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After we finished up with our Galapagos excursion, Jeff, Oksana, and I found ourselves with a few days to kill in San Cristóbal. Our original plan was to go to Santa Cruz and look for diving excursions out of Puerto Ayora, but being on hotel lockdown for a day (during the Ecuadorian 2010 Census) left us a little short on time. We decided the best thing to do with our remaining days would be to simply dive out of Puerto Bazquerizo Moreno again.

We asked around at a few shops and figured out which dives were in the area. Kicker Rock has to be the hands-down best, but we’d already done that a couple days before. We opted to save a little money (and time) by doing two dives closer to town. We found the Dive and Surf Club who offered us a 2-tank dive for $85.

The next day, we discovered there would be one more person accompanying us. Tim, a fellow traveler who was just 6 dives or so away from his Divemaster license, was coming along, too. In fact, it was Tim who sent me an email about a week after we returned to the mainland, asking if any of our underwater footage came out…

This video is for you, Tim!
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When we finished our boat excursion in the Galapagos, we had to plan out the rest of our time there.  Our friend, Jeff, only had a week or so left with us, so we deferred to him.  What would he like to do?  See more of the Galapagos or, perhaps, something else in Ecuador?  He wanted to see the Amazon jungle.

This was an interesting video to put together.  Because of the rain, for most of the day trip we only ever hauled out Oksana’s tiny little point-and-shoot camera (a Panasonic Lumix TZ5.)  It doesn’t even compare to the other cameras we had tucked away under our raincoats, but I was surprised to discover its 720p HD video mode and marginal microphone were more than capable of telling that day’s story.

The day before Jeff left (Dec 6), we sorted through our footage, pounded out a rough outline, and shot our voice-overs on the roof of Plantas y Blanco, our hostel — which accounts for much of the background noise in the final edit — all in about 3 hours.  While not perfect, I do like how most of the video turned out.

What do you think?  Does the image quality stack up to some of the previous episodes we’ve done?

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This is a video about our experiences during Hurricane Earl when it passed by the Outer Banks in early September.  If you watched the sensationalist media in the days leading up, you’d think we were about to be hit by the storm of the century, but it really wasn’t that bad.  The eye stayed safely offshore while we were only buffeted by the outer edge of the spiral as the whole thing moved north.  My grandfather kept an eye on the news and sort of scoffed at the mandatory evacuations for all tourists.  So we stayed put and tried to get some video footage before, during, and after the storm for the sake of comparison.  I hope this’ll give you the impression of what being in a Category 2 hurricane is like.

With this video, I’m trying something new.  I didn’t spend nearly the same amount of time or effort on it that I typically spend on other Postcard Valet episodes.  Take a look at it; let me know what you think.  Tomorrow, I’d like to ask our subscribers some specific questions about it (and similar videos) with respect to our website.

About three weeks ago, Oksana and I took her brother and sister-in-law, Andrey and Natasha, down to Key West. They were visiting from Russia and we took it upon ourselves to show them a good time. Andrey received his PADI open water certification course in Katmchatka this spring — in the COLD! — just so he could dive with us here in the States.

On our last trip through Key West, Oksana and I stumbled upon a little dive shop called Dive Key West. We had a wonderful experience with them, so we knew right where to take Andrey. What we didn’t realize, however, was that we would be there for the opening day of lobster season…

Technical notes: I had a little problem with… ahem, I mean I was fortune enough to have a learning experience with the audio on this podcast. I don’t know why our Zoom H2 picked up interference from our iPhones — they were both clear across the room and it’s never happened before — but our “clean” audio track was riddled with cell phone noise. The (slightly) lesser of two evils was to use the crappy audio record by the Canon 5D’s on-board mic. I have no idea where the clicking sounds throughout that track came from (because we were careful to turn off the AC and check for other noises in our hotel room.)  At any rate, I did the best I could with a little noise reduction and music.  Anyway, next time: phones powered all the way off.

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Here’s a long-ish podcast episode about the NASA Tweetup I attended back in May.  Oksana wasn’t able to go with me, so this video ending up being a one-man show.  There’s some good stuff in there, I think, but I ran into some problems during the production (not the least of which was overexposing my “narrator” shot… grrr!)  My intent was to convey my own experiences at, and thoughts about, the NASA Tweetup.  I hope I managed to at least do that.

Originally I thought I’d post it in June, but packing for our backpacking-around-the-world trip got too crazy for that.  Then, I thought I’d post it on the first week of the trip, but the trip itself got too crazy for that!

Oksana and I are finding ourselves facing down the Traveler Blogger’s Dilemma: How do we budget time for webpage work when there’s a whole exciting world out there to see?  Turns out that’s especially hard when you’re visiting friends and family!

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Back in November, Oksana and I spent our vacation in Puerto Rico.  If you’ve been following along, you already know that we’ve already put together a video on the Arecibo Radio Telescope, plus a short little Culebra diving video.  One of the other places we visited happened to be right next to Arecibo: The Rio Camuy Caves Park.

We shot the opening clip with Oksana at the park, but because of the problems I’ve been having with my laptop, I wasn’t able to edit anything together while we were still in Puerto Rico.  This April, comfortably back at home, we recorded new voice-overs for the podcast using all sorts of new equipment we’d bought for our upcoming trip.  I’m curious to hear if you notice any difference…
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There was a wall of rock on one side, a 300-foot cliff down to a dry riverbed on the other.  Alicia and I were sandwiched into the back of a pickup truck with our rented bikes, gripping its sides as a car battery and broken glass slid around our feet.  Our driver seemed to be chatting with the three other men in the cab while he raced up the Andean mountain road.  Our tires literally squealed on the pavement as he drove us, more often than not, into the oncoming lane.  It occurred to me, while rounding another blind curve, that going over the cliff was the least of our worries.  At that speed, sitting in the back of a pickup, any accident was likely to be fatal.  I thought: This may be the scariest ride of my life.

And that was before they pulled out their guns.

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