What's the link between blogs, elephant stew and travel?
Blogs, Elephants and Travel
There's a link between blogs and travel, after all there are so many travel bloggers. You won’t believe how many blogs there are about elephant stew, though! But all three? I'll tell you what the connection is - at least, my version of it.
My favourite mountain and where I spent my childhood
We traveled long before blogs were started. There was no Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. We didn’t even have selfie sticks. Oh, wait a minute, come to think of it we did have a form of social media. It was postcards! It took a while though, for the message or photo to get to the other person.
As a traveler, if you were conscientious you would jot down snippets of the highlights of your travel on notebooks or journals. Some of those journals were bound in leather and are probably now collector’s items, if they’re from famous travelers.
I never had the intention of doing that . My journal was a few of the many photographs I took. Picture a spool of 36 potential photos extracted from your camera. You hand them in to be developed. Upon return half had to be discarded after printing because they were a blur - no opportunities to check like you do with a digital camera. The good ones were put into a photo album if I was seriously industrious. That happened for the first couple of years.
As our travels continued and we usually developed the film – yes – those funny rolled up tubes of transparent film. They made you look all spooky if you peered at the negatives of yourselves after they'd been developed. Why did we even look at the negatives? To make sure all the photos were developed - even the really crappy ones - hoping for miracles that you’d taken better photos.
We had the photos printed, drooled over them and reminisced about the fun or adventures we had. They stayed in the little envelopes they were placed in after they were developed – you know, those ones with Fuji or Kodak printed on them.
Some photos were even placed in photo albums! Soon we realised those albums would need a room of their own for storage because they were piling up.
Periodically we bored our family and friends with entertaining tales about our trip, at least, that is what we thought. We were convinced they would love to hear about them. They unquestionably rolled their eyes and changed the topic when we discussed anything about them. You see, I watched them closely and saw their reactions.
Great style
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In our later travels, we changed to digital cameras. That made life so much easier, because you created a file and just stored the photos in there. I think we started off with a hard drive containing about 250MB. Today? Well, the biggest external hard drive we have at the moment is 2TB. Those old hard drives would today barely hold a few documents.
Even better...
It wasn’t long before I realised that if our family and friends didn’t want to listen to our travel stories, I could create another audience.
I’m passionate about traveling and touring. Whether it be long trips or short trips. During those times we indeed had some interesting moments. At least, we thought so and maybe a selective few people did, because they had a good chuckle. Sometimes they glared at us with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. Maybe they were just being kind to us and showing they were interested.
At the crossroads
That spurred me on and I thought it time to spin a web in the virtual reality world. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to let our stories pounce around in the global cloud on their own journeys?
The only problem was if I wanted to tell all our travel tales and use old photos, they were either grainy or faded. Some of them even stuck to the sticky surface between the plastic cover and the page in the photo albums. I persevered and scanned a few into a digital format. Voila! I could attach them to my blogs. Not the best photos, I know, but at least there is a visual record.
Some curios along the way
The next thing was to write about our travels. I’d found a new passion. I discovered that I love telling stories. Some are fact and some are fiction. The travel stories obviously are fact and later I will expose you to some of my fiction stories.
Always some entertainment to watch
I didn’t have a clue how to build a website and found a communal travel blogging website, did some homework and started there. That was the beginning of my blogging career.
Dhow in the bay at Vilanculos, Mozambique
Long boats, Phi Phi Island, Thailand
Red Sea, Egypt
Phuket, Thailand
Succulent display at a market
Sydney, Australia
Praslin, Seychelles
Mount Coot-Tha
Brisbane, Australia
A pirogue in Madagascar
Lake Windermere
Lake District, UK
Canberra
Naturally I got greedy. A communal webpage wasn’t enough. I wanted a webpage of my own. I dreamed about this for years; made notes, hinted about it amongst my family and eventually my eldest son must have rolled his eyes or grew tired of my hints. He bought me my domain name and initiated my webpage on Squarespace. Then he threw me in the deep end and said: ‘There you go, mom. You wanted it – you do it!’
Three months later after starting my webpage, it was still a huge learning curve. I’ve tackled this blog page like one would make an Elephant stew.
UPDATE: It is now 6 years later and I’m still learning. There is still so much to learn every day but I’m loving it! During that time we have had many more great adventures.
How do you cook an elephant?
Recipe included
Here’s my take of the recipe if anyone is interested.
(Disclaimer: This is a joke. We love our animals. Yes, people have been known to cook elephants; in fact they still do. I am a firm believer that you only hunt for the pot or out of necessity.
It is not necessary for me to eat an elephant, I’ll stick to other delicious delicacies. We need to continue protecting our elephants in their natural habitat which could be on a game reserve or park, private or national. Elephants do need to be culled from time to time, though, as they can wreak havoc if there are too many of them in those areas.)
This is a tongue in cheek recipe which I hope will make you smile.
Elephant Stew
Serves about 3,500
Preparation time: 2 to 3 months but could take longer
Ingredients
1 Elephant
10 Warthog
2 litres of olive oil
1 wheelbarrow of onions (don’t be stingy, fill the barrow till it overflows)
20 cloves of garlic (or is it buckets? Oh, well, what the heck, just add to taste)
100 kilograms of tomatoes
half a ton of potatoes
10 kilograms of salt
3 kilograms of pepper
10 litres of vinegar – preferably balsamic
15 litres of chutney – a vital South African ingredient – no potjie is complete without it
4 Guinea fowl (if expecting a bigger crowd)
2 hares (optional)
5 bottles of Pinotage – (reserve four for drinking)
Method
Set a trap for the Guinea fowl – this will save time. If you’re short on time, it is advisable to set a trap for the warthog too. Once the traps are set, hunt the elephant. This could take a while, considering you might have to evade anti-poaching rangers and possibly even a few poachers too.
If you get detained, by the time you’re released, the warthog and Guinea fowl should be safely trapped. Hang Guinea fowl to ripen and marinade the warthog in one litre of olive oil.
Return to hunting the elephant if you have had no success. This time you should have the necessary evasive skills. Make sure to preserve the tusks and take them straight to the police station but don’t hang around or you may be detained again.
Cut elephant into edible chunks. This will take about 3 weeks if you’re handy with a knife. Make a fire and find a large three-legged pot. You may need a 200 litre drum or two, depending on the size of the elephant. Boil the elephant, keeping the flames going under the base of the pot. This process will take approximately 4 weeks so don’t forget to feed the fire.
Just before the elephant is tender, brown the warthog in a separate pot and add to the elephant stew. Boil for another two days. Sauté the onion and garlic, until nicely browned. Add this with the rest of the ingredients including the guinea fowl to the elephant stew and boil for another day.
You should now have a rich, tasty stew. For the final touch you may add the rabbit and boil for a few more hours but this is entirely optional as most people don’t like to find hare in their stew.
Enjoy!
Recipe Card
Not planning to cook an elephant? Don’t worry, neither am I.
Back to blogging
I still learn a huge amount every day about blogging but I love writing my stories. The biggest compliment is when complete strangers comment and enjoy reading my ramblings. I’m learning new things by the day and at the same time I can dream about new destinations or still reminisce about all our travels with their great memories and moments.
Someone asked me how I remember everything. I have the memory of that elephant that you may want to cook but it also is a good idea to jot down interesting things you’ve discovered.
Once you start writing, it opens the flood gates and the words come pouring out. Photos help to jog the memory as well. I may not remember all the finer details as I would for a more recent trip but there is enough for me to write about.
Naturally I now make notes whenever I remember to do so, on anything that I can lay my hands on – my cell phone, iPad or notebook (the old fashioned paper variety). Even the odd serviette.
With this blog I’ve added a few photos of some of our travels for future blogs yet to come. To further clear my name, these are some of my numerous encounters with elephants. As everyone in my family knows, I love and respect elephants. I think they are intelligent, intuitive and even astute.
This video holds very fond memories for me:
I hope you enjoyed this blog and some others that I’ve written. Be sure to pass a comment, good or bad. Oh, and BTW, in case you are wondering, I will continue blogging as long as I can.
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