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place holder for our cusco pics

One of the natural wonders of Peru is Colca Canyon. Colca Canyon is in the Andes. It is deeper than the Grand Canyon but a lot more narrow. It is a stunningly beautiful place and the sides of the canyon are almost completely covered with terraces that were build by pre Inca civilizations and are still farmed today. We took an overnight tour to the Canyon that Cost us all of $20 each for bus transportation, hotel and breakfast. We had perfect weather for the trip.

place holder for ouir Arequipa pics

place holder for our Nasca pics

this is a place holder for our pics of La Punta Callao. Pics will be added soon

this is a place holder for our easter island pics...will add them soon

Our northern most Island on our Tour was Genovesa which is above the equator. It was about a 7 hour motor trip and they did it at nigh. Genovesa is interesting because its climate is quite a bit different that the more southern islands. The marina Iguanas are small, the vegetation has a hard life and there seemed to be more predator birds that other places

At the suggestion of Antonio, our Galapagos agent, we took a pass on the organized tours of the highlands and got a cab driver to take us up there instead. We visited a farm that has areas where you can see the giant tortoises in the wild and we got quite a few good pictures. We also walked through a quarter mile long lava tube.

There is a nice visitor center at the Miraflores locks with museums, a theater, some restaurants, and observation decks from which you can watch the ships pass through the locks. But we were lucky and got a very special VIP tour thanks to our friend Captain Jim Guy from the yacht Ocean Dance. Jim arranged for his friend Paul Reid to give us essentially the same VIP tour that Hilary Clinton got when she visited the locks as first lady. We got to walk across the closed gates and tour the control room and under the locks where all the machinery is located. This album contains pictures from that exceptional experience.

While we were in Panama waiting for equipment to arrive from the US we volunteered to be line handlers for another sailboat that was transiting the Canal. We got to ride through the canal and return to Active Transport in the same day. We got a lot of pictures of the adventure. We also uploaded an album of pictures from a special tour of the Miraflores locks that we got thanks to our friend Captain Jim Guy.

Chichenitza is the Mayan ruin that most people get so see. It's close to Cancun and receives between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors a day. That is not too surprising when you think that one cruise ship can dump 2000 people on the shore. One of the consequences of the popularity of the site is that it is plagued with the largest assortment of junk vendors of any place we have been in Mexico. They offer the same crap all over the site with the sides of the walkways lined with displays of the same carvings, chess sets, masks, blankets, etc. It is easy to get the idea that all of vendors are owned by the same outfit and buys in bulk in China.

Uxmal was our second Mayan site. It was significantly different from Palenque in that it is not located in a jungle and did not suffer the same level of breakup that was caused by plant growth at Palanque. Uxmal is off the beaten path and that has two effects. One is that the number of visitors they get each day is around 450 (compared with 10 to 15 thousand per day at Chichenitza). The second impact of the remote location is that the tee shirts are cheaper than at most of the sites. John got so caught up in a tee shirt buying frenzy that he ended up with a tee shirt that says Uxmal but had a picture of the top of Pakal's tomb at Palenque.

Several years ago Pemex (mexico's national oil company) starting drilling in a swamp near the Gulf of Mexico. They discovered some very significant sculptures attributed to the Olmec culture which is considered the mother culture of all the mesoamerican civilizations. Since the site where they discovered these relics was very remote (and probably because they wanted to keep drilling) the moved them to Venta park in Villahermosa.

Palenque was the first of the Mayan sites that we visited. Like many of the sites its current name is not Mayan but Spanish. We had been prepared for our visit here by our visit to the Anthropology museum in Mexico city where they have many of the artifacts from the tomb of Palak which was discovered here in Palenque. But nothing could adequately prepare you for the stunning impact of turning a corner in the jungle and seeing this city rising out of the overgrowth.

Teotihuacan is a short bus ride outside of Mexico City. Nobody knows who built the pyramids and other buildings found here but it was long abandoned by the builders when it was taken over the the Aztecs.

The vast majority of the equipment we have installed on the boat has worked out fine but there have been a handful of products that were shoddily made or poorly designed so that they either did not perform as expected or hold up for very long. We will add the most egregious examples to this gallery.

Isla Isabela is a Mexican National Park that is set aside because of the rookeries for Frigate birds and Boobys. The timing for our visit was very good since it was the breeding season for both kinds of birds.

Several of the students at our spanish school (Se Habla La Paz) got together to attend las luchas libres or mexican wrestling matches at club deportivo Corona. The photos and video clips in this gallery give a pretty good idea of what it was like.

We picked up some junk on our prop while motoring from Puerto Escondido to San Evaristo. The pics in this album provide a few details

Mulege located about 40 miles south of Santa Rosalia on Highway 1. The town dates back to the beginning of the 18th century where its fresh water river was an obvious attractant to explorers and exploiters alike (conquistadors and missionaries). Since there is no safe anchorage within walking distance of Mulege we decided to take a bus down while we were this close.

Santa Rosalia is as far north as we are going in the Sea of Cortes. It is a little over halfway up the sea. Santa Rosalia was built as part of the deal that the French mining company, called Boleo, made with the Mexican Government in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The copper smelting plant is now closed but takes up as much space as the downtown area. There are still some well preserved buildings from the French time here and a lot of train relics around town.

Photos taken during our trip ashore in the remote coastal town of Bahia Tortugas.

Photos from this leg of our trip

While we were in southern California and had access to a mooring at the marine lab we were able to have several friend visit us for short cruises to the island. This album contains pics of some of those cruises

The photos in this album show details of our visit to the USC marine lab on Catalina Island.

This album contains pictures of anchorages, coastline details and people. These photos were taken during our sail down the coast toward Southern California

This album contains photos from the party we had prior to our departure.

Pictures from our first few days at sea.

We wanted to characterize the performance of our refrigerator/freezer so we would spot any problems early. We found this clever device on line that allows us to get a detailed record of the temperature inside the freezer and graph it conveniently.

We decided to replace our running backstays. The ones the builder provided were too short. This meant another trip up the mast for Shawn. This time he took the camera with him.

Well, it does not really "make" water. What it does is turn sea water into fresh water.

Someone on board needs to be willing and able to climb the mast when the need arises . Since we had a couple of tasks that needed to be taken care of before we shove off, Shawn volunteered to

This album contains a collection of photos of some of the small details that we think have worked out well for us. Many of the ideas are not original with us. As a matter of fact, some of the better ones were stolen (borrowed) from what we have seen on other boats or read about.

This album will be used to accumulate pictures of the various solutions we are using to reduce power consumption by converting old fashioned incandescent lights to more efficient technologies

The photos in this album show the boat shortly after it was commissioned. I will post another album after we have finished our modifications and are ready to shove off.

The yard provided pictures of the boat at various stages of construction and I have assembled a few of them here to show the process.

This album contains some pics of the modifications we made to the lockers that run along each side of the pilot house.

These pics show what we did to bring our 30 year old dingy back to life and a couple of enhancements we made that make this a serviceable tender for Active Transport

These photos show various stages of the construction of the refrigerator box on Active Transport.