Archive for the 'Travel' Category

After nearly three days of travel (SF -> Miami (overnight) -> Quito -> Guayaquil (overnight) -> Baltra, Galapagos), we arrived in the Galapagos Islands Baltra Airport to a sunny, warm, late morning.

Like almost all but the oldest islands in the Galapagos archipelago, Baltra is fairly flat with a central set of volcanic hills. The vegetation tends to be relatively low growing, the ground littered with volcanic rock and the place is generally inhospitable to mammals.

Even at the airport, it was already readily apparent that the animal life of the Galapagos was utterly unique in its general lack of fear of people. Waiting for customs, we were greeted by a handful of lava lizards, finches, and a Galapagos locust or two. Save for the locust, the critters were far, far, more concerned about territorial rights amongst their peers than they were of us.

We then took a short bus ride to the Endeavor, the National Geographic / Lindblad ship that would be our home for the next week.

Photo aside (there’ll be a lot of these):Along the way, I took a photo of the ship out the bus window. The bus was a good 1/2 mile — maybe 2/3rds — from the boat when I took this photo. It was hot and humid and there was considerable heat haze in the air. As a result, the full sized image of the boat looks more like a watercolor than a photograph! Neat!

After being greeted by the crew, a nice lunch, and safety orientation, we spent the afternoon hiking around North Seymour Island for our first real encounter with the amazing wildlife of the Galapagos.

Roger, Christine and I spent one week of April 2010 in the Galapagos Islands on board the National Geographic Endeavor, a vessel in the fleet of Lindblad Expeditions and the National Geographic Society.

While the Endeavor is definitely a luxurious cruise, featuring great food, fully climate controlled interior (the ship spends part of the year in the arctic/antarctic), spa service, and all other services you might expect in a fine resort, this was no trip of relaxation and total disconnect. Every day was filled with opportunities for hiking on or snorkeling around the various islands of the Galapagos archipelago.

If you so chose (and I did!), every day was filled with opportunities to get up close and personal with all of the unique life of the Galapagos. And it wasn’t just a sightseeing tour. The staff included seven naturalists deeply versed in the wildlife, geology and history of the Galapagos who patiently answered all questions and offered deep explanations and observations of the islands and all wildlife therein.

The itinerary covered many of the islands and quite a few islets in the Galapagos. Itinerary details are below and will be filled with details and links as I write up each entry across quite a few upcoming blog posts.

Throughout the itinerary, hyperlinks will be to various posts on the weblog and to flickr photo galleries.


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We have spent the last week in Kauai, Hawaii having a bit of a break from life.

Awesome time.

While sitting on the beach, a guy showed up with a skimboard and started carving the waves of Kalapaki beach. A skimboard is a wonderful way to turn rather small waves into a bit of fun.

He was having a good run at tossing parts of each wave this way and that.

But even the small waves can bite back…

Fortunately, spout over handle in the water leads to a relatively soft landing.

(Thanks, Corbin, for the correction!)

Roger has a way with bugs. We have often called him a “bug whisperer” because of his ability to capture butterflies and their subsequent willingness to simply hang out on his hands, shirt, head, whatever as if it were a perfectly normal thing for a bug to do.

As he has gotten older, his fascination has expanded to include frogs, lizards, and turtles.

Roger captured this fine lizard around the house in Seaside, CA (near Monterey) that we stayed in over the weekend. Wonderful house.

Dessert climate, but across the street from the Frog Pond Wetland Preserve. More on that in a moment.

As best as we can tell, this lizard is an example of a Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus Occidentalis) or one of its subspecies.

The distinctive blue belly gives strong indication of both the species and that it is likely a male.

This particular lizard was in the midst of shedding.

The western fence lizard is common throughout the sub-6,000 feet of elevation areas of the west and northwest.

These lizards are commonly fed upon by ticks. However, they are not a transmission vector for Lyme disease. Instead, the lizards carry some kind of natural anti-bacterial agent that kills the lime disease in the ticks!

Areas with western fence lizards, and subspecies, have a notable reduction in the number of lyme infected ticks.

A very good lizard to have around!

Meet the juvenile black swallowtail larva (I’m pretty darned sure). This little guy looks like a piece of bird pooh for a reason.

Specifically, it is employing feces camouflage. By resembling a bit of bird poop, the caterpillar makes itself look singularly unappetizing during the vulnerable first part of its life.

And by “little guy”, I do mean little. This worm was exactly 3/16ths of an inch long — just about 5mm long.

No, really, about the size of a grain of rice.

That leaf? It is the end of a parsley leaf.

I was wrong. This is not a swallowtail larva. It is most likely of the Brush-footed butterfly family (Nymphalidae). Swallowtail caterpillars of this size look very similar — similarly bird poop like — but do not have spines.

It is amazing how quickly they grow. Within only a few days, that little pooh-pillar turns into a rather stunning green worm that will grow to up to 2″ in length.

Not so coincidentally, the caterpillar features a new defense mechanism. When harassed, it sticks two bright orange antenna out of its head that stink horribly.

Even without the antenna, the caterpillar’s head is really quite striking.

I tried to get a shot with the antenna sticking up, but discovered that the caterpillar seems to fairly rapidly learn that any particular stimulus is not threatening and will stop wasting energy defending against harmless “attacks”.

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In the forest, the various bugs common to the leafy undercover were waking up, too.

This is a red velvet mite (Trombidiidae).

They play a critical, if slightly surprising, role in the health of the forest. Namely, the larval stage is parasitic and effectively controls populations of locust, grasshoppers and other plant destroying insects.

As adults, the red velvet mite is a ferocious predator that will take out mites and insects many times it size. In particular, the mite seems to favor insects that eat bacteria and fungus.

Thus, the mites help ensure that fungus and bacteria remain abundant within the forest and, by doing so, help ensure that the decomposition process remain high.

While the red velvet mite is related to chiggers and ticks, they do not bite humans and are quite the sociable little bugs.

I have no clue what this bug is other than “beautiful”.

It has gigantic jaws for its size, clearly designed for biting and ripping.

The bug really is that brilliant color of metallic blue. Even more amazing, the bug flew a few feet and landed on a tree. When the sun strikes it at a different angle, it turns a gorgeous metallic green.

Unfortunately, it moved too quickly for me to snap a photo, but I’ll definitely be keeping a lookout for these on our next visit.

More bugs on the click-through….

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We are in Florida for Easter, visiting family.

Roger, of course, captured a couple of toads and a frog within the first 5 minutes of being here.

On closer inspection, we have found that there are tons of critters in the area.

This was a lizard that Roger caught on the back porch. We let it go and watched as he hopped from branch to branch for a bit.

Beyond this photo — my favorite — I also snapped a neat photo of the lizard on saw grass and another of the lizard walking on a bit of tree branch.

There is a bit of a swamp in the backyard, so this really isn’t much of a surprise.

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On Sunday, we headed down to the Claysville Store in Claysville, Missouri for lunch.

Claysville is an old rivertown that was pretty much defunct until recently. The Missouri river is huge and the “river bottoms” it flows through is even larger — miles wide. While decades ago Claysville was a bustling town where cargo was transferred from river to rail, the river shifted such that it flows almost a mile away from the town now.

Out of the outright stupidity that was the death of the railroads in the United States has come one gem, though, and it is breathing new life into river towns like Claysville.

Specifically, the Rails to Trails program and the creation of the Katy Trail. The Katy trail passes right by Claysville and, like many other river towns, a business or two has sprung up to serve the bikers and hikers that pass along the trail.

In the case of Claysville, it is the Claysville Store. Owned and run by a family in the weekends — in their spare time — it has become quite the hot little lunch spot.

On Sunday, they open at 12:30. We showed up a little before noon and drove around the bottoms for a bit. We returned at 12:10 and a couple of customers had arrived. By 12:30 the parking lot — the lawn in front of the restaurant and the shoulder of the road across road (gravel) — was full.

Reservations only for this particular hole in the wall on the weekends. However, they are happy to fit in a handful of hikers/bikers off the trail.

Upon sitting down, they bring tea, lemonade, water, or soda and a big plate of piping hot fresh cooked biscuits. Delicious amazing biscuits that really need no butter, but are definitely even more delectable with drippy buttery goodness.

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Just some random notes…

I’m staying at the Hotel Adante. Good bandwidth and a nice walk to Moscone. Bandwidth is not via wireless, though, as each room has an ethernet port and they have free ethernet cables at the front desk. Airport Express is quite useful for sharing that connection..This is actually the second time I stayed here for WWDC, the first being my first year as an Apple employee in 2003.

Interesting neighborhood. Once block in the wrong direction and it can be a bit dodgy. One block the other way and it is incredibly pricy. Some amazing food in the area, though.

Speaking of, I ate dinner at Bordobudur this evening. Excellent fresh authentic indonesian cuisine for a very reasonable price. Had delicious grilled salmon with bean sprouts. Highly reccomend the place.

Had a fairly amusing encounter on the way to Moscone this morning. Ran into a dude begging for money near the conference center:

beggar dude: Spare some change?

Me: Don’t have any.

bd: Would your answer change if I asked you in Objective-C?

Me: If I had change, it would…

That had my laughing out loud, but for reasons beyond the obvious contextual humor. Shortly after WWDC last year, I took on the role of engineering manager of the Objective-C team (which explains the relative quiet around these parts over the last 10 months or so).

So, yeah, that was pretty damned funny. If I see the dude again, I’ll definitely give him some change.

I did find him again. Gave him a buck and had a pretty funny conversation about the whole thing.

Start of day 3… brushing teeth with Tequila again. Mmm… Pura Sangre Blanco. I really need toothpaste. After rolling out of bed, grabbing breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we strapped all of our stuff to the van and headed to Tequila Espolon. Good-bye to the Hotel Santa Barbera — if you ever go to Arandas, it is an awesome place to stay.

Tequila Espolon is located on the outskirts of the town of Arandas in the middle of huge fields of Agave, mostly their own. Espolon is a delicious highlands tequila, with the aged product carrying through hints of mocha/caramel and an excellent spice. Excellent, solid product. Beautiful bottles, too, with embossed metalized labels.

Definitely a worthy addition to any bar.

Read on for a photo tour of Espolon’s tequila making process…
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