My daughter asked me why turkeys were called turkeys today and if it was because they were from Turkey. I didn’t know, off the top of my head, so I Googled the question and got the answer. Turkeys were originally from Mexico, brought back by the Spanish, and then sold throughout Europe by Turkish traders.
I mention this because TravelingPirate posted an Experience this week called Pomegranates and Adventure: A story of Turkey. She doesn’t discuss the genealogy of the Christmas roast of choice, but she does give the lowdown on living in Turkey and how it changed her life. It’s well worth a read – with or without cranberry sauce.
Meanwhile, over at Just Back From, Rhoda1 has lost her heart to Madagascar, and in particular, to a cheeky ring-tailed lemur she met there. I don’t think his name was King Julian. Steve48, on the other hand, is back from the top of Win Hill in the Peak District. I think something must have happened to him up there because he has written his Just Back From report in rhyming couplets.
DrG reports back from Chile, both Antofagasta and and Santiago de Chile. The luna landscape impressed him in the former. The café culture and the waiter's patience with his poor Spanish in the latter. Jill Frazier seemed to get by just as well in La Roja, Northern Spain. She spent most of her time drinking wine and eating tapas with the locals in the town’s horse-shaped historic centre.
East Africa seems to be on a lot of people’s mind over at the Forum. Roseattack is having a panic attack about Lyme disease in Tanzania. You can calm her or alarm her here. K4thy, on the other hand, wants you to tell her which books to load up on her Kindle before she heads off to East Africa. Ttbko, in true biker fashion, is looking for roads ‘hanging off the sides of mountains.’ And Lexie wants to know if it’s a good idea to hire a car to see Guatemala and Belize. You can help them all here.
Over at our photography section, there are a lot of photos of coloured leaves. Hardly surprising, the Flower in Power at the Towers announced a mini-photo comp with Autumn as its theme. I shan’t comment on those photos – the Flower gets cross if you wander into her domain – but it would be remiss of me not to point out the other fabulous sets of photos that are not bathed in autumnal hues. Like Peterj2002’s latest selection of shots of wildlife in the Pantanal, SiobhanHall’s images from Europe and DavidHigham’s pictures from the Copper Canyon train ride in Mexico.
I nearly started an international incident when I did that trip when a holidaying American General overheard me bargaining with a local by saying that I wasn’t American. He indignantly asked where I was from. I lied and I said I was from New Zealand.
A week later the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland Harbour.
Just saying.
