Deve’s Blog

Came back from the trip on Sunday afternoon… tired but satisfied…

A few notes, before a (I hope) future travel diary…

Bolivia has some breathtaking landscapes; the three days on 4WD on the Salt Flats and the desert were marvellous, albeit long, very tiring and very cold (outside, in the night, it went down to -20°C!!!). The cities (La Paz and Sucre) didn’t strike me as much, but they can be fascinating in their own way and deserve a visit. I’d have been quite curious to visit Potosì and the silver mines, as we were supposed to do according to our itinerary, but unfortunately we ran into strikes in the whole Potosì region, so the city was actually locked down for two or three weeks, with miners throwing dynamite and tourists stuck in the city… Luckily our guide Alex managed to avoid all that, even though the unplanned trip was quite intense: 4WD for 8 hours in the night, than 3 hours and a damned bus without heating, at 4.30 in the morning, and finally a 40 minutes flight (which is quite ironic…) from La Paz to Sucre…
Santa Cruz, still in Bolivia, was instead just a “stop” towards Brazil: the city itself has very little to offer to tourists, although it was interesting to see the difference in the population, mostly of Spanish descendence, if compared for example to La Paz, with a lot of Aymara descendents…

All the stops in Brazil were a pleasant surprise… the Pantanal, where observing animals and birds is really very easy, Bonito, where I tried snorkelling in a river that I had no idea could be so crystal clear, and where I tried some underwater photography thanks to a special plastic bag… and Iguazu Falls, the highlight of the trip for me, a wonder of nature that I believe is really unique (by the way: if you want to vote for the New 7 Wonders of Nature, you MUST vote for Iguazu…). And then Paraty, a colonial village on the coast, the beautiful Ilha Grande with the amazing Lopez Mendez beach…
Rio, instead, didn’t strike me that much… the statue of Christ the Redeemer is way overrated, the Sambodromo is a mass of cement which it’s pointless to visit if it’s not the Carnival, while the Sugarloaf at sunset was probably the best attraction of the city for me; Copacabana and Ipanema are iconic, but not so special… anyway I appreciated the atmosphere, even if in some parts of the city you didn’t really feel very safe…

Anyway it was a beautiful trip, which certainly leaves me with the desire to visit also the North of huge Brazil, besides the taste of South I got…

At the end of the holiday, the count of photos and videos that I took with my two cameras got to 3694… well, many are “safety shots”, and in some occasions I shot long sequences to create panoramic pictures, so the number of “good” pictures will certainly drop significantly… I’ll try to be selective!
In the meantime I made a first round of selection, about 1000 pics and movies that I’ve already put on Flickr here… enjoy…

P.S. I must specify that I believe that no picture or movie will ever be able to do justice to what Iguazu is…

And finally it’s time for holidays again! And finally they’re quite generous, a whole month! And finally it’s time to travel again!

As usual, no typical destinations for me, otherwise you’d get bored… 25 days from La Paz (Bolivia) to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)! And then two extra days in Rio… and two days of travel… and that’s how to spend 29 days of August!

I have to say the GAP website seems to always pull out the right trip at the right moment… Only two weeks to use, starting from Chicago? Here’s Peru for you… I have to book at the last minute for a week around New Year’s Eve? Cuba! No holidays until October? No problem, China! Another New Year’s Eve without much advance notice? Let’s say Egypt…
And this year the choice fell upon this tour, which seems really amazing (and I think it will be tiring in the same measure… that’s what the two days in Rio are for, and I see myself lying on Ipanema’s beach all day long…).

Well, I’m leaving tomorrow at 8 am, Milan-Madrid-Sao Paulo, then I’ll have to change airline and take my last flight to La Paz, where I’ll land at… 4000 metres above sea level… damn it… good thing they have mate de coca

See you in September…

P.S. it’s really weird having to pack both snow hat/gloves and swimsuit/beach towel in my bag…
P.P.S. I also had to “recycle” my bag, emptying it and filling it again with a bit less stuff! I’m going to trust the laundry services of our hotels, otherwise I don’t think I could have made it…

(last pictures!)

After leaving Banff, we had a whole day of travel ahead of us, with not a lot of things to see after the “indigestion” of the previous days… The destination for the day was Vernon, a pleasant city in British Columbia, renowned for… well, not much I think… for us, it was merely a night stop, no point in lying. But we had to get back to Vernon somehow, right?

Along the way we stopped first to visit some anonymous waterfalls (I honestly can’t remember the name), then at the observation point for Big Hill Spiral Tunnels, two tunnels in an 8-shape that allow trains to climb a remarkable height without an excessively steep slope… nice, but unfortunately if there’s no train going through there’s not much to see… The main highlights of the following two stops were a nice squirrel, peeking from a hole in the asphalt of the stop area, and a nice ice-cream in a local farm / ice-cream shop. Then we got to Vernon and the day was over!

Ok, not quite, in Vernon we had an included Chinese dinner, not so great honestly (and please tell me: if I’m visiting Canada, why are the included dinners spaghetti, pizza, Chinese… which have nothing to do with Canada?!). Then we set up our own party in one of the hotel rooms, high-school trip style, with a bit of booze from the supermarket in front of the hotel, as we didn’t have many other options… fun things were Franck with an open umbrella, neck massage lessons and a few laughs together…

(more…)

(photo set here)

After getting to Banff in the afternoon, we went on to take possession of our rooms, some very nice 4-people chalets; but Mike and I got like and had one all for us… They’re just out of town, but in a few minutes by taxi or 20 minutes on foot you can get there easily.

After a shower we headed to the Bow River Falls, for the traditional group photo… with a little accident… good ol’ Bear, next to me in the pic, lost his balance and fell from the little wall we were standing on… trying to keep up, he hanged on to me, literally ripping off a part of my polo shirt, under the right arm! We had no time to get back to the hotel, but fortunately the temperature was quite cool, so I could cover up the problem by wearing a cardigan…

The dinner was included, honestly I can’t remember the place… maybe it was Melissa’s Restaurant? Could be… dinner was not bad, even if there wasn’t any really nifty food; we stayed in the bar are for a while, playing pool and foosball, before Ron led us to Wild Bill’s Saloon (dedicated to the Bill Peyto whose name was given to the omonimous lake…) for a cocktail and some country music, before getting a taxi back to the hotel.

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Here’s the photo set…

So far, western Canada had almost only given us rain… and rain… and more rain… Well, we were repayed on July 25th with the clearest and sunniest day since we had landed in Vancouver… just when we had to travel along the scenic route called “Icefields Parkway“! Priceless!

We left at 8 o’ clock sharp, and Ron had told us he woudln’t have any qualm leaving behind anyone who was late, as the day was packed with things to see… I tried to get there way before 8, so I could get the front row seats, but I was beaten by Kylie by a few minutes, so I had to make do with the second row…

The Icefields Parkway runs between Jasper and Banff, parallel to the Continental Divide of north-western America (the so-called “Great Divide”), that is the mountain range separating the rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean from the rivers flowing into the Arctic or Atlantic Ocean. What is peculiar of this highway is the beautiful sight on the many glaciers of the Greati Divide, with waterfalls, lakes and rivers nearby.

And indeed, just travelling along the road is a show in itself, and on that day we really saw lots of “rocks and trees”!

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After… way, way too much time… still following my good intentions, I’ll get back to the travel diary of my trip to Canada, 2007… maybe my memories will be a bit blurred by now, but let’s try, also with the help of the usual pics.
So where were we? Kamloops, a stop between Whistler and Jasper.
As I woke up I felt a bit of fever… just on the day we where supposed to go rafting… And, for a change, it’s still raining…
We left, and travelled the whole morning, going from British Columbia to Alberta (on the notes of “Alberta Bound” by Gordon Lightfoot). The bad weather even spoils the view of the tallest mount of the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson, of which otherwise we could have had a great view from the rest stop where we had lunch.

That’s where the rafting guys came to pick us up and take us to the Fraser River, the same river that flows into the sea by Vancouver, but that to the north-east is good enough for some medium-levle rafting.
Getting “dressed” in the rafting wetsuit and boots was curious… they made us change under the rain (a light rain, fortunately) withouth ceremonies… and the inside of the wetsuit was not dry at all…
Oh well; I still didn’t feel very well, but we got a paddle and split on several rafts, starting the navigtaion… I must say the experience wasn’t so great for me, maybe also because of the rain and cold… but still, there weren’t many exciting rapids, and a good part of the navigation was a bit boring. We even had to walk around the toughest rapids, because they were considered too dangerous… Near the end we also had the chance to jump in the river for an icy bath, but considering my conditions I decided to avoid that…

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It’s time to dust off my blog, taking advantage of the unusual five-day holiday “bridge”, to briefly write about last Saturday’s ASP Event, a visit to the Fortress of Fenestrelle.
Well, I certainly had no idea that in Italy, about one hour from Turin, we have the largest fortified structure of Europe, also called “the Great Wall of Piedmont”, as it seems it’s the longest stonework construction, after the Great Wall of China (even if we’re talking of completely different order of magnitude).

5 brave people from Milan (unfortunately the number of attendees was quite low overall, especially from Milan but also from Turin), we entered the highway around 9 am and soon after that we entered a huge downpour… fortunately when we got there, around 11.30 pm, the weather in Fenestrelle as more than acceptable, with some passing clouds and some wind that alternated with a nice warm sun.

A sandwich and a “siesta” around noon, and at 2 pm we began our guided tour, with the great tour guide Ezio Raviol. We went first inside the fort (the kitchens, the cellars, the reservoir…), in the ex-church (later used as an ammo depot), and then we began climbing, partly outdoor and partly on the famous Covered Stairway (4000 steps for 600 metres of height difference!!!). We stopped around 1/3 up (counting the height difference… we only took around 250 steps up…), at the Garitta del Diavolo, and then we came down along another course through various casemates, where the many cannons of the fort used to be placed.
Well, it was really a nice visit… we should evaluate, in the future, the 8-hour visit, that leads all the way up to the fort.

Anyway, around 6.30 pm we head for the Pian dell’Alpe agrotourism, even higher, for a great dinner with cold cuts, carpaccio, zucchini with a secret recipe (bah… they seemed to have oil, garlic and chili peppers to me…), polenta, cotechino, fondue and mixed cheese…
We left around 9.30 pm as we had to drive 3 hours back to Milan, but I read on Facebook that those who stayed a bit more engaged a snowball battle in the dark… yes, because nearby the agrotourism there were still some patches of snow! Great…

The pictures are in this set on Flickr, I’ll leave you with this nice panorama of the Pian dell’Alpe…

After the now usual months of silence on the blog, I’m back with a post about my latest two holidays… Now, writing on this blog feels a bit like trying to inject adrenaline in a dead body… but anyways…

China. 3 weeks (and something more), leaving everything behind. Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Chengdu, Yangtze river cruise, Yangshuo, Hong Kong… a marvellous tour, only young people in the group (all between 22 and 33 yo), we really had fun. 4 trips on night trains, chinese food (spicy!), the Great Wall, the skyscrapers in Shanghai, the Terracotta warriors, pandas, the bike ride through the countryside, the light show in Hong Kong… It would deserve a nice travel diary (I took notes on my palmtop during the trip), but for the time being it will reamain a good intention… Here a few pictures with my new D90…

Egypt. For New Year’s Eve I found this tour, managing to squeeze it in the vacation days I was given… I was a bit doubtful, but I didn’t really have many options and so I tried.
Well, I ended up in the first egyptian tour sponsored by Discovery Channel, with the best guid/egyptologyst ever (I dare anyone to disagree), the great Mayer (here if you scroll down a bit you can see him in a plastic pose on the Discovery website). The tour had some crazy timings (almost always waking up around 5.00-5.30 or worse!), but we visited some amazing places and temples, all supported by Mayer’s great explanations and a heterogeneous group that managed to get together with no problems at all… Highlights: dawn at Abu Simbel, the Valley of the Kings, Karnak… Maybe the best GAP tour of my four so far… even if all of them were great in their own way…
Here the best pictures…

Let’s see how many months till the next post…

After many devastating months I’m back on the blog… DOF has been migrated… the Integrazione DOF project is substantially over, except for the follow-up (”live” defects on the production environment), which won’t be easy at all, but which I won’t see…
And finally, holidays… Far East, China… from Beijing to Hong Kong, 3 weeks… taking off.
Yesterday and today I tasted a bit of a “normal” life… left the office around 5.30 pm… tonight I had a sort of goodbye dinner with my colleagues…
I hope this keeps up when I’m back.

But now there’s only China…

Christmas. New Year’s Eve. Time for holidays. Time to rest. But to me, most importantly, one of the two main occasions in all year, together with summer, to travel.

I like travelling. Sometimes I like the travel in itself. But in particular I like visiting new places, far places, different places.
For this reason, when I have the occasion to travel but I can’t use it as I would like to, I get really annoyed. So you’ll understand that last year, when our vacation plan was confirmed on December 19th, and more importantly when I got chicken pox and couldn’t go anywhere, I was really pissed off.

This time the vacation plan arrived in early november. Unfortunately barely two weeks, thanks to the festivities in quite favorable spots; but people on other projects get three weeks off. Thus it is.

My first attempt was for this Contiki tour: I’ve never seen Berlin, Prague, Budapest and they intrigue me, especially near Christmas; Vienna didn’t struck me as particularly interesting when I visited it, but two days there certainly don’t bother me; and a Contiki tour is fun and carefree, just what I needed.
But even if the web site kept saying “Available”, after a few days from my booking request (which in Italy must go through the CTS agencies) they replied: the December 27th departure is full, availability for the 20th or January 10th. I tried to organize, managed to get the ok for a modification to the vacation plan, and the day after I asked to reserve the December 20th departure. After a week: sorry, this one is full, too.

Will I ever manage to go on a Contiki tour again before I get 35, considering the short notice I have for holidays? Who knows…

At this point, getting close to December, I decided to look for a tried and tested alternative: GAP Adventures. By looking at interesting locations and availability, my choice fell on8 days in Cuba.
It’s only going to be a taste of it, as Cuba is larger than you’d think; but I hope tehre will be a bit of everything, in the western part of the country which is described as the more naturalistic one: valleys, caves, beaches, tobacco plantations, Havana. And a lot of relax I hope.

I’m leaving on December 27th and I’ll be back in Italy on January 5th; and as Vince would say, flagged another destination!