The jumping spider
Posted by Kristian Golding on March 1, 2011
Adriana and I were out with friends at Markham Park in Broward on Sunday. It’s a pretty cool park that has a model airplane field, mountain bike trails, areas for jet skiing, a shooting range, and a Jamaican guy with a van that had a fully sick subwoofer, a couch, and 420,000 miles on the odometer.
I got distracted by a very active jumping spider, which was indifferent to my efforts to try and get it to ‘sit’ still. When you only have a depth of field of several millimetres as I do with my macro lens at its closest focus point, shooting a moving object can be frustrating. Having a speedlight handy gives some extra light so you can increase the f-stop and get a much larger depth of field, so I was happy I brought my whole kit along.
No, for some reason I didn’t get a photo of the van that had nearly travelled to the moon and back. Somehow at the time a common jumping spider seemed more interesting.
Peru 2010 – Colca Canyon
Posted by Kristian Golding on February 20, 2011
From Arequipa we went on a guided tour of the Chivay/Colca Canyon region for a couple of days. The canyon is approximately four kilometres deep, making it about twice as deep as that of the Grand Canyon, so I was pretty excited about seeing that and possibly a Condor.
The small tour bus took us around the extinct volcano Chachani towards the town of Chivay where we’d be staying the night. We went past a huge processing plant, which I could only guess was some sort of cement factory. The landscape at this point was a contrast of pale grey dust, green valley and man-made structures:
Along the way there were many wild llama, gunacao and vicunya and some great views of volcano Misti:
I never expected to see flamingoes in this part of Peru, but there they were at high altitudes of around five kilometres, feeding in isolated wetlands.
The presence of the wetlands in such an otherwise barren landscape surprised me:
We came across a farmer (a photo of who appeared in a previous post) who had decorated his herd of llamas to attract tourists. The ruse worked fantastically.
Descending into the Chivay area we were treated to some fantastic views of the town while doing some roadside shopping.
A natural hot spring was a great way to relax at the end of the day, and this one had a great view.
From the top of our hotel in Chivay I was able to get a photo of the sunset over the mountains that we’d descended earlier in the day.
The tour the next day took us through the Colca Valley on the way to Colca Canyon. The were many spectacular views of the small towns and the terraced farming that supported them.
The Colca Canyon was very, very deep, and much wider than that of the Grand Canyon. It was fairly difficult to see the bottom of it, so I had to walk around to all the viewing points to get a good sense of how deep it was. I don’t think this was the deepest part either, as the road went further around the canyon but our bus tour did not.
Our last stop in the canyon was to view the condors. That required a bit of luck, and the whole hour we were there the ones we did see were too far off to get a decent photo. While leaving the viewing area, a condor did glide past our bus and was viewable for a few seconds. I chose to admire just how massive it was rather than try and grab a photo.
The full set on flickr is available here.
Peru 2010 – Arequipa
Posted by Kristian Golding on January 29, 2011
Arequipa is the second largest city by population (approximately 900,000), and is located in the Andes in the southern part of Peru. It’s up fairly high, at an altitude of about 2300m, although taking the whole trip to Peru into account, that’s about half of the highest altitude that we reached. It has a nickname, “La Ciudad Blanca” (The White City), due to the fact that many of the buildings are constructed of a white volcanic rock.
Getting off the plane, we were greeted with the sight of El Misti. This volcano, the most prominent in Arequipa, used to have a white top of snow but with warmer temperatures it isn’t seen anymore.
We signed up for one of the bus tours a few hours after arriving to get our bearings and visited a lookout that offered a view of El Misti (middle) surrounded by Picchu Picchu (right) and Chachani (left). Click through for the full-size version:
One of the places that we visited was a water-powered mill.
The Santa Catalina monastery is something to definitely see while in Arequipa. About 20 nuns still live there, but the rest of the monastery is open to the public.
The most notable attribute of the monastery is the coloured walls. The blue coloured walls indicate a private area, while the red walls indicate a public area.
A special sort of rock is used to filter the water, and the filtration process can take a while. From memory about a litre of water could be filtered every five hours.
One of the bus tour stops was a mini zoo of sorts that contained llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and guanacaos. I had my first experience of being spat at, and I have the guanacao to thank for that. I honestly thought he just wanted to chat.
Here are some more photos taken while walking around the main square of Arequipa.
I swear there is no better way to finish the day than with a hot emoliente, a traditional Peruvian herbal drink. We spent a bit of time trying to find someone who was making them, but it was completely worth it.
That in a nutshell was our experience of Arequipa. The next two days were spent in the Chivay/Colca Canyon area (chasing condors), which will be the subject of my next Peru post. The full set of photos from Arequipa is up on flickr here.
Australia Day 2011
Posted by Kristian Golding on January 28, 2011
The last Australia Day I hosted was back in Australia and it involved beer, cricket, couches in a park and a TV with a looooong extension cord. I’d yet to host one in the United States, so I thought this year would be as good as any. Planning the full menu for a party of around eight people turned out to be a bit of a huge task, but I think it turned out fairly well (even though I was preparing and cooking food for nearly four hours… although I must admit, that time did fly). I’d nearly forgotten how many fantastic dishes there were to choose from, and thanks to the Internets, choosing the right recipe was made so much simpler.
For the starters I chose two dishes: Vegemite scrolls; and pork and fennel sausage rolls.
The sausage rolls turned out to be really light on the palate, and they tasted even better with a hint of tomato sauce (yeah, ok, ‘ketchup’). I nearly doubled the amount of spices in the mix, due in no small part because I was having so much fun with the pestle and mortar.
Vegemite scrolls are pretty easy to make. You just have to use a cheese with a lot of taste, and not lay the Vegemite on too thick on the puff pastry. Glaze the cut pastry rolls with egg, pop ’em in the oven and 15 mins later, Bob’s your uncle: tasty appetiser.
The main meal was the awesome ‘Aussie burger’. I chose to go with Bubba burgers with the following: egg, bacon, caramelised onions, beetroot, slightly fried pineapple, and tomato. Oh, and lettuce!
Preparing dessert is always my favourite part. I have made the golden syrup dumplings enough times that I’ve modified the recipe enough to be my own. For one thing, you can’t get (or it’s difficult to find) golden syrup over here, so I substitute in corn syrup instead. Secondly, I double the amount of the syrup mix that the dumplings cook in. Thirdly, I make the dumplings dry enough that you can roll them into balls. I find that this combined with the ice cream makes a nice set of complementary textures, tastes and temperatures (alliteration FTW).
Finally, the pavlova. I’d made the meringue base the previous night (with help from Adriana – thanks dear) but unfortunately the non-stick base it was cooked on was not exactly non-stick. Removing the meringue from its cooking pan captor unfortunately caused a few fractures. I’ve figured out what to use instead next time, at least, so lesson learned. Regarding the cream, you can buy whipping cream over here but it’s god-awful sweet (at least the ones I’ve tried are). After a bit of experimenting I made my own using heavy whipping cream, gelatine, and a wee bit of icing sugar (just enough to give a hint of sweetness). That was spooned over the top of the meringue, which was then topped with kiwi fruit and strawberries.
I think the night turned out to be a success, and a special thanks to Adriana for helping me prepare the food and putting up with my self-deprecating humour.
