Photos: Catch Them While You Can!

I’ve been thinking recently that it’s about time to retire the old Nomad Chronicles photo gallery, and the discovery that the comments were chock-full of spam made the decision easy. So, when I switch web hosts in July, the gallery will be no more. I may eventually get some of those photos up on Flickr, but considering my track record for posting photos, don’t hold your breath!

So, if you have any interest in checking out the photos from my round-the-world trip in 2004-2005, my 2006 U.S. cross-country drive, or trips to Arizona and Honduras that same year, do it now!

I’m also debating retiring the nomadchronicles.com domain entirely (at the moment it’s just hosting my photos, since the home page redirects to this blog on wordpress.com). This is not to say that I’m leaving my nomadic ways behind, it’s just that I’m paying for the domain and not really using it. Thoughts?

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Photos and more

After a long hiatus, mostly due to laziness, I’m getting back in the groove with posting photos on Flickr, including more of my apartment and recent days and nights in Buenos Aires, plus trips recent and not-so-recent, like my trip to Salta with my friend Connie in, um, August 2008. Better late than never! These are especially worth checking out because they include our visit to one of the neatest places I’ve ever been, the Museo Pachamama in Amaicha – where all the non-landscape pictures in the group were taken.

My awesome new (used) couch is proving itself a worthy place to rest one’s head. It was first tested out by a friend who had some family problems one night and needed a place to crash, then my dear friend Mia flew down from San Francisco to try it out for a week or so. We had a great visit – it’s so much fun to share my favorite things about this city with friends so they can finally put faces and names to the things I often talk about. I’ve also recently decided to start offering a couch to travelers once again via the amazing Couchsurfing.org and have been meeting and hosting some neat people, including two American girls traveling in Central and South America for two months and a couple from France who will be enjoying my air mattress later this week.

Stop the Presses!

Apartment pix are up on Flickr. Enjoy!

Pictures

Finally getting around to uploading some pictures again! The first to go up are from my last weeks in Mendoza, when the harvest festival was in full swing and I did some more wine-tasting as well (the new wine-tasting pictures are the last 15 or so pix in the Mendoza album).

Up next… pix from my trip to Chile in March, my newest apartment in BA, my trip to the States, and my trip to Salta in northwest Argentina (with my new camera!).

Cleanse

It’s Day 6 of the 13-day summer cleanse I’m doing, and things have ramped up quickly. The last two days I could eat only raw fruit and vegetables and seeds and nuts. Today the seeds and nuts have to go, and all the fruit and veg has to be pureed. To make it easier to digest, maybe? Who knows. I also have to drink warm water with lemon every two hours. I’m currently on my third cup of lemon tea, and am starting to think about my third smoothie of the day. I know why they say Days 6 and 7 should be on the weekend (and luckily for once I’m not working on the weekend!): I definitely feel lower energy today. But on the upside, my fridge has never looked healthier, which presumably means good things for me, too:

Here’s some before and afters of the Powerful Woman Smoothie I made for lunch:

A close-up of the lettuce, spirulina, and ground flaxseed:

And the pretty tasty end result:

Time to go chop some veggies for a raw-veggie “soup”!

You Betcha

New Mendoza photos are up! I just remembered I still haven’t posted any photos from our family trip to Iguazu Falls in December—will try to do that soon.

Subconscious Post

In the midst of trying to decide what to do next—upload photos to Flickr, write a blog post, send an email, call my brother, get back to the spreadsheet I’m working on to track my work, etc.—my mouse clicked on over to the bookmark for this here blog, without my even thinking about it. That darn subconscious knows my readers are hungry for news, I guess!

Number one news item: I have Internet. In my apartment. It was finally installed and connected on Monday. I’m sitting at my “desk” to write this. Here, you even get a picture:

The table’s considerably messier at the moment, and my current couchsurfer’s backpack is in the corner by the window, but you get the idea. I’ll upload more pictures soon.

In other “news,” I’m on Day 3 of a 13-day summer cleanse. You ease off “normal” food at the beginning and ease back on at the end, so here on Day 3 I’ve given up alcohol, caffeine, meat, seafood, eggs, dairy, bread, starches, and grains. Which leaves, basically, fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts! I’ll be eating some combination of those things (or less, one day is only fruit) for the next week, then slowly start to add foods back in. So far I feel pretty good, with a decent amount of energy and no serious hunger pangs. I’ve even started getting up earlier, which is quite an accomplishment (though not saying much; we’re talking 9 am instead of, oh, 10:30. I’ve been pretty low-energy here!).

I’m having fun in Mendoza, though haven’t done a lot of the available activities yet. I’ve been wine-tasting (once officially, I’ve also done plenty at home!), and went paragliding last week, which was fabulous yet again. I didn’t make it to Gualeguaychu for Carnival; it was just too complicated. But I’ve just seen some pictures and it looks incredible! If I’m here next year, I will definitely try to get there (it’s only 3 hours from BA, but at least 15 from here!). I am hoping to head out for an overnight trip to the mountains in the next few days with some other Couchsurfers, and maybe go horseback riding there.

I’ve hosted a lot of Couchsurfers here—more than I did in BA in the whole time I was there—and have enjoyed them all. Here’s a pic of the solid crew (four people who live here, including me, and four surfers) we had here for a few days (I only hosted two of them):

As my friend Juan (in orange above) pointed out, “I’m meeting so many great people. The bad thing is that they keep leaving.”

touristy

I haven’t been taking many pictures lately, but did manage to snap a few while out and about with my recent visitors. Check out these new sets on Flickr:

Around Town w/ Catherine and Daniel

Tigre w/ Catherine and Daniel

Tigre w/ Aaron and TJ

And my guests can fill in the blanks:

Catherine’s Argentina pictures

Accountable

For a couple months now I’ve had my eye on projects like the Self-Portrait Challenge and other related ideas. (There’s a Flickr group that’s taking self-portraits every day, and I have several friends who keep daily photo blogs, though not self-portraits.) I’ve decided I’m going to do the Self-Portrait Challenge for December (what happened to November, anyway?). This might be a little optimistic considering my camera seems to be on and off the fritz, and that December will be kind of busy, and that I don’t even know what the theme is for this month’s challenge. Never mind, I’m up for it, and now that I’ve told you, I’ll try my best to deliver! Anyone else want to join me?

Around Buenos Aires

I’m taking a much-needed break from work to drink the cerveza artesanal I brought back from Tucumán (it’s tasty, but not as hoppy as I’d hoped) and share some pictures with you, dear reader. The photography class I took last weekend was inspiring and motivating—it’s got me thinking about a new camera, something that’s hardly crossed my mind in the three years since I bought my first digital camera, which I love—and I spent about three hours wandering around Palermo with my friend Kevin on his second-to-last day in town, taking pictures with abandon. I think it was the first time I’ve wandered around with my camera since I got here, and it was lots of fun. I’m determined to schedule another photography outing soon. In the meantime, enjoy the fruits of that day.