Camping on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, 1993
I started July’s extravaganza of Tree Squares with a tree photo from my overland trip in Africa, so it seems fitting to end on the same note. I have no idea what sort of tree this is, but it’s dramatic.
Two Tree Squares from me today, due to having spotted the remarkable tree growing around the power lines a few hours ago! I just had to share that.
July Squares are all about Trees. As always, a huge thanks to Becky!
A lonely palm tree thrashing in the wind. Noumea, New Caledonia
How many animals can you spot in this rather poor photo?
I’m desperately missing travel, so I’m kicking off Square Trees with an old archive shot from a trip to Africa in 1993 — bringing back memories of the good old days. This is from an ‘overland trip’ that took in Kenya and Tanzania. I think these are Umbrella Thorn Acacia trees. They’re pretty cool, whatever they are!
I was trawling through photos from various European cities, hoping to spot a washing line — when I saw the cluster at bottom left, above, I was thrilled. Closer examination revealed more than just one! I suspect the street is littered with dropped clothes pegs and lost socks.
There are at least four of those ‘bar’-type driers on the left side of the street.
Whereas on the right side, it seems to be “hang the sheets out the window” day.
This may be my last Monday Washing Lines post, unless I find more photos lurking in unexplored folders.
I’ve been to Venice only once, at Christmas 1998 (which explains the poor quality of this photo: a scan of a bad print — there are limits to what Photoshop can do!). This was when I was living in London, and I always went somewhere over the enforced break. It was chilly, and frosty, but marvellously free of tourists. I wandered many back streets and side canals, awestruck by this beautiful, endangered, city.
This is my balcony on the stern of Radiance of the Seas (my sole foray into cruising on a white fun palace; lesson learned!). In this photo, we are heading away from the Isle of Pines, New Caledonia, where I’d had a marvellous, hour-long snorkelling session around La Rocher (Sacred Rock).
This photo is from the island of Matuku, Fiji, which I visited in 2016 on the tall ship Tenacious. I was struck — as I often am in places where people have so much less than we in prosperous Western countries have — by how clean everyone’s clothes were, and by how much effort the women put into ensuring that.
Opened in 1927, and very proudly pink!
This is the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, which is indeed known as the Pink Palace of the Pacific. When Jude asked, “Can you find any pink architecture?”, I had no trouble.
A pink seating area.
Pink umbrellas, pink-striped towels, pink paper napkins under the mai-tais.
I never found out what the very colourful (mostly vibrant pink!) cloth spread out to dry on the ground was. If you peer into the murk, you may just be able to make out another set of hills; and beyond that, up in the sky, you may, if your imagination runs that way, spot some snow-capped peaks. Due to dust, haze and pollution, March/April 2005 did not offer great views for our trek in the Himalayan foothills.
Swaymbhunath Stupa (also known as ‘Monkey Temple’)
“The stupa (“stupa” is Sanskrit for heap) is an important form of Buddhist architecture… At its simplest, a stupa is a dirt burial mound faced with stone.” (source) The Swaymbhunath Stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal, is far from a simple mound! In the photo above, the textured curved white base is the stupa itself; atop it is the “yasti, or spire, which symbolizes the axis mundi (a line through the earth’s center around which the universe is thought to revolve)”.
You can get a better idea of the scale of the Swaymbhunath Stupa complex in the photo below. For more information on Swaymbhunath Stupa, and a more comprehensive photo, go here.
The complex seen from a distance.
Posted for Becky’s SquareUp challenge. I’ve gone with “playing around with the word up”.
