Slacking!

     Well actually I am only slacking on the whole posting 'past trips on the blog thing'. 

     Truthfully I have been very busy trying to get this summer's trip planned.  It's hard to keep up when you go from planning a few weeks in Colombia to scrapping it and looking into spending two months in Madagascar. 

      You research your flight and find you have a layover in Kenya and look into what you can do there for a couple days. You quickly realize that a few days in Kenya is not enough. Now, all of a sudden you are spending a few weeks in Kenya and making sure you get to see Kilimanjaro from a distance. But after further study you are all of a sudden heading to Tanzania and climbing Kilimanjaro (is there a bar at the top?). So now you are looking at a month in Madagascar and a month in Tanzania and Kenya. 

     Finally you are relieved because you consider the trip planned. You have the guide books and you've done the research. Your timetable is loose but you know what you want to see... Enter 'Political Coups' and all of a sudden the country that made you want to forego Colombia, and spawned the desire to go to Kenya and Tanzania is in the "Avoid all non-essential travel" column of the Canadian Travel Advisory Board......Awesome......*side-note* Please look at 

http://www.marojejy.com/Crise_e.htm to see the tragic affect this is having on the wilderness of Madagascar, a place that is home to so many endangered species and is considered to have the most unique wildlife in all the world.  

     The latest news is that they are heading towards a civil war, which is a war that the already threatened wildlife won't be able to endure. This is only my opinion and I have only the reports I have read to back it up, but when you have read enough stories of endangered species being captured and sold on the global market you get upset enough to post it (even if it's only read by a few of your friends and family).

Wow. Who went off track???? 

And now I'm back on that good old track. 

We fly in and out of Nairobi and have two months in between. 

I can't promise anyone that if the opportunity to go to Madagascar comes up I won't go, but the general plan is Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda (Colombia got lost in the shuffle) .

Random Peruvian Loveliness

Homeless Photos

What else can you do with some shots except create for them their own little niche. They don't seem to fit into any of the typical headings. Portraits, parties, beaches....etc. Sure you could do a Landscapes post, but who really wants to read about or look at a long stream of what usually sounds or looks like the same mountain or valley view.

Animals can usually have their own classification but what if you just have a million shots of the same dopey looking Llama. Hilarious, yes, but only for the first couple of shots then it becomes Sleepy-Town and the Llama is the clerk.

As for Cathedrals....I get bored taking the damn picture! Posting one shot of a cathedral is already pushing it, but throw in five or six more and I may actually sacrifice my computer to a volcano.

And what if you have a couple of neat photos of yourself? Sure you could do yet another 'you segment' but, get over yourself already. I mean you already have a blog for fuck sakes! People are going to start to wonder if you can even possibly conceive of getting over yourself or if the act is simply beyond your ego.

And don't even get me started on birds and flowers! Unless you are prepared to show me some 'Planet Earth' worthy stuff  stick to one or two shots. I don't want to know what atrocities I would be capable of after looking at 20 pictures of an orchid.

And this sunset nonesense has GOT TO STOP! I don't need five different exposures of the same one. Pick one you like and keep the rest for your screensaver.

So here is my shelter for all the photos the other posts didn't want.

• Big ass stone that Incas carried from the other side of the mountain in the background.
• Cityscape of Arequipa with Misti looming over.
• Chair in a monastery in Arequipa.
• Rasta Llama.
• Dopey Llama.
• Two Llamas.
• Ollyantaytambo.
• Mountain at Ollyantaytambo which was thought to have the face of a god on it. So up they sent some dudes to carve a crown. Pretty cool and apparently at exactly the right time on the summer solstice the sun hits the 'jewel' of the crown and is so bright you have to shade your eyes.
• Picture of me with Pepe, the resident Howler Monkey at the lodge in the Peruvian Amazon that, I thought at least, to be a little over-rated. The Peruvian Amazon, not the lodge. I wanted to see an Anaconda and I didn't.
• Mountains on the Inca Trail.
• Me swimming in the river in the Amazon where we had just been fishing for piranhas, and where I may or may not have snared a caiman. 
• Best I could do on the Cathedral. If you never return to my blog again for fear of seeing another one I will understand.

Space Invasion

The Always Elusive Portrait

It's happened to us all. While wandering anywhere we can come across a face that speaks without moving the mouth. Eyes that are so deep you could swim around in them for days and never see the same thing twice. Lines that are paths to seemingly countless memories. You know that you will never fully understand a life in a portrait but you can get a glimpse if only you had the balls to invade a person's personal space and life for a few short seconds.

Sometimes it is made easy for you. People will stand at frequented tourist attractions, dress in traditional clothing and let you take their picture, for a small payment of course. But those eyes, and lines never seem to convey the same thing that the old woman's on the bus did. Sure they make a good shot to show the fam but it isn't really what you wanted and deep down you will always know that picture that mom shows off to all her friends is one big ass fake. You want that spark of reality that is never really there in those situations, plus why pay for it when you can get it for free?

Enter the 'Let's Take a Shot of the Locals Without Them Knowing it' game. With enough sneakiness, a bit of luck, and plenty of room on the old memory card this can yield a pretty good shot (usually with a bit of cropping), but usually it just leads to far away headless or feet less bodies that are off centre and usually on such a slope that without their feet it is unbelievable that they are managing to not tumble down the hill. And after awhile you just start to feel bad.

So you finally suck it up and ask. If you speak the language great. If not a show of the camera and a tilt of the head works just as well. You snap the picture and BAM great shot and one that you will be happy to have mom show off. At which point you could say thank you and walk away, but usually I find some sort of exchange always makes me feel better about the invasion. You can choose to throw them some money which is obviously best for the very poor, or you can take down a name and address and promise to send them a copy. If you do this make sure you follow through as most people will be excitedly looking forward to the day when they receive your picture of papa, mama, or little sister, in the mail.

These pictures are my attempt at these techniques. Three are my real deal and the rest are the first two tricks. I think it is pretty damn easy to figure out which ones are which.