Come Away with Caretta Caretta from Adventure4ever on Vimeo.

It does not happen very often that you see Loggerhead ( Caretta Caretta) Sea Turtles in Turkey anymore. After a Gulet Cruise with friends, Jillian Nico and I were hanging out At the Kas Camping when Nico spotted this old Turtle while snorkeling. Exited he called us over and Jillian picked up her Canon G10 with the underwater housing. Given the fact that I did not expect to get any good photo’s without proper experiece on the camera, I decided to try a movie. Here is the result: a gracefull Turtle gently gliding through the water. What a super wildlife experience!

Well my ear is well and truly buggered, but I will be buggered if I am going to pass on a dive with a dolphin. So I brave the stinging salt water that runs into my throat while I pass the 10 meter mark. The dive is not much deeper and a perforation of the eardrum does not actually suffer from the dive, because there is no imbalance of the pressure. Anyway I am sure it is not recommended, but so far… 10 days later when I write this I have no earpain.

The instructions from Gearge the Dolphin trainer of the Dolphin Academy are clear: let her Annie, the dolphin come to you, and don’t start reaching out right away. If you stick to that, she will hang around.

And hanging around she did. For a full 30 minutes she races over the reef like a dog of his leash, to come back to us and play for a while. Soon Annie becomes cuddely with most of the divers, interacting with most of us.

I can immagine how much swimming with a dolphin must mean for autistic children, because by the time I surface I almost feel sane again .  Although Anne Marie of Habitat seems to think I should go for 2 more sessions , to even come close to sanity.

Even though Annie was captured in the wild in Central America, she was trained in a record 6 weeks and goes out to open sea regularly, without wanting to disappear. Dolphins are very intelligent underwater mammals, so I guess if she wanted to get away, she would have done it a long time ago. In the meantime she has convinced me that she is having a good time playing around with landbased mammals of a dive. After diving with an Elephant this is the next best thing I have experiences and I am glad that I decided to withstand the ear trauma.

Annie comes to Jillian for a cuddle

Another year, another dive destination. Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, where 70% of the tourists come to dive…. must be something good then. It has been a while since we were last underwater with a breathing apparatus. I still have fond memories of diving with Rajan, the swimming elephant of Havelock Island in the Indian Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, last year.

This time we are in the Caribbean Sea, and the water is getting to a nice 27 degrees Celcius. From the Habitat Curacao Resort we start with a boat dive on Mushroom Forest.  A beautiful dive site full of mushroom shaped coral formations.

This is the maiden voyage of my new 8″ dome port for my Nikon D200 Ikelite Housing. With the Sigma full feame 12-24 mm mounted, the postbody was not wide enough, so I had my friend Nico Bodewes, widen the port with two mm to accomodate the lens and was able to customize a zoom ring that fit the narrow space.

The Dive is going well, and my ears… always the weak link, seem to adjust well to the local pressure. After a good 40 minutes we surface with many good shots for the story.

The second dive was a bit more eventful than I planned for. Halfway through the dive, a loud zipping noise splits my right ear and the world starts spinning for a while. I signal to the divemaster that I need to go up…. Jillian, my buddy has a new camera, and 2 buddying photographers with tunnelvission, we now find out, does not work as we have temporarily lost contact. Salt water is eating away at my inner Ear and I know I am buggered with a perforated eardrum for the rest of the trip… and months to come. @#$@$#@$

Life goes on and I will have to concentrate more on the landbased photography.

This morning TV brought the first images of the devastating powerful earthquake in Italy’s Abruzzo mountains. Epi centre is the town of l’Aquila where Jillian and I spent a full week covering the regions beauty for Dutch travel magazines. The main story was just about to go to press, but developments in the coming hours as the news breaks, will tell us about the state of the emergency situation there. There are no reports at this time about the destruction of other villages that litter the mountains.

The City of l'Aquila in the Abruzzo of Italy before the Earthquake

The Piazza del Duomo, before the Earthquake struck l'Aquila in the Abruzzo Mountains of Italy

200 Kilometers south of l’Aquila we visited Pasetta, a colourful mountain man who is the grandson of the last wolfhunter of the Abruzzo. Based in the medieval village of Barrea he runs a camping La Genziana. When we called him this morning to check after his health he answered: “Everything is OK here, there is no damage in Barrea. I was doing a pipi this morning when the tremour started, It is not uncommon so I went back to bed.”

Pasetta, grandson of the last wolf hunter of the Abruzzo mountains in Italy

I was just browsing through my archive to research some pictures for a magazine publication, and came across this picture from the Egyptian Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey. The bazaar is known for its oriental spices and pastries and sweets. What less people know, is that it also offers a very succesful Natural Viagra! I guess the salesperson is the best advertisement for the product

At the time of taking pictures, I had to smile about the Viagra sign, as all they sell is a jar stuffed to the brim with nuts and honey, according to the Turks a major aphrodisiac. As my eyes panned to the right I suddenly bcame aware of the big belly and a picture was born. Stealthilly I focussed my wide angle on the honey and the unsuspecting woman became the crown on the picture. I think I am slowly discovering the secret behind the large families, some of whom have up to 12 kids.

Istanbul is a vibrant city and I can recommend anyone to come and see it. Check out all the images in this photo gallery of Istanbul, Turkey

The Riverman: John Ruskey of the Quapaw Canoe Company of Clarksdale Mississippi is the only commercial paddler who braves the currents of the Mighty Mississippi River. Jillian and I joined him on a 3 day trip.

The big old river is known to the locals as ‘off limits’. The currents, whirlpools, eddies, its almighty power of a high volume river, not to mention 2 meter large Alligator Gars that will eat your body once you have drowned in its murky waters, have put the fear of god into the people. This is starting to sound right up our alley!

John is trying to educate the people and show them that if you know what you are doing the river is a beautiful goddess rather then a devils toiletbowl. As long as you have respect for the river it will treat you well and you get to enjoy exploring the sandbars, islands and bow lake swamps full of wildlife. Wild boar, coyotes, beavers, rover otters, deer, ducks and geese are among them. We camp on soft silky sandbars, watch the full moon rise out of the campfire, while John is preparing his favourite blacked Catfish dish over the open fire.

After 2 nights camping in relatively good weather, a storm blows in from the south. Before it can do real harm we get to our landing spot where I come eye to teeth with a ome meter long  Alligator Gar. The juvenile has been caught by a fisherman and left on the bank of the river. No respect for nature! A day later we read about three fishermen who disappeared on the river, never to be found, the day we got out. You’ve got to respect the river and treat her right.

Check out this multimedia slideshow with sound about our trip, You will find out that John Ruskey is also a gifted Blues Musician

It is a gray winterday when we arrive in Clarksdale, first real stop for us on the Delta Blues Trail. We only have one night here so we are trying to get the best out of it. The first big surpise is the Riverside Hotel. The old wooden building was once the only hospital for colored people in the region. Since 1941 however it has been transformed into a hotel by its owner Frank ‘Rat’ (“you are thinking of a rodent! right?”) Ratcliff. Rat has had the cream of the crop of blues and rock ‘n roll artists stay at his place. Proudly Rat shows us around the Riverside hotel. Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, JFK Junior, The blind boys from Alabama, Sam Cook, they all stayed in one of the cosy rooms filled with furniture from Rat childhood till present

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Rat sure knows how to make people feel at home. In the corner of his ‘office’ stands a guitar for general purpose use. When joining him on the old couch, he tells stories about times long gone…. or are they? Recently Clarksdale started to climb out of recession as tourism is slowly starting to pick up on the great number of Juke Joints and blues bars.

from thursdays to sundays, every place in town has live music. It is Saturday night so we dicide to paint the town. First is the well known Ground Zero Blues Bar, owned by Morgan Freeman, who obviously next to affinity with Clacksdale also saw the possibilities to do something here. Ground Zero has managed to attract big names as well as local talent  to perform life. Tonight is quiet, although there is nothing wrong with the quality of the band. A group of young women are dancing while others play a game of snooker or chat at the bar.

At 1130 we decide to check out Red’s bar. This is a real Jukejoint: The dark place where the band is lit by the neon light on the wall, and with only 2 meter to spare between the band and the bar, you are immediately surrounded by the blues. 50 people would probably more than fill this place up to the brim. Red, owner of the club, has been drinking tonight and decides to give everybody shit. Most people just ignore him and enjoy the battle between the guitar and the harmonica.

Here in Clarksdale, the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the blues became big. It was here on the crossroads of Hwy49 and 61  that the legendary  Bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his gifted guitarplay. It was here, where Muddy Waters Grew up in the cottonfields to become one of the biggest heroes of the Delta Blues. It is here, where the Blues tradition is passed on to the next generation. It is in their veigns and part of their DNA. Being in Clarksdale was a unique experience and I know for sure that I will be back here some day.

I just picked up some software called Soundslides Plus for evaluation. The plan is to start producing multimedia content for websites. This is what I came up with after playing with the software for an hour.

The best way to get rid of a jetlag is to dive into the nightlife. And that is exactly what is expected of us. So we scour the clubs on Beale Street for new young talented bands, who compete for the title of ‘Best BLues Band’. In BB Kings BLues club we find a Trio of Poles, named the Boogie Boys, listen for yourself……..The Boogie Boys from Poland

A great performance to get us into the mood for the rest of the trip. This video is taken with Jillians new Canon Powershot G10. Think of the difficult light situation in which this was taken and watch in High Quality to hear the great sound  that comes out of this little cam. I am pleasantly surprised with the overal quality of the camara. Did you see jillian dancing at the end of the vid? Look again!

Finally we are back online with our blog. I spent hours to make this blog fit in with the rest of the site, and off course our Photoshelter archive . The archive came online last november after Digital railroad went belly up.

So now that the archive is online again and the blog is up and running, we can finally start working on the things we really like to do: Searching out the latest adventure, travel, and diving stories for you.

Next week we will travel to the Deep South of the USA. Jillian and I have been invited to cover the Memphis International Blues Challenge. Being a blues buff myself I really wanted to go there, but working mainly for adventure and travel magazines, the question is: how are we going to get any publication guarrantees on the music theme?

After shaking the publication tree we managed within a very short period of time to get 4 commissions in 3 countries. So in the coming weeks you can expect to see our coverage of the Southern US states of Tennessee, Mississippi and Lousiana. We will follow the music from the soul to the rock ‘n roll, via to Mississippi blues to the Cajun and Zydeco music of Louisiana, to end in the music capital New Orleans. There is too much to do and see in too little time, so lets hope that the itineraries for the next 2 weeks work out.

Oh yes and lets not forget the fact that we will also be Canoeing on the Mighty Mississippi River and in the Cajun swamps of Louisiana.