When you run a blog, you can get a lot of “junk mail.” Mostly it’s people (or software) cruising for links. Their site of choice is part of the form you fill out when you post a comment, and if you accept their comment, the search engines find a link to their site on your site, and it makes them look good. The comments tend to be bland and complimentary, such as “I found your post really helpful for my homework. You must put a lot of work into it.” or, “Your posts are very insightful and clearly represent a lot of deep thought. I really appreciate reading what you have to say.”

Bleah. This site doesn’t have too much deep thought, though I do think it’s a fairly interesting read, and I do put some time into it, both from research and my own experiences.

Normally I toss this stuff immediately into the trash folder. I’m not interested in supporting forex traders or their scams.

But my last post, below, garnered one of these from someone who runs their own travel blog, about Bantayan Island in the Philippines, and the site looks pretty interesting, especially if you’re considering a visit to the Philippines. (Ahem, your Serenity agent can fix you up with a vacation there.) So here’s a photo of the beach:

Sugar Beach in Santa Fe. Click to enlarge.

Looks like a pretty nice place, and the blog seems to be pretty active. Go take a look. http://www.bantayan-island.net/

There. I’ve done someone a good deed. Maybe I’ll go plug this site on that site!

This country has some of the most beautiful, wild places on the planet, and it has a horrible history, and it hosts the location of an extremely dangerous event that hasn’t happened yet. Rwanda, central Africa. Pronounced roo-wanda.

The country experienced some horrible genocide back in the mid 90′s, but that’s over now, and the tourist industry is justifiably growing by leaps and bounds. For the adventuresome.

Normal adventurers

This is the place to go to see gorillas, hippos (the largest hippo-oriented national park in the world), volcanoes (see a couple posts back about a trip to a volcano in nearby Congo), jungle, elephants, and more. Not to mention local culture and art.

Typical art, typical smile.

Almost ready to call your Serenity agent, right? Maybe not a bad idea, but there’s this one lake you might want to stay away from. Lake Kivu.

Looks innocent, doesn't it?

This lake is dangerous. Here’s a quote from a limnologist (lake scientist)

Lake Kivu is a meromictic lake with a relatively shallow euphotic layer (~18m) usually smaller than its oxic mixolimnion (20-60 m), and with a weak thermal gradient in the mixolimnion.

There’s more where that came from, but what’s going on is that this lake has a lot of dissolved carbon dioxide and methane in it, and tons and tons of these gasses are trapped down at the bottom of the lake. Something might make all that gas escape, all at once. The valley would fill with unbreathable gas, and everybody would suffocate. Maybe in their sleep. You might have heard of another lake that experienced a limnic eruption, killing a couple thousand people. This lake is 2,000 times larger and the area is more densely populated. ‘Nuff said.

On the optimistic side, scientists are working at extracting the methane peacefully and converting it into electricity. It could supply power to the region for a century. I’d rather have that happen.

Have you ever been to Rwanda? We’d like to hear about it.

Hey, some people watch TV, I read the funnies. (Takes less time to read the funnies, so I have more time to do useful things, like write this blog.)

So anyway, one strip I read is called Rip Haywire (google it). It’s a lighthearted parody of an adventure comic, like Steve Canyon and Buzz Sawyer back when I was a kid. The art is not nearly as good, but then, Rip is not serious, either. A new story arc started on Aug 16, set “somewhere off the coast of Kaua’i Island.”

Kaua’i happens to be a real place, so let’s take a look at it.

Kaua’i is a little more than 500 miles square; it’s pretty much a big, dormant volcano, the northernmost island in Hawaii.  Still tropical, but everybody speaks English and you don’t need a passport. And they do dumb American things, like pie-eating contests. Coconut cream pie, of course. They call it the garden island, and it’s certainly green. Maybe the island is most famous for being the location of another dumb thing, Gilligan’s island—the pilot, anyway.

The cast

More than 70 other movies were shot there, too. Okay, maybe it’s more famous for Pirates of the Caribbean and the Jurassic Park movies. It really is a gorgeous place. And since we raise chickens, I have to mention that the island has lots of wild chickens.

This is about how many adult chicken we have at our place. Ours are pets that give us eggs; these are wild.

It’s easy to get your Serenity agent to fix you up with a nice vacation there. Maybe you’ll see Rip’s flame-throwing squid.

PS. Wouldn’t you know it—a day or so after I wrote this, National Geographic revealed their photo of the month. It’s a wave on the shore of Kawai’i.

click to enlarge

Your Serenity agent (and all other travel agents) can’t discount airfare, but the airlines can, and they apparently can do it about any way they want, such as offer lower fares from some airports than from others. Makes sense, in a way; after all, distances are different. Just the same, you can fly out of some places for less.

Wanna know which airport of the top 100 has had the largest fare decline in the past year? Mitchell International. That’s in Milwaukee, not exactly local to Delaware. But fares dropped 17% in the last year, on average. Have your Wisconsin relatives come visit you–they can get your friends and family Serenity discount for their motel. You can take them to that place in Philly that isn’t there. Such a deal, huh?

PS: Be alert for the next post–Aug 11. It’ll mention a long-distance trip (as in millions of miles) you can do from your back yard, and your Milwaukee relatives can take the same trip.

If you don’t want to miss the post, click the orange RSS feed icon over there on the left, and it’ll be delivered to you.

PPS: This doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but today’s date is 8-9-10. And less than a quarter past 11 tonight, it’ll be 8-9-10-11:12:13 Neat, huh?

We can’t all go to all these wonderful exotic locations I describe in this blog, but we can look at them. All day, too, if you slave over a hot keyboard at work. If that’s you, maybe you use the Chrome browser, developed by Google itself. (If you don’t, consider giving it a try. It’s clean and fast.)

So here’s the geek part: Chrome supports themes. Themes are visual “trimmings” that change the appearance around the edges of software like browsers and media players. Like putting a skin on your cell phone–doesn’t change how it works, it just looks different. Maybe I should say cooler. Under certain circumstances you can see a background picture in Chrome, and that’s where a travel-related theme is nice.

Here’s the theme for the island of Samosir, northwest of Indonesia.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lhplnmlhhojlffceihlgmenbjgbchhhm

It’s free (beats even Serenity’s prices), and here’s what you get:

Samosir theme in Chrome

Pretty neat, huh? Poke around and you might find some more exotic locations. If you find one you like, put a link to it in the comments.

P.S. On another slightly geeky note, be sure to check the post two days from now, Aug 11. It’s about a special (non-commercial) event on the 12th.