I just returned this morning from vacation. I'm making a quick posting before I collapse from sleep deprivation and jet lag. We went to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Falkland Islands, Antartica, and Brazil. I was so surprised at the number of plants in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro that are common here in Houston. I saw lantana, impatiens, Turk's cap, hibiscus, bouganvillea, mallows, agapanthus, mimosa, salvias, crotons, gingers,shrimp plants and a lot of other "same as home" plants. I also saw some weird and wonderful things I'd never seen before as natives. A very large tree called a Cannon Ball tree that has large round hard fruits that look like cannon balls, also Jack Fruit trees that are a cousin of bread fruit that has huge fruit balls attached to the trunks of the tree. One of these had over 50 fruits on a single tree. Each fruit was huge. Also saw a native of Australia called a "Fascination" tree. It was covered in orange blooms. The Jack Fruit tress were everywhere on the tram ride up Corcovado mountain on the way to the Christ the Redeemer statue. Antartica was my favorite part of the trip, but not much in the way of plant life there. We did see large numbers of whales, both humpback and meinke, dolphins, seals, including leopard seals, 5 different kinds of penguins, lots of bird life including Giant Southern Petrals (gorgeous birds) and southern frigate birds that look just like small (relatively speaking) Teradactyls. I'll post more on the trip if anyone is interested and I'll try to add a couple of pics tomorrow. Absolutely breathtaking scenery and ice bergs and truly awe inspiring. I think this has been my favorite of all the trips I've ever taken. I highly recommend it to anyone considering a cruise!
Crow
Who Knew - Plants of South America
Wow, Crow, sounds like a fantastic trip! I want to see pics and more tales of your adventures!
It's fun to see pics of plants and places from other areas of the world, please post!
Glad you enjoyed it immensely ~ remembering you anticipating this vacation.
I would like to hear about the similar plants. I find many of those I love come from Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia. Looking forward to the virtual tour... pod
Crow, sounds like a great trip. Can't wait to see pics.
There are two girls that work with me from India, and when they visit home they bring back jack fruit for us to eat, I really like it, but I've never seen a picture of a jack fruit tree!
Wonderful trip - I have been all the way to Costa Rica, but never past that! Cannot wait to see all your pics. I bet you they are going to be stunning.
Do I understand correctly that this was cruise? Where was the home port?
Wow!! I can't wait to see the pictures. :-)
Glad you had fun Crow, but SO glad you're home :).
Dawn, I have pics of a JackFruit tree! They were weird and wonderful looking. We took over 1000 pics, but I'll fish that one out and post it. I'm going to put a few on here now and I'll add more later, depending on interest.
It was a three week cruise. We flew from Houston to Santiago, Chile and then drove to the port at Valaparaiso. The next day was at sea then in port at Puerto Montt, Chile where we took a tour to a penguin colony. This is a pic of that location.
Crow
After Puerto Montt, the next two days at sea then to Punta Arenas, Chile where we did a nature tour. This is a pic of cormorants and seals at that location.
Crow
That pic looks like a postcard! What type of camera did you use?
Next day was Ushuaia, Argentina, a lovely little town nestled on the coast between the sea and mountains rising immediately behind it. Another day at sea and then we arrived in Anarctica. There are absolutely no words to describe this place. It's breathtaking, awesome, unbelievable. We were very fortunate with the weather. It's usually cloudy with fog and drizzle. The captain said it was only the second time in all the years he's saided this route that he had weather like this and got into all the places we went. We saw lots of humpback whales, minke whales, dolphins, birds of all descriptions and 5 different kinds of penguins. Here's a pic from the first day in Antarctica.
Crow
Here's another of the same. It's hard to tell how majestic these mountains and ice were because you can't get a sense of scale. This one has some red buildings in the lower left corner of the pic that you may have to zoom in to see. This should help give you an idea of just how immense the unspoiled landscape is here.
Another of mountains and ice.
World's most southern light house.
After three days in Anarctica, we went on to Stanley, Falkland Islands then to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Uruguay and final port was Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was in Rio that we saw the Jackfruit trees. We went to the top of both Sugarloaf mountain and Corcovado mountain (where the giant statue Christ The Redeemer is). We also went to Copocaban and Ipanema beaches. Rio was my least favorite part of the whole tour and if I repeat this trip, it'll be on one that stops in Buenos Aires.
Here's the Jackfruit trees.
All the pics were taken with a cheap HP720 digital "aim and shoot" auto-focus camera. I do wish we'd bought a better camera before we left that had a better zoom capability. We have a few shots of leopard seals floating on ice bergs that would have turned out a lot better if we'd had a better zoom. If anyone is interested in more pics or a specific location, let me know and I'll post what I have on it. The antarctic was definitely the highlight of the trip as far as I'm concerned and the other ports were just "icing on the cake". I have a ton of atmospherice shots of ice, mountains, sea, glaciers and ice bergs. Some of the ice bergs we passed were over 120 feet exposed above water and seveal square miles in size. Just unbelievable how beautiful it all was.
Crow
Crow,
Your pictures are beautiful, what a wonderful trip! The scenery is absolutely gorgeous. It must have been interesting packing for both the frigid cold and the tropical warmth.
Thank you for posting the picture of the JackFruit tree!
These are places we only see on Discovery HD Theatre. How special.
Right? just wonderful... can I print these images and use them at school to show the kids places they might never get to see?
And birds, plants, animals... anything most of my kids have never left Dallas city limits.
Last summer you said you really wanted to see Anartica. From the sounds of it, it has moved to most favored trip status. I am glad you enjoyed it. What was the air temp like while you were there? It looks frigid in the photos but.... ? How bad was Rio with the carnival timing?
Looking forward to more photos, please ma'am.
This message was edited Jan 30, 2008 9:26 PM
You are right - these pictures are stunning - so I can only imagine this experience in real life! I never knew anyone who went as far as you did! You are a true adventurer, Crowelli!
Great pics Crow.....more please?
Mitch, feel free to use the pics for your kids. My niece also teaches and I usually send postcards from wherever we go so she can incorporate them into lessons. She usually uses them for either science, geography or history. The kids seems to love it, especailly the younger ones, when they get a card addressed to the class from some place far away and from someone who is related to a student or their teacher.
Since there seems to be quite a bit of interest in these pics, I'm going to start another thread with a slightly more descriptive title than South American Plants and add a pic to the front page.
We did try to take pics of whales and dolphins, but it's really difficult to time. You usually only get the spray from the blow, if you're lucky. I think we have two pictures that if you look really closely, you can see the small fin of a humpback and the disturbance just below the water where three are swimming together. All in all, not worth much as fas as a good pic of the whales. I can't imagine how long it must take to get a pic of one breaching!
Believe it or not, the air temps weren't bad. I'm very hot natured though, so most people were more bundled up than me. My husband says it's official, no place on earth is cold enough for me, not even Anarctica. In Chile the temps were in the 70's, Rio, the 80's, Antarctica the 30's. The sun is so bright and with little pollution there and not much ozone either, you sun burn really quickly. With my lupus, I have to avoid the sun, so I had a light jacket on and sat in the shade on the deck for many hours each day. I took a cardigan, but never even put it on. Short sleeved tee, jeans and a London Fog were quite enough to stay comfortable.
More pics coming on new thread.
Crow
Crow, you may want to consider an article. You have all the stuff here, great pics, great details....great title---to share in an article. I believe Dave is paying $50 an article and you've got one right here!
Thank you Crow - they are going to love it.
There's more pics posted at this new thread link. I think I may have duplicated a couple of them, but they are worth looking through if you're interested. Mitch, your kids might light some of these too. Feel free to use them.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/809020/
Crow
Thank you - I will use all of them, what a wonderful trip!
Crow, went in for annual check up today. Dr. says are you cold? Told her no, haven't been cold in 14 years. 68 degrees in our house year around.
I love your pictures. Make pretty desktop background.
Thanks for all the kind comments. I'm glad y'all enjoyed the pics.
Crow
Hi Crow..
Nice pictures..sounds like a lovely vacation! I'm starting to realize that with the house, vacations like that are going to be fewer! But ...it was part of the plan...I traveled everywhere before I bought this house, so as far as I'm concerned I have the cake and am eating too!
I found the same --- traveling around you'll find alot of the same things in Thailand, to Australia, Texas to Africa and with all of our interworld plant swapping we're seeing alot more exotic things in all the places that weren't previously there!.
Ready for another summer swap and potluck!?
Rj