Earthrise revisited

The Artemis II mission is heading home after successfully looping around the moon over the Easter weekend. Two days from now, they’ll splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego. NASA has been sharing images taken by the four astronauts on board Integrity, the mission’s gumdrop-shaped capsule, as they passed behind the moon. This includes a stunning Earthrise and a dramatic solar eclipse.

These images have rekindled the hope and wonder inspired by Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to visit the moon. At the time, much like this week, another Christian festival was underway. It was Christmas Eve 1968. As the Apollo 8 astronauts orbited, they watched the moon’s grey and desolate, crater-pocked surface passing below. Then, something unexpected happened.

The Earth began rising above the horizon. This delicate, blue marble was beguiling. It sat alone in the vastness of space. A fragile, spherical island of life in the inky darkness. Every aspect of the Apollo mission, including a photography timeline, had been planned well in advance. However, nobody had anticipated this moment. It caught everyone by surprise.

The Earthrise photos taken by Apollo 8 inspired a generation and kick-started the environmental movement that endures today. Once again, Artemis II captured Earthrise, reminding us of our human frailty. Apollo 8 astronaut Jim Lovell talked about a moment in flight when the simple act of raising his thumb in front of him was enough to hide the Earth.

“Everything you’ve ever known is behind your thumb,” he said. “All the world’s problems, everything. It kind of shows you how relative life is and how insignificant we all are here on Earth. Because we are all on a rather small spaceship here.”

 
One American wrote a simple message to the astronauts shortly after their return. “You saved 1968”. It’s all too easy to forget that 53 years ago, America had endured a chaotic and violent year. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had both been assassinated. Race riots had caused many American cities to burn. The Vietnam War was in full swing, and the protest movement against it was growing. Lyndon Johnson had dramatically decided not to seek reelection.

Step forward 53 years, and history seems to be repeating itself. America is embroiled in an increasingly unpopular war. The nation is deeply polarised. A looming threat of recession hangs over the global economy. Once again, our world feels harsh and the future uncertain. Then, a tiny spacecraft circling the moon sends back an image of hope. Once again, we’ve left Earth only to look back and rediscover it anew. This is why I love spaceflight. In its finest hour, it gives us hope for the future.

Feeling a little Moorish

My first time in Andalusia was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I travelled through the region in October 1990 while backpacking in Europe with Dean, a sheep farmer friend from Victoria. At the time, we were making good use of a 15-day Eurail Flexi Youth Pass. Our Andalusian adventures kicked off when we arrived by train in Cordoba on the evening of 2 October.

Our trusty Let's Go Europe travel guide had recommended this provincial capital. It’s home to the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba, otherwise known as the Great Mosque of Córdoba. The current structure was completed in 785 on the orders of Abd al-Rahman I, the Moorish leader who founded the Islamic Emirate of Cordoba. Over time, his successor progressively expanded the complex, adding a minaret and a highly ornate mihrab.

The mosque was subsequently converted to a cathedral after Christian forces drove out the Muslim invaders in 1236. In the 16th century, a Renaissance cathedral nave and transept were constructed in the centre of the building. This quirky Christian structure remains in place today, surrounded by a vast hall of striped twin-tiered arches commonly found in mosques the world over.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Assumption, as it’s known today, was one of the oddest places I’d ever seen up until that time. Its exterior is almost as exotic as its interior. Thanks to its arched interior, the external roof is defined by row upon row of distinctive barrel-like grooves. Its distinctly Islamic minaret has been repurposed as a bell tower, while its traditional central courtyard is filled with citrus trees, a common feature of Christian churches throughout Spain.

One unexpected highlight of our time in Cordoba was a haircut I organised with a local barber. It had been several months since my last cut, and my hair was getting rather shaggy. The entire service was conducted using sign language as neither of us spoke the other’s language. The old man then proceeded to cut my hair, wielding his scissors with the most dramatic and unnerving sword-like flourishes. I’m sure he was putting on a show for the tourists.

Our Eurail ticket gave us access to heavily discounted tickets on local Spanish trains. As a result, we decided to make good use of this by buying tickets to Gibraltar via the medieval town of Ronda. Once again, our trusty travel guide delivered the goods. Ronda was recommended for several reasons. First, it’s home to one of the world’s oldest bullfighting rings, and second, its old and new town districts sit on opposing sides of a deep ravine. They’re linked by a spectacular stone arch bridge.

 

Dean and I absolutely loved Ronda. It was the kind of out-of-the-way place you always hope to discover while travelling somewhere new. We stayed two nights in a hostel a few blocks up from the town’s iconic bullring and spent a full day exploring the town from top to bottom. We toured the bullring, walked the clifftop path that offered breath-taking views of the valley floor hundreds of metres below, and explored the New Bridge from top to bottom. 

This spectacular bridge, as its name suggests, is not the original span linking the old and new town. The original “old bridge” sits about a hundred metres upstream and crosses the Guadiaro River canyon at a lower level, while an even older Roman-era bridge can be found a little further on.  We walked across all three just because we could.

Without a doubt, Puente Nuevo, "New Bridge", is the town’s most iconic attraction. This sturdy arched structure stands 120 metres above the canyon floor. The term nuevo is something of a misnomer, as its construction started in 1751 and took until 1793 to complete. The old town that it links to was equally captivating, with narrow winding cobblestone lanes and historic, white-washed buildings. I loved every moment of it. So much so that I insisted Garry and I visit Ronda while touring Andalusia in 2009.

Garry had the same "aha" moment that Dean and I experienced in 1990.  Your encounter with the cliff edge overlooking the river below is unforgettable.  One moment, you're walking surrounded by solid ground.  The next moment, the ground suddenly falls away, dropping more than 100 metres down a near-vertical rock face to the valley below. The sudden drop catches you by surprise every time.

In case you're wondering, two of the images above were scanned from postcards I collected in Ronda. This is always a good indicator that a place has captured my imagination. As a backpacker, money was tight, so I rarely bought anything as indulgent as a postcard without a very good reason.

I still recall how magnificent the town's magnificent bullring was when Dean and I visited it in 1990. It was built in 1784 in the Neoclassical style by the architect José Martin de Aldehuela, who also designed the Puente Nuevo. According to Wikipedia, it’s not the oldest bull-fighting ring in Spain. However, it is one of the first entirely constructed from stone, rather than a combination of stone and brick.

The architecture is also unique in that all seating in the ring is covered. It is considered a relatively small arena with only five thousand seats. However, the bull ring itself is the largest in Spain. When added together, the building’s unique features give it a wonderfully memorable vibe. Decades later, it’s still the only bullring I’ve ever visited.

On 6 October, Dean and I loaded our backpacks and caught a morning train to Algeciras, the port city overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. I distinctly recall the local train winding its way through the scenic Guadiaro River valley at a very leisurely pace, stopping from time to time at the most obscure and remote villages. This is a part of the world where the concept of time has a completely different meaning.

The example above was possibly one of the oddest stops we made during our entire time in Andalusia. This is the station at La Atalaya, a tiny village about 30 km north of Ronda. As you can see, the roof of the station building had long since collapsed in 1990. However, the train between Cordoba and Ronda still stopped here. A quick look at Google Maps shows that not much has changed in the last 35 years. The second image above was published online in 2024.

Follow this link to learn more about our visit to the Rock of Gibraltar and our subsequent adventures in Morocco.

Barcelona in the 90s

Time for another retrospective post. Every so often, life throws you a curveball. I experienced one such moment in September 1990 while backpacking through Europe. My travel buddy Dean and I met a young man on the train. At the time, we were in transit from Switzerland to Barcelona. Weeks earlier, we’d made plans to travel through Spain, cross the Straits of Gibraltar, and explore as much of Morocco as possible.

The guy we met on the train was on his way to Monte Carlo to collect a super yacht and deliver it to Barcelona for his boss. We got to talking with him. He was impressed that Dean had spent several months sailing through the Coral Sea, while I’d spent a year working on a dairy farm, which made me a seasoned handyman. He extended an invitation for us to join his repositioning crew and spend a week, all expenses paid, sailing across the Mediterranean.

Dean and I debated his offer long and hard. It meant we’d have to forgo our plans for Morocco. In the end, we decided a week on a super yacht, while mind-blowing, was unlikely to be as exotic as a week in Morocco. We politely declined his offer and bade him farewell in Monte Carlo. After reading my retrospective posts about our time in North Africa, I think it was the right decision. Sadly, I’ve never been invited onto a super yacht again.

Our train arrived in Barcelona late in the evening. Most venues were closed. We made our way to a backpacker’s hostel located on a side street just off the city’s iconic La Rambla boulevard. The hostel was set into an old building, with flights of winding stairs that led to some rather uninspiring bunk rooms on its upper floors. The hostel's daily room rate also burned a hole in our hip pocket. However, the hour was late, so we decided to suck it up for the night.

The following morning, we found ourselves sitting at a table in a KFC planning our itinerary for the next few days. At the top of our agenda was finding a cheaper place to stay. An elderly African American man overheard our conversation. He asked if we were looking for a place to stay and offered to help us out. As a foreign national who’d lived in Barcelona for years, he was keen to ensure we got to see the best his adopted city could offer.

At first, we were a little dubious. However, he insisted he knew the perfect place to stay. Before we knew it, he’d led us down a rather dreary cobblestone street leading away from the La Ramblas. The buildings were old, everything was heavily shuttered and closed, and the street was all but empty. He took us to a modest pensione with balustrade balconies overlooking the desolate street. A passionate debate, in Spanish, ensued between him and the owner behind the reception desk.

Before we knew it, we’d been escorted to a first-floor room with French doors that opened onto one of the street-side balconies. Our newfound friend later explained that he’d convinced the reticent owner to rent us one of his "honeymoon suites" for two nights at a bargain price (or rather, that's how he translated the room's name). He then gave some helpful advice on what to see and where to go in Barcelona before wishing us well and continuing with his day.

Unbeknownst to us, our room overlooked Carrer de Ferran, one of the liveliest streets in the city's Gothic District. As darkness fell, the shutters came up, and before we knew it, the once lifeless street was soon filled with a crowd enjoying its lively bars, bustling cafés and busy stores. We sat on our minstrel balcony, soaking in the nightlife below and toasting our good fortune with some local Sangria.  

After some extensive Google Map sleuthing, I'm fairly sure we stayed at Hostal Fernado, or its predecessor in the same location. There's a pensione still operating there today, and I'm sure the balcony highlighted in the screenshot above is where we stayed. If you look closely at the photo I took of Dean sitting on the balcony, you'll notice there was a lingerie shop directly below us on the ground floor. It's long since gone!

We spent two full days exploring the best that Barcelona has to offer. This includes climbing a steep, winding footpath up Mont Juic, a parkland plateau overlooking the city and the Mediterranean coast. We decided to climb it to see the stadium that had hosted athletic competitions for the 1992 Summer Olympics. The plateau also offers superb views of Port Vell, a marina for all those glamorous super yachts. It was built as part of an urban renewal program prior to the Olympics. It was surreal to think that this could have briefly been home for us.

However, the area’s most surprising highlight proved to be The Magic Fountain of Montjuïc. This incredible water feature is a dancing fountain containing more than 3000 jets, some of which send water soaring more than 50 metres into the air. After dark, the fountain entertains visitors with a dramatic display of synchronised lights and water jets.

As all good tourists do, we walked the length of La Rambla, people watching locals going about their daily business. The tree-lined pedestrian street is filled with plazas and parks, as well as street artists, stalls and vendors offering all kinds of snacks and trinkets.

Without a doubt, Sagrada Familia was the highlight of our time in Barcelona. It’s the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world and was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. Its construction began in 1882 and continues to this day. According to recent news reports, the building should officially be completed by 2034. Its tallest, and final, tower was completed in February this year. The building’s final height is now an impressive 172.5 metres.

When I first visited it in 1990, most of the building’s main structure was still under construction. At the time, only the Nativity façade, the Passion Façade and their accompanying steeples had been completed. The most recent of these steeples had only been completed three years earlier, in 1987. The central nave was still under construction, and only its outer walls were in place at the time. Installation of the central pillars and vaulted roof was still some years away.

However, the Nativity façade was still an impressive sight. It was built before work was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War in 1935 and bears the most original Gaudí influence. Gaudí was a unique artist. His work is a blend of Art Nouveau and Gothic styles, filled with obtuse angles and unbelievably ornate, somewhat abstract flourishes. I’d never seen anything like it before. Years later, I still love its whimsical florishes, such as a curious donkey's cameo appearance in Christ's nativity scene.

Dean and I also took time out to view some of Gaudí’s other iconic works around the city. This included the oddly angular and fluid façade of Casa Milà, and the Venetian mask-like balconies of Casa Batlló, a multi-story apartment block, and Park Güell, a hillside complex of parks and gardens filled with dramatic architectural elements.

After some Google searching, I discovered that the image above wasn’t taken in Park Güell as I’d originally thought. This sculpture of five leaping Gazelles stands in Ciutadella Park. It’s a tribute to Walt Disney, erected a few years after he died in 1966. The park was the city's first and only green space for decades following its creation in 1872. However, the park’s most famous sculpture is actually a giant stone-carved life-sized Woolly Mammoth. It seems this didn’t rate a mention in my photo album.

On 2 October 1990, Dean and I boarded our next Eurail train and headed south for Cordoba, the former heartland of the invading Moors. Our route took us south along the coast as far as Valencia, before turning inland. You can learn more about our time in Andalusia here.

One final note.  I've illustrated this post with a blend of scanned photos taken in 1990 and more recent photos from 2008, when Garry and I visited Barcelona for his 40th Birthday celebrations.

 

Coming up next

In August last year, we decided to take advantage of a hotel deal in Vanuatu. Airfares were also on special at the time. As a result, we've booked ourselves into the Eratap Beach Resort, near Port Vila, for some beachside R&R in early June.  We've booked a beachfront villa for 11 days.  If the real deal looks anything like the images online, it'll be a welcome break. 

Our package includes airport transfers, breakfast, a couple of massages, and an AUD150 meal credit we can put towards lunch or dinner.  The resort also has a complimentary daily shuttle bus to Port Vila. After our recent, rather expensive, excursion around the world, I'm glad we booked and paid for most of this holiday in advance. 

I've recently discovered that the land diving festival is in full swing on nearby Pentacost Island. These are the world's original bungy jumpers, who leap from ramshackle timber towers with nothing more than vines tied around their feet. The resort says it may be possible for us to book a day tour to see this death-defying rite of passage in action. Watch this space.

Once this vacation is done, we have one more domestic excursion to plan. We agreed to do Christmas in July with friends in Alstonville, near Ballina. We've yet to finalise the details.  However, I imagine we'll end up scheduling an extended weekend or similar, and share the driving to get there and back in a single day.  Then, once this trip is done, we have nothing more planned for the rest of the year.

Living in two worlds

Today’s headlines reflect the best and worst of humanity. This morning, NASA launched a manned rocket that’s now heading for the moon. Artemis II is scheduled to spend ten days in space. For the next 25 hours, four astronauts will orbit the Earth at an altitude of 74,000km, checking and testing their Orion capsule's systems, before reigniting its service module engine and sending it towards the moon.

The astronauts won’t land on the moon’s surface. That feat is reserved for a future mission. Instead, they’ll loop around Earth’s natural satellite in what’s known as a free return lunar fly-by trajectory. This is a flight path that uses the moon’s gravity to automatically return the capsule to Earth without firing its rocket again.

In many ways, Artemis II resembles Apollo 8. This mission, which launched in December 1968, was the first time humans flew to the moon and returned safely to Earth. However, unlike the current mission, Apollo 8 went into orbit around the moon, circling it ten times before reigniting its rocket and returning to Earth.

Artemis II will establish at least one space exploration first. Its free-return trajectory will see it fly more than 7400 kilometres past the far side of the moon, more than 400,000 kilometres from Earth. This is the furthest any human has ever ventured into space. Apollo astronauts typically flew less than 120 km above the moon’s surface.

Artemis II represents human ingenuity at its finest. It’s a potent symbol of what we can achieve as a species when we aspire to greatness. It’s also an inspiring example of the USA’s extraordinary wealth, leadership and technical know-how.

Contrast this with the war currently unfolding in the Middle East. Five weeks ago, the USA and Israel launched a coordinated aerial attack on Iran. Since then, both nations have relentlessly bombed the Persian nation, destroying military assets and killing its leaders. Iran has responded by attacking its Gulf neighbours, damaging critical oil and gas production infrastructure, while attacks on tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz have all but stopped oil from flowing out of the Middle East.

President Trump's rationale for starting the war and its ultimate objectives have morphed over time. However, one thing is clear. The quick and easy victory he plainly anticipated has failed to materialise. There's now every prospect of the USA becoming bogged down in prolonged conflict or withdrawing shortly, only to be drawn back in to finish the job at some future point.

The Iranian regime’s resolve hasn’t weakened, despite the devastation of American and Israeli airborne attacks. Instead, global economic activity is cracking under the strain. To quote a recent commentator, “The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has transformed economic prospects globally from the relatively benign to inflationary and, very possibly, in a worst-case scenario, deeply recessionary.”

What seems to have become an increasingly pointless conflict is now at risk of damaging the world’s economy for months, if not years, to come. Iran’s regime remains intact and inevitably more motivated than ever to accelerate its ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon. I'm not sure it's made the world a safer place. 

Meanwhile, here in Australia, most commentators, including the Reserve Bank of Australia, expect inflation to peak at five per cent, further interest rate rises, higher unemployment and greater economic uncertainty. It’s not the kind of year anyone wanted. The USA’s capricious actions in the Middle East stand in stark contrast to this morning’s historic launch at the Kennedy Space Centre. It's like we're living in two completely different worlds.

UPDATE: 10:58am, 3 April

I've just watched live as the Orion spacecraft completed its Translunar Injection Burn, a five-minute rocket burn that sends it to the moon. The last time humans headed for the moon, they were on board Apollo 17. This final moon landing mission took place in December 1972, more than 53 years ago. 

UPDATE: 4 April

The image above was taken by one of the astronauts aboard Orion. It shows the Atlantic Ocean bordered by Africa on the right and cloud-covered South America on the left. If you look closely, you can see auruoa glowing over both poles. Venus makes a guest appearance in the top left corner. The last time we saw an image like this was during Apollo 17.

UPDATE: 7 April

The Orion capsule has safely swung around the far side of the moon today.  The four astronauts on board are now on their way back to Earth. NASA published the image above overnight. If you look carefully, you'll see Australia and a heavily cloud-covered New Zealand are on display. I've rotated the image 90 degrees to make them easier to spot. Awesome!