This post contains macro photos of bees, bumblebee, butterfly and a fly with flowers. Originally I wanted to post photos from April, when I spent some time shooting bees on Bear's garlic (Allium ursinum), but then I remembered I have very nice captures from last year.
Portugal - modern part of Lisbon
Added: October 06, 2014
Is there a building done by Calatrava in the city? So that Zuzka must to see it. Actually I like his architecture too. Now to convince Peter... It could be much easier if there were other things too. Hm, there is oceanarium. Maybe that helps.
Madeira - 2 wonderful levadas at Rabaçal
Added: October 04, 2014
When Zuzka planned details of Madeira trip, she made very good decision to go to Rabaçal. We were sure we want to do one or possibly 2 hikes there. We were nearly sure we will not manage 3rd one. That would be too much. Especially because we arrived quite late. Fortunately a parking lot is much bigger than at São Lourenço. There were more cars here, yet we managed to find a spot. It was a bit further away, but good enough.
We used small trick here, we actually disqualified ourselves as hikers, because we used shuttle bus to get to the starting point of hike. But we saved 1 hour by that, so what?Seychelles - arrival to La Digue
Added: May 28, 2014
After 4 days in Mahe we moved to the island representing the highlight of whole trip - La Digue. I was thinking about arriving one day earlier, but 1st of May was state holiday in Seychelles and I was worried about morning bus to port. I did not know bus drivers don't take travelers with their all luggage then. It is pity, we could spend there one day more. Even it would be cloudy and raining.
Rhodes - strike at monastery
Added: April 15, 2014
During our 3 days long stat in city of Rhodes we had a half a day for short trip. We decided to go to monastery Moni Filerimos. It is quite close so very well suited for time we had.
I was looking forward for this trip and especially for photos I could take there. But we happened to arrive during that 2 days strike I have mentioned in Rhodes. No, monks were not on strike. Just state employees like tour guides were. Enough for whole place to be closed.
The first place we visited during our trip to Rhodes was Πεταλούδες - Valley of the Butterflies. It is to the west from Rhodes city and can be reached by bus in about 1 hour. As its name suggests, it is inhabited by butterflies. Bad news it that there is just one kind of butterfly ubiquitous there, but the good news is that ubiquitous means there are millions of them :-)
Important part of Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in Valencia is oceanographic park. It was designed by Felix Candela and it makes whole complex much more interesting.
I really liked shapes of all those buildings as well as clever passages connecting them, either underground or surrounded by water. And fish and other animals were amazing too. I mean dolphins, penguins, fish of coral reef as well as sharks and sting rays.Iguazu Falls from Brazilian side
Added: July 18, 2010
We thought we've seen it all yesterday. But no, Brazil has many things to offer too.
Lonely Planet suggests the best way to cross Argentinian-Brazilian border is by taxi. Buses are slow and they might not wait for all paperwork. So that's what we did - we moved from hostel in Puerto Iguazú into hostel in Foz do Iguaçu by taxi. We just filled in form given us by driver and he went to handle officials. Quick and efficient.Uyuni - Day 3
Added: June 22, 2010
Last day at Uyuni trip was less impressive (compared with previous day). We have seen only a few nice places and then travelled for long time back to Uyuni. However, the boring ride was compensated slightly by adventures in Uyuni.
We reached the highest altitude for us so far and finally I got decent photo of llama. Apart from that I made my first vertical panorama of llama! You know, bumpy road, driver does not want to stop, you need to shoot at high speed during ride :-) The first photo cuts the head, the 2nd one misses legs. No, I did not try to stitch it... But I like the concept ;-) All in all, it was fine end of this wonderful trip. I encourage everybody travelling in Bolivia to go there.Uyuni - Day 2
Added: June 17, 2010
We had fantastic experiences yesterday, at Salar de Uyuni. It will be even better today, on 6th of February 2010. We continue with our Uyuni trip. While yesterday we have seen a lot of white and blue, today we are going through landscapes providing every possible colour. And some impossible :-)
This day was the one I took the most photos and I had a huge problem to select only a few of them. It was nearly impossible task. I went through selected ones repeatedly and deleted a few, but there are still many of them. So bear with me, please. I've decided against showing photos in order we have visited places they were taken at, but to reorder them to create 2 groups: rocks/mountains and water/animals.
We arrived to Picton in Marlborough Sound quite late. After leaving Shambhala in the morning we found we got flat tire. I don't think it was caused by terrible dirt roads in Abel Tasman. More probable cause was the accident when we lost axle cap, but the roads here certainly did not help.
Then we found we don't have a lifting jack in the car, so we borrowed one in Mussel Inn, we were lucky the staff was there in the morning and they helped us. Finally we could not go very fast with emergency tire and the car rental company wanted to see the car before we could replace the tire so we needed to go slowly to Nelson. It was on our route, but we wasted lot of time.
We are not excited about cities, so despite the title of this post I am not going to show any photo of Christchurch. It is quite hard to find free or cheap parking in Christchurch (it was the 1st place in New Zealand where we needed to pay for parking), so we did not explore more than immediate surroundings of our accommodation and restaurant we dinned at.
We stayed there only one night and the main reason of visit was Ko Tane - Maori Village.China Day 6 - Monasteries of Lhasa
Added: August 18, 2009
On Saturday 11th of July I finally started to feel completely well. And it is about time because we are heading to Ganden Monastery with altitude even higher than Lhasa is at and we will have some walk with nice views today. I am looking forward for that!
Nearly half of Sunday we have spent in Copenhagen ZOO. It is very nice, big and most of animals are lucky enough to live in spacious places.
We could spend much more time there and I probably understand why they sell yearly ticket too. From photographer's perspective it not bad way to take photos of interesting animals (at leasts from a sluggish photographer's point of view) :-)
Saturday 8th November we woke up rather tired. We could hear life on streets for most of the night and it was really hot in our room because we closed windows as anti mosquito precaution (we had seen some in the evening). As I opened balcony a fresh cool air went inside. Well, we probably made mistake...
A group of tourists stopped in from of our hotel, directly below me and their guide explained something to them. After some time another bunch of tourists repeated the same ritual so it could not be coincidence. Mental note - I need to take photo from outside regardless of crammed space. Hotel owner asked when our train is running - at 16:00. "You can leave your luggage here and return at about 2pm. Then you can refresh yourself shortly in your room before you leave." Thank you very much, we really appreciate this possibility :-) This would never happen in normal hotel with normal hotel manager...
Thursday 6th November. I am tired as we get up. My throat is still sore. OK I am going to start with Azithromycin. Today we plan to visit Jaipur and shortly before midnight we are going to Jaisalmer by train.
We went down, our host was already there, a bit later Canadian couple came. We have been offered possibility to leave our luggage here, return in the evening and to have dinner here. Then all 6 of us would take rickshaw to train station to catch our train. It would be very hard to refuse such an offer! We talked about our plans, Canadians wanted to go to Amber Fort too and we realized that having rickshaw for whole day is unnecessary expensive - it is possible to get to Amber Fort for 100 Rs, back to the city centre for 100 or less and it should cost 40 to return to guest house. Apart from Amber Fort everything else is in walking distance from each other. Our wannabe rickshaw arrived. We went outside and told him we decided to go only to Amber Fort and then City Palace and we were willing to give him only 150 Rs for that. He did not see it coming. He was surprised, but started to explain it is not possible for that price and that his price (whatever it was) is fair. He got angry and even went into guest house to dispute with Manoj! It was not very good feeling for us :-( Manoj asked him to leave his house (clearly the manners of those two men were different even for those who do not speak Hindi). As we went with driver outside Canadian couple came out too, telling him how ridiculous his price was. That did not help him to calm down. He was babbling something about government price list with 385 Rs for similar tour we wanted to make and he wanted us to show it, we just needed to go with him somewhere. No way! Finally he asked for 65 Rs for coming here and I gave him 60 just to get rid of him (even I knew I should not pay him at all). We went about 200m to find the nearest rickshaw and where Canadians shown us how to haggle properly. Since then amounts we paid to drivers went down :-) Thank you for that and sorry for forgetting your names!
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