Postcard to Chase Bridge
Dear Chase Bridge,
I have had a very nice time in all the countries that I have been to. I have been to Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Ecuador (Galapagos), and now I’m in Peru. So far I have liked the Tarzan swing, which is like a rope instead of a vine where you swing like a monkey, I was amazed by the colour and size of the humming birds and I really liked snorkelling when I swam with the sea lions and the turtles. The thing that surprised me the most is that there were humming birds in Costa Rica. I went to a school in Peru called Aldea Yanapay for a week. I have helped them with English.
I hope you will have a nice first day.
From Omar.
The Galapagos August 2011
Now we are in the Galapagos Islands and we are having a great time, we went snorkelling with turtles, sealions and some sting rays. My dad saw and eagle ray which is a different kind of sting ray but it is much bigger. I also saw starfish in different colours. One day we had a tour and we saw six sharks and we also saw pelicans and marine iguanas. Marine iguanas are the only iguanas that live near the sea. I also saw blue footed boobies and they are birds with blue feet! I saw some blue footed boobies catching fish. They dive into the water in the shape of a stick and when they are in the water they quickly open their mouths and they might of caught a fish. Then they pop out of the water and fly back to their nests. We did not see any baby ones but at least we did see adults. I really liked seeing a bird called frigate because they had red bodys and males can attract females by inflating their bodys and then they flap their wings ti make their bodys big and red. The thing I wanted to see the most was the giant turtles. The biggest one I saw was around 130cm and the amount of turtles I saw was roughly 9. We will try to show you some pictures of things we saw and people we played with. I really liked playing football with the children on the streets because they were good players and they played fairly. When we went to the beach we crossed about 30 sea lions! We were there for about 10 minutes. I drew a circle of protection for a sea lion. We saw lots of babies and lots of grown-ups and also on two parts of the beach there were two females and one baby male sitting in a formation, both females on both sides and the baby in the middle.
(typed up by Omar’s dad directly from Omar’s original notes)
Volunteering at the Children’s Eternal Rainforest
Today we volunteered at the children’s eternal rainforest. If we volunteered that means that we work without getting money. We had to clear the leaves out of the path to make compost. That means we did two good things, 1. We cleared the path so people could walk through 2. We could make the leaves into compost to make new trees and help new or old trees grow. I think we were working for an hour. But we will be doing 3 hours the next two days.
A lady called Willow had a group to stop hotels having exotic plants. She wanted this to happen because she knew that people were not looking after animals from where they got the exotic plants from. So we went to a green house and saw plants native to Costa Rica that Willow planted and we helped those plants.
(typed up by Omar’s dad directly from Omar’s original notes)
Zip wires in Costa Rica
Today I’m in Costa Rica and I went on lots of Zipwires! I had a great time and a very fun time there. All of the zipwires were great and sometimes as long as 600 metres. The first one was only 40 metres and not so scary. But at first I felt really scared and not at the same time, but when I got on I was really happy. The second was a bit longer and was a little more scary. I kept going on them until I reached 400 metres! And then 552 metres until 600 metres!
Then was a really fun part. It wasn’t a zipwire it was the Tarzan swing. You had to hold on to a very long rope and jump off the platform. It was quite scary and guess what? Every boy and man except for my brother, Alvaro went on the Tarzan swing. And do you know what that meant, my TWO year old brother, Tariq, went on the Tarzan swing! My dad said that he might of got a world record for the youngest swinger and also said that he should do it more often.
The last one was one kilometre and was the superman zipwire. I did not want to do the superman so I went normal on the zipwire like the first one. The superman is when you lie down with your back against the wire. After that we had some water and some crisps. Then we went home.
(typed up by Omar’s dad directly from Omar’s original notes)
Che Guevara
Today we are in the Che museum. I saw his birth certificate and books he read as a child. Che was a very good rugby player. I saw his camera and his bracelet. He had a gun and he used a lantern for his guerilla. I saw his beret that he used in his early years. He died in 1967 in Bolivia and my dad was born in that year. We saw his memorial and his monument. First he graduated as a nurse and got a certificate. Once, Fidel and Che were having a battle against the president of Cuba, Batista. Che had only 19 people on his side but Batista had 350 people going by train to give weapons to their team. But Che had a great plan to defeat the 350 people on batista’s team. Che and Fidel with their 19 soldiers went to the track and that’s when Che started telling his soldiers his plan. His plan was to destroy the track so the train would be destroyed and the 350 people and weapons would hopefully belong to them but some soldiers would die. There were only 5 carriages to bring them in. Che used a bulldozer and lots of molotov cocktails, and they are glass bottles with petrol inside and a rag rolled up into a scroll shape and they put that in, half in half out and then they set it on fire and threw them into the carriages and then they should explode so the glass cuts and the petrol makes the fire. And that was amazing because if you were a leader like Che and you had 19 soldiers and you defeated 350 people you would feel amazed. The rest of the people surrendered and they were then very sad and also Che got all of those weapons for himself. Che’s real name was Ernesto but people wanted to call him Che.
(typed up by Omar’s dad directly from Omar’s original notes)
Trinidad Cuba, 20th July 2011
We went on a catamaran and we went snorkelling. In the water I saw some coral and lots of different fish. I saw a school of small yellow fish and I saw an eel. The eel was blue and yellow. My mum spotted some swirly coral and I saw something that looked like seaweed but it was round. I am going to identify what I saw on the Internet. All of our family went in the water but my brother only went in a little bit. A man from the crew was with us and he controlled the catamaran. He used the wind to move and he stopped by turning the boat in the direction of the wind. When we were going back we went on the boat but my dad went swimming back to the shore. I couldn’t go because my mum did not let me but as we got closer to the shore my mum let me get off the boat and swim to the shore.
(typed up by Omar’s dad directly from Omar’s original notes)
Cuba
I have learnt alot of things in Cuba. These are the things I have learnt. There are two currencys. One is pesos convertibles and the other is pesos nacionales. 40 centavos nacionales roughly equals 1p. I learnt about Che and Fidel. There are lots of small birds here but I have not found a humming bird yet.
(typed up by Omar’s dad directly from Omar’s original notes)
Aztec History 7 – The sacrifices
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The Aztecs sacrificed people by the thousands. It is estimated that by the time the Spaniards came, they sacrificed over 50,000 people every year.
Their main God was the God of war and the sun. This was a dangerous combination. It meant that every morning he had to fight away the monsters of the night, which were the moon and the stars. But to do this, he needed a cintunal supply of food and energy, and his favourite delicacies were human blood and hearts. To keep a supply of humans available to sacrifice, the Aztecs had to keep on conquering more and more tribes.
(video by Omar and Alvaro, commentary by their dad)
Aztec History 6 – Maya to Aztec
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The Aztecs started in a village called Aztlan in Mexico, and spread from there. They used to call themselves the Mexica, which is where the name of Mexico originates.
(video by Omar and Alvaro, commentary by their dad)
(pre-)Aztec History 5 – clever steps
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The Mayans were clever builders. They built this pyramid with four sides, each side having 91 steps. At the top, there was one more step. What does 4 x 91 + 1 make, and what is the significance of that number?
The pyramids in the Americas were mainly step pyramids, not like the ones in Egypt. This was the same for the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Incas and many other American civilisations. This is because here, the purpose of the pyramids was for holy men to climb up to the top to be closer to their Gods. In Egypt, pyramids were mainly for burial, and there was no need to climb them.
(commentary by Omar´s dad, video by Omar and Alvaro)