Love Manitoba: Narcisse Snake Dens

In the winter my brother-in-law sent me a link to a set of snake pits, called the Narcisse Snake Dens, that were not far out of Winnipeg and suggested I go.  As the spring approached, I heard many references on the radio, from friends, as well as at other events that snake were beginning to wake up early this year and try to find a mate with whom to reproduce.  Time for another Love Manitoba trip.  

Only one of my Love Manitoba friends was able to make it to the snake dens but we still had a great time.  As we approached the sight we saw small fences, and I am talking small fences, 10-12 inches high, along the highway.  They were so short but meant for the wee snakes we were about to meet, so that they did not meet their death as squashed long meat on the highway.

We parked, gathered our few belonging and noticed that the first thing we forgot was a picnic.  In the heat of a summery May and with tables available we could have brought a light snack or a lunch, which we were not aware as an option.  Shrugging our shoulders and walking on, we noticed several boards pointing out what was in store for our visit.  

There were four snake pits, all active, but with two containing the most number of snakes.  The dirt path led us through and around short trees and bushes to the first deep snake pit.  With a fence to ensure we would not jump in the pit, we saw the following wee snakes.  I was expecting larger ones to be honest having grown up with the images of Indiana Jones falling into the snake pit with huge snakes, or attempting to get out of quicksand with a snake.  Even so, there were A LOT of snakes!!!  

Many bodies and tails.
One wee head.

Snakes all piled on each other in a frenzy.

In view was a pit about 30 feet around with various levels of vegetation, rocks and small alcoves.  In the midst of this natural setting small snakes piled one on top of the other.  The movement of each pile was never-ending and a soon as a pile was created, is morphed into a smaller grouping until only 5-10 snakes were left, then another pile would build a short ways off.  Quite amazing.

We watched the first den and moved on to the second, where the viewers were higher up on a rounded precipice with a fence looking 20 feet down and out about 60 feet out at another area full of vegetation, rocks, dark dirt, and snakes.  

Snakes appeared to be dripping off the edge of the den.

They just kept on moving up, down, around, all over.

The occasional snake took a break and enjoyed some sun.

We were in luck at the second den as an interpretive guide appeared and my friend and I sequestered him for a while and rapid fired questions.  He explained that this was mating season and there were far more male snakes than females, all with the biological need to mate.  As it turns out there is one, ONE female at the bottom of each pile, and HUNDREDS of male snakes on top of her all vying for her attention as she picked a mate.  We asked if she does get to pick and he said yes, that it is in her biological make-up to pick a mate each spring.  He has seen piles as many as 150-200 snakes large.  Imagine being the small wee female snake at the bottom of that pile!?!  Wow!  Animal behaviour.  Quite amazing!

Our trusty park interpretative guide.

Where is the female?  Who knows!

In the third den there was less activity and more individual and small groups of snakes just slithering about.  The snakes had begun their mating early this year but some were sticking to their usual schedule.  

Calm snakes in the sexual storm.

At the last snake pit I took the opportunity to hold a snake that had escaped its thin, small, shallow pit.  With families about, kids holding touching and shrieking, and pets chasing snakes, this pit was active with humans and noise.  

I really liked the yellow and bright orange stripes on the snakes.
Funny enough, my nail polish that day matched.

Many years ago in the 1980's my two mature and extremely cool cousins came to visit and live with us in Belgium for one year.  They flitted about Europe on various travels (while I was stuck going to grade 7, still kinda bitter) returning with trinkets and presents they had purchased themselves.  Cousin Rebecca was obsessed with the recent trend of snake jewelry and purchased herself a snake necklace, earrings and bracelet.  I wrapped the snake around my wrist and it stayed to hang out.  I remembered the jewelry at this moment and took these few pictures for her.  I wonder what ever happened to those pieces?  

My snake skin/real bracelet

The bracelet begins to climb

If you are ever out this way in late April or early May, head to the Narcisse Snake Dens for fun with some little, wiggly creatures that will put a smile on your face.  Remember, snakes aren't slimy they are slithery.  Two very different things.

Confessions of a French Baker

Confessions of a French Baker: Breadmaking Secrets, Tips, and Recipes by Peter Mayle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For this read I going to my local (not French but as best as I can do in Winnipeg) baker to get some bread I can munch on while reading.  I love baking, I just have not baked a lot of bread.  More of a cookie, muffin, squares baker am I.

The introduction is a quick read and several of the recipes look delicious but I am in grad school in the heat of Manitoba.  To cook or to graduate?  Yep, another day, another time in my life I will have a home that smells of a French bakery.  For now, I shall return the book and head to the local french bakery to be a patisserie snob (I lived in Belgium as a pre-teen, I know my pastries).

Let me know of you try baking any of these delicious looking morsels and how it turned out.


View all my reviews

Pro-Poor Tourism

In completing cultural tourism research for my supervising professor, I came upon a travel philosophy called Pro-Poor Tourism.

Here is a well written definition from the website PPT - Pro-Poor Tourism Partnership:

What is pro-poor tourism?

Pro-Poor Tourism (PPT) is tourism that results in increased net benefits for poor people. PPT is not a specific product or niche sector but an approach to tourism development and management. It enhances the linkages between tourism businesses and poor people, so that tourism's contribution to poverty reduction is increased and poor people are able to participate more effectively in product development. Links with many different types of 'the poor' need to be considered: staff, neighbouring communities, land-holders, producers of food, fuel and other suppliers, operators of micro tourism businesses, craft-makers, other users of tourism infrastructure (roads) and resources (water) etc. There are many types of pro poor tourism strategies, ranging from increasing local employment to building mechanisms for consultation. Any type of company can be involved in pro-poor tourism - a small lodge, an urban hotel, a tour operator, an infrastructure developer. The critical factor is not the type of company or the type of tourism, but that an increase in the net benefits that go to poor people can be demonstrated.


No sense in re-writing what is already so well written.

I found this information through a video that piggybacks on the idea of 'this or that'. Meaning, as a member of the industrialized rich world, I can use my money for this thing or I can use my money for that thing, cause, support, service, opportunity. Here is the video titled, Imagine What Tourism Could Do:





In having just watched the movie The Hunger Games, I was disgusted by the people living in The Capitol. Then I realized that in the grand scheme of the real world in which I live, I am one of those people living in The Capitol with colourful expensive clothes, ostentatious hairdos, outrageously large homes, immaculate streets, safe neighbourhoods, busy aestheticizing my life, and my stomach churned. To some people in other countries I, along with others in the developed world, are hoarding resources, money, power, control, all in the name of creating my beautiful life. I then realized that when I travel and I try to buy something in a market, and the first suggested price by the seller is $5,000 for a wooden mask (yes this actually happened) and I walk away shaking my head wondering to whom this individual thinks they are talking, the seller sees me as someone from The Capitol (developed nations), and I had a sense of what it might be like to be from the outlaying districts (developing nations). One group making the rules; the other trying to find then comprehend the rules. A moment where one's life experience clicks with other people's outward perceptions of those experiences.

This is my plug to try and change the balance of this imbalance. Choose a destination for your next travels that actually supports those in the world who live on $2.00 per day. Avoid all inclusive resorts that hide the realities of other people's experiences from your eyes. Participate in tours that support local people overtly. Make choices to spread around some of the money and joy that those paper pieces can bring. Take responsibility for your own tourism and your tourist monetary choices.

Just some thoughts.

Travel as a Political Act, Rick Steves

Rick Steves, a travel guru who has opened up and interpreted European travel to North Americans for 30 years, has written a new book titled Travel as a Political Act.  It is on order at the library for me.  I am the first person in line and very excited to read it.  In addition to the book there is a blog and a video and audio recording of a speech given in California, available through ABC TV.

While I did not agree with everything he said in this video, I do agree with the ability travel has to remind us that our human condition is far more similar than different, and other people who appear different that you or I are not scary and to be feared, but interesting individuals from who we can learn a great deal.  Different lives.  Different choices.  Travel changes your perceptions if you are willing to open to its lessons and get off the beach of a first world resort supplanted in a developing nation.  Get off the beach.  Be brave.  Go further.  

I shall write more when I have read the book.

40 Fun or New Things in 40 Hours

Over the years I have had many friends and family members organize and celebrate wonderful birthdays with me.  Twenty-one roses and 10 helium balloons, a wake, surprise dinners, distracting movies to a surprise party, 24 cupcakes a cake and many family members, and many more wonderful events.

As my 40th birthday approached I wanted it to be memorable and a real celebration of life and the many wonderful experiences it can posses.  As my brain is wont to do, it connected the dots and in a flash I decided I was going to try and do 40 new and/or fun things in 40 days.  Since that seemed a little long and I am poor (in graduate school), the idea shrunk down to 40 fun or new things in 40 hours, faster, zippier, smaller time frame, shorter things.  The planning began.

I sent out invites asking friends and family to send me ideas and let me know if they wanted to do something specifically with me.  Many friends contacted me and participated in the planning.  At one point I was ready to give up but my Love Manitoba friend's, Christa and Stephanie, would not let me.  They planned much of the last minute new things and saved the day!  As well, my sister Lurene flew in from Calgary for the weekend and things I had done before became new because I was doing them with my sister for the first time (freebees).  See how this works.  None of these new things have to be huge, they just have to be inventive and creative.

So in the end, this is the list, most of which occurred the actual evening of my birthday, March 31 at King's Head Pub in Winnipeg.

40 Fun New or Fun Things in 40 Hours:

1. Drinking Chololate

2. Eating Manitoba

3. Eating Bacon Bark

4. Backwards lunch (started with dessert, ended with main course)

5. Wore steel coloured nail polish

6. Had Henna done on my hands

7. Went rock climbing in Manitoba (indoors, there are no mountains or hills to climb here)

8. Attempted geo-caching

9. Received a flower delivery at home (thanks Marcia!)

10. Visited the crazy purple poster shop at the end of Osbourne Village
(turns out it is not my type of shop)

11. Walked down Osbourne Village streets with one of my sisters

12. Received a mug from my sister (caveat: Marcia - another sister - gave me a mug when I was 19 with her picture on it so I would not miss her.  I still use this mug but I received it on Christmas morning, not on my birthday.)

13. I was hit on by a random stranger on Facebook on my birthday (thank you some guy named Richard or Raymond or something)

14. Ate at the Bonfire Bistro

15. Ate at La Bamba (this is where I had the backwards lunch and the item below)

16. Ate tequila ice-cream

17. Purchased rainbow tights (ready for Folk Fest and other exciting events)

18. Tried Don Jolio tequila (wow, smooth as silk)

19. Played with interactive lights in Central Park, Winnipeg

IT IS MY 40th BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!

Tonia circa 1978

yep

the day has arrived

40 and still living life to the limit

embrace the moments of change

love the new

wave goodbye to an old decade full of changes

enjoy me fitting my own standards

keep living a wonderful life

thanks for having me mum and dad

my siblings are the most amazing people I know

nieces and nephews add to the joy

friends are always a big part of my life

thanks to you all for adding to the joy and contentment 

cheers to me!

Tonia in 2009

Almost 40!

Ok
I have four days left in my 30's
I wonder what my 40's will be like
I am guessing like most milestones, Sunday morning I will wake up feeling no different than I did Saturday night.
Still
This momentous occasion is worth a wee blog post
:)

Master's Thesis

This morning at about 3 am I sent in my first draft of my thesis to my professor.  Knowing that I still have another 4-6 drafts to write, that I have just started the beginning, and that the research then subsequent analyzing of this research will take time, it still felt good to press send.

My Articles
My Mascot (Funshine Bear)

My thesis is all about the relationship between serious leisure, hobbyist-cultural tourists, and amateur travel bloggers and photographers and their opinions of how their work is influencing tourism.  I have been reading for one year (articles, books, websites), and writing for eight months.  The pictures in this post provide a wee peak at most of what I have read to prepare myself to write.

Leisure, Recreation, Tourism Anyone?

Expanding and Hurting My Brain
(all at the same time)

So much information that my brain started to hurt when I thought about my thesis for the millionth time in February.  To push through, I gave up much of my life over the last three weeks and focused on reviewing my readings, synthesizing information, writing, thinking, reviewing, then writing more.  Forty pages later, I have the first three chapters of my thesis done with 8 pages of references (70 in all) backing up what I have written.  It is my hope that I did not go completely off the rails and that most of what I wrote is usable.

The Articles Organized

Here are the websites I cited in my thesis.  I don't know if they will go or stay but take a peek and perhaps a thing or two may be learned.

Brigitte Eaton

Eatonweb Portal 

http://portal.eatonweb.com/

Blogpulse

http://blogpulse.com

(Site being retired January 13, 2012.)

CamWorld

http://camworld.org/

Gadling

http://www.gadling.com/

Hello British Columbia Blog

http://www.hellobc.com/british-columbia/blog.aspx

Hole in the Donut Cultural Travel

http://holeinthedonut.com/

In The Know Traveler

http://www.intheknowtraveler.com/

Jaunted

http://www.jaunted.com/

Adventures for Singles

Jesse James Garrett

Infoshift 

http://blog.jjg.net/

National Post: Travel

http://www.nationalpost.com/life/travel/index.html

Online Journalism Review

http://www.ojr.org/

Rebecca’s Pocket

http://www.rebeccablood.net/

Solo Traveler

http://solotravelerblog.com/

Technorati

http://technorati.com

TravelPod

http://www.travelpod.com/

Viator

http://www.viator.com/

Visit Winnipeg Blog

http://www.tourismwinnipeg.com/pegcity-lounge/winnipeg-insiders-blog

So many travel websites out there, this is just a peak.  I feel like I have learned so much that one thesis just does not cover what I have observed (mostly) in my brain.  I will keep you posted as to the next stage of this whole process.  Until then, yahoo me!  

Bois-des-Esprits or Spirit Trees

While I was walking last spring on the south side of Winnipeg, I came upon a beautiful neighbourhood in St. Vital with its own forest, the Seine River Greenway Forest.  It was a delightful day with leaves all over the path, children actually playing in the forest, small groups of people enjoying a walk.  I happened upon another woman walking by herself and we began a conversation.  She asked me if I had seen the spirit trees of the forest as of yet, to which I replied no.  She walk me deeper into the woods and there it was, the Bois-des-Esprits.    

Stunning multiple faces and animals.
Carved on both sides.

The same tree.
The other side.

This woman and I talked for a while as she gave me more advice of a few different places to visit in the city.  We parted ways and I continued walking out of the forest I spied several more faces that I had completely walked by, not realizing they had been staring at me and others along the path.  The faces were stunning, carved right into the trees, rough slices, with long whisky beards.      

Old tree
Old face

This was the last tree as I left the forest.  I took one picture, stared at the tree for a while, then realized that this was not simply a face.

Old tree
Old face
With a bit of extra

A view from below so I could capture the face's friend.

Sadly, someone committed an act of vandalism this past June and lit the largest of the trees on fire.  One wonders what pushes someone to light something so stunning on fire.  Sign of discontent.  This tree provided me with much content.  I hope people continue to enjoy it despite a part of it now being charred.  I shall continue to walk, talk with random strangers, and enjoy the outdoors.  I am thinking the Winnipeg Trails Association will help.  Love walking!
  

Flickr

Yep, I joined Flickr.  The thought has been in my head for a few years now but I wanted to investigate the site for a while.  I am adding my name to the really good pictures I post there and will only be posting my favourites of the one's I take.

T. Bates on Flickr

So far, it turns out a know a few people on the site and have started making new photography friends.  Here is the first of what I hope becomes many:

Beauty Surrounds You

Christoph Fischer on Flickr

Oh the rush, joy, fun and high of photography!

Winnipeg Weather 3

A dead flower in winter

It is now my second winter in Le Peg (2012) and it is much warmer and more enjoyable than 2011.  The Chinook's from the Rocky Mountains have somehow lasted all along the prairies and warned us over during past two weeks.  (That statement is probably completely meteorologically incorrect and perhaps improbable but it sounds good to me.)

Hoar frost all over

This one appears to be covered during a windy day.

Last week, the weather would dip down just under freezing overnight, then rise up just at or barely above freezing during the day.  This produced several days of gorgeous hoar frost on the trees. (The first time I heard that word, I though someone said whore frost.  I could not believe that frost would be named after disenfranchised women/women making money for them selves.  Turns out is was hoar.  Sounds similar, but not.)  Several days of this frost on the trees, bushes, plants and wooden structures must made the city a magnificent winter wonderland.  I thought it would not get better, but then the fog moved in and the beauty doubled.  So gorgeous!

Pavilion in Assiniboine Park

Under another tree, taking pictures of this tree.

Time to head out with my camera and see if I could capture a thing or two.  Assiniboine Park was my destination of choice and I was able to capture several beautiful pics.  I also sent a text to several friends in town encouraging them to head out and capture the delicious vision of a city.  My friend Darren went to the Legislature and captured some photos now on Flikr.  Several others went out but I have not seen their shots as of yet.

Crusty and lovely

Who love a weeping tree?  Me!

I walked around the park, drove around the park (it is very large), and clicked away at everything that took my breathe away.  While standing taking pictures of the Pavilion, I heard a rustling in the bushes.  Twas a small family of deer looking for food in the bushes behind me.  What luck!  I turned, slowly perched on the bench nearby and snuck a picture of this deer behind the branches.

There was mutually observing and gazing for a time, then they moved on to a trodden path, then on behind several buildings.  Before they got away, I slowly walked around the bushes, squatted and found the same deer unable to stop looking at me, as I was unable to stop looking at it.