A land of tea and rice near the Caspian Sea, Fuman, Iran

looking at the Agorz Mountains across a tea plantation, Fuman, Iran

I had a lovely experience with a group of women in the picturesque mountain village of Masouleh today.  Late in the day, our guide and I were peering into the small town mosque.  Three ladies invited me in, so I took off my shoes, draped myself in the colorful chador they provided, and followed them inside.  Four older women sat to one side drinking tea and chatting.  I was clearly a curiosity.  Farther inside was a beautifully decorated tomb.  The women led me inside and told me to make a wish, then led me counter-clockwise around the tomb, showing me how to rub my hand on each panel and then rub my face with the same hand, transferring the good wishes from the dead one to me.

village of Masouleh in the Agorz Mountains

Back outside, they helped me take off my borrowed chador and, when my head scarf slipped off, quickly grabbed it to gently cover my head again.  They were all smiles, saying salaam and bye bye with their hands over their hearts in the traditional greeting as I thanked them for their kindness.

A few minutes later, we visited a tiny private museum filled with stuffed animals the owner had found dead on the mountain trails and road.  He’d taken them to a taxidermist and then displayed them in 2 rooms of his home so that people could see the kinds of animals that live in these mountains.  He is surrounded by martens, many birds, a bear, wild boar, weasels, several kinds of bobcat, and a jackal, among others, all looking like they would like to devour him.  

traditional Masouleh house

He is 77 and graduated from engineering school 57 years ago.  He looked at the walking stick I’d picked up on our hike up the mountain to the Rudkhan Castle and promptly exchanged it for a much better-looking bamboo walking stick because he said I needed something more elegant than my stripped-down branch.  As we walked out, he showed us his father’s house next door, where he now lives, recently and beautifully restored.  He must have quite a few visitors who pay to enter and leave him tips.

Yesterday, we drove from Tehran to Fuman, in Guilon Province, near the Caspian Sea where we will go tomorrow.  On the south side of the Algorz range of high mountains, all is dry and brown, with jagged rocks, but no trees.  After crossing a pass, we made a long descent to the wetter northern side and began to see pine forests and then rain forest. 

pickled fruit and olives

Before we reached the forest, we passed through large farms of dry land wheat and corn as well as olive orchards irrigated by drip systems.  There are olive factories here to process the fruit.  The roadway is lined with shops selling olives, pickled garlic and fruits, fruit leather, all kinds of preserved herbs and seeds, and eggplant in a variety of preparations.

man selling grapes along desert road

Heading down the long descent to the humid plain below, we came to rice and tea plantations.  The rice harvest is nearly over, the second one this year, so cattle graze in the paddies.  The rice straw used to be used for thatching roofs and is still made into many products, including floor mats and brooms.  All these farms are privately owned.  The tea plantations, in particular, seem to generate considerable income as the houses next to them are quite large and well-maintained.  Mountain villages, except for those that are fortunate enough to attract tourists, are much less prosperous.

We started the day today with a drive through the rice fields and up to the mountains to visit the Rudkhan Castle, originally a Sassanid fortress dating back at least 900 years.  The climb to the castle is over 1000 uneven steps, about 1100 feet and 1 ½ miles up the steep mountainside.  Fortunately, the climb is through the forest, so it’s relatively cool.  The castle sprawls along a steep ridgetop.  Up one side is the area where the king and his family lived if under attack.  We clambered up about 150 more very steep, narrow steps to reach the top and look out over the valleys and mountains that surround this fortification.

watchtower at Rudkhan Castle

All the way along the steep steps up the mountain are tea and souvenir shops.  We stopped for tea on the way down, sweetened with toothpicks that had been dipped in boiling sugar that creates a candy about 1 inch wide and 2 inches long for sweetening your tea.  Quite delicious.  For the merchants, this is a daily slog up the many steps carrying food, water and souvenirs on their backs.  Understandably, as we got higher up the mountain, fewer of the shops were open.  But, at the bottom, business is thriving for both shops and restaurants.  We had a great lunch of kebabs, rice and yoghurt as we sat on a raised platform covered with a carpet.  My legs were already warning me that they would pay me back tomorrow for the drubbing they got today.

Don on bench before lunch at Rudkhan Castle

Our first day in Iran--Tehran, of course

beautiful 7-color tile work at the Golestan Palace

 Tehran seems to go on forever--a huge city of 8 million people and growing, spread across a desert landscape and up the sides of the stark mountains that block it on the north.  Driving out of Tehran this morning towards the Caspian Sea, we saw hundreds of enormous apartment blocks under construction, with highways and a subway system being built to connect these cities-within-the city to its manufacturing areas and multiple economic centers.  I know Iran's economy has been in a long slump because of the sanctions imposed by the rest of the world, but the lifting of those sanctions seems to have sparked rapid economic growth and a population surge in Tehran.

3000 BC pottery wine (?) vessel at the National Museum

The traffic at all hours of the day is pretty horrendous.  We spent an hour driving from our hotel 12 miles to the historic center.  Tehran was a village 150 years ago, but you'd never know that today.  It became the capitol of Iran late, mostly because its location provided some protection from what the shahs perceived as a large Russian threat.
We started our day at the National Museum, with its well-displayed artifacts from 4000 years ago.  I particularly liked what appear to be pottery wine vessels in whimsical animal shapes.  Marble friezes from palaces destroyed long ago fill one wall.  It's not a large museum, but worth a visit to understand the long history of this country.

Walking from the National Museum to the Golestan Palace (a "must" visit) is something I wouldn't recommend without an Iranian at your side.  Pedestrians are prime targets crossing the crowded streets with their speeding drivers who don't stop for anyone or anything.  Our guide showed us how to thread our way among the cars, motorcycles and buses filling 4 to 6 lanes of determined drivers, none of whom gave us an inch.

tiled facade at the Golestan Palace

Across from the courthouse, we passed men with old typewriters huddling with 2 or 3 people.  They are like paralegals who know the intricacies of Iranian laws and write complaints or legal documents for their clients as they sit together on the sidewalk.  They type the papers and hand them to their clients, who proceed across the street to present them to the courthouse clerks.
We loved the Golestan Palace.  It is a mid-18th century palace and fortress complex, built mostly during the Qajar dynasty, that used to be 10 times larger than it is today.  There is still a beautiful garden at its center reflecting the importance of gardens in Persian culture.  The tile work on the remaining buildings is beautiful.  Unlike architecture and artistry in most of the Muslim world, Persian decoration contains images of people, animals and flowers.  The best tile work has 7 colors, as you can see in these photos.

Tehran's grand bazaar

Next--to Tehran's huge bazaar which is centered in a sprawling, arched building with countless alleyways crowded with shops and people.  Like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, the various trades and artisans are concentrated in specific parts of the Bazaar.  The actual area spreads way beyond the old center, however, filling the streets for 5 kilometers.  Obviously, it is a major retail hub in the city.  We had a typical lunch in one of the small restaurants in the Bazaar, complete with yoghurt, olive and walnut salad, lamb kebabs and lots of saffron rice.
For my generation, the standoff with the Iranians over the U.S. Embassy hostages they held for 444 days in 1979 and 1980 is something we'll never forget.  Neither will the Iranians, who continue to take pride in their takedown of the mighty United States during their Revolution (the kindness and welcoming attitudes of the Iranian people towards Americans notwithstanding).

former U.S. embassy, now the Espionage Museum

About a year ago, the now-dilapidated former U.S. Embassy was turned into an espionage museum, with the rooms used by embassy staff for spying and secret negotiations opened to the public.  There are rooms with old typewriters, computer equipment, shredders and photos from the assault on the embassy.  Several photos show mountains of shredded paper spilling out of the shredders.  The students who took over the embassy pieced together 70 [small] books of shredded documents.  I remember reading that the U.S. Defense Department once had some of its experts reconstruct shredded documents to see if it were possible.  They put back together a multi-page document in something like 40 hours.  The museum guide was delighted to have Americans visit and told me how much he likes talking to Americans and answering our questions.  If you remember the ordeal as vividly as I do, I highly recommend a visit if you come to Tehran. 

Don and schoolgirls

From our first contact with the immigration and customs officials at the Tehran airport, we have been treated with warmth and words of welcome from every Iranian we've met.  Despite our political differences, they seem very genuinely happy to have Americans visit their country and to engage in conversations with us.  The other Americans we've run into here all are having the same experience.

The colonial city of Quito in the midst of the high Andes

panorama of Quito

Quito is over 9000 feet above sea level, set in a volcanic set of valleys in the midst of the high Andes.  The city is divided by deep gorges between rivers of solid lava that once flowed from the many volcanoes surrounding the city.  Cotopaxi, which I was able to climb to the 16,200 foot level 2 years ago when it wasn't erupting, is once again very active.

Cotopaxi in the mist

The Spanish and the Incas fought over Quito for centuries.  The old colonial center shows who ultimately won, though the descendants of the Incas and other mountain people dominate the population today.

Casa Gangotena

We stayed at a superb hotel, the Casa Gangotena, right in the heart of Quito historic center.  It was once a huge palace, turned into what the management told us is the 6th best hotel in the world.  I would agree with them--it is a treasure with beautiful service.

Roses ready to pack for shipping

We spent a day in the Andean valleys outside of Quito.  Ecuador is one of the largest exporters of roses in the world.  Cultivating and exporting roses is ahead of tourism in contributing to Ecuador's economy.  So, we visited one of the rose plantations, 10,000 feet high.  This plantation employs 80 people, growing, harvesting, packing and shipping roses all over the world.  They plant roses based on what their customers want.  Asians want very long-stemmed roses; Americans do with shorter stems.  This dictates how the plants are pruned and harvested.  I talked to one of the women packing the roses who said she loves her job. It is hard work, in a huge, cold shed. 

worker packing roses

Once packed, the roses move either to the airport for air shipment around the world or to a cold room where they can be kept up to 5 days.  The older roses are sold on the streets on Ecuadorean cities, which explains why the hotels have mountains of beautiful roses filling their bedrooms and public spaces.
Unfortunately, Cotopaxi, the active volcano, was shrouded in clouds the day we were there.  It was rainy and chilly.  But, we enjoyed a walk through the nature reserve near Cotopaxi.  Even though we were at 13,000 feet, we were walking through a pine forest and vegetation and grasses up to our waists.  Very different from the alpine plants we find at 13,000 feet in Colorado.  Off to one side was a cliff falling into a very deep gorge, another show of the lava blasts that came from Cotopaxi.

walking in Cotopaxi National Park at 13,000 feet

We wandered through a busy market where most of the local people shop for their food and goods.  I was struck by the number of pigs' heads and feet that were available.  Farmers in the area raise cattle, pigs, chickens and root crops as well as roses and some grains.
Ecuador is poor.  The government has been rife with corruption.  Everyone hopes the new president will begin to deal with that, but no one is overly optimistic.  I talked to one person about health care and education.  The government provides universal health care, but it is of low quality and very slow to access unless you have an emergency.  Those who can afford to go to the private clinics do so, but this person told me her father had a medical emergency that cost $1000 in the private clinic, so her family had to borrow money to pay for his care. 

pig's head for sale in market

spectacular gold altar in historic church

women sitting outside church

Hiking through the rain forest

Hoatzin, near the lodge

We started early our first morning with a canoe ride across the beautiful black water lake that is part of the Sacha Lodge’s reserve and through a shallow channel to the Lodge’s new observation tower, rising 140 feet to the top of the forest canopy.  From this height, you can see so many gorgeously colored species of birds—toucans, macaws, hummingbirds, anis, aracaris, woodpeckers, parakeets and so many more.  The canopy is alive with birds.  Their brilliant colors flash in the sun as they crisscross the tops of the trees.  We spent almost 2 hours on the viewing platform enjoying them.  Our guides are incredible bird spotters.  They set up a telescope that they focused on particular birds so we could admire them in their colorful splendor.

toucan in the canopy

In the distance, we could hear howler monkeys calling.  In my experience, howler monkeys have, unfortunately, always been way off in the distance.  I have only seen one once, but I still love to listen to their calls.

cotinga

As we walked along the narrow forest paths, there were so many sounds.    Bumps, thumps, blops as things fell to the forest floor from somewhere above and the forest adjusted itself.  Screeches and songs and calls from birds.  Croaks, howls, rustles, slithers, barks and chirps from insects and frogs and reptiles.    It seems so quiet when you stop to listen before your ear starts to hear how noisy it really is.

Our second day, we took motorized canoes to a parrot lick, a cliff down the Napo River where parrots gather to peck away at the mineralized soil of the cliff.  This helps them clear their bodies of the toxins in some of the forest fruits they eat.  We arrived just off the cliff about 7 in the morning.  At first, there were a couple of parrots in the tops of the tallest trees above the cliff.  Pretty soon, parrots started to fly in, landing in the trees and squawking loudly with mini-skirmishes as they jostled for the favored spot on a branch.  Soon there were dozens of parrots filling the trees.

parrots and parakeets at lick

Suddenly, all the parrots left the trees at once and swarmed to their favorite place on the cliff.  Dozens of them squished into a small space, which must have had the best minerals because there was lots of other cliff area which they ignored.  Several species of parrots and parakeets busily pecked at the cliff for about 15 minutes when suddenly something scared them and off they all flew in a rush, headed back to the trees.

That night, we took a forest walk around the lodge.  While I would have loved to have seen a jaguar, they aren’t found near people, preferring to roam deeper in the forest.  The first creature we saw was a large tarantula, a nocturnal feeder.  These tarantulas have gray bodies with black legs, unlike the ones I am used to which are all black.  They are just as pcreepy, however.  They particularly like the butterflies and the butterflies’ larvae.  The lodge has a butterfly breeding enclosure, completely covered to protect the butterflies from the spiders.  But, one chrysalis happened to be on the outside of the enclosure.  We looked up to see two legs of a tarantula draped over the top of the enclosure just above the chrysalis, about to pounce on its prey.  It reminded me of a horror movie, except the spider wasn’t 6 feet tall.

lizard feeding at night

Much better than the spiders (which included a large jumping spider we photographed and quickly crept past) are the frogs and insects.  We saw one teeny frog the size of a tear drop.  Several kinds of walking sticks chomped on the huge forest leaves.  We knew the monkeys were in the tops of the trees because they were moving, but we couldn’t see them, though earlier in the day we saw little pocket monkeys about the size of a human hand.  The forest is alive at night with all kinds of life, each with its own special place in the ecosystem.

butterflies on ground in pavilion

stick bug under leav

Brown owl

wakiri poison frog

Spix's night monkey

teardrop frog

The people of the Amazon rain forest

Kechwa women showing us gourds they use for just about everything

People speaking Kechwa languages populate much of the Ecuadorean rain forest.  There are about 120,000 of them in the forest.  Other Kechwa people live in Andean villages and, of course, in Quito.

The Sacha Lodge wanted to give its guests the opportunity to learn about the forest culture while, at the same time, helping the local Kechwa tribe have a more sustainable existence.  The Lodge funded the local community to build a typical village in the forest and to help the women to develop crafts they could sell to tourists.

food cooking on traditional fire

We spent about 2 hours with 2 Kechwa women who are leaders of the local community's tourism effort.  Like most Kechwa, they are very small, less than 5 feet tall.  The older woman, 39, is pregnant with her 6^th child.  She told us that when she was ready to give birth, she always had her babies at home with help only from her husband.  During her first birth, she stood up while her husband put his knee in the small of her back and pulled her shoulders backward.  Sounds grim, but she said it helped push the baby out.  Not sure who caught the baby as he emerged.  But, it must not have been an ideal delivery method, because the rest of her deliveries, also standing, have happened with her hanging onto a rope loop tied to the cross beam of her house, pushing while she hung on.  Her husband caught the baby.  Not surprisingly, she told us that younger women preferred to go to the clinic about an hour away by boat.

fish, manioc and plaintains

There are no roads in this part of the forest, except for those built by oil companies that don’t connect to anything except the river.  So, the river is their highway and the route to the clinic and to other villages.

They believe the forest provides everything they need, from natural medicines to food to materials for building their homes.   They don’t need cash, they said, because they simply go into the forest to get what they require.  But, the cash economy they have created with their crafts and meetings with tourists is clearly very important to them.  They told us the money is used to maintain the demonstration village and a small amount to buy things they need for their families. 

Their food is very limited.  Fish from the river when they can catch it, manioc and plantains are the staples.  Various larvae and bugs add to the diet, while hot peppers are a key part of the flavoring.  They make a drink out of manioc.  When they don’t have any other food, they will drink that 3 times a day.  It can be fermented to become their local beer.  They gave us samples of their food, which is quite good.  They serve their meals on large, clean banana leaves on the floor.  The family sits on the floor to eat with their hands.

eating local food

While the forest may provide for them, it certainly doesn’t provide enough all the time.  The claims that the forest is all they need are not believable when you know that child and maternal mortality are high, food is often scarce, and they really need some economic activity to make their lives more sustainable.

The villagers are all Catholics, but they add in a very large amount of traditional beliefs and rituals to their religious lives. Our guide told us that they are animists who enjoy the rituals of the Church when a priest visits them once a month.  But, the strictures of the Church do not play a big role in their daily lives.

mom, maybe grandmother and baby

The younger woman has an 8 month old baby.  She is not married and does not plan to marry.  She said she can have babies without getting married.  Her family does not mind.  They all help care for her baby.  The older woman is not married, either, though she has lived with her children's father for many years and considers him her husband.  They met when they were in school and had their first child very young, as do most couples.

Both women said they want their children to stay in their village.  Boys live with their parents or in a nearby thatched home when they marry.  Girls move to their husbands' villages.  The women said they stay in close touch with their daughters even if they are far away by forest travel time.  

Very few children have any schooling beyond about 5th or 6th grade because they would have to travel too far for secondary school and would have to live away from their families.  The is a university in Coca, but that is a long way by foot and boat from the forest communities.

From the desert islands of the Galapagos to the rain forest of the Ecuadorean Amazon

Sacha Lodge on Lake Pilchicocha

To get from Quito to the Ecuadorean Amazon, we took the short, and much delayed, flight over the Andes from Quito to Coca, an oil town on the Napo River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon.  This is the Ecuadorean portion of the Amazon Basin, dense with moisture, heat and vegetation.  And thousands of plant and animal species.

resident caiman

Sacha Lodge canoes

It is quite a contrast, coming from the dry, desert islands of the Galapagos to the hot and humid and dense Amazon rain forest.  The Galapagos were cool and dry; here the air is heavy with moisture and heat.  Walking through the forest, it appears that everything is growing on something else.  Huge trees support dozens of bromeliads along their trunks and branches, which in turn host other plants.  One enormous tree had another large tree growing out of its trunk high off the forest floor (we could see that because the leaves of this parasite tree were different from the host tree’s leaves). 

pygmy marmoset (pocket monkey)

Dozens of other plants were growing on the branches of the parasite tree.  Such a jumbled mass of living things.

We are staying at the Sacha Lodge, a remote collection of 26 thatched cabins, 2 hours by river from Coca.  We first took large, motorized canoes to a small cove where we disembarked and walked through the forest for half an hour to one of the river’s many sub-channels.  There, we loaded onto smaller canoes and paddled (our guides did the work) up the channel 15 minutes to a beautiful black water lake surrounded by the forest.  Here is the Sacha Lodge.  Really a peaceful and lovely setting for our 3 days in the Amazon.

cabins at Sacha Lodge

The Lodge was the dream of a Swiss entrepreneur who lived and worked in Chile, Peru and Bolivia before opening his first lodge farther up the Napo River in Ecuador.  When he was shown Lake Pilchicocha, he decided to build his second lodge here, beginning construction in 1991.  Over the years, he purchased more land and now owns 4500 acres, so has an extensive private reserve of unspoiled rain forest.

yellow-rumped cacique--a regular at the lodge

After dinner, we took a canoe around the lake and a nearby channel in search of caimans.  Fireflies sparkled in the dark forest.  We saw 2 bright red dots, the eyes of a small caiman, before we actually found the animal mostly submerged in the dark water.  This was a black caiman.  Soon after, we saw 2 more glowing eyes and found another small black caiman barely visible in its hiding place.  Apparently one caiman visits the lodge often, but we haven’t seen him yet.

agouti

Back to San Cristobal Island and onward

Blue-footed with tiny chick under her breast

Yesterday was our last full day in the Galapagos, a wonderland of birds, sea mammals, and reptiles.  The previous night, we were underway most of the night in order to get back to San Cristobal Island where we snorkeled off a gorgeous beach and walked on a remote part of the island.

Stately brown pelican

Here, too, are blue-footed boobies and their babies, lots of iguanas, marine turtles, brown pelicans, sea lions with their babies, and frigate birds.  Some frigate birds were mating, so we were able to see a couple of the males displaying their wares in the form of bright red, ballooning throats.  Quite a fascinating attraction.

Friendly, curious sea lions swam with us while we snorkeled, sometimes bumping their noses gently into us and leaping out of the water in graceful arcs, impressing us with their athletic abilities.  A couple of people swam with a marine turtle who was much less interested in them than they were in her.  These are very large creatures who can stay underwater up to 12 hours.  From the shore and also from the Majestic, we could see their heads bobbing up through the waves, mixing it up with the playful sea lions.  The turtles are much less interested in the sea lions than the latter are in them.

Today, we are waiting for our much-delayed flight to Coca, a town in the Amazon Basin.  More on what we do and see in the coming days.

Male frigate bird showing off his red throat

Crew of the Majestic at farewell dinner

handsome iguana headed to the ocean to eat