Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese My rating: 5 of 5 stars Verghese was an unknown author for me, so this was a very pleasant surprise. The strength of Cutting for Stone is in how vividly it evokes the places and situations it describes… the Ethiopian hospital, the life of a junior doctor in ghetto…
Swim review: Puerto Arista
Concrete cube, lack of sleep alleviated by nice beach days. But you can do better.
INAH and the colour of the walls
My partner and I are fortunate enough to be able to build a house in the picturesque town San Cristóbal. Alone among every single other house build in our neighbourhood, we decided to apply for a building permit. This involved the predictable queues at the municipality, being tossed from one desk to another, being given…
New fruits!
The serendipitous pleasures of local surprise fruits.
New World mango pickle
Mango pickle experiments on the opposite side of the world from India.
Skeleton doggie
Picnics, flowers, music, death.
Swim review: Zacapulco, Chiapas
Not a single cruise ship docks at Zacapulco, a spot on the sand-spit between the mangrove estuary and Pacific on the Chiapas coast. It’s similar to Boca del Cielo in that it’s got the delta on one side and fierce ocean waves on the other, but it’s closer to Tapachula. To get to Zacapulco, first…
Swim review: Lagos de Colón
Head to Montebello instead.
Run city review: el Lagartero
Don’t go out of your way for El Lagartero.
Climbing a volcano
Normally I’d never consider hiking up a 4100-m volcano, but both my travel companions were so enthusiastic about the prospect of climbing Tacaná on the Mexico-Guatemala border that I agreed grudgingly – provided we could rent a mule to carry the heavy stuff. Three of us, fairly fit people in our early 40s, did this…
It stirs!!
Very satisfying to unlimber my Kiswahili after five years in the deep freeze. In the sediment of the Mariana trench. In the folder at the bottom of the pile.
Books list Q2 and Q3 2018
Pure by Andrew Miller. This actually came about because of a pub-conversation argument, which I lost, about which literary Miller was married to Marilyn Monroe. (It was novelist Henry. Arthur being the playwright of “The Crucible”.) But in the googling I came across contemporary novelist Andrew Miller, and his book “Pure”, about the clearing of…
Cycling the archipelago: tips
Want to bike the loop? Don’t bike the loop. Take the ferry to the good bits.
Cycling the archipelago 5: Nådendal to Åbo and home
A piffling 16 km back to Turku and a morning at the castle!
Ropakanta 