This is rowe which is fermented cassava paste. It keeps for a long time. People say it is healthy too. It does not taste like chicken.

After 2008 here, there was a proliferation of Obama posters, Obama t-shirts, businesses named Obama, restaurants named Obama and apparently, Obama stationary. There is no such similar event this time.

A view from my guesthouse. The barbed wire is not that photogenic granted but is an important part of the story of this photo. These mountains in the background have seen many wars over the years, and you can see the tell-tale signs of that in the architecture here.

I had a chance this afternoon to talk to a local chief who has lived through the Belgian era, Mobutu, wars with neighbouring countries and a host of other experiences. He talked about the past with great fondness, when the forest came right down to Lake Tangyanika, wildlife was abundant, and there were so many fish in the lake that the people couldn't take them all out.

Someone like that has lived more lives than most of us could ever know.

Mexico city from the air. I don't know how someone can look at the air above cities like this around the world and not even wonder a little bit if we are having an impact on the air above us.

This is tom tom, a dish specific to certain parts of Haiti, particularly Jeremie and the North. Tom tom is commonly made from breadfruit, although it can also be made from maize or cassava, and is ground into a flour and then a thick porridge is mixed which is then eaten with a sauce. After 20 plus years of going to Haiti, I finally had my chance to try tom tom. An exciting culinary moment for me because I had always thought from the descriptions I had heard that it strongly resembled ugali or fou fou eaten throughout Africa. In fact the resemblance was uncanny. And delicious. I think I should become a food anthropologist.

After spending all week talking to nearly everyone about the elections in Haiti, I think things can be summed up in one word: disenchanted. Nothing else to say about that really.

Here's some Christmas lights in Port au Prince to cheer you up.

26 minutes 34 seconds from parking to gate. slower than usual.

Today's trip is to Haiti. Main activity is a crop yield study although so soon after the election and only a couple months after Hurricane Matthew, there will be a lot to see.

Every election changes a country a little bit. Maybe not much but a little. As a Canadian, I have been following the evolution of the US political situation with considerable but slightly detached interest. However, after spending a week here, and having had a chance to hear from a number of people from a personal level, I feel like I haven't been taking the situation seriously enough. Regardless of who had won the election, I think this represents a major societal shift. I don't know exactly what that means, and I'll continue to watch with interest as our American friends (and we too) figure that out. 

Today I think I won the transportation game. object of game is to arrive in a new country and get from one place to another using local transport without getting overcharged, scammed, pickpocketed, groped or anything else. So I visited the Intramuros area of Manila which is the old walled city built by the Spanish 500 years ago. On the way back I grabbed a local taxi which runs a semi regular route which didn't drop me right at my hotel but within 2 minutes walk: 25 pesos or about 50 cents. This compared to the taxi I took from hotel to Intramuros which cost about 5 dollars.

I had read warnings about taxis in Manila so I was a little wary so be careful.

Everywhere there are black and white images of the King honouring his memory. Many people are wearing black or dark colours. TV shows are all about him all day. Buildings are decorated in long swaths of black and white cloth. Even Google Thailand has changed their logo to simple black and white. This period of mourning will apparently continue for 30 days.

Fishing in Thailand

This is the kind of tired that I am not a huge fan of. Sitting all day in meetings--no physical activity--but still tired because of having to focus for long periods. Then I came home and ate 2 huge bowls of rice. Now it's 7 pm and I don't feel like moving. Plus I've only been here 4 days, so my body still doesn't quite know what time it is.

These are all good things. The meetings are about things that I really enjoy talking about, with people I really enjoy talking to--staff here who work directly with farmers and are passionate about helping farmers. And the rice was delicious. And if jet-lag is the biggest problem I have in my life then, well, I have no right to complain.

On my way to Thailand for  a bit. But to tell you the truth I feel like I might be going in the wrong direction. It feels like Haiti is calling.

Still lots of things to do in Thailand, not the least of which is to take part  in the 25th anniversary of UHDP, our partner organization there.

It's been raining alot for the past 3 or 4 days. Almost continuously I would say. A few breaks here and there which we've used to get as much tree measurement done as possible. Below is a photo of the Haina river overflowing a bridge and stopping traffic. Doesn't look like much in the photo but the current running over the road was definitely strong enough to pull a vehicle into the river. We found another way to go around. The rain has stopped for now and there was a little bit of wind last night but at least in this part of the island things haven't been too bad. Today I am supposed to fly through Miami. It will be interesting to see what happens with my flight.

Not really much to tell about hurricane Matthew so far. It rained a lot today and I got soaking wet because we were out measuring trees on farms. The Haina river doubled in depth over the course of the afternoon and children were out of school just in case. My colleague from Haiti says it's is windy and raining.

Meanwhile this was the view on the weekend. A bit gloomy maybe but pleasant nonetheless.

Hurricane Matthew is expected to pass over land in the southern part of Haiti today. It will likely miss the Dominican Republic, but likely it will rain some. Hopefully nothing too disastrous. Will keep you posted.

A cocoa plantation in the making. This was a acacia plantation which was good in that it provided cover and timber for the farmer, but now she is replacing the acacia with a higher value and more diversified system. You should be able to see cocoa, cedar, sapote, and banana, all of which will interact beneficially to protect the farm and generate higher profits for the farmer. A true win-win.

The view from my fishing spot. Didn't catch any fish but does that even matter?

One of the topics this week is training strategies. The staff here are using visual aids to help train farmers and they are pleased with the results. Here's an example

If you look beyond the wall in the photo you will see that my hotel is right across the street from a police station. That's a good thing right? Like probably nothing bad is going to happen here. At least that's my logic.

By the way I got all the way here with all my stuff. At customs here the only thing they asked was if the drone was used or not. Seems like people travelling with drones is just part of the background now. Also so far I don't seem to have forgotten anything. And I slept like a baby last night. I think it's going to be a good week.

Here's all my extra stuff. And it's alot of extra. Like 4 times normal. Including, you can see the tube with the red cap, a travel fishing rod. That's right, I'm carrying fishing gear which in the past I would have thought of as frivolous, but I'm eager to see if I can catch anything in Dominican rivers. I will let you know of course

I hope I haven't forgotten anything. I haven't travelled in over 4 months so I'm actually feeling a little bit out of practice. Also I'm really short on sleep and I'm catching myself making little mistakes like nearly forgetting my toothbrush. And setting my boarding pass down in a random place, something I would normally not do. So the chances I've forgotten something this time are pretty good. I have a checklist and I went over it a bunch of times but I can tell my brain is not firing on all cylinders.

There's a lot of extra things I had to bring on this trip too which means more things to forget. Like the drone for example. Which by the way, airport security didn't even bat an eye at. Drones are commonplace now I guess.

The drone on this trip is not just for fun. I'm hoping we can scan some farms and use those scans to learn more about structure and productivity of those farms. I've been practicing all summer at home but this will be the first real test. 

Trip is over and in almost every way surpassed expectations. We did not see gorillas,  but every day of this week I was amazed and surprised. Here's a photo of the Kirwa forest on the 3rd morning of our hike.

Today is mostly an office day: heard a presentation about project progress so far, right now in a meeting about project finances. There is a long list of topics to cover and we will likely work into the evening. Tomorrow we will actually get out to communities and see with our own eyes the results that we've been hearing about. 

This trip is kind of an exciting one for me. Going to our new project in the Kakumba watershed in Congo. I've been there before but only during the set up phase of the project. This will be my first time to see how things are unfolding on the ground. All reports are good so I am optimistic. Plus we get to hike from Lake Tanganyika up to nearly the Itombwe plateau. I've been taking lots and lots of stairs to be fit enough for this but it will still be a big challenge. I just hope the rain which is forecast doesn't block our plans.

1 hour from airport parking lot to the departure gate today. One of my slowest times ever, mainly because of the security check. I don't mind if it gets me safely to my destination. It's a good thing I showed up early though.

No, sadly, this is not northern lights. I was hoping I would catch them since Fort McMurray is at 57 degrees north and it is a fairly common occurrence. This looks like it could be, but actually it is light from a tar sands extraction plant just a few km north of the city. 

Fort McMurray, Alberta. At 57 degrees north, this is the furthest north I have been (as my friend here pointed out). Lucky for me they are experiencing a bit of a heat wave. Yesterday it was a balmy -12 C, and today it is forecast to go above 0. I can tell you it is sunny and very pleasant.

Here is a shot from an exhibit along the highway. This is retired equipment and a technology that apparently is no longer in use here. It is difficult to capture the massiveness of this equipment. Machinery like this, and so many other things about this town tell you how much effort has been put into extracting oil. At least up til now.

Wait. Wasn't I just at the airport yesterday? At least this time it's for vacation. I keep checking for my passport and then feel so good when I remember I don't need it. Don't need to fill out an arrivals card, don't need to pass immigration, don't need foreign currency. It is very exciting. 

The result of this week's efforts. Grey line is water temperature, and blue line is water depth. You can see there was a major rain event on Thursday night and a resulting sudden rise in river depth from about 0.3 metres to 1.5 metres. It was great to be able to check that the installation is solid and was not washed away by all that water. Five days of data doesn't really tell us much. We probably need at least 3 years of data, and better still 5 years of data before we can start to make any kind of meaningful interpretation. Fortunately the logger will just keep taking readings automatically. There is always a risk of vandalism or theft, but the station itself weighs 100 lbs, and is fastened with both a stake and a metal cable, so there would be some work involved for someone to take this thing away. Not entirely out of the question, but not something that someone is just going to do on a whim. But time will tell. At least 5 days out, everything is going well.

Last night I overheard some guests at the hotel talking about how land prices have jumped by huge amounts in a community called Juan Adrian. This because of a new highway under construction from the centre of the country to the west which is transforming Juan Adrian from sleepy mountain village into bustling, near-urban way-stop.

We all have heard about the world's shifting population, and how for the first time in history there are more people living in cities than in rural areas. For me this shift tends to be mostly invisible, and so it is a bit shocking to have such an in-your-face manifestation of global change. This also likely means more deforestation and erosion in a place that was otherwise stable. The area where the highway is going slices right through the very top of the Maimon watershed which feeds the Yuna river, which ultimately flows into Samana bay, a critical breeding area for humpback whales. Not that road building is going to immediately threaten whales, but everything is inter-connected, and protecting the source of the Maimon and Yuna river becomes more important and urgent than before. 

I think--not totally sure--but I think hotel staff are bringing me my breakfast this morning without me ordering. At least a coffee was delivered to my table without me asking for it. And I think I smell eggs frying. Two days in a row now I have ordered an egg and cheese sandwich, so I'm guessing that I'm getting an egg/cheese sandwich today too. Which is what I would have ordered anyway.

I want to say that this is the first time in a while when I have actually felt like blogging. I know that creative energy fluctuates up and down. Difficult to describe but I think everyone knows the feeling: when your energy is down, it is kind of like being a fly on a spider web--the more you try, the worse it gets. Or to put it another way, if you've seen the movie Limitless, the main character, Eddie Morra is trying to write a book, but mostly he is just sitting at his desk bouncing a tennis ball off the wall.

In any case we soldier on, right? I think it was Thomas Edison that said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration".

Today was a good day. So was yesterday if you're asking but today was good also. We secured the water quality monitoring station so it definitely will not wash away in a big storm, and trained staff in how to retrieve the data. Which turns out to be almost too easy. We have invested in some dataloggers which record data automatically and will continue to do so for as long as the battery lasts, about 1 year. And the logger transmits data to your smartphone which means no wading into dangerous rivers, no connecting with complicated cables, very easy sharing of data between users.

I'm also noticing, that at least the two times I have done a water quality datalogger installation, it leads one to some of the most interesting and beautiful places. The upper Ozama river, which you see in the photo, is practically national park material in my opinion. In fact it would be a good step to protecting an important source of water for millions of people, but I don't believe that any such plan exists. If there is a long term plan, it is likely to turn this area over to mining interests. By the way, if you look in the middle of the picture, on the far side of the river, you will see a white post sticking up out of the water. That is our monitoring station--but accessible by phone from this side of the river. Cool huh?

But I digress. This good day is ending with me enjoying a plate of cassava and salt herring--a traditional dish both here and in Haiti. And best of all, when I asked the waitress for water, she didn't bring me bottled water! She brought me regular drinking water like regular non-touristy people drink. Small victory, I know. Still, good end to a good day.

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.

Sometimes travel plans actually work exactly the way they are supposed to.  I chose my hotel in Sofia because it is near the bus terminal  (where I would be arriving ) and it had distinctive architecture  (which would make it easy to find). First thing I see when I walk out of the bus terminal is this:

Not quite as easy to see in this low resolution shot as in real life, but the light coloured building with the turret at the end of the street is what I wanted to see. I also chose it because it is close to the subway which will take me to the airport. Turns out there is a subway entrance right in front of the hotel. It is not always that everything falls in place so nicely, especially in a place you have never been before. It was kind of like a small reward at the end of a trip.

The first thing I did on arriving in Sofia is go to McDonald's. I have never done this anywhere while travelling but somehow it seemed like the right thing to do this one time. You have to understand that I grew up in the Cold War and it has very much shaped my thinking about how things are. Can't fully articulate my feeling, but McDonald's being the epitome of western capitalism deep behind the former Iron Curtain means something to me.

Today I had one of those fortuitous experiences that ever tourist hopes for and is thankful for when it happens. I got to a museum that was interesting and important to me but unfortunately just as they were closing. But a few of the staff very gratiously offered to take a few minutes to explain things to me. Which was the best thing. Their explanation gave me a behind-the-scenes view of the history here and our conversation ranged well beyond the museum to education, politics, regional conflict, and Syrian refugees. Unfortunately a happening like that is rare and can't be repeated I don't think. It can only be appreciated for what it is. 

About refugees, apparently because Hungary is closing their border this is putting more pressure on countries in the Balkans. For example there are lots of refugees in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Both private citizens and government are doing what they can, but these are not countries with a lot of resources. I myself have not seen many or possibly any, although today I saw an old man who looked like he was weary from walking a long way. He was wearing dirty clothes that looked more middle eastern to me than Balkan, and he was carrying a small cloth folded up on the corners, like he was carrying his possessions.  Perhaps he was just a local homeless person, but he just looked like he was from far away in every sense. If so you wonder where he might be hoping to go, and what has got him this far all on his own.

The Nis (neesh) Fortress in the city of Nis, Serbia. Much like the fortress in Kotor,  this is an aggregation of constructions by various powers at different times.  In the background  (under the green umbrellas) are the remains of a Roman bath--not a military installation by any means, but evidence of an occupation going back a couple thousand years. In the foreground, the domed building is the hamam (Turkish bath) the first Ottoman presence on the site built in late 1400's. The Ottomans also built a major walled fortress a couple hundred years later which you see a piece of in the background,  and maintained control of this for a hundred years or so until Serbia gained independence.

Nis as a town is much more like what I would call a "normal" place. That is I think I may have escaped the tourist bubble. The bus to get here from the coast did not have a single tourist as far as I could tell and no one I interacted with spoke English. In fact one of the bus company staff here, when I asked if she spoke English just glared at me like she would rather shoot me than talk to me. I moved on to the next wicket not wanting to be glared at or shot and found other staff much more helpful.

I'm sitting at modern shopping mall in Kotor, Montenegro at the foot of the Kotor Fortress which is a UNESCO world heritage site. Normally I would not consider heading for a shopping center when something so fascinating is nearby but I have to confess, I feel pretty good.  And by "pretty good", I mean the air conditioning is blasting and I'm not out there in the thirty-who-even-cares-how-many degrees sun. It is stinking hot out there. Is it just me, or is there some kind of change in the climate going on?

The fortress at Kotor was started over 2000 years ago give or take and was added to piece by piece over the centuries by various world powers of the day. To me it is one of those crazy impressive structures that awes you with the engineering and near superhuman determination required to build it. Beyond that it is sobering to be reminded in such a stark way what lengths we go to in order to fight with each other --or defend ourselves from each other--depending on how you want to look at it.

Sorry, I waited too late at night to take this photo of Dubrovnik, Croatia. A 15th century coastal town with a walls, turrets, narrow cobble stone streets. Commerce is thriving today just as I imagine it was 500 years ago, except today's trade is souvenirs, and boating excursions instead of copper and gold. A very pretty place and I will provide a better shot when I have a chance to retrieve some from my camera.

The Neretva River in Bosnia Herzegovina. Important as the boundary between first, the East and West Roman Empires--significant perhaps because these would come to represent Orthodox and Catholic faiths--and later on, the boundary between the Christian West and the Muslim East (under the Ottoman empire). Ground zero in a sense and a physical and metaphorical line between worlds that have clashed for centuries. It is so beautiful here it is hard to believe that such lines exist at all or that in today's world they may be intensifying. 

Visited the Historical Museum in Sarajevo today. Very moving account and display of the besieged city in the early 1990's. That, combined with a walking tour of "Sniper Alley" left me with--what can I say? A few hours of touring around does not in any way bring one close to understanding what having your hometown surrounded for over 1400 days would be like, but--the physical signs of a 20 years past conflict are still perfectly evident: bullet holes in walls, shell marks in the street.

I'm posting this courtesy of the Stari Grad municipality of Sarajevo free wifi. Pretty progressive I would say. Can you imagine if my town made wifi available as a public service? I don't even know what the logistics would be like on that.

Anyhow, I'm at at riverside patio just down the street from the Latin Bridge where Archduke Ferdinand was shot--the incident that triggered World War I. Sadly, this is one of the very few facts I can say I legitimately learned in school about the Balkans. In fact the corner where you see "museum" in the photo is the exact spot where the infamous deed was done. 

What is fascinating to me is that there are so few moments in history where one single event so clearly defines an era. More often it seems to me, history is an accumulation of a bunch of small and less well defined events that add up to make something observable. 

"Sure" you say, "the causes of WWI were much more complex than that".  But the fact remains that a decision by a very small handful of people or maybe even one guy, precipitated a continental war that lasted years and cost millions of lives.

Brussels airport, which claims to be one of top airports in Europe, at least according to the video I saw on the plane. Who am I to argue? (Well, if you know me, I'm likely to argue...)

Video also told me that the Brussels airport is the largest retailer of chocolate in the world which is totally believable given the quality of the chocolate here. I hope to buy some on the return flight. Don't ask me for any.

The Killarney hike while tiring, was rejuvenating. I think all that scrambling up and down hills and sweating somehow purged my system.  In my mind it seems like a good idea to do that kind of walking more often but good intentions....

Right now I'm actually looking forward to just sitting inert on the plane for a few hours.

Travel notes:
My doorstep to airport on public transit = 2 hours 10 minutes
Airport entrance to gate = 17 minutes 1 second

Made it to Silver Peak and back. Many hikers do this trail, so not such a great feat I suppose, but for me it was hard and I'm tired. But I feel good, even rejuvenated. This is Proulx Lake, and this is really the colour of the water. And the water here is about 5 or 6 metres deep looking almost straight down. Next stop, Sarajevo. 

The good news is that we'very been able to book some of the best campsites on the Silver Peak trail because other hikers have beenough cancelling out in the past few days. The bad news is that other hikers have been cancelling out because rain is forecast for most of this week. Forecast keeps changing though so I'm optimistic about not hiking soaking wet every day.

Got some vacation lined up (yea!). Hiking to Silver Peak in Killarney Provincial Park followed immediately by bus-train-walking in Eastern Europe. Yes, for some reason this year, I've managed to end up with trips booked back to back. Perhaps subconsciously I've succumbed to the 'adrenaline junkie' travel method--barely leave yourself enough time between trips to unpack and repack just to test your endurance. Whatever the explanation, I've got these piles of stuff started in my living room, one for hiking, and one for Europe. This I tell myself, is helping me prepare for both trips at the same time. Also I'm trying to accumulate a sufficient body of knowledge about E. Europe to allow me to navigate successfully. Below for example is a map of the tram line in Sarajevo, which I hope to use to get from the airport to the city centre. In fact, the tram line does not connect to the airport, so I will have to take a bus (I think) from airport to tram line. This also has become one of my things: taking on the public transit system instead taxis. Also part of the adrenaline agenda it would seem.

The Kakumba watershed in the 'winter', or perhaps more appropriately, in the dry season. Farmers burn their fields for a variety of reasons most of which are actually pretty reasonable, but the end result is greater erosion, declining soil health, and ultimately a loss of ability to feed one's family. The challenge of reversing the community habit of burning fields is a great one, as our project manager is Congo is contemplating.

Yesterday, I saw monkeys! Seeing monkeys in and of itself is not that big a deal, but it is the first time I've ever seen monkeys at one of our project sites. Most of the places where I work are, let's say, very agricultural, and there's not that much room for wildlife. But the Congo basin, as I've probably mentioned before is the site of the second largest rainforest in the world and even in the farm communities where we are (just beginning) to work, there are still pockets of forest left. It is one of our hopes that, together with farmers in the area, we can intervene to not only help people protect their precious farmland, but also to help them protect the wild areas that still remain nearby. This is in a sense the notion of preventative medicine versus curative medicine. Or dealing with the problem early instead of waiting til things have gone way too far.

And just so you don't think that there are monkeys just falling out of trees everywhere here, you should know that in order to see these ones, we started hiking around 7 am and reached the spot in the photo around 8:30 so, hiking over what I would say is pretty rugged terrain.

It's true that this photo looks a lot like a picture of a bunch of trees, but I swear to you that there are monkeys. Had I taken video, you would see the branches moving around as they jumped from tree to tree.

This morning about 3:30 am I woke up to the sound of a loud argument between a man and a woman. The argument went on in several languages, including occasionally in English, I guess because both of them wanted the entire world hear their side. What I heard in English was the woman screaming,"Give me my money!", and the man saying,"Get out!". I also heard snippets in French that sounded like, "Shut your mouth", and "I don't want to talk to you". The whole thing went on for nearly an hour. Fortunately for me, I had to get up early anyway to get ready for this bus trip. So just a few minutes ago, while I was waiting in the lobby for my ride, I saw a middle aged man leave with his luggage in a large SUV, and a few minutes later a young woman leaving with no luggage. 

Mind you, counting travel hours that way is a bit misleading since the 40-60 hours includes about 7 hours at a hotel. Which is where I am right now, with internet connection, a working shower, and drinking cold water supposedly bottled from the 'Source of the Nile' (in fact on the bottle label, 'Source of the Nile' is actually in quotes).

Kigali is in fact in the Nile watershed, and somewhat close to the source, so I suppose a water bottling company could make that argument. In any case, the bus that I get on tomorrow morning, will wind its way through the mountains towards the border, and at somewhere in Nyungwe National Park will cross over from the Nile to the Congo watershed. Interesting thing about Rwanda and Burundi, that both countries sit atop the divide between two of the most important watersheds in Africa. One wonders how that geography is linked to the history of this part of the world.

13 minutes 6 seconds, airport entrance to departure gate. Pearson airport, terminal 3.

Today I head  back to Congo. Just got back this morning from a GIS conference, which was great, and this afternoon I'm at the airport again. So I don't know how to count my journey. When does one trip end and the next begin? And yes, I do mean that in both the existential sense as well as the time keeping sense. Numbers-wise it doesn't make that much difference. If I count from now til I reach my real destination in Congo, it's about a 45 hour trip. If I count since I left the conference last night til I reach Congo it's probably more like a 60 hour trip. This is totally OK, because I got to go to an excellent conference where I learned a tonne, and now I get to visit a really beautiful part of the planet which is the Congo Basin. Everyone should do it.

Me and the Rwandan flag. One more country to add to the count.

Not much blogging (actually none) on this trip although there was plenty to blog about. Among other things, the scenic bus tour through Rwanda and eastern Congo turned out to be an intense and grueling journey, definitely a test of one's stamina. Not totally unexpected, but there were a couple or three moments when arrival at the destination was not at all certain. I also witnessed a new record for number of people on a minivan, 31. No, I'm not kidding and for comparison, the previous record (as witnessed by me) was 29. That leg of the journey featured a bench seat where all of the padding had worn off, so I was basically sitting on the pipe frame that would normally hold up the padding, and the board that had replaced the padding on the back had a nail sticking out of it and occasionally into my back. 

Things I am looking forward to on this trip:

• adding a new country to my checklist
• a scenic bus tour through Rwanda and Eastern Congo
• the possibility of being witness to the launching of a new program for our organization--please note this is not a slam dunk, so many things could push back, postpone, undermine, derail, or otherwise frustrate this process. All the usual philosophical cliche's apply: Murphy's law, 'nothing is ever  as easy as it seems', 'that that don't kill me, can only make me stronger', Ok, that last one is a bit of a stretch, fueled by the double espresso I just ordered and my inability to sleep on airplanes. In fact at this point I'm barely ahead of the proverbial army of monkeys randomly typing at keyboards. I mean this is a bullet point that has apparently turned into a rambling paragraph, hardly making a point at all, bullet or otherwise. Can't wait to get to a bed somewhere and sleep. That is still 14-16 hours away I expect.

Schipol, from gate arrival through security check to reaching my departure gate, 15 minutes. Sorry, wasn't alert enough to set my stop watch. I realize that almost no one cares about the time it takes to process me through airports, but I figure that someone out there is mining data on traveler perception of airports, and this is my contribution. Plus it amuses me in an environment otherwise largely devoid of amusement--unless you consider duty-free shopping to be a form of amusement. Also I have a theory that some airports are better at this than others and eventually I hope to collect enough data to prove it, at least to myself.

This trip will have the added feature of taking a bus basically all the way around Burundi to avoid possible political things. Actually it will be one bus for about 5 hours followed by a public, shared taxi for another 3 hours. So including transfer times, border crossings, etc it should be a 9 or 10 hour trip. Should be very scenic.

30 minutes from entrance to gate, Toronto Pearson airport.

This is one of the first microwatershed projects that Floresta Haiti ever did. I think about 2005 or 2006 so it's just slightly over 10 years old. Good to see that the trees are still there. The darkish green trees in the centre and left of the photo are 'frenn' (Simarouba glauca) which is a species native to Haiti. The lighter green trees on the right of the photo and further up the slope are eucalyptus (not native). 

One of many beautiful waterfalls on our hike to install water quality monitoring equipment. Tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Airport time from entrance to gate, 22 minutes. Minor delay because I couldn't use the ticket kiosk for some reason. Otherwise a good morning so far. This trip to Haiti to work on a new (and hopefully improved) way to handle data, and a new way of monitoring water quality. This in particular I am pretty excited about. A battery operated data logger that will automatically collect information on water depth and water temperature. There are several practical issues to sort out like how to protect such a device from cows and children, but we are working on that, and the possibility of getting some really valuable data back makes it worth the effort. We shall see. I'll let you know how it goes this week.