Charity - I'm not above it

Okay, so if you liked the pics but wished they were sharper/better, please give generously to help me go from this:

Sigma 70-300mm, f4.0-5.6 APO DG Macro

to this:

Canon EF 300mm, f2.8 IS USM - starting at around 4000EUR

Fat chance, ey?

Parque Nacional Madidi - 6 - Dawn over the Lake

Okay, so this post starts off much as the one before it did, but the clouds and silhouettes of the trees, together with that big ball of fire just did it to me. Having been in the mountains for so long, I hadn't seen a decently spectacular sunrise/-set for ages. To put it in the words of a good friend who is much enamored with open spaces: "so viel Himmel!"




I'm not quite sure who was sleepier: me - having gotten up at 6am - or the birds. That's one very good reason why there will be no pictures of me taken at that ungodly hour.





Kingfisher and his pole. Didn't see him dive for fish, but he did tease us by letting us draw just close enough for a picture and then taking flight.





So we went out on the canoe again, this time just the two of us. The eagle is a regular on the lake and doesn't seem to scare easily. "If you don't move while the canoe sails right past him, he won't scare and take flight!" Well that was Rodolfo's take on things...



...but apparently I had moved and did so repeatedly: it's hard holding a 300mm lens steady for a few minutes at eye level without moving! But basically that's what most of my shots from the jungle are like: half-captured shapes, blurry and of slightly different colour than the surrounding vegetation.






Another case in point, Macaws: we repeatedly saw green/red as well as blue/yellow ones flying far off in the distance. That's the original size pic at 300mm and f/8 (450mm in reality, due to the small-size sensor on my Canon EOS 350D). Zooming in a lot, you can find patches of colour on the birds, but the details and sharpness fall apart, because I had to use ISO 1600 to avoid motion blur, thus making it very pixelly. Frustrating and of absolutely no interest save to photography nuts.





A typical view of most of the birds on the lake: flying away from us when we drew too close. All of the sudden, piercing the morning stillness, there'd be a mad rush of wings and reed being pushed aside and a shape would emerge from the totora.





The selfsame Mr Longneck seen in the pic above (I think), watching carefully.




When I say "piercing the stillness", in fact that's not quite correct: there was a constant background din of howler monkeys justifying their name that started up around first light and kept going for 10-15 minutes on end. It's just that you get used to it... I even went to sleep at night in spite of theor noise.





The first person who comments on the fact that it's pretty much all blurry in this picture has to invite me out to dinner (drinks included).





The laughing longlegged birds just before taking flight and laughing at us some more.





Ah the Serere or Hoatzin, an incredible clumsy bird and apparently a bit of a remnant of a bygone evolutionary era. A pure vegetarian, it carries with it an extra load of bacteria in its stomach to digest the tough cellulose, much as cows and other ruminants do. The precise biological details are lost on me, suffice it to say that due to all that crap it has to carry around, this bird can't really fly very far! 20 meters is about the maximum anyone has ever seen it do.


So as far as birds go, it ranks with the Ouilleouilleouille for sheer entertainment value ("Vous savez ce que c'est un Ouilleouilleouille? C'est un oiseau avec des toutes petites pates et des grosses couilles et quand il se pose il fait ouilleouilleouille")

Okay, so refinement has definitely gone out the window...




These little yellow and black birds build their nests hanging from branches, so that they look like oversized fruit. They keep up a constant chatter and flutter around them, but unfortunately I didn't really get a good pic of them.



Is it a heron? Do you think? Love the neck!



Okay, so I mucked around quite a lot with contrast and saturation in these, but they're nice because JUST FOR ONCE, there is little motion blur. And that would be due to the fact that the bird doesn't move its wings very fast, for which I will be eternally grateful!



Patos (Ducks, they called them), seeing us off as we travelled upriver toward Rurre again.

And that's pretty much the end of my jungle trip. Okay, so pics of cockroaches and rats could have been taken over the next 18 hours until my flight left for La Paz, but that's just not so pretty.

Overall, a great place which I can recommend on account of the people, the sheer exposure to nature, the flexibility of the schedule and the serenity. They even do longer trips into the jungle, so if you fancy spending 20 days on end at the beginning of the rainy season, they can help you out (not sure about how sane you'd have to be to do that).

Drop Madidi Travel a line or swing by their La Paz or Rurre offices for more info.

Thank you for your hospitality to all the staff at the lodge and their offices, especially to Rodolfo for putting up with my plodding progress across the jungle (stopping every 20m for pictures) and to Rosa Maria for her enthousiasm and interest in my pictures!

Parque Nacional Madidi - 5 - Sunset over the lake

Pretty cheesy, isn't it? What you can't see here are the swarms of mozzies that awoke around dusk...



So the end of the second day at Serere tailed off with a canoe ride over the lake and into the reed on the opposite side of the main house.



Long-legged little bastards moved so fast in the fading light that this was the best I could do. Plus they kept up a constant stream of inane laughter, much of which I think was directed at us.





The colours were amazing! Changing from yellowish to red and purple - all the ingredients needed for a typically kitsch picture.



Rosa Maria accompanied Rodolfo and I on to the lake and while I kept a lookout with my camera, the two of them exchanged stories about animals, plants and life in the jungle. It seems they were so into their stories that Rodolfo got his oar stuck in the muck and reeds and had to frantically paddle back using the piece of wood he was sitting on.



Waiting for dinner do arrive as if by magic. There are very few times over the course of the last two months that I've eaten as much as in the course of these three days, yet my belt had to have another hole punched through it just a few days later... go figure!

Ad nauseam

Hatte ich schon erwaehnt, dass ich nunmehr seit fast 3 Wochen ohne MP3-Player reise? Okay, im Bus vergessen ist nicht besonders klug!

Ganz ohne Musik? Nicht ganz, denn genau 5 Songs waren im Laufe irgendeiner Spielerei auf meinem Handy gelandet, so dass ich jetzt bis zum Erbrechen blechern toenend folgende Playlist hoeren kann:

1.) Chimene Badi - Je viens du Sud (franzoesische Schnulze)
2.) The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
3.) Arctic Monkeys - Mardy Bum
4.) Modest Mouse - Float On
5.) Die Aerzte - Langweilig

Grrrrr, deswegen muss z Zt Lastfm als Jukebox bei Internet-Cafe-Aufenthalten herhalten.

Parque Nacional Madidi - 4 - wildlife galore

*** Right, first of all, I have to admit it seems I spoke too hastily as far as ticks were concerned.

Ended up plucking three fully-gorged little bastards off my skin this morning. The dears must have been drowsy from the freezing temperatures at night, the cold shower I was forced to have this morning ... oh and of course all of my blood they feasted on.

I gotta say, though, there's nothing quite as satisfying as hearing the sharp crack as you crush them between glass and the tiled floor! ***




So this is still Day 2 - please don't ask how many frames I shot that day, it makes me want to weep. Suffice it to say I had to dial down the quality to Large JPG in order to leave some space on the 16GB card.



All of a sudden, Rodolfo grabs my arm and stops me dead in my tracks no farther than 3m from this little one.



He didn't hiss, didn't budge, almost didn't show his tongue and I'm sure I wouldn't have seen him for all the looking around I as doing. First time I was glad my macro function had a minimum focal distance of about 150cm.



This Mariposa sat perfectly still while I pranced about changing lenses and mucking about with settings in the semi-darkness. I sometimes wish some of my human motifs showed as much patience!



The anonymous ones again - scooting through the canopy above us.



Ah yes, something straight out of Peter Pan: remember the Crock that had swallowed Captain Hook's watch as well as the had holding it? Well, every time the crock drew near, Hook would get unnerved by the tick-tock-tick-tock.

If only there'd been some sound from the Caymans lying in wait for us!



We had to cross this rickety bridge-contraption on our way to lunch, and I was convinced the planks were more suitable to a Cayman-buffet, being within easy reach of their jaws as they laid in wait underneath it. Rodolfo crossed very gingerly, and I was practically tiptoeing across, all the while looking out for a telltale ripple in the water.



We found one of these beautifully-coloured butterflies trapped inside the mosquito netting of the hut we rested in...



...and it was nice enough to allow us to take a peek at the inside of its wings... okay, so it didn't altogether do this voluntaril, but I assure zou we were gentle.

Ah, and then there was this little guy - a lesser anteater or Southern Tamandu, if you must know - who was shuffling around the forest floor before spotting us and trying to climb to safety.



Unfortunately he picked a much-too-slender sapling, that bent backwards under his weight almost all the way to the ground again and had us laughing our heads off...



...which he commented with loud hissing noises and an acrobatics number, worthy of a circus artist.



Once safely ensconced high above, he glared at us reproachfully for a while, and I finally had the time to change lenses; because of course, if you just happen upon an animal close by, you'll be sure to have an utterly inadequate lens mounted on your camera!

Parque Nacional Madidi - 3 - Jungle Paths

On Day 2 of my stay at Serere, Rodolfo and I went for a 5-hour walk/crawl/bash through the jungle; first keeping only a few meters from the lakeside, then walking alongside a small creek and finally heading off toward a more isolated lake through denser jungle.



Ants were everywhere, from the very smallest that you'd also expect to find in Germany, to the largest - 3 to 4 cm in size - moving very swiftly and apparently constantly fighting one another.



That little bugger was teasing me by folding his wings whenever he sat still, making it impossible to see the bright blue colouring on the inside.



Very uncomfortable insects, guarding their nests and dispensing what Rodolfo assured me with a grimace were very painful stings against perceived intruders made us take large detours from the path.



Spiders were also plentiful; mostly we encountered very dense, very large nets with huge numbers of small offspring in them. This ought to be their ancestor.





Testing my macro function, I was fascinated by the little bristles on the long legs of this spider.



Capuchin monkeys were bountiful and relatively easy to find, making so much nois during their treetop forays for food.



This branch, reaching out over a small creek toward our position must have held some incredibly tasty morsels, because the shy capuchins came out right to its tip, all the time keeping a weary eye on us and stuffing their face with the fruit.



Yet again my memory fails me, as I try in vain to remember these little guys' names. They came along after the capuchins and feasted on the same fruits.



A very rare sight, this bird was so well concealed against the banks of the creek that it took me a while to spot it, even as Rodolfo insistently pointed towards it. The amazing thing was the design on the inside of its wings, which it deigned to display upon taking flight - a pair of brightly-coloured spots smack-bang in the middle of the wing when unfolded. What a sight!



These frogs are highly poisonous, as evidenced by their bright yellow and red colouring. Their toxin apparently stops vicitms breathing and is used by indigenous people to coat arrows for hunting.




The bright red of the parrot's beak is always a great sight, especially against a backdrop of deep green.



Even though we crawled along every conceivable path through dense vegetation, I don't think I caught any ticks or other nasty insects. Rodolfo even went as far as stalking a cayman who was making characteristic noises in a dense piece of brush alongside a pond. Must admid I felt a tad queasy at every noise and rustle of dry leaves in there.