Guanacaste Blue Zone
Coffee, lunch, and a visit with Don Vidal, a 72 yo Guanacaste Province Farmer, and his daughter, Mariaolsa.
Purely magical afternoon of sharing the genuine simplicity of life and #BlueZone living.
They opened their home and shared all the produce of the farm with us with such love and generoisty.
True love for the earth and its bounty.
Guanacaste Province is home to the Nicoya Peninsula, recognized as one of the world’s five Blue Zones, where residents often live beyond 100 years.
Click here for video clip
After preparing and serving lunch for the group, Mariaolsa shot the header image of Bonnie and I giggling like two kids. 😉
Street Scenes | Egypt At Work
Streets are bare. Dirt and sand can be found everywhere. Construction and renovation was ongoing and yet, everyone appeared at peace with the chaos of life.
Tourism, and its support system, is the major driver of the economy.
The Nile River
The Nile; a river whose basin covers 10 percent of the African continent and which is an essential resource for 500 million people living in its vicinity. All water bodies are beautiful to behold, calming to experience and joyful to play in, however, like the rest of the world, global warming and overuse of the resource threaten Africa’s longest river.
This article speaks to the issue.
“Global warming and overuse by humans is putting the world’s second-longest river under strain. In the past 50 years, the flow of the Nile has fallen from 3,000 cubic metres per second to 2,830. A lack of rainfall and increased droughts expected in East Africa means river flow could fall by 70 percent by 2100, according to UN forecasts.
The world body has predicted a loss of 75 percent of available water per local inhabitant. Related land erosion, crop loss and lack of electricity are also likely to have a dramatic impact on the millions of people living in Africa who rely on the river for survival.”
‘Those with the least water will have even less tomorrow’
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I’ve known rivers.
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
Nubian Village
Like an escape back in time, the Aswan Nubian Village was all natural, all black and a pure, unadulterated African enclave.
I basically had the small boat to myself on the transfer from the cruise ship to the small village across the Nile. The LOVE Boat captain played Bob Marley down the river all the way to the Nubian Village and encouraged me to go up on top of the boat for grander vista views of the Nile.
Once we arrived, we were welcomed for tea in the home and personal space of Ms. Malak. All the residents of the village are basically entrepreneurs sharing their lives and work with tourists.
This could not have been missed. Not one second of it.
Nubian Village
Leaving the Aswan Port
Arriving at the Village
Click to Open Full Gallery Below
Giza Pyramids
Breathtaking. Pure and simple.
Upon arrival from the airport, one can immediately see the complex. From my hotel pool deck, on the last night, the Giza complex remained in full view and majesty.
The Giza pyramid complex, also called the Giza necropolis, is the site on the Giza Plateau in Greater Cairo, Egypt that includes the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx of Giza.
Yoga On the Nile
6AM Morning Movement
Yoga and movement meditation along the Nile River was all that I could have asked for. My only wish is that there were more time for more of it.
Windy Nile River Practice
First Night
A ten hour flight, delayed for takeoff allowed me to connect with Alex and Maria; we were the only “Americans” on the trip. I have a feeling we may travel with Anayra again 😉
The colorful re-construction was jarring on the ride in from the airport. Quoting from Gilles Khoury, whose Financial Times article coincided with my trip, “The condition of Egypt into a few words – its perennial hardships and rises and falls since the 2011 revolution that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak…. summarised the way people feel and behave here, with more or less similarities: their emotional exhilarations, their cautious hope and, of course, the lightness, the comic relief, the forever joie de vivre, which they express with the term maalesh (“It’s fine”).”
We were all exceptionally exhausted, but the meal, location and instant connections made at the table on the first night, clearly set the stage for the rest of the trip.
Interestingly enough, I captured shots of two wedding preps while lounging at the pools…in two different hotels….at both the start and the end of the trip. And as it turns out, the bearded guy (shooting the image out the window in seat 30A) was again my seat mate, on the way back to NY. 😉
Travel with Princesses In Mind
I committed to this amazing trip to Egypt in June 2022. I set it up with the intention of marking another year on the earth. Grateful, beyond words, that this excursion helped to facilitate a re-connection with three little Egyptian Princesses on the eve of my departure. While all my friends and family may appreciate the details; this is expressly dedicated to my great-neices, Radiyah, Hannah and Aliyah.
As-Salaam Alaikum
Three little girls and a connection to family, the ancestors, the sounds, rhythms, smells and sights of Africa. I knew the trip was meant to be and what and who it was meant to include as the warmth of that morning shower washed over me and I literally felt all my parents touch me, as if they were the water, washing my shoulders.
I just let go and cried.
I was a little nervous up to this point, in all honesty about how it would unfold, whether traveling alone – although with a group – was the right thing.
Through the shower, however, I felt all the anxiety dissipate and I instantly knew I was to reconnect to those little girls, (and eventually their father and grandmother) as one outcome of this trip. My diligence in capturing the grandness, pride and beauty of this country is as much for my memory as it is for their experience; for these pre-teenagers have not walked this part of the earth yet.
This was my way of taking them with me.
So it begins.
