View from above

I'm usually quite good with plane rides, come to think any kind of ride. I don't suffer from motion sickness whether it's on land sea or air but one ride that really tested me was our trip to the Grand Canyon. Being short on time we decided to splurge and take a plane ride there rather than motor our way up. This allowed us a great view of the landscape from the air, in particular Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. Maybe it was because I was taking pictures that I started getting air sick. I had to put the camera down and will myself not to . . . . . well you get the picture.

It was worth it though, I got some surreal pictures of the desert landscape and the beautiful water.

Jump

Okay, I'm just throwing these next pics in here. This blog is as much about photography as it is about travel and in my defense, these pictures were taken during a trip. One lazy evening my mountaineer friends introduced me to the "jumping" pictures and it didn't take us long to take it to the next level.

Leaving Paradise

Just one last post to round out my stay in the Pantanal. On our last full day at the Fazenda Rio Negro, the research assistants took us up river on a boat. In a relatively shallow (waist to chest deep) stretch of the river be tied the boats off and went for a swim. At first I was hesitant, wasn't this the same river infested with caiman, piranhas and had the occasional snake swimming in it? The researchers had assured us that the relatively fast current in this stretch of the river meant that none of the above mentioned creatures would be around and so we dove in. There's still something quite disconcerting about swimming in murky brown waters but by the end of the week we just didn't care. The water was cool, the sun was shining and I couldn't believe I was actually swimming in the middle of a river, in the middle of the Pantanal, in the middle of Brazil a thousand miles away from home. What a way to end my short and brief stint as a conservationist.

All creatures great and small . . . .

There's nothing like being dropped off in the middle of the Pantanal to feel like you're not the top of the food chain anymore. Not that there were any roving bands of big cats roaming around ready to take you off into the jungle, quite the opposite, it was the small critters that we were afraid of. And coming home after a day in the the wild was not the end of it. Sure we handled small mammals, wild pigs and bats but when you're in the middle of the largest wetlands in the world, there's no such thing as a no-go zone for nature.

We had the big flightless rea drop by every now and then, hanging out just outside the fence. We'd also have some of foxes try and raid the kitchen during dinner time and at breakfast the tucan, hyacynth macaws and other beautiful birds would come and feed off the scraps left by the cooks.

The more exciting visitors we had in the Fazenda were usually announced by a shrill shriek or someone running into the living room to ask for a little help extracting a visitor from their room. This was usually a snake or a tarantula. I never got one in my room but I couldn't sleep quite as comfortably after seeing it in someone else's room. I also checked my boots quite vigorously ( ie shaking them clear) before putting them on in the morning just in case someone decided to bed down there for the night and if my blanket accidentally fell off my bed in the middle of the night, let's just say I was cold until the morning.

Not all animals were as dangerous. I handled one small snake but only after the researchers had handled it themselves. Also I remembered a saying "Red on yellow, you're a dead fellow, red on black, a friend of Jack". Not too sure who Jack is but if you look closely this snake was definitely a friend of his. Some animals were downright dainty. Frogs, that sought refuge in our relatively cool bathrooms, could be handled but only if you didn't have bug repellent spray on your hands, otherwise they would die and as the poster in our huts said, even the smallest frog had a place in the ecosystem.

Work on the farm

Whoever thought of the environmental volunteer program I joined was a genius. On the one hand, you had the real conservationists who have dedicated their lives to studying and protecting the environment and mother nature and on the other hand you had people who wanted to volunteer and experience this way of life and in their own little way contribute to the effort. So the real conservationists who do this thing day in and day out get a little tired of tracking animals, checking traps, counting birds and washing scat (animal crap for us normal people) so guess what happens. Here comes someone like me who for the next week will do all of that and be happy about it too, well except maybe the scat washing. Sure we ask silly questions along the way, and ask them to pose for pictures but we pull our weight a bit and do all the dirty stuff they don't want to do so it's a great symbiotic relationship. The researchers get donations, free manpower and free publicity when people like me blog about the experience and the volunteers get to go waist deep in lake water, bait and check traps, hold down the occasional animal and generally live the life of a conservationist for a week. It's genius.

So what exactly did we have to do? Different things for different projects. One day we're driving out to the different fresh water and salinas lakes to install water level indicators and the next we are going up river only to let the current bring us back to our starting point all the while counting birds. We also took a mammal census both by foot and on horseback which meant we had to go through a trail and count all the kinds of mammals we saw along the way and collect any scat we came across. Probably the most exciting work we had was when we went out to check traps. for the small rodents and mammals project the excitement was just checking if the small shoe box sized traps had anything in them. If they did, the researchers would take it home, sometimes they would just measure it, take a blood sample and then release it back into the wild. Other times they would . . . . kill it to study it's internal organs and stomach content etc. Needless to say I stayed away when that happened.

More exciting than small rodents were the peccary that we had to track. Peccary are basically wild pigs or baboy damo in Filipino lingo. Doesn't sound exciting considering there were panthers in the area but without these animals there would be no panthers. Yes, the peccary is the favorite lunch item of the panther and so if their population goes, then so does our lovely panther. Tracking them was only part of it though, the real exciting part was catching them in cages. We would then have to tranquilize them, pull them out of the cage and do the whole blood sampling and measuring thing on the spot. Thank God we didn't have to kill any of them. My trip there was also timely because they were testing out a new trap which would coral a whole family group of peccary into a clearing and trap them. The researcher wasn't sure it was going to work but it was a resounding success. We must have caught 6-9 in one go which unfortunately meant the rest of the day was spend tranquilizing them, measuring them and eventually setting them free. Of course us volunteers did all the heavy lifting, dragging, measuring, recording while the researcher did the more delicate stuff like drawing blood. For the most part though she was our supervisor and you know what, we wouldn't have it any other way. For us, the dirtier and smellier we got, the more we felt like real conservationists. It's a good feeling of course having a nice farm shower to go back to helped a lot too.

Dream come true

This photo was shot out of a five seater plane on the last leg of my dream trip. Okay, the trip itself was more of a nightmare, 36 hours spent on planes and airports but I was finally on my way to Fazenda Rio Negro in the middle of Brazil's (and the world's) biggest wetlands - the Pantanal. Back then, the bank I was working for had a tie up with Conservation International and Earthwatch. For a sizeable donation these two institutions would fly some of the bank staff to different conservation projects around the world to volunteer time and help out the real conservationists in their projects. Not only was I picked, I was picked to go to one of the more exciting projects in the Pantanal. While my other colleagues would be digging in the middle of the desert or watching flamingos in a lake, I was actually off to a research center that was used as a base for several projects from studies of cattle ranching on local water sources, to monitoring the local peccary population to catching small mammals and taking fruit and bird census in one of the greatest places around.

Even before you land you know you're the minority. Dozens of caimen line up the shore of the estuaries of the Rio Negro and even walking over to the main building you see giant flightless Reah standing around the grounds, tucans resting on the trees of the fazenda. The briefing notes told us to bring cameras with zoom lenses but I couldn't afford one and went with a standard lens. This ended up both a curse and a blessing, if I wanted to get any real good shots I'd need to get up close and personal. Hard to do with skittish rodents and mammals but not so hard to do with the more aggressive animals like the caimen which you didn't want to be too close to to begin with. Nonetheless I wanted nature and now I got buckets of it. The week I was going to spend here was going to be one of the best in my life.

Rio

It's almost as if he were spreading his hands to say"Here's Rio . . . . and it's beautiful". The Kristo Redendor statue sits on one of many mountains within the city. Yes, I said mountains WITHIN the city. Not only that, the Atlantic Ocean laps the city shores at 2 of the most famous beaches in the world, Copacabana and Ipanema. What more can you ask for, mountains and beaches. What I didn't know when I went there was that these two beaches were actually connected to each other. Copacabana starts from the east, ends at Arpoador, a rocky outcropping and then turns into Ipanema. There's actually another beach connected to this, Leblom but it's in a more exclusive part of the city so the beach life isn't as "exciting" as the other two.

Here's another thing that I found weird and wonderful about the beaches in Rio, they are actually in the city. Most of the beaches that I've been to are a good plane, bus or jeepney ride away from the city but here you have people driving to work in their suits and ties literally beside the beach. The proximity is so close that the people make really good use of it 24 hours a day.

So how did I spend my time there? Well, with my hotel on Avenida Atlantica right on Copacabana Beach, there was a lot of time spent just walking the beaches and a lot goes on there. You'll see frolicking young couples, to the old guy in his red speedos doing push ups and the hot mamas taking their toddler children to beach soccer (what else?) play groups. You could spend the whole day walking on the beach watching people. Beyond the beach though I decided to go into the old city and there you can really feel for the city. Lots of hustling and bustling but you don't feel like the people are really in a rush to get anywhere like say in NY. People go out to lunch, meet up with friends and sometimes just hang out in the park. The old city is even more laid back and beautifully situated on the surrounding hills giving some of those old houses the best views of the city.

Chatting with the cabby, he told me about a shootout near his house last night and although all the guidebooks talk about the high crime rate in Rio, I never saw any of it. You know it's there though, I tried exchanging money in a bank and got caught in their bullet proof revolving door / metal detector for a few seconds. It got sorted out though after I assured them that the only shooting I was doing was with the camera in my bag.

Coming back from the city I was in a packed subway tram and standing right there in the middle of all the powersuits and briefcases was a family decked out in full beach wear. I guess it all goes back to the beach, it may not be the only thing in the city but the people here love it.

Dolphin Surprise

"What do we do for the next three days?" I asked the wife. We were at the reception desk of the Bohol Beach Club and apart from the 1/2 day tour (highly recommended I might add) there was nothing to do except burn ourselves on the beach, eat, drink and be merry. Not a bad plan actually but I could see myself going nuts after a day.

"Sir, maybe you want to go dolphin watching" said the receptionist. Dolphin watching? In Bohol? Don't get me wrong, I love dolphins but I never knew Bohol was a Dolphin watching location. It was probably going to be one of those expensive resort tours where you sight a dolphin a mile a way for a millisecond. Still, we had nothing better to do and so we decided to go for it.

We were up at the crack of dawn, met our boatman and headed off. Sure enough, when asking about the prospects of seeing dolphins the guy was already prepared with his disclaimer - It was a hit or miss situation, you should come during peak season, etc. etc.

After a while, the spotter shouted a sighting to our left. By the time I had looked in the direction the dolphin was gone. So this is how it was going to be, we'd go around a couple of hours, someone points in a direction where my wife and I aren't looking . . . . .

After a while though even my wife got into the act, what was this, a conspiracy? Finally I got to see one for myself, of in the distance, breaching the water but so far away it was the size of my fingernail. I take out my point and shoot camera and caught it in a shot but it may as well have been one of those blurred out UFO photos where the object could be anything.

Resigned to this being a bust I settle in and looked into the water closer to the boat, can't they come any closer? I once saw them at the bow of a ferry I was riding, so ecstatic was I that I wanted to jump into the water with them. Of course the ferry was about two storeys high and would run over me so that wasn't such a good idea. Now however, looking into the waters of Bohol I saw a distinct figure shadowing our boat not 4 meters away. Before long, another sleek figure came alongside and then moved to the bow. After a while a whole pod came to our boat and I was thrilled. The boatman told us to lie on the bow of the boat to get a better view and what a view it was. The dolphins couldn't have been more that 4 feet away, sometimes turning to their side so that they could have a better look at us, a case of mutual people/dolphin watching.

They stayed with us, sometimes breaching and spinning, sometimes leaving only to join us again later. The boatman also saw a pod of 30-40 pilot whales but didn't go near them as they aren't as sociable as the dolphins ie they bump the boat a lot.

In any case, that was my closest encounter with dolphins so far. I didn't jump in, it wasn't allowed but I hope we'll be able to swim with dolphins in the wild sometime in the future.

Don't Sleep Through This Road Trip

Usually a road trip through the Philippines isn't very exciting, it's for the most part very flat terrain covered with coconut trees in the South and rice fields in the North. Sure there are some exciting features like the ride up to Baguio which if you've seen once is good enough or back then the lahar fields left by the Mount Pinatubo eruption, which have since been reclaimed by mother nature. Nope, for the most part, sleeping through a ride through the countryside is totally acceptable.

Coming back from Sagada however, I decided to drive down since I had slept or was for the most part groggy going up (we decided to go up at night). I'm glad that I decided not to sleep through this road trip. The road near Sagada is approximately 50 km of rough road which at some parts are just cut into the mountainsides. Scarring from previous landslides are visible and on some sections you can look up the mountainside and think "I'd better get out of here fast, this one could go any minute". At one point I saw a stone skip across the road ahead of me and by the time I reached that point I looked up and saw another two or three following it. Needless to say I floored it. There's another place where we reached a one lane road with a bus going up (the rule is anyone going up gets the right of way) so I thought I'd pull over and let him pass only to realize that pulling my car into the shoulder would send us a couple of hundred feet down the mountain express style. Nope, I had to back up a about 50 feet to find a place where we could both safely pass each other.

These obvious dangers are easy to miss though since you are driving through some of the most beautiful countryside in the Philippines. I'm talking about seeing whole valleys with rivers snaking through them, hillsides where ingenious farmers have ecked out a plots to plant their crops, small little glints of sliver where fresh mountain water briefly springs out before disappearing into the mountain again. You get glimpses of this type of terrain on the way up to Baguio but not on this scale. In some sections you can actually trace ahead and see the roadway you will take and realize that you'll be on this mountain for a while. You realize then that you are driving through big country . . . . . . . and in the earlier parts fog and mist hang around making you realize this is definitely one road trip you wouldn't want to sleep through.

Inside the Mountain

(If your monitor is not calibrated, your pictures may turn out to be too dark, you may need to turn up your brightness)


"Sir, baka hindi kaya ni ma'am yung secret passage" Inug-I our guide told me within earshot of Pris. Wrong move, that just got her more fired up to prove him wrong. We decided to go deeper into Sumagig cave in Sagada, in any case, if she really couldn't handle it then we could just turn around.

I've been caving before but in Biak Na Bato, Sumaging cave is definitely better. There is a cavernous entrance, slightly slippery because of all the bat guano on the floor but once you're inside the rock turns into this hi friction surface where the best footwear is no footwear. Actually for 90% of the time in the cave we were barefoot, taking our guides advice and leaving the shoes, slippers, etc after the slippery part. It's amazing too since there is a lot of water trickling down, sometimes nothing more than a small trickle running down a rock face and other times it's up to your chest.


It's not a walk through cave either, there are parts where Pris . . . . (I won't say got stuck) . . . . .hesitated but given the challenge thrown down by the guide she pushed on. For me, who is a little used to the great outdoors the cave was a cake walk but for my wife (no sense of balance or direction) it was a real trial by fire and she came out on top. As a reward we got to see some pretty amazing rock formations, was it worth it sweetie?

Sagada Cemetery on Fire

"You should visit the cemetery at sunset" said Mr. Bang, the owner of Rock Inn. "We do things a little differently here". Pris and I were in Sagada for the Nov.1 All Souls Day holiday and so having no real agenda for the day, we decided to go.

It turns out that in Sagada, instead of lighting candles, the locals light small bonfires at the graves of their departed. Two explanations were given, the first was a practical one - candles would just get blown out by the high winds in Sagada but the second one was more romantic - the hotter your bonfire, the more intense your remembrance of the dead. In any case, it sounded interesting.

We get there before sunset and a few bonfires were already lit. One of the locals informs us that the service at the Anglican church was not yet over and we might just want to walk in the woods before the main event happens. We take her advice and hike over to a hill that overlooks the cemetery and walk around. By the time we get back the sun had just set and this scene straight out of Dante's Inferno greeted us as we crested the hill.