New Orleans

A business trip sent me to New Orleans last week. I was stuck in the hotel's conference rooms during most of the day, but I did have the chance to get out during the evenings. On Wednesday and Thursday night, I went back to the hotel after dinner to catch up on some work. Friday night, I went to listen to some music after dinner. At first we went to a club on Frenchman street called d.b.a. to hear Hot Club of New Orleans. They played a mix of traditional, fusion, and gypsy jazz. When their set ended, we didn't want to hang around for another hour for the next band to set up, so headed across the street. Hint about d.b.a. - the cheap wine is really really cheap. One taste and I knew it was a hangover in a glass. I couldn't even finish it because it was so bad.

The bar across the street (The Spotted Cat) had a great blues band with lots of sax. It was a tiny little dive bar, but the music was fun and the crowd was just chillin to the tunes. We stuck around for an hour until the band's set ended. My smoke allergies kicked in, and it was back to the hotel for me. (I also had to work all day Saturday.)



On Saturday night we wanted to see the Mardi Gras parade by the Krewe du Vieux. It was going to head along Royal and then turn up Bienville through the French Quarter.

We decided to eat at Arnaud's since the parade would go right past the restaurant. We reserved a table in the section of the restaurant with live jazz; it was quite nice. We had a table next to the Bourbon Street window, so we got to watch all the crazies, drunks, and bums walk past. It made for very interesting people watching.

After dinner, we waited at the corner of Bienville and Burbon for about an hour, but the parade still hadn't arrived. We decided to head down to Royal, and got there just as the parade was passing by.
This was a smaller parade than those that will come next weekend, but it was fun and laid back. After depriving some children of beads, we headed further down the road so we could snatch up beads guilt free. It was a lot of fun!

New Orleans still isn't fully up and running, but everyone there was extremely friendly. The staff at restaurants, shops, and the hotel repeatedly thanked everyone for coming back to New Orleans and supporting their economy. If you are thinking about heading down that way, please go. They can use the tourism!

Washington DC

I was supposed to be in Washington DC this weekend for business, but the "stomach flu" grounded me at home. Since it was a business trip, I probably wouldn't have had much of a chance for sight-seeing anyway, so here are a few pictures of some of the memorials from a previous trip to DC.






Lincoln Memorial













Washington Memorial









World War II Memorial













Korean Memorial









Vietnam Memorial

Flagstaff

I had to make a quick trip to Flagstaff on Friday for work. It was raining pretty hard when I left Phoenix, so I anticipated getting caught in the snow on the way up. The weather was actually pretty nice. There were some light flurries near Camp Verde, but otherwise it was clear. It was actually bright and sunny in Flagstaff when I got there.

I have to say - I'm not a fan of snow or cold. Just the little bit that I slipped walked around the NAU campus was enough to remind me why I live in Phoenix. I was quite happy to get back in a heated car to leave.

On the way back home to Phoenix, I took a couple of pictures of the snow. I have to admit the snow and the pines were very pretty together. I took a few whiffs of the cold mountain air, then got back in the warm car to go home.


It was just starting to snow again as I left town, and the weather got much worse as I got closer to Phoenix. The snow flurries quickly turned to fog and sleet/icy rain. Once again, near Camp Verde, it was snowing, but pretty hard this time. I thought about pulling over at "sunset point" rest area to take a few pictures, but I could barely see the exit, much less any scenery.

It was still raining by the time I got back to Phoenix, but at least it wasn't snow.

Picacho Peak

A couple of weeks ago, I had to go to Tucson for work. On the way back to Phoenix, the sun was setting as I approached Picacho Peak. I decided to stop to see if I could get some good pictures. Unfortunately, by the time I got to the exit, the sun was a little too low in the sky to get a good shot from Picacho Peak.




I had hoped to get a few shots of the mountain with pink and red sky behind it, but instead, the sky turned gray and then it got dark. Below are a couple of the pictures I took.

This is the summit, taken during a hike about 2 years ago.

Another view of Picacho Peak, from a distance.

PandaMania

When I visited Washington DC a couple years ago, there was a city wide art display called PandaMania with decorated panda bears. Below are a couple of the pictures I took of them.

I hadn't realized that it was a temporary display at the time, and that the bears would be auctioned off. I thought it was a permanent display - like the New Glarus Painted Cows.

The panda to the right was hanging around at the National Zoo.


This was my favorite panda, because of all the jewels on it. It was in front of the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, which is pretty upscale. Its official name is "Ling Ling in the Sky with Diamonds"











Perennial Panda was found sitting in a flower bed near the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, near the Adams Morgan/Zoo metro station.








Yin-Yang was found standing outside the entrance to the National Zoo.


And of course, you can't forget about the real pandas!

Painted Cows

I've been trying to find some reasonably priced plane tickets to go to Wisconsin for Christmas. In the process, I ran across an article about the Cow Parade of Wisconsin this year.




This is a bit of a rip-off from the New Glarus Painted Cows, which they ripped off from the painted cows in Zurich Switzerland airport. The difference between the New Glarus Painted Cows and those in the Cow Parade is that New Glarus permanently displays them, rather than having them as a temporary display and then auctioned off for charity.




There are about 15 of them in all and scattered around town. At least the cows make sense to me. Some cities have now adopted similar types of gimmicks that may or may not make sense. For instance, Washington DC had PandaMania in 2004 where 150 painted panda statues were scattered throughout the city for several months before being auctioned off. This sort of makes sense since the pandas are still a major attraction at the National Zoo. On the other hand, last winter Phoenix had Guitar Mania -a temporary display of 75 painted 10-ft tall guitars that were auctioned for charity. They are planning to repeat it again this year. I'm still trying to figure out how a guitar is symbolic of Phoenix. I guess some mysteries will remain just that.

Galapagos / Ecuador Trip (Sept 27-Oct 8, 2006)

Day 1 - Quito


The flight to Quito went without problems and I arrived at my hotel about 20 minutes to midnight last night. The room was pretty much as described on La Casa Sol's website, but instead of getting a single, I was put in a loft room. Luckily, there was also a bed on the ground level, so I took that.




I woke up this morning with a bit of a headache, which might be because of the altitude of Quito, or it might be just travel fatigue. After a breakfast of fruit and bread, I caught a taxi to the historic center of Quito. There was some spectacular gothic and colonial architecture. I really wasn't in much of a sightseeing mood, and many of the buildings were too close together to get a good photo, unless I took a close up of just a tiny part of the structure.

I was sitting on a bench in the central plaza when a good looking Ecuadorian man sat next to me. His english was as bad as my spanish, so we really couldn't say anything to each other.

I probably should have tried to learn a bit more spanish before coming here. Trying to communicate around town today was a challenge. With the small amount of Portuguese that I can speak, I could kind of understand what people said to me, but they had no idea what I was trying to say back to them.

Around 3pm, I headed back to my hotel for a siesta.

I'm starting to get a little concerned. I was supposed to get my airline tickets and cruise voucher delivered to my hotel today, but as of 6pm, it still hadn't come. Maybe they plan to deliver it after their office closes for the day. I am trying not to get stressed over it. Maybe I just need a beer.

Actually, a beer and dinner sounds pretty good to me right now. My Galapagos flight leaves at half past seven tomorrow morning so I will probably go to sleep early.

Friday - Arrive in the Galapagos (North Seymour)

I woke up early and caught a taxi to the airport. Once there, I met the representative from the yacht, who checked all of the passengers in. It looks like there will be 13 of us on the Beluga.
There was a group of 5 Americans from the Delaware Nature Society, a German couple, a father and daughter from Quito, a Scottish couple, a Brazilian man, and me. I wasn't quite sure how the other 5 Americans were partnered (2 men, 3 women) until we got aboard the yacht and I learned that I had a cabin all to myself.

North Seymour Island
After formal introductions and lunch on the Beluga, we had a chance to unpack as we were "sailing" to the first island, North Seymour. Once we arrived at North Seymour, we had a fire drill, and then we were ready to get in the pangas (inflatable dinghies) to head to the island.

This was a dry landing - meaning the dinghy stopped at the edge of a cliff, with steps formed in it. We then had to get out of the dinghy, bouncing in the waves, and scramble up the side of the cliff. It actually wasn´t as hard as it looked (or sounded).

Once on land, it was a fairly easy trail, although there was quite a bit of congestion at first. Instead of climbing to the top of the hill where the trail started, people were stopping to snap pictures of swallow-tailed gulls nesting. A couple of them were sitting on eggs. There were also quite a few Sally Lightfoot Crabs around, that people were taking pictures of. Our guide yelled at everyone to move to the top of the hill. Hopefully he won´t yell at us the entire trip!

At first the trail was fairly flat and sandy, winding past a shoreline full of sea lions and a few small, black marine iguanas. We were also able to find the rarer, lava gull. Further inland, we could see nesting colonies of great and magnificant frigate birds. People started zooming in on them, but the guide told us we would get much closer in a little while.

Along the path, there were a couple of land iguanas - most of them hiding under bushes. While the guide was explaining something, I wandered a little bit off, and tried to get pictures of the land iguana eating. Twigs from the bushes got in the way of the pictures though.

As we got closer to the frigate birds, the trail got more rocky, to the point that we were scrambling over all rocks. I had to go rather slow, since I'm not quite all that coordinated, and I didn't want to sprain my ankle on the first day!

The frigate birds were amazing!
The males puffed up the red pouch under their neck to attract females. They tipped their heads way back and made a clacking noise. Females would swoop down to check out the males. Some of them stayed only seconds before flying away. Lincoln (the Brazilian guy) and I cracked jokes about it being harder than a singles bar for the males.

Along with the adult frigate birds, there were also several juveniles in the nests. The great frigate bird juveniles had rust colored heads, and the magnificant juveniles had white colored heads. In one nest, the juvenile was screaming out to be fed. When the mother came back to feed it, the nest was swarmed with other adults, trying to steal the food.


We also saw a juvenile blue footed boobie, but not adults.
After the walk, we got back in the panga to go to the yacht. Hopefully I will get more adept at getting into and out of the panga as the week goes on.

Once back on board, we had an appetizer and welcome cocktail, then dinner. After dinner, we received the evening briefing for the next day. We were also told that we had a long sail that night, and the seas might be rough. We were advised to take a motion sickness pill right away if we needed one, since we would be moving in an hour.

Having never been motion sick before, I passed on taking the pill. I was fine when the ship was moving - until I got in bed. Then I felt queasy. I probably could have fought the urge to be ill all night, but decided that the combination of too much dinner and the motion was more than I could stomach. Once I threw up, I felt much better, and had no problem sleeping the rest of the night.

Saturday - Española Island

Around 6:30 Saturday morning, our guide Mauricio ran around knocking on doors giving everyone a wakeup call. We had a half hour to get ready before breakfast. We were still moving, so it was a bit difficult to take a shower and get dressed with the yacht tossing back and forth.

During breakfast, Lincoln asked if I did ok without the motion sickness pill, since practically everyone else took one. I told him I was a little green last night and got sick. He assured me he would keep it a secret, then went around telling everyone that I had a secret. It was pretty funny. You can bet that I took the pill Saturday night!

After breakfast, Mauricio repeated what he told us last night about the island that we would be visiting, including reminding us of the types of shoes we need to wear. He also told us that the reason we were still moving was because the yacht had to turn around last night. The captain got appendicitis and had to return to port to go to the hospital for surgery. We were then introduced to the new captain.

Gardner Bay - Española Island
The morning visit was a wet landing at Gardner Bay on Española Island. We were going to land on a white sand beach, so we should plan to get into the panga barefooted. There wasn´t an official trail there - just time to wander around on the beach, relax, or practice snorkeling. About half of the people on this cruise had never snorkeled before, so Mauricio provided instruction to those people.

The beach was littered with sea lions. It was amazing how close you could get to them. You could get close enough to pet them (but that wasn´t allowed).






We were warned to keep our distance from the male bull sea lions, in that they might bite if they felt like they needed to defend their territory. No problem there! I had no intentions of finding out if their bark was worse than their bite.

In addition, there were a bunch of sally lightfoot crabs and marine iguanas too.

After strolling on the beach for a while, I decided to brave the cool water and snorkel. The ship didn´t have a wetsuit that fit me, but luckily I brought my own "skin". It wasn't as warm as the wetsuits, but it did an ok job of providing insulation from the cool water. I also had a chance to try out my new underwater camera. Because there wasn't a viewfinder, it was a bit challenging to know what I was taking a picture of, since it was too bright for the screen.

After the newbies had a chance to practice snorkeling off the beach, we got back on the panga to snorkel in the open sea, away from the beach. The water was much cooler there. If there weren't so many incredible animals to see, I probably would have hopped right back on that panga. (Although getting back into the panga from the sea is much easier said than done!)

During the snorkel, I saw lots of different fish, sea turtles, starfish, and sea urchins. A few of the pictures turned out, but I really need more practice using that camera.


Afternoon - Punta Suarez

After lunch, we got back on the panga to visit another area of Española - Punta Suarez. This was a dry landing, and I was warned that it was rockier than North Seymore, so wear sturdy shoes and bring my walking stick. The landing wasn't as tricky, but it still started on rocky "steps" before transitioning into a sandy trail.


During other times of the year, this is a major breeding site for bluefooted boobies. Unfortunately, we missed the bulk of that season and only found a few nesting adults and chicks, rather than the 1000s that can be found earlier in the year.




The marine iquanas were big and colored red with green. We had a few minutes to watch them swim into shore before continuing along the trail.



As we moved along, the trail transitioned from sandy beach, to gravel, to small rocks, then to large lava and stones. Much of the trail was spent scrambling over large stones and a few boulders, periodically separated by short parts of gravel or small rock trail. While much of the path was fairly flat, there were rolling hills as we approached the blow hole. The picture to the right shows Mauricio explaining something as we took a break along the trail (large rock section). I don't know how he walked this section in flip flops; I was doing all that I could to avoid breaking my ankle.

Along the way to the blowhole, we saw Nazca boobies, which were so close you could have touched them. There were mostly adults, as we missed the main breeding season.






Lots of red billed tropic birds flew by, although they were very difficult to photograph.


More amazing was watching the waved albatross going through courtship rituals. As juveniles practiced, it was like watching a fencing match. As we stood and watched them, several other groups trotted past us, pausing just long enough to snap a few pictures. I´m glad we aren't rushed like that. We had the opportunity to watch them waddle around as they tried to take off and land.


Once we got to the blowhole, there were quite a few hood mockingbirds, especially each time a waterbottle was pulled from a bag, they would show up to beg for water.

We sat and watched the blowhole for a good 15 minutes before starting the walk back.

On the way back, we saw a Galapagos Hawk, eating some kind of meat. A little further along the trail, we deduced that it was from a dead baby sea lion, since there was a sizable chunk of it (freshly) missing.