weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

The first calendar I ever produced was for the year 2007 with the photos of a trip we took in our winter, their summer of 2006 down to the South American region of Patagonia, encompassing both Chile and Argentina, to which we also added a visit to Uruguay and the Iguazu Falls at the border of Argentina and Brazil. This was a very memorable trip, one of the five best trips in our life-time, and we have done a bunch of good ones.

This first part starts out in Chile's capital city Santiago de Chile, then we head all the way south to the Fin del Mundo (the end of the world), exploring first the vicinity of Ushuaia in the Tierra del Fuego region of Argentina, before heading north again to the incomparable Torres del Paine National Park in Chile, home to guanacos (llama family), glaciers, gale-force winds and some of the most spectacular mountain formations on Earth.

While seeing these spectacular mountains was a great joy under any condition, they were mainly shown in dark due to the heavy clouds present during the 3 days we spent in that location. Therefore you can imagine our joy when, as we were driving out of the park in the very early hours of our departure day, we had a cloudless sky and the first rays of the sun illuminated the Cuernos like with a floodlight and for the first time we could really observe the difference in the composition of these fantastic peaks presenting themselves in a multi-hued farewell image.

These shots were taken mainly with a Konica Minolta A2 camera with a resolution of 8 MP, or with an even smaller Casio pocket camera.

Notes
TRIP INTRODUCTON: Set # 1 provides an introduction. Please use the link below if you would like to review it:
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-682502-1.html

EARLIER POSTS of this series: To view, access my profile via the link below, then click on the figure behind "# of topics created" for the list of posts:
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-profile?usernum=45105

Thanks for visiting, for best results please view the downloads, I look forward to your comments and questions.

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1 - Chile/Santiago de Chile - Colorful Barrio Bella Vista, Santiago's Bohemian neighborhood

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2 - Chile/Argentina/Orbital - Flying south with Lan Chile over the Southern Patagonian Icefield, located at the Southern Patagonic Andes between Chile and Argentina, the world's second largest contiguous extrapolar ice field

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3 - Argentina/Ushuaia - Nature walk on the Tierra del Fuego Islands: Island H with visitors on a small trail

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4 - Argentina/Ushuaia - Nature walk on the Tierra del Fuego Islands: Island H with its sparse but brilliantly diverse vegetation

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5 - Chile/Torres del Paine NP - Lago Grey - Calved ice junks from the Grey Glacier at rear, stuck at the end of Lago Grey, patiently waiting for their individual melt-down

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6 - Chile/Torres del Paine NP - Laguna Azul with the three Torres del Paine, the tallest tower reaches 2850m/9350 ft

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7 - Chile/Torres del Paine NP - Very windy and gloomy mood at Lago Nordenskjöld with view to the Cuernos at center and the Almirante mountains at right

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8 - Chile/Torres del Paine NP - Mountain range with the Cuernos at center left, part of the Torres at the rear and Almirante at right in the first light of the morning

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9 - Chile/Torres del Paine NP - Lago and Hosteria Pehoe with the Cuernos at right in the early morning sun

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10 - Chile/Torres del Paine NP - Cuernos peaks in early morning sun: The highest peak "Cuerno Central" reaches 2450 m/8038 ft), in shades of grey (granite) and dark (sedimentary rock) - in the indentation appears the top of one of the Torres

(Download)

Umnak Loc: Mount Vernon, Wa.

Wonderful images Joe! The last in this set is my favorite(although, 9 is a close runner up)!
Incredibly colorful and intriguing set!
Rob

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

Absolutely beautiful. Can you tell us a bit about your travel method! Travel agent? By the seat of your pants? Mostly driving on your own? Buy a map and stick your thumb out on the side of the nearest road? I thought I was pretty well travelled but I couldn't hold a candle for you.

Ourspolair

All gorgeous, as always. The shot from the plane is almost an abstract. The colours in all of these shots is almost painterly, easy to see why you would chose them for a calendar. Thanks again for sharing your excellent work with us all. Please stay safe.

JFCoupe Loc: Kent, Washington

You have had some amazing trips. Thanks for generously sharing your images.

Horseart Loc: Alabama

All beautiful. I am an artist and I naturally love color so the first and last are my favorites.

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Hi Rob - good to see you active again and thanks for your nice comment. Yes, I consider the #10 picture to be one of my all-time favorites, particularly also considering how it came to be: We drove by this particular spot a number of times, always saw the mountains, always enjoyed them for their shape, but they were sort of blah, when it comes to the overall/color effect, just as you see in #7. Then in the very early morning, when we were leaving the Torres del Paine NP, we drove by here for the last time and WOW, there they were like everybody should see these peaks - we still cannot believe our luck. Have a good weekend - if you get a chance, have a look at some of the previous postings since you looked in last. Joe

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Thank you Chief for looking in on this series and your kind comment. As to your question: yes, all of the above. There is really no size that fits all kinds of travel in different parts of the world. My preferred method is to wing it myself, drive my own car, be able to stop wherever I want, having the freedom to deviate from a planned route. That works well in some places in this world - like pretty much all over Europe, the Americas in general, certainly North America, have done so extensively also in Southern Africa, also Australia and most of the islands. In Asia, I have driven only in a handful of countries even though more would be possible. Some of the hindrances here are the language, road signs, etc, even though with my wife being of Chinese origin and speaking a few of their languages, we could wing it in some places.

In Asia, we sometimes planned a trip ourselves, more often used a travel agent specialized for an area, and have done everything from private tours (sometimes by chance because we were the only ones that signed up) to small groups to actually big group tour (once, in Thailand and it worked out surprisingly well) - best of course are the private tours as you can ask the driver to stop wherever you want, conditions permitting, sometimes that also works on small groups. We have visited most countries of Asia, I also worked out there for 8 years, missing about 5 countries excluding the Arab world.

When driving, I normally pre-plan the route and set markers where we could stop - and often pretty much adhere to that. I used to wing the local activities, but then spent too much time on location figuring out what to do during a short stay. Lately, I have set up (another) spreadsheet listing the possible places along the route and what to see where and in what order - that improves the "hit rate", winging it is sometimes more fun as you get spontaneous experiences, but it is annoying when you visited a place but didn't manage to see the one "Must See" item. We do not reserve hotels in advance, except for the first night, as I want to keep the freedom to change for longer or shorter stays if the conditions so warrant - weather or other considerations.

That's pretty much it - we both have been "travelers" pretty much all our life, as I worked extensively internationally, and often tagged on some vacation time to an overseas trip. We try to do about 5 months of travel a year now that I am retired - we now have the luxury to spend as much time as we want on a trip, but while before most trips as such were employer financed and I just had to come up for the cost of the extensions, now the costs hit our own pockets. But on extensive trips, particularly to Europe, we also spend a good amount of time with our families over there and that considerably cuts down on our overall costs.

Hope this has answered your questions - let me know if you have more - I always enjoy interacting with our colleagues here on UHH. Joe

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Thank you very much Ours for your appreciation and kind comment.

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Thank you very much JFC for your kind words, I am glad you enjoyed looking at my photos.

NMGal Loc: NE NM

Well, Joe. You have done it again. A fascinating tour.

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Thank you very much Jo for looking in on my soon ending series and your kind comment. While I wouldn't dare consider myself to be an artist, I am also very much driven by color and it certainly shows up in my photography. I don't know whether you have seen the previous posts, but if not, I invite you to have a look at this series, if time permits and you have the interest - there are lots of color-driven images. Have a great day, Joe

weberwest Loc: Ferndale WA

Thank you Barbara, glad you liked it - I'll keep on "trying it" for another couple of days and then this series is history .... Enjoy your day - Joe

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

All excellent as usual, Joe, but the polar ice field really grabs me!

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

Awesome set, Joe. I really like #2.