No Really, Many Drops.

Yeah, it was pretty wet.

So once again, we're not really sure what we're going to post here next week, so we may wind up with another tactical pause. But we'll be back with something or other soon!

Many Drops

Again, we humbly submit that it's worth looking at a closer version to see the image in the drops. Or not. Up to you.

Leaf

Even a pocket camera can take a decent photo from time to time.

One Drop

If you have a moment, we would recommend checking this one out big enough to get a look at the drop on the tip of the flower. As with all the pictures this week, taken with a point-and-shoot pocket camera. The mist probably wouldn't have been good for the big SLR, but it might have been worth it to get a little closer. Ah, well.

Misty

Northern California is basically "the Pacific Northwest." As illustration, this week we offer five pictures of water on the plants along the coast. It wasn't quite raining, but it was sort of violently misting.

Bluff

One of the few landscape shots we have from Russian Gulch. Too many cool details were absorbing our attention.

X Marks the Spot

A couple more from the same fence. We found the thick metal wire holding the fence together irresistible.

The DMZ

An obscure mold that grows only on other molds. Well -- these molds are only occasionally growing on each other -- but it made the editors here think of the notorious DMZ. Not so much we can say about moldy fenceposts, other than that we thought they were photogenic though sometimes resistant to classic photo composition, as seen here.

Fenceposts

The staff photographer was quite taken by the awesome varieties of mold growing on a fence at the Russian Gulch State Park, which fence was perhaps designed to help prevent you from falling in The Russian Gulch.

Russian Gulch State Park

I believe we will be showing you a bunch of pictures from Russian Gulch just north of Mendocino. It is, like most of the Northern California coastline, pretty spectacular.

Caterpillar Obstacle Course

This crazy fuzzy caterpillar easily navigated the table-top obstacle course we set up for it. (That's it for the creepy-crawly stuff. One slug and one caterpillar is enough, and I hope has given us enough time to get some more interesting pictures ready to go starting next!)

Old Stuff: Banana Slug

So we paused to gather our thoughts and before we knew it, the Holla had been dark for over two weeks. Our humble apologies to our small but loyal readership!

So here's the deal: This blog is mostly about travel photography. We take pictures we like, sometimes with stories or semi-trenchant observations, as the Foreign Service and our own whims take us around the world. Unlike a lot of Foreign Service blogs, we're not real worried about keeping anyone up-to-date on our personal/family events. We also take a pretty leisurely approach, so most of the content here is not about stuff that happened today or even yesterday. But eventually, when we're assigned to the U.S. for work and/or training, since we don't put baby pictures or birthday party pictures or whatever up here, we run out of travel stories and photos to share.

However, when we were heading to Afghanistan, we were just too busy to worry about posting anything. So there's some good stuff (reasonable opinions could differ) from 2010 that has just been clogging our hard drive, unshared with our adoring public! Among that stock is record of our time in Northern California in 2010. We've already posted 30 pictures from Northern California in 2011. But these are different. So, here they come, starting for no good reason with this less-than-amazing picture of a banana slug. Wildlife! The pictures are going to get better, we assure you, but hey, banana slugs are cool.

Morocco 48

Ok, last picture from Morocco for now. Next: something from the archives, perhaps.

Morocco 47

The Djemma el Fna by night. We really could be done with the Morocco pictures, but we're not 100% sure what to do next, since we've mostly just been hanging around Washington and using the camera for family photos of the kind I don't care to put here and most people don't care to see. We'll figure out something soon, but we can't promise what...

Morocco 46

And so, with a little time to spare, we made it back to Marrakesh, whence we would depart. Another opportunity for delicious food and entertainment on the Djemma el Fna. During daylight, the square kind of sucks. The snake-charmers and water-sellers asking you to take your picture with them are amusing only briefly. But at night when all the musical acts come out and the restaurants start grilling, it is one of the coolest places in the world. I would happily go back tomorrow.

Above, one such musician, whose trained pigeon/dove would at times sit on his head as he played banjo. Nicely representative mixed crowd of locals of tourists also on display.

Morocco 45

We took the somewhat more luxurious although perhaps less "authentic" option of bus travel from Ourzazate to Marrakesh, rather than more Grandes Taxis. The scenery on this trip, going over the High Atlas mountains, is pretty spectacular. But rather than pretty pictures of mountains, here are a couple shots of people we saw from the bus window along the way.

Morocco 44

At the end of hours and hours of riding with six other men in a steamy Mercedes, as described yesterday, we arrived at roughly the midway point between Marrakesh and the desert. Ourzazate has a cool old Casbah and some actual non-scamming guide types who have figured out the game: They promise you that they aren't guides and that you won't need to pay them and they just want to show you around their neighborhood and practice their English. Then they give a concise but thorough and interesting explanation of some of the sights in the Casbah. And then they say good-bye and actually don't demand money from you, which, in my particular case actually results in a big tip. Bigger than the guys who run the same scam and then say "ok now you give me money... no that's not enough." Maybe I'm the exception.

Anyway, street scene from Ourzazate above.

Morocco 43

Four pictures today from our epic trek back from the desert. At this point your correspondent was traveling solo, with no particular agenda. Did we mention this before? Traveling without reservations or plans is really liberating and a great feeling and something we promised as naive young backpackers never to stop doing and then eventually stopped doing. Or at least, did less. I think the culprits were: 1. Latvia, because we were mostly going on three-day-weekend hops around Europe and didn't want to waste time looking for a hotel once we were there; and 2. Afghanistan, because when we were getting away from Kabul we were going to splash out having things arranged ahead of time with nicer hotels; and 3. Those nicer hotels are pretty easy to get used to.


But in Morocco, for a bit, we did it right. I would not trade away the snazzy riads we had reserved in advance, but having an unstructured portion of the trip turned out pretty well. We tried to travel in a mostly local manner, which in returning from the desert involved a series of three city-to-city grand taxi trips. These earned zero points for comfort, which is a true traveling snob's test of "authenticity." The taxis hang out at a central spot until they have enough passengers to make a city-to-city trip worthwhile, which generally means seven men packed into the bench seats of an old beat up Mercedes. Seen at top, my view from the back seat, second of four, which I quickly learned is the very worst seat in the taxi. Below that, one of these fine pieces of automotive technology from the exterior.


Above, the view from one leg where I managed to score the shotgun seat. Best moment from the trip was probably driving through desert, as above, when one of the gentlemen in my taxi asked to be let off up ahead in the middle of nowhere. He got out at some high-tension power lines, where he had tied his donkey to one of the pylons. He was, I presume, preparing his donkey for the ride the rest of the way home as our taxi sped away, quickly re-filled to seven passengers by someone on the side of the road. Below, yet another picture just for kicks, waiting for the taxi to fill to capacity in Tagounite.

Morocco 42

So the desert was beautiful. Your correspondent did some sandboarding and rode a camel and had nice talks with some of the odd characters one meets when near sites of organized tourism. Two favorite comment from European tourists:

1. While sitting at a dining table and having Moroccan staff bring us tagines and cous-cous in an elaborate tent on the edge of the Sahara desert, which we had reached by chauffered SUV, one of my dining companions told me, totally stone-face seriously: "We consider ourselves travelers, not tourists. It's an important distinction." Your correspondent, putting his best diplomatic training to work, did not laugh.

2. Another European tourist, surprised to meet an American amongst so many Germans and Dutch and such, asked: "Why would you come all the way to Morocco? You have Mexico." Le sigh.

Anyway, this picture is from the SUV back to civilization. We passed these guys and the driver stopped to chat with them. He said they were nomadic camel herders, which given that we happened upon them sitting on a dune and staring at a herd of camels, seems to be within the realm of possible.

Morocco 41

Couldn't do a night so far from city lights without at least one star trails picture...