Word: trippingly
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...wasn't your typical road trip. We left Baghdad at 5 a.m. Destination: Basra, Iraq's second largest city and only major port, 340 miles (550 km) to the southeast. The nighttime curfew had just ended when we--eight bodyguards, two interpreters, four journalists and four drivers--piled into our cars as the sun was coming...
...already been to Basra three times, but the last time he had driven like this, in a "soft"--unarmored--car and without the protection of the U.S. military, was in late 2003. Earlier this year, the route we were traveling was so rife with violence that the trip would have been impossible. In the past year, the roads south of Baghdad have started to stabilize, thanks to the efforts of Iraqi and U.S. troops and a cease-fire declaration by radical opposition cleric Muqtada al-Sadr...
Despite the air of normality that nearly brought Yuri to tears at some points--like when we had our morning coffee outdoors in a crowded back alley during a stop in Amarah, capital of the restless border province of Maysan--the trip at times was undeniably tense. Our nerves frayed when traffic jams caused by U.S. military convoys brought us to hour-long standstills, and when an anonymous group of men pulled up to the gates of our Basra hotel late at night--journalists have been kidnapped from hotels in Basra...
...have never much believed in natural selection, a trip to Madagascar would likely change your mind. The flora and fauna here, having developed for some 80 million years in virtual isolation from the rest of the world, have taken some curious evolutionary turns. The nocturnal aye-aye, for instance, has a long, skeletal middle finger that enables it to retrieve grubs from inside trees; the hook-billed vanga evolved a curved bill for a similar reason, while the horned-leaf chameleon can change color to match the dead leaves on the floor of western Madagascar's dry deciduous forest...
...good old-fashioned survival technique. While at Ankarafantsika, we were sternly warned not to stray too close to the beautiful lake just a few minutes walk from our bungalows, because crocodiles had snapped up and devoured several people over the last several months. When we took a boat trip on the lake late one afternoon, we got to see crocodiles sunning themselves on the shore, including one specimen more than 12 ft. long - most of it jaws. Cuteness is a nice evolutionary trait, but when it comes to long-term survival, you can't beat fear...