Long and winding road to Rio Grande

Way up to Rio Grande. At the bottom you can see the Tatón dunes in the valley and Fiambalá

Tatón is about 50 kilometers from Fiambala. From there to Rio Grande just over 40. However, it takes about five hours to travel the road that, although in restoration works, a good part is still gnawed by the rains. There is no complaint, until not long ago the inhabitants of Río Grande used to go down to Tatón on the back of a donkey with their merchandise: cheeses, goats, fabrics, threads, weeds ... Speed does not matter, time beats at a different rhythm in these mountains. The views invite you to take it easy. We are accompanied by Ricardo, Magali and Mía.

Ricardo's family, Don Antonio Suarez and Doña Angélica Tolaba, his grandparents, and Silvestre, Goyo and Juan, his uncles, await us in Río Grande. It's already night, the welcome rite mate homemade bread, tortilla and cheese. Then dinner.

Donkey trail on the way to El Pozo.

At six o'clock in the morning we leave for El Pozo, where Sandón, Marta, a thousand goats, sheep and country chores await us, milk and cape. The road is the old one for mules. The climb lasts even if it is only two hours of walking.

Intense, calm, elegant work. Roast goat for lunch with last minute guests. Pleasant after-dinner of quiet voices. The silence obviates the shouting. Names of the hills, the old days, jokes and gossip.

The return at sunset, spectacle of streams and peaks of four thousand meters. Far away those white sands exhaled by a volcano long, long time ago.

Sunday dawns with calm mate and tortillas freshly made on the fire. Family photo sessions and demonstration of men who know how to spin sheep, llama and vicuña wool. Lunch and then return along the precarious path of landscapes that Pachamama glimpse.

The hairs from the tails of the goats castrated during the days are saved to offer to the Pachamama.

I want to see more pictures from Rio Grande

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Walking on the Moon

My feet don't hardly make no sound

Walking on, walking on the moon (Sting, Walking on the Moon)

That is what it feels like to walk through the place called Las Torres, just over 20 minutes from Fiambala on Route 60, on the way to San Francisco, where the Loro Huasi slope. "Ahisito nomás!"

You enter through the white stone wall adorned with green, perhaps the crater wall of a meteorite.

The lunar silence is heard in the corners where the breeze does not give. In the silence, you can hear your own breathing, sometimes even your heartbeat.Se sospecha el engaño a poco de caminar, torres? o quizás los restos fosilizados de antiguos Gigantes.

Later vestiges of other beings that inhabited the scene years ?, centuries? behind. Vegetables, animals, beings from other worlds?

Green. Jarillas, and trees, Algarrobos. Signs of the water that once a year irrigates these ravines.

We are not on the moon.

It is the Earth to which we belong. We are just there from Fiambalá.

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Bird Watching

Birdwatching is a relaxing exercise. And fascinating. Knowing about birds, ornithology demands a bit of study. Photographing them requires training and practice.

I am not an expert ornithologist. Contemplating birds is an exercise in meditation, anti-stress therapy. Photograph them a self-imposed training.

Go out to the countryside, breathe fresh air, walk, feel the sensations that Nature offers.

I usually build my rig with an old 500mm retro-reflector lens. compact and lightweight. The best, without a doubt, is the special bokeh effect that turns blurs into rings. That if, has its drawbacks. Or they will be virtues too.

An f8 aperture it is not very bright. This is solved because the cameras I use allow me to shoot with very little noise. Although, incidentally, as a photographer of other fashions, the texture that noise gives, as in its time the grain that films offered, I like. Shooting at 3200 ISO in broad daylight allows for exposure times that freeze motion. Still at aperture f 8, which is fixed.

The aperture does not give much depth of field, practically none so the focus has to be precise.

Therein lies the second inconvenience. Or is it an advantage? The focus is exclusively manual so it is necessary to calculate, rather to predict the trajectory and correct the focus to pure reflection. Instinct, concentration and training.

But he didn't want to talk about photography. My intention was to encourage all bird watchers, birdwatchers, and those who are not yet to approach the Abaucán Territory where the apparent desert offers few obstacles to the relaxing exercise of bird watching.

If you need to relax, come to Fiambalá to observe its birds.

As a NON-ornithologist I will appreciate any contribution to know the names of the Birds photographed in this report. THANK YOU!

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