I have no pictures of the 2 staff members and 2 farmers and myself wading around in the Ozama River installing the water quality monitoring station. Mostly because it was raining when we were doing that, and also because my phone may be dead--because of said rain and river. I'm trying to dry it in my room right now using a zip lock bag and packing peanuts which may or may not work as a dessicant. I bought this phone because it was supposedly water resistant. But I guess wading around in a river doesn't count.

Nor do I have photos of us getting a vegetable delivery truck unstuck from the mud in the one lane road that leads to the river. Also no pictures of my pants splattered in mud from the spinning tires of the truck as it slowly slithered its way up the hilly mountain road--more of a path than a road.

And no pictures of the super drunk guy at the next table at this restaurant where I am eating. Even if I had my phone I probably wouldn't take pictures of that. Best that you trust me when I say he is super drunk. 

The view from my room. I guess it should be safe here with the police right across the street. I've never really worried about safety here. Not that things don't happen but I've never felt like I was in an unsafe situation. Honestly right now I feel totally relaxed. Or the nearest analogy to total relaxation that I can achieve.

Well it's not 30 degrees but I've shed my jacket and toque for a tee shirt. It will do.

Here's a view from my dinner table. I am super hungry having got up at 4 to go to airport and had a small sandwich between flights.

I think terminal 3 has improved the check in procedure or something. I felt like I got through in record time. 15 minutes from the parking lot which probably means less than 10 from the time I entered the terminal. 

This morning is one of those times when the strategy of entering the terminal with only the clothes I will use at my destination wasn't the greatest. It was minus 25 outside and I sprinted from parking to the terminal. I guess I would also say this is one of the few times when I feel actually glad to be getting out of the cold. Going from minus 25 to plus 30. Hope it's not too much of a shock to the system. 

The noodle shop where I had breakfast --which by the way was a quarter of the price I paid for my espresso at the Ritz-Carlton.

I also decided to be surveyed by the tourism board at the airport. I've asked so many people to take surveys for my work, I figure it is only fair that I fill in someone else's database once in a while.

Hong Kong harbour as viewed from the restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in Kowloon. Hong Kong is a special administrative region or something so I am totally counting it as a separate country for my "country-counting" purposes. This may be getting by on a technicality but I'must still counting it.

In the Kilimanjaro airport where I believe I can probably guess someone's original just by looking at their shoes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but all the Europeans and North Americans are wearing hiking boots and all the Africans are wearing dress shoes. There's a few exceptions of course but you'd be pretty safe betting on that one in this airport. 

I just had (at Tel Aviv airport) one of the most thorough security checks I've ever had. Actually I would say it was 3rd most thorough.  In all 3 cases I have felt like at some point the person questioning me switched their focus from assessing me as a risk to just trying to figure out exactly what I do. That seems to mystify some people for some reason. Also not everything I do makes sense so that doesn't help. In general security checks don't bother me--mostly I figure what they do may actually keep me and others safe.

Saturday night traffic in Tel Aviv

20 hour layover in Tel Aviv. It was originally supposed to be 14 hours but never mind,  it means I was able to spend a few hours admiring the Mediterranean. Also worth noting that website travel posts gave somewhat conflicting info on whether things were open on the Sabbath, which is when I happened to arrive. Turns out that things are open in certain areas like Old Jaffa, but not so much in the other parts of town I tried to visit. Trains and buses do not run until evening which means I had to rely on a cab to get me to the city. If I had arrived any other day I would have been fine. Still, it was good to get a bit of a walk in and soak up some pleasant 20 degree weather.

27 minutes 28 seconds from economy parking to gate--pearson airport

44 minutes airport door to gate, SDQ

 Day 6 from hotel window. And finally, a work-related picture. The second photo here is a mahogany which exhibits characteristics of 2 different species, the local, native mahogany (Swietenia mahogani) and an introduced species, Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla). In general mahogany is a highly valued species for timber, and used in furniture, crafts, etc. The problem for farmers is that mahogany is slow growing and they can't turn a profit fast enough. Honduran mahogany is now preferred for planting because it grows faster but the trade off is that, while the quality of the wood is good, it is not as good as the native species. The tree in the photo is likely a hybrid of the two species and may therefore have good qualities of both, that is faster growth, but also higher wood quality. Turns out that in the tree world, there is lots of hybridization, or mixing of species, and in fact the boundary between species is not nearly as clear as once thought. The tree you see in the photo is in a plantation where the two species are planted in alternate rows, and over time we are hoping to collect seed and better understand the hybridization (mixing) process. Maybe even develop a seed source that combines the best characteristics of both species. But that is much further down the road.

Day 5

Day 3 and day 4 from my hotel window.

The view from my hotel room day 1 and day 2. Mostly the other things I might take photos of this week are people sitting in meetings, people hunched over documents, people, looking at slide presentations, people hunched over a different set of documents. So this may not be the last pictures you see from my hotel window.

21 minutes 37 seconds to gate at Pearson. This includes getting from the commuter parking lot to main building.

This week, among other things, we are doing a survey of crop yields. Understanding how much farmers are producing is a common practice worldwide but trickier to do among subsistence farmers. Reasons for this are many and one of the key reasons is because the typical subsistence farmer is growing a mix of many different crops in small batches. So while any single crop might do well or poorly, this might not give us a fair picture of whole farm performance.

This week we will try some strategies to try to paint that bigger picture, which I can talk about more later.

Trip is nearly over. I saw some travellers with backpacks heading to bus station this morning while I was eating my complimentary hotel omelet, and I found myself wishing I was moving on to the next destination too. If only I could find someone who was willing to pay me just to wander around the planet with no particular goal in mind except to learn about this amazing, beautiful,  cruel, frightening, aggravating, fascinating world we live in. 

I think the surprise of the trip was Sofia. I was expecting drab and utilitarian, but what I found was vibrant and fascinating.  I guess I was a victim of Cold War brainwashing. Other than the scamming taxi driver it was a delightful experience.

In the late 1800's the Russians, Bulgarians, and several other Balkan countries fought the declining Ottoman empire. When Ottomans were finally driven out of Sofia, there was no bell to be found in the principal church at the time, the Hagia Sofia church since it had been converted to a mosque. A bell was found (provided by the Russian army I think), and suspended from a tree just outside the church so that it could be rung to celebrate independence. The bell remains outside the church in a tree to this day

Just to balance out the universe I guess, I had a bad planning experience after my good one this morning.  I had been warned on several travel websites that there were sketchy taxi drivers in town. I thought I had done my research and knew the rates , but I ended up in a scam taxi anyways. In the end I didn't pay as much as the driver was asking but more than what I think I was supposed to pay. It really soured my experience here. I was so mad I walked most of the way back. I know that most cab drivers are decent and honest, but there's enough bad ones out there to make me never want to take a taxi again.

But on the plus side, Sofia has an organization called Free Sofia Tours which provides twice daily tours of downtown Sofia. Very interesting and I highly recommend it if you pass this way. I was thinking it would be great if such a thing existed in Toronto. Here is part of the tour in the subway, where the Eastern gate of the Roman fortress of Serdika has been preserved and incorporated into the subway structure. Not only that, the stones on the ground are part of the Roman road that went all the way to Constantinople (Istanbul). Pretty cool, at least to me--hope you think so too.