Peru/Brazil/Argentina Day 20: Iguazu Falls from Argentina

May 22, 2012
Argentina Day 20: Iguazu Falls from Argentina

Up again today to a free brekkie: chocolate cake, orange slices, cheese on toothpicks, fresh squeezed OJ, good coffee... awesome! And off we went to the Argentine side of the falls. Frank was not feeling great so we generally took it easy. As we arrived there seemed to be more stuff to do than the Brazilian side (more trails), but it was not quite as fancy of a facility.

We wandered for a bit and found the little train station which took you to the different trailheads. We also found a mate store with a giant gourd and straw outside, nice! We headed to Circuito Inferior which was not "inferior" at all :) It was a nice walk, mostly on platforms. We saw some of those funny Coatis and got down to the dock area to head across to Isla St. Martin. This was a very short boat ride (1 min) but cool to say we'd been on the island and also nice to talk a short hike on there and have a snack.

Isla San Martín

Iguazu Falls from Argentina and San Martin Island

Falls at the end of a nice hike

Mwah

Don't pick flowers or touch butterflies... if you have gigantic ET alien hands

A well-fitted lifejacket

Then back to the train station, and took the train to Garganta. We had another short platform walk out to Garganta and it was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! Roaring, very calm at the top but HUGE falls with some brilliant mist and rainbows, it was so cool. This was the best view of the falls. Yesterday was beautiful and a great scenic photography spot, but this time we were much closer to the action. Watching the mist land onto the wet grass, watching all the tourists aiming for a good spot for photos, and then being those tourists ourselves... it was fantastic.

Walkway at the top of the big section of the falls

Don't get too close!

Whoosh!!!

And... Lord of the Rings

Another rainbow!

Ammaaziiinng

Me and Grits

Haha

Classic look

Not sure what's going on here

After taking lots of photos and really enjoying the waterfall's gloriousness, we were hot and tired and headed back to the hostel.

We hadn't eaten lunch and were getting pretty hungry, so we stopped at Pizza Color again originally planning just to have a few Empenadas, but ultimately upgrading to lunch. :) We got a Vegetarian Pizza, with Arugula... so good. They gave us this sort of pate sauce with tasty bread and we ate tons of it. Mmm.

Empenada

Mmmmmmmmmm

We went back to the hostel to chill out, and Frank was still feeling crappy so Jess and I went walking. We found a pastry shop, where pretty much everything had Dolce de Leche in it!! It was pretty darn amazing, and we bought a ton of stuff. So good. We are the desserts back at the hostel with the leftover Pizza for "actual dinner", not whatever the previous meal and snacks up till then had been.

Then we bought all the cookies

And Jess and I ate them all

We're leaving tomorrow for Buenos Aires so we spent some time packing up. Frank went to sleep to
try to rest up and feel better. I Skyped with Jutan Clan with everyone in Ottawa, and my sister showed off her new TV. I sent a few emails, posted a couple Facebook photos, that was all fun since we had some unexpected and somewhat reliable free wireless internet. After our mountain of desserts, Jess headed to sleep too, while I stayed in the kitchen hanging out with other hostel peeps.

As I was chatting I met a cool British couple. The man had a funky combo accent and I said, "Are you from... South Africa, New Zealand, or England?" He laughed and said, "Well, all three! You're the first person to guess all three correctly!"

I spent a bunch of time chatting with this awesome German girl in the kitchen too. She was awesome and had a really amazing travel plan, covering several months all throughout South America, into the USA, Canada and then to Europe! Epic. She invited us to a couch surfing-organized party on Saturday in Buenos Aires, hopefully we can make it if we don't have a bazillion plans by then. Also in the kitchen was a Canadian girl with the usual Canada-style crazy fake gangsta talk - "I'm straight-up RURAL, yo!" She grew up with Ryan Gosling!!

It was a super fun group, and we all chatted a lot about different world travel experiences, strange things that happen while traveling, etc. It was SUPER fun. I love those random cultural exchange moments from traveling, they are so precious and it was just awesome. A long day, off to sleep!

Why an $800 unsubsidized Verizon iPhone makes sense

I've been struggling with a decision about how to upgrade my Verizon iPhone 4 (3G data) to the new Verizon iPhone 5 (with super fast LTE data).

The issue is that, now that LTE is available, data speeds are going to go through the roof. Rough tests have shown download speeds 10x faster than existing 3G plans, and many people claim LTE is faster than their home wireless connection. Crazy.

All that said, no doubt in the future I'll be increasing the amount of mobile data I use, probably even significantly.

Verizon knows that too. So anyone with a "grandfathered" unlimited 3G data plan is required to drop the plan and settle with either one of these new Share Everything plans (which are an intensely bad deal for people who don't share data on a family plan, and would require my monthly bill to go up about $25/month) or we have to drop to a 2Gb "tiered" (read "limited") data plan with a built in cost of $10/1 GB data overage charge. Why did they make 2Gb the limit and overages (relatively) cheap? Because now that data is fast and ready, everyone's going to be using it like crazy, and Verizon knows it.

The only way to keep your existing unlimited data plan when you switch your phone to LTE is to not buy a new plan. In other words, skip the subsidy on the iPhone and just buy a new iPhone at not-on-a-contract full price. That's expensive ($749 for the 32GB iPhone 5, but here's why I think it is worth it.)

The standard line from Verizon (and even some sales associates at the Apple stores... though the guy in downtown SF today was totally on the same page as me and didn't try to steer me away from keeping unlimited) is, "96% of Verizon data customers use well less than 2GB/month", in fact most people use 500Mb or so. While that may be true (in fact, my average monthly usage is about 500Mb)... that's my 3G USAGE. Comparing this usage statistic to LTE data is like saying "last week the stock market went up 1%, and so this week it'll be about the same". It's like comparing Apples and super-fast-blazing-instantaneous-awesome Apples. LTE data is not 3G data - not only does it come fast and ready, but there is NO DOUBT in my mind that Apps are going to start taking major advantage of LTE data speeds. In fact, Netflix already does. I just read somewhere that 1hr of 720p movie streaming from Netflix is approx 2Gb. 1 HOUR ONLY. That's your entire month of data in 1 hour if you switch to the tiered plan. Overages, here you come. I am no doubt going to make a lot more Facetime calls over LTE now that it's available, and I often spend a couple hours Facetime calling my family on the weekend when I am out and about. Remember, Facetime is like a light version of Netflix streaming... well, except that it's not that light. It must be lower quality than Netflix, but I wouldn't be so fast to jump to conslusions... the new front-facing camera on iPhone 5 is 720p. Same quality as that Netflix statistic. And when you are Facetime calling, remember you are both downloading AND uploading video at the same time, essentially streaming 2 directions at once. (Read: a lot of data transfer). If the "pipe" of data is larger, and it's WAY larger with LTE, there is no doubt that Apple is going to tweak Facetime so that the quality is better, the video is more smooth and the sound is clearer. Why they heck wouldn't they take advantage of the new technology!

Verizon just offered unlimited shared voice and unlimited shared texting on their new share plans, and capped data rates to a miniscule 1 Gb shared to start with. What does that say? Talking and texting are a thing of the past, and data is the only thing you're actually going to use in the future. That's why they are betting their bucks on it.

Annoyingly, Verizon didn't support their long-term, loyal customers on this one. AT&T allowed existing unlimited grandfathered plans to be carried forward to new 2 year contracts with subsidized phones. Verizon instead is making their customers pay full price for these phones to maintain unlimited speeds. (Of course, AT&T is going to "throttle" data speeds if users use more than 5 Gb/month, and also is restricting Facetime usage to WiFi only if you're on an unlimited plan). At least Verizon is not restricting how you use your data, except you still can't tether your phone. This "makes sense", but is also frustrating as other countries (eg Canada) doesn't restrict how you use your iPhone data plan. Oh well.

Anyway, that was my thought process going through this. I was struggling back and forth to decide what to do as the difference between an iPhone 5 subsidized ($299) and off-contract ($749) is substantial, and you do really need to consider whether this sort of "future-proofing" is worth that much. It isn't right this second, but I'm sortof betting the bank that it will be very useful in the future, and I'd rather not be forced into a limited plan now and give up on future yet-to-be-invented apps and mobile data benefits.

On that note, I better put my wallet on ice, it's currently on fire.

Peru/Brazil/Argentina Day 19: Iguazu Falls and Bird Park Videos

The Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls was really spectacular. The views were awesome and as you got up close, you could walk all the way along this platform out near the main falls area. Amazing!


Parque Das Aves bird park, in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. What a bunch of crazy birds!! We saw toucans, flamingos, crazy birds who kept chasing each other... this place was so awesome.

Post-PC Era, eh?

It's funny and a bit weird to see all the ads for Windows 8 coming out. Obviously I am gonna download it (only $40? Digital delivery? Nice work Microsoft, taking a solid page from Apple here, well played). It looks well designed, beautiful, fast as heck (due to certain time requirement restrictions for Metro Apps running on the UI thread) and well... looks like I'll be missing out if my main monitor is not a touch-screen :)

I am currently running a Dell Desktop from 2008 on two 22-inch monitors, and switching with a KVM and a 2011 Mac Mini.

The Desktop I bought is a total beast and is pretty epic but it's pushing 4.5 years old... I'm surprised it's still running like a champ. Only 4 GB of RAM on this bad boy, kinda crazy right? My Mac Mini is about 1/20th the size and actual a fair bit more powerful (except for the Graphics card, of course).

This begs the question, where is home computing going? I am going to get an iPad soon and that will certainly replace a lot of my sitting on the computer at night Facebooking and email time. I also recently got a Kindle. So it's clear that at least my computer and electronic-based "consumption" (eg reading, random web surfing, reading articles, Facebook, email) is migrating away from the stuffy desktop.

But how about "real work?" I still do that kind of stuff a fair bit, and I've read some articles in the past saying that iPads and their ilk are really primarily "consumption" devices rather than "productive" devices (like the Desktop computer). I suppose I could imagine photo editing on an iPad in the future, certainly browsing, skype, etc. That is all largely a better experience lounging on the couch or at least not at a desk. But how about writing/blogging? Serious photo manipulation (eg Lightroom) with RAW files and needing a lot of processing power? Photoshop? 3D Applications?

As much as Apple likes to promote it, I don't think we're actually in a "Post-PC era" - rather the things we are doing on these machines are changing. It's super cool that you can record guitar on your iPad in GarageBand, yes, but for any real serious video or audio editing, we're still gonna need a beast of a machine that can handle Terrabytes of data, has fail-safes like backup systems, and has the processing power necessary to handle large data sets. I have yet to see a tablet real solve the photo-blogging workflow (take RAW photos, save them, do basic edits, caption, and intersperse the images with a story, then upload and share to social networks.) This kind of photoblogging workflow is arguably one of the most common uses of my Desktop right now, and until that's much better thought out on one of these mobile options, I think I'm gonna be using my computer and mouse for the time being. I wonder if we're all gonna have touch screens soon enough though. And when we do, what will happen to the 2nd monitor that I find so useful? Maybe we'll all end up with a tablet + single larger screen (24" or 27"?) In any case, this shift from all your work happening on the desktop is kinda cool, and seems to quickly becoming the norm. iPad has some excellent mobile Financial apps, and that's "real" work! So I wonder how long it'll take for the tablet to become more of a work device and less of a consumer product.

CG Evolution/Film Revolution: A Q+A with Steve "Spaz" Williams

Awesome interview of Spaz about working on T1000 and Jurassic Park and everything else awesome in the world: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/craig/steve-spaz-williams

Peru/Brazil/Argentina Day 19: Iguazu Falls (Brazil) and Bird Park

May 21, 2012
Brazil Day 19: Iguazu Falls (Brazil) and Bird Park

Time zone change!! We got up at some "regular" time that we've been used to waking up, say 6am... and realized after wandering around and having a slow morning start that we had gotten up way later than planned, it was already 9 or 10am once we realized there was a 2 hr time difference :)

Breakfast at the hostel

So good!!

We had a tasty and random free breakfast in the hostel which totally roooccckked. Cake, bread, coffee, good times. We figured out which was the best bus to take across the border and then headed out with our cameras. It was comfortable and quick to get over there, it worked out super well! We decided to do the Brazilian side of the falls today and we'll do the Argentinean one tomorrow.

We arrived and learned that Iguazu Falls has been a UNESCO site since 1986. It was super organized there... amazing, actual flush toilets!! We were so psyched. Garbage cans with step levers!! Soap!! Warm Water!! It was amazing and organized, what a great place. Also, hilarious bird beak hats.

Jess and Me being birds

Stuffed animal version of the Quoti

We got on the bus and got off at the trailhead for a walk towards the falls. At first it looked a little chill, a lot of rock and light amount of water (it's low water season)... and then as we got closer to the falls... majestic!!!! Suuuper amazing views, and the walkways were really awesome, jutting out across at an excellent viewing area, perfect for taking a bazillion photos (and we did). What an awesome place. It's said that Eleanor Roosevelt exclaimed when she came to Iguazu Falls, "Poor Niagara!" You can see why. This place is huge and is totally kick ass.

Off we go!

Iguazu Falls, from the Brazilian side

Oh, hello there

Mwah

Walkway

An hour later or so we arrived at "Devil's Throat", the biggest section of the falls. It was an amazing view, and a lot more water flowing than the other views. There was also a panoramic elevator up to a viewing platform which rocked. My favourite part was the walkway all the way out to the main view, though. It was frickin' awesome. We took a bunch of photos there, and I switched to RAW to make sure to get some good ones to post-process later.

Friggin' magestic!!!!

Ahhhwhhhwhhahaa

Painting or real-life? You decide :)

Yup, there was even a rainbow there. It was insane

Epiiic

Yeah, this rocked

Lovin' it

Higher up view of the falls, and you can see the tourists on the Argentinean side in the distance

After the views we walked to lunch and we saw a Quoti, kind of like a funny raccoon with a lemur tail! Lunch was a burger with mulberry & milk juice, pretty awesome. Some guy kept running around making noise and chasing the Quotis away from the people eating lunch.

Quoti running around near the food area at lunch

Back on the bus, and we left the park and walked across the road to the bird park. It sure looked a lot further away on Google Maps! The bird park was AMAZING. The were lots of funny and weird birds, and I got some great photos of toucans, a funny grey flamingo spinning around in the water, who looked like a Dodo bird... it was awesome. The were 3 crazy birds (I called them "The Three Stooges") who were crazy and kept just chasing each other around!! It was too awesome. It was really fun, and the toucans were definitely my favourite. There were some perfectly well kept enclosures, and environments tailor-made for the type of bird. At the same time most birds weren't in cages, and you could go right up to them. It was excellent. Antony would have like the place a whole lot more than the Zoo we went to back in Iquitos. It was really fantastic, and a model of how animal parks should be run. Lots of guided tours for school kids, and everyone seemed to be having fun (even amongst some people getting chased by some birds!!)

And off we go to the bird park! This guy was there to greet us at the gate.

Cool flamingo

This guy was SO weird, he kept spinning around in circles! Looks like a Dodo bird :)

Beautiful colours

I called this guy "Mr. Birdns" cause he looked SO much like Mr. Burns

Little fatty

Cute

Funny nose

80's hard rock metal band bird

Toucan Sam!

This guy was hopping around on the rails, so funny

Our little buddy

Hahaha so furry

Hummingbird

Another hummingbird shot

After a couple hours of walking around this awesome place, we took a break and tried some local chocolate bars, tasty stuff. We also got some Brazilian Reals as change and we had no idea what we'd spend it on. Back we went onto the bus and over the Brazilian border back to Puerto Iguazu, Argentina.

Healthy afternoon snack

First things first, Ice Cream!! We stopped at a "Heladeria" (Ice Cream Shop) which had homemade/awesome ice cream. I got one called "Sambayo" and also a Guava one. Frank got a weird one called Kinotos al Whiskey ("Kumquats to the Whisky") ?! It was awesome and had a crazy name (increasing the awesomeness).

Back we went to the hostel and chatted with our cool British roommates, Ben and Sarah. We showered, changed camera batteries, had a beer and some journaling time. And then... more eating. We headed out for dinner, wandering around for a bit and settling on a place near the hostel which we walked by the night before and seemed very popular. I got a Bife de Chorizio, again!!! Frank got Bife de Lomo (Tenderloin) which also rocked. We shared a nice Malbec wine which was very cheap. There was some Greek-style music playing as we sat there, chowing on some beef and also sharing some fries with basil and garlic.

Dinner at a Parilla. Yes, we had steak (again!)

Back we went to the hostel for some beers with Ben and Sarah, and chatting a bunch about career stuff. What a nice pair, and it was so fun to hang out. I love traveling!

Peru/Brazil/Argentina Day 18: Peru to Brazil

May 20, 2012
Brazil Day 18: Peru to Brazil

Up early, 5:40am (ugh) :) We were already all packed, so we just jumped straight into Mototaxis and a cab to the airport. Quick quick, it was very efficient compared to the way in. Antony came with us to hang out and also make sure we got off safely. Good bloke!

Last group shot together!

Modern terminal in Iquitos! :)

I chatted with a random cool French guy in line at the airport, and we "talked" in a couple of different languages. It was fun. Off we went to Lima first, and then to Iguassu Falls!! Excited. :) This part of the trip is going to be a lot easier, less crazy weather and we'll finally get to unpack and chill out. I am excited for that. We have really paced this vacation well.

Lucuma cheesecake at the Lima airport

Beef heart flavoured chips

some sort of Rice/Stew flavoured chips

Check out the name on the receipt for lunch, "Sr Maik" (i.e. Senor Mike) :)

We got to Lima airport, and said bye to Alicia. :( It looks like she'll be ok with her extremely short stopover, which is good. We headed to the Lima terminal lunch area (where we've been a couple times by now!) and I had a great chicken sandwich, fries, and of course, a Chicha Morada with it. Mmm. Then it was time to say bye to Kev :( And then there were 3...

And off we went to Foz do Iguacu, the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls. On arrival in the evening at the Brazilian airport, it was hilarious to watch a large group of Japanese tourists get off our plane and wander around the tarmac towards the checkin. They were VERY excited, and it was very cute to watch group after group stop and take the same photo at a random airport radio tower, it was also pretty dark outside! But it seemed a popular photo to get, standing in front of it. :)

Customs was a pretty long line, and we had to put our bags through an X-ray and it just generally took a bit. We were supposed to have a taxi waiting for us there but it wasn't there for some reason, bah. We asked for a taxi at the airport taxi desk and they quoted us about 2.5x more than the original quote we had from the hostel on the Argentinean side... bah. Oh well. The driver was awesome, teaching us some Portuguese. "Oy", "Chao".

We crossed the border over to the Argentinean side (it was cheaper on the LAN Pass to fly Lima to the Brazilian side, even though we were staying on the Argentinean side), and headed to our hostel to unpack. We headed to the bank to get some Argentinean Pesos out and... wham! More fun travel times where stuff doesn't work for you, haha... oy. I put my card in and my only option was for Spanish. There were so many words on the screen I couldn't tell what meant Savings and what meant Checking, and it was all very confusing. Frank put his card in and it worked the first time, and his screen was in English!! haha. We went to another bank and I managed to get that one to work which rocked.

Arrived in Brazil! Then over to the Argentinean side to Pizza Color for dinner

We're in Argentina... time for a huge steak... every day

We wandered around a while, exploring Iguassu Falls and looking for a restaurant. After a while we settled on a place called Pizza Color, it was AMAZING!!! I got a Bife de Chorizio (Sirloin), amazing! The sauce for the steak was oniony and so good. Frank and Jess got some amazing food too. We also got the best empenada evvveerr - soft and excellent. For a little while there was some live music which was great, pan flute and acoustic guitar. Good times. What an amazing steak!!!!! We tried some Patagonia beer as well, Ahhh so amazing to be here. After a long day of travel, we headed back to the hostel and went right to sleep, chilling out after a busy day.