had a bit of lunch at an"Irish" pub. The chips with my fish and chips were potato chips!  There  is a first time for everything. The fish was no north Atlantic cod either, but was good. It's funny how a Guiness can take the edge off any disappointment. 

Our next stop was a natural history museum, The Museum of York County.  I had visited the museum long ago but Claudette hadn't been there.  It's really nice with different displays of mounted specimens of animals and plants. There is also a display depicting the local area in prehistoric times as well as modern times. All displays have audio visual effects and some have interactive features. There is an extraordinary display of African animals including an elephant and cape buffalo. In fact there are over 500 mounted animals on display including African and domestic. As an avid artist, it's great to be able to draw pictures of animals without their moving. (The Phoenix Zoo presented a big problem, the animals kept moving!) I like the "hands-on" part of this museum.  As you hold a replica of a sabre-toothed tiger skull you can appreciate exactly how dangerous this animal was. Did you know that the sabre-toothed tiger wasn't really a cat? You learn the most interesting things in museums.  We enjoyed the Museum of York County and I know I will return one day to fill a sketchbook full of drawings of African wildlife.

Blood and Taters

"Potatoes?" she asked.

"Yes, sweet potatoes.  The British were foraging for sweet potatoes because they had no bread," I said.

We were at the Eutaw Springs Battlefield Historic site in Orangeburg County, South Carolina.

"So, what does foraging for sweet potatoes have to do with one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution?" Claudette asked quizzically. I decided that it was a good time to impress her with my knowledge of American history.

"0n the morning of September, 8, 1781, about 2300 British soldiers were in this area, and a small party of them were here foraging for sweet potatoes, when they were discovered by a patrol of American patriots.  The British forces were commanded by Lt. Col. Alexander Stewart. About seven miles away was the American general, Nathanial Greene, with about two thousand troops. The bulk of his forces were Continentals from North Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware.  Continentals were the trained soldiers, you know. The balance were militia, farmers, and such; some were from the local area, some from the upcountry.  Many of the soldiers were barefoot and without shirts. Of course, it was early September, and  the temperatures were probably in the 90's, so nobody was freezing at night. But they were a somewhat rag tag bunch. Greene had all the partisan generals as well; Andrew Pickens from the upcountry, Thomas Sumter of the Piedmont, and Francis Marion,"The Swamp Fox', form the Santee hills and swamps," I said in my best authoritative tone. We walked through the iron gate hung between brick columns toward the first historical marker which  gave a brief account of the battle.  The next marker we looked at was in full color with a map.

"See," I said, "this shows how the troops were deployed." 

"I'm afraid that I don't understand," she said, somewhat perplexed.

"Well, it went sorta like this. The  Americans formed a line with the militia in the front and the Continentals behind them. The redcoats attacked the middle of the line and began to break through, but the Continentals  reinforced the line and pushed the British back. Again the British sent in more men and pushed the Americans back. Then Greene ordered the Virginia and Maryland regulars into the front line and halted the redcoat charge.  It was a violent battle and many accounts of the battle say that "the blood was ankle deep". After four hours of vicious fighting both sides seemed to have had enough.  The British retreated and the American swarmed into their camp. Believing that they were victorious the Americans plundered the British camp. The patriots found and consumed considerable quantities of rum in their enemy's camp which rendered them somewhat ineffective. But the British had retreated," I explained as we walked along.

"Why is there this big marker for a British soldier here?" she asked.

"That's a good question.  Why is there a British officer buried at this historic American Battle field? I think he was their hero."

"Hero?" she queried.

"You see when all the fighting was going on here, a few hundred yards away Major John Marjoribanks was in command of a battalion of British soldiers at a two-story brick house.  His troops held off the Americans at the house, but he was wounded. The next day when Stewart decided that the land was not worth defending, and his troops began their march to Charleston, they didn't bury their dead!  September the ninth was a rainy day, and Greene decided not to pursue. Marjoribanks died in route and was buried by the side of the road. In the 1940's when Lake Moultrie was built his grave was moved here."

"I had never heard of the battle of Eutaw Springs before," she said.

"Hey, Greene even received a gold medal for his efforts here. There are eight scenes from U.S. history depicted on the bronze doors of the United States House of Representatives and the presentation of this medal to Greene is one of them."

We got back in our car and were off to visit the grave site of General Francis Marion, "The Swamp Fox".

A European Atlantic Beach

“This is unlike other Portuguese towns,” commented Claudette as I drove the Opal downhill toward the sea.

“It’s not medieval like most of the others,” I added. We were in Nazare, a town of over fourteen thousand on the west coast of the country. The road dead-ended at the beach with a broad street parallel to the shoreline. The Atlantic was a beautiful blue on this cloudless day with a temperature in the eighties. There is a lot of surf here. According to the Guardian newspaper a surfer once rode a ninety foot wave here. But there are no surfers out today. We parked the car and got out for a walk along the beach, or rather the sidewalk along the beach. The sidewalk here is as it is in most of Portugal, made of what appears to be black and white shards of ceramic material laid in a pattern. There was an old but brightly painted fishing boat there on the white sand of the beautiful crescent shaped beach of approximately one mile in length. We immediately noticed some fish nets which appeared to be drying on some posts on the beach. Upon closer observation we found that the nets were used to dry fish. There were a few dried fish on one of the nets, and nearby was a woman who appeared to be in her late fifties dressed in a long skirt with long sleeved blouse and a kerchief about her head.  She was cleaning fish. They were sardines, about eight inches long. With rapid deft moves she scraped the fish and removed the entrails. By rapid, I mean that she could clean about a dozen fish per minute. On the other side of the street were a variety of eateries and shops selling touristy items. By the time we had almost reached the marina we realized that we had not passed our hotel which was on Praca Sousa Oliveira.

After a leisurely stroll in the opposite direction we found Hotel Mar Bravo. But, alas, it was too early to check in. We wandered through the narrow streets looking in all the various little shops and found a laundry. However, it seemed a bit expensive. Since we travel with only a carry-on bag laundry becomes a necessity when we stay over a week. We will be doing laundry in the hotel room tonight.

Nazare is divided in two parts: Praia (along the beach) and Sítio (an old town, on top of a cliff). At the opposite end of the beach from the marina a rocky promontory rises with Sitio on the top. We knew that there would be a spectacular view of the beach from atop the cliff. As we walked the narrow streets in the direction of the cliff, we saw the signs for the funicular. We bought a round trip ticket before entering the very modern rail car. The steep climb to the top of the cliff was at least 35 degrees, and we stopped once half-way up to allow the other car to pass on the way down. After leaving the station we were only a few yards from the panoramic view of the beach far below. It was indeed breath-taking. There was a fruit and nut vendor close by. We bought cashews and figs from an old woman who could have passed for the witch in a Hansel and Gretel story. She was dressed in the traditional black of a Portuguese widow. We saw a number of these women either selling things or holding signs announcing rooms for rent. Back at the base of the cliff we found a restaurant for lunch. We ate outside under a canopy in this eatery operated by a rather plump lady insistent on barking orders to the kitchen and wait staff. I had grilled sardines with vegetables and it was good. Claudette did not care to order fish. She has a thing about fish with their heads on and, also, the cooks on the Iberian peninsula cook their fish rare; not like sushi, but close. Between me and the street was a large container of cockles. It was great table side entertainment watching the little bivalves move around in the water.

We finally checked into the Hotel Mar Bravo. It was a beautiful modern facility with large murals and a large amount of glass and chrome in the lobby. Our room was on the third floor overlooking the plaza. Next to our room was a large common room with a computer terminal and large sofas, chairs and magazines and newspapers to read. Our Portuguese isn't very good, so we just surfed the Internet and checked e-mail. However, the room’s best feature was the view, through huge windows, of the beach. Sunset from this viewpoint will never be forgotten.

We walked around the plaza that evening and had an ice cream while doing some people-watching before turning in. The morning would find us on the way to Lisbon.

Thursday 9/29/2011