Ann's Travel Blog @ann-mrdch - Tumblr Blog

SOUTH AMERICA - Equador Bellevista Day 2, Friday, 27th December, 2013

A morning outing from Bellevista, along the former main road from Quito to the coast, again with Jorges as our guide, took us through the thriving little tourist hub of Mindo, past schools:

and cafes:

to the Mindo...

Walk to Ellis Brook

Of Butterflies, Orchids and Chocolate

SOUTH AMERICA - Equador Bellevista Day 2, Friday, 27th December, 2013

A morning outing from Bellevista, along the former main road from Quito to the coast, again with Jorges as our guide, took us through the thriving little tourist hub of Mindo, past schools:

and cafes:

to the Mindo Butterfly Farm, set in lush gardens with beautiful many hued butterflies of all shapes and sizes, flitting and briefly alighting on flowers. We drifted around the enclosure, cameras aloft capturing their transient beauty. They are raised there through egg, caterpillar and pupae, some returned to the forest. Here are two not too bad, I think, pictures taken by me:

and a couple of Patrick’s superbly detailed ones:

A finger dipped in the banana goo provided, and you could scoop up a large butterfy, but struggle to get rid of it as it clung on, reluctant to leave the delicious goo:

Then we were off to the Mindo Orchid Garden, where Patrick endeavored to document every orchid in the collection, epiphytes that do not have roots in the soil, tiny ones that could only be seen through a magnifying glass, spider orchids and so many with the sweetest scents.

I grew orchid weary, and wandered off to watch the antics of the hummingbirds at the feeder and befriend the two local dogs:

Running late for the chocolate factory tour, we sampled rapidly but enthusiastically, and returned to Bellevista for more Hummingbird paradise at the feeders:

Of Butterflys, Orchids and Chocolate

SOUTH AMERICA, Equador, Bellevista Day 2, Mindo Butterfly Farm, Orchids and Chocolate TourFriday,

Saturday, 28th December, 2013

A morning outing from Bellevista, along the former main road from Quito to the coast, again with Jorges as our guide, took us through the thriving little tourist hub of Mindo, past schools:

and cafes:

and one of Patrick’s superbly detailed pics:

A finger dipped in the banana provided, and you could scoop up a large butterfy, but struggle to get rid of it as it clung on, reluctant to leave the delicious goo:

I grew orchid weary, and wandered off to watch the antics of the hummingbirds at the feeder and befriend the two local dogs:

Running late for the chocolate factory tour, we sampled rapidly but enthusiastically, and returned to Bellevista for more Hummingbird paradise at the feeders.

Hummingbird encounters at Bellavista in the Cloud Forest

SOUTH AMERICA - Equador Bellevista Day 1, Friday, 27th December, 2013

Finally, at 1.15am, after 3 days of grueling, exhausting non-stop travel and languishing in airport transit, all the way from Berlin, hopping endlessly across the South American continent via Sao Paulo, Santiago and Lima, our LAN flight touched down gently on the tarmac at Quito Airport, to the usual polite applause from fellow passengers, for a skilled landing.

Everything then went extraordinary smoothly. We were reunited with our suitcases, found circulating reassuring on the carrousel, and the driver from Bellavista Lodge, was waiting for us, as planned at arrivals, bearing a sign labeled “Murdoch” .

Galo, our lovely driver, drove us through deserted Quito streets , then onto dark winding mountainous roads in the Andes, up to Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve, where we were to spend the next five days. Galo responded to my questions about life in Ecuador, with a detailed account of president Correos’s rise and hold on power, the currency crisis a few years ago, the sale of the Ecuadorian oil in the Amazon to the Chinese, his popularity with the poor as he continues to use the proceeds from oil to fund education and disability services, build schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure.

We slept for a few hours and then awoke to the beauty of Bellavista:

decked out welcomingly with Christmas cheer:

And our chalet:

Bellavista is set deep in the heart of the cloud forest , at 2400m, on the Southern edge of the Choco/Andean rain forest. This area is one of a few recognized hotspots of biodiversity, to the North West of Quito, pre-mountain/subtropical rain forest and home to many species of hummingbirds.

We spent a glorious day, enchanted by hummingbirds zooming in at speed to briefly sip on sugar water at the hummingbird feeders, which are set out all around in the grounds and regularly topped up.

Here is one of Patrick’s pictures, of the Racket Tail Hummingbird:

And we went on an a guided forest walk with the multilingual, knowledgeable and ultra enthusiastic Jorge, our Ecuadorian naturalist and guide:

Staircase to the Moon

North West WA - Thursday 5th July 2012

Patrick and I left a very cold and blustery Perth, on a Virgin Flight, and emerged, three hours later into a warm Broome afternoon, at the tiny almost colonial, Broome Airport, surrounded by red dirt, to be met by Wendy, in full Wendy whirlwind mode, in her work vehicle, just back from a work trip up north to Cape Leveque.

Wendy then, with considerable flair, and oh so much charm and energy, commenced "Operation Wendy Birthday Weekend", starting with a complicated car swap at the local mechanic, a sleepy sort of place with a large ocker but friendly dog.

We were dropped of in Broome for a wander around. I loved this street art:

We then met Wendy and went to her home, in Broome, a granny flat in Roebuck, where we were allowed a brief shower and change of clothes, a quick hello to the dogs, Pearl and Opie, and then ...we were off, now in our glad rags, and handily equipped with Wendy's detailed printed itinerary of the weekend's festivities.

Our first stop was Cable Beach Hotel, to collect her friends Emily and Peter, who had also just flown in from Perth for the birthday celebrations. We were all whisked off to Gantheume Point, for pre dinner red wine and sunset, a fine bottle or red, apparently scavenged months earlier by Wendy, from the Broome tip, which she frequents from time to time.

We gazed dreamily upon the sunset and the red rocks, and the light, and silhouette of Gantheume Point Lighthouse.

Birthday festivities were at the Mangrove Beach Hotel, where we had a beach side table to watch moon rise and the staircase to the moon.

We went briefly after ordering and before our food arrived to the night market, which happens at the staircase to the moon and met Wendy's friends and local artists Marilyn and Colin. Here is Colin at their combined stall:

hello from brittany !

nice to see family pictures from Tours

by pascal

( Annie's little brother )

home sweet home :

http://www.riecsurbelon.fr/L-Espace-Melanie.html

Shopping in Brunswick Street

A week in BALLARAT & MELBOURNE - Brunswick

Kylie, Marie Gwyn and I wandered from our hotel in North Melbourne, to Brunswick Street, which runs West through Fitzroy, home to an interesting mix of artists, new migrants in housing commission flats, young professionals and boomers, It is solidly working class but with specialist galleries, cafés and boutiques and its streetscapes dominated by turn of the century buildings and trams moving past.

We wandered past vast aggregations of uncleaned up graffiti,

marvelous and extravagant concentrations of billboards,

along the length of Brunswick Street and then back down the other side peering at elaborate displays in shop windows (I have forgotten who this artist is).

Bicycles and cyclists were everywhere in evidence and there was not a lycra pair of shorts or top in sight.

Prospecting at Sovereign Hill

A week in BALLARAT & MELBOURNE - Ballarat

Gwyn and I spent the day at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat experiencing the early days of the Victorian gold rush.

The creek gets laced with tiny morsels of gold every day ready for the tourists to make their lucky 'discovery'.

Our tour guide, in character as miner who had walked to Ballarat from Bendigo in the 1860's showed us around the camp:

He told us that only 10% of the miners would go on to make a successful strike and become rich, but that about 70% were able to make an adequate iving. The price of gold back then compared to todays AUS $1739 or Bristish Pounds 1112 per Oz:

A key part of the story of the goldfield at soverign hill is the presence of the Chinese miners and their treatment by the authorities. The chinese encampment has been recreated at sovereing Hill:

The old workings have been faithfully recreated:

and there are funny old bits of old mine machinery lying around in various places:

And every now and then a horse drawn coach would go past:

and then on for a brief visit to the fabulous Ballarat Gold Museum where I fell in love with this Peruvian and Mexican gold work depicted in photographs:

Jetstar to Melbourne and then on to Ballarat

A week in BALLARAT & MELBOURNE

Gwyn and me on our early morning Jetstar flight from Perth to Melbourne. I was relieved and somewhat smug in my achievement of 9.7 kg cabin luggage, with nothing in the hold, well within the 10g cabin allowance, and hence avoiding the hideous cage at Melbourne airport, where you get incarcerated for hours on end to await your luggage.

And then Bill Reddick picked us up from Tullaminarine airport, whisked us off to the bright lights of Ballarat, where of course, as you do in Ballarat, we went directly to the cemetry for an evening walk with Monte and Bello the poodles, Liz and the darling Amalie now an articulate, funny and reflective five year old.

Paris Icons

WALES & FRANCE 2011 - Paris

My knees were still sore, so instead of walking, we spent the day hopping on and off the Paris Open Top Bus, visiting Parisian icons. We went up to the 56th floor of the Montparnasse Tower so see all of Paris laid out below.

and where Patrick was yet again in parorama heaven:

and then to Notre Dame:

where the sheer scale and magnificence of this Gothic cathedral makes an ideal subject for panoramic photography. Patrick constructs these by taking multiple rows of shots of a large area and then stitching them together using 'stitching' software on the laptop.

and then to the glorious Tour Eiffel:

#Paris #travel #Wales and France 2011/chrono

Montmartre Art Attack

WALES & FRANCE 2011 - Paris

Today, instead of wandering the streets of Montmartre around the Sacre Coeur, as we did yesterday, we earnestly set forth, with my kindle somewhat awkwardly in hand, on the 'Montmartre Art Attack', a tour suggested by ‘Lonely Planet’. We followed the directions down rue Lepec, to 'Cafe des Deux Moulin', where we drank coffee in the little cafe where Amelie worked, in that wonderful role so exquisitely portrayed by Audrey Tautou.

Patrick became utterly absorbed in the operations of this strange Parisian ladder with it's sliding platform, transporting furniture to the top floor of this apartment. We saw several of these over the next days, which Patrick dubbed 'Escaladders'.

We found ourselves at the famous Montmartre twinned windmills, one of which was the 19th century open air dance hall depicted by Renoir in 'Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette'.

We continued, through more steep Montmartre cobbled lanes and stairs with fresh Parisian vistas around every corner,

past apartment buildings,

encountering other Montmartre explorers, pouring over maps and guide books in as well as mobile phones with maps and GPS.

I did not spot any other kindles or ipads though.

We found the 'Passe-Muraille statue or 'The Walker Through Walls', the hero of Marcel Ayme's short story about a man who wakes up one day to find he can do just that. I plan to follow this up when I get home.

Just above the rue des Saules, we rested, overlooking one of the remaining vineyards in Montmartre, the wall of the 'Cimetrie St-Vincent' and the rooftops beyond,

and the caberet ‘Au Lapin Agile Cabaret Artistique’,

while I did a few cursory stretches to aid my aching limbs after days of non stop walking and no yoga. The tour took then took us back to the Sacre Coeur where we once again looked down the hill south to that magnificent view of Paris.

We then walked back to our apartment with Patrick capturing the scene.

We then decided to follow the advice of the hostess who had met us at our Montmartre apartment with the keys, and visit the seconds shops to the east of Montmartre in the 10e.

It was by no means a successful shopping trip, but we loved the quaint and dated appearance of the displays and the clothes, which were inexpensive and of good quality, but oh so very old fashioned and decorative, displayed on vintage shop dummies.

It was as if every shop in Europe with unsold clothing over the past fifty years, had bundled it all up and sent it to these shops in Blvd de Magenta. There were also a number of specialised wedding shops that would not have been out of place in Bombay.

#Paris #Chamonix

Montmartre

WALES & FRANCE 2011 - Paris

We left our apartment in Rue Damrecourt in the 18e, on the very edge of Montmartre early on a sleepy Parisian Sunday morning, with few people about yet,

just a few coffee drinkers reading newspapers in cafes, and the quiet broken by cooing pigeons and the sudden arrival of a tourist tram, climbing up the steep hill past us, towards the Sacré-Coeur Basilica (Basilica of the Sacred Heart).

We then wandered into, 'Place du Tertre' with it's tacky yet delightful tourist shops, where I carefully chose a small Tour Eiffel for Rachel as promised,

and encountered the many portrait painters of the area:

We paused to buy cakes, persuading this beautiful girl to pose for us in the patisserie window:

We visited the small 'L'Espace Montmartre - Dali',

where I fell utterly in love, not entirely sure why, with this 'Space Elephant' entitled 'The temptation of St Anthony', based on a 1946 painting by Dali. It is an elephant with spider legs carrying an obelisk on its back. The obelisk depicts the presence and progress of technology and the elephant has long spider legs which signify desire and flights of fantasy.

There was a marvellous photo of the manic genius himself, described here as "an intellectual giant partaking of a huge cultural pie that defined the times they lived in':

Then, later that evening we wandered down to the Moulin Rouge, where my reference is the wonderful Baz Luhrman movie with Nicole Kidman and Ewan Mcgregor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaT3uiNhj1g:

We walked down the 'Boulevard de Clichy' encountering sex shops and neon signs: 'Toys Palace', 'Sex Jections', 'Sexy Store', 'Sexodrome' and when they simply ran out of fresh ideas: 'Sex Shop'. There did not appear to be any actual punters just bemused and very interested tourists like us:

I was happy to support an illegal street vendor with a purchase of a fake Louis Vuitton handbag:

We returned to the Sacré-Coeur for the evening light:

and then wandered back down the hill to our apartment turning back to see it glowing in the flood lights on the hill,

and then passed the metro near our apartment:

#Montmartre #Paris #Wales and France 2011/chrono

More Trains and Trams from the Alps to Paris

WALES & FRANCE 2011 - Chamomonix to Paris

We left our B&B early in the morning, and walked encumbered with our backpacks and wheeled suitcases, down the hill through a very quiet and cold Les Bossons, with me now hobbling a bit with my aching knees, to a deserted Les Bossons train station, about a kilometer down the road,

with the mountains all misty in the early morning light.

As the sun rose behind the Alps, and bathed Mont Blanc in an orange glow, I heard the shutter clicks on Patrick's camera increase in frequency:

We took a last look at the L'Aiguille du Midi and then boarded our train.

Patrick continued to capture the Alps as the train moved through the valley:

There were multiple hops on and off trains, as we traveled via St Gervais Les Bains and changed again in Gare de Lyons:

and then to Geneva Eauxes Vives, which was confusingly located a couple of kilometers from the central train station in Geneva.

Here, some good burghers of Geneva came to our rescue, providing us initially with tram directions to the central station, and then, when they witnessed us fumbling with the ticket machine having forgotten to bring local currency back in to Switzerland, insisted on stuffing Swiss Francs into the machine for us. Then, at the end of our shared tram trip, having realised the full extent of our inability to manage even the simplest aspects of Geneva's transport system without their skills and assistance, insisted on accompanying us all the way to our train platform at Geneva CFF.

We changed again at Lyon Part Dieu and then caught our train to Paris Gare de Nord and then after a couple of Metro Stops we reached our local metro at Lamarck Caulaincourt, located in the 18th arondissement,

and just around the corner from our lovely comfortable apartment at 44 Rue de Damremont, on the border of Montmartre, and our home for the next few days....

#Chamonix #Paris

North Face Ultra-Marathon but our day of rest

WALES & FRANCE - Chamomonix

We were both tired after days of some walking and all that strenuous getting on and off cable cars, so on the day when elite ultra marathoners competed in 'The North Face Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc', we treated ourselves to a day of sloth, and hung around around Ski B&B all day, lounging, reading and doing the odd spot of socialising with fellow guests. We said goodbye to Mara and Paolo when they set off home to Torino (Turin):

Our new and more spacious sunshine filled upstairs room, to which Rob the Irishman had upgraded us, as compensation for the minor inconvenience of having to swap rooms midway through our stay, now provided a great views as a spectacular backdrop to some serious sloth.

Patrick went off with his macro lens, for a brief foray of bug bothering, and came back with a picture of this mystery 'alpine' bug - aha a recent update from Patrick it is some type of staghorn:

and this tiny wild strawberry:

In the late afternoon we drove in to Chamonix with Liz, one of the other B&B guests, to watch the start of the UTMB, the big event in 'The Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc' program, which goes through France, Italy and Switzerland over an incredible 166 km with a total ascent of 9500 m. Unfortunately the start was delayed due to rain. Liz was anxiously whiling away the hours before her boyfriend's estimated finish at 2 am of the 'CCC', a 98km event.

So we wandered around soaking up the atmosphere in a Chamonix teeming with activity and energy, with competiors from 62 countries, their supporters, spectators and exhibitors of every conceivable outdoor product. There was much applause as race finishers came in. I think one of these two was announced as an Australian:

Chamonix dubs itself ‘the world capital of alpinism’ and outdoor activities and Mont Blanc are part of the culture of the town including the history of Mont Blanc climbs. The people painted on the front of this building are all pioneers of Alpine climbing including the first ascent to the summit of Mont Blanc in 1786.

Patrick took some more pictures of this lovely little town in the rain on the eve of our departure:

#chamonix #WalesFrance2011/Chrono

Of Cable Cars, Ski Lifts and Acrophobia

WALES & FRANCE 2011 - Chamomonix

We walked to Les Praz about 2km East of Chamonix, where we used our final day of cable car passes, to ascend to the Flegere Plateau (1894m) on the sunny south side of the Chamonix Valley:

with views across the entire Mont Blanc range.

It is paraglider country up there, with enthusiasts arriving by cable car, their gear in packs on their backs, on their way up the mountain to the launch site at Planpraz.

They all had that look that I recognise so well from windsurfing, intent, focused, yet faraway, as they stopped at good vantage points to assess conditions, before hastening further up the mountain to launch themselves into the thermals and to drift forever over the abyss.

At this point, we accessed the chairlift to L'Índex (2396m) to take in even better views of the Mont-Blanc range. It was my first experience of a ski lift, having not skied before and I really don't know what possessed me, given a lifelong fear of heights.

I was distracted initially, as I focused on standing correctly on the little yellow footprints marked on the platform, and then keeping my balance as the chairlift scooped us up. I then experienced pure and utter terror as we surged upwards, with no possible escape, and no lovely cable-car capsule providing snug, safe enclosure, only a totally inadequate little metal bar, between us and a plunge down the mountainside into the chasm below.

Needless to say, I did survive and we returned for another night in our B&B that evening, walking back up the hill through Les Bossons.

#Chamonix #Les Praz

Montenvers by rack and pinion

WALES & FRANCE 2011 - Chamomonix

We were given a lift in from the B&B in Les Bossons to Chamonix by a couple who shared the story of how they met, when he was a Swiss Guard and on duty at an exhibition on the history of the Swiss Guard, and she was touring Rome with her parents, but had opted for a day on her own visiting the Vatican. He was prepared to translate the exhibits into English for her, they had dinner that night and eventually married in the Swiss Guard Chapel in the Vatican.

We continued to maximize use of our cable car pass around Chamonix, opting for a trip on the one hundred year old rack and pinion 'Train du Montenvers' to the 'Mer de Glace' or Sea of Ice (1913m) which is the largest glacier in France.

There is a cable car which takes everyone down to a platform:

and then a series of walkways to the ice grottos which are cut out of the side of the glacier. Because the glacier is moving they have to be re-excavated into the ice every year:

The caves are were a bit tacky but illuminated beautifully.

#Chamonix #Montenvers

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Ann's Travel Blog