nature & scenery

The clouds are down on the mountains but it's wisteria time on the banks of Lake Como. HFF to everyone. Enjoy the weekend.

When I first started working for Blue Circle Cement in 1970 one of my fellow geologists had just come back from an assignment in Langkawi Malaysia. I was impressed by his stories of this island paradise in the Strait of Malacca near the Thai border but never thought I would ever go there. Wind on 10 years & I was living in North Sumatra and discovered that a short flight from Medan to Penang followed by a shorter flight by light aircraft northward would take me to the small airport at Langkawi. It was well worth the trip and the unspoilt island was a delight. It remained a quiet backwater until 1986, when the Malaysian Prime Minister transformed it into a major tourist resort. A large international airport was built and the island rapidly grew as a tourist destination, and by 2012, it received over three million tourists a year.

The Permian El Capitan reef complex in the Guadeloupe Mountains on the Texas-New Mexico border. After the flight from Dallas to El Paso we transferred to the tour bus for a geological field trip around West Texas. As an undergraduate I wrote a long essay on carbonate reefs referring to the Guadalupian El Capitan as the prime ancient analogue of modern build-ups. It was a real buzz to actually visit it and hit the rocks with a hammer!

What a sky! The Penyal d'Ifac bathed in the sunset light. It was known as the Northern Rock to the Phoenicians, the Southern Rock was Gibraltar.

The Window & the Chisos Mountains looking west from the lodge in the Chisos Basin at the centre of Big Bend National Park out towards the Chihuahua desert. The Chisos Mountains are mainly of igneous origin and were erupted and deposited during the Cenozoic. The oldest rocks in the mountains are volcanic ash, mixtures of ash and clay, sandstone, and conglomerates.

We were staying in the Mobil guesthouse in Puncak in the mountains south of Jakarta. This was the view looking west towards Mount Pangrango (3,019 m/ 9,905 ft) a dormant volcanic peak, one of many on the Sunda Arc.

We drove from Johannesburg to Kruger Park for a short break spending just one night at Pretoriuskop in the park. With no particular plan we just drove around for the day and were surprised how many animals were about although we didn't see any big cats. This pod of hippos were lazing about in the river. In fact they are among the most dangerous animals in the world due to their aggressive and unpredictable nature.

Senetti Violet Bicolour.

Walking in the fields off the Berestagi road near Pancurbatu southwest of Medan. We were recce-ing a trail for the Medan House House Harriers in this area. The atap hut has seen better days. In this view there are ground nuts in the foreground, maize beyond, with a smattering of banana & palm trees. The Barisan mountains are on the skyline to the south.