New Zealand: Crossing the Cook Strait again

The Cook Strait, named after the adventurous Captain James Cook, separates New Zealand’s two main islands. Three years ago today we rode the Interislander ferry from Picton on the South Island to Wellington on the North Island. The first photograph shows the last rocks the ferry passes as it leaves the South Island and enters the Cook Strait. I took the second photograph out in the strait 12.5 minutes later.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: more views of the Pancake Rocks

Five years ago today we visited the famous Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki on New Zealand’s South Island.

You can read a little about the geology of this site in an article at Te Ara.

This renewal of pictures from New Zealand reminds me that we can renew something but we can never new something. Likewise we can reveal but we can’t veal; reproach but not proach; retract but not tract; we can replenish but we can’t plenish; etc.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Rainy view across to Panglao Island

On December 21st, 2019, from a window seat at the Lantaw Native Restaurant in Tagbilaran on the Philippine island of Bohol we looked across the water to Panglao Island. Rain softened the view.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

The Chocolate Hills

As you recently heard, on December 20th of 2019 we finally got to make the two-hour crossing from Cebu City to Tagbilaran at the southwestern corner of Bohol. The final stop on our tour that day was a place where by climbing a long stairway to an observation platform we could look out over the Chocolate Hills. In the summer the hills are more chocolaty, which is to say drier and therefore browner, but all I can show you is how they looked in December; what they lacked in chocolatiness they made up for in mist and overcast. Some of the hills are rounder and others pointier, as a comparison of the two photographs makes clear.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Back to my roots on the Bojo River

Okay, so I don’t have family roots along the Bojo River in Aloguinsan on the island of Cebu in the Philippines, but I do have pictures of some wonderfully intricate tree roots from our December 17th boat tour of the river.

Did you notice the snail under the frontmost limb in the third picture?
Click below for more detail.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Bojo River

On our trip to the Philippines we visited the Bojo [pronounced Boho] River Nature Reserve in Aloguinsan on the west side of Cebu. Local residents of what was (and still is) a fishing village have been recruited to guide eco-tours of the Bojo River, and that’s how Eve and I found ourselves on December 17th in a slender outrigger being paddled down the quiet river on a leisurely ride. What botanical purpose the “partially overlapping pancakes” serve in the second picture, I have no idea.

We approached the farthest point on the tour as we neared the place where the Bojo River empties into the Tañon Strait. The rocks on the river banks get steeper there, as the next three pictures confirm.

The “bathtub rings” in the final two photos show how much the river rises and falls with the incoming tide.

Eventually the water got choppy, and it probably wouldn’t have been safe to go farther in such a small boat.
In the distance we could see the island of Negros.

Upcoming posts will bring you more pictures from the Bojo River Nature Reserve.

©2020 Steven Schwartzman

Kawasan Falls

On December 16th we crossed over to the west side of Cebu and went down to Kawasan Falls. It swarmed with tourists, the people who run it charge for every little thing, and the water has been partially diverted from the falls. Nevertheless, here are two views of the place, one vertical and the other horizontal, one full-length and the other truncated, one at a slow shutter speed and the other at a high shutter speed.

Here’s the area adjacent to the falls:

On the walk back I couldn’t help noticing a decaying palm frond in the river that flows out from the falls.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman