Explorations Around Ventura, CA

At the southern most tip of Central Coast of California lies Ventura that I have had a chance to explore - from Channel Islands off the coast to trails around Ojai. Here is a collection of pictures from these explorations set to the music of the daughter-father duo of Sophie & Mike Montano.

P.S. My personal thanks to Mike & Sophie for letting me use their music and voice.

Cacti on the Beach

The trip to Central Baja was a treat - one stunning landscape after the other from jagged high mountains, parched xeriscape with million cacti stretching right up to the beaches. Beaches that ranged from sandy white to none at all right off the high cliffs.

The day to day life in small towns offered its own cornucopia of colorful buildings, dusty streets, old cars blaring promotions from large loudspeakers atop their roofs and street vendors selling weird handicrafts, multi-colored candy, trinkets and lucha libre masks.

Here is a collection of some pictures from the area around Loreto set to this song that played on a loop for hours at end every day on the hotel's TV channel making annoucement about tortilla soup making classes or everybody's favorite - margarita making classes.

Handling a Whale Calf in Baja

On a whale watching excursion in Magdalena Bay along the west coast of Baja California, I had the most exhilarating experience of touching the calf of a Gray Whale.

We headed out into the Bahia Magdalena from Port of San Carlos (about 300 miles north of Cabo) around 12:30pm on a late February Tuesday hoping to get "up close and personal" with the Pacific Gray Whales that breed in the bay and neighboring lagoons from January through March and are supposedly so abundant that you might trip over them. It was billed as a once-in-a-lifetime whale watching experience (2 to 2.5 hr trip for 1500 pesos for a party of 4 people).

We spent and an hour and half on the water and saw about ten Pacific Gray whales from afar. The small dingy boat of ours with no canopy or cover never got closer than 50 feet or so and even then we saw the whales surfacing for less than a minute to spout and then plunge back for a long dive. A pretty decent experience but nothing spectacular. We headed back little bit disappointed. The young Mexican boat skipper skimmed fast over the choppy waters as we were tossed around like bobbing corks - quiet a bone jarring experience. The sun beat down on us hard.

And then suddenly from nowhere on the starboard side a whale showed up about 200 feet away. First we saw the spout, and then a few seconds later it breached - the giant creature heaved itself up into the air and crashed into the water with a giant splash! We were so excited. I had never seen a whale breach. The skipper said, "One more" - and the whale breached again. Just incredible. The skipper turned the boat to get close to the whale. Very soon we were only 30 feet away as the whale, and then we noticed its calf, were playing on the surface of the water. And then they started getting closer to us. 20 feet. 10 feet. Right next to the boat. Under the tiny boat...

The mother and the calf then decided to just hang around and play with us. They turned and twisted around the boat, circled the boat, dove under the boat to surface on the other side. One time the mother went under the boat and the calf dove over her but still under the boat and came so close to the boat that I was able to touch the back of the calf - it was smooth like a baby's bottom, very soft like I was digging my hands through butter but the skin was very tight and shiny black with no barnacles... that was once-in-a-lifetime experience!!!

We got drenched in the spouts from the blowholes of the mother and the calf a few times. They must have swam and played with us for about 15 minutes when the skipper said we had to leave. As he started the engine and maneuvered the boat back towards the land the mother whale started following us. We stopped the boat 50 or so feet away and both the whales came over and continued with their horsing around. Some on the boat worried about capsizing but nothing of the sort happened. And then the whales were joined by sea lions who showed up just like that from nowhere. They jumped out into the air and dove ahead of and around the whales... It was a scene to behold - the joyous wildlife of Baja waters dancing around our boat. We were of course ecstatic. Absolutely Amazing!

P.S. All the pictures above and a short video below (shot with a digital camera) are gifts of friends on the boat. I was too busy jumping up and down to take any pics!

Below is the 25 second video of the bone crunching high speed boat ride where we had to hold on to whatever we could grab on (the sides, under the seat) and make sure we didn't go overboard. This part of the excursion was literally painful, leaving body aches in its wake for days to come.

Sharm El-Sheikh: Egyptian Los Cabos

Just finished three days in Sharm El-Sheikh, an Egyptian resort city at the tip of Southern Sinai on the Red Sea famous for its diving. The whole area is, geographically speaking, basically mountain deserts coming right up to the ocean with deep indigo blue waters. I made 4 dives in the Ras Mohamed National Park here to discover massive underwater landscapes with sheer cliffs dropping off into the deep, caves you could move in and out off, and teeming with lush multi-colored corals and tons of schools of fish. The underwater visibility here was stunningly clear and stretched far. I saw a new fish – Crocodile Fish. Didn't see what people claim here is pretty common – sharks, mantaray, hammer heads, and few others.

The town by itself (with its two parts, Old Sharm and Naama Bay, that are 10 minutes apart) has been turned into a European tourist destination with almost nothing Egyptian about it. Predominantly the tourists are from Russia, Italy and UK. The town is pretty deserted during the day when people are either diving or snorkeling or lallygagging on the beaches of major resorts runs by the likes of Hilton, Marriott, Sofitel, and some European outfits like Movenpick and Iberotel. The evening comes alive with tourists wandering the promenade trying all kinds of non-Egyptian food (Hard Rock cafe', TGI Fridays, Italian food places, etc.), smoking sheesha (hookah) at upscale versions of Cairo coffee shops and shopping for souvenirs.

And then the whole place explodes after 11pm when the discotheques dance music. start pumping out loudAll three of major clubs - Pacha (best space - partly open air), Little Buddha (best music), and Hard Rock Cafe (so-so) were jumping till 4am. At night the whole place does not have a hint of Egypt, the Egypt I discovered everywhere else - traditional conservative muslim society. The only exception was that in all the clubs there was a noticeable feature - multitudes of Egyptian men hanging out at the periphery of the dance floor staring and feeling awkward. The younger ones are much more adventurous to hit the dance floor and mingle with the tourists but majority abstain from such outings. A crazy dynamic!

The weird thing about the whole place is you see almost no Egyptian women. Since they do not work in any of the establishments (restaurants, souvenir shops, boats in the marina, etc.) its basically Egyptian men running everything. May be if Burqini's take off in Egypt the women here can enjoy the beaches and so many other water sports activities available to them.

People mentioned that the government is heavily promoting Sharm El-Sheikh as the new face of Egypt. I think that is unfortunate! On my first day of dive I noticed two warships off the coast and my dive master (an Australian) mentioned that the President was in town hosting some conference. Because of recent history of terrorists attacks here the security is very tight and police sets up road blocks at the drop of a hat. I almost missed my flight out of town because of one such police check post where the police officer harassed my hotel minibus drives for good 15 minutes!

In the end though, Sharm El-Sheikh is a fabulous place to dive. And I guess if you are trying to escape the cold of St. Petersburg, a good place to chill out by the beach and party hard at night. But nothing else if you want to experience real Egyptiana! It can be a good break and a nice stop as you continue along to other attractions up the Sinai coast (more diving!) and peninsula, including hiking up to Mt. Sinai and exploring Bedouin life.

Desert Travels: Encounters With Dali’s Dreams, “Shamanic Consciousness!” & Berber Libertarianism

I spent almost 5 days in the Western Desert in Egypt and discovered some amazing landscapes, proud people and interesting fellow travelers.

FYI – (a) The Western Desert covers two thirds of Egypt and extends for 310 miles west of the river Nile. (b) Sahara in Arabic means desert - so Western Desert in Egypt is a sahara but not the Sahara!

Black & White: A Natural Expression in Surrealism

My first stop was an overnight camping trip about 300 miles south west of Cairo where one discovers the wonders of two distinctly contrasting landscapes - Black Desert and White Desert. In the Black Desert, landscape changes color from sandy beige to a smattering of dark black along the desert floor and mountain tops. (The scenes here reminded me of the burnt out mountain sides one notices after forest fires in California.) The thin layer of black in the desert apparently is from the debris and lava spewed out by volcanoes active here many millions of years ago!

I found the White Desert to be much more stunning. It is the soft limestone of this desert sculpted by desert winds into bizarre and fantastic shapes that takes your breath away. When you spend a long night with utter silence and a black sky with gazillion stars, you start thinking of mother Nature as the most scintillating craftswoman (or craftsperson)... Here are some pictures of these beautiful desert deviants!

Faces of The Desert – Indigenous & Outsiders

During this part of the trip I ran into many interesting people including an Italian geologist who was kind enough to explain a lot about the rocks and sand in the desert. Only a geologists can say – “Oh! these fossils are pretty young, say about 30 million years”. (My idea of pretty young things is obviously “pretty” different!)

And then I ran into this group of German and Swiss people who had just come back from a 5-day camping trip in the desert as part of a “Shamanic Consciousness” seminar. They talked about experiences of ecstasy and love and used phrases like “Natural Language Processing” to train the mind. Finally a guy said I should check out the energy in that room in the ruins of the Temple of Oracle in Siwa (an oasis – see below) where the Sybil (the black priestess) used to make her pronouncements. Finally something I could experiment with – I stood in that room looking for energy - flowing or static. To me it all sounded like a bunch of hooey – I didn't feel no energy – but then may be I haven't yet met a real Shaman.

Check out another weird story below -

Life in the Oases

My idea of an oasis was a little watering hole in the middle of the desert surrounded by palm groves and few, if any, dwellings around. It turns out all the five major oases in the Western Desert are full-fledged towns (with populations in tens of thousands) set in geological depressions many miles long & wide and sometimes below sea-level, with the surrounding desert floor acting as an escarpment around the oasis. These oases have multiple springs feeding them with water. These springs can be natural or man-made; cold or hot water; fresh or salt water. I spent a few nights in two oasis - Bahariya and Siwa.

The Siwa oasis, close to the Libyan border is much more interesting for many reasons -

1. It has a long and interesting history – among other things, Alexander the Great visited here to be declared son of Zeus by the famous Oracle in Siwa; a few centuries later Cleopatra visited as well and bathed in one of the natural springs (I swam there as well – the bubbles do tingle!); the British and the Italians bombed each other around Siwa during WWII...

2. Siwa's indigenous population is Berber who are fiercely independent and nearly ignore the diktats of regional and federal government. In my conversations with the locals, I learnt that there are 11 tribes, each headed by a Sheik. These 11 Sheiks basically run the affairs of the village. E.g. (a) Locals buy and sell land and the transactions are not recorded by the government but blessed by the Sheiks; (b) To settle disputes (like water theft for irrigation purposes or other infractions) among Siwans, the Sheik of the plaintiff and the Sheik defendant discuss over a cup of tea and hammer out solutions including monetary compenation and 80 beatings by stick publicly! The local police and judiciary is involved for matters related to non-Siwans.

The economy of the oases mainly revolves around growing palms and olives and to a lesser extent figs, apricots etc. Tourism is another major source of income for the locals who in addition to selling regular lodging-related services also sell desert safaris (including sand surfing, dune buggies, etc.) and handicrafts.

Here are some of my encounters with people, landscapes and life generally around these oases -

Face(t)s of Cairo

The last few days I have been walking through the streets of Cairo, meeting the locals (not as much as I would have preferred!), taking cab rides, and visiting some of the sights.

The overarching theme: Cairo is a non-stop commotion.

The chaos of masses, traffic, jaywalking en masse (this will be heavenly for Rudy Giuliani!), haze, pollution, food on the sidewalks, smells, more than 120,000 ancient items in Egyptian museum, history spilling into the streets with monuments and mosques from the times of rulers of all kinds (and hard to remember!) - Abbasid Caliphs, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks (the slave soldiers), Ottoman Turks, modern Egypt... blah, blah, blah... the list goes on!

After the Pyramids in Giza, the best part in Cairo has been the food, conversations with the locals, and some of its Islamic architecture. Luckily two most common foods in Egypt are vegetarian - fuul (a dish of slow cooked fava beans with garlic and garnished with parsley, olive oil, lemon, salt, black pepper and cumin - it sooooo yummy!) and kushari (a mix of noodles, rice, black lentils, and dried onions served with fiery tomato sauce). They also have falafel, just much crispier and flat and they call it ta'amiyya. The sweets have been another god send - my favorie, kunafa, a vermicelli-like pastry over a vanilla base and so sooooaked in syrup... slurp, slurp, slurp!

And then there are the ahwas, the coffee shops where men gather in the evenings and stay put till midnight and beyond to talk about everything (except criticize their "much beloved" President Hosni Mubarak loudly) over many cups of shai (tea), coffee and smoking sheesha (hookah or hubly bubly, as the travel books call them!). I hung out here two nights straight and for the record, "...I didn't inhale and never tried it again."!!!

Here are some of my encounters in Cairo - its people, neighborhoods, street scenes and foods, set to the latest hit single "Lealy Nahary" from Amr Diab, Egypt's answer to Ricky Martin... Before that furrow deepens on your forehead, you better be careful, Egyptians are very proud of him since he has won World Music Awards as the best selling Arabic artist thrice!

Click To Play

Giza Pyramids & Sphinx: Face-to-Face With Ancient AND Contemporary Egypt

Yesterday, on a hazy morning, I took a 45 minute cab ride from Cairo city center to the Giza Plateau. Its only about 15 miles but the notorious Cairo traffic gets in the way.

The Giza Pyramid complex (or necropolis, if you prefer the morbid!) consists mainly of three Pyramids (Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure - named after the three Pharaohs from Old Kingdom - 2686 BC to 2025 BC), a Sphinx and a ship housed in a museum. Except for the Ship, I visited all of these and few other adjoining structures - funerary complexes, smaller temples, tombs for the King's mother, wife, architect/engineer, etc.

Once you get to the Pyramids, the only surviving Ancient Wonders of the World , the awe-factor completely overwhelms you, until you run into some other modern realities of visiting a "tourist" site in Egypt - hagglers, vendors, dust, camel & horse dung, heat...

As with Taj Mahal, I found the stories of the people (architects, designers, workers) who build these great structures much more interesting then the story of the Pharaohs themselves and their henchmen (aka noblemen) etc.

The largest Pyramid, Khufu, was build using nearly 2.3 million limestone pieces (approximately weighing 2.5 tonnes each). The symmetry and the mathematical precision required to construct these massive structures is pretty impressive by our modern standards (what with malfunctioning solar panels in the International Space Station!), let alone more than 40 centuries ago.

The Pyramids are not just a beautiful sight to behold but also a salute to the incredible human ingenuity that led to their construction. The biggest and most pleasant surprise of the trip to Giza Pyramids, for me, was to see the insides of these pyramids (especially inside the Khufu Pyramid) with their narrow passageways and chambers - simple, fully ventilated and designed with incredible care in red granite. I lucked out to be in the King's chamber, an empty 3o feet by 15 ft by 20 feet hollow space in the heart of the Khufu Pyramid in relative darkness, without any other tourists for few minutes - it was quite surreal!! Here are some highlights from this extraordinary experience -

(FYI: 1 US $ = approximately 5.5 Egyptian Pound)