Bad news from home; my father is in intensive care with respiratory failure.
Have bought all the tickets home, now just have to wait....
...
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Another grumpy moment...
Travelling in high altitudes, in warm climates, we are regularly told to use sun block.
Fair enough.
But there gets to be a status thing happening over what strength sun block is best. It all gets a bit silly and I decided that it was time to explain what the SPF numbers really mean.
Sun blocks are tested by creating a 0.1mm thick film of the cream, shining UV light of one particular wavelength through this film and recording how much of this light passes through the film. The calculation is then 100 divided by the percent of light that passes through the film, giving you your SPF. *
Simple, no?
So, an SPF 25 cream permits 4% (100/4 = 25) to pass and blocks 96% of the UV light. Likewise, an SPF 50 cream blocks 98% of the light. If applied in a uniform 0.1mm thick film, of course.
So the doubling of the SP factor in this example equates to only a 2% increase in the amount of UV light blocked by the cream. It does not mean that it is twice as good.
Even if it is twice as expensive.
◊◊◊
Next week I might pick on the current travel 'necessity', hand sanitiser gels.
* Yes, sometimes they test sun blocks in situ but it is rarely done and tricky to do with any sort of accuracy.
…
El Capilla del Hombre - The Chapel of Man.
This place was a pleasant surprise today. One of those placews that make you go 'oh wow' when you weren't expecting it. It is a chapel / art gallery created by Ecuadorian painter Oswald Guayasamin. Unbeknown to me, a portrait of Fidel Castro that I was admiring while waiting at the Cuban Embassy for a visa yesterday was also done by Guayasamin.
The quote above says something along the lines of "I cried because I had no shoes but then I met a boy with no feet."
Freaky shot of the eternal flame.
Some of Guayasamin's paintings.
Saturday, 13 September 2008
La BasÃlica del Voto Nacional
A cathedrally sort of place in Quito.
The interior tend to agree with that.
But then you get bonus extras: you can get up and look at the rose window.
The gargoyles are birds, porcupines, turtles...
You can go across the roof space above the basilica's domed roof.
And there is a coffee shop at the top of the clock tower for weary climbers.
...
Shoeshine Boys
Shoe shine boys seem to be a growth industry.
It's not limited to Ecuador: this photo was on our last day in Peru.
...
Don't drink the water...
I know tourists are told that the water is dodgy but this is taking it to extremes.
...
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Grumpy Old Man Moment
As I meet more and more tour guides, I am getting grumpier and grumpier. Not wanting to publicly tackle (and hence embarrass) them I am letting my frustrations out on you, my poor readers.
And the source of my grumplement? The extravagant claims made by guides for their particular area of interest.
Some years ago I did a tour to central Australia. Amongst other things I was told that wichetty grubs had more protein than a piece of steak (about as silly as saying that a cup holds more water than a bucket), that a particular sap was a stronger glue than anything white man had developed BUT the aborigines would soften it with heat and reuse it (so it is both hard and soft, it seems) and that a particular plant had antiseptic properties far stronger than anything we white folk use. To claims like the last one I like to apply the ‘if that then this’ test. If that was true then it seems odd that the pharmaceutical companies haven’t planted acres of the stuff. They haven’t, so what does that mean?
Why can’t the guides just say ‘Aborigines ate wichetty grubs”, “they used this sap as a glue”, “they used this herb to dress wounds”? All are true and perfectly reasonable. But, no, they have to reach for some sort of extra merit award.
So to Peru.
We have been told that the reeds in Lake Titicaca are a rich source of protein and carbohydrate. So why do they eat fish and potatoes? The reeds are very spongy and the people there do eat the soft bases of them but I suspect they only get dietary fibre from the things and, having tried them, I suspect they were only eaten after a poor days fishing.
We were told that the Inca calendar was so accurate that it only needed ‘tweaking’ every 13,000 years where as our miserable Gregorian thing needs a four yearly service with an extra tweak every other millennium or so. Can’t find any evidence to support this claim.
We were told that people drink a tea made from a particular jungle vine (probably true) and that this concoction was the reason for lower levels of pancreatic cancer among Peruvians (doubtful). As obesity is the major risk factor for pancreatic cancer, could it be that it is the general leanness of the Peruvian population that is responsible for the lower cancer levels and not the tea? I’m guessing, of course.
This is not just a trait of Peruvian guides, it seems to be a universal urge to show that your domain is somehow better than others.
Why do people have to gild the lily when the lily is lovely enough on its own?
...
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Characters on Taquille Island in Lake Titicaca
The hat indicates that the men are married. Unmarried men have red and white hats.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)