The Russian Wedding

    Well, they say that if you are going down you should do it in style, so that is why Arseniy, my Russian friend and classmate, not hearing any of my warnings decided to get married with his life sweetheart in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic . You can't do anything more stylish than getting married in the beach of a exotic Caribbean island, so he definitely wanted to go down in style.
    As I love the beach and the hot weather I was elated to participate of course, but Dani was too eager to miss it so we finally bought a pair of tickets with an all-inclusive package and we left to Punta Cana, escaping from the hot and humid weather of New York to get the even hotter and more humid weather of Dominican Republic... but with all you can eat, just like the IEOR lounge.
    In order to get the most out of our first day there we took the earliest flight to Punta Cana. Regretfully that meant to wake up at 3:30 am, which is not bad per se, but if you went to bed at 3:00 am after cleaning and arranging the house after so many days out, basically you just have enough braincells awake not to drool while seating on the subway on the way to the airport. Of course our friends from the MTA had all the subways in weird schedules and detours, but we were able to make it on time. At least you are tired enough to sleep in those wonderful and spacious economy class seats, so I had a nice 4 hour nap. Nah.. it wasn't that bad as the nice lady on the counter gave us one of those emergency exit seats, so although you still can only recline the seat 1.3 degrees as usual (which I guess it is enough so your head doesn't fall forward while you are sleeping) you can at least stretch your legs all you want (disclaimer: as long as you don't want too much of course).
    Anyway, after those awesome 4 hours of sleep Dani woke me up and gave me the camera to see if I could take some pictures of our landing. In general I seldom take the window seat but this time I had, so I gave it a shot. Here are a couple of pictures of the Dominican Republic from 5,000 feet above or something like that.

 

    By the way, if you click on any of the pictures you will be able to see a much larger version. You can also go to the Picasa Web Album (linked at the end of this post) to see all the images.
    The airport is rather rustic, which means that you only get a staircase outside the plane and you walk to the airport building. Now the change from the AC at full throttle inside the plane (I guess they don't want to spend too much refrigerating the food) to the humid air outside was quite a shock. I tried to get a couple of pictures before entering the airport building but it was impossible as even my eyes got tarnished due to the humidity, so  I will have to wait for when we come back.
    Everything worked quite fast: our luggage was one of the first to come out and a bus was already waiting for us outside, ready to take us to our resort. The only thing that was not so "dreamy Caribbean Island" was the weather, as it was really cloudy, but as the weather was so hot, you could be wearing just your bathing suit and be fine.
    After visiting one of the buffet dinners, which was next to the pool, we took a walk around the beach while we waited for our room to be ready. It doesn't look as cool as when you have a clear blue sky, but I still think that it looked quite nice:

    After walking for a couple of minutes we arrived to a set of shops, which were selling anything and everything, from Mama Juana (a mixture of Rum and some local spices) to cigars and seashells. As we look rally Latin of course, we were approached by every single shop owner to go and see what they had inside. Maybe next time I should come with a t-shirt saying I'm Latin... anyway, after zigzagging around insistent shop owners we finally came back to the hotel.

    We only saw Olga, Berk, Carlos and Allison during that afternoon, as Arsenyi and the rest of the Russian folks were visiting Santo Domingo, but were supposed to come back soon in the afternoon. Of course "soon" in here has a completely different meaning, as it can mean 1 minute (which never happens) or several hours, hence we were not surprised when "soon" meant that they arrived after dinner.
    Although we had to go to bed early that day, as Arseniy and Olga had already prepared activities for the next morning, the whole wedding gang got together to keep on enjoying the "all-included" resort and ended up in the disco.

    The activity for the guys the next day was a fishing trip, while the girls went for a swimming, snorkelling, and sightseeing trip around the island. Apparently fishes know that we humans are extremely lazy so they only go out early in the morning, where none of us is around (at least concious). That meant that we needed to wake up at 6:30 to be ready to leave at 7:30 on our fishing expedition, which was awesome considering I had slept only 4 hours on a plane the "day" before. Anyhow... we were all up early that day (even the Groom), and ready for our boat trip.

    No, this was not our fishing boat... I think it was actually the third from left to right, which was the tallest one out there. Off to the sea!

    Well, it actually turns out that fishing for Mahi-Mahi and King Fish in open waters if very similar to proctoring a test when you have a CA with you. Basically the captain and his assistant (the CA equivalent) will prepare all the rods and leave them ready at the sides of the boats. Meanwhile we would just sit and look dumb (not that we can do much better) and wait for a fish to get caught (undergrad equivalent in this proctoring comparison?).

    It turns out that even fish are kind of lazy over here, so instead of going out early in the morning they started appearing around 11:00! Not that I wouldn't do the same, but if we only knew I would have loved those extra hours of sleep.

    We were actually losing hopes to get something that day when we got our first hit, actually two hits, as two Mahi-Mahi's decided the bait looked tasty at the same time. On top you see the guys fighting to get those fishes on board.

    They say that every time you tell the story of your fishing trip the fishes grow more and more, so by the time I'm writing this we should have caught two blue whales, but regretfully I have the pictures so you can see they are only moderately sized fishes. Two Mahi-Mahi and two King Fishes. Well, that is better than go back empty handed so the crew was happy and didn't engage in mutiny, but instead decided to pillage and plunder the bars of the resort.

    On top you see the whole "fishing" team and below apparently it would be Captian Davy Jones, although I am not sure who was Jack Sparrow in that trip, as several of our crew members became a "little light of stomach" due to all the rocking of the boat, but we will not mention any names in here...

    Back to the hotel, basically we just relaxed and wasted our time in the pool and doing some. Nothing else can be said...

    Next was the big day. Although the last two days were awfully clouded, miraculously this day was sunny and only some white and puffy clouds could be seen in the morning. Maybe it was God giving Arseniy a goodbye gift, who knows. Even though we went to bed late, we woke up early with Dani and went to ask for our snorkelling gear to spend the morning swimming around some of the reefs near the shore. It was great! with lots of colourful fishes and sea urchins. Regretfully I have no pictures of that, but if you would like underwater photos, just send me the money for the waterproof case for my camera and I will gladly upload some in my next trip :D.

    After Arseniy got his last meal... being single that is, all the guys got together in one room while the bride and the girls got together in another one. Nothing fancy, just a couple of speeches and a shot of something, and we were off the meet the bride.

    The guys from the hotel had everything ready on the beach, even the clear sky. The only bad thing with clear skies in a Caribbean Island is that that means it is going to be hot as hell, and you will be sweating like a race horse. That is if you are wearing only a bathing suit, but as this was a wedding we all had nice shirts and long pants, which were completely soaked by the end of the ceremony.

    Here is a picture of the Best Man and the Dead Man... sorry Groom (same thing...)

    As you can see, from the red carpet to the chairs, the champagne, and the petals, at the hotel they had everything ready for the ceremony. The best man was not behind, and he got a nice seashell to put the rings. Quite a nice touch!

    Congratulations! Here Arseniy is signing his fate (hopefully, as everything was in Spanish so he could actually be just selling a kidney), while Olga smiles. The ceremony was in Spanish too, as the judge (or whatever name it might have) only spoke Spanish, but a lady from the hotel was giving a short English version to the crowd.

    A toast and the band starts to play for Mr. and Ms. Kukanov.

    After that, and as we were already wet by all the stewing, we took several pictures in the ocean, trying to refresh a bit. There are more pictures in the Web Album if you are interested.

smile!

Forever

    After such a wonderful ceremony, and while the newly-weds had their indoor photo session we went to enjoy the pool bar and escape from the heat. Prost!

    And after that we ended up at the sea as Berk really wanted to go there instead of the pool. We finished that day with a nice "formal" dinner at the Steak House, which included a delicious wedding cake, the disco after that, and after they threw us out because they needed to close the place, we went to swim to the ocean. So dead tired after such a wonderful day we went to bed.

    The next day started cloudy and stormy just as the first couple of days. We had planned a boat trip after lunch, to go around the north east side of the island, next to where there resort was. I though that with the bad weather we basically would not be able to see much, but actually the sky added a lot of dramatism to the photos as you can see here.

    The trip consisted in going for snorkelling in a reef a little to the east of the resort, and then to a calm beach where you could walk several miles into the ocean and still have the water on your waist. The snorkelling was great. The reef was quite larger and with more impressive fauna swimming around than what we saw back next to the resort.

    The water on the beach we went later were so calmed that you could see the reflection of the sky over them. It was really impressive, and as you can see, even though Dani is very far away into the ocean (that little dot on the right of the image is her) she has the water barely on her legs.

    Although the boat left us in the middle of this "pond" we actually walked all the way to the shore, while some of the rest of the guys tried to do some water ski. Dani, who does it splendidly, helped several of them so they could actually do it, as they haven't tried it before. She was an excellent teacher and most of her students were able to do it on the first try.
    In the meantime some of us walked along the beach, as there was another resort there with a couple of parrots at the entrance.

    We were for hours in that place, while almost everyone tried to do some skiing. After that, the boat's captain asked Dani to do it, as he had seen her skiing the day before, so we had quite a nice skiing demonstration.
    Back at the hotel, there was a flea market, with paintings, jewellery, and many other things, like wooden statues and bottles with the special roots used to make Mama Juanas. Berk impressed us with his bargaining abilities, reducing prices ten-fold, while Dani got a pair of necklaces and bracelets just for smiling. It is understandable though... it is impossible to resist that smile and those eyes...

    As usual, we ended the day on one of the fancy restaurants of the resort and then on the disco. This time we had to gather all our patience as Arseniy wanted to play a bunch of music for us, and while the DJ was eager to accept a couple of bucks for doing it, he left soon after leaving the job of actually putting the music to the next DJ. As you can imagine nothing was done until we started complaining, as when they come with their "tranquilo, ya mismo lo hace" ("don't worry, soon he will do it") speech, you know you actually need to worry and start asking for it. In the end they finally did it, I guess in part because nobody wants a bunch of angry Russians in their disco... nor a Latin girl complaining.

    Regretfully, all wonderful stories must end at some point (and I'm not talking here about Arseniy's life as a bachelor, but our vacations), and the next day was the last one for us in this island. We woke up relatively early to get some last minute pictures, pack our stuff and be ready for our bus to take us to the airport.

    At the entrance there was a nice flock of Flamingos, which that morning appeared to be in some sort of Tai-Chi lesson, as they were all contorted.

    Finally, on the airport I was able to take the picture I wanted since we arrived. While waiting to board I left the camera outside so the lens got the same temperature as the air and thus not get any moisture over it. Here is the result.

    Regretfully I must confess that I had, for the first time, to apply some Photoshop over this. Not that the picture was too bad, but there were a couple of panel doors in the middle of the garden. The problem was that in order to blend the doors with the rest of the environment these geniuses decided to paint them bright yellow (I know it was probably for some safety reason, but I still want to make fun about it), and it was impossible to find any angle where those doors didn't appear, so I had to go down the Photoshop road to make them disappear.
    So that's all for now folks!

Running Around the East Coast

    As Dani was receiving her Masters degree now and participating in her commencement ceremony, her parents came to see her and they invited us to go on a trip around the west coast in an RV. For those of you who don't know, an RV (which stands for Recreational Vehicle) a.k.a. motorhome, is a big car (almost a bus) where you have an almost full house inside with kitchen, bedrooms, and a bathroom. It was an awesome way of going around, as you are able to go around just like if you were on a car, but much more comfortable. I will give a small daily summary (with pictures of course) of  what we did on each of the amazing 9 days we spent on this trip. To start, here is a map with the whole trip:


View Larger Map

Day 1 (May 13th):
    We didn't do much on our first day as we basically had to travel all the way to Long Island to get the RV, which they only give it to you around midday, and then drive all the way back to Manhattan to put our stuff inside. That meant that we were not leaving before 5:00 pm, and thus we were not able to get very far. Our first camp ground was on the Delaware Water Gap, a huge natural reservoir close to Stroudsburg, PA. These camps have everything you need, from bathrooms and supermarket to full hookup for the RV (meaning electricity, water, and sewerage), so you just park your car and you are ready for anything. In this case anything meant just sleep, as we were really tired after all the work and the trip.

Day 2 (May 14th):
    Now that we were a little bit more rested, we woke up early-ish, as we had quite a long road ahead as we wanted to get to Allegheny National Forest which is literally at the other side of PA. Here is my view after I woke up that morning.

    After getting all our things ready (and taken a quite large amount of pictures, specially macro ones) we set off on our trip, leaving this first camp site behind.

    Our lunch stop was not very far away, as we took it quite slowly. We stopped near Dingmans Ferry, on the northern part of the Delaware Water Gap. The place was very nice, and although the visitors office was closed, we were still able to hike (actually just walk) a little trail up to the Dingmans Waterfalls. The day was gorgeous and we found quite a large amount of insects on our way to the falls, so it was an excellent opportunity to try out the macro extension tubes. I must say it was quite hard to focus as the tubes make the depth of field quite shallow, and is specially hard if your subject is a hysterical caterpillar who apparently had just drank an espresso by how fast and erratically it was crawling around. From a bunch of photos I took I was able to get a couple on focus, but it was worth the try. I think...

    But not only insects were a good catch that day. We were quite lucky as apparently it had been raining during the night, so most of the plants and trees still had some drops of water around, giving another great opportunity for using the macro.

    After this it was basically just a long drive to the Allegheny National Forest, to which we arrived very late, to  camp site a few miles to the south west of Bradford, PA. The camp was managed by a retired couple who were the nicest people on earth. They actually waited for us to arrive (quite after the closing hours) so we could find our way inside the camp and park the RV without any difficulties.

    It was so late that after a couple of long time exposures like this one I just went to bed.

Day 3 (May 15th):
    We woke up relatively early-sh and decided to walk around the park a little, before heading to our next destination.

    As you can see we were very lucky as the forest was really green and the light was very good. Plus, as it had been very humid lately there were tons of mushrooms which I learned are excellent subjects for using the macro (mainly because they don't move, not even with strong wind which tends to make flowers move all over the place and hence make the focusing a living nightmare).

    Our lunch break was relatively close by, at the Allegheny Reservoir, a lake created by a dam that was a few miles away from the camping site. Again we were really lucky by the weather as we had an amazing blue sky with patches of clouds here and there that gave us some awesome views.

    The mid-day sun though was a little bit too strong so some of the views had an extremely large range of light values to be able to get them all in a single photo. But with some exposure bracketing and blending those images together you could achieve some nice landscape photos, like this one.

    After driving around the area we finally arrived to our new camp site, which was a few miles south of Erie, PA. It was a huge camping site with a lot of people and many activities specially for children. It even had a small artificial lake inside, where you could rent a little boat to go around and you can see in this picture.

Day 4 (May 16th):

    We were so close to Erie that we decided to go and visit it, and specially visit the Pesque Isle State Park, which is a small peninsula that goes out into Lake Erie, and that is had ponds, loads of wildlife, and even sandy beaches.

    As you can see here, there were even some floating houses in the inner ponds of the Isle, like these ones in Horseshoe Pond.

    In one of the ends of the Isle there was also a very nice lighthouse, that together with the cracked pier and the blue sky made an incredible view.

    There was also a lot of people fishing (and resting like in this picture), although you don't see many of them.

    Our next stop in the tour was Pittsburgh, PA, which meant a long drive south. Once we got there we just parked the RV near Carnegie Mellon University and started walking around the place.

    Regretfully everything was closed as it was the day of the commencement ceremony, so there was not much to see, neither at CMU nor at U. of Pittsburgh. But they both have a very nice campus so we spent a lot of time walking around. On top you see what I think is a track for some of those robot races they have at CMU, while at the bottom you see one cool statue they have at CMU next to the Miller Gallery.

    After that we kept our south bearing and drove all the way to Washington PA, a small town in the south west corner of PA, as out next camp site was a couple of minutes away from it. The camping site was much smaller than the previous ones, and as the Interstate 79 passed right next to it, it was quite noisy.

Day 5 (May 17th):

    In part thanks to the trucks and buses going by the nearby highway, we woke up really early and ready to leave. Regretfully it was raining a lot, plus there was an outlet mall just next to Washington, so we spent the morning there.

    The objective was to get to a camp site right after the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, at that meant leaving the main highway and crossing part of West Virginia through secondary roads. The wonderful thing about this is that you end up going through really small towns and villages that are build around the road, which in general consisted on two or three houses, a church, and a supermarket. Very similar to some of the small towns you can find in the south of Chile.

    We first crossed the Monongahela National Forest, which is in West Virginia, but the last part of the road was ascending the whole time. As it was really cloudy (and the clouds were kind of low) that only meant that at some point we were going to get stuck in a really dense fog, which happened just as we crossed the border between West Virginia and Virginia.

    After that it was basically all downhill (literally), but the farm type houses and green meadows were still there.

    The next big city we visited was Monterrey (VA not Mexico), which is a small town in between the Monongahela and the George Washington National Forests.

    After that we crossed the George Washington National Forest, and we finally arrived to our camp site, which was a few miles south of Stauton, VA.

Day 6 (May 18th):

    The camping site was one of the best we had visited, as it had a very good infrastructure and it was not as full as the others we had visited, so we decided to stay there for an additional night. But was we are in "visiting mode" we were not going to just stay there for a whole day of course! There were many things to visit around the area so we woke up early to be able to visit many of them.

    The first thing was the Natural Bridge National Park, which is a small piece of the George Washington Forest (on its southern tip) that had, as it's name indicates, a natural bridge. The story tells that the Monacan Tribe, which lived in that part of VA, were able to flee from their pursuers (the Powhatans) thanks to this bridge that appeared out of nowhere when they had lost all hopes. So, it was a sacred place for them.

    Legend also told that George Washington visited this place while he worked as a surveyor, and that the initials G.W. that are carved there were done by him. Below you see a view of Cedar Creek, the small tributary that passes below the bridge.

    Apart from that, in this place they also have a couple of museums and a full recreation of a native village. Additionally, a couple of miles back there is a set of caves (also included when you purchase your ticket), which are quite nice. The place was really empty so we had almost everything for ourselves, including the caves, which had some bats here and there.

    After that we just went back to the camp site to rest and go to bed early as we had a lot of things to do the next day.

Day 7 (May 19th):

    We started really early today as there was a long trip ahead of us, plus we wanted to go through a secondary road that crossed the Shenandoah National Park instead of just taking the highway. For that we needed to drive up to Waynesboro and then head north to the park entrance.

    The park is extremely beautiful and they have created a special highway called Skyline Drive, which crosses the park through its long side, going up to the highest peak of the park and hence giving amazing views of the surrounding valleys.

    An additional attraction was the Appalachian Trail crosses the park and Dani was eager to hike at least a small portion of this mythical trail. For those of you who don't know what this is, the Appalachian Trail is a hiking trail that is 3,500 km. long and that goes from Maine all the way down to Georgia. As we clearly will (regretfully) not have the time to do the whole trail, Dani wanted at least to hike a small portion of it.

    So we hiked for a couple of hours while Dani's parents went on with the RV to where we would come out of the trail, and thankfully they were waiting for us with cold sodas and a nice lunch.

    Here a couple of views of things along the trail, like this massive spider web on top, which surely had quite a large number of spiders inside, although we didn't stopped to check :D. The other photo is of part of the trail, when we got visited by a slightly dense fog. There are more pictures of the trail in the Web Album which I link at the end of this post.

    After the much needed lunch and rest, we headed north through Skyline Drive until the exit to Luray. Luray is a small town in between the Shenandoah and George Washington National Parks, and that is famous for a set of caverns they have open to the public. As we had already visited a set of caverns before we didn't expect something radically different, but this cave was really wonderful. They have illuminated the cave is such a way that everything looked gorgeous, so I spent my whole time there taking pictures in every direction. This first picture shows the Mirror Lake, a very large underwater lake of crystal clear water, which was flowing so softly that its surface allowed a perfect reflection of the cave's ceiling.

    The rest of the cave was equally beautiful, containing all the possible geological structures you can imagine. Additionally, at the entrance, they give you an audio tour that explains every single one of these structures so you come out with tons of new information. The whole tour takes like an hour and a half so be ready to walk and stand for quite some time.

    These are just a couple of the pictures I took inside, and you can find the rest of them in the Web Album at the end. Apart from being one of the largest (and most visited) set of caves in the US, they also have the largest musical instrument in the world: a Stalactite Organ. (just in case, stalactites are the ones that hang from the ceiling and stalagmites are the ones that grow from the floor upwards). Basically the organ has connected to each key a solenoid that hits a stalactite that makes the corresponding sound. To make it must have been quite a task as you had to go around the cave with a tuning fork hitting different stalactites until you found one that resonated at the required frequency. They even do a demonstration of the organ and they play one short song that bounces all over the cave.

    Outside the caves there is also a museum, this time it was am automobile and carriage museum that had some of the first carriages and cars in the US.

    Finally, after all the walking and looking we set our course to or next destination, a nice campground near Hagerstown in Maryland. Again we were lucky with the weather as the sunset was great and next to the camp there is a small river (a tributary of the famous Potomac) where we found a floating pier that gave us a splendid view of the sunset and the moon after that (and also gave me several mosquito bites... but it was worth it).

Day 8 (May 20th):

    The next day we started again early, and spent some time going around the camp site and in my case taking some pictures as usual. The camping site was really nice and well maintained, with nice gardens and a playground.

    The objective of that day was to visit the Antietam National Battlefield, where one of the important fights of the American Civil War took place. The park is really well maintained, and at the entrance they give you a map with the explanation of what happened in every place, and then you can just go around in your car checking the different tour stops. Before leaving the information office I found this little fellow walking around. I tend to like spiders a lot, but specially these ones (the common jumping spiders).

    Back to the battlefield. The place is enormous so you really need to go around in a car to visit it completely.

    I don't know what this is, but it looks like a groundhog. The little fellow was sitting there like a statue while I kept on getting closer and closer for a better picture. As he didn't move the whole time I got to think that it was actually fake, but suddenly I got too close I guess and it started running really fast to one of the holes that were behind the fence.

    Other sightings included ducks, geese, and deer like this one below.

    The last stop of the tour was the Antietam National Cemetery where many of the soldiers that died on this battleground were buried.

    Back on the road, we kept on going north, as our destination was in the middle of PA, so we needed to do a lot of driving.

    But, on or way we stumbled into a new park called Catoctin Mountain Park, a very nice park with a lake called Hunting Creek Lake in the middle. So we left our course north and went to see that lake and rest a little bit.

    The detour showed to be quite interesting, as the forest surrounding the lake was really beautiful and we were able to spend part of the sunset at the beach on the lake. The problem is that that meant that we were going to arrive quite late to our destination but I guess it was worth it.

Day 9 (May 21th):

    This was our final day of travel, as the next day we needed to return the RV. The problem is that we needed to return it before 12:00, which meant that we needed to arrive really early to NYC, to be able to leave everything in our place and then drive all the way to long island to return it, so this last night needed to be quite close to NYC.

    As the first camp site in which we stayed was close enough, we decided to go there and arrive early to enjoy a little bit of calmed time. So, after a couple of hours (and a small detour to a mall...) we ended up in the same camping site we started, at the Delaware Water Gap, and thus finishing this amazing trip.

    I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.