Jump to content

Post your positive results in 2019 here! :)


Recommended Posts

On 18/06/2019 at 19:13, MizBrown said:

 

Thanks.  I've been here almost nine years and last year wasn't normal times..

 

One of the problems was North Americans and North American raised dual nationals had zero sense of the dangers of standing by people who were shooting rocks out of hand cannon at  police with automatic weapons.  One expat here went out with the marchers until the shooting started.  Another expat in another city got a rock in the back when he joined a march there (not hurt, just bruised).   When I went out to photograph my neighbors building barricades, my adrenalin was sky high.   Last year was not normal conditions and the problem with people raised in the US is not understanding that all this can get bloody fast.   

 

I have a collection of rocks.in my patio that were shot over a two story roof to land there.  Mortaros (muzzle loaded hand cannons)-- every adolescent Nicaraguan male's phallic symbol last year, both sides.   At night, I got the cat and dog and went to my back bedroom with several masonry walls between me and the street.   It was seriously not fun.  One guy I know said his FSLN lawyer was kidnapped, tortured, and killed.  Another couple who were FSLN because of employment and who were opposed to what the local government was doing (hiring kids to beat up the opposition, basically) were threatened with death and had a phone stolen by anti-Ortega street blockaders who decided he was a spy.   I may have had a cane toad thrown into my yard because my housekeeper for a while was working as an administrative assistant for the police (can't really figure how the toad got in otherwise as there's only concrete in front of the house and the courtyard has two story walls).

 

I'd say now that for tourists, it's safe enough if people don't do stupid things like joining marches, photographing cops arresting people (I wish I could have without getting arrested myself).   Basically, safest way in would be through Costa Rica and over to San Juan del Sur. 

 

At this point, nobody is going for expats as long as they stay out of the political messes.  Ortega's Petronic even sent two oil tankers by sea barge to San Juan del Sur when the blockades stopped land deliveries of gasoline.   In Matagalpa, one guy opened his door to see a riot in which an FSLN official was killed.  He was busted, got involved in a prison riot apparently, and was killed by the cops.  Dual national who'd served in the US military -- very sad.   One guy was convicted of shooting a Brazilian girl who was studying in Nicaragua probably because the Brazilian government protested and she'd truly been just a curious bystander.  

 

The Cubans have a medical outreach facility in my town which didn't have fencing protecting it before this past year.  Now it's got steel barricades and gates.  A Nicaraguan health department truck was burned during the mess.   I don't know if the Cubans were threatened or not (suspect that they were given the accusations that Cuba sent troops to Nicaragua to protect Ortega), but they certainly have upped the security since the events last year.

Why do you stay there? Me thinks I’d get the **** out. Stress hormones can’t be healthy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

Why do you stay there? Me thinks I’d get the **** out. Stress hormones can’t be healthy.

 

Eight years of quite nice and a few months of not.   Being poor in the US is chronically stressful.  I have a nice life here, with cats, fish, and a dog, and friends.   Don't have to have a car.  Streets are safe during the day (and actually were even during the troubles most of the time).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, MizBrown said:

 

Eight years of quite nice and a few months of not.   Being poor in the US is chronically stressful.  I have a nice life here, with cats, fish, and a dog, and friends.   Don't have to have a car.  Streets are safe during the day (and actually were even during the troubles most of the time).

 

You are in Nicaragua, if I remember correctly?

 

It's climbing up my list of places to visit - Costa Rica getting too expensive. I need to do a lot more research though on how good it's going to be for wildlife.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, chris_rabe said:

 

You are in Nicaragua, if I remember correctly?

 

It's climbing up my list of places to visit - Costa Rica getting too expensive. I need to do a lot more research though on how good it's going to be for wildlife.

 

 

 

Nicaragua is a very interesting and visually dramatic country to travel in. However, I'd say that Panama would be a much more fruitful destination for wildlife photography, perhaps even better than Costa Rica, which has become a victim of its own popularity. There is plenty of wildlife -- especially birds and monkeys -- just a short drive from Panama City.

Edited by John Mitchell
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 26/06/2019 at 15:44, MizBrown said:

 

Eight years of quite nice and a few months of not.   Being poor in the US is chronically stressful.  I have a nice life here, with cats, fish, and a dog, and friends.   Don't have to have a car.  Streets are safe during the day (and actually were even during the troubles most of the time).

I understand a bit, now. Reading your reports of putting thick walls between you and what’s going on outside scared me.  Like living here in tornado alley doesn’t scare me that bad. If a tornado is near, I comfort myself that a minute of wind and it’s all over! 😁 plus I have a basement to hang out in while the storm rages. Me and my parrot. Argggh, matey!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Nicaragua is a very interesting and visually dramatic country to travel in. However, I'd say that Panama would be a much more fruitful destination for wildlife photography, perhaps even better than Costa Rica, which has become a victim of its own popularity. There is plenty of wildlife -- especially birds and monkeys -- just a short drive from Panama City.

 

Costa Rica basically is about as expensive as the US.  Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America.  Panama  has more monkey species, but Nicaragua has at least two of the three that live here on Ometepe Island, plus they've got some impressive birds.  I think most people only go to San Juan del Sur and Granada.  I think Selva Negra and El Jaguar (turned out to be cougars) up here are very good for the birds and some of the mammals.  The howlers on Ometepe are easiest to see.   Costa Rica has more endemic birds.  Nicaragua has the very big lake, some interesting communities along the San Juan River, and the Indio Maiz reserve.  The Carribean coast is culturally Carribean and predominantly indigenous and black.    If you're ever back or if anyone else is interested, I can put you in touch with a guy who has done some very interesting traveling around on the Caribbean coast and in some of the less well known places on the Pacific Coast and in the central areas.   He's another expat.

 

Wild life photography tends to be one of those things that 45 year old tech guys who cashed out for an early retirement get into.  I like taking bird photos, but most of that is saturated by people who can afford bigger lenses than I can.  Panama has gotten more and more built up except for the Darien Gap from what I've read and heard.   Nicaragua and Costa Rica shared about 90 percent of the birds.

 

Panama's canopy tower is famous among birders.  It's like a Starbucks with feeding stations on several levels of the forest.  Never been, but have heard about it from a birder acquaintance.  

 

 

Betty, it's like tornado alley, only with shelter being inside the house (my house is divided by a courtyard into a front with the living room (sala), hallway, study, and kitchen, with a studio over the kitchen, and the back section which is one bedroom with toilet and shower stacked over another bedroom with shower and toilet (I don't use the upstairs bedroom).  So, pretty secure against average messes.  Most of these things didn't last all that long here.  The local mayor of the city is FSLN and a bit of a jerk who brought in people from outside to tear down the local barricades.  A friend lives in another part of Nicaragua where his FSLN mayor just let the Liberales put up the barricades and strangle the town, and then take them down when they heard the non-local national police were coming with guns.   We had five dead here in Jinotega from street fighting, and about 20 arrested in the sweeps by the special investigators, all released now.   Funny, one of them is in one of my portfolio photos, taken well before the troubles.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, chris_rabe said:

 

You are in Nicaragua, if I remember correctly?

 

It's climbing up my list of places to visit - Costa Rica getting too expensive. I need to do a lot more research though on how good it's going to be for wildlife.

 

 

 

Two places with good bird guides -- El Jaguar and a nature study place near Granada on Lago Apoyo.  Ometepe Island has at least two species of monkeys (capuchin and howler) and may have the Geoffrey's Spider monkey, too, or on a nearby small island.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, MizBrown said:

Panama's canopy tower is famous among birders.  It's like a Starbucks with feeding stations on several levels of the forest.  Never been, but have heard about it from a birder acquaintance.  

 

 

I have been. We didn't see many birds from the top but the sunrise over the rainforest was gorgeous. Very misty.  Lots of hummingbirds at ground level.

Oh yes, I also remember the gardener spraying my 500mm lens with the hose...

BHM39B.jpg

 

BHM38X.jpg

 

BHM39P.jpg

BHM38D.jpg

 

 

 

 

Edited by gvallee
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, gvallee said:

 

I have been. We didn't see many birds from the top but the sunrise over the rainforest was gorgeous. Very misty.  Lots of hummingbirds at ground level.

Oh yes, I also remember the gardener spraying my 500mm lens with the hose...

BHM39B.jpg

 

BHM38X.jpg

 

BHM39P.jpg

BHM38D.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, I've been there too. It's a remarkable place. I actually wrote one of the first articles about the Canopy Tower for Americas magazine (now defunct sadly) back in 2000. That's the owner Raul Arias de Para in the pic below. Perhaps you met him. I saw lots of birds when I was there in January, but I wasn't well enough equipped for bird photography.

 

birdwatcher-on-the-top-deck-of-the-canop

Edited by John Mitchell
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You had better weather than us! It was some time ago but I don't think we met the owner at the time.

I don't want to hijack this thread. Since it's the 'Post your positive results', the result was that it was a very good trip! 

Shame we don't have PM any more. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, gvallee said:

You had better weather than us! It was some time ago but I don't think we met the owner at the time.

I don't want to hijack this thread. Since it's the 'Post your positive results', the result was that it was a very good trip! 

Shame we don't have PM any more. 

 

Yes, I lucked out. The weather was nice and sunny while I was in Panama. I found the country to be a lot more interesting than I had expected.  Perhaps it's time to start a "Bring Back PM" movement. 😏

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, MizBrown said:

 

Two places with good bird guides -- El Jaguar and a nature study place near Granada on Lago Apoyo.  Ometepe Island has at least two species of monkeys (capuchin and howler) and may have the Geoffrey's Spider monkey, too, or on a nearby small island.

 

I spent a few days on Isla de Ometepe about ten years ago. I remember being woken up by the howlers. There seemed to be a lot of birds as well. It's a pleasant spot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I spent a few days on Isla de Ometepe about ten years ago. I remember being woken up by the howlers. There seemed to be a lot of birds as well. It's a pleasant spot.

 

I started a new discussion on photographic opportunities in Nicaragua. 

 

  • Love 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've just noticed that I've gone through $20,000 of sales since joining Alamy, although most of that is from 2015 onward. I did very little in the early days after becoming a contributor and what I did add was done so with little understanding of what the stock industry was about (still not totally sure!)

  • Love 1
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just noticed a nice little tweek to the Sales reported bit of dashboard. Until a few days ago, if I wanted to take a better look at the tiny thumbnail I would be taken to the AIM bit where I was shown a still pretty small image with an ugly blue wash. Now I get a nice big preview about A5 size when I click on the sales thumbnail. Thanks Alamy!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.