Big world, little guy

Zen Monk or Trigger Happy ?

2011-04-17T22:43:00.000+01:00

Two years ago, while traveling through Arizona and Utah, I had the opportunity to go to one of the most amazing places I've ever been to: the slot canyons near the town of Page, on the state of Arizona, near the Utah border. These canyons are best known to all the world as the Antelope Canyons (Upper and Lower), and are worth seeing even if you're not a photographer.

Both of these canyons are extraordinarily beautiful, specially around the middle of the day when the sunlight enters from the top and lights up the narrow canyon walls, at some times of the year creating light beams, due to the lit particles of sand in the air. Both are also extremely dangerous to visit on rainy days, as flash floods can occur and there is virtually no place to escape once we're inside the canyon. Both are also on the Navajo reservation, one on each side of the road. And you have to pay to visit them both. There was a time not so long ago when photographers could take photos of these marvels relatively alone and undisturbed, but now they have become a mandatory place for tourists. There is a difference, though, when approaching these canyons photographically. And I find it interesting that this difference also illustrates the differences in approach of several landscape photographers.

Upper Antelope Canyon can be visited only in a guided tour that leaves from Page. There is a normal 2 hour tour, or the 4 hour photo tour. These are often packed with people. I couldn't book a photo tour so I had to settle for the normal one. Take into account the time it takes to reach the canyon and you realize that you have only about 1 hour inside the canyon. Take into account that you don't have much light and you realize that your exposures are normally around 15 to 30 seconds. So during the hour I spent there I had to manage setting up the tripod, composing, taking some 15 to 30 second shots while avoiding the other tourists from passing in front of my camera for that time. And I had to move on from spot to spot to keep up with our tour guide... I was in trigger happy mode, and could barely pause to think about what I was doing.

Lower Antelope Canyon, USA

Lower Antelope Canyon can only be visited with a Navajo tour guide, but you are more or less free to be there for as much as you like (not exceeding 4 hours) and it's much less crowded. You don't have to follow the guide, he's just there to make sure everything is ok, and you can go back and forth on the canyon as you please, so you can take your time to compose and shoot the way you want. There are still people coming and going but if you ask them too, they won't stand in your shot or will wait patiently for you to finish exposing before passing by.

These two places are in a way symbolic of two ways of shooting a landscape. I've met photographers that exhibit a zen-link patience. They are extremely methodical, will choose a spot, and then wait patiently for that bit of light that they envisioned. I've also met people that shoot anything that moves (well not literally because most landscapes don't actually move that much, but you get the point). They will go to a spot take a few shots from various angles, then move on to the next spot and so on.

I'm still trying to figure out on which of these categories I belong. I don't believe one is necessarily better than the other. Each person is different, so maybe one photographer's personality makes him choose one approach over the other. What I try to do is choose what works best for getting my shots. In fact my time in the Antelope Canyons taught me to be flexible and learn to do both, depending on the circumstances I was facing. As with lots of things in life, flexibility is the key...

So which one are you ? Trigger Happy ? Or Zen Monk ?...

Doing justice to an old friend

2011-03-22T23:22:00.001Z

Adraga Surf, Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, Portugal

I recently had some nice surprises while looking through my old film archive for photos that I may use for online sales. It seems that, for some strange reason that I cannot comprehend, there were a few images lying around the archive to which I had not payed proper attention in the past.

Here's one of those images. It was shot on Adraga Beach, a beach near Sintra that is well known to Lisbon-based landscape photographers because of some oddly shaped rocks. Yet there was nothing odd about the rocks in the image, just a soft light hitting them as the waves and the surf rolled in. I liked this image the moment I saw it in the archive. I like the composition, the shadows on the rocks, the light reflected on the waves. It may not be one of my best shots, but for me it just has a nice, balanced feel.

What puzzles me is how this image could have been unnoticed for years on my archive. I don't really understand why I overlooked it for so long. Maybe at the time I was so interested in shooting the odd shaped rocks in the beach with a nice sunset sky, that I didn't pay any attention to the other shots I took during the afternoon. And since that shooting session didn't provide me with the images I wanted in the first place, I overlooked all others... Big mistake.

But hey, we learn from our mistakes, right ? Well some people do anyway, and I sure try to learn from mine. Sometimes I need to look at my images objectively and with no preconceived expectations in order to see them for what they are and not for what I wanted them to be. And sometimes even if I didn't capture what I originally wanted to, what I bring home can actually be very beautiful.

So I guess this image deserved that I did it justice after being forgotten for so long. I humbly apologize to it and hope to learn from my mistakes...

Shutting out the 'busy' world

2011-01-11T23:20:00.002Z

White Stork leaving nest, Alcacer do Sal, Portugal

During Christmas Holidays I took the time to read the eBook 'Close to Home' by photographer Stuart Sipahigil. It's a nice read, you can finish it in an afternoon, it has great photos, and it talks about something that I sometimes experience: how hard it is to find photographs on your own 'backyard'.

According to the book, this happens because of our difficulty to find something extraordinary out of our daily lives. We are so accustomed to the routine that it's really easy to pass by good photographs without noticing them. I believe this happens because we do not stop and give ourselves time to see what's in front of us. Not to look, but to really see. Absorb it, feel it with all our senses.

I work in an office building. Everyday I see people come and go out of the building, queuing up for the elevators to take them to their workplace, coming down for a ritual smoke or coffee, and talking to their beloved ones or their bosses on the telephone. How often do these people stop to look at what's around them ? Not very often, I imagine... They just don't have the time... Neither do I sometimes, because I'm one of them (apart from the ritualistic smoke... I don't smoke).

Looking back, I feel that most of my best photos were taken either during vacations or on photo tours. But it's not because I get to travel to new and exciting places. It is because those are times when I am able to completely shut out the busy world around me. No, I do not stop talking to my beloved ones when I'm on vacation, but I keep that to a minimum. One phone call every two or three days at specific times just to let them know I'm ok. No family visits, no work, nothing more. It's at those times when I'm able to absorb the world around me and try to make some sense of it, at least photographically.

Normally I keep daydreaming about how great it was if we were less busy and would be able to stop and see what's around us more. My new year's resolution is to stop daydreaming and actually do it. Not to come up with excuses that I don't have enough time to go out and photograph, but to make time for it. Schedule a day every week or so in which I do exactly what I would do if I were on vacations: shut out the 'busy' world and go out and experience the 'real' world no matter what.

I did that last saturday and even though I did not come up with photos that are absolutely astonishing, I managed to shoot some that I believe are nice. I share with you today one of those and hope you like it. And I leave you with a challenge: every now and then, take a day off that 'busy' world you live in, and go and feel like what the 'real' world is all about. You won't regret it...

Farewell to 2010

2011-01-02T18:38:00.002Z

Twilight Clouds over Kleifarvatn, Iceland

So 2010 has passed... One more year, full with stories, some good, some bad, some interesting, some boring, but that's the way things go. If we didn't have rainy days, we wouldn't give so much importance to the sunny ones. That's a metaphor for life... As far as landscape photography goes, we'd better turn it around because I actually prefer rainy days to those sunny ones with clear blue skies...

Anyway, photographically it has been a great year. The highlight was of course the trip to Iceland in July. I had been wanting to go back ever since I went there for the first time in 2007, and what a trip it was. This time I prepared the trip better than last time and it payed off nicely.

I had talked with some Icelandic photographers trying to know what were the best spots to see the amazing light show that was provided by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and even though I was too late for that, speaking to landscape photographer Orvar Thorgeirsson and visiting him at his gallery in Reykjavik was great. Apart from being able to check out his wonderful work, he gave me some great tips about several places that I wouldn't have been able to discover on my own.

I visited one of these places on my first day in Iceland. Kleifarvatn is a lake near Reykjavik, that provided me with one of the best sunsets I have experienced in my life. I arrived there at about 10:30 pm and there was no one there. There was great light everywhere. I literally did not know where to point my camera. On one side there was a small mound lit up by the reddish light of sunset, on the other there was the lake with beautiful clouds above that were colored pink as the sun went lower on the horizon. And the best thing is that there was no one there, I had the place to myself, so I ended up staying until almost 1 in the morning... The beauty of Icelandic twilight in the summer: great sunset light doesn't happen very often, as there are still lots of clouds and sometimes all you get is grey skies, but when it does it lasts for hours.

I share with you now one of my images from that twilight. The composition is pretty basic, but if there's one travel moment that I will remember from this last year, it's those huge pink clouds over the lake as the sun was setting. It may sound strange, but it almost seemed that Iceland was welcoming me back...

Happy 2011 everyone ! :)

How can we still be creative?

2010-12-25T22:52:00.001Z


Painted Hand in Ansazi Ruin, Mystery Valley, USA

When I came back from my trip to the Southwest USA last year I came back wondering if it's possible for any photographer to be truly creative in places that have been photographed millions of times. Then I looked at some of my images from that trip and I thought that maybe I had some that I liked and to be honest, some of them were unlike anything I had seen before regarding those places. I was happy...

Until I saw a post in Guy Tal's blog... Guy Tal is a photographer whose work I've admired for quite some time now. In this post he had a photo of a painted hand in Cedar Mesa, and even though it's in black and white, it reminded me of one of those photos I took during that trip. It's not even in the same place, mine is was taken in Mystery Valley, in an Anasazi ruin called Many Hands, during a photo trip I did with a Navajo Guide, but the resemblance in composition is pretty obvious.

Now my concern isn't really who took his photo first or if one can be considered a copy of the other. I hope Guy does not think, if he ever sees my photo, that I tried to copy from him, because when I shot this image I did not even know about Guy's photo. But this raises an interesting question: how can you still be creative today ?

I mean, one may think that he has a great photo only to know that it has been shot before. Or that someone else will shoot a similar image in the future without ever knowing that the image looks like another one that already existed.

A few months have passed and I still have no answer to this question. However, I know that it is indeed possible to be creative. That's the beauty of photography (and all art). When you think you have seen all possible angles of a subject, someone else comes and presents it to you like you had never seen before. These are the moments when I feel real joy. It's when I feel that the world is a place full of possibilities and that they're all here for us to experience in our own personal way.

So I've actually given up trying to answer the question. I just shoot what moves me, trying to be as open as I can to all those possibilities, and I hope that maybe one of those shots can one day help someone see the world a little differently.

Unknown Heroes

2009-12-25T21:31:00.004Z

Two months ago I came back to Portugal from a great trip through the Colorado Plateau, in the Arizona and Utah states of the United States of America. It was an amazing trip, through six National Parks and some amazing landscapes, and I was able to take a lot of photos. My friends here loved them, they said they were amazing photographs, but the real truth is that one of the main reasons the photos look great is because the places themselves are fantastic. And the reason these places are fantastic is because lots of people care for them, and wanted to protect them.

More than one hundred years ago, some people in the USA came up with this weird idea that Nature is something that fuels our spirits. They defended that the wild places that still existed in America should be protected from commercial exploitation, and should be made public so that all people, regardless of age, religion or position in society could benefit from them. Thus was born one of the greatest ideas of America: the National Parks. And the funny thing is that all it took was people with a love for certain places and with the ideas and initiative to make things happen.

Now the photo you see in this post is not from America. It's from my own country, Portugal, from our only National Park, Geres. The reason I chose this photo for this post is because I recently found out that in my own country there are also people with this kind of initiative and driving force. In fact, I feel privileged and happy to count one such person as a friend of mine.

She's just like you and me, she has a job to where she goes to every day. However at certain times, she packs her stuff, gets in her car or in a train and travels in our country, in order to volunteer to certain nature protection activities. Whether it's helping to recover wild animals in recovery centers, or participating in reforestation activities, she does her bit. Her enthusiasm has inspired me to start helping as well in any way I can, and I am looking forward to participate in some of these activities as well. I know there are more people like her, but still I wish there were even more. These are the people that make things happen behind the scenes. It was this kind of efforts and enthusiasm that led to the creation of the National Park idea in the United States long ago.

People look at some of my photos and they see the natural beauty of the landscapes. For some time, that was all I saw as well, but now I see something more. I see these unknown heroes that have worked so hard to keep these places so beautiful. So here's to them all. Thank you for your efforts and hard work.

Pay up if you want to photograph...

2009-04-21T23:01:00.004+01:00

This post goes a bit against the normal posts in this blog, but since it concerns a subject which is dear to me, I decided to write about it, in conjunction with other fellow photographers that will post the same content in other blogs and sites. Basically the thing is if I want to continue to take photos like the one I show you here (taken in the Alentejo Southwest Natural Park), I will have to pay. Why ? Read below...

It recently came to my attention that the portuguese governmental entity that takes care of our Natural Parks and Natural Areas (ICNB - Instituto da Conservacao da Natureza e Biodiversidade) has published a price table that targets some activities taking place in those natural areas, and photography and filiming are among those activities. Apart from being too high for most photographers and film makers, especially those that need to spend several days in a Natural Area to get images for a magazine article or a film, these fees were decided upon without taking into account the people that they would be targeting, or the people that live near those areas and want to enjoy them.

Because of this, some nature photographers, both amateur and professional, joined together and decided to write a letter to ICNB, in order to debate this issue with this Institute. The purpose of the photographers, in which I am included, is not that photography in these areas shoud not be targeted by fees, but that these fees should not be decided upon randomly, but by debating the issue with the people that work in the field. It is our belief that if the correct criteria is set for nature photography in protcted areas, then the correct fees can be established according to that criteria.

In order to be proactive rather than reactive, we decided to send the letter to ICNB about a month ago. During that time we waited for some answer that never came, and this is the reason we are now making this letter public. If you want to know its contents, you can find it here.

Nature photographers in Portugal are trying their best to bring people to our country and to have them appreciate the few natural resources we still have. If these fees for taking photos start to be enforced it will be a severe blow to some of the people who try harder to let people know about what we have in terms of natural beauty. And the saddest thing is that this blow is dealt by the entity that should do the most to protect and let people know about our natural environment.

Download the english version of the letter.

Spontaneity...

2009-03-15T15:48:00.006Z

A few months ago, I decided to go back to the place where I started to take photography a bit more seriously: Geres National Park, near Braga, in the north of Portugal. In 2004 I was there with photographer Jose Romao for a workshop in nature photography, and I decided to repeat that same workshop last Fall.

If you go there at the right time, Geres National Park is probably one of the best places in Portugal to witness the display of Autumn colors in trees. Anyone who's ever been to the Albergaria Woods road in the peak of Autumn will know what I'm talking about. Anyone who's never been there should make the effort to go there at least once. All around you there are trees whose colors go from green, to yellow, to orange, to red, in a awesome, breathtaking show. And it's right here, in Portugal. No need to travel across the globe to go to places like Vermont or Maine.

Anyway, it's Thursday. I'm traveling north on the next day to stay there for the workshop in the weekend. I open up my e-mail and suddenly there's an e-mail from Jose Romao saying that due to the lack of participants, the workshop has been canceled. I was pissed off, to put it mildly... I pick up the phone and call Jose Romao to know what happened. He tells me he had to cancel the workshop but that there are still some people who are going there so maybe I could join them. He gives me the number of Helio, a topographer and very talented photographer, that would be going on the workshop as well, and we team up the next day and head for Geres.

A few hours after our arrival, we meet two other friends, Tiago and Carlota, who would also participate in the workshop. They are a joyful bunch, and we end up spending the weekend together driving around Geres National Park in Tiago's Land Rover. Tiago does a lot of off-road autonomy traveling and a few weeks before he had just come back from Morocco. Carlota had been to the Patagonia region of South America and we end up talking a lot about our travels, the places we'd been, the things we'd seen.

On Sunday afternoon, as we were preparing to return, nature gives us an amazing sunset. as Tiago is driving and I am admiring the sunset he asks me if I want him to stop so I can go and take some photos. I accept, and take some shots of sunlit granite boulders in the distance. As I am picking up my stuff and returning to the car, together with a new friend (a stray dog that stood curiously looking at me as I was shooting), I notice the fiery sky reflected on the windows of the Land Rover. I take my camera off the bag and shoot... This ended up being my favorite shot for the weekend. Sure there were shots where I took my time, setting up the tripod, filters, and waiting for the light. But the spontaneity of this image is what makes me like it the most... After all, this whole weekend would not have happened if I had not been spontaneous and accepted to travel through Geres with three complete strangers.

Once again, it is proved that people need not be strangers when they share common interests, being it photography, travel or simply the desire of being in nature and admiring it.

Here's to lost opportunities

2009-02-06T22:12:00.004Z

Sometime ago I was introduced by a very good friend of mine, Ana, to her husband who works for National Geographic Portugal. We wanted to meet for quite some time, and the opportunity presented itself over a japanese dinner in one of my favorite japanese restaurants in Lisbon.

While eating delicious sushi and sashimi, he told me that the magazine was looking for some photos of Lisbon for an article about light pollution. I did not have any good photos for the article but I told him I would try to come up with some. Now this was not an easy task. I am not a professional photographer and I normally come out of work late, so I don't really have much time after work to go and photograph. The only time I had were weekends but I only had one weekend to do it because he needed the photos in the following two weeks.

To add up to my bad luck, in the saturday I went out to photograph it rained a lot and some of the main arteries in Lisbon had no traffic at all. The ideas I had about shooting light trails from cars passing by in the city went literally down the drain. I had to come up with other ideas so I remembered going to the other side of the river, to the Christ Redeemer sanctuary. We can get a pretty good view of the city from there and we have the added benefit of framing the bridge as well. No luck once again. The sanctuary closed at 6pm and at that time it was not dark enough yet for the city to have any lights.

Yet my trip to the sanctuary showed me the city in a different perspective. I had only been there when I was a kid and I barely rememberd the view. I returned there two weeks later, not in time for the photo to be in the National Geographic article, but the hour had changed from daylight savings time and at 6pm it was dark enough to have a great show of lights from the city, so I started snapping away. This is one of the shots I liked best, although it's a rather unusual composition. The statue of Christ the Redeemer had already been decorated with some lights for Christmas, and I ended up putting those lights on the top of the frame, making it look like that there was raining light from the sky into the city.

I may have lost an opportunity to finally have a photo published but I ended up discovering a great spot to look at my city in a different way...

New day, new year, new moments

2008-01-06T16:54:00.000Z

A few years ago I went with some of my best friends to Marvão, a small historic village in the Alentejo region of Portugal, near the border with Spain. Being a region renowned for the good food and wine, we would be staying there for a few nights, and then head back to Lisbon to celebrate new year's eve.

We didn't actually stay in Marvão, but in Portagem, another small village just about 3 Km away, because we already knew an inn there that has a fantastic restaurant ('O Sever'). However, even from afar, our attention is always captured by the village of Marvão. It sits atop a cliff with its castle walls right on the edge, looking down on the plain, and fulfilling its long-appointed role of guarding the portuguese kingdom. One night, after a delicious dinner and a good red Alentejo wine, we took a stroll near the margins of the Sever river and, looking up, there were the battlements of Marvão, turned orange from the floodlights, hovering among the clouds, always reminding us that we were being looked after.

At the time I was just starting to get interested in photography. I was reading all the stuff in magazines and books about how important it is for landscape photography to shoot in the "magic light" of dawn and dusk, so I decided to try and put that into practice. Next day, I would get up from my warm bed into the cold , and drive up the hill to get some photos of the sunrise in the castle.

It was about 6 a.m. when the alarm clock rang. I looked out the windows of my bedroom and was utterly disappointed. Clouds were all I could see, not even a little bit of sky. Since I was already awake, I decided to go out anyway. As I drove up, I was thinking that I must be crazy to get out of a warm, comfortable bed to go and look at the fog. Suddenly I noticed some stars in the sky. The higher I got, the more stars I saw and I realized that the fog was only in the valley, not on the hill where I was heading.

I parked the car, picked up my backpack and tripod, and as I walked to the castle I witnessed a show I will probably never forget. The sky was clear, the castle walls were starting to get bathed in a beautiful warm orange light of sunrise, and below, in the valley, there was a blanket of clouds covering everything. As the sun rose, the clouds dissipated, and the air became so clear that looking north I could make out some mountains with a bit of snow on the top, and recognized what could only be the Serra da Estrela mountains even though they were about 200 Km away.

Looking back on this moment, I think that photographing or just appreciating nature is an act of faith. We do all kinds of silly things and sacrifices when we think we may have found the right moment for the perfect photo. We go out in the rain, endure cold, drive hundreds of Km, and get up from our warm beds when others are still asleep, without knowing if we will get what we want (in fact, most of the time, we don't). Yet, something makes us go on and keep trying. Finally when we find the right moment it just compensates for every failure we had so far. It's just like being in love, the only difference being that when we find the right person we stop looking for anyone else. When I find such a perfect moment, though, I embrace it, enjoy it, but keep looking for more new moments. I am sure the new year will bring some more of them.

Whose privilege ?

2007-11-15T22:13:00.000Z

It's about 5 o'clock PM. The leaflet in my hands says that we will be given thermal sailing outfits during the whale-watching trip, even though when we board the Haukur, the temperature is mild, so I'm wearing just a polar fleece and a windproof jacket. Mild, for Husavik, a harbor town in the north of Iceland, is more or less what I'm used to in winter, in Lisbon, my home city. Still I think that what I'm wearing is enough, but when the boat starts leaving the harbor and gaining speed, the chill goes right to my bones. I put on my gloves and wool hat, and prepare myself for the three hour trip.

The Haukur (icelandic for Hawk) is a two-mast schooner, the last of its kind in Iceland. According to our guide, Nils, these boats were used for shark fishing on the 19th century, and this particular boat, even though it was not a schooner originally, was converted in order to recreate the feeling of sailing in the northern Atlantic. It is now used for the "Whales and Sails" trip, in the bay of Skjalfandi, off the coast of Husavik.

For some time we went on without seeing any animals, but Nils kept reassuring us that North Sailing had a 95% record of sightings and that he himself had seen whales on every trip he went on, so we were confident. I was hoping to see some humpbacks, given that they are the most playful species, and I secretly had the hope of photographing some whale breaching. Our first encounter, though, was with a white-beaked dolphin. We followed him for a while but eventually he got tired of all the attention and went his own way. After a while we spotted another animal and this time there was no mistake, it was a humpback. This one however, was a bit shy, and all I could get was a glimpse of a white flipper but it was too quick for me even to try and take a photograph.

We were still near the place where we spotted the humpback when I saw the captain point to the horizon and heard him shout "Blue Whale !". Now if you follow these stories, particularly one of my first ones, you have a pretty good idea of how I felt when I heard him. My bones chilled again, but this time not because of the weather. I could not believe I would be near the biggest animal ever to live on the planet. At first we could only see the spouts, but even the spouts were huge, going 5 or 6 meters high, or sometimes even more.

As the boat approached we noticed that it was not one blue whale but a couple. And they were feeding, oblivious of our presence. The boat slowed down almost to a halt and we just stayed there admiring these magnificent animals. I could only see the last third of their bodies when they came out of the water, but it was enough to see that they were gigantic. The flukes (tail fins) alone were about 5 or 6 meters in diameter, about the length of the boat. At some point one of the animals passed right under the boat because I saw part of its body come out of the water near the hull, still I was not afraid. These animals could turn the boat or smash its hull anytime they wanted, however they were just happy to be there feeding. It makes me think that nature, no matter how powerful, will respect us if we treat it with respect.

After we left, we passed Lundey (Puffin Island), to watch some puffins, and on our way back the captain stopped the engines, and unfurled the beautiful red sails of the Haukur. There was not much wind, just a breeze, but it would be enough to take us back to Husavik. As soon as the engines stopped we could just sit back and listen to the waves. Soon after, Nils offered us some hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls, and told us that it's an old custom, if the captain thinks his crew is worthy, to give them some of his rum. It is called "Captain's Privilege". It turned out we were worthy enough, so we formed a small queue and one by one he poured a few rum in our mugs of hot chocolate. As I drank, feeling the beverage heat my throat, I thought about the experience I had just witnessed. The rum may be the captain's privilege, but being near a pair of the biggest animals that ever lived on Earth, in their own environment, is something that not many people will be able to witness in their lifetime. That, was my privilege.

Nature's gift

2007-08-30T22:08:00.001+01:00

Altocumulus standing lenticularis, or lenticular clouds, are "stationery lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes". At least this is what wikipedia tells us about these strange cloud formations. Until recently all I knew about these clouds was what I could read on wikipedia (or other sources of information), or what I could see in some photos of my favorite nature photographers.

Most of my favorite photographers are either american or based in America. I have grown looking at magazines like National Geographic or, more recently, Outdoor Photographer, and marveling in the amazing landscape photos published on those magazines. It's only natural that I should want to go to the american continent to visit the same places that I had seen in such beautiful photographs, so last year me and some friends booked a flight to Vancouver, rented an SUV and drove to the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

First stop was Jasper National Park, where we stayed for three nights. The place took my breath away even if I could see very little of it because of the weather. We got low clouds and rain during all three days we were in Jasper. There I was, in a place I knew was absolutely stunning and all I could see were trees and boring gray clouds over those trees. I knew I was surrounded by magnificent scenery and beautiful mountains, but I just could not see them. Frustrating though it was, it was different from anything I was accustomed to in Europe. Due to demographic growth in the old continent, there are no National Parks like in America. In my own country, parks are just some small tracts of land someone has decided to preserve, but you can't really go anywhere without finding a telephone pole or some sign of civilization. In Jasper, and in other places in the Rockies, there are places where you can really get alone in Nature. It can be scary (it's bear country after all), but very rewarding at the same time.

Still, one cannot be immersed in Nature without having to live by the whims of the weather. At some point I found myself thinking that for some strange reason I was being punished with bad weather. Why was Nature doing that to me, who had flown around the world to show its magnificence ? Why wouldn't Nature reveal itself to me as it had done countless times to other photographers ? The answer to these questions is, of course, that Nature is unpredictable. We never know what's going to happen and we just have to go with the flow, take whatever gifts it has to offer, and make the best of them.

My luck (and the weather) started to change when we started going south in the direction of Banff National Park. We drove through the breathtaking Icefields Parkway (that's a subject for another story), and eventually stopped in the town of Banff, just besides the Vermillion Lakes. These lakes have been photographed many times, and my guide said that light there was always worth trying out, so one afternoon we arrived at the lakes, set up our tripods, and started shooting pictures of Mount Rundle reflected in the lake. The sky was a deep blue, with a few wisps of white cloud which worked really nice in the reflections on the surface of the lake, since there was no wind and the water was totally still.

Suddenly I noticed that the wisps of cloud just hung above Mount Rundle. More wisps came and just hovered there as if the mountain held on to them. I suddenly remembered some photos I had seen before and recognized what could only be the forming of lenticular clouds. And what's more amazing, they were forming at the perfect time for photography, just when the sun was setting and lighting them from below. The only thought that went through my head was something like "this is the most amazing sunset you have ever witnessed, so don't mess up and bring home some photos..." Nature was finally handing me a gift.

When I got to the place I was staying at in Banff, the owner asked me what I had been doing. I replied I had just witnessed the most incredible sunset in my life. "Oh, great ! Did you get some good photos ?". My answer was "You know what ? I did try to get some photos, but it doesn't matter... If this sunset is not recorded on film, at least it will live on in my memory". In the end, those photos turned out quite nice. Thanks for the gift, Nature.

We still have some accounts to settle in Jasper, though...

No worries

2007-08-19T18:06:00.001+01:00

"No worries, mate" is a sentence that anyone who goes to Australia will most certainly hear more than once, in that slightly nasal accent so typical from the Land of Oz. And in my opinion, there is hardly a sentence that can define the relaxed spirit of australian people better than this one. In his book "Down Under", renowned travel author Bill Bryson states that "Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else", yet the people there are still cheerful and quick-witted. Looks like they really don't have any worries at all.

As I landed in Perth , I was in the airport looking for my friend Kathleen, whom I had not seen in a while, since she moved from London to her homeland. Kath is most definitely a good example of this optimistic spirit in most australian people. She has seen some suffering and has suffered enough herself, and yet she manages to keep a positive attitude and an inspiring optimism.

She is waiting for me at the airport, although I first don't recognize her, because she dyed her hair brown, and I was looking for a blond girl. We greet each other and as we're leaving the airport she tells me that we are having dinner at Andrew and Eudotia's. Eudotia is her sister, and I had already met her and Andrew a few years before in London.

We had a wonderful dinner, a good conversation, and in the end, Andrew hands me his car keys. "You can have my car for the next three days, I'm going to Malasia on a business trip". I was planning to rent a car when I got to Perth, because I wanted to drive to the Pinnacles Desert for some photos. Pinnacles Desert is a place with some bizarre rock formations some 250 km North of Perth, and the only way to get there is either by bus or by car. I just wasn't expecting to go there driving a convertible Mazda MX-5. I was somewhat embarrassed with the offer, because I did not feel comfortable driving Andrew's car to that place and as me and Kath left their place, I told her so, and she just goes "No worries ! He knows you want to go there, that's why he lent you the car".

So two days later I took off from Perth to the Pinnacles Desert, in Nambung National Park, near a little village called Cervantes, on the western coast of Australia. Even though I was driving a convertible, the gods showed no mercy because at the horizon I could see some pretty dark clouds. As I approached the place, those dark clouds brought rain (lots of it), and I was thinking that maybe I had just driven 250 Km to stay inside a canvas top convertible looking at the Pinnacles Desert in the rain. But then a certain thought came through my mind: "no worries, lets just get there and see what happens". And about 5 minutes after I started driving in the desert, the clouds started opening up and I could finally see some blue sky. Of course I took my camera and tripod and started snapping away, but about 15 minutes later the clouds closed, this time, not to open up again. I returned to Perth under a dark gray sky and a merciless rain, but at least I had my photographs.

Today, almost two years have passed since I've been in Australia. Still, I think about my australian friends and the time I spent there. I remember the relaxed, optimistic, cheerful atmosphere of most people I met there, and I can't help but feel good with myself and think "no worries, mate".

Ice ice baby

2007-07-15T22:09:00.000+01:00

I was having dinner with my traveling companions, Elsa and another little guy. We were discussing what we were going to do next day. There were three options: seabird watching on Ingolfshofdi, glacier walking on Skaftafell National Park, or snowmobiling on the Vatnajokull ice cap. The only option to which we all agreed was bird watching, but in order to do that we had to catch a ride from a tractor-pulled haywagon because Ingolfshofdi is a promontory rising in the middle of a shallow, tidal lagoon through which there is no car access. And we had to be in the correct spot at midday or else we would miss our ride. The people in Iceland, as it turns out, do respect schedules. We arrived two minutes after the hour, only to see the tractor moving away, taking other tourists to see and photograph the puffins, skuas, arctic terns, and other seabirds. We had no other option but to go to plan B: a walking tour in the ice of one of the glaciers in Skaftafell.

Skaftafell National Park is the biggest national park in Europe. It encompasses Vatnajokull Ice Cap, which is the third largest mass of ice in the surface of the Earth (right after Antarctica and Greenland). From this huge mass, several rivers of ice have made their move, forming the glaciers we can see from the road that leads to the park. It was in one of these tongues of ice that we would be spending the next three hours, taking a little stroll.

Ice: now there's a subject everyone's been talking about for the last months. Ever since Al Gore started his campaign against global warming, the melting of the ice in the polar regions of the Earth, and the receding of glaciers have been subjects for conversations all over the world. I have watched the movie "An Inconvenient Truth", and I have often wondered about the climate changes I've been feeling in my own country and whether it's all related. One thing seemed certain: if this all has to do with the earth getting warmer and ice melting, there probably would not be a better place to learn about it than Iceland.

Having learned our lesson from a couple of hours before, this time we arrived at the location on time (a few minutes earlier, actually). As our guide, Bob, was fitting the crampons to our boots, I thought I detected an australian accent. As it turned out, he was from New Zealand, and not too happy about having his accent mistaken for australian. He had worked for a long time as a guide in Fox Glacier in his home country and that was to be his first day on this season in Iceland (he'd been there already in the previous year). Apart from me and the other little guy (Elsa didn't want to go), our group was two austrian girls, their welsh friend, and an italian couple. Bob gave us a ride to the base of Svinafellsjokull glacier on his red land rover, and from there we walked a few minutes through rock until we finally got to the ice.

At first, walking with crampons seemed a bit awkward. Instead of walking normally, I had to stomp my feet, so I could get a good grip on the ice. After a while I got used to it, and was able to stop thinking about how to walk and start enjoying the experience. And what an experience! All I could see was ice. In front of me, behind, to the sides. In some places it was a dirty gray, in other places it was a beautiful sparkling white. We knew that there were dangerous crevasses nearby and occasionally Bob would tell us that in a certain spot we should not get too close to the left or the right side because it was a huge drop. Trying not to think about it too much, I just followed his instructions and enjoyed the landscape.

During the walk, Bob was giving us the normal talk about Glaciers, how they are formed, and the history about this particular one. Like many in the world (but not all), Svinafellsjokull is receding. Some centuries ago it joined with his neighbor Skaftafellsjokull ("Jokull" being the icelandic word for glacier) near what is now the road to the park. At that time, when farmers wanted to take their sheep to the pastures in the mountains that border the glacier, they had to carry the sheep one by one through the glacier in the beginning of summer and do the same thing to fetch them before winter came. Eventually he came to the bit about global warming. It seems that the next sign of global warming will be that Iceland will actually get colder. Now this was something I wasn't expecting to hear, but after the explanation, it made sense. What stops Iceland from getting colder right now is the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean. If the Earth is warming and the ice in the polar regions melts into the ocean, it will disrupt the Gulf Stream, thus causing the temperature in the island to drop.

After a few hours walking we had to come back. Conversation with Bob changed from the subject of climate change issues, to lighter subjects like the rugby world cup and how big would the score be in the game between the portuguese and the all-blacks. We took off our crampons, got back in the red land rover, and headed back to the National Park. After we left, I kept daydreaming about trekking in other glaciers like the Baltoro Glacier in the Himalayas or Perito Moreno in Patagonia. I don't know if I will ever be able to do something like that in my lifetime, but I could not help but think about what we are doing to the planet, and that maybe in the future there will be no more glaciers for our grandchildren to walk on.

Undefeated in Ireland

2007-06-27T23:28:00.001+01:00

2004 was a special year in Portugal, particularly in the summer during the European football championship which was hosted in the country. June was a great month in most of the host cities. Lisbon looked like the capital of Europe. There were people from all over, enjoying the game, the good weather, having fun. Being crazy about football (or soccer), the population was celebrating each win of our national team like I'd never seen before. There wasn't a window without a national flag, even some iconic monuments in Lisbon like Christ the Redeemer, the Tower of Belem, or the Aqueduct were illuminated by red and green floodlights. We portuguese are like that. Most of the time we are so laid back and perhaps so worried and suspicious of each other that we lack the energy to make something good of our lives. But give us a common goal, and suddenly all the people come together in a burst of energy that I've seldom seen in any other country in the world.

I was no exception. I exploded with joy when Ricardo, our goalkeeper, scored the penalty that put us past the english team on the quarter-finals, and celebrated with my friends and lots of other people when we reached the final after beating Holland on the semis. Unfortunately, I would not be able to watch the final in Portugal, because I had already booked my flight to Ireland on that same day.

When I entered that flight, the portuguese scarf was tied to my backpack, and all I could think of was that I had to find a place to watch the game. As soon as I arrived, with another little guy, we left the airport to Wicklow, a small town a few kilometers south of Dublin, put our bags in the hotel, and started looking for a pub, which, let's face it, is not a very hard thing to find in Ireland. We found the place, grabbed some pints of Guinness, and settled for what I was expecting to be a memorable afternoon. Once the game started I got more and more nervous with each play. Every time our team picked the ball I hoped some magic would happen and we'd score. Most of the people in the pub were supporting Portugal, but there was a young guy in the table next to mine that was shouting "Go Greece ! Go Greece !". I had no idea if he was really supporting Greece or if he was doing it just to annoy me. In the end Greece scored and we didn't and we lost the opportunity to win a big soccer competition. I was annoyed and I turned to the guy next to me and asked him why he was supporting Greece. "After all we kicked out the english, you irish should be supporting us". The guy laughed. "You're right, you know. Normally I would be supporting you, but me dad placed a bet on the greeks and said I could have the money if we won the bet". That was the first lesson I learned about the irish: they're a joyful people, out to have fun, and they love betting. "Don't worry, mate. Two years from now, Ireland and Portugal will both be celebrating in the world cup !" he said, and we said farewell to each other.

After talking to this boy my mood suddenly changed. Suddenly I was not as angry for losing the game, I said to myself that it was just a game, and that it shouldn't ruin the trip. It was like the joyful spirit of the island started to take over me. We grabbed our backpacks, picked up our car, and started driving. Light was still good so maybe we could get a few shots somewhere. The ruins in Glendalough looked like the right place.

Glendalough Monastery was founded in the 10th century A.D. by St. Kevin, a descendant of the royal house of Leinster who abandoned his life of privilege, choosing to live as an hermit at Glendalough, and devoting his life to the tending of the sick, and to copying and illuminating sacred manuscripts. When we got there though, illumination was something we did not find, because the sun was already setting and the good light was over. The twilight, however, was right to experience such a place. There would be plenty of time for photography the next day.

That evening, the old graveyard with its round tower, the ruins, the high celtic crosses, had gained a special calm after all the tourists had left. We could hear nothing but some birds in the distance. After the excitement of the afternoon, walking around the ruins made me feel at peace, undefeated, and that was the spirit I had in the rest of the trip in Ireland. And not even the remarks that everyone we met made about the european championship when they found out we were portuguese ("Oh, you're portuguese ? Too bad about the euro..."), moved me from that state of mind.

Travel without moving

2007-06-05T22:58:00.000+01:00

Some years ago, while working, I was listening to some music and I had a Chieftains CD on my desk. A colleague of mine noticed it and said something like "if you like this, you have to listen to some of the stuff I have". At the time I did not know he had his own band (At-tambur), nor did I know he was the webmaster of a world music site. I just listened to his stuff, which included some bands and artists of whom I later became a fan, and started my own voyage in the world of world music.

A few months later I became an active contributor to his website, writing articles and short stories on albums I had listened to, and concerts I had seen. Some of these concerts took place in Sendim, a small village in the northeastern corner of Portugal, near the Douro river gorges, which serve as a natural border with Spain. For two years in a row I covered the annual celtic music festival that takes place there, being able to watch artists like the swedish band Hedningarna, or even talk to members of the irish band Dervish, just to name a few. The festival is a wonderful mixture of cultures, both on the stage, where artists from several countries transport us to their homelands through the sounds of their unusual instruments, and off the stage, where people from all over Europe gather together to magically transform the small village of Sendim into a traveler's meeting place.

Such is the power of music. People from all over the world have used it from the very beginning of times to express emotions and pass on knowledge from generations to generations. Through music we can learn about distant cultures, either by listening to songs in different languages, learning about faraway stories, or listening to strange and uncommon instruments. Who cannot picture a scottish glen when listening to the wail of a bagpipe ? Or imagine a majestic indian temple when listening to the strings of a sitar ?

Some people often tell me that they wish they could travel as much as I do. I don't think I travel much physically (not as much as I'd like to, that's for sure), but I'm always traveling in spirit. Sometime ago, I attended a workshop on travel photography by my friend and brilliant photographer Antonio Sa. One thing he said keeps going through my mind: "traveling is not an action, it's a state of mind". Music can play a big part in helping us reach that state of mind. And what better music genre for a traveler than world music ?

Whales and Paintings

2007-05-27T15:05:00.000+01:00

"Last week a blue whale passed through here... More or less 30 meters..." said the skipper of our boat. At once I started imagining how it would be to be near the largest animal on planet Earth. Whales have always fascinated me. First I was a bit afraid of them, maybe because of the "Moby Dick" series I used to watch, but afterwards I began to get fascinated with them, as I understood that these gigantic animals are apparently docile, and they want nothing more than to follow their own way. When I got to the Faial island, in the Azores, it was, therefore, natural that the only thing going through my mind was the moment I would go aboard one of the several whale watching boats that leave Horta harbor daily.

These boats normally do two trips a day, one during the morning, another during the afternoon, but it's best to make reservations for the trip as soon as we get to the island because if the weather is not good enough (and we never know how it will be in the Azores), the boats won't leave the harbor. If we have reservations, we get warned previously about the weather and we can go on the following trip.

Me and my traveling companions reserved one of the morning trips, and we would have to wake up by sunrise. As I woke up I went to the balcony of my room to check on the weather. I was gifted with a soft breeze and with the beautiful silhouette of the Pico island, on the other side of the canal, lit by the soft light of dawn, and cut against a magnificent violet-hued sky. Everything was in place for a memorable trip.

Nowadays whale watching trips rely on much of the experience acquired through several decades of whale hunting (which is now forbidden). The watch towers that used to direct the whalers to the location of the animals are now used to guide the whale watching boats, in order to allow the visitors to be side by side with these Azores icons. That's how the skippers know where to take the boats and where to look for the animals.

Even with these directions, and after we arrived to a spot where some whales were supposed to be, near Pico island, I was looking in all directions and all I was seeing was the ocean. We stopped a few seconds until the skipper's trained eyes spotted something. I looked at the direction he was pointing and still saw nothing, until suddenly I noticed a small cloud rising from the sea. A whale had just surfaced to breathe. We got as close as the safety rules allow and we noticed the gray body of a sperm whale gliding in the waves. "This one must be around 12 meters. Not bad but you should have been here last week..." said the skipper, used to measuring the animals with just his eyes. For me, the size was irrelevant. What mattered was that for the first time I had the chance of seeing in its natural habitat one of the animals I always admired.
"Gonna dive !!!" cried the skipper. And like a tamed animal, the whale vanished, leaving in the surface only its tail fin, in one of the images that has become a trademark in the Azores postcards. We waited for some time until it came back, we took some photos, and it disappeared in the depths of the ocean.

After the morning emotions we returned to the town of Horta. Having nothing to do in the afternoon I decided to go for a stroll in the marina. I have been in several harbors and marinas in several places of the world, but the Horta marina has an atmosphere that is hard to find in other places. It's one of the only places to stop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which means it's a mandatory resting place for crews of boats of all types from all over the world, from scientific research vessels, to sailing yachts in transatlantic voyages. It's common to walk around the marina and to meet people from all over the world, some resting, some taking care of their boats, others keeping the tradition of leaving a painting on the walls or pavement of the marina.

No one knows how this tradition started but it's told that it began with the superstition that the crew that did not leave their drawing in the marina, would not return from the next trip. And now, looking at the hundreds of drawings and paintings in the concrete, it's easy to understand why sailors are said to be superstitious. Some leave maps with the trip they are making, others leave birds or cartoon-like paintings, and others just leave their names, but all say that they were there at least one time.

After walking for a while I chose a spot, put down my backpack, and sat on the painted wall. The early summer sun was heating my skin just enough to balance the cool sea breeze. I picked up a book, lied down on the wall and started to read. As I read a printed story, I could not stop thinking about the images in the marina and the thousands of unprinted, maybe even untold stories they represented. Stories of voyages around the world, of faraway places and different cultures, and, who knows, maybe even some stories of encounters with blue whales.

John's magic place

2007-05-19T18:41:00.000+01:00

For a curious, little european guy arriving for the first time in Australia, particularly if that guy is interested in all he sees around him, the feeling is almost that of a child entering a toy store for the first time. Everything is new, everything is different. While I was driving my rental white Toyota from the airport to the Blue Mountains National Park, about 100 Km west of Sydney, everything was catching my attention: the cars, the advertising outdoors, the birds flying near the road (yes, you can easily see cockatoos in the city), the people walking, busy in their everyday life.

When I arrived at the Blue Mountains, and after spending a good half an hour under the shower in my room, in the Katoomba guesthouse where I would be spending the next three nights, I had already forgotten how tired I was from the almost 26 hours of flying from Lisbon to Sydney. I put on my backpack, and I was off to look for the views and landscapes that earned the Blue Mountains a place among the Unesco World Heritage sites.

Despite the name, the Blue Mountains are not mountains in the true sense of the word, but big red and orange sandstone cliffs rising majestically from a huge eucalyptus forest that spreads out as far as the eye can see. The name comes from the blue mist that we can see rising from the forest when we look at this magnificent landscape from a distance (it's actually caused by the release of certain types of oil from the eucalyptus trees). Other than the cliffs and rock formations, of which the Three Sisters, near Katoomba, are the more famous, this area has also some water courses that carve deep narrow canyons, or tumble on high waterfalls. At least that's what was written on my travel guide, because when I got to Govett's Leap, the 300 m waterfall was just a trickle of water running down the cliff (it had been a dry year).

Having missed what I was looking for, I was just preparing to go away when I noticed some funny looking birds that were not afraid to come close to the few people that remained in the lookout. Once again, curiosity took the best of me and I couldn't resist asking a local man what were the names of those birds. I can't remember the name (it was one of those strange aboriginal names), but John, the man I talked to, said they were quite common.

"Do you know what I'm doing here?" he asked as I was preparing to leave. Shyly I said I didn't, and he said he was there because it was a special day and that was a special place. It was the day of the month John went there to meet his wife, that had passed away some time ago. I listened carefully as he told me that his wife had asked him that her ashes should be spread in that place she loved so much if she died before him. I listened while he told me he had rented an helicopter to grant the last wish of someone that had meant so much to him. From then on, John visited that place every month, always in that same day, to pay his respects to his lost companion, and surely to remember the good times they spent together. We stood on the lookout for some time, side by side, talking, both turned to the amazing landscape that had suddenly gained a new life with the story John had just told. After a while we said goodbye with a vigorous handshake, and with the usual wishes of mutual happiness.

I did not see the waterfall of which my guidebook spoke so well, but I left that place certain that I had left a magical place, at least magical for someone, and I'm glad that someone decided to share its magic with me. I couldn't help but think that every person has their story to tell, and many people really wish to share theirs with someone. Sometimes all it takes is a little curious european guy willing to listen to them...

Rooftops of Santorini

2007-05-12T19:26:00.000+01:00

September 2003, town of Fira, island of Santorini, Greece. After a wonderful traditional dinner, accompanied with a refreshing white wine (perfect to deal with the heat), and shared with the sound of a guitar and a bouzouki (a kind of greek mandolin), the night was promising another stroll, in search of the fun that most of the younger tourists find in the several bars and clubs that claim the narrow streets of the small town.

We were four: me, Ana, Tom, Belinda. Ana is a good friend that convinced me to go to Greece with her and go island hopping. The last two, australian, respectively from Melbourne and Sydney, were two of those random friendships one can make in trips like this. One minute we are perfect strangers staying in the same hostel, the next minute we are talking about our lives. It was our last night on the island, we already knew some of the bars and clubs from the previous night, and quickly we concluded that we did not want to go to a place where we felt like canned sardines, because even at night there was some heat. "What if we go grab some beers and go out somewhere ?" Tom's idea, a typically australian one, immediately deserved everyone's agreement. We entered a store and picked up some Heinekens (the only brand available), and some Baccardi Breezers (for the ladies), but we quickly understood it wouldn't be easy to find a place we could be comfortable, due to the night buzz of the town.

It was then that, turning a corner, in a poorly lit and somewhat faraway street we found the perfect place: the roof of an abandoned house. And all we had to do to get there was cross a small wall. Most of the towns in the island of Santorini are white spots, built in levels in big black cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. From any street it is easy to see the houses in the level below (and reach their roofs, with some luck). The cliff, shaped like a crescent, and the crater it is facing, in the middle of the ocean, keeps in our minds that the land we step on was formed by a cataclysm, an eruption of a volcano that is still active today.

At night, though, we could not see the crater, we could not see the ocean. We knew they were there but the only landscape we could see was a black abyss, occasionally painted by the lights of a passing ship down below. It was like the roof was hanging in the middle of nothing. At our side, the town lights were lighting up part of the cliff and hiding the stars from our view, even though there was not a single cloud in the sky. A fresh breeze was blowing, surely a gift of the gods, to help us deal with the heat. If what we wanted was some isolation from the town's night life, we could not have made a better choice.

For hours, I can't remember how many, we talked, we laughed, we shared some of our stories and experiences. I vaguely remember Tom and Belinda saying they were physiotherapists, and Tom mentioning he was working in London. I mentioned my work as an engineer and the passion for photography. Ana mentioned she was an english teacher. I can't recall much more of our conversation, but it was not important. The important thing was that one night, four strangers from opposite sides of the world, joined together on a roof hanging in the middle of nothing and, detached from reality, forgot their worries and stopped being strangers for some time.

There's actually a big world out there...

2007-05-08T22:45:00.000+01:00

Some years ago I was walking in the streets of Dublin with another little guy when someone noticed the cameras on our shoulders and asked us if we were photographers. We said we were, although not professionals. "That's not important, what matters is that you're taking photos". The guy was Geo, an american photographer who was working on his project of photographing the atmosphere of hostels and the world of backpacking. We talked for about half an hour, and in the end he gave us some leaflets about his project and invited us to go and watch his exhibition in a nearby hostel, which we did.

A month ago I was sorting through all the papers I keep in my laptop case and I found the leaflets Geo gave me in Dublin. I went to his website and browsed through his "The point of traveling" photographs. Suddenly I realized that he's right, his photos somehow feel right. The points of traveling, or at least some of them, are to enjoy ourselves, to discover new worlds, and to share those discoveries with the people that are important to us. I remembered my journeys, and the stories that took place in them, and noticed that most of those stories I kept to myself. So I decided to find a place where I could share those stories.

I can't imagine if someone will find the stories I will be posting here interesting or not. The only thing that matters to me is that they happened as I was discovering the big world out there. And of course, these are just the beginning because there is still a lot to discover. Thinking about this I remembered the lyrics of a song by The Kings of Convenience called "Summer in the Westhill". At some point it goes

"Now I know there is a world beyond the small place I was coming from.
I feel at home here, in the middle of nowhere."

Those lines pretty much sum up what I feel about the world. It's a big place, and I feel at home, precisely when I'm somewhere (or nowhere), letting it all in, exploring it and trying to discover what it has to offer. And of course sharing what I can with my friends and the people I care about.

One last thing about the language of the posts. Being portuguese, I don't mean to write in english to sound pretentious or to reach most people. I love my language and the only reason I don't write in it is because some of the stories I'll be posting have characters in them. And these characters are actually real people I met while travelling and most of them don't speak portuguese. So it seems logical to me that, if some of these people actually read these stories, they can at least understand what are my thoughts about the experiences I went through with them.