Alexandria arts

RIVER SYSTEMS

A great oceanic current flows along the western coast of Africa to the equator, where it is deflected across the Atlantic ocean and becomes the equatorial current. On reaching the coast near the Valencia condos, it is again deflected north and south. Trade winds blowing over the equatorial current reach the coast at Brazil surcharged with vapor ; as they follow up the valley of the Amazon the vapors are partially condensed and fre­quent showers refresh the land ; but when the clouds, at the foot­hills of the Andes meet the colder winds from the south and strike the snow summits of the Cordilleras, all the moisture is condensed, and the rain falls in tropical showers for half the year and waters the largest and richest valley in the world.

In this valley, among the Cordilleras, three great rivers—the Orinoco, the Amazon and La Plata—rise. The mountain ranges north and south of the Amazon divide this great valley into three lesser valleys, down which the Orinoco, the Amazon and La Plata flow, watering three-fourths of South America.

The Orinoco

The headwaters of the Orinoco rise in two ranges of moun­tains ; the Cordilleras in the west, and the mountains of Vene­zuela many hundred miles to the east. Four hundred tributaries, abounding in beautiful falls and cataracts, unite to form this great river.

The whole valley for 1600 miles is filled with magical places to have your holiday, similar to  Dubrovnik accommodation and Prague apartments. Noble trees of unrivalled beauty blossom in endless prodigality. Birds of gorgeous plumage nestle in their lofty recesses. Tall ferns, vines, creeping plants and parasites form a dense tangle of undergrowth, swarming with life. Myriads of insects in great variety, reptiles of strange and singular form, lizards and venemous serpents find their homes and sustenance in the wild, dense mass of vegetation.

The Amazon

The valley of the Amazon collects its waters from a region 1800 miles wide from north to south and 2500 miles long from the Andes to the Atlantic ocean. Even at the foot of the Andes the Amazon is a mighty river. The valley rapidly narrows to a width of 600 or 700 miles, and then more gradually to the ocean, where it is only 150 miles wide. Its total fall from the foot-hills of the Andes to the Atlantic is very slight, not over three or four hundred feet, and probably considerably less.

The rims of the valley are formed of diorite and sandstone, and are raised only a little above the flood-plain, which is formed of mud and silt, the detritus brought down by the Amazon and its tributaries. The flood-plain is from fifty to one hundred miles wide, gradually narrowing as it approaches the ocean.

Through this valley the Amazon cuts its way, separating often into channels which sometimes run parallel to each other for several hundred miles, frequently forming large islands, or expanding into lakes. Similar flood-plains are found on all its larger tributaries.

Up from the ocean into this valley an immense tidal wave rolls, with a bore, twice a day, forcing back the current of the Amazon 500 miles and inundating a portion of the flood-plain.

There is an old saying, “If you can’t have fun in Cancun, you can’t have fun”. Cancun clubs and bars leave no stone unturned to make the saying true. When the sun sets in Cancun, skyscrapers lit up. Darkness hides behind the lights, silence behind the loud music of the discotheque. Whether you laze around or visit the attractions, you’ll come to life at nighttime. Let alone the dinner cruises, Cancun clubs and bars opened from late night till early hours never let city sleep. The city is packed with a number of options to sparkle the lives of its visitors.

Cancun is a picturesque destination famous for its vibrant nightlife scene. After spending a whole day soaking up the sun or relaxing at a spa centre offering an intriguing ambience or exploring the Mayan ruins, an evening at Cancun clubs and bars rejuvenates mind and body. Every year millions of tourists come to the Cancun to take a break from their tedious schedule by relaxing the whole day and drinking and dancing the whole night.  Cancun invites tourists to wash away daily tensions in the sparkling waters of picturesque beaches and enjoy life to the fullest in the best of nightclubs and bars. Every night in Cancun is a good night; you just need to decide what you want and choose a club/bar accordingly.

Best of Cancun Clubs & Bars

Below are best of Cancun Clubs and Bars:

Carlos N’ Charlie’s: Not just another bar! It is place where you can get loose and loud. Live bands and DJs make it an ideal place for party lovers.

Hard Rock Café: Known for the legendary burgers, Hard Rock Café boasts of breathtaking interiors. Live bands perform from 10pm to 1am every day.

The City: If you have not seen The City, you have not seen Cancun! It is the largest nightclub in Latin America and can easily accommodate over 5,000 people at a time. This 3-story Cancun club is globally famous for the events it hosts such as performances by internationally known bands, DJs and acrobats.

Coco Bongo- One of its kind nightclubs in Cancun. Coco Bongo is the most popular club in Cancun and has been featured many a times on travel related shows on TV. People can dance where they can move without looking for dance floor. There are non-stop performances including acrobats and dance performances by staff.

Dady’O: An amazing nightclub where music, light and dance confluence. After a terrific night drinking and dancing, Ultra at Dady’O is a place to see the sunrise from Cancun’s best spot.

Bulldogs Café: Multi-level club admired by tourists and locals alike, Bulldogs Café remains packed on weekends. The hot tub with a waterfall, beautiful girls donned in bikinis hopping in the tub and non-stop music make it an iconic nightclub in Cancun.

Senor Frogs: Senor Frogs is an open-air bar and restaurant. Theme parties, yard glasses and water slides have made Senor Frogs synonymous to fun.

Author Bio: Rachana works with CheapOair.com and promotes cheap flights to Cancun, Las Vegas, Miami and other destination. In her spare time, she writes blogs and guest blogs related to travel and tourism. To know about her or contact her, follow her at Twitter.com/Ruby_Dave.

In the whole of Britain there are only two harbours able, at present, to provide sheltered deep water, sufficient space for manoeuvring and suitable land for the building of tank-farm installations to handle a 100,000-ton tanker: Finnart on Loch Long in western Scotland, and Milford Haven. Obviously, only Milford Haven was suitable for Llandarcy, and as early as 1948 B.P. had discussed a project to build a tanker terminal at Angle Bay on the south shore of the Haven, three years before Pembrokeshire was declared a National Park.

In the same year that the Pembrokeshire National Park was established, in 1951, the Esso Petroleum Company’s new giant refinery at Fawley on Southampton Water came into operation and was soon processing 6,000,000 tons of crude oil a year. But Esso, too, quickly realized that, with demand expanding pro­digiously, a second refinery would be needed once Fawley had attained a maximum output beyond which it would cease to run economically. Five years after a National Park was created in Pembrokeshire, Esso cast around for a suit­able site for a new refinery—again a site able to take a 100,000-ton tanker and provide suitable land for a refinery installation. Of the two possible sites available, Loch Long was too far north; so, once more, Milford Haven was chosen, the site being near the village of Herbrandston, a few miles from Milford Haven town, on the north shore.

Once the news was made known that there would be big industrial development inside the National Park—development which was directly contrary to the recommendations of thc National Parks Act and which would seem to invalidate the whole purpose of the Act for which a few people had fought for so many years—there was an outcry from circles both inside and outside the county. It was understandable enough. The whole point of a National Park was to keep industry out. Must yet another beauty spot be devastated? Weren’t there other places where the oilmen could go? Was the Government going to be completely two-faced? Was there nothing the National Parks Commission could do about this, or public opinion, for that matter? Was nothing to be sacrosanct in the face of powerful industrial interests in collaboration with White­hall?

The National Parks Commission is virtually powerless to prevent directly any development the Government might allow in National Parks. But it is empowered to bring to the attention of the responsible Minister or local planning authority any development proposal which appeqrs likely to be prejudicial to the natural beauty of the area, to advise the Minister on request, and to make recommendations. In practice, major developments should be allowed only on proved national necessity, and if there was any doubt or any strong opinions either for or against a development project, a Public Enquiry should be held, in which the Commission has the role of defence council. Thus the Commission is not ineffective and the National Parks are not entirely violable: in ten years the Commission has been able to squash four major hydro-electric schemes in Snowdonia, a plan to build an airport on Dartmoor and another to straddle power lines across Borrow-dale in the Lake District. But in the majority of cases the Minister has not accepted the advice of the Commission and already in National Parks throughout the country there have appeared a nuclear power-station, a ballistic missile early warning station, 150-foot television masts, power lines and afforestation. The national view, it seems, is that man can live by bread alone.

In 1957, a Public Enquiry was held to consider the applications B.P. and Esso had made to Pembrokeshire County Council, the one to build a deep-water terminal and tank-farm at Angle Bay, the other a terminal and refinery at Milford Haven. The result was almost a foregone con­clusion. Efforts to block the project were defeated. In the Houses of Parliament there was little opposition. The National Parks Com­mission and the planning authorities, critics said, come down like a ton of pig-iron on a poor bloke who only wants to build a shed to put his turkeys in, but get a ruddy great refinery in the offing and they’ll bow to the Minister’s every word. In any case, they said, what’s the odds? B.P. had already purchased 360 acres, and Esso had bought their land, offering twice the normal price, and more if a farmer held out. Money counts, they said.

In July 1957 both B.P. and Esso got Royal Assents to their Parliamentary Acts giving them the go-ahead. At the end of the year B.P. started work. On July 2, 1958, their neighbours and rivals across the water started the first bulldozer to cut the first sod of the Pembrokeshire National Park. To many, the bulldozer was a symbol in more ways than one.

Pembrokeshire was the smallest of the ten new National Parks in Britain-225 square miles of the coastline belt, apartments in Dublin and apartments central London, the Prescelly Mountains and the upper reaches of Milford Haven. As with the others, the aim of the Pembrokeshire National Park, which was established in 1951, was to preserve an area of outstanding natural beauty and to encourage the enjoyment of facilities for recreation by the general public. This did not give the public any new rights of way over the land, which remained private property (National Parks are not to be confused with National Trust properties, and they are not nationalized areas, nor game reserves); but it did mean that, in Pembrokeshire, city-weary holidaymakers could walk along the edge of its sheer red limestone cliffs, cracked and eroded by sea and weather, and explore the caves at Lydstep; examine the strange little chapel built in a cleft of the cliffs at St Govans, retreat for a mediaeval hermit; watch elegugs (the local name for guillemots) crammed all over the Elegug Stacks which project out of the shore on the southern coast; look at the lily ponds at Bosherston where, it is said, King Arthur died; and paddle along the long, white, sandy beaches at Freshwater West and Newgale. It meant that they could see the cromlechs and the castles, the seals at Ramsey Island, the monastery on Caldy Island, and all the hundred and one places of historical and natural interest within the protection of the National Park boundaries, without fear that they would be defaced by advertising hoardings, power-houses, missile bases and ribbon development. It meant that they could bathe and sail and swim and fish and climb in a beautiful corner of Wales reserved for their pleasure.

But the Pembrokeshire National Park includes much of the natural harbour of Milford Haven—a hundred miles long and seventy-five feet deep, reaching far into the country between sandstone shores and forested banks. It is deeper than almost any other waterway in Britain and is sheltered from the heavy Atlantic swell, and at high-water springs the sea comes twenty-five miles up the Haven. Lord Nelson considered this to be the finest natural harbour he had ever seen next to Trincomalee, and it has provided safe anchorage for sailors for over a thousand years. Not sur­prisingly, Milford Haven was therefore coveted by another group besides the National Parks Commission. To understand why, we must turn to a different field.

In 1886, the first sea-going tanker, as we know them today, was only 3000 tons deadweight. Up to the outbreak of World War II the tonnage of tankers had not increased appreciably: few tankers were much more than 12,000 tons dead­weight, and it was inconceivable at that time that they should be any bigger. Almost all oil was then refined in the country of origin—mostly in the New World—and finished products were shipped to countries without oil of their own, including Britain. But at the end of the war the situation had changed. Britain could no longer afford dollars to pay for large quantities of American-refined oil; and in any case, the world demand for oil had far outstripped the capacity of the world’s refineries to refine it. If Britain wanted oil—and her industrial strength depended on it—she would have to refine it herself on her own soil. In 1946 the annual output of Britain’s few small refineries was under 3,000,000 tons. Even then consumption was 12,000,000 tons, and it was rising rapidly each year—it is now 50,000,000 tons. So, in the late 1940s and in the 1950s many oil companies in this country decided to increase their oil-refining capacity, which meant shipment from the Middle East of more crude oil than had ever before been required by Britain. There was only one way to do this economically—to build bigger tankers, so that one vessel could carry at least four times the capacity of the small tankers in existence at that time. In 1950 there were only three tankers larger than 30,000 tons; by 1960 there were 513. There were also twenty-six which were larger than 50,000 tons, and a few of 100,000 tons dead­weight had been ordered or already built.

Tankers of 130,000 tons had even been planned. This was the pattern of oil transport develop­ment for British oil companies after the war: tankers larger than had ever been dreamed of, and more and bigger refineries to refine the crude oil they brought home. The question was, where could such gigantic vessels berth?

Not long after the Hobhouse Committee had made its recommendations about the establishing of National Parks in Britain, the British Petroleum Company took stock of their own position. They realized that to meet the rising demand for petroleum products in this country they must expand their Llandarcy refinery at Swansea. They also foresaw the necessary increase in tanker size. A 100,000-ton tanker is nearly 1000 feet long and 135 feet in the beam. Laden, it floats like an iceberg with most of its massive hull submerged, drawing very nearly fifty feet of water. B.P. were faced with two alternatives: either they could, at enormous expense, expand the Port Talbot docks so that they could accommodate the great tankers almost next to the refinery; or they could look for another harbour and pipe the crude oil from there to Llandarcy. They chose the second.

ALREADY the foreign armies are entrenched on the warm soil of Little England. The sun glints on their armour and on the supply ships at anchor off the shore; their banners fly in the wind, flaunting the devices of the rival kingdoms of Esso and B.P.; at night you can see the lights of their camp a long way off. Inside the camp perimeter the troops in their blue uniforms and coloured helmets move about between the latest heavy equipment pointing skywards like menac­ing guided missiles. The new occupying force commands the inland approaches of the haven which reaches, deep and wide, from the Atlantic into the very heart of the country. Little England lies, in a sense, in a state of siege.

Life in the hinterland of this new garrison carries on as normal, of course: the farmers plant their early potatoes, fatten their turkeys, reap their corn; in the brown Prescelly Mountains the sheep graze as they have always done; from Milford Haven the herring-trawlers breast the rolling Atlantic swells. But in Pembrokeshire they are all conscious now of a new force in the land, for the three towering smoke stacks of the invaders’ oil refinery beside the town of Milford Haven stand like monuments to a victory and presage a change in this hitherto secluded and little-changed county. The last invasion of this un-Welsh corner of Wales is under way, and its pleasant green land may well have to bear the imprint of a stamp that has been thumped down on so many rural areas of the British Isles. People are aware of the danger in Pembrokeshire. The county is a guinea-pig for the rest of the country, and it can die or be made stronger under the knife.

The first invaders of Little England were Neolithic men, who found the climate to their liking and settled down to grow wheat and barley and to work stone as we now work plastic. In no other part of Britain are the remains of such a muscular handicraft more abundant—there are twenty-six stone burial chambers (called cromlechs) for the delight of antiquarians, the finest at Pentre Ifan, where children climb like chubby roses among the massive blocks, oblivious of the chieftain or priest who lay here once, dead in the lovely Prescelly hills. Around the 17th century B.C., the Blue Stones of Stone­henge were quarried in this sacred mountain, and were probably floated down Milford Haven on their slow journey to Wiltshire.

The Romans followed, but left little trace of their grudging occupation. Early in the Christian era, the Pembrokeshire-born saints, Patrick, David and Teilo, spread the Word among the farming and fishing Celts on either side of the Haven. The Cathedral at St David’s (Britain’s smallest city, the locals claim—and they may well be right) honours one of them, for he did his work well and Pembrokeshire is still one of the most devout of counties.

In the year 877 a Viking pirate called Hubba sought safe winter anchorage for his twenty-three ships deep in Milford Haven. These wild sailors of fortune respected no fishing limits, rights of way, immigration laws, nor other men’s wives. For a hundred years they looted, burned and raped in Pembrokeshire. The native Celts withdrew into the uncoveted bogs and mountains of the north while the Vikings, their speech like gravel in Welsh ears, cheerily labelled every place they came to with a Norse name: Skokholm, Skomer, Milford, Fishguard, Haverfordwest.

The county was split in two, and conquering Normans reinforced the division with a line of castles defending the secured south against the unsecured north where tough little Welshmen were alone able to wrench a living out of the inferior soil. Thus were established throughout the south of the county the foundations of what is called Little England beyond Wales, a land where only English was spoken, and where large manor houses of stone looked out over feudal farms tilled by Saxon serfs. The great castles of the English, very old and little broken, loom over the land: Pembroke, birthplace of Henry VII, Manorbier, Carew, Haverfordwest and Roch. The English were the last of foreign invaders in Little England, though there were other colonists; most remarkable of all was a group of American Quakers, whalers from Nantucket, who founded the town of Milford Haven in 1793 and left their memory in Starbuck Road and Nantucket Avenue.

And what of Pembrokeshire now, faced with a new invasion which is insidious in that it is gradual and largely welcomed by the majority of the natives? Will its narrow lanes, boring like tunnels through woods, past old churches and across the dun, gentle hills of Prescelly, be bull­dozed into arterial roads? Will hilltops sprout pylons? Will all the familiar mess of ribbon develop­ment, suburban sprawl, advertis­ing splotch and factory eyesore spread to this untouched corner of western Britain too?

For some years before World War II, a few responsible people in Britain had expressed fears that areas of natural beauty in this country were in danger of being ruined by industry and unplanned urban growth, and that something urgently needed to be done about it. Already in Pembrokeshire there had been a foretaste of what could happen. In 1939 the War Office had requisitioned 6000 acres of best arable land near Castlemartin as a tank training ground, and small­holders at Brawdy had a sour sampling of high-handed govern­mental action when property was taken over as a site for a new airfield.

The first shot in the campaign for National Parks in Britain had been fired as long ago as 1810, when Wordsworth put forward a plea that his beloved Lake District should be deemed ‘a sort of national property’ whose beauty could thus be preserved; but it was not until 1945 that a really positive proposal was put forward, by Mr Herbert Morrison (now Lord Morrison of Lambeth), then Minister of Town and Country Planning. Shortly afterwards came the Dower Report, recommending the establishment of National Parks in certain areas of Britain, including parts of Pembrokeshire. The Hobhouse Committee made more detailed recommendations in 1947, and the National Parks Act was eventually passed on December 19, 1949.