I’m off to Crete tomorrow, and with all the packing and procrastinating I didn’t write a poem. And I have to get up in about 4 hours time [yipes] so no poem today. I’ll try to write two tomorrow— I have a longish flight to fill time on.
Posting may be sporadic in the next couple [...]
Posts tagged with ‘holidays’
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nopowriday
15 April 2007 – 10:11 pm
A cunning plan
15 April 2007 – 1:59 pm
I just realised that my camera can screw directly on to my telescope tripod. Expect me to come back from Crete with lots of attempted panoramas.
Can you tell I’m procrastinating because I don’t want to pack?
Holiday book report: ‘Bleak House’
22 November 2006 – 5:37 pm
By Charles Dickens, obviously. I have to admit, this isn’t really my idea of holiday reading: it’s just too long for that. But I half-inched it from a hotel I stayed at in Quito. It was either that or Harry Potter in Finnish.
It’s odd reading Dickens; sometimes he seems so dated — so sentimental, so [...]
Galapagos pics
21 November 2006 – 12:42 pm
I finally got round to uploading some photos from the Galapagos to Flickr. The whole set is here. It includes some sealions:
boobies:
and of course tourists:
Birding in the clouds
13 November 2006 – 9:42 pm
Well, I may be back in gloomy England, but I think I’ll return to my thoughts about the cloudforest. Sadly, the cloudforest isn’t a forest made of clouds. That would be like a Disney computer game come to life! You could jump from cloud to cloud collecting candy. Or something.
The lodge was at 2000m, and [...]
Cloudforest
9 November 2006 – 11:34 pm
Well, here I am, back in Quito from the couldforest.I managed not to get robbed this time. I have all sorts of no-doubt fascinating thoughts about cloudforests but I think I might be too tired to share them. Plus for some reason the text I’m now typing is appearing very very tiny and I’m not [...]
Rainforest
4 November 2006 – 10:16 pm
Having said that I recommend the Galapagos, I have to say that equatorial lowland rainforest may not be for everyone. With the temperature in the 30s and 80% humidity, it’s hard work just walking around. Particularly, once you do get hot, it takes for ever to cool down again because your basic thermal regulation system [...]
High drama on the Rio Napo
3 November 2006 – 9:29 pm
We just got back from the jungle lodge to Quito. I saw lots of birds and dripped rivers of sweat. And met a towering blond man called Thor. I don’t think he was the Thor though. No enormous hammers or eight-legged horses. And would a thunder god go in the shape of a Dutch birdwatcher? [...]
In the Galapagos
26 October 2006 – 6:01 pm
I´ve got a couple of hours in Puerto Ayora (on Santa Cruz, in the Galapagos), so I thought I´d post a quick note.
I can recommend the Galapagos. For a start, the landscape is more varied and more beautiful than I expected; somehow in my head it was all rocks, but from island to island the [...]
And on to Galapagos
21 October 2006 – 1:00 pm
Posted in advance:
Don’t worry, there aren’t going to be a whole string of these posts telling you what I might be hypothetically doing. But having spent the night in Quito, I’m now on my way to the Galapagos. Or perhaps when this post appears I’ll already be there: I don’t have the itinerary to hand. [...]
Over the Ocean
20 October 2006 – 1:00 pm
If all goes according to plan, both with Wordpress and my travel plans, this post should appear while I’m somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to Ecuador. We’re flying London - Madrid - Quito, so it’s a long day, but well worth it, obviously.
I’ve decided not to take my telescope this time, so [...]
Spain photos
29 April 2006 – 4:49 pm
I forgot to say, you can see a (fairly large) selection of my Spain photos here.
Spain Bird List
29 April 2006 – 9:07 am
I’ve divided the list into not-very-taxonomically-coherent chunks to make it easier to read.
Little Grebe
Great-crested Grebe
?Mediterranean Shearwater
Cormorant
Little Bittern
Cattle Egret
Squacco Heron
Little Egret
Grey Heron
Purple Heron
White Stork
Glossy Ibis
Spoonbill
Flamingo
Greylag Goose
Mallard
Gadwall
Shoveler
Garganey
Pochard
Red-crested Pochard
Griffon Vulture
Short-toed Eagle
Booted Eagle
Black Kite
Marsh Harrier
Kestrel
Lesser Kestrel
Peregrine
Red-legged Partridge
Moorhen
Coot
Purple Swamphen
Avocet
Black-winged Stilt
Collared Pratincole
Ringed Plover
Kentish Plover
Grey Plover
Sanderling
Dunlin
Curlew Sandpiper
Common Sandpiper
Redshank
Black-tailed Godwit
Bar-tailed Godwit
Whimbrel
Black-headed Gull
Yellow-legged Gull
Audouin’s Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Little Tern
Gull-billed Tern
Royal Tern (!!)
Whiskered Tern
Wood Pigeon
Collared Dove
Cuckoo
Great [...]
Whales watched.
21 April 2006 – 7:03 pm
The whales behaved very prettily - a group of Long-finned Pilot Whales came over and swam around the boat so we could see them. Also Common Dolphin and Striped Dolphin. They saw the first Sperm Whale of the season yesterday, apparently, but no such luck for us.
Also saw what I’m pretty sure must have been [...]
whale-watching
20 April 2006 – 5:40 pm
I’ve booked a whale-watching trip for tomorrow. I suspect this means a few dolphins and a pilot whale if you’re lucky, rather than enormous skeins of sperm whales stretching as far as the eye can see. But I figure it will also be a good way to see some pelagic birds - skuas, shearwaters, petrels [...]
Tarifa
18 April 2006 – 7:14 pm
I’m in Tarifa. Tarifa is the southernmost point in Europe - or at least the point closest to Africa or something - which is why I’m here. Migration. Huge flocks of raptors flying across the straits on their way north. Theoretically. It’s also the kite-surfing capital of Europe, so if I suddenly get the urge [...]
humph.
16 April 2006 – 7:32 pm
I actually came in to check my email, but for some reason this computer won’t let me access it. Some stupid security setup I expect. So I’ll anecdotalise instead.
I went into a restaurant for lunch today - Easter Sunday - and they were playing the ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ soundtrack on the stereo. Sly satire?
Sevilla
16 April 2006 – 12:45 pm
Seville! City of tiny platesful of food!
The food has indeed been yummy. Garlic prawns, morcilla (the local version of black pudding), scrambled eggs with garlic shoots and ham, etc etc. I haven’t been getting my 5 servings of fruit and vegetable a day, mind you. Even if you count bread and breadsticklets as seperate vegetables. [...]
El Rocio
12 April 2006 – 8:37 pm
OK, I can’t get to my hotel because there’s a procession in the way, which seems like a good opportunity to blog the first week of my trip. Or to go to a bar and have a beer and a little tapa of something, but blogging it is.
I went to a town on the borders [...]
Hiatus
3 April 2006 – 8:59 pm
Tomorrow I’m going to Spain for three weeks. I expect I’ll get to an internet café and blog something sooner or later, but I don’t know when that’s likely to be. I’m planning to keep napowrimoing, and I’ll post them when I get the chance.