NOTES, COMMENT AND BUZZ FROM EUGENE KASPERSKY – OFFICIAL BLOG
April 9, 2013
Search engines will lead you to sites claiming that the “blood of the Earth” is oil. Don’t believe a word of it. The blood of the Earth in fact looks like this:
Here we are, April, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, checking out the Tolbachik volcano erupting – on a long-weekend trip. It’s a long way to go for a long weekend, but for me and crew – it sure was worth it.
April 4, 2013
Aloha everybody!
Should fate ever be so mean to you as to see you dropped all of a sudden on the island of Maui of the Hawaiian archipelago – don’t feel too hard done by. You’ll find something to do there.
First, you’d need to learn a bit of the local dialect:
March 29, 2013
I’d long wanted to return to California’s oldest giant redwood park. I was first here in something like 1997, 15 years ago – and have cherished the experience ever since. And here I am again! Back in the Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The brain struggles to take in the size of these trees, the biggest in the world. They’re bigger than… Atlas – supporting the sky on their branches… Forgive me for getting all mythologically romantic and lyrical, but there’s no other way to convey my emotions.
As touched upon in the recent Golden State & Golden Gate post, the giant redwood– otherwise known as Sequoia sempervirens, coast redwood or Califiornia redwood – can live (with a bit of luck) for more than two thousand years! The tops of these trees are waaaay up somewhere in the sky – more than 100 meters above the ground! One of the fallen giants has been cut into cross sections and different epoch’s rings are indicated show when and where major historical events occurred.
March 28, 2013
Hi everyone!
I’d always dreamed of one day walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco – and recently, I’m glad to report, that that dream came true! Traversing the Bay took about an hour (with plenty of stops to soak up the views and take some photos) – from south to north (where I met my fellow frequent travel partner T.T., who was also in a rental car).
March 15, 2013
Day 3. Geothermality.
At last! The time has come to move onto the most interesting bit (at least, for me!) of NZ – of which there happens to be plenty.
Our route was planned thus: from underwhelm-ness, via mid-whelmness, and on to overwhelm-ness, along hundreds of miles of road surrounded on both sides by luxurious landscapes and a continuation of the inevitable – scads of sheep.
Our third day in NZ served up the following for our touristic pleasure: geysers, hot springs, cauldrons, pot holes, fumaroles, and other assorted volcanisms and geothermality – all unconditionally mandatory for visiting and studying more closely.
More: Geysers, volcanoes, a frying pan lake, and pancake rocks…
January 22, 2013
Towards the back end of last year, a group of like-minded souls – yours truly included – suddenly decided to drop everything – well, most things – and carefully study the country that calls itself New Zealand. But why? And who are these like-minded souls? These questions, and others, will be answered right here, right now…
More: 2 x 30+ hour sets of flights, 6000+ km traveled on NZ roads, and 17 days in NZ …
November 29, 2012
Salam folks!
My list of the countries in the world I’ve been to has just had a +1 – Morocco. My total now comes to 72, including Antarctica. Kind of sluggish plusses of late being added to this list, but I guess that’s mathematically unavoidable the longer the list gets, and of course the list takes no account of the multiple repeat trips I make to a handful of countries…
So here I am in Morocco – in the city of Marrakesh (sometimes referred to as Marrakech, but never Marakesh/Marakech!). We had our annual European Partners’ Conference here. We normally have this somewhere on the European shores of the Mediterranean, but this year we fancied having it over the other side of that pond – on African shores. The conference was great – dynamic, fun, useful, interesting and entertaining. And an F1 replica racing car was present for the occasion.
But that’s all you’re getting re the business bit of the trip. Now for the cultural bit…
November 12, 2012
Northern Arizona is famous for its astounding landscapes. In a relatively small area that can be covered in a car in just two or three hours there are three unique red rock formations.
First, there’s the world famous Monument Valley, offering breathtakingly beautiful panoramic views. Alas, we didn’t manage to get up close to it ourselves – only flying over it on a plane; but that was still enough to overload the senses with the place’s grandiosity.
Second, there’s Antelope Canyon. This is a mind-blowing slot-canyon – a big crevice in red sandstone. This is how it looked:
July 23, 2012
Howdy all, from the village of Paratunka! Here we’re at a small hotel that has warm water springs in its grounds that flow into natural swimming pools. All ecological, none of that horrid chlorine, and great fun! Paratunka is near the end tip of Kamchatka, in the far-far-far-east of Russia. The hotel was nothing special, but that didn’t matter. The only things that did matter were the nice warm temperature and freshness of the water in the hotel’s pools.
June 19, 2012
Jerusalem, the Living City, is older than almost all others that have survived to the present day, older even than Rome, and a couple of millennia older than some of the world’s oldest cities. Only a few others can boast of such a history… the likes of Jericho, Babylon and Yerevan, for instance. But it’s surely true to say that Jerusalem is the oldest among the “big ticket” world cities, and as such it’s one of those places you have to explore at least once in this life. And it’s not just a place for strolling the streets – it’s worth descending underground, since the caves are now open for visitors. I was there recently – these are old sewage tunnels which were discovered not so long ago, enmeshing the whole city like a web. They are more than 2,000 years old!
