Aberdare National Park

 We leave Nairobi. Martin has come to pick us up in an eight-seater jeep.

It’s morning rush hour but we are leaving the city so the traffic flows. There are people everywhere. Pedestrians circulating on every bit of green beside and between the highways. Small motorcycles, solo riders, milk crates full of live chickens strapped four high on the back, couples with a baby bundled in a blanket between them, blasé passengers in flip-flops watching the world go by. Ten-wheeled trucks, taxis with dashboards lined with fluorescent shag carpet, hundreds of matatus (VW van-sized buses) that go back and forth from the city to the country and everywhere in between. Passengers stand on the side of the highway and hail them down, piling large bundles on the roof rack. Four rows of people sit behind the driver — officially 12 passengers but usually 16, half leaning forward or with one arm out the window to make room for one other. A very affordable way of getting around, Martin tells us a two-hour trip from Nairobi to the countryside costs 600 Kenyan shillings (about 4$). 

On the outskirts of Nairobi, shops have beds and other rough wooden furniture out on display in the red dust, tree nurseries, rows and rows of soursop, lime, orange, tree tomato, mango, banana, papaya seedlings growing in feedbags. The concrete block buildings are pink and neon green, bright yellow, pink. A riot of clashing colours that somehow works. Billboards tell us how to get closer to God. There are 4,000 named churches in Kenya. Each tribe leans a different way. Catholic and Anglican dominate but the pentecostal and evangelical churches abound. Martin tells us that, with their tax-free status, everyone is recognizing what money-makers churches can be and is getting on board. Freshly-painted fences are all sponsored by paint companies — “If you like it, Crown it”.  Eucalyptus stands everywhere. Then wispy jacaranda and squat coffee bushes as we get further from the capital.  Fruit stands built with lashed together bamboo, the roof a frayed tarpaulin, a sun-bleached feed bag or a scrap of corrugated tin roof that has long lost its colour. Each town seems to have its produce of choice — this town’s stands sell red onions, narrow mesh bags dangling from the roof. In the next town, all the vendors stand behind tidy piles of mangoes. The next village has oranges.  Cows graze on the verge. A shoebill, a four-foot tall heron with a beak that could double as a man’s dress shoe, wanders around in a field looking like a time-traveller from prehistory. Euphorbia candelabra, cactus bushes the size of apple trees, announce the foothills of the Aberdare Range as the landscape turns into rolling hills.

We drive into the National Forest, through an electrified rhino fence manned by a man in uniform and then along a single track that weaves through old growth forest before turning into a compound of cedar cabins tucked in among the trees.

Martin and Nickson take us for a walk in the woods. Martin walks ahead, very quietly, the sole and straps of his sandals fashioned from bald car tires. He carries a long stick of well-polished olive wood, the end a big knot smoothed to a perfect ball. He explains that it is the stick carried by members of his tribe, the Kalenjin, pastoralists who keep sheep, goats and cows. He has a wife, a four-year old and an eight-month old who he sees once a month when he returns to his village on his days off.

We come across a troop of Colobus monkeys swinging in the trees overhead. It’s hard to get a good look at them as they launch themselves from treetop to treetop trying to get away. Long-haired black monkeys with a white fringe and a long fluffy tail, their fur flounces as they move, a poof of white framing their faces. The name colobus comes from the greek work for maimed. Their thumbs look like they have been docked. Martin tells us their numbers are dwindling because the singular colouring of their pelts makes them very popular as neck decoration for traditional dancers. 

Further along, a group of baboons grunt as they catch sight of us. They run a distance away, then perch on downed trees with their backs turned. They glance over their shoulders, watchful, bodies ready to flee but not wanting to expend energy unnecessarily. They know how close is too close. Giant cedars tower over us, their ropey trunks twisting skyward. It would take several people with arms outstretched to encircle their massive trunks. The woods, draped in Old Man’s Beard, a wispy pale-green moss, have a somewhat sinister feel.

We find a crimson feather with black tips belonging to a Hartlaub’s turaco, a big blue and green bird whose feathers flash red in flight. Elephant poop, like little keg-shaped clumps of fermenting straw is scattered everywhere. Thankfully none are very fresh. When we have walked in the Kenyan bush before, our guide always had a big shotgun slung over his shoulder. Martin only carries his herding stick.

Tree hyrax make a racket all night. An ancient forest draped in gauzy moss in the deep dark of the night. Invisible creatures screeching bloodcurdling screams above us. It feels a bit like a scene out of Jurassic Park. The kind of noise that makes stepping out onto the balcony feel like an act of bravery, despite the fact that hyraxes are basically big guinea pigs. 

The bull elephant comes for a visit to the clearing. His hide made by an unskilled upholsterer. Too much material for the job with wrinkles across the forehead and back, sags below the belly and excess gathered into untidy rumples above the tail and knees. The ridge of the spine looks like the rib of rocks that cut across the meadow on our walk. Despite his size, his legs hang in such a dainty way. He puts his feet down so slowly it’s like he’s tiptoeing. It looks like his knees are halfway up his thighs and his ankles are in the middle of his shins. He must be lonely, this herd animal shunned by his family. Despite the fact that young males are nursed longer than their female siblings, once they hit their teenage years they are sent out on their own because their newfound testosterone makes them unpredictable and they’re seen as a threat to the new cubs. He hangs out with the cattle, pushing them around but maybe secretly enjoying their company. This bull will probably spend another fifteen years maturing before he can start competing for the right to mate; only to go back to being alone once the job is done. He spends a lot of time backing up, as if not quite sure where his feet are.  His trunk gropes around on the ground, grabs a bunch of soil and salt and tosses it into his mouth.

We get an early start the next day for a hike up Satima Mountain, the third highest peak in Kenya. We bounce up the rutted road in a jeep, with Martin at the wheel, into a clearing at the beginning of the trail. Mercy, Nickson and Joseph are our guides. Long-legged Mercy sets the pace at the front, minuscule backpack strapped to her back. Slow and steady. Joseph and Nickson pull up the rear. I listen to them chat away in Swahili interspersed with technical words in English. Joseph acknowledges Nickson with a long string of Ehs (like the sound of E in bend.) The tone rises or falls, quiet or with surprise but it seems to be the perfect, universal response. Some of the Swahili words sound like the little Portuguese I learned in Lisbon. Nickson tells me Swahili borrows a lot from Arabic and also to some extent Portuguese, English and German, adapted to do business on the East African Coast. He tells me that Kenyans of his generation never really learned how to pronounce English words properly, that there were no phonetics at school, which is why his “book” sounds like “bok”. His son’s generation, he tells me proudly, is getting a completely different education. 

The trail is a worn track a foot wide through alpine pasture — a mix of low-lying vegetation, little hummocks of elephant grass, clumps of everlasting flowers (a chrysanthemum that looks like the most diaphanous of tissue paper), what looks like tiny alchemilla, sedums with bright yellow flowers, giant thistle, pale purple scabiosa, giant lobelia that look like small palm trees with an erection. So many of the plants in my flower beds had their start here. We’re ascending, very gradually, but it’s seriously hard work. At 4000m, the amount of oxygen in the air is 40% lower than at sea level and most of us are regularly gasping for breath, bent over, hands on our knees, far more than seems reasonable for the pitch of the slope.  It isn’t especially hot but the sun bears down. Scattered across the hillside are enormous, craggy rock formations, some worn smooth, others so jagged they bear the name Dragon’s Teeth. The trail is peppered with scat — matted fur balls left behind by leopards or jackals or serval cats.

Hunter’s Cisticolas, little chubby, brown birds sing to us along the trail. Their song rises and falls, repetitive and insistent like a car alarm. They know that where humans pass, crumbs are left behind so they follow. Swallows dip and dash around the big rocks. Buzzard-eagles soar overhead. When we get to the peak, long-legged Moorland Chats perch a few feet away, swinging their heads side to side as they eye our sandwiches. Mt. Kenya is off in the distance, blanketed in a big poof of white clouds. It is so perfectly quiet. The trails are dusty. The rainy season is coming. Soon, all the dry grass will be a lush sea of green. The air thick with bugs and birds and life.

Driving back to camp we catch a glimpse of a lone Colobus monkey on the side of the road. We’ve obviously spotted him as he is about to cross. He lands on his two back feet, one of his hands holding the tree from which he just leapt, his long fur sways. A coiled spring, ready to leap back into the trees. He peers at us with his big eyes. We back up to get a better look but he is long gone.

After dinner, Eva, the lodge manager, grabs a flashlight and runs away from the house into the dark. Her flashlight swings back and forth as she dashes back. Elephants are in the clearing. Lots of them. Go to the viewing platform, she says, I’ll turn the light on for a bit. We walk down toward the trail and climb the steps to a huge deck wrapped around five big cedars about twenty feet off the ground. From here we look down onto where Eva scatters salt for the local wildlife. It’s hard to explain the depth of the dark here. With no moon, you cannot see your hand in front of your face. At first we can only hear low rumbling and shuffling but, as our eyes adjust, the massive shapes emerge from the gloom. Eva hits the light and there they are. More than a dozen elephants right beneath us. It looks like several distinct family groups, as they seem to keep a certain respectful distance from each other. Mothers and their babies. The very little ones are irresistible, weaving in between their mom’s legs, tugging on their siblings’ tails and trunks. They’ve kicked up a lot of dust as they sift through the dirt for the salt so, despite the light, the image is eerily soft-focus, massive grey shapes wandering in and out of view. As my eyes adjust to the dark I see more and more approach. I count 22 in all. Grunts and huffs and what sounds like someone blowing bubbles in the bottom of a glass (whether this is coming from a trunk or a backside I’m not sure). The pecking order becomes obvious. The matriarch, whose tusks are longer than me, moves very little but everyone seems to give her a wide berth. A young male wanders around the periphery, occasionally trying to make a little foray into the group but is quickly chased away by a mother.  Some of the ground has been washed out, leaving deep ruts between mounds of red soil. The elephants step into the ruts and use the lumps as scratching posts, rubbing their bums back and forth or straddling the mounds and giving themselves a good belly scratch. There is some jostling for the best spot. The matriarch trumpets, scolding the kids and telling them to settle down. 

We fall asleep to the sound of the tree hyraxes shrieking.

Cascais and beyond

A quick drive along the coast to Cascais and the beautiful Casa das Historias, a museum devoted to the amazing artist Paula Rego. Throughout her life, she suffered through bouts of anxiety and depression and her work can verge on the disturbing. Etchings of fairy tales from a childhood spent in England bring out the very darkest parts of the stories. Her portraits are full of strong, physical women staring at the viewer. A quote from an early teacher of hers instructing her to “paint what’s in your head” seems to have freed her to explore the depths. 

We drove on to Cabo da Roca, Europe’s westernmost point and took a quick hike through a blanket of succulent plants, sour figs, their yellow and pale pink blooms little pops of colour in the spiky mass. The edge of the path is littered with white rose petals —their perfume still wafting in the sea air. The scrabbly path led down to a small beach framed by massive towering rocks. The waves crashed, fellow walkers tanned in the 20° sun, a pair of young women posed endlessly for each other with the sea as backdrop. What a feeling to stand here, feet pointing at the Atlantic knowing that the next land west of here is home.

We headed inland toward the Parque Natural da Estrela for a little countryside. Cherry trees coming into bloom, sheep and goats in the fields, lots of stone buildings left to ruin. I imagine the cost of maintaining and/or renovating them must be prohibitive. I had seen a little remote hotel while we were researching the trip called the Cherry Sculpture Hotel. Kitsch meets kirsch. In honour of the ginjinha (sour cherry liqueur) we enjoyed in Lisbon, it seemed like the right thing to do. Some lovely design tempered by the incredibly gaudy — freestanding room pods shaped like cherries — complete with massive stems pointing skyward. The pool is also, you guessed it, a bunch of cherries. The bed in our room —  a cherry. What must the locals think of this wacky place tucked into their remote village. We had almost no company in the dining room, cheesy music playing in the background.

Roads lined with eucalyptus, silvery olive trees, orange, lemon and grapefruit trees all heavy with fruit. The fields separated by low stone walls topped with wires waiting to train the pared-back grape vines planted below. The towns are all fanned out on hillside terraces. Tall retaining walls of sand-coloured rock separate streets as the villages climb above us. The mountainsides are crisscrossed with tracks.  So many trees are black. 333,000 acres decimated by forest fires in 2019 and again last fall. A third of the fires were started by arsons. Police claimed the culprits were doing it for financial gain — aiming to buy the burnt wood afterward or looking to pick up the land for bargain prices after the fact.

We pull into a village at the base of a mountain and park the car. After a couple of scares, thinking we are doing something very wrong, we discover that delivery truck drivers in rural Portugal don’t use doorbells, they just sit on their horns. 

We wander through someone’s backyard, misunderstanding the symbol that means “This is NOT the path” but find it soon enough. The trail is up and up and up. Way harder than anticipated. Turns out the European moderate trail is the Canadian difficult. Noted. We climbed for two and a half hours. No switchbacks. Just up, through old oak and beech forest with signs of boars everywhere, little upturned patches of dirt along the track. Empty beech nut husks and acorn caps scattered in the leaf litter. The path is built and lined with huge, mossy rocks. It feels ancient. No doubt built in a time before people got jobs, when the scrabble to survive on one’s little plot of land meant long winters filling time doing projects to make summer farming easier. The top of the mountain is like a moonscape, granite rocks, strewn hither and yon. We scramble down the other side, a steep meandering track through loose rock. The kind of trail that makes you pitch forward so much you’re sure a slip will send you tumbling into the abyss. We pull out our sandwiches at the Poço do Inferno, a pretty alcove cut into the wall of rock, a waterfall that makes everything around it cool and damp and green. 

The rest of the hike is a leisurely walk along a logging road curling around the backside of the mountain. I almost put my foot down on what I think is a snakeskin and take a closer look. It isn’t a snake but a long line of processionary caterpillars. Designed to fool predators into thinking they are one large insect as opposed to a hundred small ones, they travel like this, in safety, nose to tail, following a trail of pheromones on the hunt for a new source of food. It is said that if you make the first one go in a circle they will all follow and spiral for eternity. We make a quick stop at the grocery store (closed from 2-3. I guess lunch is later here). Olive-flavoured ruffle chips are hands-down my new favourite snack.

We opt for smaller roads to take us back to the coast. Switchbacks through rolling mountainsides. It feels like the moors of Northumberland. Desolate, rocky. The finest coating of topsoil on the tan bedrock. There is nothing here save the occasional, abandoned farmhouse. Steep drops beyond the guardrails to the right of the road. Signs indicating that it is single track for 5 km. Luckily we only cross one car’s path and it is an old Portuguese guy who blasts past us completely unfazed by how tight the squeeze is. We drive through tiny hamlets. Not unlike Quebec villages, the houses are very modest, the town budget having been blown on the church. Everything is stone. Walls, homes, churches, roads, We are blindly following Google maps, bumping our way down narrow cobbled roads through towns of twenty homes. The villagers peer through the windshield at us. Before I moved to the country, I would’ve thought they were giving us the evil eye, now I know they’re just wondering which of their neighbours got a new car.

On to Costa Nova, a deserted seaside resort. Beach clubs — front doors blocked by puddles of sand, piles of stacked chairs and striped chaises longues, little palapas stand in sand drifts. There is no one here. The long wide beach is totally empty. We stroll on the wooden boardwalk, past a little church tucked behind the dunes, past the buildings painted in colourful stripes, past the stores selling tacky tourist trinkets. Is there anything sadder than a beach resort in the winter?

Lisbon

Lisbon is a maze of hills. Every bit of sidewalk an irregular mosaic of white and black rock. This is not a city for high heels. The streets meander, leading up and down and around. They are narrow enough that every corner brings a little surprise. Highly ornate stonework, round windows, endless staircases, four story buildings with tall windows and elaborate ironwork to frame the bottom half. Hues of pink and cream and yellow beneath terracotta roofs. The polished rock of the sidewalks are uneven, faceted so they shimmer in the sunlight like fish scales. The roads are dark grey — matte square cobblestones. Grand boulevards, some streets just wide enough for a small car, some narrow enough you feel you could touch both sides of the street if you stretched your arms wide. The buildings are narrow and tall, french windows in lines that stretch from corner to corner, the top floor windows are often tucked into a gable cut into the terracotta roof. Many windows have a rack fitted below with strings of clothesline and pulleys at one end so people can reach out the windows to hang their washing. A hell of a walk if you drop a clothes peg. So many of the buildings are tiled — each with its signature pattern. Geometric patterns in every colour under the sun. No two alike. Some of the tile work is more elaborate —  hand-painted scenes in blue and white that span the whole façade. A city of 500k people invaded by over 19 million visitors a year, I am relieved to be here in the winter. There are still packs of tourists wandering around hunched over their google maps but the thought of heaps more, in >35 degree weather, is terrifying. There is little occasion to practice my terrible Portuguese as everyone speaks great English. My usual chitchats with cab drivers foiled because most of the drivers we get are immigrants whose English is miles better than their Portuguese.

So many empty buildings. It seems there’s at least one on every block. A regal grand dame of a place, or a tiny home with windows boarded up or a collapsed roof. Lisbon recently passed a bill — following a citizen petition that garnered ten thousand signatures— to outlaw airbnb as of this summer. You can see how the short-term rental market has gutted neighbourhoods. Graffiti on buildings being renovated bear messages like "speculation doesn’t make homes”.

Our days are punctuated by hours-long visits to the Quiosque, ubiquitous stalls with their classic green dome, around which are scattered a handful of tables and chairs, to be found in seemingly every park in the city. We sit together early in the morning drinking coffee and munching on pasteis de nata, or in the evening sipping Apérol spritzes and Super Bock beer on tap. The waiters move chairs around to follow the path of the sun. It is glorious to be together. Everyone settles into group-travel mode, making few demands and lots of concessions — following whoever’s pitch for the next activity is the most winning, which means Wil and Henri are usually leading the charge. We eat like kings. A lunch at Cervejaria Ramiro was a highlight. We all came from different directions to meet up at the little lectern by the front door where an older man checked his reservation book. He shouts unintelligibly into his walkie-talkie, then hands us a tiny piece of scribbled paper to hold on to. A few minutes later we were led up some iron stairs, and weaved our way through a corridor bustling with wait staff and led to our table tucked into a window.

The room could not have held more tables, most of them groups of six, families off all varieties, generations at a table, many of them dressed in their Sunday best. A long room with a curve at the corner of the building and grand French windows that faced the street. Clattering plates, clinking silverware, waiters hustling around, a group of women in their forties having a ball, laughing and singing loudly. As they left their table, they flirted with the kitchen staff, pouring their drinks into plastic cups to take the party with them. The menu was all seafood and we tasted as much of it as we could. Giant shrimp, little shrimp, crab, barnacles, little steamers, razor clams, all simply prepared, steamed or boiled, served in their juices with melted butter, lots of garlic and bread to sop up the drippings. The waiter demonstrated how to eat the barnacles, which to me looked like clumps of tiny witches’ fingernails. Surprisingly delicious. We followed up the heaps of seafood in the traditional Portuguese way, (don’t ask me why) with a steak sandwich, fine slices of beef heaped in a round bun, slathered with mustard and hot sauce. The dessert was sundae glasses of ice cream generously drizzled with shots of vodka.

We get some tickets to go see a soccer match, Lisbon’s Benfica against Porto’s Boafica. Crowds wander around outside the massive stadium trying to get as much beer in as they can before the game. No alcohol is served once the match begins. Multigenerational families pulling their young kids along, couples out on dates, packs of giddy young men jostle each other, everyone in red. The energy is electric. We head up to our seats in the nosebleed section, over 50,000 people packed into their seats. At the end of our row, a ten-foot high wall of plexiglass topped with fencing separates us from the Boavista fans. The plexiglass to keep us apart, the fence to keep flying projectiles from making their way over. They have a separate entrance and exit. There is no mixing. Serious business. Lovely scenes all around — a father dips his head down so his daughter can place her sparkly headband on his head. A man in his sixties in the seats in front of us leans over to chat with his tiny granddaughter while her parents are off looking for better seats. The local team is introduced with much fanfare. The announcer calls out the jersey number and the first name of the player and waits for the crowd to shout the last name. Everyone stands for the national anthem but the singing only really starts when the Benfica fan song comes on (with lyrics in lights all over the stadium) to get us all in the spirit.

Anytime the opponents touch the ball there is whistling. We had a moment of discomfort when we realized that Adèle was wearing a black & white checkered jacket (coincidentally the colours of the visiting team). Thankfully the inside was black so she turned it inside out to reassure our seatmates that we weren’t the enemy. The small Boavista crowd waved massive flags and sang their songs but were quickly drowned out by the Benfiquistas. A fistfight erupts around the margins of the away team zone but the security guys quickly have it in hand. Boavista is outplayed, not helped by a red card early in the game that had them scrambling one man down for 75 minutes. Our seats hung high over the Boavista goal and we got a great show. Each of the three Benfica goals was rewarded by everyone getting on their feet, spinning their rally scarves overhead and singing. When there were changes to the lineup, the announcer called out the names to huge cheers, in contrast to the away team’s subs which were comically whispered as quickly as possible into the mic. When the game ended we emerged from the stadium into the dark washed along the boulevard in a sea of red.

On my birthday we went out to a neighbourhood far from the tourist zone. We got out of our Bolt at a little park lined with ancient trees, hoping to try out another quiosque before walking over to the restaurant we’d booked. When we stepped out of the car, the park was heaving with people, all standing around a group of musicians  playing what sounded like Brazilian music, lots of drums and instruments of every variety, the musicians all dressed in green, swaying in time to the music. A curly-haired woman wandered around among them with a mic and sang her heart out. The crowd sang along. A warm up for Carnaval, a man explained as he sold us tiny brigadeiros, small balls of chocolate and condensed milk rolled in sprinkles, like a truffle tucked into a colourful tissue paper which he pulled out of his big, rectangular Tupperware.

People swayed and danced. It culminated in a conga line with everyone moving in a big vortex around the musicians. And then, without fanfare, it was done and the crowd dissipated as we made our way to Tati.

An amazing meal. Tucked into the back of the small tavern, our table was right beside the kitchen and watching the buxom chef and her tiny sous-chef quietly hustle in the minuscule kitchen was great entertainment. Henri had some pointed questions about the wine. The waitress hemmed and hawed and then went to get the expert, who turned out to be the chef. She came out of the kitchen, wiped her hands on her apron, hair piled high on her head and chatted with Henri about wine. She came back a few minutes later with a few bottles and introduced them to us. She spoke quietly, wringing her hands a bit, but she was so patently jazzed with her offerings  that she relaxed, telling us a story about each of the wines. We ended up with three glasses each on the table, one for each colour, because it was all so good. She was obviously tickled. We all had a crush on her by the end of the meal. The food she served up was delicious and creative and spot on. The beauty of dining with seven people is you get to try everything on the menu and we did. We feasted and drank and made merry.

Saying goodbye to our team broke our hearts.

La Côte Nord

The maples and the splashes of colour dwindle, replaced by birch and their golden  leaves quaking in the breeze. The only contrast to the black spruce, gnarled and stunted, scabs of lichen and decorated with garlands of wispy spanish moss. The soil is an inch deep. One good kick and you’d wipe away a hundred years’ of topsoil and moss.

 

The fleuve. Vast. Majestic. Glittering in the sunshine. How can you feel anything but insignificant, watching it flow past. Herring gulls jockey for position on the one spot in the sun, bullying each other off the rocks with comical squawks, the immature birds with their buff feathers ceding the spot to their white elders. Flocks of eider scoot past, strung in long lines, frantic wingtips brushing the surface of the water.

The river is a broad band of colour across the horizon, in a million shades of grey, interrupted from time to time by a small cloud that appears and, for a few seconds, hovers over the dark water. The size of the puff of mist, basically whale snot, determines who made it. On this lucky weekend, a minke is responsible for the smaller ones and the bigger spray belongs to a humpback. We get to know the difference between the two, the shape of their tail fin, the minke’s more like a jester’s hat while the humpback’s like the thorn of a rose. The sheer size of these creatures is enough to take your breath away. Hours of staring at the unbroken surface of the water, everyone waiting  for a glimpse or the telltale sound and soon all eyes are trained on that puff, knowing we’ll get three or four more. The minke, inky black, moves more gracefully, a body length or more between dips. The humpback lumbers, bobbing and sinking more than moving forward, up comes its massive head, the blow hole distends as it expels air, then collapses as it slowly sinks, barely below the surface. A real life giant, the breadth of what little we see of its back a hint of the spectacular mass under water. Seeing the tail fin means the creature is diving and we all settle in to wait for its next appearance. Just once, we are treated to the show of a tail, broadside, the very tips crusty with barnacles. Barnacle species are whale

specific. There is only one species that lives on humpbacks. They hitch a ride during mating season when the whales hang out in shallow, warm water. A humpback can be host to 1,000 pounds of barnacles. Seems like a lot until you consider that the whales weigh up to 80,000 pounds. The equivalent of them wearing clothes.

Every once in a while a sea lion’s head pops up above the surface. It bobs in the 4 degree water, scouting around and then disappears. A beluga also makes an appearance. Jarringly white, even from a distance and although submerged one can watch the creature move along the river, its icy whiteness turning the dark waters above him a pale green.

 

The coast a fun obstacle course of boulders. Up, down, into the surf and back. A single starfish. Splayed out on a rock. Perhaps a seagull bit off more than it could chew.

Clouds look like a child painted them on the sky. The wind turbines on the opposite shore 35 km away, glint in the late day sun.

 

Rock in sections, crisp lines delineating strata. Geology I don’t understand. All this was once a sea until a shift in the plates tipped the water back into the ocean. Smooth grey stone. Ribbons of chunky pink, the texture all wrong, cut through the grey, weaving its way across the shore, in and out of dips and gullies. Worn smooth over millennia, perfect pockets for water to collect. 

Minuscule creatures skitter through the clear pools. Tiny, perfect ecosystems. Limpets clinging to the surfaces crunch underfoot. Like arriving at someone’s cottage with a table laid out with a huge jigsaw puzzle with pieces too big to move. Very satisfying and grounding. The Canadian Shield has always been home.

 

Aurora borealis, champagne shimmer, fingers of light burst from the horizon, like the headlights of a car driving past seen through a gauzy curtain. Visible ripples of energy coming from the sun, connecting overhead, making shapes like Christmas angels. Talking to our neighbours in the morning, no one else has seen it. Thank you, small bladder.

Drive up the coast, through villages stretched along the only road. Lots of glassed-in shelters and carports tacked on to the sides of homes. Impressive piles of firewood. How the wind must howl up the fleuve in the long, dark months of winter. Behind a line of trees to the north, bundles of peat moss sheathed in white plastic, like soldiers in formation waiting to be shipped out, covering many football fields. One of the world’s best carbon sinks, peat bogs store twice the carbon as all of the planet’s forests combined. Any disturbance to the soil turns these amazing photosynthesizers from carbon sinks into carbon emitters. 12,000 years’ worth of carbon released so gardeners can loosen the soil in their flower beds.

Rivière à Saute Mouton, a rock face battered by water, the shapes of spring rivulets etched into the face. One of countless waterways that feed the fleuve which, with all its tributaries, counts for 20% of the world’s fresh surface water. The vestiges of concrete piers meander down the rock face, on the slope along its side and out into the fleuve. The skeleton of a flume, the bay too shallow to load a boat, the loggers created a structure to transport the lumber far enough off shore to load them. How the pillaging of their forests must have horrified the Innu. What a different place this would be with old growth. We wander along a beach that emerges at low tide, the sand strewn with seaweed and enough sea glass to keep me hunched over for an hour, my pockets barely able to hold my treasure.

It was all treasure. Two days of heaven. 

Thank you fleuve.

Paxos

The feeling doesn’t change when we see the house we have been invited to share. Stone walls with grey-green shutters, everything else painted a crisp white, comfy seating areas everywhere, lovely pool —- all of it overlooking Mongonisi Bay, a tiny little harbour on the southeast tip of Paxos. The drive to the house from the port is comical. We pile into four little cars and start winding our way through the village toward the house. The road is barely wide enough for one car, never mind two. As we approach the house, the woman showing us the way stops and runs back to our car. “The driveway is very steep. Don’t chicken out!” She wasn’t kdding.

The island of Paxos is just thirteen kilometres from top to bottom and made up of cream-coloured, jagged rocks. The shoreline is ragged, little rocky coves and sheltered bays on the east side, tall chalky cliffs on the west. I take a little walk around the bay. The roads are textured concrete, bordered by stone walls and gates — all of it carved up into villas or rough homesteads. Friendly dogs on chains at the end of a dead end road guard skinny, shaggy sheep in small pens. Now I know where the tinkling bells I hear come from. Access to the water is impossible without trespassing here. Elsewhere on the island it’s often a scrabble down a gravelly path and, it seems, the more difficult the path, the prettier the water.

Our first day on the island we head around the southern tip to the west coast. We anchor the boat and swim around with our masks and goggles being wowed by the visibility and the colour of the water. We marvel at the incredible geology made visible by erosion and landslides. The tall walls that hang over the water are chalky layers of stone, some as straight as an arrow, some look like rough waves of white — whorls frozen in time. We need a geologist to explain. The boys climb the cliff face and take turns giving the rest of us the willies as they jump from higher and higher into the sea. The cliffs are punctuated with caves and the one before us is called the Blue cave. We make our way toward the cliff face and then through it. Once inside, we swim another forty feet until the rough walls and roof start to close in around us and then turn back to see how the cave got its name. Above the water the cave walls frame a small triangle of sky and below a massive cone of shimmering deep blue. Wow.

Parking the boat on our return reveals a whole new set of etiquette and vocabulary. A man cuts across our bow as we’re easing in and takes the spot we’re aiming for on the crowded pier. The outrage! Apparently it is Just. Not. Done. When you’re in close quarters and not out on the open water waving hello you realize just how valuable all these boats are and how easy it is to damage them if the wind pushes you ever so slightly in the wrong direction.

Stone walls and olive groves. In the shade of each tree lies a boulder atop a pile of folded black nets awaiting the harvest in late october/november. There is also often a loose perimeter of lttle rocks around the trunk — presumably to counter the slope and help the net catch any olives that might roll away. Most trees seem well-tended while others look as though they haven’t been pruned for generations. Perhaps there’s more money to be made renting boats and houses to the tourists. The island’s appeal to visitors is understandable. The waters are aqua. Access to it, however, is limited — definitely easier for those with a boat and their numbers reflect it. Multi-million dollar yachts, cigarette boats, huge sailing vessels and dinghies are moored cheek by jowl in the bays. It is immensely entertaining watching the skippers jockeying for spots in the bay. Time is easily whiled away watching the boats choreograph pulling up anchor in the morning and mooring in the evening. What they say about pets resembling their masters seems to hold for boats. The preppy yachtsmen don polo shirts and long swimming trunks while the sailors look like savages, half-naked, leathery dark skin barely covered by tiny speedos. The sailing families, once ashore, seem more than happy to put some distance between themselves and their family members after being cramped into their claustrophobic living spaces. They are predominately Italian but the flag of just about every nation flutters on the masts.

The fenders (plastic buoys that hang on every boat’s sides) are the only space that separate one vessel from another when they are « parked »; families are essentially having breakfast in each other’s laps and just a plank’s length from the main pedestrian thoroughfare of the island. The windows of their bedrooms are inches away from their neighbours’. I can’t quite reconcile it with my romantic notions of sailing around the Med. God knows how much it costs to moor here (and how far ahead one needs to reserve the berth). Perhaps the silence and intimacy of life on the open sea makes one more keen to cozy up to one’s fellow travellers when on land.

The local fishermen still ply the waters despite having to compete with yachts, dozens of sailboats and the likes of us yahoos towing kids around on wakeboards. We spot the rare solo fisherman out on his boat, tugging at his oars, pulling in lines hand over hand in a fluid, practiced rhythm or sitting hunched over his tangled nets. Some of the brightly-painted boats are so tiny it’s hard to imagine a full-grown man prying himself into the wheelhouse. Thankfully the men from Paxos are not giants.

Sadly, Jimbo is leaving us and needs to catch a ferry to jet out to his next gig. The gentle rain which began first thing in the morning has turned into a full-blown storm before we leave. Getting into the car, a bolt of lightning strikes the other side of the bay and the accompanying thunderclap is so close, and loud, and violent it makes us all literally jump. We stop for coffee on the way at a little café in Gaios. The Greek take their coffee very, very seriously. The Greek language is Elliniká, their coffee is Ellinikó. Greek coffee, by all accounts delicious, is not however good to the last drop. One has to know when to stop sipping or one finds oneself with a mouth full of grounds. They sweeten it before bringing it so the order includes the temperature, the sweetness and the milk. The assumption is that it will have sugar. Men huddle over their cups under a dripping tent. The owner kindly shuffles a table away from the windspry to make room for us. I watch the locals discuss but can’t understand. The olive harvest, the weather, the seas, I suppose. What rural men chat about over morning coffee the world over. One man has a cell phone and seems to get the last word in every exchange. What would once have been an opportunity to defer to the elders when discussing things like the coming weather has become an internet check. The phone has usurped the role of elder as expert.

The ferry is broken, the lady at the port reports, and the seas are up. The ferry is not coming and Jimbo is going to miss the first leg in a series of flights. A quick chat with fellow stranded travellers finds us racing up the island to Lakka, another port, to find a sea taxi driver willing to go out in this weather. Thankfully, Jimbo the sweet talker manages to convince someone and makes his flight. The concept of being so much at the mercy of the seas is a bit disconcerting for me. It leaves me feeling a bit trapped.

The drive to and from Lakka reveals a whole other side of island life — gorgeous, abandoned homes set in overgrown groves, crumbling stone walls, the island’s elementary school with artificial turf soccer pitch. An extravagance, I think, until I realize that grass requires topsoil and what little there is on Paxos is a mere sliver clinging to these hostile rocks. Finding purchase must be hard work for the trees. Thank Athena for the olive tree.

The road back to Mongonisi through Gaios isn’t what most people would call a road. It’s more like an obstacle course threading its way through town, leaving us sure it’s about to deadend in someone’s courtyard. The manoeuvering involved in getting from A to B is a serious laugh. It’s stop, start, pull over, backup to a wider spot, all with scooters slipping past. It all works though and makes us wonder why we, in North America, devote so much precious real estate to our ridiculously oversized cars. Apparently there are seatbelt and helmet laws here but, as on the mainland, they are consistently flouted. The most likely place to find the helmet on a motorcycle rider seems to be sitting on the tank between his legs. There are often more than two people on the bike or scooter but there is never more than one helmet.

The water is divine, as clear as could possibly be. Details on the sea floor are visible at twenty metres or more and the temperature is perfect. It’s so salty that buoyancy is completely effortless. Lying back in the water, eyes closed, ears submerged, lulled by the underwater silence save the quiet clicks and bubbles of fish, with the warm mediterannean sun soaking in to your every pore is absolute heaven. With a mask and goggles you can watch streaks of dappled sunlight on your arms and legs below the surface. I’ve always been afraid of the ocean but the ocean has never been like this. Not exactly teeming with marine life but you do see the occasional crab or starfish, sea urchins and lots of little fish. I found myself in a little school on our last day — little silver minnows swimming above and below and around me, completely unconcerned by my presence. Being able to see so much of the topography of the sea floor elicits a whole other level of appreciation for the oceans and the life they harbour.

On a grocery store run into town on our last day, I notice little dutch doors on all the buildings closest to the harbour. About two feet high, they are gasketed and caulked to the walls around the front door. Just the thought of the seas getting this high is terrifying. Some of these homes and businesses are more than several hundred metres feet from the harbour. There is no way I would survive a winter on this island. The locals are tougher than I’ll ever be and, like so many people who live by the ocean, their resilience will undoudtedly be sorely tested by rising sea levels.

The week is a spent laughing at a series of lazy, delicious lunches at long tables set in shady olive groves or under parasols by the sea. The glaring sun makes the colours of the water pop — turquoise, translucent aqua, shimmering greens, the gentlest of waves lapping the rocky beach. Alpha beer, retsina, amazing greek wines, grilled octopus, deep-fried anchovies and sardines, sea bream and tuna steaks, olives, garlicky tzaziki and the humble but satisfying greek salad. I am amazed at the variety of greek cheeses — a selection of soft, creamy rich whites, sweet, firm cheddary blocks and, of course, briny, fruity feta that bears little resemblance to what we get at home. Makes me wish more Greek food was exported.

We’re sad to say goodbye when our week is done but grateful for one more night together in Athens on the way home.