After spending some time at the Treasury, I decided to hike up a bit towards the High Place of Sacrifice. After reaching the top, I was greeted by Ahmed who had a small lean to with a few nick-knacks for sale. After showing me a few “rare and old” coins, he invited me in to have tea with his wife and daughter. While We weren’t able to speak that much, his hospitality was a welcome respite from the early morning heat.

Walking through the Old City in Jerusalem, it’s impossible not to feel the history wash over you. It’s all around in every direction and paints the narrow cobblestone streets and courtyards. Muslims, Jews, and Christians all have thousands of years of history here and it’s evident at every turn. This is just one of the beautiful and intricate doors I encountered on one of my many trips through the Jewish Quarter.

During our first dive on the fifth day of my trip to the Maldives aboard the M/V Carpe Vita, we head to a local manta cleaning station. The current was really moving that morning so we had to do a negative entry in to the water in order to get down fast enough and not miss the dive site. Getting down was a challenge as the current was ripping.  I’d guess somewhere around 30 miles per hour. It was by far the most current I’d ever been in and a bit nerve wracking. We finally made it to the bottom and all hooked in to whatever we could find to keep us from blowing away. Just as soon as we hooked in, the mantas started to line up. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was just like a car wash. The mantas would line up single file and wait to be cleaned. Each manta would stay for a minute or two and then fly off and swoop around to the back of the line. During the time we were there, six mantas came through the cleaning station. It was an amazing sight to see and I can’t wait to head back again.

In addition to the last video showing the bulls coming through, Michael and I set up a fixed camera on the balcony that overlooked Dead Man’s Corner and captured everything from the preparation, the runners setting up along the streets, and finally the Running with the Bulls as well as the aftermath of the event.

Here’s a short video of a formula one pit stop during the Valencia Street Circuit race of the European Grand Prix. The race was simply amazing and the pit crews work with split-second timing to get their drivers in and out of the pits as quick as possible. A fast pit stop lasts about 5 seconds from stop to start. It’s impressive to see in person as there are approximately a dozen members of the pit crew involved.

While in Valencia, Sherry Ott allowed me to tag along with her as she was treated to the F1 race courtesy of Tour Spain and Valencia Tourism who were also gracious enough to let me stay and play with them.

While settled over 5000 years ago, Jerash came of age during the Greco-Roman period and was also known as Antioch on the Golden River. Jerash is considered one of the most important and best preserved Roman cities in the middle east and was a city of the Decapolis. Jerash was directly in the center of the action in the Syrian Province and the throughout the Roman empire, the forum in each city was the center of Roman public life. At the southern end of the cardo maximus near the Temple of Zeus, the forum in Jerash stood out from other cities in that it was designed as an oval and was nearly unique in the Roman empire. Used for everything from victory processions and elections to public speeches or criminal trials and even gladiatorial matches at times; it was the center of commercial and public affairs.

So I’ve stopped in to Male for a few days before heading out on a diving trip aboard the MV Carpe Vita. I wasn’t that interested in hanging out in Male as I’d heard it was notoriously expensive, but was even less thrilled about hanging out in Colombo.

While I’ve only been here for two days, here are my first impressions of Male:

This has been a challenging city for me and possibly the most challenging I’ve encountered so far. Jakarta was an intimidating city, but thanks to the help of my friend Adri, I was able to get around while I was there. One of the reasons it’s so difficult is that very few people speak English and even those that do struggle at it. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in a place where I’ve had to work so hard to communicate so little. Trying to get a taxi to a restaurant across the island on my first night took three people and five phone calls and resulted in the guy from the front desk holding up his mobile phone for the taxi driver to get directions from the hotel owner. Besides the language barrier I’ll soon explain another complicating factor.

Walking around the past few days, I’ve also felt like people here just aren’t as friendly either. I’ve just come from Sri Lanka and it’s possible that the overwhelming kindness and friendliness of the people there have probably skewed my judgement. The people here certainly aren’t hostile by any means, but there is a look of suspicion and caution as I walk down the street as opposed to the easy grins I’ve seen everywhere else in Asia.

As I’ve walked around the city, I’ve noticed there is a tremendous amount of shopping here which I find surprising for a country that produces next to nothing. The most common shops I’ve seen walking around are shoe stores, personal hygiene stores stocked with every kind of shampoo,  deodorant and perfume possible and hardware store. There seems to be a hardware store on almost every block. But, hardware stores make sense to me since everything seems like it’s under construction. There’s rarely a building I pass on the street that doesn’t look like it’s in some state of repair and since the island is only 2.23 square miles and there’s no room to build out, everyone is either building up or refurbishing existing space.

This leads me to my favorite discovery about Male, there’s no traditional street and address system. While all the streets have names, there’s no specific order to them. Also, there are no numbers on the buildings. When you build or buy a property, you simply choose a name for your house or building and then register it with the city. It’s amazingly haphazard and the only way to tell people where you live is to tell them it’s near an older building or a shop or hopefully something significant. This has got to be challenging for the taxi drivers and postmen to always have to learn new names for each building.

Speaking of taxis, my second favorite thing about Male is that a taxi ride anywhere on the island is 20 Rufiyaa. The have a set rate system here for the taxis one stop, 20 Rufiyaa, 2 stops 40 Rufiyaa. Since it’s such a small island, there’s no need for a meter. It’s brilliant and is a welcome departure from all the haggling I’ve had to do as I’ve made my way across Asia.

Lastly, I’ll say that almost everywhere you look, you can see the ocean. It really is a very small island and walking to the “shore” provided me with a breathtaking view of the ocean, it was also easy to see why Maldivians are so concerned about global warming and rising water levels. The whole island is surrounded by jettys and manmade breakers with the top of the breakers only about a meter higher than the high tide line. There really isn’t much room for error here and as I’ve asked people about the 2004 tsunami, I’ve learned that two-thirds of Male was flooded and some of the  low lying islands were completely submerged at the peak of the tsunami. While I hadn’t planned it, much of this trip has been to areas that were deeply affected by that tsunami and I’ve still got a few more places to visit.

Sigiriya is a towering rock fortress and former palace in north central Sri Lanka that was built over 1500 years ago. The entire complex was built by King Kashyapa (AD 477 – 495), and after the his death, it was used as a Buddhist monastery until 14th century. This is a small panoramic showing approximately a 90 degree sweep of the valley surrounding Sigiriya.

Click on the link for a larger picture.

As we begin to descend, I vacillate between giddiness and curiosity. Thousands of images I’ve seen of Raja Ampat over the past 3 years dance through my head, but I’ve also never been on a liveaboard and don’t know what to expect. Like the takeoff, the landing is pretty rough and sends the plane bouncing up and down and teetering back and forth. Everyone lurches forward to grab the seatback for stability and we brace ourselves and hold on. It’s a bittersweet reminder of what I’ve been through to get here over the past few days, months, and years.

Off the plane, down the air-stairs, and across the tarmac to a building smaller than some outhouses I’ve been in. Crossing the threshold, I’m accosted by an overwhelming wave of humidity and sweat along with the accompanying odors. Greeted by a swirl of orange and blue clad porters jockeying for customers I make my way to a simple hole cut in the wall to await my backpack.

As I’ve elected to forgo a porter, trying to get within sight of the baggage coming out is near impossible as the porters have staked out the prime positions to retrieve their client’s bags. It’s a painstakingly slow process as every bag and its tag, is checked and re-checked by a half-dozen porters before being passed back to the rest of us.

Deciding to skip the queue, I walk outside and look around as I’m expecting to be met by someone from the boat. I’m not really sure who I’m looking for, only that I hope I’ll recognize them or they’ll spot me. Not seeing anyone, I head back inside once things have thinned out a bit and start to look for my bag. As I’m peering through the cracks between people, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I swing around and see a young, fit, and clearly West Papuan young man with a big smile on his face. He says “Mr. Bruce?”

I’ve gotten used to being called Bruce since I’ve been in Indonesia. Surprisingly, even though there is a hard “K” in Bahasa, when my name is pronounced it’s as if the “K” has taken it’s own holiday. And, even though the name Bruce evokes a feeling of a hairy chested, disco dancing, mustached, Tom Selleck lookalike from the 80s, I don’t mind so much as the imagery it conjures up makes me smile.

I nod and shake his hand and learn his name is Rudi and he’s one of the divemasters aboard the Tambora. He also tells me I’m the second to arrive and that there will be 6 people on the boat for this trip. He says it with a tone that makes me think it’s abnormal so I ask what’s normal. Sixteen is the response. I smile and hope that means I won’t have to share cabin.

After collecting my backpack, we hop in a truck and head for the harbor. Since this trip came about quite quickly, I hadn’t really taken the time to look at any pictures of the boat online. As we get to the “harbor” and hop out of the car, there are a few crumbling buildings next to the water and the only boats I can see are either police boats or single level tourist boats as well as a half sunken tanker. Knowing, hopefully, that nothing I see is where I’ll be spending the next two weeks I nervously ask Rudi where it is. He smiles, grabs my bag, and points toward a few men sitting on a platform under a tree and tells me we have to wait for them to come pick us up.

After a few minutes, a zodiac appears with a few guys from the crew to pick me up. I hop in the zodiac and we head away from the docks and get past the tanker, I can see about a dozen schooners moored up. As we head further out, I ask Rudi which one is the Tambora. He points to a white two-masted schooner with a wooden deck.

As we pull up, a half dozen or so of the crew comes out to greet me. They all clap and yell “Welcome!” as I hop off the zodiac and climb on the boat. I’m handed a cool towel and a warm cup of tea and led towards the main deck to relax in a deck chair. I lean back to sip on my tea, soak up the sun, and I can’t help but grin like a cheshire cat as I can already tell this is going to be the trip of a lifetime.