Monument Valley

The day after Christmas Margie & I set off for Monument Valley, it's something we've wanted to do for years, but with elderly parents we feel we should be around. I was going to have us go to the UK, spend Christmas with mother, who is 87, but the air fares were truly appalling! Margie's dad is 86, but is busy with poker, bridge, pinochle, shuffle board etc, and seemed to be quite happy to spend New Years Eve alone, so off we went. It's 425 miles from the house to the View Hotel, on the Arizona/Utah border, we set off at 7:00 am and were there by just after 2:00 pm. Check in, it seemed, was 4:00 pm, so we sat in the car park and looked at the view. My video camera does time lapse, so I set up to catch dancing shadows, and wandered around and took some stills. Monday morning I was up early for the dawn shots (dawn was 7:30 am!) then we took the 17 mile drive around the monuments. In the afternoon we went for a drive, and ended up going through Valley of the Gods, a 19 mile drive on rough dirt roads. Quite spectacular, though. I drive a mid size SUV 4x4 with good ground clearance, I'm not sure I would have driven a sedan down that road! Tuesday we drove the 130 miles up in to Utah to Arches National Park, which was interesting, but maybe not as spectacular as I as expecting. The National Weather Service promised us a winter storm and 10-20 inches of snow on Wednesday and Thursday, so I cancelled the hotel in Canyon de Chelle and extended our stay in Monument Valley. We didn't get that much, but the local roads were closed, as were interstate highway's 40 and 17 around Flagstaff, so we really couldn't have either gone to Canyon de Chelle, or home. Anyway, it was a good week, I shot 605 photo's, quite a lot of video and read 4 books, and I didn't go into my office!!

 The view from our room. Nice hotel, Navajo Nation owned, highly recommended.

Panama

We went to Panama in early November, to have a look at the canal with the object of shooting a program. We went with AA via DFW & MIA to Panama City. The flight from MIA was delayed due to a problem with the airplane, (broken rubber band?) so we ended up arriving at 10:30 pm or so. After a fairly lengthy delay in passport control, we ended up having an, ah, interesting taxi ride to our hotel on the far side of Panama City. Speed limit? Stop signs? Staying in lane? Not, it seems, in Panama. We arrived at the hotel pretty close to midnight, happily they were expecting us, and we had a very nice room overlooking the Pacific, the Canal and the Bridge of the America's. When I woke up I could hear bird calls, so I went out on to our balcony to see my first exotic bids. Great tailed grackles, which I see in my back yard!

We did the Panama Canal tour, going through Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks on a small boat, then went out and visited Gatun locks and Miraflores locks to shoot the ships passing through, and the electric locomotives, called mules, which keep ships in the center of the lock. We both found it to be interesting, the big ships have little clearance, and when a ship doesn't take up all the lock, they cram in as many smaller ships, tugs etc as they can. Lots of pelicans and magnificent frigatebirds.

We also visited Casco Viejo, the old part of Panama City. The taxi driver told us to walk this way, not that way, it seems that parts of the old city are dangerous. Seemed like there were a lot of building shells, some were being renovated at, I can only assume, enormous cost. The presidents palace was here, we were searched before being allowed along the street in front of it. We were told later by somebody who had stayed at a hotel in the old part of the city that they were advised to be off the streets by 4 pm, as that's when the kids get out of school and go out to prey on the tourists.

After six days in the hotel at Amador, by the canal, we moved to Canopy Towers, a converted US radar installation on the top of a hill in the jungle outside Panama City. We went here for the birds, it's in the top 100 birding locations in the world, and we had guided bird walks every morning and afternoon. The guides were excellent, we wouldn't have seen half the birds we did, and probably wouldn't have been able to identify half of them, either, without them. The world is getting smaller, one of our fellow guests grew up 20 miles from where I grew up, and another had just visited Hollingworth Lake in Rochdale to see an American grebe! Neat place, we enjoyed the lodge very much. Panama is tropical, and covered, for the most part, in rain forest. I don't recommend visiting in the wettest month of the rainy season, it rains. Hard. A lot. Putting on damp clothes every morning wears a bit thin after a while. After the Towers we drove to El Valle de Anton, a 2 1/2 hour drive from the city. The town is located in the bottom of a volcanic crater, but since it was the rainy season, there wasn't much to do, and the town rolled up the sidewalks at sunset. It rained here, too. quite a lot.

We did enjoy Panama, although it was a relief to come home and be dry again. We saw 2 kinds of sloth, 3 kinds of monkey, cotamundis, kinkajous and 175 species of birds. While we were there, black vultures were migrating through, we must have seen tens of thousands of them. Altogether, an enjoyable experience, but one that would have been much better without all the rain.