Category: Travel

After being on my feet for six hours this morning, my knees were killing me, and I was just generally exhausted. But with hours to kill and a strong desire not to pay another 50 quetzales for a morning hike tomorrow, I went back in (I had noticed one nature trail outside the ticket-check area that I can take tomorrow morning). Instead of heading into the main area of the park, though, I took what looked to be a remote route to isolated Templo VI.

For the first 15 minutes, all I saw were mosquitoes and tiny tree toads. I picked up one of the tree toads: it was cool.

I noticed after while that the mosquitoes wouldn’t bother me if I kept moving, even at a slow, Joe-in-his-his-last-six-months-pace stroll. They just couldn’t keep up, and would hover in a cloud behind me. But stop for 30 seconds, and they were all over me.

Actually, the walk was pretty boring. A few times, I heard the snapping of branches and some small items falling to the jungle floor, but after the pounding rain, a lot of twigs and nuts were loose, and I couldn’t spot any monkeys.

That is, until I was about 30 minutes in. Then, I spotted a pair of good 150 yards from me–too far for my zoom lens, but I was so bored, I hung out watching just in case they got close to the trail. I’m glad I did, because five minutes later, that pair was joined, first by five or six more spider monkeys, and then by another dozen. It must have been at least 20 individuals in total, and they just kept jumping back and forth between two sets of trees on either side of the past.
I even found a little past into the jungle that went right under one of the trees they were feeding it. After 15 minutes, my neck was near numb with pain from looking up into the canopy with a six-pound camera rested on top of my face. But the opportunity was incredible. There was always at least one spider monkey a mere seven or eight feet above me and not blocked by intervening foliage.

[click any picture to enlarge]

I left eventually, but I didn’t give in to the pain in my neck. I gave in to my flash, the batteries specifically. After I don’t know how long, the flash began to take a minute to recharge. I had three fresh batteries in my pack, so I opened up my flash to replace three of the four. They were actually hot to the touch. Not warm. Literally hot. Just a hair below too-hot-to-handle.

So, I didn’t talk about my new flash when I bought my new camera. Well, my old flash wasn’t compatible with the 1d Mark II N, so I bought the top-of-the-line Canon flash. But I didn’t read the manual or experiment with it before arriving in Guatemala. I just took the old batteries from my flash and put them in the new one. To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the new flash the first couple days. It wasn’t any different from the old, from what I could tell. Basically, I paid $500 for compatibility. Damn Canon and their proprietary systems.

But with three fresh batteries… oh man, I could snap off three shots in succession without waiting for recharge. Incredible! I can only imagine what it will be like with four fresh batteries. Why does this matter? Well, in this case, the monkeys are distracted by the flash, and look right at you after you nail them with the strobe. I’d seen this before in Costa Rica, but by the time my old flash recharged, the monkey was looking away again. Now, I shoot one to get the monkey’s attention, and once more for the real picture.

Of course, I had to rotate the four drained batteries every few minutes, since the flash would start taking minutes to recharge again, but hey! Anyway, when the four drained batteries couldn’t help the other three charge the flash anymore, I was done.

After that, I took the long way home. I was utterly exhausted, but there was one more set of ruins close by. Might as well check ’em out. On the way, this European couple showed me this ridiculous, furry white caterpillar.

By the time I got home at 7pm, my knees were in agony, my back on strike, my neck in open revolt, and my stomach growling more loudly than a howler monkey. I don’t know, maybe I won’t have the energy to take that morning hike after all.

Still, a good walk for shooting. The pictures of the spider monkeys were fantastic.

It’s been ages since TheServerSide Java Symposium (TSSJS) in Las Vegas, but I have a last bit of photography to record.

The final day of the conference, Dennis and I took a hike in Red Rock Canyon (photo gallery), specifically Ice Box Canyon. Yeah, we were supposed to be at TSSJS, but Java Jeopardy was over, and neither of us was up for much more tech babble.

So we went to Red Rock, and spent a couple hours hiking through the high desert into a narrow canyon. Ice Box earned its name: The temperature must have dropped by 15 degrees in the hike up. It was almost too cold for my short sleeves. Dennis didn’t seem to notice, though. One of the advantages of not being a human twig, I guess.

About halfway in, we heard water, and the remainder of the hike required criss-crossing the creek every forty or fifty feet. Every five or ten minutes, there was a new little waterfall which I had to stop at to take a picture.

Of course, waterfalls require slow exposures–1/20th of a second will get you a bit of streaky water, but slower is better. The longer the aperture is open, though, the greater the camera shake, and I didn’t bring my tripod. So I tried to wedge my camera between pebbles to keep it steady. This took time, and Dennis started tossing rocks into the pools in front of my camera, partly out of boredom, but mainly, I think, because he thought it was quite clever and funny. Probably was–he couldn’t hide his chuckling–but I was not amused at the droplets of water landing on my cheap-ass camera. I’ve never had much of a sense of humor about my photography.

We kept wondering when we would hit the end of the canyon. The trail map said you’d hit a waterfall where you couldn’t go any further. We thought we hit that point twice. But each time, we found a way around the little waterfall by scrambling over the massive boulders. (We were also egged on by a couple ahead of us that was a good ten years’ older and hadn’t yet turned around).

The end of the canyon was obvious. An almost sheer wall, probably 100+ feet high, with a narrow waterfall cascading down the rocks. There was nowhere else to go but back.

The person in the picture is Dennis. If you know him, you won’t need to zoom in to identify that wild, mad, face-splitting grin of his.

Biding my time at the airport. No one’s even here so I can check-in.

I neglected to explain what I was doing in Guanajuato’s tunnels back when I was dazed and confused. For background, Guanajuato was founded in a river valley, and sometimes during the summer monsoon season, there was so much runoff that the town itself would flood.

Actually, my sister has a great description of how this developer:

"The wealth [from the silver mines] resulted in lots of mansions and other growth in Guanajuato and
the river ended up carrying a lot of sewage. So the river was diverted into tunnels and the city continued to build on top. But then a
combination of a 100-year flood that submerged the town’s main plaza,
presumably in sewage, and other issues caused the city to decide to
divert the whole river away from town. This left the old tunnels empty
and dry. They were turned over to vehicle traffic and the central area
of town was reserved for pedestrians.  The town has continued to build
more tunnels to keep traffic out of town as the town has continued to
grow.  Once a year in June they still open the dam above town and flood
the tunnels – to clean out the tunnels or to empty the dam before the
rainy season, I don’t know."

Anyway, I spotted a postcard of the tunnels with one shot of a turn with a bunch of arches–very nice picture and pattern (photo hint: look at postcards when you arrive in a new place for ideas). I thought I found those arches the first time, but in the taxi back from Valenciana, I saw the real thing on Calle Hidalgo. Popped out, took some pics.

La Mina de Valenciana is closed. In it can’t be closed permanently, because there are too many touristy shops at its entrance (which is big enough to accommodate more than just a few tourist buses). But it wasn’t open today. Only Boca Mina de Valencia, a much smaller, older mine a quarter-mile away near the Iglesia de San Cayetano, was open. It was underwhelming. Actually, I think any mine would be underwhelming. It’s a narrow, steeply descending hole in the ground.

My guide spoke only Spanish, and that right fast. I caught maybe a quarter of what he was saying.

The church itself [below] was gaudy: what you’d expect from an altar made entirely of silver and gold.

The mines of Guanajuato–and of New Spain in general–are more impressive as an economic memorial. How many empires were destroyed by their own inability to adjust to the massive inflation caused by the flood of silver and gold from the New World? The Ottoman Empire took five centuries to fall, but its refusal to act soon enough to counter the arbitrage opportunity provided by fixed silver-gold exchange rates shattered its finances. Or of the empires built? Northwestern Europe was forced to adapt much more quickly to the new financial regime because they had fewer economic alternatives (Spain and Portugal had mining, Italy in the Ottoman Empire trade). Anyway, interesting to see a hole the ground that proved as economically, socially and politically disruptive as the Bubonic plague in the 1300s, and industrialization in the 1700s and 1800s.

I am exhausted. I should be out taking pictures of the mariachis or something. But without a nap, I’m just dead to the world.

Got in a little shopping today. I bought at a painted devil mask, and some pottery. Apparently, Guanajuato area is famous for its pottery, called Talavera. Trish bought six boxes of tile, and has been taking them back on the plane a box at a time each trip.

Earlier, I camped out at El Jardin de la Union, taking clandestine photos of the locals. Good shooting. I think I’ll camp out there tomorrow, too. I’m actually almost out of film. I have three rolls of black & white, which I’ll push for people shots if need be. And I have two of color. Actually, I should have three of color. I swapped roles (400 to 100) this afternoon, not realizing that my camera would attempt to rewind the rest of the way with the fresh roll, destroying a perfectly good roll of film. Annoying. But another reason to go digital.

Next to El Museo de las Momias was a small exhibit on the "Culto de
los Muertos." I didn’t quite get it. For example, there was a coffin
containing, according to the sign in Spanish, of a man whose name was not
recorded. The man who "we" know was German likely died of exposure to
radioactive materials. OK, should I know who this guy was? I get the
impression from the Spanish that everybody knows who this was, even
though it was an unmarked grave. Why the radiation hypothesis? And why did this person have
difficulty with sunlight? Was he supposed to be a vampire or something?
Another body definitely had shaved incisors…

What ever. I wasn’t impressed. But there was one item that caught my
eye: a chastity belt [photo right] with metal teeth along an opening that would have
ringed the labia. The reason it caught my eye was what the belt implied
about the "ultimate" sexual taboo.

El Museo de las Momias was a little bit disturbing. It wasn’t the desiccated cadavers that I found alarming. It was how obsessed I became with photographing the naturally mummified corpses of people so poor their families could not afford to bury them when they died over a century ago. Children, pregnant women, the old and infirm, all preserved right down to their pubic hair. My intention had just been to finish off the role of E100VS still in my camera. But when it was done. I stuck in a roll of black and white and pushed two stops in case the flash wasn’t sufficient.

Since the bodies were all behind glass, this brings up a useful photographic trick. When shooting through glass with a flash, you have to shoot at an angle to the glass to prevent the flash from reflecting into your shot. Yes, you may still get some reflected light, but it won’t dominate your picture.

The other trick is to use your polarizing filter. Yeah, I know, the polarizer effects of range of colors, mainly by deepening the blue of the sky. It’s really supposed to be used outdoors, so why should it make a difference? Well, it also reduces reflections and glare–you can use it to take pictures of fish underwater, for example. If one were ever to spot that, which I haven’t.