Stuff, Sights, and Things

Various photos, or stuff, or things from the head of Andrew Mulholland var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3940675-1"); pageTracker._initData(); pageTracker._trackPageview();

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(not) the dead sea on Flickr.

actually a fjord in iceland. but so calm, that the dead sea came to mind. Saw this place as we headed west, on the move to the west fjords

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oh..hay! on Flickr.

Icelandic Horses hanging out by the feeder. later they got more friendly and came over to talk to us. Driving through iceland, its rare to go more than a quarter of an hour without seeing a cluster of these little horses.

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Anthony Davidson puts the #7 Peugeot 908 on pole for Imola!

Just one week after most of the top drivers were in action at the Nürburgring 24 h, there is another endurance...

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Before this year's 24 hour race on the Nürburgring, ThePitwall identified, and provided a synopsis on what it thought to be the cars in with a shout of victory - and then again identifying some...

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Warming up for the annual 24 hour race, is the Falken Motorsports team. For the past few years, they've run a Z33 Nissan 350z car, but all change for 2011 - with their FIA GT3...

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Nissan GT-R of Richard Westbrook / Peter Dumbreck before the damage

The full race report will follow soon, however having seen the GT1 championship race at Silverstone I felt...

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With just over two weeks to go until the 2011 ADAC 24h on the Nürburgring, questions are being raised as to who the favourites are likely to be. Judging the favourite, with over 200...

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Manthey 911 GT3 RSR, with Dive plates fitted during testing

Ok, so this isn't a typical spot the difference competition, as there are actually hundreds of differences between...

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GT Racing + Endurance racing

I always fail to update this blog...and I'm not sure why.. probably because I'm not generally a fan of talking about myself, as I often don't have anything interesting to say there...

I do update another site pretty regularly though - http://www.thepitwall.com/

The Pitwall covers mostly GT and endurance racing, with last year the main focus being on FIA GT1, GT3, GT4 and this year so far being mostly VLN... with some big endurance races to come.

A lot of focus so far has been on the ADAC 24h at the Nürburgring, which is in my book the most exciting race in the world, and there's also the little thing at Le Mans later on this month too!

That said the FIA GT circus is at Silverstone this weekend, so there'll be some high quality photos, with some accompanying prose coming there over the weekend - so if you're not already, check out the ThePitwall :)

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12 months in my job

Wow, it hardly seems possible that it was just 12 months ago, when I moved back from Holland... and (re)joined Betfair.

I left behind the windmills, clogs, and cheese...

and moved back to London, and tried to remember everything I'd forgotten in the previous 2 years :)

It was a bit of a struggle - as there was enough familiarity in the people and set up to make me think that I knew what was going on, but enough had changed, to make it quite hard work to get back up to speed.

Since then apart from the hard work in the office, I've managed to have a little fun :)

Most of my (non work related) fun in the past year seems to have centred around photography - mostly with a motorsport theme...and as such in July

A month after joining I went to  Belgium for the FIA GT series, where the annual Spa-Franchorshamps 24hr race was held

This might sound exciting or glamorous, but in actuality it was hard work :) - another photographer and I left after work on Friday, reaching our destination in the early hours of Saturday morning thanks to some pretty nasty traffic out of london... when we got there it was raining... and I'd left my waterproofs behind...

Thankfully the race itself was mostly dry, and we covered most of the 24hrs.. only sneaking off to get a little sleep! Race completed, it was a rush back for eurotunnel, a quick sleep and then back to work Monday morning!

In August, I changed cars, and decided to exercise the "new" one in Germany, which was great fun...it's quite amazing what you can fit into a weekend... I drove to Harwich on Saturday, caught a ferry to Holland, drove to Germany, picked up a friend, drove on to Papenburg in north Germany, arriving at the guesthouse for supper time..

On the Sunday morning, we drove down to an automotive test facility, where Mercedes develop their new cars in utmost secrecy... but somehow some friends have arranged that a bunch of us can use their facilities for drifting a few times per year... on the normal condition that any device possessing a camera is placed in a locker upon arrival, to avoid shots of the prototypes leaking out.

Thankfully by organising for a security guard to watch Jochen, he was able to bring his cameras, and thus capture our high octane thrills

At the end of the day, I departed, at somewhat high speed, (just) making my overnight ferry home, and thus make it to work on Monday morning :)

In November, I went with my family on a trip of a life time to Guyana, where my grandmother was born, and grew up. When I was young, she'd often retell the stories of her youth, and it was fascinating to see them brought to life.

It's in many ways an amazing country, with some of the richest bird, and animal life anywhere...

Over the winter, it snowed a lot, and  I realised my new car was a bit silly, and swapped it for a slightly more sensible diesel one, so I could save money! :)

In April. motorsport season for me kicked off again, so I was sent to Silverstone to cover the FIA GT1 races there

before going 'home' to Nürburg in Germany for the 24hr race there... I've been covering this race for 3 out of the last 4 years, and it is simply epic.. 200 cars racing... from top line sports cars.. to 20 year old hatchbacks..

and then on Sunday, for something slightly different  I headed up to Bruntingthorpe 'air museum' where some cold war jets like this Lightning were doing fast taxi runs down the runway... being stood only about 30-40 ft away, was exciting... and deafening!

So that's 12 months... :) and by some weird coincidence I'd unintentionally selected 12 photos to sum it up with....

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Guyana - Day 7 - Karanambu

As mentioned the next morning, we got up before dawn, again :)

It was worth it, we encountered this owl

and also some less pleasant things, like  this umbrella wasps nest:

you need to be careful around those, especially at night, as if you were to shine a torch at a nest, at night they will all swarm and sting you.

The place we were staying - Karanambu - looks after and rehabilitates giant river otters. Currently they have just one - which is blind. Amazingly in the water, this isn't a problem -  he's still able to catch fish.

Whilst sitting down on the beach, which is a tributary to the essequibo river, we became aware of a pair of caiman sitting on the bank opposite us:

At first I didn't quite believe they were real as they were so close, and weren't moving.

but then we saw the yawning one close its mouth slightly. :)

Am not quite sure what they were plotting, but they didn't bother us.

Interestingly apparently if a family of Giant otters are hungry, and there's no piranhas (their normal food) about , they'd take on a Caiman between them, and eat that instead!

After lunch, we headed out on a boat trip, where we saw this fine iguana

We were mostly going in search of monkeys, which we saw - capuchin and squirrel monkeys, but they were too high up in the trees, and I wasn't able to get a photograph of them.

This wasn't really a problem, as there was such a diverse range of wildlife there to be seen.

From little kingfishers

and more kingfishers, this one eating a fish as big as its head

to great egrets

and of course an obligitary hawk, This one is a common black hawk I think

However the stars of the boat trip, were the Caiman. Our guide told us we saw about 170 on the trip, and I don't think he was exaggerating.

including this lovely black caiman

and for comparison this spectacled caiman

What's amazing is how seemingly sociable these giant predators are... apparently this was due to them having plenty to eat... so there's no competition for food.

Its not to say they're docile, we were told a tale of two boys who went fishing. On the way back, paddling back in their boat, they put their dog in the water, to let it swim and cool off. Then they noticed a big caiman approaching, obviously wanting to eat the dog... so one of the boys jumped in, to try and stop it... and became the caiman's meal as well.

In general through, we were told they didn't really bother humans unless humans act stupidly.

we stayed out on the boat, and watched the sun set, as there are giant water lilies there, with leaves about 1 metre in circumference

and a flower which  flowers for 3 days... except it only opens at night for the first 2 nights, and then on the 3rd night, it opens up and remains open

The leaves of the waterlily are  strong enough to hold a baby, we didn't have one of those to hand to try out, but we did see a baby caiman sitting on one:

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Guyana - Day 6 - Roadtrip to Karanambu

Our road trip rumbled on, past more indian villages

and supposed road works

through lethem, along the dusty road tracks

and round the corner, ran into the brazilian army. Needless to say, I hid my camera pronto, and didn't get any snaps of them.

It turns out that the brazilian army has been contracted into building a 'proper' road between boa vista and georgetown. We ended up skirting around them, with some angry shouting in portuguese, and then continuing on our way.

past mahoosive termite mounds

some of them looked big enough to be someones house:

for such small creatures theyr'e pretty advanced.

We didn't stop much, as whilst it was only a couple of hundred miles, it was slow going, probably average speed of about 30mph or less.

We did stop though to look at what is meant to be the lost, sunken city of el dorado.

regardless of whether its true or not, it looked pretty cool, with the fluffy clouds over head.

Having left not long after dawn, we were still going as the sun set

but eventually we arrived in karanambu, where we were greeted with rum punches, and another early night... as yes more early morning starts the next day :)

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Guyana - Day 6 - Leaving Dadanawa

Next morning - 18th November, we got up early, my brother had found a scarlet tanager, hiding in some trees, so I tried to get some shots of it.

It was tricky though, as so far away, and due to the branches, almost impossible to get focus on it.

We had a macaw wave goodbye to us

and we left the vultures plotting

and headed on our way... away from Dadnawa, and back toward lethem.

It had only been two days there, but it had left a profound effect.

This yellow headed caracara watched us closely as we approached the essequibo to wade across back toward lethem on our road trip

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Guyana - Day 5 - Dadanawa and Anteaters

So we got woken up at 5am again the next morning... our hosts had sent Vacqueros out to look for giant anteater. They'd radioed back, and so we headed off on the back of a pickup to look for them. they quickly showed us to where the anteaters (called antbear by the locals) were hiding - there was a pair of males which had been sparring. our first glimpse was this giant fellow emerging from a little bush island

We let them run off, and I sniped at them in the early morning sun from a distance with my camera

Truly extraordinary creatures. Unlike anything else I've ever seen... and yet perfectly designed for destroying termite mounds and ant nests. - they have very long thin sticky tongues which they poke down holes they create, in the nests with their huge claws, and suck up ants through it.

Heading back toward the ranch for breakfast, we stopped off to see yet more hawks - this time a white tailed one

along with a juvenile one - presumably the young of the adult

After breakfast we went for a horse ride around the place, and rounded up some cows, I didn't dare take my camera out there, as it was a bit wild, and the saddles were unlike anything I'd sat on before - they weren't western, but they weren't european either. It was a weird kind of thing. We then headed across to another village, visiting our host's brother and family. They were I think from a wei-wei tribe, and lived near to the school in their village, which meant sometime after lunch we saw the children heading home from school

After that we swam in a pool, which we later found out contained anaconda, and piranha. Was quite glad to find out afterwards, and not before! Then we headed off to look at some petroglyphs, which are rock carvings, which apparently date from thousands of years ago... and are in some weird dialect which no amerindians can make sense of

the cynical theory raised was that they're mostly a prank 'drawn' by people before they're discovered. They looked pretty genuine though. :)

Whilst looking at them, an american falcon popped down to look at us

And then as we drove across the savannah toward the setting sun, we were greated by a swarm of fork tailed fly catchers, which made for quite a sight

Birds became a bit of a theme of the trip, they were so plentiful and varied, and so striking, I think almost half my photos are of them.

This was a very fine savannah hawk

Being on a ranch, I kinda had to include a photo of some cows - they were pretty spread out, and let roam free... amazing

With that, the sun was set and another day was over.

Another early night called, as we had a huge road trip across the savannah to karanambu the next day.

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Guyana - Day 4 - Dadanawa

On the morning of the 16th November, after getting back from Arrowpoint, we headed again to Ogle airstrip, and flew down toward Dadanawa. The plane actually landed in Lethem, about 60km from Dadanawa, or about 3 hours drive - the roads are dirt tracks, rather than actual roads, and frequently there were parts which had been washed away in the last rain season. We saw amerindians herding cattle on horseback

and a Caracara sitting in the remnants of some savannah burnt by amerindians

Eventually we arrived at the essequibo river, to wade across it, into Dadanawa lands Dadanawa was at one time the largest ranch in the world, with over 35,000 cattle. These days its much smaller, perhaps 5-10,000, but still massive compared with european standards.

Wild life was plentiful upon arrival - a macaw sitting patiently waiting to be photographed

With dozens of vultures sitting around plotting.

(the reason for the vultures became clear shortly - our hosts had killed a cow for our supper... which put to bed a myth about curing beef.

If you can get it fresh - as in same day fresh, it beats anything which has sat around for weeks to cure.

After that, it was another early night - we had the promise of Giant Anteaters to search for the next morning.. I say morning I mean getting up before dawn again :)

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Guyana - Day 4 - Arrowpoint

On the morning of the 4th day, we got up before dawn - 5am (this was to become a recurring pattern for the next two weeks), in order to go look for the crimson topaz - the world's largest humming bird.

We were in luck - there were a number of them, and although the light was poor, making it difficult to get shots, felt pretty privileged to see them

I have to say birds are much harder to photograph than cars, or people, as they're so unpredictable, and can move in 3 dimensions...

We then headed back through the mist to our base camp where we had breakfast, and packed up. Just before leaving we saw this:

An Agoti! - a large rodent, really sweet thing.. We then got the boat back toward georgetown, before catching a flight down to Dadanawa Ranch.