The Wandering Scot
An occasional travel journal
I’m visiting Eritrea, a small African country which rivals North Korea for isolation and eccentricity.
The capital Asmara boasts some good Futurist buildings from the Italian colonial era, earning it UNESCO World Heritage status. The most famous is the Fiat Tagliero Building, a quirky Art Deco petrol station in the shape of an airplane, with aggressively cantilevered wings.
I’m in Andasibe, Madagascar. I’ve seen various lemurs, chameleons, geckos, etc, but my favorite animal so far was a tiny baby tenrec.
It had bright yellow spines on its head and a blackish body. We had inadvertently cornered it against a stone wall, with no easy escape. So, despite being only about 3 inches long, it decided to try to intimidate us. It lunged and feinted menacingly with its spiky head and made it clear that any stupid monkeys that tried to mess with it would get a handful of spines.
Suitably chastened we backed off. It then resumed its stroll. With perhaps a hint of a swagger.
Googling later, it turns out to have been a Lowland Streaked Tenrec. They are noted for being pugnacious and if we hadn’t backed off it would have probably escalated to a charge-attack and head-butted us. Not surprisingly, local predators avoid them.
I’m happy to report that I’m now part cyborg!
I had been hiking on Black Mountain, in Rancho San Antonio, near Palo Alto. I was heading briskly downhill on a steep slope, tripped and splatted down hard. I managed to use my left arm to take the impact and save my stupid head, but as a result my left wrist was clearly broken.
I hiked out, then drove to the PAMF Urgent Care center. They took a look, deemed the fracture to be “interesting” and sent me over to the Stanford Hospital Emergency Room.
Stanford x-rayed and scanned me and then did emergency surgery that same evening. They used a titanium plate and screws to tie the broken bone pieces together.
Both PAMF and Stanford did a great job of looking after me. At Stanford, I was both very grateful and rather intimidated to discover that the “Hand Team”, led by a Stanford Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, had come in late specially for me.
I also saw the darker side of US healthcare. I’m fully insured and ended up paying nothing. But the nominal list price for the whole thing was a staggering $200,000. Which Medicare negotiated down to a much more reasonable $15,000.
My wrist is healing up fine and I should get back full normal functionality.
The good news is that I can confidently expect that our new AI Overlords will now welcome me as a part-cyborg ally!
I’m on Mauritius, where I successfully hunted down a dodo!
It was a very fine dodo. It waggled its little wings and cawed gently at me.
Yes, it’s true, the Mauritius Natural History Museum has a very charming animatronic dodo. 🙂
Perhaps more to the point, they also have the only “complete” dodo skeleton, which has pride of place in their Dodo Gallery.
I successfully made it to the Source of the Nile!
Well, OK, there are many sources of the Nile, but the people of Burundi confidently assert that their Source du Nil spring is the southernmost source that eventually flows into the Nile. And, just to remove any doubt, it comes complete with an actual pyramid. Ha!
The spring itself now emerges from a small pipe a little below the monument, before starting a very long journey North.
Later, back in Bujumbura, I successfully discovered the spot where the explorer Stanley successfully discovered Dr Livingstone.
If you find yourself with some free time in Frankfurt, I recommend hunting down one of their paternosters, a kind of continuously moving step-on-step-off elevator. They are a fine cheap amusement!
This time, I snuck in to the library at the University of Frankfurt to visit their two paternosters. These seem to be much beloved by the students. There are lots of warnings, including that you shouldn’t ride over the top, which I’m sure all the students take very seriously. 😊
P.S. If you do visit, please be discreet. The library staff quietly tolerate the occasional joy riding visitor, but they would probably have to close off access if there were too many, which would be sad.
P.P.S. Riding over the top is (sadly) less exciting than it first sounds. The paternoster consists of little cabins hanging from a chain and it is designed so that the cabins stay vertical while going over the top or around the bottom. Not that I’d know, of course.