The Carpet Museum and a Walk on the Boulevard

The shopping mall on the Boulevard

Next up on the agenda was the Azerbijani Carpet Museum.

Why, you may ask. Carpets are an important part of Azerbaijani cultural tradition, The Caucasus region was one of the first places on Planet Earth (our planet) (the one we call home) to develop a weaving culture. And it's supposed to be a very interesting and, most definitely, it is a unique museum. And I like museums dedicated focus on non-traditional museum things. And, to top it off, it's in a building shaped like what inside: a carpet! Do you need any more reasons than that?

Well, I don't.

The carpet in the foreground of that line features a camel motif. Camels are important cultural symbols. They symbolize humpin' to get through the drudgery of life. Actually, I don't think that's quote it. Endurance, maybe? Prosperity?

And here a room of carpets.

I once was in a room that was fully carpeted. Even the walls were carpeted. But with deep pile monochromatic carpet. It was the Jungle Room in Elvis's Graceland. This carpeted room did not evoke Elvis or Memphis or Graceland. Cool nonetheless.

This museum, by the way, had the strangest photography policy I've yet encountered. Cameras are not allowed. But you were allowed to take pictures with your phone. Just not a camera dedicated to picture-taking. Sometimes I just shake my head ...

You can see the shape of the building -- the side curve -- on these carpet displays.

This one unusually displays humans, instead of the traditional Islamic geometric designs:

The carpets in this section are separated and placed to highlight local traditions in technique and design.

If you want me to explain what local design traditions are evidenced by the above display, well, that's a above my vacation-level pay grade. You're going to have to hire a knowledgeable tour guide for that sort of information and I, not being as into carpet as some who visit this museum, did not do that.

This was a huge carpet with a camp scene (which included people) in the middle surrounded by the geometric design.

This was one of my favorites:

If the price were right, I would buy it and display it in my house. I like the design, I reminded me of an Advent Calendar.

And we will end with this one:

A carpet weaved to commemorate Azerbaijani victory over (who else?) the Armenians in the recent 44-day "Patriotic War" in 2021. Yes, even carpet-weaving can be timely, reflecting current events.

My feet are now getting tired. The sun is getting hotter. Might be time for a mid-day jetlag-required siesta. Instead, I choose to walk the Boulevard.

This is the pedestrian walk along the Caspian Sea harbor. You could call it a "boardwalk," since actual timber "boards" are not required to make a boardwalk in this day and age.

Lots and lots of small stands. Most sell ice cream, or cold beverages, or hot coffee. But there was an old-fashioned shooting gallery:

Do they still have these in the USA? Are have they gone out of favor? But here, out there on the Boulevard, the shooting galley remains part of the fun scene, Children (or adults) shooting ducks and other small objects (Armenians? This is Azerbaijan after all!) for the thrill of it all. 

Art Cotton Candy! Get your cotton candy dyed and sculpted into various shapes, such as green Ninja Turtle. Because if you are going to eat pure sugar, it might as well be dyed.

And here is the Coffee Bus!

I got a chocolate milkshake and lesson in life. What life lesson did I get at a coffee bus? The gentleman working the coffee bus asked me where I was from and I answered "Las Vegas, United States." He got a huge smile on his face and said something about wanting to see Las Vegas. And here's the life lesson. We in Las Vegas keep hearing that tourism numbers are way down and Las Vegas is on the decline. But wherever whenever I travel and I mention that I am from Las Vegas, it always gets a smile and a comment about wanting to visit Las Vegas some day. So things may be down here, but we're not out. Las Vegas is still a place that people the world over love and brings them a smile. Thank you for the reminder, Mr. Coffee Bus.

And, finally, a giant chess board.

Azerbaijanis love chess. And right along the Boulevard is a giant chess set to prove it. Some toddler had been moving the chess pieces around, but obviously the kid was chess-illiterate. He but both black bishops on black squares. A chess impossibility! I hope his parents corrected him.

Getting close to the hotel, I walk the street behind the hotel.

This is the street filled with restaurants with English language names. You might even have to ask for the Azerbaijani language menu. Some international chains (Gloria Jeans coffee, Cinnabon) or stand-alone restaurants evoking American imagery (the bar called "Friends" no thank you). The people working at my hotel told me not to go to the restaurants on this street and, instead, recommending Azerbaijani restaurants in the Old City reached by walking out the front door. Go west! Not east. At least when you're in Baku, staying at The Merchant, and need supper.

Bob Versus The Volcano

Sea turtles all lined up at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach in Hawaii

Today was the day to take a 12-hour tour to see the best of the best on the Big Island of Hawaii.  The 12-hour tour will feature volcanoes, waterfalls, coffee, black sand beaches, lava tubes, and more.  It was a busy last day on Hawaii in Hawaii.

First stop:  a coffee plantation.

This is the Kona Coast and Kona is the coffee of Hawaii.  And on the coffee plantation we saw mango trees (above) and we saw banana trees (below).

Those are apple bananas, not the Cavendish that make up an overwhelming percentage of bananas imported into the U.S.  They make great banana bread.  Well, the coffee shop at the coffee plantation made great banana bread with those very same apple bananas.

What else did we see at the coffee plantation?  Pineapple plants.

Soursop.

Also known as guanabana in Latin America.  And we did see coffee plants:

But no coffee in production.  This is not the season for picking the coffee cherries for those coffee beans inside that get roasted into black magic perfection.  We did get to sample the Kona coffee -- dark roast of course was superior in every possible way to the medium roast -- but there was no coffee under production.  This is growing season, not picking season.

After a stop at a bakery for sandwiches and malassadas, Portuguese sweet donuts.  Which, we learned, are made from the same sweet dough as the Hawaiian bread.  Which is actually Portuguese in origin.  Just adopted by the Hawaiians.  After that, on to the next stop.

Second stop:  Punalu'u Black Sand Beach Park.

Even though there is some sort of monument/memorial/public art showing a child (or what appears to be a child) riding a sea turtle, all the signs agree on this:  do not ride the sea turtles.  Mixed messaging I would say.

The black sand on the beach is awesome.  It feels like sand.  But it's black.  It's from the black volcanic rocks being worn down into sandy powder by the forces of the ocean.

It's still black like lava rock.  I don't think it's silicon dioxide, like regular beach sand.  But it feels like sand.

And, as you can see, there is plenty of black lava rock just waiting for the ocean to pulverize it into black sandy powder.

It's like a real beach.  Only the sand is black.

They have a few black sand beaches in Iceland, too.  The landscape on the Big Island resembles Iceland, too.  Except the sun is much hotter.  And it's tropical.  And it has sea turtles.

Sunning on the beach.

I also believe that the waves pounding the Big Island are far more surf-able than those of Iceland, although there were no surfers out at this particular beach on this particular day.

But the waves were gnarly.  As the kids would say.  If the kids were surf dudes stuck in the 80s.

Third stop:  Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

This was both awesome and disappointing.  First, the awesome.  The star volcano here is Kilauea.  As is true of all volcanoes on the Big Island except for an extinct volcano in the far north, an eruption does not mean an explosion of lava and ash shooting out the top, as we typically think of a volcano.  Instead, there is a massive crater filled to the brim with molten lava.  At the very top, a skin has formed so you do not see the red molten lava.

But you do see sulfur dioxide steaming out of cracks in the lava.  There is so much lava in this mountain that when Kilauea erupts, the lava spews from some fissure in the ground which might be several miles away.  It just depends on where the weak points can be found in the nearby portion of the earth's crust when Kilauea is ready to spew.  So we did not get to walk next to a flowing river of red molten lava.  Which is what I was expecting.  Because I've seen the pictures of that.  But that would only be during an eruption and the latest eruption spell ended a few days ago.  And it most likely would not be right around the crater, but at some fissure point several miles away.  In other words, I did not get to walk next to a river of molten lava as I had hoped.

This is the "rain forest" side of the Big Island.  Kona is on the western, desert side of the island.

So while I did not get to walk next to a lava river, I did walk through a lava tube.

It was not the same experience as walking next to a river of lava, but it was the best that I could do on this trip as far as getting up close and personal with a volcano that had only stopped erupting two days prior.

Fourth stop:  Rainbow Falls.

At this point we are on the far eastern edge of the Big Island, just past the City of Hilo.  It is green.  It is a rain forest.  And, most importantly, it has water.

Oh, and it has a few giant banyan trees next to Rainbow Falls.

You can't have a waterfall without water.

And that's why there were no waterfalls until we got to the wet side of the Big Island.

Fifth stop:  Akaka Falls.

Longer walk.  But through very interesting vegetation.  All for a much taller waterfall.

Unfortunately, for photography purposes, it was impossible this time of day to snap a photo of Akaka Falls without shooting directly into the sun.

 

I did get a few pictures, but not-so-great.

And, of course, the photos were shot at a distance to get the entirety of these rather high falls into a single shot.

Sixth and final stop of the day:  Waipi'o Lookout.

This is overlooking the sight of a village that was wiped out in a massive tsunami in 1946.  You can drive down there, but the road has a 25 percent grade.  And is a single lane, with no visibility as to what or who is coming in the other direction.  I'll stick to the lookout point.

And this concludes the Hawaii getaway vacation 2025.  I've now gone to all 50 states.  Time to continue seeing what's there in the rest of the world.

Day 10: My Visit to a Coffee Farm (Where I Wear a Funny Costume)

A burro! Just like in the old Juan Valdez commercials

Day Diez of La Gran Aventura Colombiana.  This day will feature the final bit of organized touring:  my visit to a coffe farm operated by RECUCA, Recorrido de la Cultura Cafetera.  The purpose of the tour is to learn about the region's most important crop and to see how things were done in the old days of coffee processing.  For those of you reading this from the comfort of the Beaver Valley region of Pennsylvania, think of this as my field trip to the Old Economy Village of Coffee Culture.

But first it was time to pack up and say good-bye to the Hotel del Campo outside Quimbaya.  It was a beautiful, albeit isolated hotel out in the middle of farm country.

Hotel Del Campo

It even had a parrot loose on the premises, which is (almost) always a good thing.  The big blue parrot hung out in this tree.  See if you can spot him:

A parrot! In a tree!

From there it was an hour-long drive closer to Armenia to the RECUCA demonstration coffee farm.

Entrance to RECUCA

It's the off season, so it was only me and my translator-guide when we got there.  Oh.  And a cat.  Asleep on a saddle.

A cat. On a saddle.

This was noteworthy to me because I have seen VERY few cats in Colombia.  Hundreds of dogs.  Colombia is most definitely dog's country.  But this was, I think, only the second living domestic feline I have seen all trip (not including the jaguar imagery in the San Agustín statuary).  At least I think this cat was living.  It was still there two hours later at the end of the trip.

We saw coffee plants:

Coffee

We saw baby coffee plants being germinated in river sand:

Baby fetal coffee plants

We saw coffee-covered hills:

A view of the coffee plant covered hillside

I learned how and why Colombian coffee is the richest coffee in the world.  (Juan Valdez was an advertising masterpiece.  The guy has been off TV for 35+ years and those of my generation still remember what he looked like and his advertising slogan.)

And why is Colombian coffee the richest in the world?  Arabica beans.  Arabica coffee will grow only between 1000m and 2000m above sea level.  So they don't grow cheap, nasty, bitter low-elevation Robusta like they do in Brazil (World's #1 coffee producer) or Vietnam (#2).  They don't sun dry the Arabica like the Brazilians or Africans who grow Arabica do.

From there, it was time to learn about coffee processing.  And while those cheap nasty Brazilian and Vietnamese knock-off coffees can be harvested by machine, Colombian coffee must be hand-picked.  And that the first step in coffee processing:  the picking.  I was directed to go out into the fields and hand-pick only the best, the richest Colombian coffee, which I did:

Dressed in my coffee-picking clothes

I dressed for coffee picking in my coffee picking clothes!  Which consisted of protective sleeves, a big ol' bandana/poncho for my head, and a bucket strapped to my waist.  I've come around on wearing funny costumes (and headgear) when I travel.  I used to think that I was "too cool" to do such things.  But then I realized that you can't be "too cool" if you're not even "cool" in the first place.  I've got no "cool" to lose!  So why the hell not!  Dress me up in a funny costume to experience the full tourist experience.  And if the funny costume has funny headgear, even better!  Wearing this coffee-picking outfit makes me no less cool than I already am. 

Assisted by a young man in the traditional Juan Valdez costume

Still, I was so slow searching around the bushes for the bright red coffee cherries that the young man leading the tour -- he's the one in the traditional Juan Valdez garb -- starting helping me with the picking, figuring I'd be there until 8:00PM the next day picking enough to proceed to the next step.

And the next step was separating the bean from the pulp of the coffee cherry.  Originally this was done mortar and pestle style.  Then this ingenious machine was invented to separate them with the turn of a crank.  I'm not sure how it worked, but it did.

Cranking the separatin' machine

As you can see, I am very happy about that.  Once separated, the beans are set out to dry while the pulp is taken away to compost, to become part of the organic fertilizer for the next year's crop.

Coffee being dried

The dried beans are what is shipped.  The roasting is not done on the farm because that typically is done by the buyer, in accordance with local tastes.  Still, to sample the coffee from the RECUCA farm, they did roast and grind some beans to what I would guess would qualify as a "light city roast," still a crayon brown and not the deep blackish brown of a good French Roast.  The young man in the traditional Juan Valdez garb went through an elaborate process to brew up three cups of fresh coffee for me, my guide, and our driver.

Home-brewed

It was good coffee.  Less strong than I like, but absolutely no bitterness.  You wanna know why?  They only used 100% Colombian coffee.  The richest in the world.

And that concluded the organized touring part of La Gran Aventura.  I was then driven to the Armenia bus station and put on a bus bound for the big city of Medellín, my final stop on this nearly-completed trip through Colombia.