Balustrade, Rafael Nunez house, Cartagena
Shutters, Rafael Nunez house, CartagenaSaturday, January 15, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Details: Cartagena
Door knocker, old city, Cartagena
Architectural detail, high school, Cartagena
Street sign, old city, CartagenaThursday, January 13, 2011
Cartagena
Before the cruise I knew a little about Cartegena, basically by looking at Web sites before leaving. My murky-view-at-a-remove resolved into sharp, vibrant immediacy when Susie and visited this city of Colombia on the Carribean. From the ship we could see both the extended skyline of modern skyscrapers along much of the shore and the old city with its churches and fortifications. Our tour, which focused on museums, took us mainly into some of the gracious residential districts and into the heart of the old city.
Walking through old Cartagena, you immediately notice the narrowness of the streets, the Spanish architecture, the colors, and the flowers.
The Spanish founded Cartagena in 1533. The city became rich from the trade in gold and emeralds. Indeed, the city became so wealthy that by the mid-16th Century it was subject to constant attacks from English and French pirates and corsairs. In 1586, Francis Drake captured, plundered, and ransomed the city. The Spanish responded by building extensive fortifications.
From one of the narrow streets, you can see the cathedral's tower. Construction on the cathedral began in 1575, restarted after Drake partially demolished the structure, and was completed in 1602. Just beyond the Cathedral, the visitor finds the Plaza de Bolivar, the lush park that is heart of the city.
The city's Spanish fortifications run all the way around the old city, both toward the land and, as seen here, toward the sea.
The most impressive fortification is the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which stands on the mainland just east of the old city, defending the city's deep-water approach.
The fort served the Spanish in defending Cartagena from an overwhelming attack by the English, who massed 25, 000 English soldiers and a fleet of 186 ships. The Spanish had only 2,500 soldiers, 
but they had a leader who would become legend, Admiral Blas de Lezo, a one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged star of the Spanish navy. Blas de Lezo came to Cartagena having already captured eleven British ships in the Siege of Barcelona, driving English and Dutch pirates from the coasts of the Americas and capturing twelve ships in the process, commanding Spain's Mediterranean fleet, and recapturing Oran from the Ottoman Empire. In Cartagena, Blaz de Lezo sank his own fleet to block the English from advancing on the city. This, with fighting by Spanish forces held off the English. Time and malaria accomplished the rest, and the decimated English fleet went home in defeat.
The residential neigborhoods southeast of the old city boast wider streets and gracious mansions. Here's one of the most interesting that Susie and I saw.
One of the mansions has special historical significance for Cartagena and for Colombia: the house of Rafael Núñez, the country's three-time president after independence. His political accomplishments were complemented by his cultural contribution: authorship of Columbia's national anthem.
While we were at the Rafael Núñez house, a wedding was taking place at the small church across the street. The groom was a policeman, and so an official police carriage pulled up, waiting for for the happy couple at the end of the ceremony.
In the old city, the streets bustle with both tourists and with local life, even on a Sunday. Street vendors sell treats like shave-ice and freshly squeezed orange juice.
On a field, next to a line of idle carriages, two teams played a soccer match.
Some of the people on Cartagena's streets are a little less animated. These figures are by the Cartagenan sculptor Enrique Grau, who directed the Cartagena Museum of Modern Art for 20 years. Susie and I visited an extensive exhibition of his work, and we were tickled when we came across this conversing couple as we neared the end of our tour.
The sculpture of Cartagena runs back from Grau all the way back in time to prehistoric. The Zenú people, who flourished between 200 and 1000 BCE and developed an amazing system of irrigation, left a legacy of stunning gold figures. Ornaments such as this one would have been carried or worn by a governor.
Jumping ahead to present, I should mention that Cartagena is also a thriving modern city. As our ship left the harbor, it circled the rows of skyscrapers that define Cartagena's contemporary skyline.
Walking through old Cartagena, you immediately notice the narrowness of the streets, the Spanish architecture, the colors, and the flowers.The Spanish founded Cartagena in 1533. The city became rich from the trade in gold and emeralds. Indeed, the city became so wealthy that by the mid-16th Century it was subject to constant attacks from English and French pirates and corsairs. In 1586, Francis Drake captured, plundered, and ransomed the city. The Spanish responded by building extensive fortifications.
From one of the narrow streets, you can see the cathedral's tower. Construction on the cathedral began in 1575, restarted after Drake partially demolished the structure, and was completed in 1602. Just beyond the Cathedral, the visitor finds the Plaza de Bolivar, the lush park that is heart of the city.
The city's Spanish fortifications run all the way around the old city, both toward the land and, as seen here, toward the sea.
The most impressive fortification is the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which stands on the mainland just east of the old city, defending the city's deep-water approach.
The fort served the Spanish in defending Cartagena from an overwhelming attack by the English, who massed 25, 000 English soldiers and a fleet of 186 ships. The Spanish had only 2,500 soldiers, 
but they had a leader who would become legend, Admiral Blas de Lezo, a one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged star of the Spanish navy. Blas de Lezo came to Cartagena having already captured eleven British ships in the Siege of Barcelona, driving English and Dutch pirates from the coasts of the Americas and capturing twelve ships in the process, commanding Spain's Mediterranean fleet, and recapturing Oran from the Ottoman Empire. In Cartagena, Blaz de Lezo sank his own fleet to block the English from advancing on the city. This, with fighting by Spanish forces held off the English. Time and malaria accomplished the rest, and the decimated English fleet went home in defeat.The residential neigborhoods southeast of the old city boast wider streets and gracious mansions. Here's one of the most interesting that Susie and I saw.
One of the mansions has special historical significance for Cartagena and for Colombia: the house of Rafael Núñez, the country's three-time president after independence. His political accomplishments were complemented by his cultural contribution: authorship of Columbia's national anthem.
While we were at the Rafael Núñez house, a wedding was taking place at the small church across the street. The groom was a policeman, and so an official police carriage pulled up, waiting for for the happy couple at the end of the ceremony.
In the old city, the streets bustle with both tourists and with local life, even on a Sunday. Street vendors sell treats like shave-ice and freshly squeezed orange juice.
On a field, next to a line of idle carriages, two teams played a soccer match.
Some of the people on Cartagena's streets are a little less animated. These figures are by the Cartagenan sculptor Enrique Grau, who directed the Cartagena Museum of Modern Art for 20 years. Susie and I visited an extensive exhibition of his work, and we were tickled when we came across this conversing couple as we neared the end of our tour.
The sculpture of Cartagena runs back from Grau all the way back in time to prehistoric. The Zenú people, who flourished between 200 and 1000 BCE and developed an amazing system of irrigation, left a legacy of stunning gold figures. Ornaments such as this one would have been carried or worn by a governor.Jumping ahead to present, I should mention that Cartagena is also a thriving modern city. As our ship left the harbor, it circled the rows of skyscrapers that define Cartagena's contemporary skyline.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Aruba
The first stop on our Panama Canal cruise was Aruba, one of the "ABC" islands off the coast of Venezuela that had been Dutch colonies. We spent most of our time on Aruba at the Arikok National Park, which makes up 18 percent of the island's area. Even from the entrance of the park, we could see the distinctive mixture of cacti and broad-leaf trees that typifies the Aruban landscape.
In the distance, on the shore, we could see Aruba's power plant.
And, much closer, we saw lots of differents animals and birds, including this whiptail lizard, locally called the kododo blauw.
Amid the park's cactus and divi divi trees live numerous goats, seen here grouped on boulders.
We also saw iguanas and, notably, this boa constrictor. It turns out that boas are an invasive species in Aruba, eating and displacing local species. Recently the Aruban government placed a dollar-a-head bounty on this snake. During our guided hike through the park, one of the group spotted a boa constrictor on a rock wall. Our guide knocked the snake to the ground, picked it up with his bare hands, and, after letting some of the group hold the snake, put it in a trash can with a rock on top of lid so that the snake could be picked up and disposed of.The highlight of the hike involved visiting a rock shelter covered with prehistoric paintings. This rock art, something like a 1,000 years old, was painted by a group of indigenous Arawak indians called the Caiquetios who migrated north from the Orinoco Basin in South America and settled in Aruba approximately 2,000 years ago. The last Arawak on Aruba died in 1862.
After our hike, as the weather started to get cloudier and rainier, we headed to one of Aruba's beautiful beaches for a quick swim. Although the wave action was a little rough--big enough to attempt body surfing--the water was warm and inviting. So I swam in the rain, eventually washing back up onto the beach.
Our ship left Aruba in early afternoon, making its way between shore and sand bar, the waters around us a bright Carribean blue. Next stop--Cartagena.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Our Holiday Cruise
Over the holidays Susie and I, with our relatives Shari and Stuart, had the great fortune to be able to take a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles, via the Panama Canal. Over the next several posts, I'll share some of our experiences on the cruise, which took us to Aruba and Cartagena, through the canal, and then to Costa Rica, Acupulco and Cabo San Lucas.
We left Fort Lauderdale on a Wednesday afternoon. We had stayed at a Hilton hotel virtually across the street from the cruise terminal, so the four of walked, with our luggage from the hotel to the ship. In this picture taken from the balcony of our stateroom, you can see the terminal, a gangway that's already been disconnected from the ship, and the hotel.
By the time the boat actually left the dock, the sun had just set. The area around the hotel was awfully swanky, with lots of yachts, some of which were enormous. The crew of one such boat told us that they were going to sailing to Europe shortly.
With the pilot boat along side, our ship, the Coral Princess, reached the last of Fort Lauderdale's condos as it headed into the Carribean on our way to Aruba.
The next couple of days were, as they cruise line said, at sea. For almost of all our first day, we sailed along Cuba's northern coast in iffy weather. This was our view toward the end of the day.
We left Fort Lauderdale on a Wednesday afternoon. We had stayed at a Hilton hotel virtually across the street from the cruise terminal, so the four of walked, with our luggage from the hotel to the ship. In this picture taken from the balcony of our stateroom, you can see the terminal, a gangway that's already been disconnected from the ship, and the hotel.
By the time the boat actually left the dock, the sun had just set. The area around the hotel was awfully swanky, with lots of yachts, some of which were enormous. The crew of one such boat told us that they were going to sailing to Europe shortly.
With the pilot boat along side, our ship, the Coral Princess, reached the last of Fort Lauderdale's condos as it headed into the Carribean on our way to Aruba.
The next couple of days were, as they cruise line said, at sea. For almost of all our first day, we sailed along Cuba's northern coast in iffy weather. This was our view toward the end of the day.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
El Paso volcano tour
The area around El Paso has seen a lot of fairly recent (last 100,000 years) volcanic activity. Thanks to one of the events organized as part of the Celebration of our Mountains, an annual festival that helps El Pasoans appreciate and enjoy the many dimensions of our geological treasures, Susie and I were able to join a tour of some of the volcanic features northwest of El Paso in desert of southern New Mexico. In the course of a round trip of about 130 miles, we visited three major features: Black Mountain, Aden Crater, and Killbourne's Hole.
Black Mountain is a cinder cone--or what remains of a cinder cone now that much of it has been mined to provide decorative rock for landscaping. I'd read about Black Mountain but had never visited or seen it before. Although it's a pretty large feature, it doesn't stand out prominently on the horizon, in part because the miners have knocked down the top of the mountain.
As you get close to Black Mountain you get a better impression of its size, and a vivid impression of how much of it is already gone.
This view shows the road that's been dug out of the mountain's main mass.
Some great geological features still remain, though. This volcanic dike--the frozen evidence of an intrusion of magma into a crack, stands above the desert like a prehistoric sentinel.
The tour's second stop was Aden Crater, a shield volcano. Visitors reach the crater over a very difficult road, where your--necessarily 4x4--vehicle crawls directly over rocks. From outside the crater, you can see the wall of lava surrounding the crater.
From the area where we parked our cars, we zigzagged up the crater's wall.
After the crater's wall were formed, basically as a large bowl, the center of the bowl filled up with lava. Here's a view from just inside the crater, looking north over the crater's rim.
Some of the lava in the crater's bowl has been taken over by vegetation such as ocotillo.
This is the pit from which the lava flowed to fill the crater.
The "slide" is an interesting feature: A colder, more solid chunk of lava skidded down a hotter, still plastic section of lava, leaving these traces in what is now solid rock.
Another interesting feature, near the source of the lava, is a fumarole, a deep hole through which volcanic gasses vented. This narrow hole goes down over 100 feet. I didn't go down there and measure it personally, though. Remains of a sloth, some 11,000 years old, were found at the bottom by spelunkers.
Looking southeast, with El Paso's Franklin Mountains on the horizon, you can see these collapsed lava tubes.
The third volcanic feature we visited on the tour was Kilbourne's Hole. I'd been to the rim a couple of times before but had never gone into the crater before. The crater was formed much differently than Aden Crater. Kilbourne's Hole is the result of a single, almost incomprehensibly powerful steam explosion. This area had been an inland sea, eventually forming deep layers of sedimentary rock. Volcanic activity then covered the sedimentary rock with a layer of lava, which formed a kind of seal. When water made its way down to the hot magma miles below the surface, this seal meant that the steam had no where to go. Eventually the pressure built up to the point where the whole thing exploded, creating a crater about two miles across, strewing the rock from the explosion across the landscape. The result was one of the largest maar craters in the world.
Some of the material from the explosion, and then erosion products, partly filled in the crater. It's still a couple of hundred feet deep, though. At places on the crater's rim the various layers are quite clear. The lowest layers are the sedimentary materials of the old sea. Above the sedimentary layer lies the lava layer, not that thick but distinct. And about the lava lie the layers of material from the explosion and subsequent depositions.
In other places along the crater wall the layers are less distinct as thousands of years of erosion have weathered the contours.
This erosion has brought some of the explosion materials from the crater's rim back into the crater's bowl. Sandy washes inside the crater testify to the ongoing processes of weathering and erosion.
In the original explosion, minerals from the hot magma that heated the steam were ejected onto the surrounding landscape. With the erosion of the tops of the crater walls, some of these minerals have made their way back into the crater. The most spectacular mineral to be found in Kilbourne's Hole is olivine, fragments of which can be found lying on the surface in and around the washes.
Olivine, when found in larger crystals, is called peridot. I collected a few samples of olivine before returning to the crater's rim and then driving back to El Paso.
For more complete information on these volcanic features, see
Black Mountain is a cinder cone--or what remains of a cinder cone now that much of it has been mined to provide decorative rock for landscaping. I'd read about Black Mountain but had never visited or seen it before. Although it's a pretty large feature, it doesn't stand out prominently on the horizon, in part because the miners have knocked down the top of the mountain.
As you get close to Black Mountain you get a better impression of its size, and a vivid impression of how much of it is already gone.
This view shows the road that's been dug out of the mountain's main mass.
Some great geological features still remain, though. This volcanic dike--the frozen evidence of an intrusion of magma into a crack, stands above the desert like a prehistoric sentinel.
The tour's second stop was Aden Crater, a shield volcano. Visitors reach the crater over a very difficult road, where your--necessarily 4x4--vehicle crawls directly over rocks. From outside the crater, you can see the wall of lava surrounding the crater.
From the area where we parked our cars, we zigzagged up the crater's wall.
After the crater's wall were formed, basically as a large bowl, the center of the bowl filled up with lava. Here's a view from just inside the crater, looking north over the crater's rim.
Some of the lava in the crater's bowl has been taken over by vegetation such as ocotillo.
This is the pit from which the lava flowed to fill the crater.
The "slide" is an interesting feature: A colder, more solid chunk of lava skidded down a hotter, still plastic section of lava, leaving these traces in what is now solid rock.
Another interesting feature, near the source of the lava, is a fumarole, a deep hole through which volcanic gasses vented. This narrow hole goes down over 100 feet. I didn't go down there and measure it personally, though. Remains of a sloth, some 11,000 years old, were found at the bottom by spelunkers.
Looking southeast, with El Paso's Franklin Mountains on the horizon, you can see these collapsed lava tubes.The third volcanic feature we visited on the tour was Kilbourne's Hole. I'd been to the rim a couple of times before but had never gone into the crater before. The crater was formed much differently than Aden Crater. Kilbourne's Hole is the result of a single, almost incomprehensibly powerful steam explosion. This area had been an inland sea, eventually forming deep layers of sedimentary rock. Volcanic activity then covered the sedimentary rock with a layer of lava, which formed a kind of seal. When water made its way down to the hot magma miles below the surface, this seal meant that the steam had no where to go. Eventually the pressure built up to the point where the whole thing exploded, creating a crater about two miles across, strewing the rock from the explosion across the landscape. The result was one of the largest maar craters in the world.
Some of the material from the explosion, and then erosion products, partly filled in the crater. It's still a couple of hundred feet deep, though. At places on the crater's rim the various layers are quite clear. The lowest layers are the sedimentary materials of the old sea. Above the sedimentary layer lies the lava layer, not that thick but distinct. And about the lava lie the layers of material from the explosion and subsequent depositions.
In other places along the crater wall the layers are less distinct as thousands of years of erosion have weathered the contours.
This erosion has brought some of the explosion materials from the crater's rim back into the crater's bowl. Sandy washes inside the crater testify to the ongoing processes of weathering and erosion.
In the original explosion, minerals from the hot magma that heated the steam were ejected onto the surrounding landscape. With the erosion of the tops of the crater walls, some of these minerals have made their way back into the crater. The most spectacular mineral to be found in Kilbourne's Hole is olivine, fragments of which can be found lying on the surface in and around the washes.
Olivine, when found in larger crystals, is called peridot. I collected a few samples of olivine before returning to the crater's rim and then driving back to El Paso.For more complete information on these volcanic features, see
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
