Skip to main content

Galapagos Day 4

Day 4 - May 27
Today started out with a 6:30 AM pick-up to go over to the pier to catch our speed boat over to Isabella Island. You have to take a water taxi out to the boat, there is no other way, and they charge you 50-cents per person to get to your boat. The speed boat over to Isabella took about 2 hours. And it was worse than sitting in an airplane, since 25 people are smooshed together with their bags and life jackets in the main body of the boat. To top it off there is little ventilation, unless you are sitting in the back of the boat, so the air gets hot and stagnant. Three people got seasick including myself. I was doing really well sitting in the back of the boat with the breeze, until the breeze changed and all I got was boat exhaust. So I got sick with about a half hour left of the ride, thankfully the nice Australian couple next me was kind of enough to give me some tic-tacs after I stopped being sick.
After arriving at the port at Isabella, we took another water taxi to the pier. That water taxi charged a dollar per person. We met our guide at the pier who took us to our hotel, which is not as nice as the first two hotels we stayed at. After checking in we had about 90-minutes to relax before lunch. Lunch was warm potato soup, a pork chop, rice, large cold vegetables with dressing, and potato wedges. Dessert was some form of custard. After lunch we had a couple hours to relax and nap before our 3-kilometer bike ride tour.
Our bike ride tour was conducted in a tropical rain. The ride itself was on a compacted sand path up four hills to the wall of tears, which was built by a penal colony. Our guide is actually a descendant of one of the original guards of the penal colony. We did not attempt to go to the overlook because visibility sucked due to the rain. We did stop at one of the beach viewpoints and saw some more marine iguanas and a pelican. Along the ride, we did see two tortoises fighting, which let me tell is a very slow fight, and a male tortoise trying to mate with a very unhappy female tortoise. By the end of the ride we were soaked through. Overall, it wasn't a bad bike ride, might have been better if it was dry, the steering on the bike wasn't so loose, and the seat was more padded. After the bike ride we went back to the hotel to dry off and changed before having dinner at the Endemic Turtle.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Pumpkin Barron

On October 12th, I had the pleasure of working with the marvelous SunnyRae .   The general theme for the shoot was pumpkins but with coordination on outfits with SunnyRae theme evolved into official portraits of an 18 th century Pumpkin Baron. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 Westcott Strobe 1 rectangular soft box 1 strip box 1 6x6 silver reflector 2 C-stands 1 light stand Boom arm Color checker clamps Sandbags Backdrop stand Rough canvas backdrop Pumpkins Rough canvas drop cloth Flowers Old trunk Books Letters Wooden crate Fake leaves Chair Tri-level plant stand     The set up I wanted to keep this set up a bit rustic yet give the feel of staged aristocratic painting of the time.  I started with a plain rough canvas backdrop then placed an ol...

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May.   This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot.   The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice   The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature.  I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric.  To that I added two flower pot hol...

Belle Island with Central VA Cosplayers

On October 19 th I drove down to Richmond, VA to attend a Central VA Cosplay Photoshoot meetup on October 20 th at Belle Island.   I wanted to go to this event because it was in an interesting location, and I wanted to meet some new cosplayers.   For this session I used: Canon R6 2 Speed light Trigger 1 Light stands 24 - 105mm lens Gels Camera Settings: For this shoot, I was transitioning back and forth between being inside an old, dark, abandoned building to bright, sunny woods.  Due to the transitions, my settings varied greatly.  I mostly shot at ISO 100 except for when I accidently bumped the nob to “Auto” and didn’t notice, so I also took shots at ISO 2500, 3200, 4000, and 6400.  The shots at the high ISO actually look fairly decent, and not as grainy as one would expect.  My shutter varied between 1/100s to 1/250s with the most common shutter speed being 1/250s.  My aperture varied between F5 to F11 with the most common ap...