Thursday-Friday December
13-14/12 update #313
I never slept all night, just tossing and turning trying to
figure out in my mind just how to make the night photography tour to the Cajas
a success. I did rest, but not sleep.
Finally I got up and started to compose a long email of suggestions to
the group that signed up outlining tips for warmth, clothing, and to be sure to
know their camera settings. Then I
rested many times more during the day.
Bella was off doing her thing and I had some sad news to tell
her upon her return. Her daughter Kim
had called to say that her husband Mike’s Dad was about to be unplugged from
life support. Bella had had Thanksgiving
dinner with Tom and the family while she was in Canada and there were no outwards
signs of distress. Tom had had bad
arthritis but nothing that appeared life threatening. It seems his lungs were paper-thin from too
many years of smoking and probably noxious fumes in the oil patch. Operations to supply him with oxygen etc were
not effective and he was left in the position of not being able to eat or
breathe on his own. He had 22 tubes
going into his body and was kept in a coma to avoid him dislodging any of the
tubes. Anybody who knew Tom would know
that he would not want to live, if it could be called that, in that
fashion. He had a Living Will and the
family had to come to grips with letting him go. After a month of agony they finally made the
difficult decision. They removed the
tubes, then removed the ventilator and, with his whole family at his side, he
quickly expired. Tom was always a
pleasure to talk to and he will be missed.
I woke up this Friday morning with so many ideas on how to
describe the night’s excursion that was a success, but not nearly in the way we
intended it. Here goes…
4 hours before departure I had two emails from two
participants that they had been sick all day and weren’t going to make it. One offered to pay for their commitment,
which is implicit, as we do hold their spot for them, and we do make very clear
that a commitment is necessary. Neither
had been on one of our tours before so I have not even met either of them. Unfortunately, one was a professional
photographer who I was hoping would be a valuable resource of information.
We had decided to make our departure point in the parking
lot of Super Maxi, over on Las Americas, near Joe’s Secret Garden. We figured this would be known by everyone,
and easily accessible by taxi or bus, out of the downtown core, safe, and well
lit. It was a good choice. I was there very early in case we had some
early-birds because this trip consisted now of 14 people,… myself, 2 couples,
and 9 adventurous women.
Our bus company rep, Daimler stopped by with his family to
be sure everything was OK and to collect for the trip. Everyone showed up by the 9:15 requested time
and I collected, then paid the money to Daimler, giving him a little extra for
the driver (we were never introduced..) and guide Wilson, who also works at El
Jardin restaurant in the Victoria Hotel.
The bus arrived about 9:25 and everyone piled in. The bus is a nice little Hyundai that seats
20 passengers with the jump seats down.
Daimler gave me a company hat and passed out a few T-shirts.
It only took 45 minutes to get to the first stop in the
Cajas and we enjoyed the spectacular night sky along the way while it got
darker and darker as we got further away from Cuenca and the city lights. The first stop was near a small valley with a
hiking trail to the lake, the sky was clear and the sky was breathtaking. However the option was to go to the top of
the park, at 4500 metres, so the decision was made to continue there.
Arriving at the top of the park we got out again and a quick
look told us that it was cold, breezy and cloudy. It was pointed out that the clouds would
move, a very good point, but the cold air had 13 of the 14 deciding to go back
to the first spot.
There are very few turn-outs on the road for views but there
were these two at these spots, basically very small parking lots. While the lower location would have been a
decent spot to work from, the passing traffic would interfere with our
outing. The guide said it was a
10-minute hike to a small lake which would be completely dark. So off we went in a long line, led by Wilson and with me
bringing up the rear. The path was
typical of the outdoors, rocky, muddy and slippery. The group quickly got separated when a couple
of the ladies, one with a walking stick, were having a difficult time
navigating the path. I might have easily
made the destination in the 10 minutes, it wasn’t that difficult, but it was a
hardship for these ladies. These two
found a small clearing and decided they would set up shop there, on their
own. Now, I had a dilemma, but decided
everyone is grown up and had been warned of the obstacles and the cold so I
made sure they were comfortable, and then pressed on.
The lake location was ideal for those who were
prepared. There were large rocks to sit
on and a large grassy and mossy area for camping or whatever.
Now picture this, we are about 12,000 feet up in the Andes, in a pitch black valley, with only flashlights
(many with those little headlamps), with no moon. It was so dark we couldn’t even see any light
reflections off the lake, which was indeed strange. We literally could not see our hand in front
of our face.
Some of us set up our tripods and cameras, adjusted our
settings, and took a few initial shots.
Most of the folks just had point-and-shoot cameras with no manual
settings so they immediately gave up on the photography and just picked out a
comfortable spot to enjoy the night sky.
A couple of ladies came to me for help with their very fancy
cameras, with more setting than the first Space Shuttle. Believe me, I tried to get their settings
changed, but basically only managed to change the shutter speed and could not
figure out how to also change the aperture and ISO settings. It was so frustrating not being able to
accomplish this simple task and eventually they also gave up and sat down to
enjoy the view. That really left only
Mark and I taking any shots at all, and those were very few at this point.
I was stressing over leaving those two ladies behind so Wilson (who had come
without a flashlight!!!), with a second flashlight borrowed from me, and I
scooted back along the path to check on the ladies. We seemed to be going on forever without
coming across them and I was beginning to panic as there are bears and pumas in
the Park. We started calling for them
and they finally responded and shone their flashlights to show us their
location, actually not very far from the bus parking lot…. They said they were perfectly fine so we told
them we would see them in a while and trekked our way back to the main group.
Now the main purpose of this excursion was to watch the
Gemenid Meteor Shower on the best night indicated, with the main show to be
between midnight and 2am. We had an
awesome spot, sitting right under the constellation Orion on a pitch black
night for such an event. I am not an astronomer so I am not able to
name any nearby constellations. There
were so many stars it was difficult to pick out actual constellations. While
the main show was to be better viewed in North America
it should have been easily viewed from a high mountain close to the
equator. We had read multiple websites
about the who, what, where, when, etc of this show, so our expectations were
high.
There were shooting stars, falling meteors, etc but not
nearly on the scale indicated on the websites.
There were the darts of light, lasting maybe ½ a second that would have
been incredibly difficult to record without major camera equipment.
We continued to try to photograph some of the night sky, at
reasonable setting on our camera but were mystified why the camera didn’t seem
to be recoding the shot. Finally I shone
my flashlight on my lens to discover that the lens was coated in frost, and it
frosted up again almost as soon as we wiped it off. So that relegated me to sitting with the
group stargazing. Mark continued to try
to shoot but I never did find out yet if he got anything decent once the frost
was obliterating our lenses.
It is hard to describe really how dark it can be out on a
mountainside, on a moonless night, with millions of stars not really providing any
light. You can’t see your own hand and
definitely can’t see any obstacles on the ground. Without a flashlight it is easy to see how
hikers have died on this mountain.
Overall, I saw maybe 80 shooting stars over the 3.5 hours
when the promise was 60-80 per hour at the peak, but then I was obviously
distracted much of the time worrying about the group. I was amazed and really thankful that we had
such a great and accommodating group of people who were willing to just kick
back and watch the stars. Again, it is
hard to describe the incredible beauty of such a sky, viewed from such an
altitude near the equator. I don’t believe
the Milky Way extends this far south, across Orion, but it sure seemed that way
as we sat in awe of the millions of pinpoints of light amongst some of the
incredibly bright stars like Sirius overhead.
Being mesmerized hardly describes the feeling we all had.
As the mist and breeze continued it was apparent that
everyone was getting chilly and the Meteor Shower wasn’t developing as
promised. About 1:30 everyone was very
agreeable to pack up an hour early and head back. Wilson
again led the troupe and I took up the rear.
When you have a lot of women, mostly elderly, walking on skinny mountain
paths in muddy conditions, it is really slow going. One lady in front of me began tipping every
10 steps and I had to help her and let her rest. I told her, not jokingly, that if she was
going to tip over to make sure she tipped to the right, or we might not see her
again. I took her bag so she would have
less problem balancing and that really helped her cause. It aggravated mine somewhat as I am now
trying to steady a large woman on a slippery slope while carrying a heavy
backpack, a tripod, a heavy shopping bag, and a flashlight. The two of us eventually caught up to the
main pack again and she moved in the group.
I kept watching and listening for recognition that we had
come across the two ladies that were on their own but didn’t hear
anything. I was much relieved to hear
that they made it back to the bus about 15 minutes before we arrived. It seems everyone had made the decision about
the same time to pack up and go so that was good.
We had made arrangements with Daimler to include a ride home
to everyone due to the late hour. We
were getting back almost 1.5 hours earlier than scheduled but everyone was OK
with that. They were thankful for the
ride home and I made sure to walk every lady to her door until they were safely
inside their gates. I was the last one
to be dropped off as the farthest participant to the east, and it is fortunate
that Wilson
also lives in this area. As I was about
to leave the bus I spotted a nice hat in the aisle and decided to quickly check
the bus and found a light parka that had been left as well. Luckily I was pretty sure these belonged to a
mother-daughter team so I emailed them on my arrival home that I had them in my
possession. They were very thankful that
I had managed to retrieve these for them and would make arrangements later to
pick them up.
About 3:30am I quickly downloaded my few photos, worked on a
couple then decided that I would be much better doing this after a little
sleep. And I did sleep….
So I was up around 10am and started on this missive which is
one of my longest ever. Thankfully I
have received many emails from some of the participants thanking me for the
tour which they thoroughly enjoyed, such as this one from Rommie:
“Good morning, Al, Hope you had a chance to catch up with your
sleep.
Charles and I want to thank you for the very
well planned and enjoyable excursion.
It was so amazing up there high. Very
cleansing and spiritual. Never mind the limited sky show, it was still worth
the effort. If every wish I made on a shooting star comes true, I will be in
heaven.”
And a few others:
“It was so special to be able to experience the Cajas under a blanket of
stars. Thanks for planning the trip.”
“Thank
you so much for organizing the trip and taking us last night!
I have never experienced anything like that-it
was truly spectacular!
I have to look over the trip for Friday again
and will let you know asap if I can go.”
So, in a nutshell,
the expedition was a success, just not in the way it was intended. It
really made a person feel closer to God and the incredible nature of creation, …or
the creation of nature. Not too many
folks get the opportunity to be that close to the stars and witness the
incredible beauty of the night sky. I
just wish my photographs could convey this, but frankly they don’t even come
close.
I have tried to use some of the camera starburst effects to
accentuate a few shots. You will note a
lit up foreground in a few shots as well, done with a technique called “light
painting”, using a flashlight to briefly illuminate objects which is a very
useful effect. I hope you like them. A purist will say that almost all the photos
contain “noise” but eliminating the noise also eliminate most of the pinpoint
stars so I have tried to have the results as natural as possible.
As I am downloading the photos I realize that I will surpass
10,000 photos on this camera and about 6,000 on the small camera….
Bella was off to the weaving place to help collect the
clothes everyone has made for donation to the folks at the cancer
hospital. I think they are making that
delivery on Monday. Hats off to them
for all their selfless work. She has
returned shortly after Rosa’s arrival for our
bi-weekly cleaning cycle.
