Rmitsa Gulf lies off the northeast Crunch, that mega-continent where many platelets have collided, corrugated and stacked. The Rmitsa Peninsulas would be, on Earth, an island arc. Capsica's drier, so it's more like our Malay Peninsula. Well, two small ones with a strait between. We're near Capsica's equator, where lowlands (wet or dry, summer or winter) are hot even for natives, and fatal to Terrans: averaging 60°C (140°F) and up to 70°C (158°F). They'd be hotter yet if they weren't so humid; clouds often cover them, though the inland side facing the Gulf is in a mild rainshadow; unlike most of the Crunch's interior, there's still a substantial monsoon--rainy summer, dry winter.

All in all, Rmitsa's one of Capsica's garden spots. Just a bit too hot of a hothouse--for your chilly Terran blood.

Unlike most parts of the Crunch, Rmitsa is fairly easy to reach and tour, if you've mastered flying in strap-on wings; no long fatal lowlands to cross. The highlands snag clouds and rain year-round, and temperatures are mild in summer, a mere 40-50°C (104-122°F), and downright cool in orbital winter, just 30-40°C (86-104°F). For obvious reasons, Terrans all tour in winter, and they MUST stick to mountaintops.

And there are mountains. Though snowless, the flanks and summits of Rmitsa's volcanic spine are green climatic islands in the sea of red. The high meadows of the outer slopes, above 5 km (16,400'), thrust up through the cloud-sea into relatively sunny air. But these heights aren't arid, as on many Terran tropical peaks like Kilimanjaro or much of the Altiplano. Capsica's denser atmosphere, thinning slower in the lower gravity, means high-altitude air holds more moisture than Earth's; and Capsica's tropics have more thunderstorms, especially in global summer, when the little planet swings close to the sun.

Though snowless, the summits are windy and dry enough to discourage trees--the higher peaks have quite Terran-looking meadows, sometimes gold in the winter dry season, greening again with the summer rains. It's the subalpine shoulders just below, with small creeks and shade trees, that are ideal camps for tourists. You don't have to ask permission; the locals won't mind. For them, these peaks are just cold windy holes frayed through an otherwise balmy, pleasant climate-carpet. Mountains are scenic signposts, but as unlivable for them as any glacier-capped peak is for us on Earth.

We'll start in the northwest, approaching from the Lrota-Keh region.

You cross the lowland basin between Lrota-Keh and the Leeward (or just Lee--meaning downwind) Peninsula. Maroon and ruby rainforest below you, when you can see it through the puffy clouds.

Warm showers and rainbows all day. This is steamy country.

The Oruka Mountains, the largest upland on the Peninsulas. South a full day, never below 3.7 km (12,000'). Green, not olive or red. Could be the Amazon! If you were a parrot.

Mt Oruka, a broad shield volcano 5.8 km high (19,000'). Wheel around its eastern, windward flank; the updrafts are better there.

Two days east and a bit south along Rei Ridge, a chain of volcanoes 4-4.5 km high (13-15,000').

South a day over olive cloudforest; a few canyons are deep maroon, marking them as barely a mile up. But mostly 3 km and up; a few cones reach 4. Comfortable rest stops--shade, water.

Mount Atu, a tangle of lava flows and vents (all currently inactive). Camp on the south side; tomorrow we're crossing Rmitsa Strait, and you want the shortest line between oases of cool.

Not much to say about the crossing. Take care, of course. But really it's no farther from peak to peak than you've been flying daily--about 125 km (75 mi); Rmitsa strait itself is just 25 km wide (15 mi). Capsicans cross it without a thought.

Yet the strait's important to them--for shipping. It makes Rmitsa Gulf an arm of the Spiral Sea, and thus the world ocean. Goods from here can go anywhere--unlike most of the Crunch, cut off from world shipping and a bit backward because of it.

Capsicans take for granted the Strait's other function: the Crunch has a dozen cut-off sea, some stable, some variable in sealevel and salinity. Being connected to the world-sea means a stable shoreline and no salt flats. Not that this was ever likely for rainy Rmitsa! If a lava flow blocked the Strait, the Gulf would swell to a brackish lake until it found an outlet between volcanoes, and slowly flush out the salt down that new river. Eventually Rmitsa'd be a freshwater lake--and still accessible to shipping, up its substantial exit river.

This may have indeed happened already, even several times. The saddles between peaks, especially on the Windward Peninsula, are low.

The Tak Hills. Unlike the north, you have to plan now; you're ridge-hopping. Oases of olive and green over big stretches of deep red forest.

Mt Kuro. Really a triangle--West Peak, Mt Kuro proper, some 50 km east (30 mi), about 5.2 km high (17,000'), and South Peak 80 km farther on, just under 4.9 km tall (16,000').

On the horizon, southeast and southwest, are lesser cones--still over 4 km high--perfectly good campsites. We head southeast; the other peaks are out on Cape West, a dead end for us.

North Kontsa. Kontsa proper, with its breached rim and crater lake.

A day south to Mt Niro, highest on the Windward Peninsula at 5.7 km (18,700').

View west from the summit. Another flooded caldera, this one spectacular--raw cliffs dropping into deep blue water. The collapse forming this one must be recent, just a few thousand years ago.

But there's another factor keeping these cliffs bare; less rain. As you creep away from the Equator, you're slipping from year-round rains to a summer monsoon and winter dry spell--at least here on the rainshadowed side of the mountains. The east coast, along the Spiral Sea, looks just as dense. But trees here on the drier side are slower to pioneer on bare rock.

South an hour or two to the end of the Niro complex--an olive ridge above... no, not lush red forest, but open woods--groves and small meadows.

The Motos--North Peak, then South. Twin Fujis, perfectly symmetrical. Like that flooded caldera, evidence many of these vents are young. Despite the rains, little erosion yet. Not geology's millions of years; history's mere thousands.

Infants! Who knows how big they'll grow?

Now where? Several ridge complexes lead south past Lake Nib, 90 km long and 40 wide (55 by 25 mi)... more and more of the country ahead is low and fatally hot. You were safer at the equator!

One flyway, a popular one with the locals, leads due east along the shore of WIndward Bight, than across lowland veldt, Isargo Delta, the Ombok Waves (low washboard ridges like the Appalachians) to Habren Mesa in the Southeast Crunch. I don't recommend it; you have to cross a full 400 km (250 mi) of deadly lowland nonstop to reach Habren's rim and safety. Hot and miserable at best; quite possibly fatal.

I recommend instead you head southwest to huge Lindara Plateau, high, scenic and safe. Well, at least near the coast; inland, not so much. But the best I can offer. This is the Crunch.

This has been one of the shorter Capsican tours, but one of the muggiest too. Congratulations! You may look like a pickled plum (salted in your own sweat), but you didn't wrinkle to death On Capsica, I call that a win.

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