Njip Plateau in the northwestern Crunch is small, as such plateaus go--no bigger than our Andean altiplano. It's complex, though--twisted ranges, dissected canyons. The region's the squashed remnant of a once-sprawling continent, perhaps 100 million years ago. Like our Mediterranean Basin, faults and ranges twist under pressure.

If Capsica was as wet as Earth, Njip Peninsula, north of the plateau, would be a modest island arc--just a few mountaintops poking out of miles-deep sea. On Capsica as it is, though, these mountaintops become thermal islets in a sea of fatal heat (and humidity).

For Njip straddles the equator, its lowlands, wet or dry, summer or winter, are hot even for native Capsicans, 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, except in the west and in the rainshadows of the higher peaks (west or northwest face).

The southern side of the Plateau is much drier, but still not typical of the Crunch's arid interior. There's still a substantial monsoon--rainy summer, dry winter. All in all, Njip's one of Capsica's gardens. Just a bit too hot of a hothouse--for your chilly Terran blood.

The highlands of Njip are another world--they snag clouds and rain year-round, and temperatures are mild in summer, just 40-50°C (104-122°F), and downright cool in winter (30-40°C, 86-104°F). For obvious reasons, Terrans all tour in winter.

Though snowless, the flanks and summits of Cape Njip'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.

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 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. Scenic, but as useless to them as any glacier-capped peak on Earth.

We'll start in the southwest, approaching via the Nawa Mountains. Unlike many uplands in the Crunch, Njip is easy enough to get to, if you've mastered flying in strap-on wings; no long fatal lowlands to cross.

So we'll set out from the northern tip of Lanifa Plateau: the Nawa Range.

You're riding the winds off the Spiral Sea. To your right, deep green wooded slopes and paler green summits; though the Nawas are steep, breaking into cliffs, there's not an inch of exposed rock--smothered in trees and ferns. Too rainy here. Below, maroon and deep magenta canyons, draped in dragons of cloud--as the sea-wind rises, mist condenses. Classic cloud forest.

The sea's out to the left, 1-200 km away. You're so high you could see it on a cloudless day, but the coastal plain jostles with white cumulus. About as sunny a day as you get in the lowlands.

Two days northeast. Rain. Sun. Waterfalls.

After Mt Timus, tallest in the range at 5.5 km (18,000'), the range veers due east. But go on north, just a bit east. Ridges get lower, but still in the olive zone, just cool enough to be bearable.

A wide gap between ridges. Several anxious hours over a sea of red jungle shimmering in fatal heat. It's easy to ride the updrafts along ridges; the heights are clear markers. But finding thermals over a land in patchy, shifting shadows is a lot harder; they move.

A couple of isolated volcanic cones. You land near the summit on the nearest, and rest up. On to another. Then to more sustained coastal ridges where you can camp for the night.

Over Binn Strait to Thever. Again, fatal if you fall, but no big deal--the strait's narrower than the rainforested gap you already crossed.

Thever is as big as Java, and quite similar--rainy, equatorial. A bit warmer--averaging 60°C (140°F). Rarely too much more--the heat guarantees typhoons most of the year. Luckily for Terrans, the similarity to Java includes volcanoes rising into a much cooler zone--now, in orbital winter, 35-40°C (95-104°F).

Two peaks on the south side of Thever loom right over Nep Bay, allowing you at least a distant view of Port Nep two miles below--catamarans crowd the docks, loading smoked janga fruit from the orchards all over the lowlands--purplish trees with bright green fruit, where Java has terraced ricepaddies. Theverians have wings so harvesting from tall trees is easy; orchards are far more common than cleared fields, all over Capsica.

Fly to the green-tipped ridge at the head of the bay. From here it's just a few ridges west, a few hours on the wing, to the north coast of Thever. A small bay, 25 km wide (15 mi), a low rugged point, and on the horizon, the Isle of Nip. Low and deep red, wooded shore to shore, it's a perfect stepping-stone to the Serrel Islands, a flyway to Lamia Peninsula. A string of flyers, black dots agains the pale Capsican sky, is headed out. But you can't join them. The Serrels are low, lush islands. And as such, utterly fatal for you.

Southeast back to Nep Bay. Across Binn Strait, about 65 km (40 mi). Down the olive hills to those solitary volcanoes. South by east from the last of them, a bit east of your outgoing route. You land (and camp, and if you're smart, swim & stretch out the kinks from that trip) on a ridge of the Nawas 50 km east of your jumping-off point.

In the morning, follow that ridge straight south. At noon you reach a narrow gap, barely 15 km (10 mi), and cross to a cliff-walled mesa... first finger of Nalifa Plateau.

East to its base--three full days.

The oceanward side

Belodu Peaks.

Mindotan Peak

Crater lake.

North to Tserka Bay. Port below you.

Southeast to Tsallu Peak

Cape Pitkib. Locals fly south; you shouldn't.

The Njip Gulf coast.

Halden Bay. Ridge on the west right above the bay. Don't land on Halden Island, it's too low and hot.

Skirt the Torth Rainforest.

Mount Yuko--7.6 km (25,000'), actually snowcapped.

South to the rim of Njip Plateau.

East across the mouth of Torth Canyon.

East along a straight coast. Humid, lush. Waterfalls and plum-colored rainforest below you, chartreuse peaks above (despite their height, no snow; you're right on the equator now. Not that you can see all that well. Big white cloud-sheep graze the lowlands, and banners veil the peaks and ridges. Not much of the mainland Crunch is tropical or maritime, but this coast is an exception; you could still be on Njip Peninsula.

Impossibly, one cloud-veil is stable. Head south up the slope. Thin air and hard work as you climb past 5 km (16,500') but it's marginally cooler. As you creep above the clouds, an astonishing wall of ice-sculpted peaks looms above you, 7-8 km high (23-26,000'). The Xxxxxxxxx Mts

big canyon

A full day east.

The next day you have a choice: continue east to the L'rota-Keh Uplands; a second coastal, equatorial highland.

But I want to show you the other face of the Crunch: the dry side. Even if the monsoon here is so strong it's not very dry, by Crunch standards. But then you don't want to see the real dry side. Farther south it gets uninhabitably nasty. Even for Capsicans, I mean.

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The next day you have a choice: keep on south into Capsica's grimmest zone, Droom; here, no plateaus exist, just narrow and intermittent mountain ranges. Hot, deadly... spectacular.

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