Expired fun

Found a vintage camera shop in Buenos Aires selling old expired film. Going to have some fun with some old Ektar 1000 from '94!

Buenos Aires is closed

Our first day in Buenos Aires and the streets are deserted and all the shops are closed.

Turns out we have arrived on Argentina's national day!

We did find where all the people were when we found a large street fair.

When it rains, it pours

Just when we thought we had managed to navigate through 17 hours of flight time trouble free, Aatya spewed all over Gwen's shirt, followed by spilling wine all over Gwen's trousers with a solid kick to the tray table.

All done in the space of 2 minutes and one hour to go before landing!

A stalled start (or a lucky break?)

We should be in the air flying to Buenos Aires at this very moment.

But a malfunctioning plane has scuppered that so instead we are still in NYC until tomorrow morning (I'm not sure that an airport hotel counts as NYC though!).

Something similar happened in London but in that case we were further along by being in the plane but stuck on the tarmac!


There is some good that has come out of it. Our lack of an evidence showing we would be leaving Argentina meant that the airline weren't going to let us board since Argentina only allows visa free visits for a maximum of 90 days (less than our itinerary).

Access to the hotel business centre means we are now booked to leave Argentina by ferry in 2 weeks. Hopefully we will actually make it onboard tomorrow morning.

Location:New York,United States

First Post (again)

Only 3 days left before packing up to go on a 4 month trip to South America (Aatya is excited anyway!).

So thought it would be a good idea to start thinking of some sort of itinerary.

We have flights coming in and out of Buenos Aries (BSAS) so the itinerary is a loop. Being Winter, we will head north first before heading South so that when we are in the deep south (if we do get there), the days will be getting longer.

So after some time in BSAS, we will head north upto Rio, and then head over to the west coast and trek south from there.

An unexpected swim, part dos

Yesterday, I took from Gwen's lead by taking to the waters with a camera still attached to me.

I'm in the tiny village of Tortuguera in Costa Rica. The adjacent beach is the nesting place for more than 100,000 green turtles. Viewing them can only occur at night time so during the day, we went out to view the wildlife in the national park located south of the village.

The standard way to do this is with a guide in a canoe, where only the guide is doing the paddling. We wanted to have a bit more fun so with a bit of negotiating, we managed to convince our guide to let us follow him in some kayaks.

Unfortunately, when I got into my kayak and onto the open waters, I lost my balance, and flipped the kayak over, while I had my camera on me. The good news though was the camera was in my bag, which miraculously, kept the water out.

Unfortunately though, the lens in my bag built up some condensation due to the humidity, and upon drying out, has left an inner lens fogged up.

So in short, my camera and 1 lend works. The telephoto is out of commission. :-(

Costa Rica - first impressions

So after a 2 days of travel, I finally landed in San José, the capital of Costa Rica. And based on the airport, it was hard to tell that I had even left the states! It had the same drab 70s metallic look that I assume was designed to look futuristic at the time but seems to always look old and dreary. Sort of like a metallic Barbican :-)

On the streets though, things look a lot different. I'm staying at a Backpackers that's quite central but you wouldn't know it. The streets are deserted with most shops closed although that could be due to siesta. Regardless, the place lacks any charm and for me, seems like a mash between Compton in LA and Havana (without the character).

Tomorrow, we're heading out of town to the only ancient ruins in Costa Rica. They're not grand but hopefully will be interesting. It's rainy season though so hopefully the day won't be ruined by it ;-)