Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category

This was a special moment. After one of the worst nights sleep I’d ever had I’d been away from the tent early and been to see Old Faithful. Whilst the geyser itself remains as spectacular as ever (except for the cone which was hacked away for souvenirs by early tourists) the surrounding area has been turned into a geological Disneyland, overrun by coachloads of tourists for whom Yellowstone can be crossed off once they’ve witnessed Old Faithful spouting.

Without a doubt, you have to go and see Old Faithful, a visit to Yellowstone would never be complete without it, but take your time and go and see some of the less well-known geysers and you’ll get to see something truly unique. Getting to Lone Star involves driving 10 minutes past Old Faithful and an hours walk. I was alone for the majority of the walk, apart from squirrels and deer grazing by the river that the path follows. This was good because if nobody was walking away from the geyser it probably meant it hadn’t recently erupted (it has intervals of between 3-4 hours), but bad because I was a little terrified of meeting a bear, and the lack of other walkers increased the possibility of that in my city-slicking mind.

But, I made it to the geyser unscathed, delighted to discover a group of around 20 people already gathered, who told me it was due to erupt within the next hour. And sure enough, 40 minutes later they rhythmic belching and hissing graduated into a fully-fledged jet of scalding water being fired 50 feet into the air, roaring like a small jet plane. It lasted for another 20 minutes or so, then fizzled out. One of the spectators noted the time in the log book, and slowly the group dispersed, witnesses of a unique and beautiful natural display.

This was the local bar in Paraguay, where I was staying with a Peace Corps Volunteer and his family. It was different in two ways. Firstly it was basically somebody’s house, the waitresses were the daughters of the family (both wore Man United tops) and the beer was kept in the fridge in the kitchen. Secondly, you can see the guy on the left being passed a glass. In fact it was the only glass. Everybody bought a bottle of beer and when you got the glass, you filled it up from your bottle, drank all or some of it and passed it on. I liked it.

I got here early on a beautiful summers day and already it was starting to get seriously hot. I had a lot to do that day so I didn’t stay too long but it’s not a big place so I got to see most of it. It’s a starkly beautiful place, very little vegetation and surreal rock formations all around. The red of the rock and the deep blue of the sky stays imprinted on your brain for a long time.

Today I am proud to present the greatest photo I never took.

Whilst in Alaska last year, I stayed for a week in Craig where my cousin’s husband was working. It’s a 2 hour ferry and hour’s drive from Ketchikan (itself only accessible by ferry or plane) so it’s kind of remote. To make the most of the beautiful, still weather they were enjoying (made more eerie by the haze from huge forest fires across the border in British Columbia), after work, Michael took us all out in a skiff for a spot of fishing.

The water was glassy, with not a breath of wind and we shot out into the bay for about 30 minutes heading for an area where the seabed rose up to within 15 feet of the surface, a good fishing spot I was reliably informed. And, it proved to be, Michael reeling in a tasty dinner every 5 minutes or so. Even I managed to snag a couple of rockfish, which I was all excited about, but one disdainful look from Valerie told me all I needed to know, and we threw it back.

It floated slowly away from the boat, and we got on with catching some more serious fish. At this point we were around half a mile away from the shore, with nothing else around and surrounded by total silence (the occasional noise of a whale exhaling could be heard).

A couple of minutes after the fish had gone back in the water, Valerie spotted a black shape in the distance flying towards us. “An eagle” she said, “It’s seen the rockfish.” And sure enough, having seen the fish in the water from half a mile away, a bald eagle was flying towards us, looking for dinner. It flew past us once to check out what was floating in the water, looped round and in one fluid movement, scooped my luckless fishy friend from the water, 15 feet away from the boat.

I had brought my camera along, and Valerie was holding it when the eagle swooped, and she managed to get a shot of it’s tailfeathers as it flew off. Her son Simon however, managed to get the perfect shot, so I will always have a reminder of what has to be the most incredible thing I have ever been lucky enough to have witnessed.

Eric Fischer on Flickr has published a photoset that examines the GeoTagging information in each Flickr photograph of a city and analyses the users behaviour to establish whether the photographer can be classified as a “local’ or a “tourist”. For example a tourist takes pictures of lots of different locations in a month, a local takes lots of pictures in the same area over a longer period of time. He then produces a map of the city showing who took pictures where (blue = local, red = tourist, yellow = uncertain).

The Buenos Aires one is interesting in that there is very little blue in there, it’s mostly big blotches of red. The “V” on its side in the middle is Congreso bottom left, Avenida de Mayo leading to Plaza de Mayo and the Diagonal skewing up and to the left towards El Obelisco. Towards the bottom the concentrations are El Caminito and La Bombonera in La Boca and the large blob in the centre towards the top is Recoleta Cemetery. Other hotspots include El Puente de la Mujer in Puerto Madryn and Plaza San Martin (north of Plaza de Mayo)

For those of you paying attention, you will remember that I have already written about Ruta 40 from my Patagonia trip. On that occasion I travelled on it southwards from Bariloche to El Chalten, a distance of around 1,500km. It wasn’t however, my first time on the 40.

A few weeks before heading to Patagonia I’d been on a week-long roadtrip in a hired 4×4 from Buenos Aires to Argentina’s North West corner, based around the city of Salta. A lot of that trip was done on an unpaved section of Ruta 40, with a reminder every kilometre of the size of the country and the road that runs the length of it.

OK, so two photos today and not of anyone actually tangoing either but two iconic tango places in Buenos Aires.

Carlos Gardel is to Tango what Maradona is to Football. Except more so. And he’s dead. The world’s greatest ever Tango singer, Gardel was killed in a plane crash in Medellin, Colombia in 1935. This is his tomb in La Chacarita cemetery. Recoleta may attract all the tourists, but I like La Chacarita better – it is much more attractive, with much more space and it has Gardel. What more do you need?

Keeping with tango songs, the opening line of the best-loved one is “Sur” an elegy to Lost Love set in the southern barrios of Buenos Aires. The first line namechecks the corner of Boedo & San Juan, which is now known as Esquina Homero Manzi in tribute to the song’s author and, like Gardel’s tomb has become a shrine to all things tango.

This is Matias. He’s a teddy bear. I sat next to him (and his owner Jenny) on a 10 hour bus ride in Bolivia from Sucre to Uyuni. When I first got on, he was actually sitting in my seat but he’s a very well brought up bear so he moved. When Jenny’s Dad died her Mum bought her a parrot to stop her being sad, but the parrot died, which didn’t really help Jenny’s sadness. So her Mum bought her Matias instead, and now she’s much happier. They made a nice couple. I liked them.