Couch-Based Explorations

ANTARCTICA

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ROMANIA

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CZECH REPUBLIC

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CANARY ISLANDS

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MORE CANARIES (check out this whole island...)

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Graphs of Interesting Things through Time

And all of these lists are very worth looking at.
Did you know that Greece is the safest country to give birth in?

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=146#us

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=87#us

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=121#us

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2225rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=2#us

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=23#us

Tasmanian Graveyards and the Huon Pine

The first graveyard we found was in Stanley, which is next to "The Nut" which is a big rock.   We stayed in a nice hotel (Stanley Hotel and Apartments) that was really one of the best nights sleeps we had in Tasmania.  Get Room 8 if available.  It was $70 when we showed up.  We walked around before deciding to stay in Stanley for the night.  We didn't go up The Nut.  We went to the base, and maintained a more or less constant elevation profile to the Stanley Cemetery.  We were reading "The Origin of Aids" (Pepin - great book) and it was an apt place for a read.  It drizzled and that was enough to convince us to stay in Stanley.  There are wooden grave-boards (headboards?) from a very long time ago in there.

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They grow Opium Poppies all around Tasmania.  Very progressive!  It is for making morphine.

Later in the trip, we found another graveyard at an accidental stop.  We had just passed through a confusing "intersection" and needed some GPS arbitration.  So I stopped at a little dirt off-shoot.  I pulled up next to some old large pines and said "huh, that's a gravestone."  And there were a lot of them.  All hiding in the scrub.  All very old.  A 4x4 track cutting between the graves.  We took it all in slowly, aware that both species of snake resident to Tasmania are deadly.

More wooden graves.  Amazingly old.  These are made from Huon Pine, which is obviously really tough wood.  One stand of these trees was found to be a single vegetative expansion over 10,500 years old.  Looks like cedar.

Below is a Google street view of our lucky find, so you can see it too if you go there.  It's called the Zeehan Cemetery.

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Tasmania - Boat Harbour Beach

We stayed at a B&B in ... Wynyard.  But for the last two days we hadn't eaten.  We had ramen and some fresh mushrooms and brocolli.  It was terrible.  We ate breakfast well with some old Australians.  She was loud, he was quiet, so me and her yacked and she told us about Boat Harbour Beach, which was great.

Here is that B&B...  proprietor was not so young-people friendly.  Like, did not offer us food when we told her we were starving after not having eaten all day, and with everything closed.  Also, she pretended like maybe we wouldn't be needing breakfast in the morning, which is totally WTF given that ... oh well.  We did get breakfast, and it was ok.

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Boat harbour beach is shown below.  It has an excellent cafe which serves the most excellent chicken tenders sandwich.  I'm not kidding.  Really the best I've ever had.

The rocks... the ocean was so blue!  And warm even.  Karin convinced me not to bring my snorkel and I admit I listened to her.

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These shots are from Wynyard.

This is a huge broken window with blood all around.  It trailed off to a pool under a bench nearby.

Starving.  Eating raw ramen.  Down by the river.  With drumsticks walking all around.  Christmas in Tasmania is a time of no food for foreigners.  Even McDonald's was closed.  We ended up just starving for almost 2 days.  Eventually we found an open gas station and ate chips and salsa.  Then we found a pub having christmas dinner.  We had to go, it was the only option.  Guess what the bill was?  ........ $70 per person.  And it was the shittiest, most British food I have ever eaten.