Souvenir Photo Studio, by Al Bourassa: Sunday August 25, 2019 Birthday/Views

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Sunday August 25, 2019

Awake again at 3:37 and walking the dogs at 5:30am. Hardly a cloud in the sky, another scorcher coming. No wild bunny to be seen.

I took out the 70-300 lens and tried a few test shots this morning, again just using the manual focus because the auto-focus is definitely not working.. I check the box and it says that it contains an AF lens. It does have what appears to be AF contacts, which I tried to clean, but to no avail. Some of the pictures were actually quite sharp, especially the shot of Turi, so I packed the lens and camera in my sling bag for the trip today.

Today we were headed to help celebrate niece Ana's 34th Birthday at German's finca (acreage) on the mountaintop.

Oh, but first we had to take special food to a sick pitbull (nobody home so left it with a neighbour). Next we stop at the one vet place to see if they have a specialized dog food (they didn't). So we go shopping for what I thought was birthday celebration items, like the dozen beer I grabbed, but instead we were filling Ana's grocery list so that filled up the back of the car unexpectedly, to me... Then we go to a pet store to find that dog food and get lucky. That large bag goes on the floor at the back. Next we go home to let the dogs have the run of the house while we are gone, and to grab Rex to come with us.

We go into Tulua to pick up Adiela to come with us. Imagine my surprise again when the Mom, Ana Julia, is getting into the car as well... So now we have 2 adults and a big dog sharing the backseat and fighting for legroom with garbage bags, dog food and other stuff... Ane Julia is holding a bag of groceries, including eggs.

So we go to pick up the cake and stuff Cristina had ordered on Friday from the place that is supposed to make the best cakes in the world. That actually goes rather quickly. Cristina has to have the cake on her lap.

Up 2 more blocks and we are stopping to pick up a box of Chinese rice and ribs apparently arranged for lunch by Adiela. Adiela gets to carry this.

We make it through Rio Frio to get to the foothills and the dog Rex is making noises, comes forward, and barfs all over my right arm, the armrest, and leather seats. At this point I was already so livid with everything that I just sat there and calmed down. It isn't the dog's fault that a bunch of adults made it sit in the middle of the backseat. Cristina digs out the wet-wipes and cleans me up and what she can reach without anyone moving. The odd thing is that there didn't seem to be associated with this episode. The mess between the seats was yucky and I just asked Cristina to cover the sight of it with a couple of the wet-wipes. I figured the car needs to be cleaned anyway so I would just pay my guy 50% more for the extra work involved.

We make the left turn right when we reach the foothills and start climbing hairpin turns for several miles. We arrive at the finca turnoff and I go down this awful road at a snail's pace, get to the house and turn it around.

We unload the car and it wasn't long before everyone had a plate of rice and ribs, then beers.

The view from German's place is absolutely spectacular, marred only by low cloud often. I am quite sure that most of today's haze was from the Amazon forest fires, so the photos are not the greatest.

Rex is being adopted by German and Ana. They already have 2 smaller male dogs and wanted a little larger dog for security. Rex should fit the bill nicely. The dogs are very protective when anyone goes down the road.

The cake was pretty and was supposed to be fresh today. I estimated that it was at least 3 days old and certainly not the best cake in the world but edible.

I contented myself with taking the few shots I did while Ana got her presents, etc. Then I closed my eyes for a while. I was surprised that there were few birds or wildlife to shoot. The 70-300 did a creditable job for the shots it took. I still have to get accustomed to the manual focus and hope that my subject will stay still long enough.

Cristina actually went back to the car and cleaned up almost all of the barf, bless her soul. She didn't think that we would have time to take the car in for cleaning tomorrow and she didn't want this stuff to harden.

There was little argument to my very subtle hint that we should leave so that we could drive in daylight. Like last time, I let German drive the car up that crappy road because he knows what speed will work. I walked up the 1/2 mile hill and was happy to settle into the comfortable driver's seat. The next surprise was that Ana was coming back with us to catch the bus at Tulua to go to work in Cali. Fortunately the car had been emptied of most of the impediments.

I love the view from up on that mountain, and the road up is paved, but it is deadly narrow and has tons of blind curves. There are mostly motorcycles on the roads and they usually are not bad to let us by. Once we get near Rio Frio, all the weekend crowd is also going home so the traffic is choked with every kind of conveyance. Once we hit Tulua, it takes 3 light changes to get through the first 4 lights. The number of bikes criss-crossing inches from the front of the car drive me bananas. I am thankful that I have my dash-cam to record this stuff. Some of these idiots (often families of 4 on a bike) have a death wish.

Finally we drop everybody off and arrive at home to our happy 8 dogs...

I wasn't going to caption all the photos.... I am supposed to work on the birthday pictures and put on nice backgrounds... That is too much for today.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. That was the day’s excitement.

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