Dew magic - Gray whale cove trail, Pacifica

We have hiked Gray whale cove trail once before. We were inexperienced hikers then, confusing bike paths with hiking trails and taking on steep slippery slopes without hiking shoes.

Decided to revisit the trail this weekend with some friends who are not part of our usual hiking group. There were no views. The place was completely foggy once we hit the cloud line. The skies cleared up only when we almost came down. Definitely recommend this as an afternoon hike if scenery is your thing.

That said, our hikes are all about the joking, giggling ladies, taking pictures of whatever comes our way and Chaifies when we reach the summit. This time we had Chai, cookies, pakoras… they all taste divine after hiking a few hours , standing in condensed dew and sweat on a windy summit. There were many bench photos..

The dew and condensed mist made magic. The flowers, the webs, buds.. I was just taking macro shots everytime we stopped. Here are the pictures..

A few other shots..

a short video clip of the foggy experience

Blogging can be fast if you keep at it.. editing photos and videos, uploading them and doing a write up used to be so fast for me.. after a three month gap, takes me longer.. like my yoga teachers say “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Glad to be writing again.

This hike is tricky at places but strongly recommend with good hiking shoes, having all trails (still two members missed a cut off and kept walking) and taking the safer options. The two folks who kept talking and walked almost a mile ahead and turned back were made to stand up on the bench and do thoppikaranam for ummachchi. The offenders faces have been blocked out like in Indian news media so the blog audience cannot know who they are..

Now I have to be more careful on the trails and not get lost. As the person who is most likely to get lost, this new protocol might actually be bad for me!

Go try this hike! We have. never gone down the beach on the other side of the freeway yet. On our next attempt definitely plan to do that.

Time levels everything..

The previous post in this series is here..

In the middle of writing this post about how time makes sure nothing can survive it intact, it was pointed out the the time and effort spent in writing this blog is an absolute waste! If the great Pharoh's of Egypt and their secret tombs with hidden labryinths, sweet smelling poisons that would emit when tombs were opened, granite stone coffins that would not be easy to move in confined spaces, were still looted successfully.. this blog.. okay, I get it. 

Then again, the intent of this blog was never to survive even 20 years. My first post on this blog was originally done on Jan 1st 2005 after we had come back from a trip to Zion and Bryce canyon.. when the Tsunami hit! After coming back home, my cousin BIL told me about this thing called Blogger started by google. It was just a homepage creator. I wrote a "Hello World!" post but realized "who is going to know about this?". Then blgoroll came along and others started blogging and I jumped on it a good 6 months later. 

In a few days it will be 20 years of blogging! Never thought it would go on for 20 years. Mostly wrote for myself and the kids.. so someday they can go back and read it! Back to Egypt... 

It is true that majority of it is looted. Anything that was pure or gilded gold is just gone! If the local thieves and invaders didn't get to it, the Brits and French took it to their museums in the name of preservation!

We had 2 hours and Walid was not going to join us. He gave us directions to go and and out of the tombs. there was only one way in and out and all of them went down to a chamber at the bottom through narrow channels. 

All this time we were color blind. This tomb visit showed us what all those temples must have been like!

Words are not adequate to describe this. You have to go visit it. Hopefully the pictures and video do it some justice!

the caption for the photo below "what is the point? it still got looted!" 

A bigger, grander coffin.. still looted!

Museum piece now..

The tombs in the valley of the kings are many.. Our ticket gave us access to 3. We also got a special extra ticket to see the Rameses V and VI tombs which are extremely well preserved and the colors are still there on every wall. It was totally worth the extra price!

thank you sand for saving some history for us..

there was a stream of people.. so the one way to get a clean photo was to stand across the whole thing..it was also a rare thing for San to take this group photo.

took this pano shot inside one of the tombs. it was difficult to manouvere and iPhone and get a shot here. not sure how they painted all this in that confined space.. maybe the ceiling was open when they painted it before closing.. maybe kids or dwarfs painted it! who knows!

The rest of the photos are in two slideshow galleries..

Vertical shots..

And a video highlight of the tomb visits..

This is yet again a thing not to be missed. We now understood why folks bypassed the boat ride from Edfu to Luxor and came by bus instead to have more time in Luxor! 2 hours was not enough to see everything here, but we went in and out of the four tombs pretty quickly and we got a decent idea of it.

There was a brief power cut when we were inside the main tomb and everything went pitch dark for a few seconds till Phone flashlights went on everywhere. They restored it in 5 minutes and we got to continue taking pictures. 

Once we exit the place there was a wait for the shuttles. There were two groups fighting over the next shuttle and people had to be physically separated! Things got heated.. we just watched it from a distance, waited a few more minutes and were at the entrance. There was a large shopping area outside. We walked through it and got to our van. The vendors here were very pushy and in our face and blocking our path at instances. Walid helped navigate it expertly. 

We were still racing time as there were 4 more stops to go before hitting the airport..

National Geographic Magazine - the bucket list generator!

In the late nineties, my cousin in the US gave a subscription to the National Geographic Magazine. The very first few issues that we got blew our minds. One was about the Serengeti National park. It is still being talked about in the house. The pictures, the occasional map that was packed inside the magazine, the posters, the big official looking certificate that stated that I was now an explorer.. not to mention the fact that the mail was actually addressed to me.. priceless!

That membership lasted two years and it was a window to the world for me and my brother! 

One of the things I learned in that magazine was that there was such a thing as a glasswing butterfly with transparent wings. It was to be found near a natural wonder of the world called Iguazu falls. 

Many years later I ended up in the US and got my own subscription to the bucket list generator magazine! There is a long list of places I told myself that would be visited in this lifetime. After getting married the wife was told about this long list of items. She was not aware of most these places. The kids would shake their head and go "no wonder you two are married.. there is nothing in common between you two! Appa raves about all these places and you have never heard of them!". Needless to say, when it came time to visit any of these places, the kids would give excuses to bail and it was my darling wife that would actually force them to come and also plan the entire thing.

She got tired of me mentioning Iguazu. She did her research, found that this was in the middle of the amazon jungle, part of this visit involved a boat tour that was dangerous, vegetarian food there was going to be a challenge and there were insect bites to deal with (which was a strict no no for the little one). In spite of all this, she did an amazing job booking everything. There were a few last minute twists but we handled them well as a collective, given our last day in Greece during Labor day!

This is going to be a series of blog posts on this trip to Iguazu.. as an added bonus, given we don't visit this part of the world that often, we decided to go to Rio to see "Christ the Redeemer" as well as the world famous beaches there. Then there was Buenos Aires, our first stop before flying into Iguazu at the Brazil Argentina border. 

Given my status as a frequent flyer is questionable, we had to go a week early. The kids were not thrilled with a 9 day international trip the day after they got back home from college. We had both taken the week off before Christmas to beat the crowds and it was a good move, except having to spend Christmas in the southern hemisphere where it is summer and it is not exactly festive like in the northern hemisphere. A summer Christmas is intersting! You start feeling bad for the mall Santa in 95 degree heat!

We made it back from South America in one piece and in good health. A new years party took some of us out. My throat is still recovering and I could not even speak for a few days last week. Thinks are just slowly getting back to normal. 

Word of caution to bay area peeps. Start wearing masks and sanitizing hands again! Did take the covid and flu shots in October. Know this is not COVID or flu but some other respiratory virus that takes aim at the throat. Trying to sing songs I like did not help either (given I sing them 50 times back to back till a version clicks). 

Right now all I can do is type.. hence the blogging to distract myself!

The travelogs follow..

Fun fact: We did not see the glasswing butterfly during this trip.. but we did see the falls in all its glory. Jr. and myself made it to the "Devil's throat" within the falls, which was the real core of that bucket list item!