Tijuana and Old Town

Tijuana

This morning, we were woken early but this noisy little finch. It turned out to be the first of many. The weather was a bit cloudy, but by the time we set off, the cloud had burnt off making way for a beautiful day.

We decided to head for the Mexican border. The southern suburbs of San Diego share the US/Mexico border with Tijuana. The Trolley (light rail) system in San Diego has a spur that runs right to the border crossing (literally). You walk out of the immigration building heading back to the US and basically step onto the LRT in picture.
The US side of the twin cities is called Ysidro. It's all very clean and westernised. The contrast accross the border was almost immediately apparent. It should be noted that San Diego was in fact part of Mexico at one point.

The photo above is taken just on the Mexican side of the border. You can see the Tijuana arch in the distance. The odd thing was that as we crossed the border we smelled an unpleasant smell. Fortunately it didn't last, but it was as a result of a storm water canal under the walkway that I'm standing on in the photo above.

 

 

Tijuana is a nutty place. It's the biggest tourist trap I've ever seen. It's a city of 2.5 Million people, but the tourist part is only a couple of streets. They are full of dodgy unregulated pharmacies, drinking establishments, Mexican restaurants and trinket shops. To be honest, I was fairly unimpressed, but it had to be done.

The many police all carried semi-automatics and looked like gangsters with their aviation glasses and military boots. It cracked me up when we saw a police dual cab utility driving down the street with a couch in the back tray with one of the cops sitting on it.
Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get a photo. The term "Workplace health and safety seems" not to have made it to Mexico yet.

These Mexicans are crazy.
They paint their donkeys up to look like Zebras (well partially) hook them up to a cart so you can have your photo taken with it.

The Nice Part of TJ
We asked the tourist info lady for options other than the main tourist trap of TJ. She mentioned a park a few blocks from the main street. It was a good call. The park was a nice haven from the craziness. All the local families seemed to have gone to church and then come to the park to hang out as a family. It was quite pleasant really.

After an unimpeded crossing into Mexico, the path back to the USA was no where near as straight forward. We spotted a line of traffic banked back at least to the tourist part of TJ. It was 4 lanes wide and at a complete stand still. I'm guessing it was at least a couple of kms long. (I've since seen on Google Maps, that there are in fact sets of 4 lanes for a few kms.) There were even a bunch of trinket stalls along the way with the vendors out in the traffic trying to flog stuff to unsuspecting motorists.
The Tijuana/Ysidro border sees 40 million crossings every year and is the busiest in the world (whatever world means in North America). I'd just finished scoffing at the unfortunate motorists when I saw the pedestrians lines up to cross the border. It took about 25mins, but we eventually got through without any problems.

 

To the North of Downtown San Diego is the original centre of San Diego the locals call "Old Town". It actually has many of the original buildings from back when San Diego was founded by the Spanish. There's a good mix of history, restaurants and variety stores to make it a nice place to spend some time. After our morning down in Mexico, we had lunch there & the food was excellent. We spent the afternoon having a nosy around the place as well.

 

 

For the entire stay in San Diego, we stayed at the Ocean Park Inn (our room was the one with Kerri on the balcony). The location was great. It was right on the beach next to the lovely Crystal Pier and among a bunch of nice restaurants, pubs and shops. We could easily have stayed there for the week and not to have gone more than a few hundred metres for our needs. Obviously there was so much more of San Diego to explore and we spent a lot of time away from the area, but every evening we found our way back just in time for some awesome sunsets.

 

 

 

We wandered along the beach on the previous evening and saw a pod of dolphins messing around in the waves. Tonight we were out on Crystal Pier and saw the dolphins again. They're really hard to photograph from long range in low light. Hopefully we'll have better luck in Alaska in a month or so time. We managed a much closer encounter with dolphins the next day at Seaworld. We didn't see the dolphins again after that evening.

San Diego (Arrival)

We didn't go away one Kerri's last week off so we were itching to get out traveling again. With Canada and the northern parts of the US still being ravaged by the last throws of winter, San Diego seemed to make sense.

The Friday night before we left for San Diego bought a driving snow and by the time we left for Calgary airport on Saturday morning, the roads were a mess. We'd been trying to call a cab since Friday evening but we couldn't even get through. I ended up driving to the airport through driving snow and parked at a long term car park. It was awful! -8 C and snowing like nothing I've seen here all winter. The predictions were for the snow to continue until Tuesday at least.
Our plane had to be de-iced, and after the anti-freeze was hosed on, the plane was fluro green.
We were lucky to get away because they grounded a few flights later that day.
We made it to San Diego without further incident. Stepping off the flight I was immediately aware of heavier air. I've become used to the rarefied atmosphere in Calgary and the change in air pressure at sea level was quite noticeable.
We checked into the hotel which was really nice and the view was excellent (above). San Diego was having an uncharacteristically cold and overcast morning, but we were just happy to be away from the horrible weather of Calgary. The cold weather didn't last. We had a bit of a look around for the afternoon. I didn't realize how much I had been missing the ocean until we took a walk along Pacific Beach in front of the hotel.

Spring Snow

The weather dealt us yet another surprise today. The forecast was for -2 and a "Chance" of flurries during the early morning. (For the uninitiated, "Flurries" involves very light snow)
HA! They got the temperature about right, but flurries ended up as a major snow dump in the morning of 10" (we know that for sure because someone set up a piece of cardboard with inch markers on it, outside the office. The 10" was probably more than that because the temp hovering around zero meant that the snow kept melting. The storm cleared out around lunch only to crank up at 3pm with another 4" or so.
Needless to say, there were a bunch of road accidents this morning and the main arterial into the city were parking lots. The locals hate the snow, but it's still got the novelty factor for me.

Remember my "Rain Gauge Canada Style" from the first snow of the year? This is a photo of the exact same bench this morning after only 2 hrs of snow. MAD!!
Apparently these big dumps are quite common for this time of year, but they usually (if there's such a thing here) start in mid-late March. Having said all that, the 10"+ is a bigger than normal dump.

Blizzard

This morning we woke up to a full on blizzard! It's hardly surprising considering Shane's having a barbecue this afternoon. I haven't seen snow this heavy since..... I was down at Fernie.
The snow flakes are big fat ones and they're coming down almost horizontal. The winds are up around 30km/hr apparently.
The odd thing about all this is that the weather bureau still says it's cloudy and zero. Vastly different to blizzard and I'm guessing around -5.
The snow has stopped now but there's now about 5cm of snow on the ground (and on the cars). Not bad considering the storm lasted for less than an hour.

Elbow Falls

The Easter weekend is no better in Calgary than the same weekend back home. Everyone in town heads away for the 4 days making the roads a hazard and the holiday spots over run. Needless to say, snowboarding didn't even enter the fray and I had to find something to do, particularly with Kerri working Saturday and Sunday.
So what did I do? Dropped Kerri off at work and headed south to try to find some animals to take photos of. I ended up at Elbow Falls to the south west of the city and just at the foothills of the Rockies. They're not the most spectacular falls I've seen here, but at least they were running (and not iced over) and there weren't too many people around.

 

 

 

I saw this ice structure & it reminded me of some stalactites I'd seen in a cave down near Margaret River.

The wildlife was very uncooperative at Elbow falls. The mammals were all hiding and the birds hadn't returned except for this dipper. It was warming up be winter still had the upper hand in the foothills.

The more time I spend out in the countryside around here, the more I see Mule Deer. They're everywhere! They make for good practice for taking photos of wildlife. These were the only mammals I saw and they were out on the farmland near the main road.
I've learned in the last couple of days that you can have a long lens as big as you want, but if the lighting conditions aren't that good, taking photos of animals that don't sit still isn't going to work no matter how much you mess around with the settings. I have learned a few tricks though, including opening the aperture of the shutter wide open to let in as much light as possible and upping the ISO setting to allow the photo cells to be more sensitive to light. All this makes for a quicker shutter speed and less chance of the animal moving and blurring the shot.

First it was the noisy geese and the ducks arriving back from their winter holidays down south, but now the other birds are returning. I'm told this one is a Northern Flickr and is one of the woodpecker family. It was making such a loud noise that it was asking to have its photo taken.

 

This is my first sighting of a Bald Eagle. It was riding the thermals up into the clear sky and was climbing in a real hurry.
It's funny that it's an American icon & there are more of them in Canada than the US by a very big margin. In fact, Canada has started to export captive birds to repopulate the US populations.
They're impressive animals but I'm yet to see one up close.

Highway 22 wildlife

After a day of Snowboarding at Fernie, we stayed overnight in a motel in Fernie then headed back to Calgary early the next day.

The 1st 100kms of the return trip (being at dawn) was a constant Mule Deer spotting competition. They were at least as common as Kangaroos back home on dawn and dusk. They're as much of a danger to traffic as roos as well. Fortunately there weren't any elk, unlike the previous morning when I nearly hit a mob of 30. Elk are at least twice as big and if you hit one, it's like hitting a domestic cow.

After 100kms of mule deer spotting, a change. A female moose! She had a yearling calf with her and they were very skittish. Unfortunately this photo's a bit out of focus, but the light was bad and the animals were on the move.

 

These photos are bit more in focus. Unfortunately the Swamp Donkeys (as they like to call moose around here) had gone for the cover

 

  

Not far along the road after the moose, Shane spotted this coyote in a field.
We pulled over and I put the long lens to good use. The next photo is a better example. The overcast sky didn't help things again, but at least the subject was a bit more helpful.

The farmers hate these little scavengers and like to shoot them. I reckon they're pretty cool myself. This one was very well fed probably due to an abundance of rabbits, mice and ground squirrels on the prairies.

Coyotes are always looking for an opportunist's meal. Even though this one was watching me and looking for an escape route, he was still head down searching for a snack.

Fernie

Shane and I decided to wag work for the day (work isn't either of our favourite places at the moment) and head 300kms south of Calgary to Fernie. Fernie's actually just inside B.C. and less than 100km from the Montana border.

Fernie gets incredible amounts of snow each year and is somewhat immune to crowds unlike Banff and Lake Louise. If you want to ski/board in soft stuff, Fernie's the place (within easy driving range).

For the last few snowboarding trips I've been getting a bit dejected with the crowds and conditions. I also tended to get bored pretty quickly. Not the case this time. The lack of crowds, huge amount of fresh snow and some really interesting terrain meant that I have the taste for it again!

It was so different to any other trip because the soft, smooth, untracked snow made it more like surfing than any other time. I won't say more than that because I won't be able to describe it, but those who've done it will understand. Suffice to say that having fresh powder burst onto your legs is a fantastic feeling.
I can't wait to go down there again!

Life returns to Cowtown

 

Calgary has had a fairly brutal, but short winter this year. Last year apparently had record snowfalls, but this year has been crap for the ski resorts. In contrast, the east coast has been belted by snow and it's still going.

 

We've had some nice weather the last month and the birds have started to come back, starting with the Canada Geese (unfortunately they're the most annoying noisy bloody things!).

 

 

After months of being frozen, the rivers have started to defrost and flow again. Big chunks of ice break off and float downstream. These sometimes get stuck along to way (above).

 

Close behind the Canada Geese were the ducks. The Yellow Eyed Ducks (above) are the smaller variety of the ones I've seen.

I don't think I've been anywhere in the world that doesn't have mallard ducks. The North Americans seem to have an obsession with shooting at them (along with everything else that moves including each other.)

The plants are waking up as well. There are little signs all over the place that winter's strangle hold is releasing.

The Chinook

 

Our Savior!
The weather phenomenon that makes Calgary so livable is called the Chinook.
It's not unique around the world, but when it's -30 around most of Alberta, the Chinook is certainly the most welcome. It gives us a reprieve from the icebox bringing the temperatures back up close to zero and even +10 at times.
Needless to say, while the rest of Canada is living in an icebox from anywhere from -20 to -40, Calgary are "Basking" in sunny skies & above freezing temperatures. The margin for getting the benefit of the effect is quite small. Typically there band of warm weather runs from about 5kms from the foothills of the Rockies, to about 80kms out. This usually means Calgary is right on the edge. The narrow band of warm air is accompanied by clear skies & the boundary is distinctly marked by a cloud front (above).

Sunrise vs Moonset over the Rockies

The couple of days after the Eclipse were host to some pretty spectacular views from my desk at work. At the same time as the pink tint appeared in the sky from the Sunrise, the full moon set over the Rocky Mountains.

 

It was quite incredible to see how quickly the moon disappeared over the horizon. The time between the top photo and the one above was 18 minutes!
I quite the shot above as the moon was directly above the saddle in the mountains. If you look at the top photo, that same saddle is way over to the right of picture.
We're at the back end of our project at the moment and I'm struggling to get motivation to go to work, let along focus! Nature taunting me from across my desk isn't helping.