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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 15, 2022 12:17:37 GMT
Yes I see it now tod but regret I can’t help.
Actually they look a bit like horse chestnut flowers and leaves.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 16, 2022 16:12:55 GMT
Bixa - Mick - Anyone: Photo #8 - the one after the Delicious Monster fruit ( which is edible and has a lovely flavour) The one with the pink flowers. What plant is that? as I have one and cannot find anyone to identify it- Not even our plant nursery. Tod ~~ www.oxleynursery.com.au/plant-profiles/hedging-screening/brazilian-red-cloak/I would give anything to visit that botanical garden! It's huge and lush and seems so visitor-friendly. I love the overhead walkway because of how it mimics the natural shade of trees, plus giving a jungly manmade vibe to the area. Your pictures, again, are great! I think the duck is quite proud of his hairdo & probably has all the Daisy Ducks crowding round. Turtles always look so content when they're sunning. The dry zone area looks rather newly installed, compared to the other areas, but in a year or so should be equally impressive. Oh yeah -- thanks for those overhead shots of Medellin, which really give an idea of its dense sprawl.
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Post by lugg on Apr 17, 2022 20:28:57 GMT
Wow Mark -love the images of Medellin from aloft. And of course of the botanical garden is such a treat. Safe travels .
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Post by tod2 on Apr 18, 2022 14:15:18 GMT
Thank You Bixa!! At last I can tell visitors it's name! It is so beautiful when flowering I am going to attempt propagating a few more from slips. I bit of rooting powder should do the trick.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 24, 2022 19:28:00 GMT
Arrived back from Spain this evening, set off from the house at 8m, arrived 'home' at 8pm after a couple of Turkish Air flights. Then next Friday a long weekend driving to Slovenia and Croatia. I'll get back to this soon. Just a bit left.
I'm glad those in the know are able to identify the plants because there was scant information on the ground. One thing I may not have made clear regarding the views from "above" - they are actually a couple of shots of the hill sides surrounding the city taken from street (tram) level. I did mention going aloft but that is yet to come and to a different garden area that we didn't walk around as it as all jungle. You'll see the views a bit better then.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 25, 2022 5:40:20 GMT
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Post by tod2 on Apr 25, 2022 8:52:01 GMT
Oh dear me Mark. I have never seen graffiti on a plant before! It is totally disgusting but must have been done at a quiet time when nobody was around. It is too big to have been carved into the leaf in minutes. The signs are all very well and good, but its like preaching to the converted. The people who screw things up are not interested in what you have to say or any behaviour that is expected of a normal human being.
The photos revealed a beautiful "Lobster Claw" flower which I first saw in Singapore years ago. Fabulous plant.
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Post by htmb on Apr 25, 2022 8:58:03 GMT
Mark, you seem to have done and seen so much! Sorry if you mentioned this already, but how long was your trip?
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 25, 2022 10:06:06 GMT
Tod, I'm not sure at all about the effectiveness of the sign as people being how they are, some probably never thought of doing it but the sign prompted them to, just to be contrary. No doubt the sign had to be put up as someone started doing the whole thing.
htmb, how long was the trip? Several thousand kilometres. I know though that's not what you mean. I flew from Bosnia on the 1st February to Spain. On the 5th February I flew to Bogota from Madrid. The trip started in earnest on the next day, the 6th. There were stopovers in the major places for a day or two and the last two days being spent in a finca close to Bogota to relax, repack etc etc and some days were all travel, especially the bus journeys but also we couldn't do much on some of the flying days as they tended to leave early afternoon so the morning was spent lazing around and we'd have time for a quick walk and dinner in the evening, hence little was seen that day.
I had to be back in Bogota on the 26th Feb to catch the flight back via Spain to Bosnia. So consider 20 days for the staying in a city or place, travelling around and going between places and a few days either side to get there and back. We're now looking at new places we want to go in the country and tentatively 2025 we'll return. I'm thinking we'll rent a car and miss out on buses and flights as it's ok being somewhere, but with a car we can enjoy the journeys to get there as well. Next year and the year after I'll more than likely resume my solo trips and tend to go for close to a month in February or so - especially in the European winter which I dislike rather a lot. I have a couple of ideas.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 25, 2022 10:30:55 GMT
I’ve seen names carved on Saguaros, the giant cactus you see in Westerns. I’ve also read of them being used as shooting practice for the idiots with guns,
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 25, 2022 11:03:38 GMT
They need to train that iguana to attack the vandals. Oh dear me Mark. I have never seen graffiti on a plant before! People have been doing it to trees for thousands of years, though. I hope I learn to travel for 3 seeks again one of these days. I used to do it all the time in Asia and Australia. Then I started worrying about family too much. Now I don't have any family about whom to worry, but I have not managed to lengthen my trips to even as long as a week.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 25, 2022 14:02:31 GMT
Sign of aging when you can't be bothered to stay away from home too long.
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Post by tod2 on Apr 25, 2022 14:17:02 GMT
Yes you are quite right Kerouac! I had forgotten all about trees, but I was actually thinking about leaves when I saw that terrible scraping of a persons name on that huge one.
My husband has always disliked l o n g holidays and after three weeks gets very itchy to return home. I put it down to the stress of so many places, airports, trains and different hotels in a short period of time. Even though I do ALL the planning and bookings. Now me......I could just go on and on roaming all over.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 26, 2022 6:55:50 GMT
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Post by tod2 on Apr 26, 2022 8:42:16 GMT
That must have been a real eye-opener Mark. It was for me. The first thing I noticed was the trash below where the cable car starts. So far everywhere you photographed has been clean and trash-less. Is this tourist rubbish? The second thing I see are what we call "Shack dwellings" but because our government is so embarrassed at the huge number of these close to the city dwellings, has renamed them "Informal Settlements". We saw the same thing in Rio with the famous favellas, but over the years they seem to be more acceptable. To me it seems that the ruling powers spend money on enormous projects like the cable car, and in our case just lined their own pockets. I cant wait to see what's at the top!
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 26, 2022 13:11:13 GMT
I saw so many favelas (from a distance) when I was in Brazil that all of the construction looks very familiar to me. It definitely shows what the human spirit will do when the only land the leave for you is "unconstructible" hills and ravines. And we all know what happens when there are flash floods.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 26, 2022 15:05:03 GMT
The trash is on waste land and more than likely blown there by the wind. I can't imagine anyone would bother to clean it up like in the rest of the city. You can even see the hillside housing is pretty rubbish free.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 26, 2022 17:46:28 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 27, 2022 5:30:11 GMT
*sigh* As a lifelong gardener, I can vouch that people's indifference to and mistreatment of plants and nature speaks volumes about why the environment is in the shape it's in.
Fantabulous iguana portraiture! Nice birdy, too. That garden must have been a shady respite for you.
Love the cable tram and would love to go on one that covered so much distance.
There were a couple of comments about shack houses, but I don't see anything that looks slummy. A lot of the houses have that look you see in Mexico, where people save money and only build as much house as they can pay for at a time. Maybe not pretty while the work is going on, but much nicer than paying tons of interest on a mortgage. A few of the houses do have a "we made it up as we went along" look.
I like the "shiny sandwich" sculpture. Was it to honor something, or just nice outside art?
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 28, 2022 16:39:03 GMT
No idea what that was but a piece of art. Couldn't see a sign with any info.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 28, 2022 16:41:28 GMT
We visited another couple of places in the city, one being an interactive museum. Unfortunately I was so busy playing with stuff I didn’t really take any photos of note. It was this place and I recommend anyone going there to schedule at least three to four hours to see everything - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parque_ExploraThe other was El Castillo Museum and Gardens. Not so much of a castle, more a large house made to look like one. “Inspired by the medieval castles of the Loire Valley in France, El Castillo was the country house of José Tobón Uribe, a doctor and founder of the Pasteur pharmacy, who commissioned its construction in 1930 to the first office of architects in Medellín, HM Rodríguez. In 1942, after the sudden death of José Tobón Uribe, the Castle was acquired by Don Diego Echavarría Misas and his wife Benedikta Zur Nieden, who expanded the construction and decorated its spaces with valuable works of art, many acquired on their numerous trips.” The weather seemed good so we set off and saw a little wildlife on the way - During the time we spent in and around the house there were glimpses of the history of the last owner, Benedikta Zur Nieden. And interesting it was too. First though we needed to get there from our hotel. It looked easy enough, a few turns here and there but what we didn’t realise is how far up in the hillside it was. I don’t like walking up hills. I had a theory though that if you walk uphill backwards, your brain is confused enough to make you think you are walking more easily downhill. My theory never holds true. I’ll keep trying though just in case it works one time. After some huffing and puffing and Mrs M springing up the hills like a young gazelle, we reached the entrance -
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 28, 2022 16:45:12 GMT
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 28, 2022 16:47:31 GMT
By the way, I'm away again tomorrow for a long weekend. I think I mentioned it. Slovenia and Croatia. Bear with me, we are nearly at the end.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 28, 2022 17:14:50 GMT
Oh, some of that pseudo German architecture is very bad, but that makes it all the more interesting to see it in Colombia.
As for climbing unexpected hills, I have noticed that almost every place in the world tends to hide this small detail unless they have some famous hill climbing device to promote.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 28, 2022 18:03:16 GMT
Inspired by the medieval castles of the Loire Valley in France These are German architecture? I have no idea.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 28, 2022 18:27:54 GMT
Looks very Ludwig II to me. French châteaux don't have all of those pointy hats.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 28, 2022 20:11:08 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 28, 2022 20:13:38 GMT
Absolutely. Almost no pointy hats except for the Viollet-le-Duc fake renovations. Did you search pictures of German castles to compare?
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 29, 2022 5:04:11 GMT
There must be a lot of repetition in those photos of the same building then. But as the 2nd owners did a lot of work to the building and they had strong connections to Germany, maybe it was them that put the pointy bits on later.
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Post by onlyMark on May 4, 2022 6:30:36 GMT
As we return to the front we went in and were immediately told no photos were allowed. I did manage to grab a shot inside the entrance. As well as these two. Don Diego Echavarría Misas and his wife Benedikta Zur Nieden - It seems her intention whilst living there is that she always had a view of turning it into a museum. Hence it was packed out with articles collected from their travels. She was written about some years later because of her character and life - www.otraparte.org/agenda-cultural/literatura/benedikta/The introduction states - “This investigation narrates the life and work of Sophie Benedikta Zur Nieden de Echavarría, a woman born in Herscheid, Germany, but who lived in Medellín for most of her life. She defended with great generosity the artistic, educational and social ideals, which contributed, in a decisive way, to the progress and well-being of the inhabitants of the region. In each of the pages of this biographical work rests the thought and life of a brave and provid woman who lived happily in Colombian lands, but who also suffered deeply from the anguish of her family during World War II in Germany, the tragic loss of her only daughter Isolda and later the kidnapping and murder of her husband, Diego Echavarría Misas.” Their daughter died aged 19 in the US whilst doing her studies. She died of Guillain-Barre syndrome ( “....when a person’s own immune system harms their body’s nerves. This harm causes muscle weakness and paralysis.”) He was a local successful businessman and philanthropist who in 1971 was kidnapped and killed by the "El Mono" Trejos gang in Medellín. The gang had told him to send a letter to his family regarding paying a ransom. He refused and was subsequently killed. His wife, known as Dita, more or less immediately donated the house to the city to be used as a museum and moved into the gatehouse where she lived (I don’t have a date) until the 1990’s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Echavarr%C3%ADa_MisasAfter an interesting wander round, trailed by a guide who sounded extremely bored when telling us about stuff, we went back outside to see the gardens -
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