After a bit of hiking on day 1 of a 4-day Inca Trail trek, you’ll get to the Inca farm town of Patallacta, here seen from its similarly-named neighbor, Llactapata.
But before I prattle on for too long, I suppose I should talk a bit about names. Continue reading
This is Salapunku, the first ruin you’ll see on the first day of a 4-day Inca Trail trek.
It was located next to a canal, so may have been involved in administering water from it. Otherwise, from what I can uncover, it was just a little Inca farm town.
It now overlooks the rail line to Aguas Calientes / Machu Picchu Pueblo — so any local ghosts don’t get much rest these days.
Every journey has to begin somewhere. Since travelers on the Inca Trail are fairly tightly controlled of late, a journey on the Inca Trail starts at a checkpoint. In this case, the checkpoint at the km 82 marker (measured from Cusco — possibly along the river, or possibly along the rail line, I never asked).
Before I hiked the Inca Trail, I naturally did the modern thing and consulted the font of wisdom that is the Internet. Quite a few sites talked about the cardiovascular challenge of the trail, the risk of altitude sickness, etc. Before I hiked the trail, though, I didn’t appreciate how helpful resistance training would have been.
The normal brief description of the 4-day approach to the trail goes something like this:
This is generally accurate, but an over-simplification. Continue reading
So I recently returned from a trip to Peru — including a hike along the Inca Trail, a good chunk of time spent in Machu Picchu, even more time spent in Cusco, all sorts of good things. I plan on writing up a number of blog posts on things I saw and experienced — but first thought this might be helpful to future Machu Picchu visitors (it’s a sign at the entrance, laying out 25 things you may not bring to / do in the site):
Bottom line — there’s lots of inaccurate information online w.r.t what is and isn’t allowed into / at the site of Machu Picchu. So, since the above text is a bit small, here’s the posted list of restrictions (as of May, 2018), along with my comments on them: Continue reading
A rear-engine Polish Fiat; seen on the streets of Cienfuegos, Cuba.
Tulips in bloom in Denver’s Civic Center Park:
Nothing of profound significance here, I just liked the pattern these were planted in.
There’s been some discussion online about ways to use the Olympus E-M1II‘s dual slots, so I thought I’d write up how I use them — in the hope that this is useful for other owners of the camera.
So, first off, three things:
So it’s been a few years, but the Ice Castles folks have again set up shop in Colorado (as well as at 5 other sites in North America). Here’s a particularly blue shot from this winter’s “castle” in Dillon:
Some tips for you, should you be able to visit one… Continue reading
Another shot of Paris’ Ferris Wheel, courtesy of Olympus‘ Live Composite function:
Unfortunately, when you use Live Composite to create an image, the total exposure time is not recorded in the image’s EXIF data. I do know, though, that each Live Comp “sub-image” was 0.5 seconds long, and this photo is made up of at least 20 of them.
Other EXIF info for the curious:
Olympus E-M5II, M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 lens @ 31mm
ISO 200
f/14