Common Sense and Whiskey

Wednesday HDR - Gorillas Mull Extinction

A damp fog blankets the clear-cut hills outside Parc National des Volcans in southeast Rwanda as we trek in, two of a group of eight, with an additional crew of guides and porters. We come upon a family of gorillas, but one male remains solitary, arms crossed across his chest. Pensive, it would seem.

If you're going to trek to see the mountain gorillas of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, time to get a move on.

This week's HDR photo, below, in which our hero seems to fulminate on the encroachment of those demanding humans, visible just on the next ridge, is a perfect illustration of the perils this dwindling community of 800 or so gorillas faces. A report just issued by the U.N. titled "The Last Stand of the Gorilla - Environmental Crime and Conflict in the Congo Basin" suggests that "Gorillas may disappear across much of the Congo Basin by the mid 2020s." Download the report, or read a story about it.

Click the photo for a much larger, higher-res version. And continue below the jump for tech details on the HDR photo itself.

Running Out of Time (Zones)

"Journey with us across eleven time zones," the Great Rail Journeys web site offers.

"Connecting Europe and Asia, stretching over 9,200 kilometres through eleven time zones and countless cites on-route, travelling the «Trans-sib» is not just a way of getting there," Real Russia's rail planner says.

*****

Uh oh. All 12,500 sites that Google returns in a search for "trans-siberian" and "eleven time zones" will have to be revised. Last Sunday, Russia eliminated two of its time zones. Now there are nine.

(See photos from our Trans-Siberian rail trip, and several other visits to Russia, in the Russia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. And read the story of part of our trip - from the Urals to Irkutsk.)

The Earth and Space and Photos and Travel Planning

Like the Astronomy Picture of the Day, the Earth Observatory Image of the Day is almost always worth dropping by for a look. Also check out the series of features at Earth Observatory, like a nice one called Cities at Night: The View from Space. And discussion of the earth and space reminds me of a useful chart - think of it as the eclipse travel planner on a single page.

DPRK Dining

More strange North Korean doings: "the food here is fresh and abundant. The menu features specialties such as Pyongyang "cold noodle" (served encrusted with ice), barbecued cuttlefish, stringy dangogi (dog meat) soup, and countless variations on the kimchi theme, all served with glutinous white rice. Also available for sale are a series of North Korean products, including ginseng wine and some nameless bear "product" promised to increase sexual virility."

From the Eventual Book: Paraguay

We've spent some of this winter-that-won't-end proofreading and polishing up the eventual book Common Sense and Whiskey. As we take the edit pen to the various chapters, we thought we'd post them here. Last week's entry: Climbing Mt. Kinabalu. Today, enjoy a longish chapter about a drive across Paraguay.

The farthest back water washes to a national capital must be Asuncion, Paraguay. It’s as if its residents didn’t ask for the honor, but the capital had to be somewhere and so they amiably accommodated.

 Maybe parts of Africa are less vital. Think Ouagadougou, maybe, or Bangui. Even somnambulent Vientiane, which is in Laos, shows more vitality than here, smack in the middle of South America.

 They’d rolled up the streets by the time we installed ourselves in the Sabe Hotel. The front desk spoke not so much as “hello,” no English. Here in the national capital.

 The TV wouldn’t work until tomorrow because it was New Years Day and they couldn’t get anybody out to fix it, but it was a nice enough place. Except a picture hung partly over the window in the hallway.

 I was out early, through the business district and down to the Paraguay River. It’s not very big, downtown Asuncion, and it wasn’t very busy.

 The main Plaza de los Heroes, down a few blocks. Asuncion has a building modeled after the Pantheon. Birds were loud and it was hot hot hot by 8:45.

 Sales ladies’ tables along Avenue Palma offered up the usual languid market fare: watches and underwear and (allegedly) Nike clothes and plastic toys.

 Down at the river, General Fransisco Solana Lopez’s white-washed mansion, started in 1860, stood shuttered. Beyond it, children pumped water at a clutter of squatter shacks. A sand spit stretched out to two rusting shipwrecks, resting just on the edge of the water. Here in the national capital.

 

But let’s start at the start:

Friday Photo Quiz #64

Here's a nice skyline shot from this country's second city. Recognize it? Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Just a Little Inflicting Among Friends

Travel blogs "seem to be, for the most part, cyberspace’s version of the vacation slides people used to inflict on friends," says travel writer Tom Swick.

Little Culinary Horrors

From our most recent trip abroad, we brought home scorpion vodka and Thai green curry crickets. I don't imagine they'll ever come out of their packages, though. Just interesting items for the kitchen counter.

I've just seen a discussion on Flyertalk about the strangest things people have ever eaten. Among them: dog and slugs and durian, of course, and live octopus and insect pupa. (We watched a man buy and enjoy a caterpillar in Burma. Said it tasted like butter.) In comparison, I guess my list is fairly conservative: fried scorpion in Beijing and crocodile tail in Cape Town. Scorpion was fine. Had a little problem with the croc.

The picture is from a visit to a big farmers market in Hanoi. The ladies we talked to were disdainful. Only men ate dog. Usually when drinking beer.

*****

There are 274 more photos from around the world in the Food and Drink Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Would You Sleep in a Truck with 18 Others to Get Photos of Polar Bears?

Okay, not exactly a truck truck. A tundra buggy.

The other day we were on about how spending days in close quarters with the same people - like on a cruise - can get to be just the least bit stifling. Now here are some truly close quarters: Much as I would dearly love the chance to photograph polar bears on Hudson Bay in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, I'm not so sure about spending several days with 37 others in the Tundra Buggy Lodge. 

From the web site: "The lodge consists of five large, modular units on huge tires, linked together like a train with a large-scale interior. The five units consist of two sleeping modules (complete with shared bathrooms and shower facilities), a lounge, kitchen and dining unit and a module which houses supplies and the camp's power station."

Maybe. I'm just not sure.

Here's a couple of screen grabs from a video on YouTube, which you can watch here.

   

Wednesday HDR #7 - Texturized Church HDR

There's a new element to my novice HDR photography this week, and ideally, you won't even notice it until I describe it.

This is the pipe organ in the oldest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere, the St. James Church in the capital of St. Helena Island, Jamestown. St. Helena is one of the most remote islands in the world. It's about 800 miles west of Angola in the South Atlantic Ocean and, with no airport, several days away from the rest of the world by ship.

The St. James Church sits just inside the harbor fortifications in Jamestown, across the street from the castle and adjacent to H M Prison. No one was about when I let myself in that morning. I had the whole church to myself for twenty minutes of picture taking, and this one is my favorite. It's from a single RAW image, tone-mapped in Photomatix and finished in Photoshop.

The new element? I'll show you after the jump, where you'll also find the original RAW, non-HDR photo for comparison.And click on the photo above for a much larger view.

(We visited St. Helena and Ascension islands in January. Stories and related items here, and the photos are in the St. Helena Island Gallery and the Ascension Island Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. See also the EarthPhotos HDR Gallery.)

The Friendly Government of North Korea Asks That You Kindly Change Your Name

The government of North Korea insists you not name your young 'un "Jong-un." So says Foreign Policy, in an article about the heir apparent, The Teensy Weensie Leader, called North Korea bans other people from being named Kim Jong Un.

Fabulous Destinations When Money Doesn't Matter #8

We're not much for cruises. There are good, practical reasons like this, but also because after four or five days of lockdown with strangers, it just seems like time to move on.

It's not the cruise itself - I began to feel the same way after a few days in Zermatt one winter. Same folks, same single main street, same couple of restaurants. Just a little stifling.

But here's one cruise that just might work - fifteen days aboard the icebreaker 50 Years of Victory, for a trip to the north pole. Might work except for one teeny detail - money really has to be no object, because the price tag is, um, well, a little robust.

Here's another cruise that doesn't have the cachet of the North Pole, but which cruises around above the Arctic Circle. And hey, it's a bargain, starting at a mere $10,000 per person.

(Photo from the Greenland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

One More Out of Bounds Photo - Camels on the Beach

Here's one more Out Of Bounds (or "OOB") photo and then we'll let it rest for a while. This is a combination of HDR and OOB, actually. These camels take tourists on a sunset walk along the surf every afternoon at Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia. This one's from our tour around Australia, clockwise, in August last year.

 

Find OOB galleries here and here, and tutorials on how to create an OOB picture  here, here and here.

And see more HDR Photos in the HDR Gallery, and lots more from Australia in the Australia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Up to His Neck in His Work

Remarkable.

Out of Bounds Photo - Uganda Lion

To elaborate on a previous post, here's another Out Of Bounds (or "OOB") photo. This is one of the famous tree-climbing lions in the Ishasha Wilderness, Uganda, from our visit there in August, 2008:

Find OOB galleries here and here, and tutorials on how to create an OOB picture  here, here and here.

And see more of the tree climbing lions in the Uganda Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. And, there are bunches more lions in the EarthPhotos Animals and Wildlife Gallery.

Friday Photo Quiz #63

This young family is enjoying a lovely panoramic view of their capital city. Can you name it? Can you name the country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Climbing Mt. Kinabalu: A Story

A story from the eventual book, Common Sense and Whiskey:

CLIMBING MOUNT KINABALU, MALAYSIAN BORNEO

A fine young man with a Yesus Kristus medallion bouncing around beneath his mirror drove us the seven or so kilometers into Mt. Kinabalu park, through the sleeping village of Kundasang. Farmers congregated at the warren of tin-roofed stalls along the main road. It looked like a good day for green tomatoes, potatoes, and cabbage.

They hauled us all in bas minis from the ranger station to the trailhead. From here, a six-kilometer trail led up to our destination, the Laban Ratah guest house at 11,000 feet. At 13,432 feet, Mt. Kinabalu’s summit, in Malaysian Borneo, is the highest point in Southeast Asia.

The first kilometer (the trail was marked at each 1/2 kilometer) popped by in 23 minutes. We were flyin’, and all that stuff about how hard this would be was just talk. The first kilometer, we only stopped long enough to shed our wraps.

Just at first the trail led downhill, charming, to a cool, wet place called Carson’s Falls. On the way down the mountain, conversely, having to climb at the end was just one last kick in the butt on the way out the door.

Still before 8:00 a.m., no sunlight had fought its way to the forest floor. The air was downright chilly once our shirts turned sweaty. And they did — at the first K marker they weren’t soaked through, but a breeze blew down the rise and chilled our wet skin.

We were cocky, jaunty, making tracks, and unappreciative of the flora, except the little violet flower of the Kinabalu Balsam — shaped like it had a beard instead of lower petals.

The massif stood silent and still, the only sounds birds or a rustling squirrel. There are no monkeys on Mt. Kinabalu. They live nearer the sea, east toward Sandakan.

Our guide Erik was a phlegm volcano at first, hacking, spitting, coughing, exercising all facial cavities by the second. He was a little guy, as these highland people were, but with the strong, imposing legs you’d imagine.

He guided once a week, reckoned he’d done the climb fifty times. His personal record to the top — a place called Low’s Peak — was about three hours.

The rest of the week he helped his parents haul their produce to the Kundasang market, where you cain’t make no money. Erik said a kilo of cabbage brought fourteen U.S. cents.

*****

Grim realization set in during kilometer two.

Out of Bounds Photo

Being here at the farm, with no imminent adventures and with winter insistently lingering, we amuse ourselves with indoor entertainment. Following the tutorial here by a man who calls himself Serrator, I created this Out Of Bounds (or "OOB") photo. It's from the harbor in Fremantle, Australia. The whole technique was entirely new to me, and kind of a fun way to spend a cold, gray afternoon.

In case the idea interests you, you can find OOB galleries here and here, and more tutorials here and here.

EarthPhotos.com Photos at HDR Spotting

Two of our photos are on the very neat web site HDRSpotting.com right now. These links won't be good for terribly long, I don't imagine, but you'll see them if you just scroll through the latest posts, which is worthwhile, because there's a lot of creative work on the site. At the moment, at least, the first photo below is on this page, and the second is on this page.

The top photo is the cliffs at Watson's Bay, Australia, at sunrise, and the woman tossing the cabbage on the bottom is part of the floating market at Can Tho, south of Saigon, Vietnam. Both photos are viewable much larger, along with 182 other HDR photos, in the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Huge Panorama

Here's a really remarkable project: 2346 single photos stitched together to make a panorama of Paris that's 354159 by 75570 pixels. You can navigate around it and zoom all the way to the horizon. Enjoy it at the site Paris 26 Gigapixels.