Low tech > high tech
After the pleasure of discovering my laptop could play Skyrim (albeit at the lowest settings) I had to find a way to get the fan to work a bit better. My stupid Lenovo Z360 has plenty of options when it comes to making the fan quiet, but when you want the fan to cool the CPU properly it just can’t. It won’t even turn up to high when you’re pushing 80 degrees! It would rather just shut down.
If you press the fan control button though, it does speed up while pressed….
I built a elasticated strap to push the fan button down, but the button is touch sensitive, not a pressure switch. Next I spent a few hours googling for a software solution and reinstalling drivers from Lenovo. Speedfan is a nice little program that should work, but can’t see the fan on my laptop…. 
So, I opted for the low tech solution :
Great work Lenovo. The only way I can get my laptop to cool properly is with a wet square of toilet paper on the fan button…
I should also point out that I’m on my second battery and second power supply, and I can only charge when I have a piece of elastic pulling the power cable towards the USB plug… and the laptop is only 10 months old. I don’t think I’ll be buying Lenovo again….
Tags: fan control, pressure switch, 10 months, control button, usb plug, pleasure, power cable, software solution, toilet paper, second power, speedfan, laptop, power supply6 Days of pain!
Last weekend I started looking for some keyword lists and the lack of a website anywhere, plus the availablility of a nice sounding website made me build my own wiki for one. Photography Keywords is a mediawiki site where people can download and upload their keywords. Well, judging from the traffic there has only been downloading going on but I threw a dozen lists on there and will see what happens. I spent a few days making some lists and then I started looking for an online tool to keyword my images. There are a few, but it seems like they revolve around clicking more pictures and selecting more words… they didn’t seem very fast or intuitive to use. I spent the weekend thinking about it and looking at the page sources of a few websites. If other people could pull the keyword info from stock websites, couldn’t I?
Monday morning I sat down at my laptop and started to learn PHP. I fired up my FTP, typed in a few examples and shot them over to my website. They seemed to compile ok and I started reading some tutorials and trying a few things out. The premise is simple, use a function to read a website page that you create using a search term in the URL, pull the link information to the pictures shown and then pull the keywords from those pages. In two days I was able to do just that and then I started figuring out how to store this information and display it. Then for the next three days I felt like I’ve been going around in circles, I just couldn’t get the array of keywords to work properly. I had over 200 lines of code and I ended up just trying stuff out and trying to make it work. Pretty soon I had even more code and would sit there staring at it trying to understand the knots I had written myself into :p
This morning I decided to reset the loop of frustration. I could get the keywords but then I was getting confused by the arrays. IÂ built a tiny test page with only 8 values and started figuring out exactly what the code meant. PH P is unforgiving, you drop a [ or } and it all goes to shit. Everything has to be perfect or it won’t run at all. I sat and read and tried to get my head around it. Working with a page of 10 lines is a lot better. I worked my way through the PHP.net website trying various functions to try to get my 2 arrays to merge and finally found one. Then I cut out all the code that wasn’t working and spent the evening figuring out how to display it properly. I ended up with another mess of code but did some more reading, found the magical array_keys function and my frustration was over! If only I noticed that on wednesday ! :p
Anyway, all the pieces are in place now. Its currently only pulling keywords from shutterstock so I’ll be looking at how the other sites display their information and adding them to the mix. The keywords are larger if they’re returned more and I plan on adding some code to change the colour of the keys if they’ve been selected already. Last week I never thought I would spend 10 hours a day for 6 days learning a new language, but I think it could be a good investment of time. Some people are keywording thousands of images a week and adding them to stock sites… would be nice if there was a free tool to do it quicker….
Tags: few days, images, circles, array, online tool, arrays, frustration, wiki, laptop, page sources, photographyI think I’m losing my mind
Today I had a minor miracle. I went to VIP Iquique for the eighth time and… They were open! I was coming back from the printer i tried last night, clutching my, slightly better, print when I thought I would try again. They couldn’t always be closed so I tried knocking. The woman from the hotel in the same building said I had to go in through another entrance. They have a huge padlock and you can’t see the office and staff from the street…. Grrrrr! They had some iMacs and printers but I didn’t have my file. When I came back after lunch we did a test print that was much better but still has banding in the twilight sky part of the image, the same as I’m using as a logo on my site. I had created the file as an 8 bit image instead of 16 bits which might affect it. So now I’m rebuilding my 9 image cover again from the original files…. And my laptop is SHIT! This is really getting to me now, I can’t see why everything has to be so damn hard!! I’m going to reboot, put in the last two images and head back to hopefully get a good print. I think I might had to select some images that dont have such a big colour range since the 6 ink printer at VIP still struggled. They didn’t have a colour calibration device I could hire either… Maybe in Santiago…
Tags: lunch, time, laptop, everything, bit, VIP, nightMy kingdom for a Canon Pixma 9500 printer!!
The professional place was closed so I headed to the Mall. In the kodak place they looked at me blankly when I asked if they can read .tif files. Nope. JPG only. Probably the worst file format for printing… I wander the mall in despair for a while and found a place that dress people up as cowboys and hookers but they send all their big prints off to Santiago.
I went back to Kodak and tried to establish exactly what format my file should take. The guy had to ask what the pixel density was (300dpi as I guessed) and said the size I want was 20x30cm… Bong. Not according to the machine, 20×30.5cm. I pulled out my laptop and redited my file. I eventually got it to read my USB stick correctly and printed the smallest possible size. For 50 pence I found my picture of the Colombian church being gently bathed in the glowing embers of the setting sun looked like someone had sprayed orange juice all over the walls. Sigh…. I guess they set the saturation so high because people come in with pictures that need a saturation boost. This is why I don’t print my pictures. They just looked at the difference and me like it was fine… Colourblind people shouldn’t work for Kodak.
The search continues….
Laptop problems
Well, I’ve ‘finished’ all up until India at least… again. All the weak and problem photos are chucked and now I regret hacking the 570 picks down to 500 because its gone down to 480. Photoshop has stopped working and needs reinstalling and lightroom is becoming less responsive all the time. I now find that although I have 4Gb of RAM only 2.6 is useable and as soon as I do anything complicated my laptop uses 100% of it and goes very slowly. I am about to head into town for lunch and to see how much an upgrade to 8Gb will cost. Hopefully they will take the 4Gb I already have in part exchange….
Most of my adjustments are minor colour adjustments and minor cropping. Nothing too radical… Hopefully LPI will prefer the change from this:
to this:
The work continues
Why is it that when there are no clouds I want to be out shooting and not sitting in front of my laptop, and right now the sky is blue and fluffy and I get the urge to organise my pictures. At least I’m being productive!!
I took a few people from the hostel back up to Humberstone last night and got 17 keepers for my trouble…. doesn’t seem much out of the 309 pictures I took, but I have quite a few panoramas to make out of those and I was bracketing as usual. Looking at my output since April, I only have 16,000 shots and a keeper rating of just over 6%… I suspect I need to increase my productivity quite a lot…
I’ve pulled out another 400 shots from the last 2 months which are going to require some work but South America just isn’t as interesting for photography as India. People look very, ‘normal’ and there are no herds of cows walking around and elephants all over the place… Still, I’m finding a few things. I just have to keep my eyes open and my camera near at hand…
The road from Hell
Day 310
Semuc Champey, Guatemala
The girl, Kara, I had spent the day sitting in the bank and fixing my brakes on Monday with still hadn‘t come back from Tikal. I was slightly concerned but I really had to leave. I pointed out this information to the good people of Los Amigo hostel and after another spell on the Internet got my stuff together to leave.
Another week gone, another set of doors close and others open. I had finally met some Swedish girls, a pair of cousins from Uppsala who were studying in Lund. They wanted me to come on their 3 day walk to some ruins to reduce the price. I regretfully declined and of course now wonder if that was a mistake. I bet they see a wild Jaguar! :p
It would be $100, not too bad but they were returning via Tikal and I had no major desire to see it a third time. Thinking back these were my forth and fifth Swede I had met in 10 months, one in Puerto Escondido, one in San Cristobal and the girl I freaked out in the phone shop at the very start of my trip in Toronto. At least it would give me more chance to speak Spanish.
I would be needing it for the next leg. After assuming Kara would be coming with me to the waterfalls at Semuc Champey I had neglected to post a notice to see if anyone wanted to come with me. I probably should have gotten my oil pan welded but the road all the way down was the main highway number 5, it would have to be paved right?
The first part of the journey was fine, I got some gas and directions out of town. I took a slightly wrong turn but firing up my laptop and good old Google Earth showed me I would join the road I really wanted soon. My power converter were all broken now so I suspended the laptop and listened to dodgy Guatemalan radio.
The road was good, the best since the US really since Guatemala has mostly avoided the horrible custom of covering their roads with speed bumps. There were a few around, but nothing compared to Mexico. I made good time, the distance wasn’t that great and I made it to the half way mark at Sayaxche after about 2 and a half hours. I took the green goddess over a little ferry too, which was fun. They were moving 3 cars and a gas tanker around with a couple of outboards.
I crossed a rickety bridge at Sebol and the asphalt gave out. So much for the paved highway all the way south. The road was dusty but flat and clear. I would have to be careful about my oil pan though. I tried to turn on my laptop to recheck Google Earth and learned it hadn‘t suspended and was now nearly dead. My first bit of bad luck.
I bumped down the dusty track passing a few cars and trucks and saw a box in the road. I big one that must have just fallen from the truck I had passed. I pulled up and found it was a box of 14 packets of Corn Flakes. The big 600g boxes. I reached down and pulled it onto the front seat. It barely came through the window. Nice find. Shame I didn’t really like cornflakes :p . 100 meters down the road I found a starving dog nosing around another 3 big boxes.
I chucked them all into the van, emptied a box for the starving dog and continued south. What was I going to do with 56 boxes of Cornflakes? It was 33kg of the stuff. If only they had been Branflakes I would have been much happier. I guess I could sell them, give them away to the locals, eat some or make some chocolate cake things. I started following a beer truck and hoping that would start dropping some of its produce too 
My musings about what to do with my sudden windfall was interrupted by a small truck zooming past me but then being blocked by the beer truck. There was a kid in the back sitting on a load of boxes of Corn Flakes. He looked at the pile of Corn Flakes on my front seat, shouted to the driver and they pulled over. I did the same.
He jumped out and started yabbering on in rapid Spanish which I could barely understand. I understood the word ‘Career’ or ‘Job‘ though. He didn’t even wait for me to speak but opened my door and started grabbing the boxes. I really wasn’t prepared to argue with the guy, and why would I. My slight good fortune would be nothing compared to the grief this would get him into.
I told him he was lucky (I doubt he would get so much compliance from a hungry local) and shook his hand before driving off on my way. I was now hoping this was going to give me some good karma for the road.
The road was getting worse. Someone else had obviously noticed this and decided to spend a few billion Quetzals to get it fixed. Only a few miles after losing my breakfast, so to speak, I came to a bridge which was closed. I gathered they were repairing the road, or at least making it half decent and no traffic could get through now until 6pm. It was 4.30pm and I had just missed the 2-4 slot to get through.
What could I do? I pulled into the shade, dropped my hot water bottle into the nearby stream and had to wait for an hour and a half. I tidied my car as usual, checked the oil, tried to fix my power adapter, studied a few Spanish words, hoping the local truck drivers who also pulled up to wait wouldn’t decide to rob me.
I would have gone fishing but the milky water was polluted with soap powder. The truck drivers washing directly in the stream weren’t helping either. How can they be so short sighted. The sun sank lower and lower and my window for making it to my destination shrank.
At 6pm the cones were moved and I now had a choice between the safety of driving slowly verses the danger of being forced to drive at night. I also had my oil pan to consider which was basically being protected by some hard chewing gum. After a minutes drive I realised they weren’t sealing or improving the road, they were building a whole new one by blasting half the hillside to widen it.
Ignoring the waving construction workers I picked my way across the rocky road, cursing the day I didn’t buy a 4WD. I suppose I could go back but the guy manning the blockade told me it was only 1 1/2 hours to Semuc Champey. I was 3 hours away from Flores. I decided to continue.
This probably wasn’t the best decision. I soon came to the most recent part of the roads construction, a steep section of blasted road that was mostly flat but not quite. My first ginger attempt at it was unsuccessful and I backed up to consider my options. The middle part had several large rocks jutting up, waiting to bleed my oil out so I went up and chucked them out of the way. I was still going to be in serious danger of losing all my oil again.
With one of the workers cheering me on I got back in the car, put it in low gear and gunned the engine. I would have to make it in one shot, it wasn’t so steep that I couldn’t make it, the danger was stopping or tearing the bottom off my van in the attempt.
I really should have had my camera on video mode :p
I picked up some speed and hit the rocks at a fair pace, I could hear them smashing all over the bottom of the car and I wondered, not for the first time, what the hell I was doing. It was 10 seconds of sheer hell, I just kept my foot down and prayed to the gods of Karma that I wasn’t going to spending the night in the jungle.
Tags: trousers, wrong turn, tikal, god, mexico, seat, chewing gum, uppsala, bridge, sal, power converter, fishingFixing my car
Day 308
Flores, Guatemala
My car had been making some scrapping noises in Belize when I was driving with Vanessa, seems like the brakes were on the way out. Stupidly I only just thought about getting them fixed since I was always giving lifts to people. I had a very hot day over the bridge with the crazy ex-punk Kara alternating trips to the garage where they had my car jacked up fixing the front brakes and to the local bank with the Western Union office. Kara was in an even worse state than I was over the weekend when I was down to only Q6 (less than a dollar) and only 97p showing in my bank account.
My own fault for not remember to transfer some money before I left Caye Caulker. At least I had some emergency dollars to fall back on, Kara couldn’t even afford water and she had a bad hangover on Sunday. The hostel is now filled with people I don’t know, mostly Dutch and English so I think I will be moving on very soon.
Los Amigos is a great place to hang out and take a few days to process my photos, it might be perfect if it had free wireless Internet but then I wouldn’t get anything done as I would be either surfing or lending my laptop to other people. I had some problems uploading my last few entries to my blog using Live Writer, which is how I write all my posts offline, but upgrading to WordPress 2.6 seems to have fixed it. It also kept the layout of my blog the same which didn’t happen the last time I upgraded. I messed around with the layout so much that getting it to look like it does now would be a major pain.
I spent some time playing with Photoshop too, trying to figure out how to watermark my photographs. You can see the results above which will be the standard from now on. I need to drive some traffic to my site and its no good taking a good shot and then no one knowing where to go to get some more.
Tags: belize, flores guatemala, Guatemala, money, cars, locals, wordpress, brakes, local bankBelize without a map
I finally got my oil changed on my last day in Mexico. I rotated the tyres, changed the air and oil filter and had a confusing conversation about the fuel filter in Spanish. I didn’t care I didn’t understand any more, it was time for country number four on my world tour. After 4 months in Mexico it was time to leave. I had a final breakfast at a local cafe and dumped about 40 coins for my 52 peso bill before heading off the to the border. After seeing all the Belizean cars queuing for fuel I thought it best that I get in the line as well, just as well, I would later learn that gas is $11 a gallon over the border. Why do the Americans complain?!?
The guard at the border hit me for $10 to leave and had the gall to suggest other tourist pay him $25 for the amazing “service” of pointing out where the car import office was. I don’t think so. I sorted out my paperwork and headed over into the free trade zone between the borders. I got my $5 wheel spray and waved off the guys attempt to sell me insurance. I couldn’t just drive through though as one of the customs ‘helpers’ was keen to point out. He jumped in and we went back to get my wheels sprayed, at least that’s where we were going until I told him, to his amazement, that I had already done it. He also wanted to sell me insurance but I said I had no cash. We turned around and went back to the immigration place. Somehow I got away without giving him any money.
I was given 30 days and the same for my car. My papers all in order I drove my car to the border where it was vaguely inspected by the disinterested guard. He mostly wanted to know how much my bike was worth. $100 if I was lucky, I didn’t mention the laptops, camera gear and guitar. All of this business was conducted in English which was nice, its always nice to be understood. I was soon through and went to the office over the border to pick up some insurance. Since its $29B for a week and only $60B for a month I went for the longer time*. You never know. Sadly I learned that the disease of speed bumps has spread to Belize too but the roads weren’t too bad, the lack of signs sent me off down a dirt track that I learned would have soon brought me to my destination but taking no chances, and possessing no map, I turned back to seek out the highway turning I had missed.
A hour or so later I was in Orange Walk and with some local currency in my hand happy to be able to buy a drink. I am slightly ashamed to say I was glad to see the Queens face on a bank note. Kinda feels like coming home somehow. Now should I stay or should I go. Accommodation options in Orange Walk were limited, and most people only stopped to go on the river trip to the local ruins. I had just come from 3 major Mayan ruins so wasn’t that bothered about staying. Belize city was only an hour and a half away with more options, certainly for accommodation so I picked up some supplies and got back on the highway. I say highway… it was a paved road. Mostly without potholes.
Outside the SEA hostel I met the Canadian guy I had been chatting to the previous night but some strange force made me keep going to my other choice, the Seaside Guest House. It sounded so tranquil, serene and peaceful. What could go wrong?
The gate was opened by some aging American dude who obviously had had a few too many beers. He was followed by an older American woman who was shouting at him. I had them pegged as other guests and hoped they wouldn’t cause a problem. I stood in the common area trying to get some service for 10 minutes but there was no one about. It looked like a cool hostel though, lots of drums everywhere and a great library. I found some staff upstairs and it turned out the drunk couple were the owners. Seems like they had been at this all week.
I met up with the other guests, got checked in and a group of us headed over to find some Chinese food. We managed to pick up a local bum who I had asked directions from, which ended up costing me a bottle of coke to get rid of him. We were also on the street it says specifically in the guidebooks not to walk down during the night. 6 people shouldn’t cause a problem, right? Belize city is pretty grotty, the roads are in terrible shape, people hassle you for change everywhere and there is too much trash. Shame really, they have some nice architecture and the working people are friendly enough.
Back at the hostel we found there were another group of guests checking in so we all moved upstairs with a few beers in an attempt to be social. Mitch, the owner, brought us up a couple of drums and we started talking about buying a batch of local rum. His partner Diana had been drunk and embarrassing downstairs with the new guests and she soon came up to have a chat. She then started ranting about being mugged at gunpoint and how the Belizean Tourist Board were going to close them down if they had any more complains. It seems the tourists have been complaining about the hostel. We all wondered why. The other guys seemed to find it highly amusing that Diana seemed to take a shine to me, but at least she was being nice.
It started raining outside and we all felt sorry for poor Mitch who was out getting our booze. He came back and we started doing some serious drinking. Everything was fine, we had the guitars and bongos going.
I found out Vanessa had the Canon 40D and we chatted about photography. She said she was a photographer but I soon caught her out on that one by finding out she didn’t know how to set the white balance :p Faker!
Then everything seemed to go wrong. Diana was getting increasingly drunk and shouting about tourists ripping her off. Mitch managed to calm her down and send her back to bed but she was soon back up and not only shouting at poor Mitch but also now accusing everyone upstairs of not paying our bills. We had a tab open downstairs so thought this wasn’t a problem. I got my guitar out too and was trying to teach Mitch a song when she came over, grabbed the bucket of ice and threw it all over him. I didn’t get wet but I moved my guitar into the wall. I wasn’t impressed!
The rest of the evening consisted of everyone else talking to both of them trying to calm them down but mostly just trying to get rid of them. Mitch wanted to stay with us and chill, Diana wanted to kill him. She came up and kicked the locked door in, was screaming and shouting. We wound up retreating to one of the dorms and whispering behind the doors. Even that wasn’t enough and we got told off for that too. It was a very weird night.
Mitch and Diana. More drama than Mexican Soap.
* 1 day – $12.50B / 2 weeks – $46B
oil change/breakfast/getting rid of change/queue at gas station/border/$25 guard/spray/belize border/insurance-12-30-46-60/wrong road-no signs/orange walk-atm/belize city/heat sink paste/chinese directions/meet the canadian outside SEA/finding hostel/bad roads/drunk owners/hangin downstairs/check in.park up/invited to dinner/olly.jo.vanessa./ATM-shower/belgian couple.john-laurie/walk to chineese/pick up bum for directions/coke/peotry back to hostel/new arrivals downstairs/few beers/row/uncomfortable/go up stairs/rain on baloncy/dog shit/bongos-mitch.diana/diana talking to me/rows restart/mitch goes for rum/guitar/throwing ice/vanessa photographer/diana accusing us of not paying/getting weird/kicking door in/hiding in dorm room/3.3-am
Tags: orange walk, thumb, rv, tourists, queue, set, paperwork, laptops, eveBack in the USA
Day 220
New York, NY
Thankfully felt a lot better after my trouble on the plane and managed to get my bags, onto the train into Penn Station and into a hostel. I didn’t feel like wandering all around Manhattan so looked up a hostel in Starbucks and wandered the few blocks to get to it. $48 for a 4 bed dorm! Might have been better value if I could have gotten up for the breakfast but it didn’t happen. I wandered around for a couple of hours and had an early night.
Next day I packed up my bags and jumped onto the Subway to where I would be spending my second night in NY, the floor of a Daniella‘s hotel room. She was over for a course for a couple of days and generously let me share her room. I dumped my bags and set off on a mission to buy a new camera lens. My 17-55mm was good, great in fact, but I was constantly finding myself wishing for more reach. A 70-300mm would suit the bill perfectly and despite the fact that B&H, the best camera shop in NY, if not the world, was closed for passover the prices were pretty much the same all over the city. I walked up past Union Square, which I didn’t even recognise in the sunshine and walked west along 17th Street to the Camera store of the same name. $400 poorer I could now stalk celebrities! After a lunch of falafels and snapple I decided to wear out some shoe leather and try to find something interesting to snap. Sadly the track of my route will never be published as I had managed to lose my GPS tracker! It was my own stupid fault for attaching it to my belt and then putting on my backpack. Bleh.
I headed east and then south, ending up under the brooklyn bridge and finding I could photograph birds with some success at last!
I also checked out the World Trade Center site again, and although construction has started on the new towers it still looked much the same as it did the last time I was there in 2002. A bloody mess!
It was a nice afternoon walk back up to the hotel, I was absolutly knackered but I had arranged to meet Dani when she got off her bus…. I took my laptop out to the local Starbucks but for some reason didn’t bother checking my mail…. duh!
I sat waiting from 11pm until 1am and she didn’t show up. I tried in vain to call her but just ended up shouting at the stupid phones in frustration. Her bus broke down and she finally turned up at 2am. If I had checked my mail I would have had a nice sleep :p
wander past union/can’t find shop/17th str photo/wander west/photo bridge/WTC/walked north/use net/meet Dani/2am/sleep on floor.
Tags: sleep, 55mm, blog, gps, backpack, USA, new camera, nap, laptops, hostel, Travel, photographs, starbucks, eveRace to the Ferry
Day 159
La Paz, BCS, Mexico
It was time to leave Baja after nearly 4 weeks of fun but the whole of Mexico was still stretching before me. We got up, packed up and made our way back up to La Paz to get the ferry back to the mainland. The ferry left at 3pm, but you had to be there 3 hours before, ie noon. It was a simple calculation to make and a simple mistake. The road went north from the RV park and so did we. It curved around the coastal road and traffic was light. We passed the places we probably should have been camping for free but then I can confess we sneaked out in the morning without paying for the second night :p Roland‘s idea! The road became really quite bad, strange for a main road, sometimes the fallen rock debris forced us into one lane and the tarmac had fallen into the cliff on the right more than once. Up and down, around treacherous bends and over rutted sections we finally came to a place where the tarmac ended and it was just a dirt track. This obviously wasn’t the main road! We needed to go inland to get back to La Paz and we had just driven for half an hour north on the wrong road.
Nice View on the Wrong Road |
Cursing our stupidity we turned around and went back on the same terrible road, now an hour behind schedule and wondering if we should bother going to La Paz at all. We had been to the terminal before and it states quite specifically that you must be there 3 hours before. We would be there 2 hours before, but it wasn’t an international flight, and hey! We’re in Mexico! I was half hoping La Curva would be open for breakfast but it wasn’t and we found the proper road and put the pedal to the metal. Around 1pm we made it to La Paz and then went up the 25km to the ferry port but we need not have hurried, they would actually sell tickets up to 45 minutes before departure so we stood in the queue, I paid $180 for a 6 hour ferry ride and we went for a much deserved breakfast of fish tacos from the van near the entrance. So long Baja, hello mainland Mexico!
| The ferry ride was pretty mundane, Roland was kicked out of my van and I had to negotiate the boarding alone, which was mostly waiting around for the lorries to get on board. It was a pretty big ferry, and I was soon sitting on a ramp inside and trying to work out what I needed for the journey. I took so long that eventually the ramp behind me was raised and I stood there for another 15 minutes waiting with a deck hand for it to move. When I eventually set off to find another way out and wandering the |  The scary ferry ramp! |
lower decks for 5 minutes I ended up at the same point I started but with the ramp now down. Well I do like to explore. I found Roland and we stood in line for our included meal before going out to watch the ferry depart. A completely unremarkable journey, it soon went dark but the wind was enough to get us inside pretty quick and we read, I watched the end of ‘Stardust’ until my batteries ran out (the ferry had a non standard plug ) and we tried to ignore bad American movies dubbed in to Spanish.
|
Why is Roland wearing a dress? |
Roland had organised another Couchsurfing host in Los Mocis, a town of a quarter million people some miles inland from the port, so we gave him a ring and met him at a supermarket near the highway. Roberto was a big guy, talks good English and the only host in the area, so I guess we were lucky. He showed us the room we would share and then took us out for some 10pm tacos and we discussed a few things to do over the weekend. He works as a lawyer so I guess out timing was pretty good, however Roland had to head off to pick up his father soon so the timing was getting tight….
Waiting on the ferry…
up/wrong road/la paz/ferry terminal/shrimps/ferry/meal/laptop power/coffee/roberto/dinner
Tags: animals, couch, mom, tent, job, laptop, whore, stupidityLooking for a puncture
Day 161
Los Barilles, BCS, Mexico
God it was hot! Happily I had camped closest to the wall and didn’t have too much sun on my tent in the morning, but I woke as usual at 9.30am and prepared myself for the day. After 4 days of being stinky I had another shower but only for pure enjoyment of being clean. We had kind of decided to stay another day. There wasn’t really anything to do but there was a beach nearby and a pool. When Roland finally rolled out of his blue oven we started chatting about trying to find the puncture in my air mattress in the pool and that became the activity of the day, although not in the pool. We blew it up and found one large hole using water but no more. The pool + facemask idea would have been better I’m sure as it was still leaking. We also removed everything from the van in an attempt to discover what had happened to the bottle of vodka Roland had bought in San Lucas the week before but it was gone baby, gone. Someone is going to have a nice surprise at one of the 2 campsites we dropped it at I had solved my GPS marker problem and then started looking at compressing the tracks a bit better. I was also terribly out of date in my blog and despite a few days effort was still 12 days behind. Roland fell asleep and I took advantage of the nearby electricity outlet to try to get back up to date.
Eventually hunger called to us both and we took a walk into town to fix our appetites and Internet addiction. We went for Tacos at La Curva Restaurant and had simply the best tacos yet. First they heaped fresh nachos and salsa in front of us, with guacamole to die for, and then we had fish and shrimp tacos which were piled high for only 20 pesos each. Simply stunning food and just the thing for my appetite. I got another car key cut while Roland checked his email; we had found a place to stay in Los Mochis, the next town after Topolobampo where we would get off the ferry. It seemed likely we would try to get the ferry the next day and Roland gave Roberto in Los Mochis a ring to confirm. We enjoyed our last evening in Baja by revealing to Roland my video game emulator collection on my laptop and he spent a few frustrating hours trying to get Street Fighter to play properly with my cheap gamepad. When he eventually gave up and went to bed I stayed up far too late watching Gone Baby, Gone which was pretty good (8/10) and then despite my previous loathing for Family Guy watched Blue Shift, their Star Wars parody and enormous fun. It looks like I’ll have to start downloading all of them again soon, if only I could find a decent Internet connection….
lazy/puncture/shrimps at la curva/gone baby gone/blue shift
Tags: drinks, USA, dorms, eve, bam, shrimp, one of theLooking for a shower
Day 160
Los Barilles, BCS, Mexcico
Roland had most of the shade under the campsite tree and hence was getting more sleep than me, I got up at 9.30 as usual when the suns heat on the tent became unbearable and went to work on my latest obsession, putting the date information on my GPS track. Using Excel I was slowly working out how to search through the information until the date changed and then put in a marker which would also be a link to that days blog entry, but my lack of knowledge of excel macros was holding me back and I couldn’t understand why it was giving me errors. My laptop battery doesn’t last very long anyway and Roland blearily enquired from his tent which bastard was running a generator so close to his head so early… I told him it was 10.30am and shocked him into getting up. We had kind of decided to leave and go north somewhat, if only to look for a shower. Roland is cool, if I had wanted to stay another day it would have been no problem, but we were both getting a bit smelly and the milk had run out! :p
Back on the appalling road we learned it soon became sealed and then we only had to watch for the usual insane pot holes dotted around the highway and the ever present ‘topes’ or speed bumps. There was an occasional cow wandering too and we saw a couple of escaped horses but I kept my speed down enough to avoid such dangers. Later on we saw a rolled car, complete with emergency vehicles right outside a school along with scores of on looking children and a body on the ground… Not the way I want to go…
Up at the next town, Las Lagunas, we drove around looking for a Taco place and checked out the beach. There was no surf as promised in our guidebooks so we looked, reversed and drove off towards Santiago. We needed somewhere to camp, with a shower and we hoped to find somewhere there. The weather is just great now, its mid twenties all day and the nights are usually cloudless with a nearly full moon, cold enough to enjoy a fire but not so cold to be uncomfortable. Perfect weather, it can’t last. When we eventually found Santiago we discovered a charming little town with no cheap food and no where to camp. The one hotel/bar in town was no longer allowing camping and again we couldn’t find a Taco place. I was getting very hungry now after only eating half a papaya in the morning but Los Barriles was only 25km away and I thought I could make it.
It would take longer since seeing my first dead Mexican…
Los Barriles is gringo-ville but still we couldn’t find a cheap taco stand, there was a nice seafood restaurant though and after not paying for accommodation for 10 days or so could afford to spend the $10 on the seafood soup which was very tasty but not very filing. I will get the special Tacos tomorrow then, Marlin, Octopus and Shrimp. If I didn’t eat seafood now I would be losing lots of weight or possibly ballooning out on cheesy quesadillas. The town was dotted with RV sites and after checking out the nice, but empty beach we decided to splurge on the $13 to park up and get a hot shower. The RV park is really just a big car park for Americans but lots of them stay here for months and make their spots really quite nice, planting fauna around and even building their own shower blocks on their sites. We settled for a place to pitch our tents and I got the usual regular comment about my Massachusetts licence plate. ‘Yes I have come quite a way….’.
Tonight was a lunar eclipse at 8pm so we showered, went to get beer and went over to the pot luck by the beach to watch the show. Roland didn’t know what a pot-luck was and seemed disappointed when I explained it wouldn’t be a party for stoners :p It was moderately cloudy but regular breaks meant that we saw most of what was going on . I have seen 2 solar eclipses but can’t remember if I have every seen a lunar eclipse. They happen regularly enough but its usually too cold or late to watch them. Either that or I have something more interesting to do. It wasn’t exactly mind blowing so we finished our beers and then went looking for some action in town, which basically meant we went for a walk because there was nothing going on at all…
Doing gps logs/papaya/sealed road/crappy beach at next town/no camping at santiago/up to los Barillos/seafood soup/shower at camground/130 pesos/out for beer/lunar eclipse/looking for bar/charlie wilsons war
Tags: sea, tent, stoners, marker, macros, rv park, gps, blog, sleep, camping, set, laptopBack and forth in San Lucas
Day 157
San Lucas, BCS, Mexico
We returned to the supermarket on the advice of our neighbour to buy more supplies for Los Arbolitos beach which was in the middle of nowhere and on a terrible road. We didn’t want to be driving around looking for food, we would be pretty much trapped with whatever we took with us. Betsabe was at church, it seemed Sunday had rolled around again without us noticing but had invited us to lunch and we drove over to sit and chat and leech her Internet connection. Expecting to spend the night at a dodgy beach I had left my laptop at her place, uploading photos and downloading movies. She is a Lost addict and was stunned to learn that the fourth series has recently started and I spent quite a while earning a extremely positive CS feedback by copying the latest 3 episodes to her laptop and ensuring they play. She made delicious lunch and I finally got to eat cactus which was really nice, although I have no idea how she made it. Roland is the chef, I hope he took notes.
Lunch was late though and I started wondering where we were going to spend the night. When we eventually got going it was 3pm and Betsabe drove us over to La Playita beach, which we had been looking for, before putting us on the road along the coast up toward Los Arbolitos. Of course all this passed me by as everyone was chatting in Spanish, but the road was pretty appalling, sandy with regular bottom scraping rocks. Betsabe got her Toyota saloon over the obstacles with no problems and I followed, with an increasing sense of uncertainty and dread. No one was camping up here, the road was bad, the sun would be setting soon and I only had a quarter of a tank of gas. Not a good combination for a trip out into the Baja wilderness. We came to the first town after half an hour and I decided we should go back to the original beach and come back better prepared, if at all. We said goodbye to Betsabe and her friends and once again went to set up our tents by Barb, our Canadian neighbour, who once again wanted to know why we hadn‘t left :p
Tags: cactus, crap, camping, sal, tent, dread, sod, photosDesert driving
Day 137
Catavina, Baja, Mexico
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We went for breakfast at the hotel where Rob worked and filled up. The place was pretty quiet, which probably makes it a good place to work, or rather to sit and read and get paid. They even had a ‘mall’ ie a room with stuff to buy. Rob was a great host and really showed us a nice time in La Mision, I can see why he came for 2 weeks and stayed for 3 years. I’m not sure I would find it completely authentic or comfortable to stay in such a ex-pat community but it would be tempting. I want to get a taste of the real Mexico though, dirty toilets and all. We gave Rob and Nathan a hug and once again it was just me and Sheena. We had to get her a tourist card in Ensanada which was an hour down the toll road but they decided that since she didn’t get one at the border she would be fined $5 for the day. We tried lying and saying we just drove down but they wouldn’t budge. We didn’t tell them we’d been in the country for 4 days and it should be a $20 fine… The stupid thing was that we couldn’t pay at the bank which was 3 meters from the office but had to drive into town to pay it before returning to get the card. Stupid bureaucracy isn’t limited to Mexico and you can’t argue with such stupidity…
We followed the road south for a few hours along the coast, stopping for some nice fish tacos in a converted bus when we got hungry but we had gotten up too late to make our goal of Guerro Negro that night. We would have to stop and there wasn’t a Couchsurfing host for a hundred miles to throw ourselves on. It was hot and dusty and we had left the deserts near La Mision blooming emerald green in the late winter rains far behind. Now we were back to classic Texas landscapes with huge deformed boulders punctuating the fields of cactus and hardy desert plants. We stopped for photos and in a bout of foolish bravado plucked 2 cactus in a stupid attempt to look like mickey mouse, getting a few bloody fingers for my interference.
Just before the sun went down we made it to a small town called Catavina and it seemed like a good idea to stop for the night. The first hotel was very basic and was $350 for a night, the next place was $1000 for the night so we went back to the first one, but when we checked the rooms they had all been recently painted and I wasn’t going to spend money to get an overnight headache and cancer in 20 years. Why they chose to paint them all at once is beyond me… I think I was saying something about painting a smell instead of talking about the smelly paint but they understood me enough to direct us to another place 1km away where you could camp. Sheena didn’t understand the whole bed in the van idea but I soon showed her the way it fitted together.
It was far too early to go to sleep though so we went back into the town to sit in the expensive hotel to drink a few beers and wait impatiently for our free nachos! Back at the campground we admired the lack of light pollution out in the desert and lay in the back watching movies on the laptop. For some reason I put my boogie board back on the roof…
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la mision breakfast/sheena FMT/bannk/coast/tolls/hot/cacti/boulders/catavina/smelly room/expensive/camping /beers in hotel/setting up the van/watching redition
Tags: mexico, money, cards, mickey mouse, sleep, beds, fish tacos, stupidity, sun, tourist card, Travel, toiletsLocked in
Day 132 LA
After the party I woke late, really late, in fact I only woke up when Bonnie and Suki went out the front door trapping me in the apartment. She left me a note and a key though but I could only use it to open the door to the apartment, I couldn’t get into the lobby or operate the lift. If I wanted to go out I would have to wait for someone to come into the building and hope they were so unconscious of security that they would let me in. I thought it best not to risk it and just hung out in the apartment all day, writing my blog, surfing, relaxing and watching movies on my new laptop. The latest harry potter movie was devoured and enjoyed and I managed 70% of Transformers before I had to turn it off. Simply awful nonsense!
Tags: sim, laptop, apartment, blog, Travel, transformers, pot, nonsense, harry potterTravel scrabble??
Day 127 Tucson AZ
I spent most of the day installing Ubuntu on my laptop which worked without a problem but getting it to connect to the Internet wasn’t happening. The wireless drivers for this Aspire 5520 don’t work natively and I couldn’t get the madwifi drivers to work or ndiswrapper. No sound either but I got the graphics to work ok, it looks good in 1280×800. I ended up downloading the 64-bit version of Ubuntu and switching to that, not that it made any difference. I was semi scared of messing with the hard drives since I have XP set up nicely now and didn’t want to screw it but it was ok. The laptop comes with a 10gb partition for recovering the system but I had not compunction wiping that for Linux. I should be able to connect through my other laptop to the Internet if I can figure out how to fix the wireless problem. A laptop that can’t connect to the net is neither use nor ornament.
Lashel was out to Uni for a while but when she came back she volunteered to try to show me some of Tucson’s more wacky sights, specifically some kind of crazy welded truck out in the suburbs somewhere but we couldn’t find it. When I found out Tucson has a Govindas restaurant I was so there! I love those places and we sat on the floor cushions filing our faces with yummy curry and salads chatting about Lashel’s forthcoming trip to India. I’m guessing she’s going to be having a great time! I decided I should probably leave the next day and hence we wouldn’t be drinking, well, only coffee. The three of us went out to Coffee X Change with a scrabble board for a game. I haven’t played it since I was a kid but Grace didn’t kick my ass too much, at least I didn’t come last! :p I protested weakly back at the house and got my guitar out to see if I could remember any songs. The girls were a gracious audience but my voice was a mess, all gravely and uneven. At least I wasn’t so horribly embarrassed and coerced like I was at the ski resort. They forced me to play until 3am, so much for an early night eh? :p
Tags: guitars, girls, forthcoming trip, laptop, Travel, natively, coffee, scrabble board, having a great time, faces, india, trucks, audienceStuck in Tucson
Day 122 Tucson Az
Well after the excitement of yesterday I was reasonably pleased to sit in Starbucks updating my blog and messing about with my website all day. I also wasted a few happy hours playing Portal which runs ok on the new laptop I am pleased to report. I was expecting/hoping to hear from Tamara who is a fellow Couchsurfer and also on her way to Mexico but the site was down yesterday and she hasn’t logged on for a week. If I don’t hear from her tomorrow I’ll be thinking I went through all that shit for nothing. The silver cloud is that it looks like there will be a CS party on Sunday so maybe it wont be a total waste. I discovered my site hasn’t been visible to the Google bots since August last year so most of my hilarious blog posts are wont be searchable on Google. Hopefully I have sorted that out and I was adding tags to my posts last week so eventually people should start coming across my stuff on random searches as long as the tags are relevant. I’m a bit annoyed at myself for this but I know it will take a while before I become a notorious blogger :p
I also attempted to replace my front light that hasn’t worked for a couple of days. It was a bit of a pain doing it without much in the way of tools but I replaced it with a new one I bought in Nogales and it still doesn’t work! I guess I’d better check the original one was ok first before I draw any conclusions but I think tomorrow I’ll be checking all the fuses out.
Tags: nogales, fuses, cs party, random searches, silver cloud, tamara, logsWelcome to Mexico!
Day 117
Well I left it until the very last day but I finally left the States on my trip south. I wasn’t going to be in Mexico for a long time as I was hoping they would let me back in for at least a while so I could pick up a fellow Couchsurfer in Tucson and help alleviate some of my costs. That’s if they would let me in. First I had the problem of being let out of the US. Well, that’s easy, you just drive over the border, but my problem was that if I didn’t hand in my visa waiver form I would be hard pressed to ever get back in. I grabbed a final starbucks coffee and headed to the border. Parking up I had to walk all the way around the checkpoints and then stand in line waiting to see an immigration officer. When I finally got to her she was so brain dead from asking all the same questions to the Mexicans she even said them to me.
‘”How long are you planning on staying in the US?”
“I’m not, its my last day, I need to leave”
Of course, this she already knew as it was the first thing I had told her. She then asked me all the other questions I had heard each time I went through the border but I wasn’t really worried… I didn’t get a stamp either, I just pray she processed my form properly. Back in Juarez it felt like coming home and I went looking for the highway 2 west and on to Nogales. Using my Mexican map it wasn’t to hard to find, although I took a wrong turn and ended driving about 5 miles along another highway which was split by concrete bollards. I didn’t think I would ever get back on track… That’s when I nearly got myself into trouble. I was so used to seeing a gas station every 20 miles I sent off into the Mexican desert with only a quarter of a tank…
Tags: coffee, waves, wrong turn, mexico, immigration officer, starbucks, nogales, checkpoints, maps, brain, tank, map, immigration, couchsurfer, pumps, desert, carsLast day in the States, and a frustrating one!
Day 116
El Paso, Tx
I woke up in the Walmart carpark for hopefully the last time and went back to Circuit City once more to buy my laptop… I got the same sales clerk as before and he knew what I wanted, a $400 14″ laptop…. Not in stock and the delivery had come. I wasn’t happy! Why the fuck was I still in El Paso waiting on Circuit City lies. I explained to the guy that I had been waiting for one for 4 days now and wasn’t going to wait another day. They had the 15″ models but they were took much and only the display models. He went to speak to his manager and I stood around waiting. It seemed he might be able to get me a deal, he came back and seemed to say as much but when he went to speak to his boss again he couldn’t do anything for me. Wuss. I asked to speak to a manager which he didn’t like but he said he would see me. I then stood by the office for 20 minutes waiting for the guy, people kept asking if they could help me and I kept saying I was waiting for the manager and he knew I was waiting… I knew as soon as I saw him he didn’t give a shit that I had been told 2 different dates when the laptops would come and I would have happily bought the display model on Wednesday but he didn’t seem very interested. However I got him to agree to sell me the 15″ AMD model for $550 instead of the $700 it was marked as. It wasn’t really the result I was hoping for but I was getting increasingly frustrated by my old laptop and my lack of ability to burn DVDs or watch movies so I agreed. I even got the clerk to just give it to me, since he at first wanted to wipe it and reinstall Vista. That would have been a complete a waste of time. I went next door to Best Buy to buy a case for it and spent the rest of the day installing XP on it before treating myself to a nice hotel for my final night in America. Tomorrow, I would HAVE to leave!
Tags: display model, walmart, old laptop, carpark, display models, rest of the day, nice hotel, eve, america tomorrow, best buy, last time, salCircuit City Sucks!
Day 115
El Paso, Tx
After hauling all the stuff from my room that I wasn’t willing to leave in the carpark of the dodgy hotel I set off to buy my new laptop. I got there quite early and seemingly too early for the truck. I asked, waited and was told it hadn‘t arrived yet, should be noon. Ok, I said and went off back to Starbucks to implement some SEO into my site and waste a few more hours. At noon I went back and then found to my dismay that the truck wouldn’t be coming after all today and would be in the following day… Bleh. Now what was I going to do, I had already wasted 3 days in this boring city. I took the chance to investigate the mega cheap hotel again, at $26 you can’t go wrong… or so I thought. They only had 2 rooms left and something made me ask for the key before I said I would take it and I’m glad I did. The place was overflowing with McDonalds trash, the sheets were filthy and it would take a big overhaul to make me pay to stay there. Simply disgusting and made the $31 look like a palace! I went for some noodles and decided to double check whether the truck with my laptop had arrived after all. Not only had it not come but the display model was now gone! I had asked if I could buy this on Wednesday but was told ‘no way’ and now it was missing, presumably sold. Great. But I was assured the laptops would arrive on Saturday. I hoped so, I only had one more day in the US….
Tags: starbucks, noodles, trash, el paso, bleh, sim, boring city, laptops, heap, circuit city, dismay, hadn, laptopGoodbye Mexico
Day 113
El Paso, Tx
I only had 4 days left on my visa and wasn’t really sure what my plan was now going to be. Dani was leaving back to Montreal the next day but at breakfast I was told ‘so you’re leaving today then?’ and I didn’t quite know what to say. It was kind of bizarre living with a family that all speak rapid Spanish, are all quite friendly but I wasn’t able to really communicate with them. Dani was kind of trapped as well, it would have been nice to set off to see something else after Christmas but then I became trapped and bereft of options. I still had a nice, and vitally, interesting time, but its always good to be able to decide your own destiny. My brother had finally asked me to be his best man at Christmas so I now had a date to alter my trip and I wasn’t sure I liked it. Freedom is probably the best thing in life, and I wanted to enjoy it as much as I could. But now I was about to be set free again I hadn‘t the faintest idea of what to do with it. We went and picked up Dani‘s laptop from the Cafe and then went to buy some flowers for our hosts and some tequila for Dani‘s dad. I said goodbye to Dani and for want of something better to do went back into the States…
This time I was stopped at the border and searched properly, but the guards were quite nice about it, asked if I was writing a blog, were slightly interested in the fact that I could own my own car in the states but were happy to let me come back in. Seems crossing the border was becoming less and less stressful…. :p I went back to Circuit City to see if they had any cheap laptops in stock. They didn’t but I was assured they would be back in on Friday. That was when the truck would be turning up. Hmmmm. Should I stay or should I go…. Checking the couchsurfing site I learned there was an American girl heading south into Mexico around the 12th and she would be flying into Tucson which was pretty close. I would have to leave the states on the 6th but there was a chance I could get back in, my Australian friend Renae had done it. I decided to get a cheap laptop on Friday and then drive over to the border at Nogales. It was only 2 days.
In the meantime I went and bought 6 months insurance for Mexico for $200 and went to watch ‘Aliens vs Predator Requiem’ which was simply terrible (5/10) followed by a night in a cheap hotel.
Tags: laptop, heap, couchsurfers, girls, sea, aliens, Travel, decider, couch, american, own destiny, insurance, flowersDumbass Dani :p
Day 112
Juarez, Mexico
The first day of the year was spent lazing around the house. Dani and I went into the city in the evening (despite my lack of insurance) and sat in Sanborns coffee shop using their wifi until the kicked us out. When we got home we realised she had left her laptop there. Racing back at 1am we learned it was locked up safely but they couldn’t give it to us then. At least we would have something to do the following day…
Tags: Travel, shopping, mexico, insurance, coffee, dani, laptop, juarez mexico, day of the year