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Around the World in 128 Days - At Sea day 3 of 4 Off West Africa

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   Travel Day 113 - April 25, 2024 - 10,429 Steps Calm sea below a nearly full moon. Closeup of the moon taken from the deck of the moving ship with my Nikon P950. Oatmeal for breakfast, the first of the cruise. The Chief Engineer was Kim's guest this morning. The concept of nationalism arose with colonialism. The second book in the series was as good as the first one. Seafood was the order of the day at lunch. Angola was what the Cold War looked like when it became a Hot War. Really, it was more about oil than anything else. American oil companies paid taxes and fees to the communist factions so they could buy weapons from the Soviet Union and pay Cuba for the ten's of thousands of soldiers they sent to fight against the US government allied factions who were supplied money by the US government to buy arms to fight against the communist factions. And it that sounds crazy, it was. Sunset over a still calm sea. Real comfort food, a toasted cheese sandwich. Sometimes one needs a
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Around the World in 128 Days - Sea Day 2 of 4 Off West African Coast

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   Travel Day 112 - April 24, 2024 - 5,814 Steps Today we are passing through the waters off the coast of Angola. Slightly rocking has become the norm lately. This morning's presentation dealt with the diamonds found in Namibia and those trying smuggle the diamonds out of the diamond "mines" and the efforts of the "mine" owners to prevent the smuggling from happening. The photo shows how easy it was at first to find diamonds as we learned during our visit to the abandoned mining town a few days ago. There was always traffic of one type or another in and put of the restricted zone. The owners at first searched the miners. Later they began X-raying them. Since they had to X-ray everyday they had to develop less dangerous X-ray methods to prevent radiation poisoning the workers. Even going so far as developing the first portable x-ray units. The miners turned to other methods of smuggling, one to secret the diamonds on artificial limbs. One enterprising group of sm
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Around the World in 128 Days - At Sea off West Africa

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 Travel Day 111 - April 23, 2024 - 6,428 Steps Heading north along the West African coast. Early Portuguese trade routes with wind and current directions they took advantage of. Indigenous groups exterminated by the Portuguese or Spanish. Never underestimate man's inhumanity to man, even one that lived hundreds of years ago. Slavery traffic from Africa to the New World. All these countries boundaries were the result of colonialism. Two happy cooking demonstration attendees. Things didn't go well today. Someone set up the mixer but forgot the beaters. Had to feel sorry for the guest chef. Lecture on how the American Civil War resulted in South African song to be written that is still sung today. This is the Confederate raider CSS Alabama. The story of this ship was very interesting. Unfortunately for the Alabama, the US ship Kearsarge finally caught up with her and destroyed her. The biggest cart load of laundry I've ever seen on ship. My latest book. When you find yourself
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Around the World in 128 Days - Walvis Bay, Namibia - The Namib Desert

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  Travel Day 110 - April 22, 2024 - 8,427 Steps This post is late because the day resulted in over a hundred photos I wanted to post as well as a dozen and half videos. Thankfully I realized that was not something virtually no one would want to wade through. Below is the "cliff notes" version of the day, but I do plan to put another post up sometime with more of the photos and videos of the day for anyone who would care to see more of what we experienced. The is a fairly constant feature in this part of Africa due to the cold waters of the South Atlantic current flowing to the north. Walvis Bay is home to large numbers of jellyfish. As we get older, getting around can be more difficult and even a railroad crossing can become an obstacle. Today's excursion was getting up close to what lives in the Namib Desert and the fact there were only three of us on the tour made for a truly fantastic experience. There are no wild camels in the desert, but there are camels for tourists
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