Chickens after crisis

This is one of my most recent travel tails, from the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Northern Lebanon, where I'm currently working. For three months in 2007 the Lebanese army laid siege to the camp, in order to flush out members of the militant Islamist group Fatah Al Islam, who had established a base in the camp among the 27,000 Palestine refugees who had been living here for over 50 years. By the time the Government declared an end to the hostilities, over 95% of the camp, and large parts of the surrounding neighbourhoods had been totally destroyed. As such, UNRWA has begun rebuilding the camp, following a long period of removing all the rubble, which was made all the more challenging by the sheer number of unexploded ordinances and booby traps that lay in the ruins.

For the past two years, families that were displaced have slowly begun to return back to the areas surrounding the camp. There is little employment to be had, and the exam results for students are the worst in the country, due to the trauma and interruptions to their schooling during the conflict. On a visit to the camp one day, we stopped to get a snack, and this little boy was so excited to see some white people, and he wanted to show us his chickens. He tried to only open the door where they were kept a little way, but of course the chickens rushed out. He wasn't concerned by this at all, and spent a very happy few minutes playing with his feathered friends.

Dignified geese

Barcelona is a fantastic city, full of surreal architecture (mostly thanks to Mr. Gaudi), great food and the best coffe I've ever tasted (try a cortado sometime). The structure that is La Sagrada Familia is mind blowing, but when I visited, there was still a lot of work underway (as I'm sure there is now), so it didn't have that quiet serenity that cathedrals normally do.

There was another cathedral however, that had a beautiful courtyard where I could have stayed for quite some time. Even these geese seemed to understand the nature of the place and though they strutted around, flapping their plumage, they remained quiet.

I remember sitting outside the cathedral on a bench afterwards, next to a young man who was playing guitar. He pointed out some gypsy kids and gave the instruction to watch as they picked out a target to pickpocket. Everyone knows about the risk of pickpocketing in Barcelona (indeed anywhere really), but it was nice to be warned by a local. I don't think I have any other travel tails from Spain, but this one brings back memories of a country I long to visit again.

A lucky kid

The ongoing conflict in Mindanao has displaced over 200,000 people. Many of these families have taken refuge in temporary camps, with a lucky few being moved into longer term barracks or structures. I visited one such area, which was situated on top of a hill, which had a spectacular view but no access to water, and the land was not fit for agriculture. People had to walk a few kilometres to access clean water and some how transport it back up to the shelters in the containers you can see in the photo. Some families had managed to save their livestock, mainly chickens, but I noticed a face poking out at me from around the corner of one of the shelters; a lucky family had managed to save their goat.

Piggies in Peru

I have a fondness for pigs, well, more for piglets. I found this family outside a touristy market stop at the start of a bus journey through the Sacred Valley in Peru. The piglets were quite docile, and happy to follow their hairy mother around, sniffing around for tasty morsels in the grass. What can’t be seen in this photo is one of the piglets, who had the same colouring as its mother, but with spots instead of stripes like the others. 

They didn't seem at all bothered by the bus loads of people pulling up, focusing much more on finding something tasty to munch on. How I wish I could scoop up the little one on the right and take it home with me!

La Vultures at La Ventana

I've started avoiding photographs of famous places I plan to go to, so as to not spoil the surprise when I get there. The Iguazu Falls in Argentina were a slightly different case in point, as I really didn't know much about them to begin with, but was told by many other travellers that they were a must see. So I got on a bus in Buenos Aires and travelled for about 20 hours to reach the falls, which span across Brazil and Paraguay as well. It was a lovely warm and sunny day, which was lucky as any package to the falls includes a boat ride in which the pilot takes the boat under a waterfall, saturating everyone. Great fun indeed! Since I had no idead what to expect, I was eagerly awaiting the first waterfall. Well, it was a piddly little thing, and next to it was another small fall and so on. But then suddenly, there were huge waterfalls, stretching as far as the eye could see, and the roar of all that water was astounding.

After the boat ride, it was a short hike up on a nearby island, full of lush greenery and lizards and shade. My Spanish, though rusty, allowed me to translate the directional sign to La Ventana: The Window. The rocks, as you see, form a window that loks into one of the most impressive waterfalls in the area (though this is dwarfed by the incredible Garganta del Diablo - the Devil's Throat fall). And it must have been an excellent feeding ground, as there were many vultures circling around, and smaller birds darting in and out of the water.

These two vultures seemed particularly lazy in comparison to them.

Posing in Petra

I have to say from the outset that this photo wasn't taken by me. I tried to take this photo numerous times but it just didn't work out as well as my friend Jeremy's did. So thanks to Jez for taking this fantastic photo, I'll make sure he gets some percentage of any future book sales...

I'd wanted to go to Petra in Jordan ever since I first saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a kid, and then found out that the magnificent structure at the end was a real place. Funnily enough, many of the people I've met who've been there had the same inspiration. Jez and I, along with our friend Emma went to Jordan on holiday from Bangladesh and I was giddy with excitement at the thought of seeing the Treasury building (the one from the movie). After we'd bought our tickets, a bus load of ageing European or American tourists pulled up in matching white caps. We took one look at them and rushed towards the Siq, the long rocky corridor that leads to the Treasury, not wanting our first view to be masked by all the white caps. As we came around the last corner and got our first glimpse of the Treasury, through a narrow opening at the end of the Siq, my heart skipped a beat. It was absolutely stunning.

After admiring the view for quite some time, and throwing off attempts from the Bedouins to check out their merchandise, we headed off through the ancient city and started the ascent to the Monastery. Side note: have you ever noticed how so many wonderful places sit atop hundreds of steps? It was a long trek up, I think over 400 steps, and the summer heat was almost unbearable. But we made it in the end, and the Monastery was quite a sight to behold. While not as ornate as the Treasury, it was much, much larger. And there stood this donkey, perhaps taking a breather in between lugging unfit tourists up and down those 400 steps.

The Story of Mangy

I hadn’t planned on telling the story of Mangy so early on, but in light of recent events, I thought I should share a success story. When I moved to the Philippines I was very lucky as a staff house had just been established; my colleagues had spent previous months (and in some cases years) holed up in a nearby hotel. I’m not entirely sure how the cat family came to be part of the household, if they came with the house or just smelled the food, but Grandma, Mum and the kitten soon became part of daily life. Grandma and Mum were named for obvious reasons, but it took a little while to decide on a name for the kitten: Mangy. She was a pathetic looking thing, I was initially scared to go anywhere near her because she looked so terrible. But sure enough, I caved in, and would spend a lot of time curled up on the couch outside on the patio with Mangy curled up beside me. I started giving the cats milk every morning, and my leftover dinner every night. Soon enough, it became clear that Grandma was pregnant again, and then there were another three tiny kitties to admire. Well, as is the way of life, two of the kittens didn’t survive very long, which was very sad indeed…particularly as I found one of them one lunch time. Throughout all of this upheaval, Mangy became more and more outgoing and interested in the world around her, and became stronger and healthier and much less ugly.

Mangy is one of my happiest success stories...I don't know where she is now, but I hope she's thriving.

Nibbles

Squirrels are adorable. We don’t have them in Australia, and it wasn’t until I first went to England that I saw them bouncing around Hyde Park. This though, is an American squirrel. I was there in early November and think I experienced some unseasonably warmish weather in Washington D.C. I’d spent the day wandering around the monuments of the city, marveling at how they were all free, and soaking up the sun. It was getting later in the afternoon as I strolled along the reflection pool (swallowing the temptation to yell “run Forrest run”) towards the statue of Abraham Lincoln, and then on to the Vietnam War Memorial. It was as I was making my way towards that long black wall, with thousands of names etched into it that I heard some noises in the trees. Sure enough, there was this squirrel, happily gorging itself on the bright red berries. He wasn’t the first squirrel I’d seen on the trip so far, but was extremely endearing.

Bathing Buffalo

Water buffalo are a precious commodity in Mindanao, the largest island in the southern Philippines (and the 19th largest island in the world). Buffalo can plough land, drag heavy loads, and produce milk. So, people take care of their buffalo. The west coast of Mindanao has been plagued by a long running conflict for many years now. I worked there for a few months and was lucky enough, even in an insecure environment, to be able to see a lot of the area while observing food distributions.

The area on the opposite side of this river was experiencing shelling on the day this photo was taken; we could hear mortars exploding in the distance, probably only a few kilometres away. We were conducting an assessment on food needs for people who had left their homes on the other side of the river the week before, and were now living in makeshift shelters, with bamboo frames and walls made of sarongs or old rice bags. We could tell these people had already been displaced by fighting before, as many of them already had rice bags marked with the logo of the agency I was working for. I heard stories of people who'd been forced to leave with only the clothes on their backs, and perhaps some cooking utensils if they were lucky. A number of women told me that their husbands had returned to their homes to try and save the livestock, and they were worried that they wouldn't make it back to safety.

This man had managed to bring his buffalo with him, and it was obvious how precious they were to him as I watched him brush the water off their backs after their bath.

Flat Out

It can get quite hot in Bangladesh. I lived in Chittagong, located in the south east of Bangladesh for a year. My housemate and I went with a friend on a boat trip down to Rangamati, part of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, which has suffered from sporadic fighting in recent history, along with a rat plague every fifty years or so. We didn't actually get as far as Rangamati, as special permits are required to enter the area, and the border police stopped the boat.

It was February at the time of this photograph, which was the end of winter. I remember it being quite warm in the middle of the day, and our friend jumping in the river (complete with his BYO life jacket) for a swim, but that it cooled down dramatically in the afternoon and that I wrapped my thin orna (a scarf) around me in a futile attempt to block out the breeze.

This dog must have spent the whole day running up and down the river bank, enjoying the sunshine, which as we all can imagine would get pretty tiring. So what better place to have a nap, than a dug out little spot in the mud in the shade, complete with headrest.

Horsing around

Kolkata, or Calcutta as it was formerly known, in India is most commonly thought of in relation to Mother Teresa, and ergo, poverty. I went there for a long weekend while I was living in Bangladesh, and to me, the poverty wasn’t as apparent as it was in the city I was living in. I actually found Kolkata to be a little piece of paradise – I could easily order a beer, and have bacon for breakfast. If people didn’t speak English, I could use the Bangla I’d been learning to get around, winning favours along the way. My first taste of India wasn't one of being overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells as it is for many tourists, but one of comparison and a feeling of slight superiority that I wasn't so overwhelmed.

It was during a stroll on the first morning that my friend and I stumbled across this horse. While you can see a motorbike and a truck in the background, that doesn’t truly represent how busy this road was. Cities in India are busy, noisy, places. There are buses and trucks and motorbikes and autorickshaws, and in Kolkata, the fabulous old yellow Ambassador cabs. And there, amongst it all stood this horse - no reins, no rope, nothing to bind it to any one or any place – fast asleep.

Babushka Roos

Being Australian, I tend to forget just how odd some of our native animals are. In the past couple of weeks I've been asked twice what a marsupial is - the best example being a kangaroo - with the answer being an animal that raises its young in a pouch. I grew up not far from a wildlife reserve where you could buy bags of puffed oats to feed the kangaroos. This was always the highlight of any trip to the sanctuary, to try to get up close to the joeys without angering the mothers. When I lived in Canberra, early morning drives to the airport were met with trepidation, as kangaroos could hop across the road at any given moment. A kangaroo hitting your windscreen would cause about the same level of damage as a small deer or elk for those northern hemispherites reading.

I've never been a huge camper, but did go to a few lovely campsites in recent years and had up close and personal views of other native fauna including goannas and wombats. At Merry Beach in New South Wales, there were lots of kangaroos hanging around the camp grounds and this family of three arranged themselves like a Babushka doll near the tent, which was a nice surprise to zip open the tent to find.

Cluck and Whistle

This is one of my favourite travel tails. I was at the famed Machu Pichhu in Peru and had hiked up to the Sun Gate which has a magnificent view over the ruined city. It was a long walk up there, and after taking in the view for some time, I started my descent. I was about half way down when something jumped out of the bushes on my left and raced across the track in front of me. Something red, something with a fluffy tail and a long nose. At first I thought it was a fox. Then I thought perhaps I shouldn't stand around in case it jumped out and bit me, as a course of rabies treatment wasn't an attractive prospect.

Then I heard a sound - a sort of clucking then whistling. I imitated it, feeling pretty sure that foxes don't cluck and whistle. I waited. And waited some more. And then...a little head poked out between two stems of bamboo. It was the most precious little face, with a long nose and big eyes that were looking right at me. In a split second, it jumped out just as the first one had and ran across the track. I got a better look at its body - red and brown on the face and body, with the same colours in a stripey, bushy tail, about the size of a normal to small house cat. I settled down on a nearby rock to wait for more, and I was rewarded for my patience. There must have been another five who came out nervously, stopped to look me over, then jumped the trail.

Eventually, I continued down the track - going down almost as hard as going up - and when I reached the bottom and looked out over the city again, I spotted a lonely tour guide. I showed him the photo and asked him what it was. He said the name in Spanish too quickly for me to catch, but said it was a native raccoon-type animal. He also said that I was very lucky to see one, and couldn't believe it when I said I'd seen seven. After much internet searching, it turned out that it was actually a type of coati (though I'm sure that's not what the guide had called it), a creature I would meet again in Argentina for another memorable travel tail. For a long time I thought it was something completely different, but the power of Google has proven it so.

Those minutes that I spent perched on a rock waiting for more critters to appear, were some of the happiest I had in Peru.

Flight of the Flamingo

At 4125 metres above sea level, in a place called Laguna Hedidonda in Bolivia, there are thousands upon thousands of flamingos. During mating season, this number can rise to over fifty thousand, which I imagine would look like a shocking sea of pink. I didn't see fifty thousand, but I watched in awe at the strange grace of these gangly birds; all necks and legs. The flamingos spend their days hanging out in lagoons filled with borax, that's the white stuff, which we more commonly find in cleaning products (and which I've long said coats the water pipes in Brisbane causing the water to taste funny!). We've all heard the saying "as happy as a pig in mud" (evidence of which will be presented here at a later stage), but watching these birds led me to coin the phrase "as happy as a flamingo in borax"...go on, use it in conversation today!

Where it all began

I met this wise old dog at the Swayambhunath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal. There must be hundreds of steps to reach the top of the hill (apparently 365 according to Wikipedia) which are lined with little stalls selling jewellery and knick knacks. Otherwise known as the Monkey Temple for good reason, little monkeys dart in and out and around.

After reaching the top of the hill, and doing my best to avoid all the hawkers, I saw this dog; so calm and serene among the madness. He stayed in this position for as long as I watched him, until I was disturbed by a man wanting to realign my chakras. This old dog has inspired me to seek out other animals on my travels, and I wish I could give him a scratch on the belly in thanks.

Travel Tails

Two of my favourite things in life are travel and animals, particularly cute, fuzzy animals, but also the strange, weird and downright ugly animals I've met throughout my travels. The idea of "Travel Tails" belongs to my Mum, and one day, I hope to turn these photographs and stories into a book. A such, please do not reproduce any photographs contained on this site without my written permission.

I'm not a professional photographer, and none of these photos were staged, they are simply the animals I found along my way. I hope you'll enjoy reading about these animals as much as I enjoyed the adventures that surrounded them.