Yesterday I had shown you a picture of one of the bridges connecting the
continents of Europe and Asia. To the bridge enthusiasts, who might find the
pictures of the bridges often enough, I wanted to show this information
about the bridges, given on the navigational charts. These are great bridges
and as we can see that the first bridge has a span of about 600 meters, the
second bridge, goes on for about a kilometer.
With a height of about 68 meters from the high water mark, these are some of
the greatest bridges that I have passed under.
The institution of Scouts completed a hundred years of its existence in the
year 2007 and everyone other then the Indian govt seems to have issued reams
of stamps to commemorate the occasion. Pictured above is one of the sheets
released by the Italians for the occasion. I am putting this here simply
because so many people have been asking for Scouts stamps on the internet
bulletin boards, that I am sure that I am missing out on their significance.
I actually was in the scouts. I distinctly remember wearing my brothers
hand-me-downs to the parades. The only thing I took to those parades, which
was my own, was this round ferrule type thing through which we knot the
scarf and a fierce will not to parade.
And that is what we did in the scouts, I swear. We paraded, saluted that
three fingered salute and read some rules off some blue book. Which was
immediately taken back as soon as the parade was finished.
Of course the stamps prove that some scouts play the guitar around the
campfire and do canoeing, but I assure you that the only thing remotely like
that in my two years with the scouts was to move some stones near a hill.
And I don't like hills and I didn't like those stones.
First off, please forgive me for the long absense off the blog. I wish I
could say that it was for a good reason like global hunger, but I was
actually busy killing friends and strangers on the Team Fortress servers.
After a moth or so of that, I find myself again in the safe sanity of
bobbing along in the middle of the sea. This time in the middle of the
Lagoon - Something the US Navy calls the Mediterian. I don't particularly
like the Medi. Too crowded for my taste and some of the worst weathers that
I have faced in my seafaring life has been in these waters.
But hey new waters translate into new stamps don't they? I had gone to the
beautiful Italian city of Trieste and actually stepped out to visit the
International Maritime Institute to have a look-see, but it turns out that
the place shut down few months back. Just my luck. Someone who knows someone
tells me that there was some scandal. Money taking and all that. But don't
tell anyone.
Anyway, Not to make it a total loss, I went over to the charming post office
in the city centre where they have a really nice postal museum, with
postmarks from as far back as the 1800. Pretty neat stuff.
I got this sheet from there. I love maps of any kind and one of the
bemnifits of sailing at sea is that you are sorrounded by charts, some of
them really old. In my last ship, I came across a chart of New Zaeland,
where the credit for the plotting was given to Captain Cook.
So I'm pleased as a plum to present this map sheet. It seems to tell us the
path from the cities of L'aquila to Foggia and probably the name of the
route is "tratturo Magno. The route obviously passes through mountains and
we see in the stamp a mountain range with sheep in the fore ground. A
beautiful stamp sheet.
In my pursuit of the global graffiti, here is a wall from the small village of Corinto in Nicaragua. For a change I think the graffiti is about pro-social causes such as deforestation and abortions.
I know I say this about every place, But Nicaragua is a beautiful country. I think once I get back home I should lay down strict guidelines on rating beauty. But the above scene was just sitting on the balcony of my deck. There are not too many people
in Nicaragua and the reason might be the presence of 27 active Volcanos on the pacific coast. This is one of them and the fact that it was spewing out smoke throughout the stay of the ship was not very comforting to me. I've heard people actually pay money to get near places like this.
Its a good thing I got my Pay raise last year!
Valparaiso really is a beautiful city. It was one of the oldest cities to be settled in the country of Chile and the neat thing about it is that as it was settled, people from all over Europe came to the city and built houses in the style of their
country. So you have French Shotgun houses nestled right besides a British country home. One great thing I like about the city was the huge variety if Graffiti on display. You had the more standard ones with weird font letters like the ones you usually
see in the US to some really beautiful paintings done up on the wall.
The snap above is on one such wall I pass on the way to lunch as we went walking on the cobbled roads.
PS: As you can see from the position, I am now 23 miles from the equator so should be passing the big line in a couple of hours.
Chile claims a sizeable chunk of the Antartic Continent as a part of its Territory. I am not really sure how this goes down internationally because as far as my understanding went, the whole of the Antartic was supposed to be an international territory.
Regardless, the Antartic does impose a potent influence on the whole country simply because of the cold water current that flows from it up the Chilean coast. This also brings along the visitors from down under such as Penguins and Sea lions.
While Penguins are often spotted about 50 miles south of Valparaiso, only sea lions venture north up to Vina Del Mar. The picture above is of a rock just off the coast on the main road joining Vina Del Mar and Quintero. The picture was taken by a
camera with zero optical magnification and 3 mega pix. I really regretted the fact that my faithful camera had finally died. Missed some wonderful snaps back there.
A stamp sheet of these included in the Philatelic bolg.
Inspired by the post that I put up on my philatelic blog, I wanted to show you what a day on the beach looks like in Chile in the Summer.
This was also the day after the new year and on they say a million extra people had come to the Twin cities of Valparaiso & Vina Del MAr. This is the Main Beach of Vina.
The Jetty in the background is that of an old Sugar refining factory, but has now been condemed for the use of some amusement park while the Sugar plant dug up and shipped to some remote region.
Have been meaning to put this latest by Puja for some time. She painted this last month using Acrylic paints.
