Kruger National Park - Pictures!

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

Back in London

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?

.. 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!

Bathrooms and Whales

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

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

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