Adam in Australia

Adam in Florida: Space Shuttle Discovery Launches Into Space

2010-02-11T18:00:00.004-03:00

Hey everyone

As some of you know, I've recently (well.. not so recent!) been to Florida. The purpose? To watch one of the last five shuttle launches before the shuttle fleet is retired this year. Luckily, it was also the LAST planned night shuttle launch EVER. Yep. ever.

I could go on and on about the trip: about the launch itself, about the amount of friendly and warm people I met, and the chance to photograph Burrowing Owls (credit to Richard Peters for providing the inspiration and letting me know they were there), but I thought instead to share one picture from the trip that summed it all up for me. This is an early stage rough edit.

Space Shuttle Discovery launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Mission STS-130

There are two great points to this blog post.

Firstly, the shuttle just happened to launch on my birthday which wasn't planned! I wanted to show that off :)

Secondly, and for the first time on this blog, I am offering this picture for sale. Prices and details to come shortly, as will the final edit, but expect some news much sooner than it's taken me to blog this, now that I'm finally finding time to.. do stuff!
This is hugely exciting for me. This is my first active promotion for my work, and hopefully the start of good things to come. Feel free to tell your friends if you like the image! The more the merrier :)
And just to re-iterate, this is the last ever night launch by any of the shuttle fleet. Own a piece of history!

To the many people from North America who I've met and who have emailed, the reason for this very late blog update is because I've been spending a LOT of time trying to find somewhere to live and trying to get a job here in Sydney. Well, one down for now!

PS, and for the benefit of the Google Bot I've seen around, here's a tip to anyone who gets a chance to shoot a night launch:
ISO 400, 1/500, f/6.3 and bracket 2/3 either way. Job done. I promise you, those settings will work..

Cheers all, I hope you are well!
Adam

Adam in Australia

2010-01-11T20:34:00.005-03:00

First, let me start off by wishing all a belated Happy New Year! I hope everyone's NYE was fun and the holidays were spent with those closest to you.

Anyway, as you can see from the revised title.. I'm no longer in the UK. Yep. The time had arrived to call an end to my sojourn in the UK. We are now in Australia, having arrived on Sunday. So this gives me a chance to send a quick apology out to the many friends I've not emailed back lately or seen or didn't say goodbye to. As you can imagine, the past couple of months or so has been pretty hectic! Sorting out shipping etc has been fun to say the least. I'm going to spend the next few days catching up on emails/calls/visits etc.

So for the short to medium term, Fran and I are in Aussie. No more cold weather, well at least the winters here only last a month really!
Our last day in London was blessed with some great weather though. Cold, crisp, clear skies until a brief snow shower, followed by a beautiful sunset. It was a great send-off.

I hope everyone has a great 2010.
For me, I'm going to be quietly building up my portfolio and hope to launch a new site in 2011. This year therefore will be quite busy.

On the gear front, I'm about to receive my first 1-series camera: the EOS 1D Mark IV. I'm so excited about this camera and the possiblities it can give to photographers: low light shooting, coupled with movie quality full 1080p HD video recording. Hopefully this year I'll also be receiving a 24 1.4 II for some work I want to do on starfield photography. We'll see though. This is an expensive hobby and I don't yet have a job :)
rarrr.. dole anyone? haha

So I might be a bit quiet on the blog-front this year. We've one or two trips planned of course. You can't stop this man travelling that's for sure. Hopefully towards the end of the year I should have some more detail on the new site.

Thanks for those who have followed in 2009. My subscriber list is actually bigger than I ever expected, for which I am forever greatful. I'm also now on Facebook and plan to put my "business" on there late this year as well. Look out for that!

Much love to everyone. Best of luck for the coming year.

Cheers
Adam, Sydney, 31 degrees :)

Kruger National Park - Pictures!

2009-10-20T17:20:00.019-03:00

Rightyo, here we go.

All pictures are now online. My mate Neil and I had a blast, driving around the park, and seeing beautiful animals in their natural habitat.

Highlights:
-Seeing a pride of seven male lions.. Extrememly unusual!
-Finding a pride of lions in beautiful morning light, and watching them play
-Seeing six! leopards! One of the rarest cats. One of them hunted what looked like two Steenbok, but missed it's meal.
-Seeing jackals! They are like small coyotes, and very beautiful.
-Hyena. After many days of near-misses, the last two days proved pretty fruitful to see these animals. They are the most unnerving predators, as they are the most curious and least fearful
-So many eagles! Wow. Huge birds of prey the likes of which you would NEVER see anywhere in Europe (except maybe here)
-And of course, Cheetah! Just as we were leaving the park, we got a tip that two Cheetah were sitting next to the side of the road not a few km up ahead. So lead-foot Lawler raced to the scene (of course, at no point breaking the speed limit)

The majority of my favourites are here in my Smugmug galleries and I urge those interested to have a look, because the files there are much higher quality than what you'll see here. Remember to click "slideshow" in the top right corner.

Here are a few of the best IMO:

Sunrise in the Kruger. There's an eagle in that tree if you look closely. It's eating a monitor lizard.. not that you can tell!

Our first lion encounter! I love the tongue of the little cub poking out there

One of my favourite shots from the trip. I'm going to work on this some more when I get access to my PC

Impala portrait

Just before a hunt!

Another favourite of mine - these buffalo are POWERful

Croc

Lazy. The image isn't too sharp; it was so hot and there is LOTS of haze in the picture

For you Sal!!

I tried for a motion shot on quite a few animals, and I'm glad it worked with this Hyena

A fairly common bird; some kind of hornbill

Croc vs Catfish

Cheetah. Beautiful hey?

Cheetah profile

This fella was the winner of a fight we'd just missed. The loser is in my gallery. Be sure to check it out

Leopard, the most beautiful cat. All that white fluff around the edges are unfortunately branches, but thank God for shallow depth of field!

Kingfisher. No idea what type. Neil will know as he's the birder!

So what's next for Adam? Well the year isn't over, and I have a few other travel ideas for before Christmas. I had planned to head to Florida for November, to watch the next Shuttle Launch, but alas, for reasons to do with employment, that has had to pass (for now).

I also hope to update the blog software here. Hopefully I will be able to orient this site towards my photography a bit more, and the first thing that needs doing is to "pimp it up" a bit. So look forward to that later this year.

Anyway, hopefully all are well. Thanks for following my journeys so far, and keep your eyes peeled, because I ain't finished yet!

Adam

Canon EOS 1D Mark IV

2009-10-20T17:02:00.005-03:00

For the photographers:

Canon today announced their new Journo/Sports flagship, the EOS 1D Mark IV.
The spec is not as high as what the community expected, and nothing in this camera, in my opinion, bests the fantastic Nikon D3s released last week, but taken on it's own, it looks like it will be a brilliant camera in it's own right.. especially if Canon can nail the AF module this time!

Brief specs:
16.1mp APS-H CMOS sensor
10 fps at 14 bit depth
Dual Digic IV processors
Full HD (1080p) movies at 24, 25, and 30fps
Rugged weather sealed body
Brand new 45 point AF system, with 39 cross-type points
3" LCD with Live View and Live View autofocus
And the big one that I'm sure the marketting department at Canon pushed for:
ISO 100-12,800, expanding to 50-102,400 in L and H3 modes. Yep. ISO 102,400.. pretty much night-vision!
RRP:
$4,999
£4,499!!!
Ridiculous price in my view, considering you can get a Mk III for £2.5k at the moment.

Anyway, barring the few negative points (I'm not going to mention the comparisons to the 7D), I'll probably end up getting one at some point. After the price drops of course!

Oh, and I haven't forgotten about the Safari pics, don't worry. They are coming up next.

Peace

Back in London

2009-10-14T12:16:00.010-03:00

Rightyo!

I'm now back from South Africa.. what a trip! My mate Neil and I hired a car and self-drove around Kruger National Park. Unless you're on the Serengeti or similar, self-drive is the way to go. We saw so many cool things and weren't limited by someone else's schedule.

Anyway, I'll keep this short. I'm updating pics now, but it will take me a while to finish. Unlike South America, I did not shoot Raw + jpeg, or any kind of jpeg. I shot Raw the whole time which means I have to go in and edit the pics I'll upload.
The next blog post should be back to the big text stuff but also, lots of pics :)

I'll give you one teaser though.. On our last hour in the park, we stumbled across the one animal most people do NOT see, even those that live near the park and go monthly or yearly. And we saw TWO of them together! Beautiful cats.

The world's fastest land animal

Later

Adam

Where In The World, Is Adam Lawler?

2009-09-28T19:48:00.006-04:00

.. London for now!

Well it's been just under three weeks since I've been back. And to be honest, it's only now that I'm feeling the come-down. Thinking back on the trip is a bit depressing at the moment.. I miss travelling and being on the road, and not knowing where we're going next.

BUT, as you can see from the new title of this blog, I'm not sitting still here. In fact, tomorrow I leave on another (shorter!) trip to the Kruger National Park in South Africa.
Fran is staying in Blighty and I'm going with a mate of mine who is also mad about wildlife photography. I reckon Fran would probably have gotten fed up with us after 2 hours, when the conversation turned to the precense of diffraction on APS-C sensors with a pixel density equal to or greater than the 50D..

..exactly

Anyway, I guess the answer to the come-down after travelling... is to keep travelling :D
And that is something I can definitely live with!

Bye for now - I will try an update this blog with pictures along the way, if I have a chance.

Adam

EDIT: Just to clarify (not big on image theft), the above banner picture is not mine. I took it from here:
http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/channel/3/extra/new/display/14305957
I'll remove it as soon as I get my own sunset pic!

The End

2009-09-09T13:25:00.007-04:00

Yep, it's finally over. My flight leaves Quito back to London (via Guayaquil and Madrid) tonight at 5:40pm. Fran left two days ago, but has been stuck in Guayaquil with a faulty plane! Her plane was due to depart today at 12pm. Hopefully everything is now sorted for her, otherwise I might have a travelling companion on the way back! That's if they let me on the plane of course and not bump my flight.

Anyway, it's a bit depressing having to leave, but to be honest it hasn't sunk in just yet. I'm sure it will hit me as the plane takes off that the journey has now finished.

It's been one hell of a journey and I guess I could write loads and loads in reflection here, but I'll keep it (relatively!) short.

In 6 months we've travelled through 5 countries: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Each country has been remakedly different, yet the common theme linking them all to each other is the Andes. These huge mountains, split into different "Cordillera" are the backbone of South America. They not only run the entire length of the continent, they've also shaped the massive eastern rainforest by providing enough water to allow the Amazon to flourish.

The cultures of people who have lived and are still living here are again all so different, yet they are linked through their amazing tenacity at eking out a life in, at times, so harsh a climate. The peoples themselves have been warm, welcoming, humourous, and intensely proud of their culture and countries. Patriotism here is unlike anything I've encountered. It's not like the in-your-face patriotism of the US, or the self-deprecating patriotism of Britain, or the laid-back-but-proud patriotism of Australia. The people here love their corrupt, poor and mis-managed countries, and they fight for what's right. They always look on the bright side, even though it might not come across that way! As a hostel owner I met in Argentina said, when I asked him "so what do you think of your country" after we'd been speaking of corruption there.. he paused, looked pensive, then smiled and said "at least we have broadband".

Personally, it has been a rollercoaster of a trip. At times it was hard, having to endure long uncomfortable bus trips, and not being able to speak the native tongue hindered our interactions with the locals. But always, something around the corner totally surprised us and blew us away. Take Bolivia for instance. Before we got there, I was struggling to think how we'd fill 4 weeks there, knowing all about the altitude, the bugs, the cold showers! But we spent 6 and a half weeks there and almost had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from the place.

Anyway, I also want to thank you my audience for enduring my ravings and reading my blog. Thanks for all the compliments on my pictures, and the supportive emails we received along the way.

And a huge thank you to all the people we met along this trip, travellers and locals alike, without whom this trip would have been a far duller experience. You guys know who you are, and hopefully the friendships we've made won't be the typical "let's exchange emails and then never hear from each other" type emails.

So here is a map of what we've done in total. At some point I'll clean it up and provide hyperlinks to each blog post on the map itself.

View South America 2009 in a larger map

This is not the end though. I plan on coming back here one day. The lure of Patagonia, the jungles of Bolivia, and the Galapagos have been the big adventures of this trip for me and I can't imagine life without seeing them again.

And lastly, thank you to Fran for putting up with my crap for 6 months. You have been the best travelling companion I could ask for. Always positive and there to support me when I needed it. Thank you babe x

So I will leave it there. This is not really the end though. Stay tuned to this blog, because I should have a few more surprises coming up over the next few months.

Much love to all!
Adam

Bathrooms and Whales

2009-09-05T18:37:00.008-04:00

Hi folks

Well after the paradise that was the Galapagos, we had just over one week remaining on our South American odyssey. Our plan was to head from Quito to Baños, and then to Puerto Lopez, before finally heading back to Quito to fly back to sunny England. Yay :(

So we spent a single night in Quito before taking a 4 hour bus ride to Baños. The town is set at the base of Volcan Tungurahua, which is highly active; the last eruption was in 2008, which forced the evacuation of nearby towns. Sitting at 5,023m amsl, the Volcano would ordinarily be the town’s major feature, but unfortunately we are in Ecuador in “cloudy season”, and most of the time visibility is quite poor.
Baños (English Translation: Bathroom) has a really glowing review in the Lonely Planet, and is also known for a few other things such as the thermal springs (we gave them a miss - been there done that!) and the numerous waterfalls on the road towards the jungle (the town is halfway between Andes and Jungle).

Baños is known for it's local toffee as well

Baños from a lookout

It was in Baños that I also became a bit sick. Nothing major, just man-flu. But it had me bed-ridden for a day or so, meaning we stayed in Baños a little longer than planned. Still, we got to see the awesome Pailón del Diablo by biking the 20-odd kilometers through brilliant scenery (at one point going into a road tunnel through a mountain which had almost zilch visibility.. Scary stuff!) and walking a km or so to the falls. You can even walk behind the raging torrent as evidenced below.
On the way back to town, we put the bikes in the back of a truck and sat with them and shivered as the clouds opened on us. It ain’t pleasant being rained like that, let me tell you.

Pailón del Diablo

me in front of Pailón del Diablo

To get to the spot where you can stand behind Pailón del Diablo, you first have to crawl through a huge crack in the rock. Not for the claustrophobic

Unfortunately, that only served to make me a bit more sick, and we missed our 6:30am bus out of town because I couldn’t move. We caught an afternoon bus back to Quito (and our driver was Schumacher's Ecuadorian cousin, I‘m sure), waited in the bus terminal there for a couple of hours and then vamossed down to Puerto Lopez, this time with Schumacher himself.

Puerto Lopez's main drawcard is that once a year, hundreds of humpback whales congregate off the coast to feed, mate, and for the females, to ween their young. Each year humpbacks (both Northern and Southern species') migrate for summer to the Poles as the feeding grounds bloom. Then they make their way back towards the equator in winter and shallow waters, where the young are safe from predators like the larger shark species, but more importantly, the roving packs of Orcas. Aussies will know about this migration as the whales often travel up the coast, sometimes popping into Sydney harbour for a frolic.

So we arrived at around 5:00am, and immediately (like at most bus stations in South America) were set upon by taxi drivers (they drive rickshaw-like motors here), hostel owners and the like. Still feeling sick, I have to admit I was a little grumpy and basically gave them evils. Not proud of that, but at least it got them away! So we headed out to a place recommended by the LP: Hostal Mandala. Bloody expensive though! But as I was sick, I couldn't be bothered walking around town looking for accommodation so we stuck it out.

The cabin we stayed in in our "hostal". Most of the private rooms were these cabins.

We were in town three days and in that time, we got to see the whales!

What a trip! I've been whale-watching before, but never ever have I:
1. Seen so many! Easily 16 whales, but more likely 20 in our three hours on the water
2. Seen them breach! You beaut. What a site. After encountering our second pod of whales of 8 individuals and tailing them for a short while, suddenly about 20 meters from the boat the leviathan leaped from the water like a salmon fighting its way upstream, twisted onto its back, and slammed down onto the surface. I took easily my best picture of the day in this moment.. I don't know how I did it, because from memory I was jaw-agape and motionless, but as soon as I looked at my camera, this beauty was staring right back at me on the LCD screen.

Up from the depths

From then on it was breach after breach. We saw so many that I even had time to put the camera away and just watch! They came pretty close to the boat as well, and a lot of times several would lie on their backs and slap the water with their pectoral fins. What a site!
After about 20 minutes I began to see a pattern and could predict to within 10 seconds when and where the next breach would be. I was pretty proud of that achievement but Fran didn't seem so impressed, so I just showed off to myself.. "man you're cool Adam, how did you know that?!" haha.

Play. Fin slap and Breaching. We were just spoiled!

One his back, lazing about

Fluking was another behaviour witnessed

And twist!

Waving

Lots more breach pics can be found here:
Puerto Lopez

After that brilliant display, the naturalist guide on board made everyone give me their email addresses so I could send them the photos, because I had a "good camera".. No problem except you all HAVE TO PAY FOR THE PICTURES YOU THIEVING SCUM! ...ahem..
Anyway, that's not the first time I've been put in that position. When my dad and I went to Skye to see the Sea Eagles, everyone wanted copies of the pictures (for free). I think it's time I did something about that, maybe make some money from it.

Anyway, back to it!

After Puerto Lopez, we came back to Quito, firstly staying at another LP recommended place: Secret Garden. Filled with backpackers and it was pretty noisy so we left after one night. It did have fantastic views of the city though as seen below.

Quito Panorama

This gringo (don't be fooled by the clothes.. she was a gringo) was playing the most God awful music. Yes, you do remember that instrument on the floor from when you were in school

One of Quito's many squares

Locals enjoying the sun

my delicious lunch! Sandwich de pollo y champiñones con guacamole y papas fritas. Servido con te de menta y jugo de piña

An honour guard. These guys were waiting for the President to make an appearance, and he was actually supposed to be facing the other way. But they get bored easily I suppose

Can't think of a caption for this one, sorry!

Don't want to think of a caption for this one

local woman

The next day, Fran was due to leave Quito for her flight back to Blighty and onwards to Italy. Her flight was at 5pm and at mid night I got an email from her saying her flight was delayed by 24 hours! She was in Guayaquil, 30 mins flight from Quito. So that's where she is right now. For me, today has been a slow day as I've sat around waiting to see what happens to her situation. My flight is tomorrow, so we might end up being on the same plane back! Weird.

Right, I'll leave it there. I'll blog a final farewell post tomorrow morning. I might even shed some tears! Or not.

Much love!
Adam

In other news, Canon have just announced the brand spanking new EOS 7D, which is absolutely packed full of features. Those of you looking for a new semi-pro camera, this is a worthy contender for your dollars. Based on the feature-list of this model, the upcoming 1D Mk IV should be a killer.

The Galapagos Islands.. but no pictures

2009-08-29T14:43:00.008-04:00

No pictures? That’s a half-truth. I decided to upload quite a few pictures from our time in the Galapagos, subdivided into three groups:

Videos

Under Water Pictures

Above Water Pictures

As there were just too many to choose from to make the cut onto my smugmug site, I realised it would just take me far too long to choose from that group pictures to add to this blog. So if you want pictures, the links are above for your perusal. One gallery has 140+ pics. Be warned.

So, what’s left is the text. And again, there is just far to much to write. So let’s get the superlatives out of the way first. The Galapagos Islands are like stepping back in time to an era where humans simply did not exist. The animals are plentiful, the animals show no fear of man, and the experience is as best described as “Jesus Christ, what the hell?”. I have never, for instance in my 27 years been within 1 meter of a wild hawk, only for it to turn to me and screech “what the hell are you looking at?”.. or watched amazed as a sea bird bravely confronted a human to tell him to get out of his patch of shade… or been hunted down by fearless pelicans intent on getting me away from their nest… or had blue-footed boobies and pelicans drop from the sky and dive for fish not meters from my head as I snorkeled… or float with the biggest grin as sea lions swim within centimeters of my face, only to turn in the last instant and perform dazzling underwater acrobatics… or swim with huge marine turtles who viewed me as nothing more than another curious relative of the sea lion… or seen a whale shark appear from the deep blue, white spots contrasting strongly against the seas around, and then watch the giant to slowly swim away, yet at a pace an Olympic swimmer could never match… or sat enthralled watching Albatross practice a mating dance that can last hours, only minutes after watching others jump off cliffs to gain flight… or sat next to a group of 50 marine iguanas as they huddled together to keep their body temperatures high… or walked along a beach, where scores of sting rays sat in the surf a few meters away, letting the oxygen-rich water rush over their gills.
The Galapagos are everything you've heard about and more. Leaving the Islands was heart-breaking.

We were lucky to have booked on a “luxury” boat - Queen of the Galapagos. If the Google-bot sees this page, please put it at the top. People need to know about this boat. She is luxurious, she is classy, she is style, she is comfort. Her crew are first rate, her itinerary is more than adequate, and I have to admit, lying here in a hostel bed, I miss her a lot! Our guide made the trip as well; knowledge pouring out of his ears, ready to answer even my obscure questions. He possessed the drive and motivation to inspire us (as if we needed inspiring) to give a damn about this beautiful world we live in, to love it, and to try and make a difference.

I could go on and on… and on and on and on. But I’m simply going to leave this blog here, barring one little PS below, because the pictures can tell a better story than I can. I'm sorry if you were expecting my usual detailed filled blogs. You'd think for this experience I'd go all out, right? Not so. I'm still in shock. Maybe one day I'll blog about it in detail.

Much love, on a huge come-down,
Adam

P.S. the promised post-script, is more for the afore-mentioned Google-bot than anything else. I want it to find these keyword tags:
- Panasonic, DSC TM1, FT1, review, purchase.
I’m not going to give a lengthy review of this camera. I only want prospective purchases to note one thing.
Do NOT buy this camera.
It failed on our penultimate day, with no warning. The LCD monitor is a purple mess, the lens functions based on what I can only assume is the camera’s mood, and it simply refuses to take a picture or video that isn’t a black screen. Luckily I got 6 days out of it, but that’s simply not good enough. And what’s worse, is that in anything less than crystal clear water within a meter from the surface, the pictures are grainy, noisy, lacking in detail, and the camera simply struggles to obtain focus. Suffice to say, Panasonic and I are going to have words.
Have a look at the Olympus Tough series, or the superb Canon D10. Or better yet, invest in a DLSR with a fast lens and an underwater housing.

Quickish Update Mk II

2009-08-20T17:59:00.008-04:00

Hey folks. Well I'm just posting this to get the last few days out the way so the slate is clean. Why? Because tomorrow we fly out to the Galapagos and will spend 8 days on a boat sailing the islands. I can't wait! I'm pretty nervous about the sea-sickness (this being the roughest time of year for the seas around there), and considering I get sea-sick in the bath tub, and remembering my last excursion on a boat to sea, well right now my mind is in worry-mode.

To start us off - a sunset in Huanchaco, again!

Me at the Peruvian/Ecuadorian border crossing. There were a few pictures here representing anti drug squads who patrol the border. Peru is Latin America's second largest exporter of cocaine

Anyway, since my last update, we've arrived in Ecuador. From Trujillo, we took an 18 hour bus ride to Guayaquil (Ecuador's biggest city), which plenty of people recommended against. But we found it quite nice! Granted, it's not a top-ten desitination by any stretch, but the city has a bit of charm.

Guayaquil's lighthouse. Not sure if it's necessary as the city's on a fairly calm river.

View from the lighthouse

Guayaquil's redesigned waterfront. Loads of money has been spent on this place, and it's now quite safe

And again. That's Fran there

There's a park in the middle of the city that has the obvious wildlife, like squirrels, shitting pigeons and the like. What's a bit unusual is all the iguanas that are around there as well! Iguanas in a city park. Bizzare. There are even some tortoises in the pond, but the tame iguanas steal the show.

Iguanas find all sorts of places to rest. Like this tree

Or in a flower-bed

Little girl watches on as the boy starts pulling the animal's tail.

Portrait

Me and my new mate

We also stayed at one hell of a posh Guest House (La Casa de Romero if anyone's interested). Quite far out of town, but I guess when you have great accomodation, it adds a lot to your experience of a place.

From Guayaquil, we came to Quito, and we arrived last night. Today has been half admin (getting the tickets sorted, also laundry before the trip!) and half sight-seeing. I'll be back in Quito when I leave in a few weeks time (boo hoo!) so I'm not too fussed on seeing everything in one day. So I guess: more to come from Quito in a few weeks.

Inside Quito's gothic cathedral

Cathedral, another view

Anyway, like I said, this was a shortish update.
Remember we'll be away from the 'puter until next Saturday I reckon, so I'm unfortunately going to get even further behind in replies etc. Sorry dudes!

Before I go, there are two things I want to mention:

1. I've uploaded a video from the new underwater camera just to test my hosting site's functions and to see the quality. Here's the video. I tried compressing it before uploading, but it's still big. If anyone could please let me know what the image quality is like on your computer, plus how long it took to load, that'd be great. Hopefully I'll have some better videos to upload once the Galapagos is over and done with. (If you can't get HD on the video below, try this link)

2. My new Canadian friend Jen has sent me the coolest link:
Read between the lines, someone somewhere is preparing for the invasion. They don't want to panic us, but information like this is leaked for a reason. It's coming people. Stock up on food and ammo. And remember. Aim for the head.

Later
Adam

Quickish Update

2009-08-15T23:27:00.007-04:00

Hi everyone,

Well it's been a fairly uneventful few days, although we have managed to head down to Nazca and see the famous Nazca Lines. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After getting back from the Inca Trail, the plan was to stay a night in Cusco, and then head to Nasca with SAS again, and then up to Lima. The night before we were due to leave, we went for dinner with our new Canadian friends, and Fran had some dodgy chicken. So the next day she was out for the count, and we had to delay our departure. We tried for the next day once Fran was feeling better. We went to the bus station to catch our overnight bus to Nazca, which was due to leave at 5pm. 530 came and went, and so did 6. The locals were getting pissed off and went to the company's office at the station to get some answers. To cut a long story short, by 730, we were told there was a "problem" with the bus, so that meant another night in Cusco. Ordinarily that's no big deal, but it meant cutting out Nazca and going straight to Lima the next day, and also fronting up yet more cash in the VERY expensive Cusco. But finally we left Cusco, and made our way down to Lima.

Lima is a pretty dull city. There isn't much going for it really. Check out my Lima gallery. Just two pictures.. taken 20 minutes apart. That's how much Lima excited us. BUT, I did manage to buy an underwater camera for the Galapagos, so that's a plus. A Panasonic TS1 for those curious. Awesome little thing.

One of two shots taken of Lima!

Anyway, after a couple of days of not really doing much in Lima, we decided to go to Nazca afterall and look at the famous Lines. I'm so glad we did! An 8 hour bus trip took us to Nazca, and as soon as we got to our hostel, we were booked on a flight to see the Lines in half an hours time. We went to the airport with a Spanish couple from our hostel, and in 20 minutes, we were up in the air! The planes are all Cessna-sized, and anyone who's been in one knows just how bumpy they are. Within 10 minutes I was feeling sick. Thank God the flight is only half an hour. But the planes are all flown by what I'm sure are ex-stunt pilots, as they do almost 90 degree turns over the huge glyphs in the desert, banking horizontally left and right so both sides of the plane get a good view. It's like a MiG doing a 4 gee negative dive, Mav.

The desert

Upside down whale - I'll get around to rotating and cropping at some point

The hummingbird

The spider

My favourite - The Astronaut

The condor

Oh, also in Nazca is the world's largest sand dune - Cerro Blanco. Over 1km of pure sand going vertical, the damn thing dwarfs the mountains around it. Really weird.

Other ruins:

Puquios.. mysterious aqueducts in the desert

more Puquios - Fran gives a sense of scale

Ruins

From Nazca, we made our way back to Lima, but only for two hours to catch a connecting bus to Trujillo. By the way, if anyone is in Peru, try a bus company called Cruz del Sur (literally, Southern Cross). They are the most airline-like bus, with meals, compulsory seat-belts, pre-departure safety video, GPS positioning (where a central command can shut down the bus or even change it's speed!), and get this... Wi-Fi. There's even a computer "room" on board where a laptop is set up for you to email/work from. Eat your heart out National Express.

We didn't stay in Trujillo, but opted to meet Craig and Laila again in the sea-side town of Huanchaco. There's nothing here really, except the beach, and the weather isn't that great most of the time. But we were lucky enough to withness a damn nice sunset. The following pics are the only ones I've taken in Huanchaco so far.

Sunset 1

Sunset 2

Sunset 3 - my fav

So yeah, that's pretty much it! The ruins of Chan Chan are set in between Trujillo and Huanchaco, and they are HUGE. The first time you see them is pretty bizarre, because the main road runs right through it. There is no fanfare shouting "here is Chan Chan"... you suddenly find yourself surrounded by what looks like lumpy sand dunes that stretch for miles, but are in fact ruins of the adobe settlement thst pre-dated the Incas. We're hoping to go and visit the site tomorrow if we have time,

I'll leave it there for now - not much else to report! We start our Galapagos trip on Friday, so we're making our way into Ecuador tomorrow. Peru has been great... more expensive than we'd planned, and we've missed out on lots of places I wish we had time to visit, but I guess that's for next time.

Much love, I'm tired.. gotta go

The Inca Trail - Lotsa Pics

2009-08-07T11:45:00.011-04:00

Before I begin, just something to note: try viewing these pics on a bright monitor.. I´ve been uploading them on a laptop, but I´ve just viewed them on our hostel monitor (which is pants) and they are quite dark.

We booked the trip back in March, thinking "cor, that's a long way away". All of a sudden, it was upon us. Everyone we'd spoken to had said the trail was hard, and day two was horrific, so I was pretty much dreading it. One guy even went so far to say that it was harder than the Torres, and considering my body shut down on that hike, I was pretty nervous.
BUT, and I say this in good spirit, those people were talking shit. It's not that hard. In fact, day two is what I'd call moderately difficult. I'm not pretending to be Chuck Norris here, because Chuck doesn't have a spare tyre around his waste. The most difficult part about the whole trek is the steps. Why the Incas thought it made more sense to have steps instead of gentle gradients is beyond me.. maybe that's why they're no longer around. Sore legs.

Anyway, from the beginning.

The day before we left Cusco, we met with our group for a briefing at SAS' office (not that SAS, this one). We quickly went through the itinerary for the next four days, paying careful attention to all the details of day two. We were then given duffel bags to put our stuff in for the porters to carry.

Day 1

We met at a square near SAS at 5:45am, to begin the three hour journey to the town of Ollantaytambo. This is where the trail kicks off. The park rangers check your passport against the booking list to make sure you aren't trying anything funny, you cross the Bridge of No Return, and then it begins.

The group at the start of the trek

Crossing the Bridge of No Return

We started with a gentle walk, staying at 2,400m amsl and having a chat amongst ourselves; getting to know each other a little better. When you spend 24/7 with a bunch of people, you want to make sure none of them are convicted murderers or something similar. Thankfully no one was a convicted murderer. Maybe they just hadn't been caught.
Anyway, we walked for a few hours to our lunch spot, being passed along the way by porter after porter. 400 people per day are permitted onto the Inca Trail, including the porters, and it's utterly amazing and hugely embarrassing seeing these guys sprint past you, carrying 25kg and not uttering a word of complaint.

The ruins of Patallacta

By the time we arrived at our lunch spot, the porters had set up two huge tents - one for the chef to cook in (yes, we had a chef, and an assistant chef) and another with tables and chairs for the lazy gringos to rest in. We were even given bowls of warm water to wash our faces and hands in... C'mon, this isn't trekking! But I'll take it!
And then food was served. Dear God, the food was incredible. We all stuffed ourselves and sat in the sun afterwards for half and hour. Eating is hard work you know.
After that, we slowly climbed to our campsite for the night, passing through a small village at the foot of the mountain we'd have to assault the next day. The mountain pass is known as "Dead Woman's Pass". It's so named, not because there's a dead woman up there but because the pass looks like a dead woman. You really have to use your imagination, and forget anything you know about female anatomy. I'll leave that there.

Llamas and humans cautiously keep distance. These things spit and kick, and so do the llamas

Camp that night was the same. Awesome food, all the tents pre-set up for us, and an amazing view of a huge mountain in front of us.

Day 2:

We were woken at 5am to get an early start on the climb. The porters knocked on our tent with cups of cocoa tea, which supposedly helps with altitude. Fran and I have been at altitude since the start of June, so luckily we were acclimatised. One poor woman in our group had just flown into Cusco the day before the trek, and today the altitude was going to really hit her.
After an amazing breakfast, we started the climb. This section is not that difficult. There are a few stairs, but mostly it's pretty straight-gradient walking. The trail is also in good condition. We started out as a full group but soon began splintering off into smaller assault teams. I find it difficult stopping on hikes, so I went up front. The climb to the pass was supposed to take 3.5 to 4 hours, but your truly made it in 2 and a quarter. Jamie, I hope you are proud. I even beat the porters to the top, though I know that means diddly squat considering they were carrying 25 kay gees and I was only carrying an empty camera bag. Fran had the camera. I planned that well.
The rest of the group dribbled it's way uphill, with the last few appearing at the 4 hour mark. We all congratulated each other on a job well done. Those people who elected not to use porters were given extra congratulations. One guy took 17kgs to the top. Hardcore.
This was to be the highest point of the trek. At 4,200m amsl, it's no push-over, but still doable.

Children in the village of Wayllabamba

The view on the way to the top

SAS porters ascend to Dead Woman's Pass

The view from Dead Woman's Pass. We were at the base of that mountain the dazy before

The group at the top of Dead Woman's Pass

porters head down the mountain from Dead Woman's Pass

On the way down from Dead Woman's Pass

At the top we posed for a group shot, and then made our way downhill to 3,000m amsl. Again I decided to go it alone up front, but was sometimes joined by a young giant American named Greg. Cool bloke, who was also carrying his own gear. Another excellent lunch later, we then had to hit another mountain pass. This one I found more difficult, because of the bastard steps. After 5 minutes of it I'd had enough. But we all pushed on for 45 minutes before reaching the ruins of Runkuraqay. Here we stopped and our guide Javier (one of two guides, the other a botanist named Ramiro) explained about the function of the site.

Javier explains the purpose behind the ruins of Runkuraqay

20 minutes later we were off again, and again splitting into little groups. We reached the top in another 45 or so minutes. This pass is at 3,950m amsl, so a little lower than before. But the day was wearing on and it was fairly cold up here. So we started going down again, before finally reaching the ruins of Sayaqmarka. And this place is awesome. The ruins are huge, and it was here we started seeing first hand evidence of just how important the sun was to the Quechua Empire. We got to watch a really nice sunset and learned more about the peoples who lived here. From there, it was a short walk to our camp for the night, which was to be the coldest night yet. But not cold enough to ward off the bastard mosquitos and sand flies, and I was viciously attacked by a gang of marauding vampire bugs during the night. It was traumatising.

Through a window at Sayaqmarka

Sayaqmarka

Day 3.

Far easier than day 2. We awoke at 6am, and the plan was to walk just 3 or 4 hours to the lunch spot, where we'd have the afternoon to ourselves. After yet another hearty breakfast, we walked for an hour to another ruin - this one being an important stop along the Inca Trail for the Quechua peoples as they made their way to Machupicchu. And then we descended 3000 steps, taking about 1 and a half to two hours, and finally reached our camp. Along the way we walked through cloud forrest and rain forrest micro-climate, and saw beautiful plants and flowers. No spectacled bears though. Gutted.

Phuyupatmarka - meaning City in the Clouds

Me and Ramiro

Camp at day three is more like a small town. You can even have hot showers (timed and not free) and it was brilliant to get into relatively clean clothes after a shower. We went as a group to another ruin that evening before saying good bye to our porters, as we were on our own for day 4. We all got together, and an Irish woman named Lorraine in our group gave them a Michael Flatley performance, which was reciprocated by our chef taking her through a Peruvian dance of his own. No, not like that.

Right near the main campsite on Day 3, are the ruins of Winaywayna

Pano of the Andes

Same spot, different time

Sunset over the Andes

Sunset over the Andes

So we went to bed early that night, as we had to get up at 4am to hit Machupicchu for sunrise.

Day 4

Up at 4am, with the porters waiting by our tents to take them down as soon as we stepped out. They had to pack everything up and run down the mountain to a waiting train at 5:45. Insane.
So we had another brilliant breakfast, with everyone excited about the final day's trek. It was only two hours and luckily for us, the sky was clear, with not a cloud in the sky. The walk was gentle and the last 2 minutes involved climbing some steps before finally arriving at Inti Punku: The Sun Gate! On the December solstice, the sun peaks it's way through the narrow gate and shines down into the Temple of the Sun all the way down the trail to the city of Machupicchu itself. The Quechuas mastery of the heavens was incredible. Another example later.

Anyway, from the Sun Gate, you get your first view of "The Lost City of the Incas" - rediscovered by the American Hiram Bingham in 1911. It's still fairly far down the valley (which makes the sun trick even more neat considering the distance), but beautiful nonetheless. The sun at this time hasn't hit the city just yet, and we took a walk closer to watch the city gently awaken to the kiss of the sun. A beautiful site.

Machupicchu from a spot near the Sun Gate

We finally arrived in Machupicchu proper about half an hour later, where we took loads of shots. It was pretty surreal to be there as the Inca Trail and Machupicchu is pretty much the number 1 destination in South America, and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. It was also time to reflect on the whole trip and realise just how much we've done in our time here.

The mountain of Putucusi, which we'd planned to climb the next morning

Putucusi amongst the other mountains

The group as we arrived into Machupicchu. Turn your head sideways to the right, and enjoy the fantastic Inca Face in the mountains.. completely natural

Sunrise at Machupicchu

The trek finished with a tour through the city, where we learned more about the Quechua people. There's a giant sundial in the city, that (when it worked - more about that here) casts a shadow on a particular piece of rock just once a year to make the eyes of a puma. Too cool.

Archaeology still goes on at Machupicchu

That afternoon we said goodbye to most of our tour group; five of us were going to stay at the town of Aguas Calientes (so named because of some hot springs around the area) at the base of Machupicchu. Myself and Fran, Giant Greg and two awesome Canadian girls. We had planned to climb another mountain at 4.am the next morning to watch the sun hit Machupicchu from a different angle, but after going out for some food and a few cheeky drinks, it turned out that was never going to happen. By the way, a word of advice: if you ever do the trip, take advantage of the hot springs in Aguas Calientes. After 4 days of hiking, it's a god send.

Jen, Alicia, Greg and myself cross the bridge on the way to the village of Aguas Calientes

King of the llamas, or so he told me

Sunset at Machupicchu

Overlooking Machupicchu

Me at Machupicchu

Same

rainbow

Anyway, I could go into so much detail about the trek and the entire experience, but I'll leave it there. It was an amazing trip, and please don't believe everyone who says it's hard. It's definitely not easy, but very doable.

Remember, more shots are here on my Smugmug site. Much love to everyone :)

Random shots:

Two lovely Canadian lasses, Jennifer and Alicia

Alicia nurses a tree log.. street art is the same weird stuff the world over

Cusco's Plaza de Armas square

Need more zoom

Greg and a beaten up looking pig

Cusco, Arequipa and the Colca Canyon (Again, lots of Condor pics!)

2009-07-29T12:12:00.013-04:00

We arrived into Arequipa late afternoon and quickly checked into our hostel. We spent two nights in this absolutely beautiful city - a rival to the sights of Sucre. Arequipa is Peru's second major city, after the capital Lima. But thankfully it isn't over-populated, at around 1 million people. The buildings in the town centre are made from white volcanic rock from the surrounding area. The city is bounded to the north by high plains, and a range of snow-capped mountains and a beautifully conical volcano: El Misti.

Misti on the left, and mountains on the right. This pano (click for full size) was taken from the other side of the mountains from Arequipa, on the way to the Colca Canyon

Misti from Arequipa

There is a restaurant that has a terrace high over the main square where you can watch an awesome sunset.

Sunset over the square. Arequipa's main Cathedral is on the right

Shopping in Arequipa. The most diverse and comprehensive shopping since Santiago.

Terrace view

Plaza de Armas

After a couple of nights there, we did a two day trip to the Colca Canyon, to the north of the city. The second deepest canyon in the world after nearby Cotahuasi Canyon (although that stat is not exactly solid - there are purported deeper canyons in China and the Himalaya - Grand Canyon, eat your heart out), at it's deepest point, it drops 3,400m from mountain to canyon floor. Think about that for a bit. Almost 3.5km straight down. And it's not only famous for it's sheer size, it's famous for the fact that it's one of the premier spots to see Andean Condors in the wild. This is not like Samaipata, where you have to trek for hours to a prime viewing spot (though if you like trekking, the journey there is as good as the destination), but it's simply a viewing point called Cruz del Condor (that gets VERY crowded with tourists), where if you're lucky, the Condors fly meters over your head.
Of course, we were indeed very lucky, and as soon as we arrived, we saw well over 10 different Condors flying above us.. Tourists that arrived not 45 minutes later saw none.

Incoming!

This little bugger drew almost a hundred Condor happy people to flock around trying to take a picture. He knew what he was doing

Condor in Flight

Condor habitat. Deliberate underexposure by the way, before anyone thinks to correct me!

Above our heads

Condor in it's territory. I tried to get a few shots showing the birds in their environment, not just against sky

Kinda like this one

aaaand this one

The crowds. And yes, Condors are that big.

The trip to the Colca Canyon meant staying at the "capital" of the Colca Valley - Chivay. A hugely tourst-driven town, accomodation is strangely very basic, but the savng grace of the place is the hot springs just outside of town. Being able to chill out in 40 degree water, when there's a storm hailing on your head is a unique experience.

Great way to spend a rainy afternoon

Me and my new mates. I tried to teach them break dancing, but they weren't dressed for it.

Locals play local moosac

What I like about this picture is the woman in the bottom right contrasted against the bleak scenery. This was at over 4,000m amsl, and it was COLD. It's a hard life.

Condor country

Stopping at a village on our way to Cruz del Sur, ,and I've no idea what's on the right, but the bird on the left is a Black Chested Buzzard-Eagle (first encountered in the Torres)

Local girl with her pet Alpaca

A Colca Valley village

Condor Country..

Chivay

On the way there and back from Arequipa, you pass over an Andean ridge that hits 4,800m amsl. I think that's a record for the trip (excluding flights of course!) so far. From memory, not even the Bolivian south-west corner was as high. Thankfully we didn't experience any headaches or altitude problems. Either we are now acclimatised or we weren't up there for long enough!

Anyway, the Colca Canyon is so named because of the "Colcas" - small round containers in which the locals used to store vegetables, fruits and grains. The valley and canyon are lined with very small villages, and the locals farm along terraces etched into the canyon sides

Terraces

A view of the Canyon as it starts to get deep

We arrived back into Arequipa after two days planning on taking a bus over-night to Cusco, but things didn't go as planned. After we'd checked out and rushed to the bus station, we discovered that all buses to Cusco were delayed until the following morning because snow had closed the road over the mountain pass.

But we are now in Cusco, and this city is just awesome! Also hugely touristy, but VERY beautiful. Colonial buildings are well preserved, and the main centre of town is basically a large network of plazas linked by streets big and small. The nightlife also pumps, although there's an unhealthy proportion of hippies and rastas. It's also VERY expensive, and is probably the most expensive place yet on the trip. We've just booked onto a Galapagos tour which means money is now tight and which unfortunately means skipping some of the city's MANY museums and archaelogical sites (very expensive to get into). Also Craig and Laila introduced us to a stupidly expensive restaurant here, and we are addicted, so our money is also going there! Thanks guys!!!

I also haven't gone too hardcore in Cusco on the picture front. Sometimes it's nice just to look with your eyes instead of a lens.

Cusco

Slumming it.. backpacker style

Along the Plaza de Armas

Plaza de Armas

Cathedral on Plaza de Armas

Anyway, bar the pictures, I'm keeping this blog a bit short. Those of you who know what Cusco is famous for... well we will be doing "that thing" starting tomorrow. I'll blog post it when we get back.

P.S Nath: A couple of friends here saw a cat in Bolivia. Obviously nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was that the cat's front leg was basically a skeleton from the torso down. No flesh, nothing.
The zombie apocalypse has begun. Take Archie and Marisa to the mountains, and be wary of cats. I always knew they were evil.

Copacabana, Lake Titicaca, and PERU!

2009-07-23T13:38:00.008-04:00

When I left you last, Fran and I were on our way to famous Lake Titicaca, which straddles the Bolivian/Peruvian border. As mentioned in a previous blog post of mine, Lake Titicaca is the remnant of ancient Lake Ballivián, which once covered the entire Altiplano. What's now left, is still an enormous body of water, covering an area of 8,372 sq km, South America's largest lake, which has had a huge impact on the Altiplano cultures that encountered it. The Tiwanaku culture flourished here, from approximately 1,200 BC to just a few hundred years before the Inca arrived in the area. According to Inca creation mythology, Titicaca is the spot where the Empire was created - the Sun God causing the first two Inca rulers to emerge from the lake, and they narrowed it down to a specific location on the north of the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), which juts out into the Lake from the Bolivian side.
On a personal note, I'd long wanted to see the lake, after reading a book called Trail to Titicaca a few years back. Reading about a place before you get there always makes the experience a bit more personal.

So we left La Paz one chilly morning, saying goodbye to an awesome city.

La Paz, and Illimani sits above it

Taken as we left La Paz. This woman was waiting for the right time to set up her stall (packed away under the blue covers)

Chaotic streets of La Paz

One of Fran's pics whilst I was in bed sick. Great shot I think!

Another one of Fran's

The bus travels across the last of the Altiplano for about three hours. Along the way, you are offloaded onto a boat, and the bus itself crosses a narrow straight on a barge.

Buses cross on barges.. people take small passenger boats

From there, it's a short drive to Copacabana. Touristy, yes, but one hell of a cool town. For the first three nights we stayed at Hostal Las Olas, which has easily the nicest view of any hostel in South America... big call, I know. And yes, I also know we've only been to three countries! The comment still stands. Our private "cabin" had a small kitchenette, hamocks inside, two small gardens, also inside, and the pièce de résistance, gas showers! No more electric shower heads!

Our "hostel" room. That bed on the left is big enough to fit a tank on. We even had hammocks inside!

The view from our room. The funny shaped building in front is another cabin of the hostel

See what I mean?

Copa is also reknowned for it's fantastic sunsets, and we were greeted on all our nights there (bar one, more later) with such a view. We climbed a huge hill next to the hostal to watch the sun set into Titicaca.

Sunset over Lake Titicaca

Sunset over Lake Titicaca

As the sun sets over Copa. Hiking to the hills around the town is hard work!

A few hours later

The big Cathedral in Copacabana

By the way, Stu: I finally managed to track down a copy of the Solaris album.. watching the sunset and listening to that music? Well, you get the drift.

On our third day in Copa, we took a boat ride out to the Isla del Sol, and visited the ruins. The boat drops you in the north of the Island, and from there it's a 45 minute walk to the ruins, and then a three hour walk to the south of the Island where the boat waits to take you back. Remember, Titicaca is at just over 3,800m amsl, and the hike is easily two hundred meters above that. Hiking through this terrain was HARD. You take a few steps and your body screams for oxygen. But we made the walk in just over two hours so we were pretty chuffed. Cath and Jonesy are probably laughing at us right now, seeing how super-fit they are, but that's good work for us guys!!

The trail on the Isla del Sol

Cordillera Real, from Isla del Sol

Locals having lunch

Cordillera Real again

On the boat trip back, a huge storm came in off the lake and hit Copa. The boat had to drop us in a cove near Copa and we then had to walk back to town. The storm stayed with us the whole night, and the wind for a few more days. Wind coming off that enormous lake is both cold and very powerful.

A storm brews on the lake. It was very powerful when it hit, and rolled all the way to La Paz

The next day we were due to leave Copa for Puno; a journey that would take three hours by bus. We arrived at the Peruvian border and got some bad news. A series of rolling strikes that have plagued the country for several months was in it's latest swing. The road between the border and Puno was blockaded by locals. Farmers had set up baricades and were charging anyone coming through, asking for quite a bit of money. Some people even reported that if you tried to walk around the baricades, you would be pelted with rocks from the locals, and potentially worse. So we had to turn back to Copa and stay there another two nights, waiting for the strike to stop. Luckily, after moving to a new hostal (similar to the previous one, and situated right next door) we ran into Craig and Laila again! Great stuff. We had dinner with them that night. The price for a curry, black forrest cake, bottled water, and drop of Chivas' finest? 67 Bolivianos.. just on six pounds.

The penultimate day was a chill-out day, where I spent a bit of time putting the blogs together, and Fran went and shopped.

Finally, 6 days after we arrived in Copa, we made the border crossing! 6 and a half weeks in Bolivia in total. When we were still in Chile and Argentina, I'd honestly though we would struggle to fill four weeks in Bolivia and that we'd be in Peru around 8 July. Well balls to that. Bolivia has so so much to offer. It's good and bad sides are equally charming, and Fran and I will very much miss that fantastic country. Do yourself a favour... visit Bolivia!

P.S. I know I'm really quite far behind in responding to emails and such, and my apologies for that. I'll get to them all hopefully by the end of the week.

Jerry in the Jungle (Warning: Lots of Pictures!)

2009-07-16T11:07:00.011-04:00

Previously, on Adam in South America:

Our travels had taken us from Sucre, to Samaipata, to Santa Cruz, and we were planning on making the move up to La Paz: Highest Capital City in the world, and from there a trip into Bolivia's chunk of the Amazon Basin.

So, picking up where we left off..

Fran and I left Santa Cruz and spent another uncomfortable ride on a bus to Cochabamba (though we didn't know it at the time, nothing we'd experienced on Bolivia's buses thus far was going to compare with what was to come). Not much of a city really and we stayed there but one night, more to break the journey into La Paz than for any touristic reason.

Crossing the Altiplano from Cochabamba to La Paz

Another bus the next day and we crossed more of the Altiplano, arriving at a settlement on a giant flat plain. We'd heard that La Paz was situated in a huge bowl, so we were a bit confused. Little did we know that we were actually in El Alto (The Height) - a suburb of La Paz that leads directly to the money shot. The bus took a corner to the left and WHAM, you are given the most impressive views of one of the most unique cities in the world. La Paz is indeed situated in a bowl, and is crammed right to the top with buildings. The huge mountain Illimani (Bolivia's second highest mountain at 6,438m amsl), backdrops the city. We were pretty much in awe as the bus made it's way down into the city, and didn't take a single picture of the view.

Anyway, after our first day in La Paz, I realised that I was getting a bit more sick. No dodgy belly or anything but a cold or man flu or something similar that started in Samaipata. So because of that we didn't do too much sightseeing, as I wanted to be hale for our trip to the Amazon Basin. We did venture one night to a previously recommended curry house called The Star of India (what else) that advertises itself as British Indian Curry House. And it might be British, but some dishes have a distinctive Bolivian twist. Like the Llama Tikka Masala. Deadly. Tom, thanks a billion for the recommendation mate.

Llama Tikka Masala, served here!

Our plan for the jungle was to visit an "ecolodge" run by an indigenous community in the Madidi National Park. The National Geographic has not only done a few articles on the park, but also on the ecolodge we were going to stay at. Here's a bit of info:
Madidi Diaries., and Madidi on Wiki
More on the Madidi in a bit.
As we were organising the trip, I'd heard that if you love wildlife, the Bolivian Pampas was where it's at, which is right next to Rurrenabaque (called Rurre for short) - the town used as a base to get to Madidi. So we decided to add a side trip to visit the Pampas. More money to part with, but hell, this is a once in a lifetime trip after all!

So after a day of hectic scheduling, we took an 18 hour bus ride down from the Altiplano to Rurrenabaque, situated on the Beni River. And Jesus H Christ, this was the killer. The first two hours were incredibly deceptive. Tarmac roads, awesome mountain vistas. Then the road just stopped and became a dirt track skirting the edge of cliff edges that dropped a hundred meters or more. The tracks themselves were only wide enough for our bus pretty much, and it was a two-way road! In fact, the road partially follows the infamous Death Road, so to those of you who know about this road (or Mr Tickles, who crazily mountain biked down it at pace), it's pretty harrowing.

Narrow roads! There's about the same amount of space on the right of the bus as well

18 hours later, arriving sweaty, dust covered (lots of holes in the floors of Bolivian buses), tired and shaking we arrived in Rurrenabaque. And I was immediately assaulted by the humidity - we're in the tropics, remember?

We met with our Pampas tour group first; a company called Indigena Tours. From Rurrenabaque, we drove two and a half hours to a small(er) town called Santa Rosa, where our motorised dug-outs were waiting for us. From there, it's another 3 hour cruise past awesome wildlife to our camp: a lodge built alongside the river deep into the Pampas.

Along the river to camp

Brown Howler Monkey. Three types exist in the area: Brown, Red, and Black

Black Capped Squirrel Monkey

Snowy Egret in Flight

Spectacled Caiman. Max size on these are about 2.5m

Spectacled Caiman. The majority of Crocodilians you see in the Pampas are the Spectacled Caimans. The Black Caimans are quite rare.

Great Blue Heron.

Black Caiman. Vicious. The largest of the Alligator family, these can grow up to 5 meters. Don't swim with one of these around.

Capybara - the world's largest rodent! They can get up to 60-70 kilos.. You'll need a large hamster wheel if you want one as a pet

Hoatzin. Like a forest chicken. Nothing eats them because they stink.

That night, we went to see a beautiful sunset over the grasslands. And saw about a billion mosquitos flying around: the most Evil Little Fuckers ever invented. I'm sorry for the outburst, but I just have no idea what their biological purpose is, other than to annoy the hell out of everyone and spread death and disease.

Sunset over the Pampas

And up comes Luna in place of Sol

Day two's sunset

Sunset on day one

Day two in the Pampas began by all of us taking a trip into swampy grasslands to look for Anacondas. The trick to finding them is to basically.. ermm. step on them. They are incredibly hard to find, and in shallow water, stay just below the surface, meaning they are near invisible to anyone who doesn't know what to look for. Luckily, Anacondas live in habitat that's proportionate to their size. So small ponds or lakes will generally support small Anacondas. The big lakes deep in the Amazon support snakes up to 10m long. Did I mention the Anaconda is the largest snake in the world?

One of our guides found a 2-3 meter snake hiding in shallow water, and we all crowded around to see it. We weren't allowed to touch it because human contact is stressful to the snakes (so our guides only handle them long enough to explain about them), and the mosquito repellent DEET that we all use also causes them lots of distress. The one we found also had recently consumed something as you could see the stretched belly. Most likely a small bird or a rodent. Normally, an Anaconda that has just eaten and is then handled will throw up it's meal because of the stress, which I was a little upset about. But luckily we released it in time and the snake did not have to regurgitate it's food. Watching it slide away into the grass was a cool experience. They are fast!

Yours truly, trekking through swamps to find Anacondas

Anaconda. There's a slight bump mid-way down it's body... probably a bird or a rodent

Snail Eggs

Magellanic Horned Owls

That day we also had the opportunity to swim with River Dolphins, common in the area. Supposedly it's fine to swim wherever the dolphins are as they keep the Caimans away. I'm not too sure of that. I saw some Caimains that were pretty close! Anyway, I decided to forgo the opportunity as I was starting to get more sick.
Oh, on the way to the Dolphin spot, I spotted a Sloth!! Awesome, they are the coolest little animals, and move SO SLOWLY. Really chuffed to see one, and just as importantly, to spot it before even our guide did!

Sloooth! Too cool. The markings on it's back are brilliant.

And again!

And again!

And again!

Tired of sloths yet? I'm not!

I thought this was a Fish Eagle, but I'm not sure. If anyone can let me know what it is..

Fish Eagle?

Spectacled Caiman

That night we went back to see the sunset over the Pampas. Not as breath-taking as the night before but still impressive. And still, the same amount of mosquitos! The little bastards even bite you through your clothes.

On the final day, we went Piranha fishing! A little bit of beef at the end of a hook and away you go! I caught one (Red Piranha), a crazy Norwegian guy in our group caught one (Yellow Piranha), and Fran aka Rex Hunt caught three (Red Piranhas). So that was our lunch for the day!! Not overly tasty fish, but still.. I ate a Piranha! Take that cannibal fishes!! Adam 1, Cannibal Fishes 0

Yours truly fishing for Piranhas

Piranhas for lunch

So that was basically the Pampas Tour. On the way back to Rurre, our tyre got a flat. Seems like a pretty common incident in Bolivia.
Loads of wildlife which really reinforced just how much I want to do wildlife photography, and just how HARD it is. But the trip has really made me realise what is important in life, and has given me a bit of focussed direction.

So that night we were put up in a "hotel" (and I use that term very loosely) as part of our Madidi tour. We were on our way to stay at Chalalan Ecolodge (loads of info here.. I won't type too much text about it, you can read that instead). We left at 8:30am and arrived just after 5pm, going upriver and over very very shallow stretches where at times our guides had to get out and push the boats. The thought of jumping out to help did cross my mind, but then so did the cost for the trip so I decided to sit back and relax. Sue me.

And the absolute ball breaker of the entire South America trip so far. The happiest and most frustrating moment all in one go....We saw a Jaguar!!! I'd heard it previously, "barking" in the distance (Jaguars tend to grunt more than anything) and wondered what a dog was doing in the middle of the jungle. As our boat got closer, we saw a flash, a splash, and then a Capybara (see pics above) fleeing the scene by swimming into the middle of the river. On the banks, a lone, muscular and massive jaguar watched it go and then sauntered off into the scrub. It was too far away to get any decent pictures, which was a real bitter-sweet moment, but I was just thrilled to see it. Then the frustrating part came. We had to land the boat and get out whilst it was pushed upriver, and the landing was right around the corner where the jaguar left us. Realising that I was the only super eager person in the group, I decided to go an track it on my own. I walked up the beach, and headed inland. As I stood on a log that gave me a view of the scrub that borders the forrest, I saw it. Not 40 meteres away, and WELL withing the reach of the 40D + 100-400. I could get a frame-filling shot! But.. SHIT. Fran had the camera. Trying to help her with her photography, I'd decided that morning that she should keep the wildlife cam (we were using the 5D for standard shots) and Fran was busy chatting her female mouth off behind me on the beach to the other travellers. As I tried to call Fran over to bring the camera, everyone suddenly perked up and ran over to see, scaring off the jaguar. ARRRRGH.. I was not a happy person for the next few hours, let me assure you. I could've done something very bad to my camera equipment, the boat and anyone stupid enough to talk to me.

Our Jaguar spot.. Heavily cropped image.

Another heavy crop. He's under the logs to the left

So onwards we went, to arrive at Chalalan sometime just after 5pm. This place is REMOTE man. Nothing around for God knows how long. We had our own private lodge and the sounds of the jungle at night were just brilliant to fall asleep to.

Our cabin at Chalalan. Pictures of inside are on my smugmug site

Chalalan is definitely less about the wildlife than it is about the experience, compared to the Pampas. That's not to say you don't see any wildlife of course. You hear it more than see it, but we still saw some cool animals. And we found out first hand just why Howler monkeys are so named. The sound they make is the scariest sound I've ever heard. Being alone in the jungle and hearing that would scare even the toughest of people. We've got a video of them howling at another rival group, so if anyone wants to see it when we get back, let us know. But you'd better come prepared; bring a comfort blanket, and make sure you have someone to drive you home.

Red Howler Monkey warning a rival group not to come close

Red Howler Monkey

Compared to the Pampas though, the jungle is a completely unique experience. Finding wildlife is down to sound and smell more than anything. Our guide (they take groups of 4, so a perfect size) was pretty good at spotting all sorts of crazy stuff. On a night walk we did with him (Jesus, that's another scary experience, especially when you find out halfway into the jungle your torch has stopped working... stupid batteries!) he was spotting tarantulas, insanely deadly snakes and the smallest of frogs by the sounds they make and by his own keen eyesight if his torch beam shone over them. To me, it all looked like sticks and leaves. I'm normally fairly proud of my ability to spot wildlife, but doing so in the jungle is another skill entirely.

Forgot the name of this snake, but our guide says it's the second deadliest in the jungle... and we rowed right under it

Same species as above

And another! This one's a youngin

Tree Frog

Forgot what this frog is called, but it was tiny. I've no idea how he spotted it

Creepy spider

Tarantula

We spent two nights there, before having to make our way back to Rurre. I think the Jungle was a far more cerebral experience, and we learnt a lot about the culture of the area and the history of it's peoples.

So back to Rurre we went, and we had to boat our way through one hell of a storm. On the way, Fran spotted a river Otter. Cool little thing.

River Otter

Getting back to Rurre, drenched, we all rushed to find accomodation for the night.

There are basically three options to leave Rurre back to La Paz, sin hitch hiking. The first is via the 18 hour bus ride which Fran and I flatly refused, no matter how long it meant waiting in Rurre. The second is a private jeep, costing $400 US, and taking 12 hours. Way too expensive, even if the cost dwindled if you had more people in it. The last option was a flight. At around 50 GBP, it wasn't a bad option at all, and one we decided to take. However, Rurre's runway is grass and if there is any rain, flights are cancelled. We ended up waiting for four days in Rurre for the weather to clear and for our plane to get a slot out. Once, we drove to a neighbouring town to use their airport (also grass) but got turned back as we arrived because their runway was also unusable. So finally, four days later, we took a tiny plane back up into the Andes and into La Paz. The journey time? A grand total of 40 minutes.

Yours truly just about to board our tiny plane to La Paz...

The Andes (I believe it's the Cordillera Real) from the flight back to La Paz

Inside our tiny plane

So back to La Paz. The altitude really hit Fran, and I was getting a lot worse with my man flu. Again, it meant missing out on a lot of the great sites of La Paz, which we do regret. I guess it means another trip down here is warranted! Three more nights we stayed there, trying to recover. Whilst we were there, we met up with Craig and Laila, who we met in Sucre, for a curry night. The next morning we caught a bus to Copacabana, along the shores of Lake Titicaca, where I will leave this blog. We are currently in Puno, Peru. I will post a seperate blog shortly of our experience around Titicaca.

Thanks for reading down to here! I'm crap at brevity, hey?
We've got just over 6 weeks left now. This is the home stretch! Very disappointing, but we'll make the most of what time left we have.

Much love, and don't forget, my smugmug galleries have lots more pictures:

Pampas: http://adamlawler.smugmug.com/gallery/8940179_ATy8u#593752720_NDTNW
Jungle: http://adamlawler.smugmug.com/gallery/8940178_R6uwk#598736341_tJHeF
La Paz: http://adamlawler.smugmug.com/gallery/8940154_ZTUvU

Sucre, Samaipata, and Condors

2009-06-30T13:42:00.008-04:00

G’day everyone

Fran and I just left a really nice town called Samaipata, in Bolivia. It’s at around 1,400m amsl, but has a very tropical feel. It’s surrounded by lush forest and has loads of potential. We arrived there a week ago, so I guess I’ll start from where I left off last and fill in the gaps.

After Uyuni, we took a bus ride to Potosi - the highest city in the world. We were there about 4 days, mainly to allow Fran the time to recover from the Bolivia Bug. Potosi is also famous for it’s silver mines. You can visit the mines through “tours” organized by mining co-operatives, but Fran and I did not visit them. I guess the reason we didn’t visit was due to ethical concerns. I mean, the tours have been running for quite a long time, but it seems the workers are still as poor as ever and still work in very dangerous conditions. So we questioned whether money from the tours ever really improves their lot. The last thing I want to do is head down these mines with my big camera taking pictures of their impoverishment.

Anyway, we did enjoy the little bit of Potosi that we saw. It has a very pretty central square which we wandered around a few times. Whilst we were there, there were also loads of parades going on all the time. Firecrackers and bangers were constantly being let off, at all hours of the day, including to our detriment, through the night into dawn.

This church looks over the markets in Potosi

One of the MANY parades in Potosi.

The Cathedral in Potosi

But besides from that, we didn’t see much more of Potosi. From there, it was a three hour bus ride to our next destination: Sucre. And what a city! An incredibly beautiful town - Bolivia’s “Second City” after La Paz. In fact, in the days of Simon Bolivar (the founder of Bolivia, and the person much of South America has to thank for it’s current constitution), it was the fledgling country’s capital. Today, whilst the administrative powers are based out of La Paz, Sucre retains the judicial power.
The switch to La Paz as the nation’s capital was not a popular move, and today, the populace is still divided on the issue. There is plenty of graffiti around stating “Sucre, the True Capital of Bolivia”. Some of this graffiti is also covered in a big “NO”.

The city’s centre is a UNESCO listed World Heritage Centre and retains it’s old colonial influence. White buildings roofed by terracotta tiles. If the city had a coast, it’d be easy to think it as Mediterranean. We were so surprised by this place, knowing that Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. A drive through the country-side proves that the people are certainly impoverished, but Sucre is almost a complete world away.
I say “almost” because there are a few segments that are definitely poor. A trip to the local Mercado Central (Central Market) shows another side of life. The market is huge, and offers all sorts of fruits, vegetables, meats and eateries. Beggars sit around with bowler hats out, asking for money. It’s a very vibrant place and seems so far removed from the beauty of Sucre itself. You can walk around and see severed cow’s heads for sale. Only the poorer people buy them, as that is the cheapest meat to buy.

We spent just over a week in this city - the longest time on this trip in any one place.

Out for dinner at a vegetarian German restaurant…where I ordered steak. And it was good.

Another night out. Cocktails are cheap as chips. I had a Long Island Ice Tea for the princely sum of 2 pounds

Local woman weaves

Beautiful Sucre

Sucre

Anyway, in terms of pictures, I really didn’t take that many of this place. Mainly because Sucre is pretty much the centre for learning Spanish in Bolivia, and Fran and I decided to make the effort and go to a few classes, meaning the time allotted for picture-taking was small.
So we went along one day to Fox Academy and booked ourselves some lessons. We booked through Fox because the money from the Spanish lessons they teach is used to subsidise English lessons for the local people. It’s all not-for-profit, so we were glad to use their services and contribute in some small way.

Our teacher, Maria, was a young enthusiastic lady who was so generous to us and helped us along in the basics of Spanish. In total, we spent four days with her (it would have been five, but I was sick one day) and she took us through the beginnings of Spanish. At times it was like being back in school, and just like school, my attention wandered quite a bit! But still, we learned a fair bit in our time with her. Certainly not enough to strike up conversations with anyone, but with practice, we should be able to pick things up a lot quicker now.

Staying for so long in one place also meant we made a fair amount of new travel-friends. Our hostel was brilliant for this. Everyone we met there was there for at least a week. It was a mixed group as well. Two guys were motor-biking around South America. One woman was looking for her ideal place to set up a hostel. One couple was on a round-the-world trip. One American guy loved Spanish culture and was travelling to be immersed in it. But we were all linked through friendship and our time there was made far more enjoyable because of these people.

Not only is Sucre Bolivia’s judicial capital, it’s also its cultural one. Packed full of museums, it’s the ultimate city to learn about Bolivian culture. The country’s National Archives are based here as well.
We visited a fantastic little museum called Museo de Arte Indigena (you can translate that one!), which displays the mind-boggling weavings of the local tribes. There are some 2000 year old artifacts and a fair amount of other archaeological information. But the weavings are the highlight of the show. The detail and time and effort that goes into them is incredible. If you purchase any of the weavings (which we did,), 65% goes to the woman who made it, 10% goes to the program that helps them make their art, and the remainder goes to the museum to look after the priceless artifacts on display. All in all, a worthy cause.
Each weaving also tells a story, be it a linear tale, or simple events and chores that are important to the weaver. Our weave displays a village surrounded by mountains, in which the women bake and cook, and the men harvest. Parties and celebrations are also important, denoted by a section with lots of people “dancing”.

On the Sunday before we left, we went to a town a couple of hours away called Tarabuco. Famous for it’s Sunday Markets, which are supposedly the most colourful in all of Bolivia.
That might have been a slight exaggeration. It certainly is colourful and all, but seemed a bit life-less. Perhaps that’s because it’s even more relaxed than we are now used to, so gives off the impression of dullness. But it’s the perfect place to see people in their native costumes, and picture opportunities abound so long as 1. You are discreet, or 2. You ask permission first. A lot of Bolivian natives do not want their pictures taken so expect a lot of no’s.

Craig and Tyler at the markets in Tarabuco

Tarabuco markets

That‘s a lama fetus on the left there.

Local woman at the market

Colourful patterns. These “sheets“ are used by the locals to carry stuff on their back. We saw a child being stuffed in one. You couldn‘t see any bit of him when he was wrapped up. Hopefully these things are breathable

Tarabuco

The next day we left Sucre to travel to Samaipata. That was easily the bumpiest and most uncomfortable ride ever. We sat right at the back of the bus, which serves to magnify every bump. In my last blog I stated that most Bolivian roads are unpaved, and this one was no exception. Thankfully, it was an overnight bus (normally we try and avoid overnight buses for safety) but we’re fairly glad to have taken this one. We could see the road skirting cliff edges with room on either side no more than a few centimeters. It’s damn creepy seeing the edge of the road, and then pure black.
The bus arrived at around 5.am and we were met at the station by the owner of the hostel we are staying at: a really nice Texan guy named Trent.
The hostel/B&B is the nicest place we’ve stayed at so far, and that includes all of Argie and Chile. One of the reasons we were sold on this place is that it offers REAL breakfasts, like bacon and eggs, pancakes, porridge, yoghurt and granola etc. When you’re traveling, all you get in other places is bread and jam, so this was a welcome change!

The tropical-esque town of Samaipata

A howler monkey picks Layla‘s head. This was at an animal recovery centre outside of Samaipata.

Blue and Gold Macaws

Another reason we were sold was that it was apparently a great place see Condors, the world’s largest flying bird. So after a day of rest, we drove the two hours to the starting point of a trail, through the roughest terrain ever. Bolivian roads are at best dirt tracks, and at worst dirt tracks with giant rocks and ditches. We had to leave at 5am as well to get a good start on the day. So basically you drive into the middle of nowhere (Samaipata is right next to the middle of nowhere), where you then hike for about 3 or 4 hours to the TRUE middle of nowhere to a cliff edge, against which the Condors build their nests. And as the day warms, the condors take to the air and begin soaring above you and in front of you. What a sight! Seeing an animal that eats flesh (albeit dead flesh) with a 3 meter wing span not 5 meters from your head is a pretty awesome experience. They dwarf the vultures that are common in the area, who themselves can stretch their wings to 2 or more meters. I took so many pictures that day!

Some of the scenery we hiked through to see the Condors. True wilderness.

Precipices? Bah!

Condor. The borders around these images were just because a few people wanted copies, and they have to remember who took them ;-)

This male flew pretty close!

Another male

Another male

Puma tracks

Another day saw us visit a local waterfall, pretty close to the Condor spot. It’s a 70m drop in a sheltered location set amongst some really lush forest. Beautiful location.

Beer and barbeque at the waterfall

On the Saturday night, the town celebrated the festival of San Juan, which basically involves everyone getting extremely pissed (some people drink pure alcohol here), lighting bonfires (getting outlawed actually due to the pollution) and dancing. We went to a local square where all of the above was happening. It was loads of fun. Fran and all the other women had men left right and centre asking them to dance (and most of them asked for permission from the boyfriends first!). One bloke in particular went through a whole line of women.. He was insanely energetic and could out-dance anyone. One dance, the Chacarera, looks identical to Irish step dancing, but in fact is northern Argentine (and also danced in the very south of Bolivia) . Trent also told us about another dance where men and women take turns leading, and as they get more and more drunk, the dance the involves the use of props. The props are basically rocks, and people try to smash each other’s heads in with them. No joke. Obviously this is outlawed, but it does still happen in remote communities. And yes, men and women are known to die from this activity.

So here we are in Santa Cruz, and we've only been here for a day really. Tomorrow we catch an early bus to Cochabamba for one night, then onwards to La Paz. I'll try and post a quick entry just before we head to the Amazon and the Pampas.

I hope all are well. I hear the weather in the UK at the moment is superb! Bet you poms are blistering.

Much love all
Adam

Farewell Chile, Hola Bolivia!

2009-06-12T16:33:00.012-04:00

Hi all

Before I go on, I want to wish my dad a happy birthday. He and my mother have just returned from a trip to Nepal and Tibet. My dad wanted to visit Everest Base Camp for his 60th, which they accomplished.
You can see where I get my travelling bug from, hey?
Love you lots guys!

Back to it.

Well we said goodbye to Chile last week, and did it in style. We paid 70,000 CLP each to Cordillera Tours for the trip of a life-time across the border into Bolivia, and passing through awe-inspiring Eduardo Avaroa Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina, and finishing off with the world's biggest Salt Flat - the Salar de Uyuni.

I'll format this blog a bit differently. Loads of text, followed by all the pics. The pics just deserve to be on their own. They can speak for themselves.

The trip takes three days, and the only way to do it is via a tour company. We were picked up at 8am from our hostel (Hostel Iquisa) in a mini-van and, after picking up the rest of our party, we quickly ascended to 4200m, behind Volcan Licancabur to enter Bolivia (check the picture of their immigration office.. very basic). This was the first point that the surrealness of the area hit us. We saw sea gulls around the office. Yep. Sea gulls. I've no idea what they were doing at such an altitude, and also when the driest desert in the world is between them and the coast, but I guess that just shows how successful gulls in general are as a species.

Once that's done, you are allocated a 4WD (all Toyota Landcruisers, and LOTS of them as other companies also do the run) and spend the next six hours or so passing through the first section of the park. In total, there were eight of us on this tour with this particular company, and we were split into two groups of four. The French and Spanish couples (Julien, Melanie, Miguel and Sonja) in the first truck, and Fran, myself, Dave and Carla (both English) in the second jeep. We had wolf stickers on the side of ours, so we knew ours was the cooler jeep.
We had also been warned that the drivers were frequently drunk, stoned, or exhausted, and the jeeps were quite often in rough shape so we were quite nervous as to the composition of our driver and his fourbee! Luckily, we had okay fortune with both.
Our driver introduced himself at the beginning, and we quickly forgot his name. It was definitely something Quechan or Spanish or just foreign, and we didn't find out what it was until two days later when we asked the other driver in our convoy.
"Richard" was apparently his name. Didn't sound like Richard when he said it.

That first day we visited Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon), hot springs, geysers, and finished off at Laguna Colorada (Red Lagoon). At this point I'll interject and just state that it has been a dream of mine to visit Laguna Colorada for about 10 years, so getting to this point was a massive highlight for me. It's incredibly surreal to be in a desert-like landscape, not be roasting, and have the lakes covered in ice.
None of us eight attempted the hot springs, simply because we knew how painful it would be when we got out. Sure it might be warm in there, but hell, I'd probably still have the goose-bumps from getting out if we'd tried it.

At our "hotel" for the night, we met a great little kid named Oscar, who was five, and had the most infectious laugh ever. No matter what you did, he would find funny and would launch into a fit of giggles. Fran has some face-warping software on her phone, and she took a picture of him, and then showed him how he'd look with all sorts of weird features, which he absolutely loved.
Lunch and dinner that day was incredible. Our host (the first glimpse of a "Bolivian" woman - bowler hat, long skirt, woolen jersey etc) cooked us very tasty meals and we prepared for bed on very full stomachs.
Some of us had headaches from the altitude, but no one had any serious problems.

That night, we were all dreading, as we'd heard that the accomodation was BASIC and the temperature regularly dropped to minus 15 degrees.
I layered up in:
-Thermal top and long johns
-singlet
-long-sleeve top
-fleece
-another fleece
-sleeping bag liner
-sleeping bag!
-four thick blankets.
And I was still cold.
I don't think it actually got down to minus 15. It was about minus 5 or minus 10 or thereabouts. Still farking cold!!

Early the next morning after breakfast, we visited Laguna Colorada itself. It's amazing colour is due to blooms of algae and red sediment (most likely iron deposits), which then attract large flocks of flamingoes. It's very weird seeing such tropical looking birds at 4278m amsl!
We spent about half an hour there, walking along the shore, taking lots and lots and lots of pictures, before driving to our next stop El Arbol de Piedra (The Stone Tree). A very strange rock that sits in the middle of the Desierto Siloli, it was formed by wind and water aeons ago; it's very Dali-esque. The remainder of the afternoon sees you visiting the Three Lakes: Chearcota, Hedionda, and Cañapa, and also driving past Volcán Ollagüe. Another very active volcano at 5868m asml. This stretch of the Andes is known as the Central Volcanic Zone, so this should give you an idea of how many volcanoes are about the area.

On the way to our accomodation that night, and very luckily, on a flat stretch of road, the back left rim snapped off, and the tyre pushed it's way half-way off the wheel. This caused the 4WD to start fishtailing, which got progressively worse after each swerve. We were also mere feet away from a ditch, going at pace, so if we hit it, we would've rolled and rolled and rolled. Seat belts are non-existant down here by the way.
Luckily Richard controlled the vehicle superbly, and we managed to get back on the road after about 15 minutes repair work (where we found out the spare we'd been carrying was completely the wrong size, meaning we drove with different size tyres).

That night, we stayed at a "Salt Hotel", about an hours drive from the money-shot of the trip - the Salar de Uyuni. The only place that offered hot showers, which we all took greedily. ALthough the air in the hotel was bitterly cold. If you were an inch away from the stream of hot water, you froze. The air also dries your skin out something fierce! So come prepared if you're in the area.

The following day was the big one. The Salar de Uyuni. The largest Salt Flat on planet earth, at a massive 10.5k square kilometers . Nothing prepares you for the sheer size, the sheer FLATness of this once huge lake. Whatever picture you see will never do it justice. The scale is mind-boggling. When we drove to an "island" in the centre of the flat, the size of distant mountains just did not change after about half an hour at pace. Whereas other stops on the trip elicited loads of "oohs and ahhs", we were all in awed silence for the Salar.

Quick fact here - the Salar de Uyuni is obviously a remnant of a massive lake. BUT that lake is itselft a remnant of an enormous lake that stretched from the Salar all the way to Lake Titicaca (in essense, covering the entire altiplano). It's name was Lake Ballivián. When this giant of a lake dried, it left two smaller (but still huge) lakes: Titicaca and Minchin. Titicaca is still around, but Minchin dried up, leaving two current lakes (Lago Poopó and Lago Uru Uru) and also leaving behind the Salar.

Of course, we had to stop and take pictures of us doing silly poses and jumps as is so common on the flats. This is where the compact cameras rule. The depth of field required for such shots just isn't possible on an SLR, especially a full frame one like the 5D. The 40D fared better, but not by much. So be warned photogs who come here. Bring a G10 or something similar as backup!

We then visited Isla Incahuasi, which is covered in cactus and offers superb 360 degree views of the flats. Here we had our lunch and I opted to walk out into the salt flats and eat on my own. It´s pretty surreal to be sat in the middle of nothing, with a china plate eating your lunch at 3660m amsl.

From there we made our way to see the illegal salt hotel, and we took more crazy pictures.
We saw people mining the salt here too. At this altitude, it´s damn hard work. We asked one guy how long he worked for per day and he said just two hours. Then his mate told us to go away. Fair enough!

So we finished off in Uyuni, and said goodbye to our friends. We´d heard some pretty negative things about Uyuni (that there´s not much going for it), but we were pretty surprised. It´s a nice town, and if you want to relax after the trip, it´s a good place for it. But it gets COLD at night! God damn.

On our second night in Uyuni, we two hired a driver to go back to the Flats to watch a sunset. And dear God, I´m glad we did! If the Salar on it´s own is incredible, seeing it reflecting the colours of the sky at sunset is like nothing else I´ve ever experienced. Easily one of the BEST moments of the entire trip, if not THE best.

From there we made our way to Potosi - the world´s highest city, at 4060m amsl. We´ve found a gem of a hostel here as well, that has hot showers, awesome pressure, private ensuite, a TV with cable and a comfy bed! Just as well, as Fran has been quite sick the past few days, so this is a perfect place for her to recover.

Anyway, I´ll finish here. Not too much detail I don´t think (compared to other posts!) as Bolivian internet is a bit slow (which is understandable) - I´ve been uploading pics for the past 4 days!.

I hope everyone is well, and those in the UK enjoying the start of a good summer.

Much love
Adam

And before I forget, remember more pics are in my Smugmug galleries

Immigration into Bolivia! Basic

Laguna Verde

Altiplano desert

That´s our jeep there. Forgot where this was, but the scenery was brilliant

Natural geysers

Little Oscar with his wonderful smile

The deepest part of Laguna Colorada is 80cm, meaning lots of nice reflections

Laguna Colorada

Take off! Flamingo at Laguna Colorada. I took a lot of shots of these birds. Aching for the 500 f/4!

More Flamingoes

The stone tree. Really surreal!

Laguna Chearcota

Red Fox

Laguna Hedionda

Forgot which lake this one.. I think it´s Laguna Hedionda

Self portrait

Busted car

Me and Dave contemplate what to do to our busted car. It´s probably the alternater

Driving onto the Salt Flats!

Air Time!

An overland truck drives past

The view from Isla Incahuasi

Same view

Reflections

Fine dining on the salt flats

Cactus on Isla Incahuasi

Ninjaaaaaiii

Just as the sun went down

Our jeep at sunset

Sunset over the Salar de Uyuni. Can't wait to play with these in PS

Catching our bus to Potosi from Uyuni

Halfway point between Uyuni and Potosi. A very small percentage of Bolivian roads are paved

Farewell Argentina

2009-06-02T17:43:00.031-04:00

As you can see, the title of my blog has changed somewhat. I guess it was time to be a little honest and cut through the pretentiousness of the previous title. I´m not really a photog, and at times I feel like I´m just snapping bulk standard shots with a nice camera. So until I earn the "photographer" title, this will be the new name.

Since my last update, we´ve been to San Pedro de Atacama, back to Argentina an visited Salta, Cachi, Cafayate, and Tilcara. A lot to cover, so expect this to be the biggest post yet, with LOTS of pics.

The journey so far:

View South America in a larger map

From the beginning. From La Serena, we caught our first ever "Cama Premium" service to San Pedro de Atacama. The seats on these buses recline a full 90 degrees, making for a damn fine sleep! It cost us just 7,000 pesos more than normal Cama (about 8GBP), and included dinner and breakfast.

We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama at around 10am, and walked the small distance to our hostel. San Pedro is not a big town. It´s more of a large village. Adobe houses front dirt streets, and the town has a lovely central square. However, it´s probably the most touristy place we´ve been, and it´s chocker-block full of backpackers. The whole facade of the town is a front, as it has geared itself to be a "postcard" South American village. In fact, the dirt streets are sealed to give it an authentic rustic feel. Tour operators line each street and it is also EXPENSIVE. Our hostel, nice as it was, cost 30,000 pesos per night (about 35 GBP). Cheaper places exist, but they are hard to find.
Saying all that, it´s still a very nice town, and it´s an awesome bas to check out local sights. Situated at 2,400m amsl (above mean sea level), it can also cause light headaches and fatigue. Not proper altitude sickness but the symptoms can start at this altitude. It is nestled in an enormous valley between the Andes-proper to the east, and the Cordillera de Domeyko to the west.

No idea what he was doing, but he was cute as heck

Volcan Licancabur seen from the Town Square

The church in San Pedro. Currently under reconstruction

We did one tour in our time in San Pedro, and that was the "Valle de Luna" tour. It starts off with a drive around the region, with an explanation of local geology, which I found interesting. It includes some mini-hikes, and an exhilarating and breathless (literally - you´re at altitude and lose your breath a lot easier) run down a giant sand dune. The tour caps off with a visit to Valle de Luna (Valley of the Moon) to watch an incredible sunset. The colour change in this area over the period of sunset is sublime and has to be seen to be believed.
Also, we bumped in Simon and Cath in San Pedro (Simon being the lively English bloke I mentioned we met in Santiago - he of the Israeli Space Lizards fame), and did the tour with them. We went for a drink afterwards in a real local bar. They were getting ready to do the San Pedro - Uyuni trip the next morning (more on this trip later) and I probably ordered one jug of beer too many. Sorry guys! If you´re reading this, it was great to catch up with you again, and hopefully we´ll bump into each other up north somewhere.

Trying to conquer my fear of precipices!

Volcan Licancabur towers over the basin

We are about to run down this massive dune

Running down the dune!

Shooting into the sun sometimes pays off

Sunset over the Valle de Lunar

Anyway, we decided to postpone other trips in the region as we were going to make one last visit to Argentina, then return to San Pedro to cross into Bolivia. The three day trip to Uyuni in Bolivia is supposedly one of the highlights of any South American adventure.

So we caught a cockroach-infested bus back to Argentina (one fell on my head as I was chilling out listening to music) and saw some of the most beautiful scenery yet.

These were taken through a dirty bus window, so excuse any IQ issues

The bus passes through an altitude of 4,200m amsl and you can definitely feel the effects. Luckily, our symptoms were wild (harder to breath, slight headaches), but one poor woman on our bus really struggled the whole way. The bus trip took a total of 12 and a bit hours, and crosses the Andes, skirts the southern edge of the Altiplano, and crossed more of the Andes and then descends to Salta. The descent was torturous, as the road suddenly becomes about 90 minutes of hairpins. If you get slightly carsick, the novelty wears off pretty damned fast.

This represented about 10% of the amount of hairpins down this mountain. Not too pleasant an experience

We arrived in Salta at about 9pm, and caught a taxi to our hostel. And the hostel was rubbish. There was no curfew, and even though our room was upstairs, the sound of drunken idiots watching TV at full blast made its way into our room. At 3:00am, it mercifully died down.
So early the next morning, we checked out and moved to a very nice hostel down the road (Hostal de Cerro). It was run by an Argie family and only had locals staying there. Very nice.
Oh, and just to backtrack, because this is important, after we arrived in Salta, we went for dinner at a local restaurant where I had the BEST STEAK of the entire trip. Sweet Jesus it was good. If you´re in the area, I´ll give you directions to the restaurant. It´s etched permanently in my brain. I reckon I could find that place in the dark by smell alone.

The next day we spend looking around Salta, and we were pleasantly surprised. Expecting just another city, it is pretty laid back, and has a viewpoint with a beautiful lookout over the city, accessed by Cable Car. The city centre is charming with another beautiful square. One of the coolest things about Salta (and indeed, the entire region up here as I´m discovering) is the amount of fruit trees (mainly oranges) that line the road. You can pick the fruit off and eat if you so desire. Imagine that along any other city side-walk.

One of Salta´s few beautiful churches

earning an honest quid

sunset over the square

A row of orange trees!

Salta from the cerro lookout

In the afternoon of the following day, we caught a bus to Cachi - about 150km outside of Salta through incredible mountain and canyon filled scenery. The bus was very basic and was filled with locals rather than tourists and gringos. It stopped halfway at a cafeteria in the middle of nowhere where we had the tastiest empanadas yet. Nothing has come close. Anyway, we arrived in Cachi at around 5pm and found a hostel next to the bus station. Cachi is another beautiful village, but with not a lot to do. But we stayed two nights because it was so relaxing. Lately I´ve been feeling a little rushed and it was nice to kick back in this little bit of heaven that is completely isolated from everywhere.

Another elaborate cemetary. Very common down here.

The church in Cachi

Sunset over Cachi

One of the roads leading into Cachi. Fran and I hiked up to this point

Another cute little kid

From Cachi, we then went back to Salta to catch a connecting bus down to Cafayate. The connection was at 7:30pm which meant we had a few hours to kill. So we left the safety of the bus terminal and were hit by what felt like Mike Tyson wearing gloves of ice. Where previously our time in Salta was pleasantly warm, now it felt like 5 degrees with a wind that made a mockery out of anything "windproof". BUT I did manage to find a camera store that had more gear than anywhere else in South America so far! It had D300s! Non-photographer friends will roll their eyes at this point, but some Jessops stores in London don´t stock these cameras. So that was 15 minutes of heaven strolling through the store.

Back to it. We caught our bus to Cafayate, with the aim of being there for two nights only. We were there for four. There is so much to do in the area, and it´s another very chilled out place. We were met at the bus station by people advertising their hotels/hostels as is pretty common at bus stations here. Usually we politely tell them we have a reservation somewhere (when we do!) and we had indeed already pre-booked at a place called Rusty-K. Anyway, for some reason I gave one guy a chance to sell his hostel, and it turns out he was an owner of Rusty-K come to meet us and take us to the hostel. I´ve no idea how he knew we´d be there. So he put us in a cab (which he paid for) and followed us to the hostel on his scooter. As soon as we arrived, we were given wine and joined in a BBQ, then sat around the common area chatting to other travellers. We then hit a bar that, from 10pm to midnight shows movies for free on a projector, after which the bar kicks in proper.

The next day we went on a tour organised through our hostel to a place known as Garganta del Diablo (literally - Throat of the Devil). It was just Fran, myself and our guide Ismael, who spoke no English and we still speak no Spanish! However, the trip was SUPERB and was worth every penny. Ismael spoke plainly and clearly and I found I could understand a fair bit (which I figured out was due to the tour being an explanation of ecology, geology and fauna where the Spanish terms are based on latin origins. Since I love science and have a general knowledge of a few subjects, I was able to pick up quite a bit since the English words are similar).
Anyway, it kicked off at the start of an area known as Quebrada las Conchas where we walked through incredible wind and water swept rock formations. We saw a fox and a few condors here as well too! Just beautiful. It was a sign that the day was going to be good.
The area was, millennia ago, a massive lake (hence the name - "concha" means shell) but the lake drained out and mountains formed on it´s eastern flank, rising to 3,000m amsl. Huge, but babies compared to the Andes on the other side, which hit 6,000m without sweat. The area is hugely mineral-rich, evident in some of the most colourful rocks I´ve ever seen. Red for iron, white for clay (more evidence of the mezoic-era lake), green for copper, brown for sulphur, and blue for something that I forget now! Thankfully NO mining is allowed in the area, meaning the park stays pristine.

Fran buying vegies for our dinner

Cafayate

Just chillin, readin the news!

That´s Fran in the foreground there

Ismael and Fran

Another church! This time in Cafayate

After I took this shot, the little boy shook his head, telling me "don´t do that again"

You turn up to one of these places, choose your steak, and then get well fed. Two MASSIVE pieces (a foot long each) plus drinks for two people? 30 pesos. About 6 GBP

Cafayate´s wine region

The rock formations themselves are out of this world. The forces that created them are huge, powerful, and beyond our small minds to appreciate. Over time, in some of the spires, wind and water have made holes in which birds next during season. Also, we learned that the cactus of the region grown at a hare´s pace of 2-3cm per year. I suddenly had a profound appreciation for the 9-10m giants that are scattered about. Ancient. The world is truly an amazing place.
We came across stone cairns which Ismael explained were tributes to Pachamana (Mother Earth). Also, we saw first hand evidence of the ancient lake:

Sulphuric rocks

Crazy rocks

More crazy rocks

Me, Ismael and Fran

Huge upheaval evident in the slanted rocks

Under-exposed, but this guy was selling stuff by the side of the road, and we had to stop

High tide in January and February sees this "rio" flood

Ancient fossils

And more

The rocks in these pictures were well hidden and Ismael had to dig through piles of seemingly random rocks to get to them. This is due purely to theft, he explained, as people like to take these types of rocks for themselves. Pretty sad.

Back to Pachamama quickly. If you´re ever in South America and notice loads and loads of road-side "shrines" everywhere, with their kennel-like appearance, and coke bottles inside, we found out what they are. Apparently they are offerings to local spirits and to Pachamama made by local farmers and land owners to appease their deities and to ensure good harvest.
One guy in Puerto Natales reckoned they were just roadside markers for victims of accidents. That might sound correct, but when you´re in the middle of Patagonia, with nothing in site for hundreds of miles, and you see lots of these shrines, that explanation falls a little flat.

We also found out that puma are common in the mountains; our guide having seen them several times (at night only). We drove to a few more interesting spots, one of which afforded us a view of the river as it snakes it´s way from canyon to valleys.
View as the "Rio" snakes it´s way through the valley

God rays shine over the valley

The penultimate stop was at a place called the Anfiteatro (you can translate that one!) where a natural canyon formed by a waterfall now gives beautiful acoustics. A few people were there playing music which sounded so incredibly pure. We discovered that a music festival is held here every July, so if you´re in the area at this time, go visit! Be warned though, it is COLD.

The final stop was at Garganta del Diablo, which is another canyon carved into the cliffs. Take a look at the following pics. See if you can figure out if the camera was pointed up or down.

Optical Illusion 01

Optical Illusion 02

The Anfiteatro... that little speck at the bottom is me

Music players at the Anfiteatro

That night, we met a Dutch/Norwegian couple who had hired a car from Salta. They kindly invited us with them the next day to visit the ruins at Quilmes. The guy, Evo, started well by driving the wrong way down a one-way road. It then took him longer than acceptable to get out of the small town! Mr Lawler had to step up and direct us out.

Quilmes is located about 50km from Cafayate, and is set against a large hill, and evidence of fortifications on it´s flanks tells a story of its past. At first glance, the ruins are rather ordinary, with no explanation as to the meaning of any of the buildings or sites. Over the course of a few hours there though, they definitely grows on you. Climbing to one of the fortifications gives you a good overview of the settlement. It is very extensive, and at one point, housed 5,000 people. The area has been occupied for approximately 2,800 but the fortress was really built around 800 AD. During the time, the Quilmes people resisted the mighty Incas, and were finally overcome by the Spanish after 130 years of resistance. The Spanish decided to evict everyone from the city, and marched everyone on foot to a reserve outside of Buenos Aires: a journey of over 1,000km in which many hundreds of people died.
During their time, the locals harvested maize, fruits, and other vegetables, and exchanged these items for meat that nomadic hunters of the area caught.
All in all, a great day and I learned a lot about these fascinating people.

The ruins at Quilmes

Evo tries macro

The next day, our penultimate day, was due to be a trip to the local wineries on bicycles (again!) as Cafayate is a larger region for wine production than Mendoza (at least in terms of growing space). Unfortunately the wineries were all closed (being Sunday) and our bikes were rather poor. Fran´s brakes barely worked. So we walked around instead.

At 4am the next morning, we woke to catch our bus back to Salta to get to Tilcara, which is further north. One of the hostel owners, Walter saw us and offered us a lift to the station. "Oh do you have a car" we asked. "Yes, but I have no license" came the reply. So we packed our bags in the trunk "leave it open" he says "it´s only a short journey" and drove to the station, trunk open. From there we caught a bus to Salta, and waited two hours for our bus to Tilcara.

It was only a short journey to Tilcara, but a world away from a big city. Population circa 5,000, it´s very laid back and the faces of the locals start to take on that of the Altiplano natives: sun dried, weather beaten, leather skinned faces with serious stares. At least, they are serious until you say hello or give them a smile. Then it´s like you´re a long lost child.
Situated at 2,400m amsl, I was expecting to be a little breathless, but I coped well. Fran though, on the second day when we walked to a local waterfall, lost her breath quite quickly. A shot of ventolin fixed her up!

Tilcara is based at a halfway point between the highlands (southern Altiplano) and the lower regions of Salta and surrounds. In pre-Hispanic times, there was a large community based here, and they prospered well due to their location, facilitating trade and travel between the two regions. The ruins of this community are just on the outskirts of town, which we went to visit.

More churches!

Now in concert!

Market stall

Walking back from a local lake, this is the view of the fields surrounding Tilcara

And Tilcara

Too rusitc for me NOT to take a picture

Cacti. And lots of em

The ruins at Pucara

more ruins

and more

and more

and more

More cool rock formations

On our final day, we went to visit a waterfall which was about 2 hours hike away. Expecting something a bit tepid (this being pretty arid country), I was pleasantly surprised:

Exif around 1/3 second. Hand-held too!

Same goes

Same goes

We then caught a bus to San Salvador de Jujuy (ask Fran to pronounce that one.. ha), for just one night as our connection to San Pedro was the next day. It looks to be a gem of a city though, so if you`re in the region, swing by!

So here we are. Back in San Pedro, about to book a trip to Bolivia.
I`d better get off now, I`ve been on here far too long!

But before I do, remember more pics are on my Smugmug galleries. If you want better quality images than the jpegs on this blog, run a "slideshow" from Smugmug. The pics are much bigger there.

I hope everyone is doing well. Lots of love.
Adam

Smog, Rain, Cloud, Stars, and PISCO!

2009-05-20T19:53:00.010-04:00

Hello everyone.

Before I go on, I just want to share with you a picture I took down in patagonia of the Perito Merino glaciar. It is a pano, and it has been stitched and edited by my good mate Neil Burton (http://neilburton.smugmug.com/ and http://www.neilyb.de/) Huge thanks to you dude!

Stitched from about 8 frames from memory. I'm going to print this one quite big I think

Back to it..It´s been a while since my last update.
Well, not really, but it does seem like it. Net access has been pretty poor lately, mainly due to the short amount of time we´ve spent in each location.

It´s been a pretty busy couple of weeks, and we´ve been to Santiago, Mendoza, back to Santiago, Valparaiso, the Valle de Elqui (brilliant) and are now in a snoozy big town/small city called La Serena on the Chilean coast, waiting for our bus to San Pedro de Atacama tomorrow night at 630pm. So be warned, there´s going to be a lot of text in this post! (again)

I´ll kick off where I left off last - Pucon. As you know, the main attraction was to climb Volcan Villarica, which we successfully completed at the start of the month. The next night, which was the night before our departure from Pucon, we decided to visit one of the local beaches, situated on a lake just next to town. Apparently they are famous for their "black sand", due to being located right next the active volcanoes in the region. We saw about an inch worth of black sand right next to the water. The rest of the beach was gravel.
Dodgy marketing.
Fran went back into town to spend some time doing something else, and I decided to watch the sunset over the lake. I wasn´t disappointed. It was beautiful:

The next day, we caught a bus to Santiago to spend a few days. This was to be the first of two trips to the city. To be honest, we didn´t spend much tme looking around the city, even though we´d wanted to. So many people had said that Santiago wasn´t really that interesting, but in the time we were there, we had a great time. The hostel we stayed at was brilliant. The guys that worked there were super nice. One guy has a band.. "Ciudad Satellite". Their videos on Youtube are pretty good: H2O and Peligro de Gol.. Their lead singer/guitarist "Tonino" was a really chilled out bloke, who was completely left field. Getting a bit drunk one night at a barbeque, he started going on about how he "believed in the moon", and he was so psyched it was a full moon because it gave off so much femine energy. He went on and on about so much new-age hippy crap, but he was so positive and so friendly, it was hard not to do anything but laugh with him and be happy. He got into a friendly argument with a pommie bloke at our hostel named Simon, who started his own tirade about Israeli space-lizards. Seriously, if I have time, remind me to tell you guys the story whenever I see you. We´ve even got video of one of their discussions. Tonino also told us about how he met Zac de la Roca during RATM´s split when Zac visited Chile - and how Zac went over to Tonino´s place for a bbq. Pretty cool.
The other guy at the hostel, Sebastian, was VERY chilled out. One night, after going out for Fran´s birthday with a dutch couple we met, we caught a cab back to the hostel and the Dutchies entered first. As they entered, they both exclaimed "wow, that smells good". Expecting the scent of a bbq, Fran and I were amused to smell the overwhelming and unmistakable aroma of Mary Jane wafting through the hostel. Sebastian emerged through a cloud, grinning from ear to ear.

Anyway, back to Santiago. Unfortunately, we spent a lot of time in hospitals getting stuff sorted (long story - I won´t bore you, and yes, everything´s fine), so we didn´t get too much time to see the place thoroughly. But what we did see we loved. There is a view point on the edge of the CBD that gives a good overview of the city. Unfortunately, Santiago suffers from a huge smog problem, and the visibility is really poor

There´s a giant statue of Mary (not Jane) up on that hill, and also, as my mum puts it: "an ABC" - another bloody church.

Santiago is a modern city, with a cosmopolitan feel, a decent size financial district, and a good metro system, which will be expanding over the next couple of years. One lunch time, Fran and I had the nicest sushi I´ve ever tasted, at a place that was giving a 50% discount. A full meal, plus drinks and a tip cost us 10,000 pesos; approximately 11 squids. Not bad for "the most expensive country in South America". You just gotta look for the bargains.. isn´t that right, DC Carver?

Santiago's Metro is clean efficient and safe

Once all the admin stuff was done, we hightailed it back to Argentina to see Mendoza, which, like Santiago, is situated at the start of the section of the Andes that gets really big. The highest peak on the hemisphere (in fact, outside of Asia´s behemoth ranges, the highest peak in the world), Aconcagua, is just a four hour drive away. But we arrived to really shitty weather: thick cloud and rain. We were there for a few days, with plans to do horse-riding, and sample some of the regions wines; Mendoza is a main wine-producing region in Argie. The horse-riding was out of the question, but we did do a wine tour. Got the priorites right, eh?
The tour was basically a self-drive to various wineries outside of Mendoza, around a very run down town called Maipú. We´d heard Maipú was pretty rough, and it was. But it was nice to see something that wasn´t so clean and touristy.
Oh - I must clarify at this point, that the "self-drive" thing, is actually a "self-cycle". You rent bicycles from one of many bike shops in the area, and cycle from winery to winery getting more and more sloshed along the way, as you try and stay away from the deteriorating road where crazy Argies speed past you. Exciting stuff.
The weather was poor, but we had great company in the form of an Irish girl we met in Pucon - Aileen. She was a good laugh, and could talk for Ireland. If you´re reading this Aileen - thanks for the company! We might see you up in Salta in a short while if you´re still there.
Anyway, we cycled to a few wineries and hoped for a quick tour of each place before starting on the wines. I managed to find a white wine I could grow very fond of. Trapiche´s "Torrentes". I hear it is available in Australia. If you find it, give it a go. Very sweet, and typically South American. By the time we got to our last location (a chocolate factory!), we were well on our way to being slightly merry.
The weather didn´t play nice that day. One tour lady said that it was highly unusual for Mendoza as they get "300 days of sunshine per year, and hardly any rain".. Balls.

We stayed at "hostel Lao" so named because the owner wanted a relaxing place just like Buddhist Laos.

Fran got a bit greedy

Road Hogs. Mine's yellow, obviously.. Because yellow´s faster.

Aileen cycling "happily"

The night bus back to Mendoza. We found out later it's pretty dangerous. And there´s me snapping away with the 5D + 24-105 L!

We did pimp it up a bit when we had lunch at a delicatessan Jamie and Lex recommended to us. Damn pricey, but worth every penny. Super tasty food.

Ahh the life of a backpacker!

Speaking of Jamie and Lex, we managed to organise a meet up with them as we were both in Mendoza at the same time. We met at an all-you-can-eat place that another friend we´d met previously had recommended (Tom, if you´re reading this - thanks for the tip for the restaurant, but what were you thinking with the "I could live in Mendoza" thing?!). It was awesome to see them and guys, we will miss you! I hope your last week in SA has been brilliant and that you managed to get up to Iguazu. Enjoy Canada!

Anyway, maybe it was the weather, but we weren´t so enamoured by Mendoza. We´d heard such great things about it, but the city was pretty dull. Maybe in better weather it has a nicer shine.

So from there, we made our way back to Santiago for a day for two reasons. One, since we´d not managed to see what we´d wanted to see previously, we thought we should give the place a day or so (we arrived at 5am and left at 11pm), and two, for the past week I´d been in touch with Canon in Chile to get an A/C charger for my 5D and 40D so I could use it in our upcoming trip to the Elqui Valley. More on that later.
The second visit to Santiago was great. It is a really nice city, full of life and it has a great buzz, yet manages to retain a nice laid-back attitude. Though saying that, we did stumble across an interesting scene where the police had set up a blockade in a pedestrian mall, and had arrested a group of women who had stormed some apartments protesting against some socialist government policy.

As dusk settled, we took a walk to the main square downtown, and there we stumbled across a large bunch of guys playing chess. It was great standing there watching, and everyone was so good natured. I was so tempted to sit down and play someone, but we were running late for our bus and had to leave.

From there we took a short bus ride to the coastal city of Valparaiso. Valparaiso is an old port-city that made a fortune back in the day shipping minerals from the vast Atacama desert up north around the Tierra del Fuego to European markets. Once the Panama canal opened however, "Valpo" as it´s known lost a lot of business, and became a run-down city, a shell of it´s former self. However, what it lost in wealth, it gained in charm, and the city is ringed with colourful houses that adorn the hill-sides, and access to the top of the bigger hills is via funicular.

One of the best parts of Valpo was the fruit and vegetable market in downtown. The place was alive and kicking and Fran and I tried a bit of street food in the form of a local hot dog made of God-only-knows-what. Horrid, but hey, you gotta give it a go!

We were there just for one day before catching another bus to the Valle de Elqui, and a little hotel called "Elqui Domos" (google this name.. it´s worth a look).
Situated outside one of the nicest towns we´ve been to, Pisco Elqui, Elqui Domos is basically a group of high-end tents that open up to reveal one of the most impressive star displays in the world. It´s such a well kept secret. Hardly anyone we´ve spoken to has heard of the region, let alone the hotel.
The skies above the Elqui Vally are some of the clearest on earth (situated right underneath the Atacama desert - itself the earth´s driest desert - no recorded rainfall since the Spanish settled the place!), and many many Observatories are based here. Thanks very much to Fran´s father, Richard for finding out about the place and recommending it!
We were there for two nights, and it was worth every expensive penny. It was here that I put my new A/C charger to use, attempting to capture star trails over exposures from 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Please don´t take too much from these pics just yet. They need a lot of work in Raw, to fix white balance, colour and composition, but for now, they will do. There was no decent forefround interest so I had to make do with what I had.

The hotel was absolutely amazing and it was brilliant to be off the "Gringo Trail" for a short while. It was here I learnt that the Elqui Valley is a region of the world with the highest concentration of electromagnetism, which has drawn mystics, hippies, and religious leaders like the lamas to the area. I also leared about a neat trick the Incas had, where they´d make a circular hole in the ground (not deep), bottom it with dark volcanic sand, and top it with water. When the water was still, they´d mark the positions of the stars, and over time, use it as a calendar - they´d know when to plant or harvest certain types of crops from it´s use.
The nearest town, Pisco Elqui, was super nice and laid back. It felt like the real "South America" we had come to see. Obviously, the "Elqui" part of it´s name is derived from the valley in which it resides, which runs ravine-like from a couple of villages outside of Pisco Elqui to the larger town of Vicuña further down. The "Pisco" was added last century to counter Peru´s claim of trademarking the name; Pisco being a famous drink in these parts (Pisco Sour - a damn fine drink with one hell of a kick).
On the way into town, the bus driver honked at everyone and they all waved and smiled at him. Obviously, community means something here. It was so refreshing to see people behave like that, instead of scowling at each other like in London. When we left Pisco, the bus driver stopped at another town square, got out, left the keys in the ignition and the engine running, and sat down at the fountain having a chat to a local. How nice and trusting is that?

Once we´d checked out of our hotel, and were waiting for a bus to Vicuña, a man and his family in a pick up truck offered us a lift into Pisco Elqui. At that moment, we felt like real backpackers - travelling the roads with the locals!

Once we arrived in Vicuña, we searched for a place to stay and stumbled on a family-run hostel a few minutes from the bus station. After the luxury of Elqui Domos, it was quite a come-down, but the place was clean, had hot showers with excellent water pressure, and was fairly central (though the latter point isn´t too difficult to achieve in a town as small as Vicuña).
We had booked a tour to go to a local observatory to see a working astrophysics lab, and get a chance to look through their huge 30cm and 60cm telescopes. But when we arrived at the tour pick-up point, the lead scientist (a bearded French bloke with the smallest face ever) told us "sorry, not today, bad weather".. Having just looked at the stars in a very clear sky not moments before, I was skeptical. But he was the scientist, and we assumed he knew what he was talking about.
Vicuña itself was otherwise rather dull. We went to dinner where I ordered what sounded like a gem of a meal: steak topped with two fried eggs and a plate of chips.
To cut a long story short, the patatas fritas were the best part of the meal, and they were horrific.

So this morning we caught a bus to La Serena, where we were hoping for a connection tonight to San Pedro. Unfortunately the bus is tomorrow night, so we are chilling out here for the night. Yay, that means net time!!
Which leads me to apologise to all my friends for being slack over the past couple of weeks with emails. I will reply to you all as soon as possible.

Anyway, I believe we´ve just past the 1/3 mark as well, so there´s a landmark!
The plan for the immediate future is to get to San Pedro, check it out, then head back to Argie for one last hoorah around the Salta region (between 7-10 days I think). Then back to San Pedro for the 3 day trip to Uyuni in Bolivia. We are running quite a bit behind schedule, but we´ve plans to fix that I think!

Gotta go (and reply to mails!)

Much love everyone, and I hope you are all doing well.
Adam

Back to Chile

2009-05-02T16:07:00.007-04:00

Hola chicos

Since my last update, we have caught our first really long bus ride (28 hours!), visted beautiful Bariloche, watched Sea Lions beg for fish scraps (maybe not "beg" but they were waiting there to be fed!) and.. climbed an active volcano!

From the beginning.

We caught a 28 hour bus ride, thankfully full Cama, from El Calafate in southern Patagonia to San Carlos de Bariloche (known commonly as just "Bariloche"), a beautiful city in the Argentine Lake District. The Lake District here is nothing like the one in the UK. It´s surrounded by evergreen forrests, snow capped peaks, and volcanoes.
The bus ride, even though Cama, was torturous. If 28 hours wasn´t bad enough, for the first 20 the bus´s heating was on full pelt. We were baking, and getting pretty sick from the heat. At hour 21, someone must have kicked the heating controls because thankfully we went back to normal bus conditions... cold!

Bariloche it situated on beautiful Lake Nahuel Huapi and backdropped by the awesome Cerro Catedral (Mount Catedral). It´s an outdoor lovers paradise and is shaping to be the Queenstown of South America.
The lake provides watersport activites like windsurfing and kitesurfing.

Of course for such leisure, you´re charged a fair bit, and being backpackers, the best we could afford was watching the action! The regions prices are inflated not only to the overseas tourist trade, but also because Bariloche is viewed favourably by many Argentines and wealthy locals go there to play.

Within our budget was an awesome day´s bike round around the "Circuito Chico", which takes in a few of the surrounding lakes and scenery. We were joined by an energetic young Irishman. Dara or Gara or something similar. I understood about 50% of what he said at best, but he was a good bloke and good company. We hired mountain bikes and cycled the 30ish km circuit in a few hours, taking a leisurely pace.

we picniced at this spot

The hostel we stayed at for the first few days (Hostel 41 Below - named because Bariloche is on the 41st parallel below the equator) was great, and here I cooked my first real meal of the trip. A beef stew. Previously we´d either eaten out, made do with pasta and sauce (real backpacker fare!) or gone without. And it was awesome. I make the best beef stews full stop. I don´t care how that sounds. It´s true.

We then moved to another hostel to check out a different part of town. And boy were we surprised. La Baracca Suites was the most guest-house place we´ve stayed in. Which is explained by the fact that the owners were about to apply for hotel stars to move up from the hostel trade.

seriously, what hostel have you seen like this?

Sunsets in this part of the world are also awesome. I was hoping for a bit of cloud definition in this shot, but we lucked out weather-wise. Apparently we arrived smack bang in the middle of rainy season, but we had clear skies for the entire week we were there. Payback for the Torres, I think.

The town of Bariloche itself is quite nice, and we managed to get a little bit further out of the main touristy bits this time. Hopefully we´ll keep that theme in the coming months. It´s nice to see the real face of the place you are staying, rather than the tourist side. That is of course, if it´s safe!
Although saying that, we did spend a lot of time in the town´s chocolate shops!
In one cafe, we met a waiter who spoke minimal english, and when he found out I was from Australia, he replied "best Rugby team in the world".. Could´ve fooled me mate! I asked why he said that and he replied "Michael Lynagh, John Eales, David Campese"...... I didn´t have the heart to tell him.
When we left the cafe, he shouted "congratulations for David Campese"... ermm. Thanks!

Deciding to forego a horse riding trip for cheaper Mendoza (hopefully it´s cheaper, anyway!), we paid a visit to Cerro Catedral on our penultimate day. Caught a cable car from the tourist base of Catedral to near the summit, then walked the remaining distance. The views were sublime:

In winter, when the entire mountain is covered in snow, it becomes one of the largest ski parks in South America. This time of year, with no snow, the place was pretty much shut. We saw Andean Condors again, playing in the thermals high overhead.

After Bariloche, we caught a 6 hour bus across the Andes to Chile, and a university town called Valdivia. On a side note, my passport is actually starting to get full now because of all the Argie/Chile border crossings, and I´m hoping I have enough blank pages for the rest of the journey!
Anyway, it must be off season, because the town is pretty dead. It´s saving grace is the colony of Sea Lions that pretty much live next to the fish market, getting big off scraps thrown in by the fish mongers. Cormorants, Pelicans, Turkey Vulters, Chimango Caracaras and gulls make up the support crew.

We strolled the market and decided to buy some salmon for dinner. Expecting an expensive price (being used to London salmon prices, and hearing about Chile being a generally expensive place), we were amazed at being charged 1,800 pesos for a massive filet of Salmon. I mean a huge piece, caught fresh that morning. That worked out to about GBP 2.10. A similar sized portion from M&S would set you back at least 15 squids. So we ate the tastiest and best value (is taste proportionate to value? there´s a thought!) fish ever that night.

Also in Valdivia, we decided that we really need to improve our Spanish. After spending a day strolling a local park (and making friends with a local stray dog... too cute), Fran decided she really liked the look of some cake in a cafe window. So we went in and sat down and were met by a fast talking woman saying God-knows what in espanol. Hearing the word "comida" (food), we nodded. "Si, Si". 5 minutes later, we were given a bowl of soup (which was damn tasty) which was then followed by a meat/veg main, and dessert.
We went in for cake and came out with a 3 course meal.
I figured it might be time to learn a bit of Spanish. Now I take the Lonely Planet book "Latin American Spanish" with me everywhere, and read it as much as I can.

Speaking of books, I think I´m reading them a little too fast. In the first 5 weeks, I read 6 novels. I was originally hoping three full novely would last me the full six months, with maybe an option for one or two more if I read quickly. That´s proved to be a dud idea, so now I´m going cold turkey on non-language books for a while and will try and get something once we hit Bolivia around June-ish.

Anyway, after Valdivia, we caught a three hour bus ride to the town of Pucón. Another outdoor place (seems to be very common in this part of the world), with the main attraction the ability to scale an active Volcano: Villarrica. A very active volcano, with the last eruption in 1984. Lava flows are still visible on the base of the mountain. When we were at the top, we heard her rumbling several times. An incredible sound.
The trip departed Pucón at around 730am, and we were hiking with our tour group an hour later. Being within National Park boundaries, self hikes of the Volcano are prohibited unless you can prove to Conaf (Chile´s "National Parks and Wildlife Service") that you know how to traverse mountains yourself and that you´ve done it before. It´s uphill all the way, and the trek to the top takes you through the volcanic rock and sand from the base to the middle of the peak, into the snow and ice covered cone. We took 3 hours and 40 minutes to make the climb, which we were all very happy with. It was an easy climb at first, but Villarica has a typical conical volcanic shape, with a steeper ascent towards the top. That was hard, but thankfully, quick. No mental or physical failing on this trip! Wooooo. On the way up and at the peak, the views were awesome. We really lucked out on the weather, as we arrived the day before to grey skies and rain. As we hit the serious snow-line, we were forced to don crampons, helmets and use our ice-picks. Loads of fun.

On the way down, we were allowed to slide down on bum-boards and with our bodies. However, the snow at top wasn´t deep and it was pretty icey, so we were only allowed to do it incertain section. A few Irish lads in our group, with that goofy look so common of the Irish, decided to pester the guides mercilessly and did improptu slides of their own. Typical!
Anyway, I gave it a go and it was loads of fun, except for two people careering into me crampons-first. That hurt.
We were going to give some local hot-springs a visit tonight (they are open 24 hours) but we´re pretty exhausted, and in need of some rest.

On to other stuff (sorry this is a long post!)
The past week or so, I´ve started to miss a few things from home (wherever that is!). Some of the things are obvious if you know me, others less so. A few ommissions are surprising for me as well. So what am I missing?
1. Blueberry Muffins from Starbucks.. no surprise there
2. My X-Box.. being a PC dude, that´s a surprise. I don´t really miss my computer - maybe because I´ve been impressed by games such as Dead Space and Halo 3 on the X-Box lately)
3. My bike. And that´s probably because we´ve used mountain bikes here a couple of times and I´d love to do the trails here on my Rockhopper.
4. Without a shadow of doubt.. my lenses. The big 300 f/2.8 and 500 f/4. I´m glad I´m not lugging around their weight, but the wildlife hear is begging to be photographed with good equipment!
5. The Breadmaker! Seriously. We used that thing so much back in London it was part of the family. Jo you were nuts not to use it while we were gone!
6. My friends and family. Thankfully only a email/skype call away. But the regularity of contact is what I miss.

Right, that´s it. The photography post I´ve been meaning to write up will come very shortly. I think it´s going to be fairly negative and self-critical so prepare to ignore it! I just need to vent.

El Calafate and Perito Merino

2009-04-25T13:08:00.004-04:00

After a 5 hour bus ride from Puerto Natales, Chile, Fran and I crossed the border back into Argentina and arrived in El Calafate - one of two towns here used as a base to explore Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, which includes world famous Perito Merino. Of course, with our luck weather-wise, we were sure not to see Perito Merino looking anything like we´ve seen in pics. So I´ll get them out the way quickly:

A chunk of ice falls of the glacier into Lago Argentino

The only sunlight all day!

As you can see, it´s impressive, but the weather didn´t play nice at all. I´ve only uploaded four pics to my gallery, so that says how impressed I was with the weather. I might steal a few from Fran and post them as well, spice things up a bit.

The glacier is amazing though, so don´t get the idea that I didn´t enjoy seeing it. It´s huge, and is constantly moving forward and breaking off. Some estimates put it at a hares pace of 2m per day. That´s a lot of ground to cover, and if you wait 15 minutes, you´re guaranteed to see something fall into the water, or hear the ice crack and groan.

The glacier is reached via bus from El Calafate in a journey that takes around 90mins through impressive scenery (but what part of Patagonia isn´t impressive).

El Calafate itself is nice, but hugely touristy. It´s building itself to be a European lodge-town. A-frame houses and lodgings are sprouting up everywhere and the main street is tourist city! I´ve not taken a single picture of this town. It´s not that it´s bad, it´s just that it´s obviously gearing itself for a kind of clientelle I am not.
Anyway, the hostel we are staying in is more like a hotel. Free breakfast (standard hostel stuff) and free dinners! Massive plasma screen in the lounge area, telescope to star gaze, free pool tables, TVs in the rooms etc. Very hotel.
Except for the bed bugs. Fran and I are now covered in bite marks - I don´t react to them so much so my marks will be gone in a day or two, but Fran.. poor thing, she´s been bitten a lot! And she´ll kill me if I post pics, so I´m not going there!

Anyway, I´m keeping this one short. We´re off to Bariloche tonight on a 28 hour bus journey, thankfully, full Cama. We´ve decided to give El Chalten (and the impressive Fitzroys) a miss. Maybe we´ll end up regretting that, but the decision´s been made. I think my next post will be a bit more geared to photography issues, so feel free to shut off and skip that if you´re not interested!

As always, Smugmug galleries are there to peruse. I normally add a few extra pics (sometimes a lot) that aren´t included in the posts.

Much love to everyone. Starting to miss a lot of you guys, some far more than others ;-)

The "W"

2009-04-24T16:39:00.009-04:00

Hello everyone.

Well it´s been an eventful few days. Since my last post, we´ve done a 5 day trek through the Torres del Paine National Park, and popped back into Argentina and seen Glacier Perito Merino.

Anyway, I have a bit to post up, and I might spread it across a few posts. Expect this one to be meaty. I think...

First, the trek.

Easily one of the hardest, most rewarding, yet physically and mentally draining things I have ever done. We followed and increasingly popular hike called "The W", because funnily enough, it´s in a rough shape of a W. I´ve ripped an image from Google Maps and overlayed a rough impression of the route. Do you like my MS Paint skills? God I miss Photoshop.
We did the trek with Jamie and Alexis (mentioned in my previous blog post). An awesome couple. Jamie is like Superman with his mental and physical fitness and Alexis is just the most positive person ever, which really came in handy as the days went by! Thanks again guys for an awesome trip.. a really "unique experience" ;-)

click me for full size pic

Day 1 began at around 12pm, where we caught a ferry across to the starting point (purple dot above). Hot chocolate on the boat put us all in good spirits for the day ahead. Once we disembarked we wasted no time in getting off to a great start by being unable to find the start of the trail. A few questions later at a local "refuggio" (think organised camp-site, with log cabins optional if you don´t want to camp) and we were on our way. Looking back on this day, it was definitely one of the hardest. It was only 3 and a half hours to our camp site that night, but over very rough terrain, with bits so steep they left us quaking at the thought of returning via the same route the following morning. In the map above, we camped at the spot marked "1".

Jamie leads the way on day one.

Icebergs from Glaciar Grey, whose eastern tongue can be seen in the background

Unfortunately, the weather didn´t play with us this day. There was slight drizzle, but thanks to this being day one, it didn´t dampen our spirits. We camped about half an hour from the start of Glaciar Grey, which is pretty impressive. Icebergs sailed past our campsite during the evening and into the morning. Not many camp-sites can claim such an attraction. Glaciar Grey is actually slightly bigger than Perito Merino to the north.
Spirits high, we fed ourselves on two minute noodles, and warmed ourselves and dried our gear in a common area of the nearby Reffugio. That night we camped under clearing skies and woke to some nice weather.

Day 2 began with a hearty meal of porridge to power us through the rough walk back to the start of the trail. Instead of taking us 3.5 hours, the walk back through steeper terrain was 4 hours, but boy did we see some awesome scenery! The weather cleared up nicely and we could see the extent of Glaciar Grey from several viewpoints:

Glaciar Grey, which if were advancing (most glaciars in the world are retreating), will eventually crush the island in the centre

Constant snacking on raisins kept the sugar levels up, and by the time we got back to the start, we were still in good spirits, if just tired. A quick tuna sandwich lunch, and we were off again, this time to our second campsite marked with a "2" on the map. The tuna must have been laced with something, because for this short walk (two and a half hours) I earned the nickname Energiser Bunny (still prefer Mr Mysterio) because I was absolutely speeding ahead. The consequence of my being rapido was that I pretty much drenched my clothes in sweat. Nice. Lesson to self: don´t do that again. With the weather clearer on this day, we were afforded a great view of the Cuernos peaks:

The Cuernos

Camp that night was next to a raging river, at the start of Valle de Frances. There must have been loads of moisture in the night, because we woke to damp tents, clothes, and sleeping bags. Not pleasant when the temperature drops to freezing.

The morning of day 3 started with plenty of cloud cover, which I suppose was a bonus because we were now going to head up into the valley for two and a half hours past Camp Britanica for a panoramic view of the valley. I really wish I had photoshop here, as I´ve taken a bunch of shots I want to stitch together. Next time I guess.
Thankfully, this morning we left camp up and took day bags (water, food, cameras, etc) so we weren´t lugging 10+kg around (more for me with my camera gear normally). The view from the top was beautiful, and Jamie being Jamie, decided to go a bit further to a higher plateau and see the view from there. Lex, Fran and I knew our limits and stayed further down the mountain!
As we descended, the clouds remained but thinned and we could see the glacial lakes below:

Autumnal colours area currently in vogue in Patagonia! Beautiful

Packing camp, we hiked another 2 and a half hours to the next camp for the night, which had a Refuggio! Yes, a chance to warm and dry our clothes! It rained this night, but it was so windy that the wind dried our tents. And we awoke to clear skies, fresh air, and an awesome mountain sunrise on our doorstep.

I´ll bring the highlight back in PS, I promise!

The blown mountain above

Day four began in style with the above sunrise, which cheered us up big time. This was also going to be the hardest day, with a good 7-8 hours of trekking ahead with the final section over some steep terrain. We all knew it was coming, and we all were pretty nervous and anxious. By now I was beginning to hit my wall, and knew today would make or break me. Thankfully, even though the day nurtured some dark thoughts in my mind (created by exhaustion, honest!), day four was not the day that would break me. That would be day five´s privelige.
But with such good weather that lasted the whole day (you can have four seasons in one day in the Torres), this was pretty much the best day scenery wise:

I can´t wait to play with these pics in Raw

These guys were on their way to close down one of the Refuggios for the season

And then, we hit a MONSTER climb. Straight up with two flat sections that lasted no more than 10 meters. For over an hour we climbed and climbed and climbed. Carrying our gear on this stretch was torture and I was close to breaking. Still, I didn´t lag behind on this hill, which I´m proud of, and kept pace with Jamie right to the top. Where we saw the final valley on our trip:

Beautiful. My mind didn´t even think about having to climb back up this valley the next day on the way out. I was too impressed by the scenery.
At our final rest trip though, we had to let Jamie and Lex go ahead as we knew that we just wouldn´t be able to keep pace with them. So Fran and I made the final hour trip to the campsite directly beneath the Torres, ready for an early morning assault on the mountain to watch the sun hit the peaks.
Camp that night was great, but I just knew, with Sod´s law, that the weather would not be kind the following morning. And I was right. We woke on day 5 to cloud and slight drizzle, which served to really dampen my mood and knock the spirit out of me. I wanted "that shot" of the sun warming the Torres that DOES happen, and happens quite often. Just our luck that it didn´t for us. So, trying to use Lex´s positivity for motivation, we made the final 45 minute scramble up the mountain. And this is where I broke. With nothing left, no energy in my legs, and a downed spirit, even sans backpack with all our gear, I struggled. Everyone bar Fran got further and further ahead until I had to tell them to just go on, and I would try and catch them later. Fran stuck by me and tried to keep me positive. I will publicly apologise for being so moody wth her here and snapping at her. I was not in good shape, and without your help, I would not have made it to the top. And make it I did! Of course, the view of the Torres were obscured by cloud and the sun did naught to illuminate the spires, but still, the part of me that wasn´t broken was happy to be at the top. Congratulatios by my new friends at the top really helped, even if it didn´t seem like it at the time. Sorry guys!
Anyway, obligatory pic of the Torres below. I can do a lot to this in Raw!

The sun couldn´t burn through thick cloud, but you take what you´re given and make the most of it

Again, I was slow down the mountain, with no energy to keep up with everyone else. And again, we told Lex and Jamie to go ahead and we would meet them at the finish line, because I had to take it slow. So we packed up and make the slow, 3 and a half hour walk back to the end. Along the way, I threw up, but kept pushing. Fran saved my bacon by carrying my camera bag for me, which really helped. Not a complaint out of her either. With nothing left in my stomach, the rest of the trip was slow walking interrupted by dry-retching. Not pleasant. Along the way, I found a walking pole. Ordinarily, I would try and find it´s owner or hand it in, but in my state, I took it and used it to help me back to the finish line.
Constant drizzle kept us company the whole way back, but in the end at around 1:20pm, we reached the end!
Lex and Jamie (and Elly, another who joined us for the morning climb to see the Torres) met us in a hotel restaurant as we waited for the bus back to Natales.

I down two pints of O.J. in quick succession, hoping the sugar would help. I was still broken. Thoughts of food only stirred my stomach in a bad way.

On the (smelly) bus journey back to town, everyone on the bus slept. We awoke, and carried our gear to our hostel (more like a guest house - really nice place too: Yagan House if you´re in the area) and I crashed. We had plans to take Jamie and Lex out for dinner that night as a thank you for inviting us and for carrying and letting us use their cooking equipment, but I was coming down with fever symptoms and so needed the rest. Fran went out with them sans me. Thankfully though, I´d taken a berocca and two paracetemol before falling asleep, on an empty stomach, which worked wonders. Half an hour after she left, I was up, feeling LOADS better and so went to meet everyone at the pizzeria. With Jamie and Lex leaving early the next morning, and Fran and I staying another day so I could recover, I knew I wouldn´t be up in time to say good-bye to them. So the night turned out well and I went to bed on a full stomach, with only a small desire to throw it back up. Things were improving.

The next day, I spent pretty much in bed. The fever symptoms had come back and rest was what I needed. All in all, we´d trekked nearly 80km over terrain that was in parts clogged with mud, steep, rocky, and slippery, carrying all of our gear ourselves. An incredible achievement and I´m very proud of our effort, for a couple of virgin trekkers. Lex and Jamie proved to be excellent companions and I thank them for the warmth, friendship and understanding they showed us.

Any regrets? One. Don´t take so much camera gear next time. I took three lenses and used only one. The 17-40 and 100-400 were essentially dead weights.

Not much wildlife was seen on the trip bar Gunacos at the start of the trip, massive Andean Condors (the world´s largest flying bird), and a really cool Black Chested Eagle-buzzard, which against it´s name, is actually a hawk, but the size of an eagle. Huge.

We booked our bus to leave Natales the following morning for El Calafate, and were greeted with a beautiful sunrise:

And two days ago, we arrived in El Calafate, which will be in my next post.

Oh, before I go, I did promise a pic of my passport with an Ushuaia stamp.. here it is. Done at the most southerly post office in the world apparently, which I think is bogus, because I´m sure McMurdo in Antarctica has a post office.

And lastly, but CERTAINLY not least, congratulations to Kelly and her lesser half on the birth of their second son, Oliver Grace. I hope mum and baby are doing well, and Paul is taking good care of everyone!

Cheers all

It´s the End of the World As We Know It

2009-04-17T06:59:00.003-04:00

Hello folks.

I´m currently sitting in an internet cafe in Puerto Natales, Chile. It´s a town that´s a stepping stone to the Torres del Paine National Park, famous for those photogenic mountain towers (Torres in Espanol) you tend to see representing all of Patagonia. Along with the Fitzroy range near El Chalten in Argentina, these are probably some of the most photographed mountains in South America. I´ll get back to the Torres in a bit.

First of all - Ushuaia!
The most southern city in the world. I´ve got a stamp in my passport to prove I was there (haven´t taken a picture of it yet) but I will do so for the next blog.

We got there pretty late after a fairly rubbish trip from Rio Gallegos on mainland Argentina. I say "mainland" because Ushuaia is actually on an island called Tierra del Fuego. "Land of Fire" in English. So called because when the Portuguese sailed past this part of the world in times of yore, the fire from the natives camps were clearly visible from the ships. Technically, the Tierra del Fuego, the southern most section of Patagonia (itself an awesome region of southern South America) is actually a group of islands, but the main one, known as Isla Grand de Tierra del Fuego is the one most people speak of when mentioning this region.
The bus trip involved a border crossing not once.. not twice... heck not even thrice. But four times. Yep. Once to get out of Argentina, then to get into Chile, then to get out of Chile, and back into Argentina. The reason being because Chile owns most of the area down here, and to get to Argentine Tierra del Fuego, you first have to go through Chile.

Anyway, it´s always had a rather mythical place in my mind, and I´ve wanted to come here for a while. The main city here (not in terms of population - that title goes to Rio Grande) is Ushuaia, and in the summer months, is THE main spot in the world to launch ships bound for Antarctica. Luckily, or unluckily (depending on my wallet and dreams respectively), we arrived after the end of the Antarctic season, so we were not able to go down there. Some of the last minute cheap berths are around $3-4k USD so I guess that might have been for the best! Otherwise the credit card would´ve been shaking that´s for sure! Ushuaia itself is set on the Beagle Channel, and is surrounded by high snowcapped peaks. Really beautiful.

We spent 5 days in Ushuaia, which we were assured was too long. But in fact, we could´ve stayed there a bit longer. There´s so much to do. We climbed a mountain right behind the city to see a glacier. Of course, the weather turned on us half way. You can see the fruits of our labour below.. REALLY horrid walking through this, and it got a lot worse, I assure you:

That´s me in the frame there

Another day, when the weather improved, we went to the Tierra del Fuego National Park and did a day hike with a really nice Welsh couple we met at our hostel, Jamie and Alexis. They are super friendly, and in fact, we will be hiking with them over the next few days here in Chile. But I´m jumping ahead of myself. On the hike, we saw incredible scenery, and I impressed everyone with my knowledge of raptors (Southern Crested Caracara!).. by impressed I mean bored of course. Jamie then had to show off with his knowledge of shrubs and trees and the like.. Cheers Jamie! ;)

We also then had the good fortune to go on a boat trip out of Ushuaia to see local seal and bird colonies. Pics below:

Boats around a Seal colony. Fur Seals and Sea Lions were here

And after 5 days, we left Ushuaia at a lovely time of 5am to catch a bus across to Puerto Natales, Chile, which involved two brder crossings, and two connections at Rio Grande and Punta Arenas.
We´ve now been here for a day, and tomorrow we will be going on a 5 day hike around the Torres del Paine. Wish us luck. It´s bloody freezing here at night!!

Anyway, sorry to keep this short. I´ll post more pics upon our return. Remember:
Smugmug galleries are there to check out.

One particular friend (no names mentioned!) had a whinge at me for not including more people shots. If you want, Fran has been doing more of those kinds of pics, and I can send the link to anyone interested. Just drop me a mail.

Gotta go. Much love all!
Adam

Spider Bites, Mr Mysterio, and the Lazarus Car

2009-04-08T14:04:00.012-04:00

Right. Well it hasn´t been too long since my last update, but both a lot and not much has happened. I´ll get to the odd title in a bit, but first, on to Cordoba!

What was supposed to be a few days of trips around the area turned out to be rather tame. We took one trip to a town called Alta Gracia, from which you can do hikes around the mountains and check out one of Argentina´s (and presumably South America´s) numerous Che museums.

Taken at the Che Guevera museum

The museum was good.. and done thoroughly in half an hour. As we got to Alta Gracia late in the day, hikes were out of the question.
The rest of the time in Cordoba was pretty chilled out. It´s a nice place, but just like any European city, really. We met one Kiwi bloke who´d been staying at our hostel (Baluch Backpackers for those interested) for 3 weeks. And still had another week left. Now Cordoba is a nice place, but really. It´s not THAT nice. To each his own I guess. Crazy Kiwis.
The hostel itself was awesome. Really chilled out place, and they put on a free live acoustic show every Tuesdays, with free drinks. Can´t argue with that can you?!

Acoustic set by two locals at Baluch Backpackers

Anyway, not many pics from Cordoba. I got a little camera bored to be honest. I´m sure that won´t be the last time that happens this trip!

So after a few days taking it slow in Cordoba, we took a 22 hour bus ride to Puerto Madryn, which was founded by the Welsh some time in the past (and can I just interject my own commentary here and say that we were spoiled on our first bus ride from BA to Iguazu. Not that the subsequent bus trips have been bad per se, but they´ve become more crowded with more surly staff.. still, it´s given us laughs, and as ex-Navy-Seal-turned-chef Casey Ryback said.. "it´s an adventure".. or as the food additives genius Clark W Griswold said.. "It´s no longer a vacation. It´s a Quest. A Quest for Fun").
The bus journey wasn´t too bad actually. I got to see another absolutely brilliant sunset, with my iPod on, listening to some good tunes (thanks to DC Carver for Holden´s Sky Was Pink remix, and Lavelle´s Everything in it´s Right Place remix... and a bit of REM to close off the night. Waking up the next morning to a bit of Black Dahlia Murder´s Warborn. Great stuff).

Back to it; the main draw for P. Madryn is it´s wildlife and it´s location to UNESCO listed Península Valdés; a massive wildlife sancturay about an hour to the north. Famous for it´s oceanic wildlife (though not at the expense of the land-life.. they were still cool) which include colonies of Elephant Seals, Sea Lions, Penguins, Southern Right Whales, and Orcas. This is one of the few locations in the world where Orcas are known to surge up the beach to catch seals. Of course, it´s still a rare event, and we didn´t get to see it happen, but we heard it DID happen two days before we arrived. Awesome.
Anyway, to the south of P. Madryn lies a colony of Elephant Seals. We cycled to this spot - 17km in one direction, on sandy-gravel road and up and down some serious hills. That was a few days ago and I´m still aching from it all. Fran had been bitten by a spider in Cordoba and was cycling with a rather puffed up left hand. Luckily the spider wasn´t deadly or else my trip would´ve been cut short, and that would´ve been rather upsetting! Ha. Anyway, she was given medication for it which turned out to be rather fortuitous in more ways than one.. more on that in a bit.
Of course, with our luck, there were no seals after the grueling cycle. Or rather, we cycled right past the bay where they were supposedly basking. Sod´s law, really. So we slogged it back to town - another 17kms. Torture.

The next day we hired a car and drove to the Peninsula itself. First of all, in retrospect, we should´ve maybe thought the car hire through a bit. Not that there´s anything wrong with hiring a car to see this awesome place - it´s almost necessary due to the area´s size. It´s just that the car was falling apart and the group that used it the day prior to us had busted the fan belt, which was an omen of things to come.
So we drove along about 250km of gravel roads once inside the park, and saw all sorts of cool wildlife:

Guanaco

Magellanic Penguin

Rhea (very skittish)

Sea Lions

Big Hairy Armadillo (yes that´s it´s actual name!)

Distant clonony of Elephant Seals.

You could get right up close and personal with the Penguins. Of course, like most sea life, they stank to high heaven, but not as bad as some people on the London Underground. The highlight of my day though, was the VERY distant spotting of an Orca pod. This is what I mean by very distant:

Taken at full zoom on a Canon EF 100-400. The Orca is a speck, but even this tiny sight of an awesome creature was enough to make my day. If I hadn´t seen anything else that day, and just that Orca, I would´ve gone home very very happy

As the day progressed, the car became less and less reliable. It became harder to get the car to change gears, and at times I had to force the shift into 2nd or 3rd. By the end of the day, I could barely get it into 4th. The car would not start in 1st, but would chug along in 2nd only with a shedload of revving. We were staying overnight on the peninsula in the only town: Puerto Pirámides. We had planned to get up just after sunrise to make an early start so we could return the car at 9:30am. So I figured "leave the car until tomorrow, and see what happens".
Anyway, at around 5:30am, Fran came into my dorm (sex segregated at this hostel) and woke me to let me know that she had been bitten on the eye-lid during the night by a mosquito. It had swollen up pretty bad and was putting pressure on her eye ball. So we decided to hop in the car and get her to Puerto Madryn asap to see if there was anything the small hospital there could do to relieve the pressure. But the car was well and truly dead. The clutch might as well have not been there, as first, second, or third just wouldn´t take. Trying any or all of the tricks I´d learned the day before was next to useless. So we had to call the rental company, with our hostel in Puerto Madryn acting as a translator to get a mechanic out to fix the car. After the conversation, I thought to myself "guaranteed now that we´ve asked for help, if I start the car, it will work". So, in the words of President Thomas J Whitmore, I said "Hold on Command. I want another shot at it". Fran, worried I would be flooding the engine, said "Sir, I strongly recommend you disengage". Ignoring her, I turned the ignition.. "Eagle 1 Fox 3!". The car purred back to life, just like Lazarus.. who wasn´t a car, but the analogy stands.
So there we were. A car that suddenly shifted gears like silk, on our way back to Puerto Madryn. I was so relieved, being fairly worried they were going to charge us for a new gearbox or something. Upon arrival, the elderly and friendly car rental guy took the car for a spin around the block, and it worked flawlessly. "Mysterio" he says. He points at me and says "Mr Mysterio". I smile. It´s a cool name.

And back to the bite on Fran´s eye-lid. The medication she had been taking for the spider bite must have also helped her with the mosquito one, because within a few hours, she was on her way back to normal with no side-effects.

So that was the end of our time in Puerto Madryn, which turned out to be better than we expected. Loads of wildlife to see, in a pretty cool and relaxed place. I mean, with sunrises like this, how can anyone not love the place?

Sunrise in Puerto Madryn

Oh, and to anyone who is heading down this way - I recommend Hi! Patagonia Hostel in Puerto Madryn. Very chilled out, and the best one we´ve stayed at so far. Roy who works there is super super friendly and helpful, and the owner Gaston is full of life and laughs.

Right now, we are in Rio Gallegos, which hasn´t got too much going for it bar being a nexus point for buses down into Tierra del Fuego (Ushuaia), and El Calafate/El Chalten. We are just staying here overnight before an 8:30am departure to Ushuaia - the most southern city in the world!

Later folks!
Adam

Iguazu Falls

2009-04-01T09:43:00.005-04:00

Hi folks

Well it´s been an incredible few days here in Argie. On our last day in Buenos Aires, we caught a train to Tigre, about an hour outside of BA. It´s a town used by BA residents during the summer, and situated on a delta to the north of the city.
Here we took a 2 hour cruise around the delta, hoping to see lots of wildlife and impressive scenery. But most of the delta has been settled by people, so it was basically a tour seeing lots of houses along the rivers and inlets. At one point, we could see Buenos Aires to the south:

Buenos Aires from the Tigre delta

The delta also has quite a few wrecks along the shoreline.

We then high-tailed it back to BA to catch a 18 hour bus ride to Puerto Iguazu, which is the main town on the Argentinian border that is a base to visit the famous Iguazu Falls.
18 hours wasn´t too bad though. The buses here are like business class flights. Fully reclining uber comfortable seats, dinner, breakfasts, drinks (alcoholic and non).. brilliant. All for about 30 squids.

The town itself is charming, with open streets, good cafes and a positive vibe. Whilst at an internet cafe, I saw a local man walking the streets selling hand made crafts. So I ran after him, bought a little something from him, and tried to engage him in conversation. Of course, with me speaking little to no Spanish, it was dificult, but he explained his carvings, and the significance of each sculpture and how it related to his religion. Pretty interesting stuff. Of course, I had to take a picture of him, as he was incredibly photogenic:

We checked into Hostel-Inn, which is basically a small resort. It´s been said it´s the best hostel in Argentina. Whilst I haven´t travelled around all of Argentina, I must admit that´s a big call. Still, it was prety good, with a great party atmosphere, and excellent food. The BBQ.. God!!

The next day, we caught a 9am shuttle bus to the National Park, about 10 minutes away.
And we were just blown away. Each view of the falls got more and more impressive. Fran has a video of me with my jaw open at the first lookout point. We were in awe. Little did we know at that point that the day would reveal even more impressive views of the falls. The sheer power of the water was mind-blowing. Here´s a pic taken from the Argentine side looking at a fall known as the Devil´s Throat.

People from the Brazillian side are afforded a different view

From what I´ve heard though, the Brazillian side is impressive, but not as good as the sheer variety of what you see on the Argie side.

There was plenty of wildlife around the area as well. Coati´s (think of a racoon), Vultures (hundreds riding the thermals overhead) lizards big and small, tropical birds (no Toucans I´m afraid!!) and thousands upon thousands of butterflies. I hear there were also monkeys and Jaguars in the area but we saw neither.

We also took a powerboat ride on the river, which takes you right up to a couple of falls. Jesus, we got drenched! It was like the air had turned to water. Brilliant fun.

By the afternoon the light changed to something much softer. It was gorgeous and really showed off the beauty of the place.

Like a scene from Jurassic Park

Anyway, by closing time, we´d seen so much and taken our time doing it that we realised we couldn´t make it in time to see the Devil´s Throat up close. So.. we went back the next day. And I´m glad we did! It was incredible. A walkway takes you over the river and right up and close to the edge of the falls. This is the main section and the power from this spot was awesome. But probably my favourite pic from this location was not of the main falls, but of falls just off to the side. Again, very Jurassic Park to me. I love the mood in this one:

After seeing the falls, we caught another bus, this time for 20 hours and arrived in Cordoba yesterday. Seems to be a nice city, but there´s more to do outside the boundaries than in, so we´ll be doing a few excursions to see what´s around the area shortly.

Anyway, all pics are in my galleries below. To my photographer friends, please don´t be too critical! I´ve no software to process the shots and the vignettes can´t be helped. CPLs + Lee filter kits = trouble. You know it!

http://adamlawler.smugmug.com

I hope everyone is well. I hear folks at RBS had to be evacuated? Please let me know if everything is okay there.
Also Stu - can you send me the name of the track I listened to of yours? The Solaris one?

Much love folks!
Adam

Leaving Buenos Aires - And a few pics

2009-03-27T07:42:00.007-04:00

Hello everyone. Well the time has come to leave this fantastic city. It´s been excellent to see what an amazing vibrant and lively place this is. From the wealth of Recoleta (more on this place below), to the poorer (but no less vibrant) neighbourhoods of the infamous La Boca.

First things first. Steaks. Oh yes. We managed to find a restaurant that served one of the meanest looking steaks I´ve ever seen. Part of it was still kicking. I´m not normally one for rare steaks, but I tell you it was incredible. And they don´t waste time with unnecessary vegetables here. No siree. You order a steak, you get just the steak. But no steak is complete without a generous helping of Papas Fritas.
I could seriously live here.

Anyway, we´ve also been down to La Boca a couple of times. Obligatory pic below.

Clourful La Boca

It´s so colourful, and the main area is definitely geared towards the tourists. Of course, La Boca is famous not only for it´s colourful buildings that adorn many postcards, but also for it´s famous football team - Boca Juniours. The stadium is nestled in the heart of the area, and life pretty much revolves around this monument.

La Boca Stadium

Now.. Onto Tango. I´ve received a few mails from people telling me to have a go at Tango, or how funny it is thinking of me dancing the dance or words to a similar effect. Can I just say, I managed to get OUT of dancing the Tango (the world is a better place for it, believe me), but as a compromise, I had to go and sit through an evening watching OTHER people dance it. Pants. I hate those strictly come dancing shows, and this was just a small live version of it. Still, at least I can say I saw the Tango being done professionally in the heart of Argentina.. even if it was extremely boring.

To the north of Buenos Aires lies the wealthy district of Recoleta. Grandeur aside, it´s far more famous for the
Recoleta Cemetary, where the wealthy are buried in grand style. Eva Peron (Evita) is also buried here.
It´s what I imagine a City of the Dead to look like. I´m sure it´d be extremely creepy at night time

City of the Dead

We didn´t give it more than an hour though. It´s a huge place, and very fascinating to see, but still.. a little creepy.

For me though, the best place so far has been the Buenos Aires Ecoogical Reserve. It´s a massive area on the eastern edge of the city that is home to lots of different wildlife. I managed to see two Caracara fly overhead, and in the distance, a Crested Eagle. What city can claim to have such huge raptors over it´s skies?

Anyway, today we are catching an overnight bus to Iguazu Falls. We´ll be there for a few days and I´ll post another blog when we´re done there I think.
More pics are below. Sorry to those at RBS who can´t see any pics above or in the link below. If you want to see them, I suggest forwarding them to your home account instead.

Galleries

Gotta run - people are waiting to use the net behind me.

Much love people!
Adam

Buenos Aires!

2009-03-24T06:56:00.004-04:00

So far, so good.
The trip began in style, with BA overselling the flight to Madrid. So that meant sitting and waiting someone would get off the plane for the small bit of cash BA was waving in front of their nose. We were trying to keep calm but inside I was pissed off. Luckily a family of four agreed to wait until the next flight, so we made it onto the plane. But all that time waiting for news meant we had to rush through security and to the gates. Of course, BA didn´t offer to fast-track us and when we asked, we were told: "no".
See ya later Britain!!

Madrid airport reminds me of a mix between Dubai and Hong Kong. Except at least those airports have people in them. There were literally about 10 people in the airport working. And it took us half an hour to find the gate for the fight to Buenos Aires, because random areas were blocked off, even with signs saying they were open.

Anyway, we got on the flight and spent the next 12 hours flying back to my native southern hemisphere and into BA. We were flying with Iberia at this point, and I´d read loads of bad things about them. But they weren´t bad really. Enetertainment system was pants (just a few screens overhead), and the breakfast was very Euro, but leg room was excellent and the cabin crew were friendly.

We landed in Buenos Aires at around 10am, and caught the number 86 bus into town for all of 2 pesos each (think 35p). We met a friendly Israeli guy who was planning on hitch hiking around South America. He had one rucksack, which was really only the size of a gym bag, and a smaller bag for air travel. He looked like a real backpacker compared to us with our 20kg+ bags.

The bus ride took about 2 and a half hours into central Beunos Aires. And on the way, we saw a few people selling things at street corners. One bloke was selling a measuring tape along with a knife with a blade of about 20 inches. Yes, a small sword. Some bloke was selling a sword at a street corner.

Welcome to South America!

Buenos Aires itself is pretty cool. Massive place, loads of shops everywhere. Think Oxford Street but every street in central London like that. Crazy. We´ve not tried any steak restaurants out as yet as we crashed like Jenson Button last night. Sooo tired. But we´ll be definitely trying to sample the local foods today and I can´t wait. Also, SOMEONE (name not mentioned) wants to do a Tango lesson.. yeah right!
We are staying at Tango City Hostel in San Telmo. It´s not bad, but the power cuts out constantly. Makes for an interesting experience though.

Anyway, the plan for the rest of the week is basically stay in Beunos Aires until Friday, then make our way up to Iguazu for Saturday, overnight in a town somewhere on the way up.

No pics as yet, but I´ll upload one or two in a while.

I hope everyone is safe and well!

Chléa Georgette Burton

2009-03-16T06:45:00.003-04:00

And another!

Congratulations to my mate Neil and his better half Claudia on the birth of their daughter, Chléa Georgette Burton.

All the best to both of you..

EDIT:
Of course, I must mention Fran's brother, who also became a father with his partner Felicity 10 days ago. Congrats to all.

Kelly, you're up next!

Archie Francis Ringold

2009-03-11T06:45:00.004-03:00

Not travel related at all, but just a congratulations to my good mates Nathan and Marisa on the birth of their son Archie Francis Ringold.

Top stuff, and all the best to both of you!

Post-Move: T-Minus 2 Weeks!

2009-03-08T09:21:00.001-03:00

So the big move is over!
Fran and I spent Wednesday night, all of Thursday, and most of Friday packing and moving our crap (yes, most of it is genuine crap that Fran has a desire to hold on to) into storage. We hired a Ford Transit 350 (which if any of you know, is a massive unit) and made not one, not two, but three trips to the storage facility. In fact, we've basically filled a 50 sq foot room. For people who's only furniture is a bed, that's a lot of crap, wouldn't you say?

Aaaanyway, we are now staying at Fran's sister's place. A million thank-yous to you, Jo! And now, with the big move out of the way, we can actually start to concentrate on the trip. Finally!
We've got to get Machu Pichu booked asap, and have decided to go with a company called SAS. If anyone has any alternatives (we've heard great things about this company), give me a shout.
Two weeks left as of today, so we've best get cracking!
Exciting stuff.

UK Residency

2009-02-26T09:32:00.004-03:00

Otherwise known as Indefinite Leave to Remain.

I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Liverpool, picking up the LiverpoolOne Wi-Fi feed.
Up at 5am this morning, nursing a splitting headache, to catch a 7:07am train from London Euston to Liverpool (nice empty, and quick train.. onya Branson), arriving here at around 9:15am.
My appointment was booked in for 10:45am, and I had to be there half an hour earlier to go through forms and all that crap.
Anyway, after going back and forth to the "booth" where I was seen by a lady who spoke way too softly, I spent about an hour and a half sitting in a very packed waiting room with lots of screaming kids running about, obviously bored out of their little brains as there was nothing for them to do. A grumpy Liverpudlian woman came out of the office and told everyone in a rather stern voice to keep their kids under control.

Luckily I had a copy of BBC Wildlife to keep me occupied, my iPod, and my laptop.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was called up to reception at around quarter past 12, and given my passport back, stamped with my new Residency permit.
Sweet :)
Not so sweet was the cost. £950! A few years back it was free. Go New Labour!
Luckily my bonus from RBS should cover it... oh.. wait a second. What bonus.

So I've got 6 hours to kill now in Liverpool. I've really no idea what's up here, so I guess I'll just take a stroll around and see what's here. Does anyone know of any good camera shops in the area? :)

Later!
Adam, UK Resident! (though officially, not yet a Pom)

The Beginning

2009-02-22T09:47:00.001-03:00

Rightyo then. My first ever blog post.
I've no idea how these things work, but I guess it's organic and there's no real need for me to learn the ropes right up front.
And I know it's a bit presumptuous of me to call myself a "Travelling Photographer" seeing as I'm not any kind of pro, but rather someone who enjoys taking pictures on his holidays, but I figure.. aim high!!

Why have I made a blog? Well, with Fran and mines big trip coming up (more on that soon), I figured it'd be a nice way to
1. Keep a diary of what's been happening up to and during the trip, and
2. Share with you everything under point 1!

Anyway. Today we are making a big push to pack up the flat, getting ready to move out. We've got less than two weeks left here (eek!), and then another two weeks at Fran's sisters place (big ups to you Jo, thanks!) before we leave.
Things are starting to feel like they are moving now, which is great. It's felt quite static up until now, with no real "end" in sight.
The best part up until now, has been buying gear for the trip. Maybe it's a guy thing, but buying new gadgets/tools is really really cool. I've just had delivered two PacSafe CarrySafe 100 camera straps which are very useful for providing a bit of security to the travelling photographer. Not only that, but they replace the rather useless straps provided by Canon and are infinitely more comfortable.

Back to the trip. The (very basic!) itinerary right now is as follows:
Fly into Buenos Aires March 23, and spend around 4-6 weeks in Argentina, making our way to Patagonia, the Tierra Del Fuego and Ushuaia, back up through Chile, into Bolivia, then Peru, and finally into Ecuador. Of course, there are a couple of other side trips to be considered, like an Antarctic cruise from Ushuaia, or a cruise around the Galapagos from Ecuador, but we figured we can decide what to do (money allowing) when we are there. If anyone has any advice on this, feel free to let me know.

So yeah. That's all for now. I'd better get started on the packing.. so much to do, so little time!