Les Laurentides

City in the Clouds

Neither photos nor video can do it justice.

That's what I heard before I ever laid eyes on the Incan city of Machu Picchu. I had seen tons of photographs and viewed countless videos, especially in our family's lead-up to visiting this historic site, and thought that if the images cannot do the place justice, it must be pretty spectacular to see.

It is.

And while my own photos cannot do justice to the city that fades in and out of clouds, here is some of what I captured, anyway.

Happy Thursday!

Mountains and Plains

I didn't start seriously looking at the photos that I shot of Peru until the day after we returned home.

Of course, during the trip, I had shared lots of the photos that I had captured on my smartphone. It was easy to add them to a blog post or to share on my social media platform. But the images that I captured with my D-SLR would take more time than I had while we were travelling.

There were one or two shots that I downloaded from my Nikon D750 to my phone, but I found that at the end of each day, I was just too tired to look at the images on the small screens that the back of the camera and my smartphone offered. It was best, I told myself, to wait until I got home to see what I captured.

Of course, when I got home, I realized that I had shot more than 1,240 photos and it was going to take some time to get through all of them. I want to have them all by the end of today, so that I have the weekend to get some chores done and to hopefully get out in my new kayak.

Plus, on Monday, I'd like to get back to working on my novel.

On our first full day in Ollantaytambo, DW, the kids, and I took a collectivo (community bus) to the nearest town, Urubamba, where we hired a taxi driver for a few hours to explore the Sacred Valley, which includes the pre-Incan salt mines of Maras, and the Incan archeological site at Moray. Both are must-see sites if you ever find yourself in this part of Peru.

As we headed to these historic places, our driver pointed out a small building and explained, in Spanish, that this was a good spot for buying Peruvian chocolate and salt, and asked if we would like to stop. DW, who studied Spanish in university, was able to understand and said yes, but after we had visited the sites.

It was a very good place, as a representative inside spoke English and was able to explain the processes for making chocolate and showing the various types of salt that were obtained from Maras. She also had samples of the popular drinks derived from yellow and purple corn. We had had a few glasses of chicha morada, made from the purple corn, but had never tried the yellow-corn beverage, chicha de jora, which is fermented.

Both were tasty.

We bought several varieties of both salt and chocolate, taking care that we didn't buy more than would fit in our backpacks. The stop was a great recommendation from our driver.

Before we piled back into the taxi, I couldn't help but marvel at the beautiful scenery around us. Across the dirt road from this shop, a colourful, flat plain led to the rugged mountains of the Andes. Between two peaks, ominous clouds let rain obscure the further peaks, beyond.

Sun was shining on the plains, creating a stark contrast between the foreground and background, and I had to capture it before the light changed.

So far, this photo is among my favourite of the trip. If I lived there, I would never tire of that view.

Happy Friday!

More Ollantaytambo

Up in the Andes

Approaching Cusco.

We were still travelling tired, with less than four hours of sleep.

It was about 2:30 or so by the time we got to bed. I had set an alarm for 6: DW and the girls shared one room; I had one to myself but in fairness, we didn't want to take the risk that I might snore and keep others awake.

My alarm went off but I slept through it, waking up on my own at 6:39. We were supposed to leave for the airport at 7, but because we were so close and our flight wasn't departing until 10, we decided that 8 was fine. And it was.

We flew the one-hour flight from Lima to Cusco, the Inca capital city. We're planning to spend a couple of days here but because it's at an elevation of about 3,500 metres above sea level, we decided to acclimatize slowly, and so hired a driver, who is employed by our hotel, to take us to Ollantaytambo, another historic Inca town about two hours from Cusco and at only 2,700 or so metres high.

Our boutique hotel, Parwa Guest House, is run by fabulous owners who are very helpful. Our room is spacious for the four of us and our windows look out onto an archeological site that we haven't visited at the time of writing this post but will have visited, and I'll share images of this site for Wordless Wednesday, tomorrow.

I have to say that Ollantaytambo is beautiful, surrounded by steep mountains of the Andes and surrounded by history. So far, none of us seems affected by altitude sickness, but we're taking preventative medicine and sucking on cacao candies, which relieve effects as well.

We'll already have been to Machu Picchu by the time this post has been published, so I'll have more to share in the future.

Stay tuned.

Monteverde Sunset

We are surrounded by rolling mountains of lush jungle. One of the highest points of Monteverde is a "cloud forest," full of incredible diversity of flower and fauna.

We hired a guide who carried a spotting scope, and he was so fast at spotting creatures and setting up the scope that you would almost think the wildlife wasn't real, was set up exactly were he knew to find them.

They were real, of course.

After our guided tour, we wandered the cloud forest (named as such because it is at the top of the mountain and has clouds passing through it constantly) and took a trail that ended on the continental drift. We couldn't see anything because of the clouds but the wind was fierce due to the conflicting weather systems of the Pacific and Caribbean coasts.

It's always windy in Monteverde.

We had lunch at a small brewey and wandered the town of Santa Elena before heading back to our hotel for a rest. We had walked more than 15,000 steps and climbed the equivalent of more than 80 flights of stairs!

Our hotel is on a west-facing hillside, and the owner told us of a path that he made that climbs to the top of his property. He told us that from there, he had a spectacular view of sunset.

He said it was a short walk but he didn't say how steep the walk was. I added another 20 flights of stairs to my daily total. I cursed like a drunken sailor the entire way up, but when we reached the viewpoint, I shut up. 

I took many pictures with my D-SLR but haven't looked at them yet. Here's a shot that I captured with my smartphone. 

Happy Friday!

Life in the Clouds

Sometimes, the weather doesn't cooperate.

Sometimes, you imagine a place, and the environment that surrounds it, and the photos that you're going to take. And when the day starts off on the right foot, it's hard to imagine anything else.

We started our first full day in Costa Rica at a hotel, just north of the San Jose airport, up in the hills. We had a great unit with a large terrace that looked above the jungle that surrounded us. Breakfast was delivered to our door and we sat outside, marvelling at the myriad birds fluttering and singing over our heads.

Beautiful.

Our rental agency delivered our four-wheel drive SUV to the hotel. Our first order of the day was to get a data card for our phones, some local currency, and then to head to our next destination: La Fortuna and the Arunal Volcano that stands as the town's backdrop and is the area's biggest attractions.

The volcano erupted violently in 1968 and spewed lava for more than 40 years. It caused widespread devastation and caused the town of La Fortuna a lot of damage. 

Getting to La Fortuna was a two-and-a-half-hour drive that had us climbing windy, narrow roads over steep mountains. There were lots of switchbacks and tight corners.

But as we climbed, we encountered fog, then rain, and soon we were in thick clouds that made visibility a challenge.

I love challenging drives.

As we descended into La Fortuna, the clouds lifted (or more correctly, we got out from under them). We even caught glimpses of blue sky, and we looked forward to seeing the volcano.

But it wasn't to be. Not on our first day. 

We stopped in the heart of the town and found a nice restaurant for lunch. It was an open air restaurant and we could see straight up a road that led to the volcano, that was completely shrouded in thick clouds. We kept or cameras handy, in case there was a break in the clouds and we could capture a peek.

No luck during lunch.

After our meals, DW and I went to the town square, a park that is in front of the town's main church, which is a famous attraction because the volcano fills the background.

On this day, we only saw clouds. At best, we caught glimpses of the mountainous base.

We checked into our hotel, which is even closer to the volcano and our room looks out to it. So far, all we see are clouds.

All that was left for us to do was to visit a natural spring that is naturally heated by the volcano. The whole time we were there, it rained.

But no matter: we were getting soaked in the best way possible, up high in the clouds.

Today, we'll try to see Arenal again. And a waterfall.

Thoughts on Phoenix

I always thought that a mythological bird that was constantly regenerating was kind of cool. The phoenix, rising from the ashes, seemed indestructible. Perpetual renewal, while remaining itself to its very core.

The Arizona city, on the other hand, is a very different creature, and while there appears to be constant growth, the city seems to spread without any true core. And within Phoenix, the heat does burn.

Phoenix seems to comprise several suburbs, including Scottsdale, Mesa, Gilbert, Tempe, Glendale, Chandler, Goodyear, and Litchfield Park. The heart of Phoenix, which seems to house the area's only multi-storied buildings, takes a small section of real estate that is surrounded by highways 10 and 17. It's a fraction of the size of Ottawa's Centretown region, with fewer tall buildings.

The suburbs, to me, seem to take the same layout of small, single-storied buildings (a few have two levels) on street blocks that are sheltered by palm and other trees that try to conceal the existence of structures. I found it difficult to tell the difference between Mesa and Scottsdale, between Gilbert and Chandler. And the sprawl is so vast that it seemed like it took a half an hour, or more, to drive anywhere.

Luckily, we were in Phoenix to visit family, and for the first four days, that's exactly what we did. DW's brother lives in Goodyear, on the far-west side of Phoenix, not far from Luke Air Force Base, from which we could see F-16 fighter jets taking off. On our first day, as our girls were adjusting from the time shift and from a late flight, they hung out with their cousins while my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and eldest nephew took us on a drive around the neighbourhood to give us a lay of the land. We also stopped at Verrado Trail, where we got our first taste of the Arizona desert landscape.

It was my first photo opportunity, so I took it.

Our second full day put our bodies to the test, as we climbed Camelback Mountain. What DW and I thought would be a leisurely hike became a challenging excursion, as we negotiated rocks and steep climbs. At the two-third to three-quarter mark toward the summit, my wife and I both felt like giving up, but her brother, a fit Scouts leader, urged us on.

Our fears, once we reached the summit, turned towards the descent, but at least the view was breathtaking.

I have to hand it to my brother-in-law. He got us to push ourselves and he brought the tools for our return to the base of the hill—walking sticks. Without one to lean on, I doubt I would have made it down in one piece.

Lessons learned were to not carry my full camera bag—to only take what I needed for the day—and to make sure we carried enough water. The dry Arizona heat is a killer.

It took a full day to recover from the climb up and down Camelback Mountain, but we filled our time with a visit to the Musical Instrument Museum, some shopping, dining, and relaxing in the backyard swimming pool.

Phoenix is not one of my favourite cities. I don't like the layout, how it's spread so far when it could be built up without obscuring the mountainous landscape. For me, the main attraction is family. Without them, I doubt that I would ever consider returning. 

On our fifth day in Arizona, we said goodbye to my brother-in-law's family and headed north, almost to the Utah border, where we turned more to the photography element of our trip. Page is a small town with an almost alien landscape, and it is home to a photographer's Mecca: the Antelope Canyons and Horseshoe Bend.

For tomorrow's Wordless Wednesday, I'll take you through a hallowed site, where I was led by a Navajo guide on a journey of colour and shapes, and a peace that emanates throughout.

Stay tuned...