This is it! Our last day! Hmmm.. have to do something special… let’s go down to the beach at sunrise and drink some tequila! So Hank, Kim and I trundled down to the beach and saluted the morning. We also did some long exposure (15 sec) shots looking south at the star Fomalhaut and walking towards the camera.. Pretty neat effect.
A morning of taking it easy, packing up and hopefully not forgetting anything in the rooms, making sure none of the room geckos got into the luggage and we were off to check out at noon and hope on the bus to the airport at 4. Before we headed out however, we were treated to a show, the weekly feeding of the crocodiles? alligators? I always get those confused.
We got to the airport, went through a few security checks, and then trundled through the most massive duty free series of retailers I’ve ever seen. In Toronto there were a couple on the arrivals side. In Mexico we walked for 10 minutes through dozens and dozens and dozens of them, sometimes right through the middle of the stores to get to the other side. They make a huge effort at seperating the last few pesos from the departing 🙂
Around 7:15 our plane arrived, disgorged a full load of gringo touristas and 40 minutes later we boarded on a turned around flight… one seat free on the 757. Packed solid but at least a faster flight home with prevailing winds. We left Mexico in 35 DegC and 95%+ humidity to arrive in Toronto after 1am in near 0C temps, cleared customs and waited for the bags for about an hour. Back to the vehicles and home by 6:30am and right to bed… what a long day!
What a trip!
Just watching some of the new Hd channels that we are getting from the Starchoice satellite service and noticed that the HDNet channel (275) will be broadcasting the launch of the STS-126 space shuttle at 7:55 p.m. EST on Nov. 14 on a mission to prep the station for expanded crews.
Of course it runs right up against our RASC-KC Annual General Meeting, so it will have to be recorded.
Our last full day at the resort saw us down at the beach .. we made a brief siting of the newlyweds getting their feet wet as well.
Where did the day go? Before we knew it, it was sunset on the last day here. Time for reflection and the realization that 7 days is not enough. This was the first day we actually had nothing to do and felt the stresses leaving, leaving.. gone.
That evening we went back to the theatre again. There was an inhouse group of dancers/actors/singers that put on a show most nights. They were very very good. Here in the next few images they put on scenes from Rocky Horror (Sweet Transvestite from Transexual Transylania!), the Phantom, Thriller and a couple more.
We actually made a few videos with our Canon Powershot A540 camera as well that did not turn out too bad.. not of the show but of the audience. Kim, Di, Katie were all dancin up a storm to the Time Warp!
Wednesday again started before sunrise… eight of us hopped into a cab/van and headed off on the adventure of the day… Treasure of the Sierra Madres… ok.. maybe not the Treasure but darned close.
One thing we noticed in Mexico was that there were a lot of dogs and no cats. Scratch that… we saw one cat at the Adventure Centre, while waiting to board our truck jeeps.
Here are some of the dogs we came across.
We met these three amigos at our lunch stop… where we had homemade tortillas that were to die for. Not made from corn soaked in limestone water for two days and then pounded flat.. no… the new instant tortilla corn mix… and it was still fantastic. We didn’t want to go but we had more travelling up into the mountains.
The roads were still pretty bad but we eventually made it through to El Colombo and the Town Square
We checked out the church the square and the school across the way. Some of the girls dug into their packs and left Canadian type souvenirs… pens pencils, balls and stuff like that.
Our guide, Estevan, was fantastic. Enthusiastic, funny, knowledgable.. everything you would want in a local guide.
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Back to the fanatastic tortillas and Coca..
Too soon we hit the road again, heading even deeper into the mountains, through Neuvo Ixtlan and La Cucaracha. We stopped for a half hour hike through the jungle, checking out the bugs, fungus and plant life. After a jungle pit stop for the ladies, we went by an active volcano (just a lot of steam and smell) and back out onto the highway through Conalep. We stopped for a BBQ dinner on the beach at the bottom of yet another horrendous road down the mountain plateau. gorgeous little resort… it even had wifi!
Better yet it had one of the best bars for marguaritas ever!.
The undertow was something else so we only went in knee deep onto the surf. The beach was gorgeous with a lot of volcanic rock and sand.
Again too soon we packed up and headed back up the mountain to the highway and out came the tequlia.. lots of toasts and cheers and the trialing state police declined a shot, fired up their lights and passed us with smiles and waves.
Ten hours after we started out we returned home.
Another exhausting day but one of the best ever. Good thing too because tomorrow is reserved to rest, lie around and drink a lot.
Tuesday saw a group of us get up at the crack of dawn and head out on a bus tour of Puerto Vallarta and surrounding areas. The level of construction was phenomenal. The amount of manual labour employed was phenomenal. The condition of the roads was scary bad. Huge series of really deep potholes right outside 5 star resorts. Leaving our own resort in the daylight let us see how bad our own road was. The highways were not too bad but the on/off ramps were another story.
Cervandro was our guide for the day and we quickly toured through Neuvo Vallarta and onto a great whale statue. A little farther along was a great big statue of Triton? or Neptune? God of the Sea type guy.
Kim was amazed at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company (from the movie Forrest Gump). Quite real and all over. Never did get a chance to stop in and sample though.
We made our way to downtown and were immediately struck by tourist attractions, including these natives flying around a pole while playing music. It was something else to experience. These 4 guys climbed up the pole, wound up the rope and platforms to the top, climbed in and started spinning around unwinding the rope as they went. It was a little surreal.
Downtown was full of things to see.. we could have spent the entire day there but only had an hour or so. This hotel was seen in the movie “Night of the Iguana”, which started the entire tourism boom back in 1964. We just watched that movie with Richard Burton and Ava Gardner. Wow. Great Movie!
The church just off the Square and City Hall was magnificent. Here are a couple of images, inside and outside.
After touring the church we started walking into some of the older sections of town, up and down up and down.. good exercise! Then off for a quick bite of lunch and through a market near the river. Too bad most of the items were very similar to each other.. I was looking for some specific items and they were not to be found.
Back on the bus and we headed out of town along the south shore to Mismaloya, the main area of shooting for Night of the Iguana. Beautiful place!
Much more developed now as you can see then it was back in 1964. Back on the bus and we turned inland following highway 200 up into the hills. We turned off up yet another sideroad, washed out and narrow .. up and up and up… to a Tequila factory! One of the highlights of the trip to be sure.
We sampled all six kinds that they made, before during and after touring the factory… basically a tin roof with no walls and a lot of stainless steel tanks and equipment. One thing we could not get over was all of the outdoors to the weather buildings. The tour guide had to sample each shot first, to demonstrate either a shot technique or to give a different toast. Then he would splash around the group filling cups and do it again with us. Then he did one again so we could watch the technique. Later on in the afternoon he admitted this was his 3rd bus tour of the day and that he “really LOVED his JOB!” We fell for the almond tequila, which was so similar to amaretto that we had a hard time telling them apart. Just as we were about to leave, the sky made a big booming thunder noise and the skies opened up in an afternoon downpour. The washed out roads quickly got worse and we headed down the mountain. Phew!
A long 1+ drive home in the rain and we had little energy left that day.
But it was fun!
Sunday evening November 02 we went out for a quick peak at a near conjunction of Venus, the crescent moon and Jupiter, all within the field of view of our little Canon Powershot A540. This was a handheld 1.8s exposure at f3.2 looking south southwest at 18:22 EST. Nice skies. Would like to stay out longer but there is that concept of having to get up an go to work and adjust the routine to the new Standard Time concept. On a bonus side, for the first time all of our computers switched over without any issues.
For the first time in I don’t know how long, we had some spare time, it was clear, and we got outside for an hour of observing. It was nice… cold but nice. No Space Station passes this time around, they seem to be in the morning hours for the next few weeks. Iridium flares seem to be clustered in the late afternoon. Oh well.. It was clear but a little hazy with a Sky Quality Meter reading of 21.01.
We set up a new telescope (images a little later), a Meade DS2090 90mm alt-az refractor.
Ran it through its paces and will write up a little story for Regulus. Jupiter was low in the southwest but we used it as a test of the new telescope’s optics. We also ran through M31 Andromeda, M57 the Ring Nebula in Lyra, Alberio, M45 the Pleiades and even attempted Uranus. There were a few sproadic meteors, and maybe even a Taurid meteor or two. After an hour the -7C temps were getting to us and we packed up for the night. It was good to get back to the eyepiece.
Gorgeous wedding day sunrise for Carlos and Brandi
Monday, the big day. Did Carlos make it back from downtown Puerto Vallarta last night? Let’s hope so!
The weather promises to be sunny this morning, at least for the wedding. Still hot and humid. A bad day to be without a hat. But back to the sunrise. We are looking east right at the city of Puerto Vallarta and you might be able to see it through the haze. At least some of the taller condos, resorts and hotels of Neuvo Vallarta. The beach was quiet. No other guests down yet, no vendors. The site of the ceremony was going to be a lookout at the end of one of the buildings, overlooking the Bay. Wonderful! The breeze off the Bay, the blue skies… all looked great!
We have been attempting to commission an AllSky Camera for some time now. It helps when the clouds go away 🙂 So.. This is an SBIG ST237A camera with a wide angle lens, a proprietary control box and a parallel port data cable. It is housed in a 30cm acrylic dome that has a circulation fan and a 5 watt heater that runs at night. The camera control software is also proprietary, CCDSoft. The object of this whole setup is to have the camera image all night long, in the hopes of spotting very large/bright meteors entering the atmosphere, burning up and perhaps a small chance of having one survive reentry. Using three cameras spaced apart, we can calculate a flight path and a probably impact area. This camera is the first testbed and once operational, would be used as a pattern to build two or more.
One of the issues is the overwhelming manual nature of the system. We remote desktop in to the Windows XPPro workstation running CCDOps and connected to the camera control box, start up CCDOps, turn on the Peltier cooler and then decide on the exposure for the night (4 minutes for moonless nights, 2 minutes for mooned nights), then figure out how many exposures you can take before twilight (4 minutes each gives 15/hour, 9 hours gives 135 exposures). Roughly.. as there is more time involved to download the image from the system as well. They get stored on a linux file server where the next morning a series of bash scripts process them, renaming each image with its date/time stamp, converting them to .jpg from .fits and then combining and converting the .jpgs into an animated .gif and then finally moving them into a local data storage area. In the morning we must manually connect to the workstation again, turn off the cooler and shutdown the camera.
We have attempted to use other software (such as Handyavi, Homewatcher etc.) but none of them can see the camera. Things that we want to do include: annoating the images to include location, exposure date/time, length of exposure, orientation ,etc, automate the start/stop of the imaging all night adjusting for changing sunset/sunrise times, find a better method to generate a video of the images overnight (smaller file size) and finally, some kind of automated processing to search for meteor events.
Sunday was cloudy and hot and humid. It is amazing how fast we adapted to the climate and how much we loved it. The beach was the first stop and all went out to test their individual stability against the surf. The view back up the hill to the resort was also spectacular. A good thing too… all that exercise up and down the endless stairs did help counteract all of the food and drink… a little at least!.
What next? afternoon torrential rains of course. Funny how many pool participants did not even seem to notice, much less wine. But it was warm rain. A few hours of that along with the not so gentle sound of the surf, and relaxation started to set in. Sunday was the day we discovered the room gecko. A tiny little thing, maybe 10 cm long. Supposedly more afraid of us than we of it, it soon showed up with friends out in the hallway. Lots of friends. Geckos everywhere! And frogs and centipedes and more. That would explain the heavy duty room door sweeps.
Darkness comes early? and faster than up north. Luckily the pool had lights and eventually the long day came to an end.
The heat and humidity were fantastic. Something to remind we Canadians what it is like in other, warmer parts of the world… and why in the Earth did we not take up the Turks and Caicos back in the early 1980’s on their offer to join up with Canada??? Saturday Morning showed the Bay (Banderas Bay) to be at low tide, albeit with a large storm surge kicked up by Hurricane Norbert. We explored the site, moving up and down a lot of stairs and a lot of slopes. Walking through the gardens and saying hello to the spider monkeys was great. A lot of our tropical house plants were here as well.. only several meters taller than at home.
It isn’t raining at the moment, so I thought I would move the Bull’s Blood beets (heritage) to garden 4A in the SW corner. I moved 5 beets, so we will see how they over winter. I put 3-4 inches of straw over them, to give them some protection. We will see how this works. The geramiums are pulled and put in a box for the winter, these too will go under the foyer. I put the cana bulbs in sawdust for the winter (need more sawdust), but these will have to be moved to the foyer storage area. Also a red peonie tubor is put in here as well. I may put this out in the front garden by the road, but not sure yet. Filled up the bird feeders, cut down the dead hollyhocks, and the siberian iris seed stocks, if that is what they are. I need to research this. Its cool, with a SE wind gusting to 20-25 km. Rain is moving in this afternoon, but the fire is warm, so inside is where I will stay.
