In Arequipa

Arequipa, Peru!

The main plaza - town centre

Hot, dry, interesting, chaotic, dirty, messy, a complete free-for-all. Amazing! America doesn't have entrepreneurs like Peru; everywhere there is a little business underway - from selling ice creams, corn, newspapers or plastic bowls to food vendors, shoe shiners or car sales - its all there on the street. Arequipa is full of little yellow taxis called Ticos made by Daewoo - a ride in one makes you feel like part of the street and anything bigger than another Tico seems positively threatening. If you want to experience a real adrenaline rush, better than any bungy jump, climb into the back of a Tico, give the driver your destination (and haggle the price a little) then add "muy rapido, por favor". This phrase will guarantee the driver will take every opportunity to get you there quicker (expecting an extra tip if he does) and the resulting ride is similar to the famous Shotover Jet ride in Queenstown NZ, but with added traffic. And the traffic is something else, hopefully I will get a video to show it in all it's stupendous clamour.



The ubiquitous Tico

Note this is only two lanes wide, and the person getting out is not parked but rather decided to jump out here.

One thing that did surprise me since my first visit (in 2004) is the number of brand new cars on the road. Arequipa is very dry and vehicles tend to last quite well, but obviously Peru's recent growth has created plenty of money for the middle classes, as Audis and BMWs as well as high end Chev and Ford models are seen regularly. I don't imagine that many locals would be keen to try and drive a Porsche or Ferrari on the streets here but I don't doubt that one may be found in a garage in a quiet part of town. But generally you see recent Japanese and European sedans making up the bulk of the private cars. Interestingly I have seen a fair number of older cars which have been clearly lovingly repaired and restored to a degree, and there are a lot of VW beetles and 1980 Japanese cars which look immaculate.



1967 VW Beetle

The weather has been a welcome break from the experience of DeKalb's descent into winter, with an average so far of approx 30 degrees Celcius most days and dry and sunny. It is the start of the rainy season here however, and we have had a couple of heavy downpours and some light afternoon drizzle on occasions. To be honest they are actually quite welcome and refreshing, adding some much needed humidity.

So far, after a lovely christmas dinner with family, we have been mainly walking and exploring. And enjoying an afternoon siesta of course. Our usual day consists of getting up for a leisurely breakfast and an explore about mid-morning, be back for lunch around 2pm (3 courses) and after a brief siesta go back out about 5 for a stroll, remembering to be back in time for supper about 8 or 9.

We have also been out on the household shopping trips a couple of times, usually these are fairly involved affairs as the favoured market is driven too, good selected then the next market visited, perhaps a supermarket for one or two items, then usually a return for something forgotten or an entirely unexpected (to me at least) trip elsewhere unrelated to shopping. This may take a few hours and is usually repeated a couple of times a week.



They take their potatoes seriously, with their own section.



At one of the fruit and vege markets

The markets are of course full of everything you could want; fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, cheese, plastic bowls, cake tins - in fact goods of all kinds, but some of them are apparently better for certain things. For anyone used to supermarket shopping it is well worth the visit to see how things actually are - nothing like a row of cow heads and entrails to remind you where your meat comes from as the butcher dismembers another carcass in front of you. The row of cuy (guinea pigs) carefully laid out with entrails included to prove the freshness I have decided not to post just yet...



Want pork?



Artfully displayed fruit is standard

But the thing I really love about Peru's cities is the architecture. From the Aztec to the Colonial and right up to the modern day, Peru has it all somewhere. Unfortunately a lot of the Aztec buildings were demolished by the Spaniards (although Cusco has a good selection) and in their stead they erected large imposing buildings to stamp their mark on the New World. The photo at the top shows the main plaza of Arequipa and the large church built by the Spaniards (and subsequently repaired many times due to earthquake damage). The photo below shows a typical street of the colonial section of town (in this case surprisingly free of people).



Colonial street in Arequipa

Moving more towards today it is clear that rapid growth and population pressure along with lax building codes and apparently non existent planning resulted in some pretty shocking buildings going up and a lot of people subdividing their land to make some money. In many cases they couldn't divide so they went up - in fact building up seems to be the main activity here as it is rare to find a building less than two floors which does not have some partially completed extra floor or protruding reinforcing rod up top. But while the results often resemble a child stacking blocks, there are plenty of interesting buildings around, often with a variety of colours as well...



note the staircase

Finally, we managed to get out of the city for a day and visit a farm and some countryside, a lot of which is slowly being urbanised as the population flood into the city for work and opportunities. Many suburbs start out as little more than a collection of houses, built illegally, until they reach the critical numbers to force the city to provide a water and sewer infrastructure, and are now almost indistinguishable from the city proper as they have been absorbed in and new suburbs appear outside them. We got out to one of the hydroelectric generation schemes serving Arequipa, and which has started supplying water as well. The main generator has been operating continually since 1905!



I think I remember this from New Zealand...



Dam #1, operating since 1905



Downstream from Dam #1

The plan after New Years is to get down to the beach for a few days rest before returning to the US!

A Very American Thanksgiving

Our first Thanksgiving in the USA! We had a nice quiet night at home, cooked an applewood smoked turkey roll, some potato cake and vegetables, cranberry and apple sauces and a New Zealand Pinot Noir... very nice. Then we decided to pop down to Walmart about 10pm to see if we could get some toys cheap - they have a tradition of big sales at Thanksgiving ("Black Friday"), usually starting on the 25th, this year Walmart started their toy sale at 10pm on the 24th. Packed is not the word. Not only were there thousands of people there but most of them had shopping trolleys. A quick look revealed that they didn't have what we were after so we left, glad we weren't queuing up at the checkouts.

But I still got up at 6:30am to pop down to Officemax to pick something up on sale, turns out the place was quiet! No queues, very few people, so I was in and out pretty fast. I guess their sale wasn't as sought after (Best Buy had a queue around the block before midnight so I didn't bother going in). But the best fun was yet to come...

We had been invited to go target shooting, so after breakfast we set off west, to a small gun club out near a town called Polo. Andy was there with his wife and some other family members and a surprising array of guns - a 7.62mm AK47 with modified stock, a .22 MP5 knock off, a 9mm MAC-11 uzi type thing, a couple of .22 pistols, a Ruger 9mm pistol and there was also a Civil War pattern black powder revolver and rifle and a Colt 45 cowboy revolver as well!

Just some of the selection...

He had a range of targets set up including some blocks of ice. I had to have a go with the AK of course, powerful and surprisingly accurate (it was a semi-automatic, no autos allowed).

Striking a pose for la revolucion

The black powder rifle was impressive - smoke and noise!

And I wasn't the only one having fun.

So, much fun was had, the black powder guns produced a lot of smoke and an almighty deep bang, the .22's were very accurate and the Colt 45 was surprisingly easy to use (I don't know how those cowboys fired them one handed while riding a horse though). I managed to hit the targets a fair amount of times but by far my best effort was when a Walther PPK pistol was produced - the James Bond gun - and I got to have a go. 7 shots and 7 targets down, very easy to use and aim. Nice!

A short vid showing some of the action:

Getting my Illinois Drivers Licence

OK, I haven't done a lot of driving over here so far, a bit of local stuff and some cruising to Chicago and back. Luckily I have my navigator ;), by far the worst part of driving in any new place is finding your way around and when it's on the other side of the road trying to concentrate on navigation is just one more undesirable distraction.

So far I have been just using my NZ drivers licence, as far as I can tell according to Illinois law it is perfectly legal as long as I have a valid visa, so on my F-1 I am good to drive with that for at least a couple of years. However it is also a requirement to have insurance, and the insurance company demand that I get an Illinois licence within 30 days, or be in the process of getting it.

To get an Illinois Drivers Licence however you need a Social Security Number (SSN). If you're unfamiliar with what this is, it is a magical number that is required to do most things in the US, but if that number gets in the wrong hands then it can cause problems (think credit issues linked to you via your SSN). It is not just a tax number (like the NZ IRD number or the NI number in the UK).

As a foreigner I have to apply for a SSN, and this can take several weeks. You may be able to spot the potential issue here with my drivers licence... Anyway, I could apply through the university, a Social Security representative turned up to go through all the paperwork of the hundred or so of us in the line and told me I would have mine in a few weeks.

In the meantime I was reading through the Illinois road code - as Illinois has no licence recognition agreements with any other countries (or indeed other states from what I can tell) and requires you to sit the full test. I was a bit nervous, I haven't sat a driving test in years and this was in a foreign country driving on the other side of the road. I think I have it down pretty well but who knows what I would need to do - parallel parking for example is pretty rare here and I haven't done one while driving on the right. As an aside I am surprised how much less flexible I seem to be looking to my right through the back window than when I had to turn my head left to do it. Seriously, I am a good few seconds slower at orienting myself in the car as well, I guess all those years of practice have made it second nature and now I have to learn a new side!

In the end it was a bit of an anticlimax. I turned up and took my number, waited,  handed over all the documentation, proof of address, passport, visa etc and went over to a little booth to sit my exam. 20 questions on basic road code (about a third was "what does this sign mean") and I was back to the desk to let them know I was done. I then just had to wait until a driving examiner was available.

The driving test was super basic. I mean, all I really did was turn left and right and do one three point turn. I also had to pull over at one point and then tell the instructor how I would turn the wheels if I was parked on a hill. No parallel parking, no hill starts (no hills), not even driving on multi-lane roads. I did clear up an argument for the staff though, they were evenly split over whether we drove on the right side or the "wrong" side of the road in New Zealand

So now I have a US drivers licence in the state of Illinois. One definite benefit is now I have a State ID, invaluable as otherwise I had to use my passport for everything. And I have only driven on the left once so far...

Red sky at night... Shepherd's delight!

An amazing red sky tonight, unfortunately I didn't have anything other than my phone at the time and I don't think it did the colour of the wispy clouds justice, they were a deep purple/red.

Luckily I managed to get home and get my camera in time to catch some of the sunset near home.

Moving my RAW files with Python

When I am out taking photos that I think might warrant more attention I often use the RAW+JPG mode, if I get a really great shot that I want to edit further then I can use the RAW file otherwise for quick stuff I can just use the JPG. If it turns out that all my photos are rubbish I might just delete the RAW files altogether. Regardless I like to make a new folder for the RAW files, as well as a folder for edited and uploaded files (which I usually resize).

When I decided that I should really learn Python I thought this would be a neat little project to get started with and I eventually created a script which managed this task for me, creating the RAW folder and moving the files. When I got my new laptop here in the US I realised that I had failed to backup this script, so I had to redo it. Now, my Python skills are pretty basic and fairly rusty - and in fact most of my work with the language has been done with ESRI products, particularly in automating Data Driven Pages in ArcMap. A bit of googling and I had the bare bones, a bit of tweaking to make it a little more versatile and I had my script.

No doubt anyone out there who knows Python better could replace it with a handful of lines but as an occasional programmer I like to keep things obvious and relatively well documented as I may not revisit it for a long time.

The Python script below runs after I have imported the photos from my camera (via the EOS Utility) and adds in the folders I want as well as a RAW folder if it finds a RAW file, moving those folders afterwards. This simplifies my fairly haphazard workflow and keeps things fairly tidy. Note that it is hardcoded and only looks for Canon RAW files as is.

# Grant Herbert 29/10/2011
# Python script to manage RAW files imported from 40D.
# 
# Looks through the folders in my Pictures folder.
# If it finds RAW files (cr2),
# creates a RAW subfolder (if needed) and moves them into it.
# Also creates Editing and Uploaded folders if an image file is found

import os, shutil

start_folder = "C:\Users\Grant\Pictures"
print "----------Starting------------"

#create RAW folder
def c_RAW(p):
    p1 = str(p) + '\\RAW'     
    if not os.path.exists(p1):
        print "Creating", p1
        os.mkdir(p1)

#create Edited, Uploaded folders
def c_Edit(pp):
    p2 = str(pp) + '\\Edited' 
    p3 = str(pp) + '\\Uploaded'
    if not os.path.exists(p2):
        print "Creating", p2
        os.mkdir(p2)
    if not os.path.exists(p3):
        print "Creating", p3
        os.mkdir(p3)

    
#find RAW files
def findRAWf(path):
    count = 0       #initialise count
    filelist = os.listdir(path)
    for f in filelist:
        f_lower = f.lower()     #ignore case
        if f_lower.endswith(('.cr2', '.jpg', '.jpeg', '.tif', '.tiff')):    #search for any image files
            c_Edit(path)
        if f_lower.endswith('.cr2'):    #search for Canon RAW files
            c_RAW(path)    #RAW file found, create folder if needed
            #rename file using shutil to keep metadata if possible
            shutil.move(path + '\\' + f, path + '\\RAW\\' + f)
            count = count + 1
    if count > 0:
        print count, "RAW files found and moved"

#search folders in start_folder
#ignore files
for name in os.listdir(start_folder):
    folder = start_folder + '\\' + str(name)
    if os.path.isdir(str(folder)):  #is a directory
            print "searching", folder
            findRAWf(folder)
#when finished
print "----------Completed------------"

Shabonna Lake and Wind Turbines

So this weekend I decided to go check out Shabonna Lake, which apparently is a bit of a local fishing spot*. I texted my mate Stephen, who was keen to come and show me around, so today we cruised over there to have a look. There was a cool wind with a bit of a bite and most of the trails were closed because of hunting season but we got a few photos.

*They have Muskie, Crappie, Bass, Walleye and Catfish - interestingly you're only allowed to keep a Muskie if it is over 48 inches long!

Cloud formations (well, I was with a meteorologist)

Autumn colours mostly gone

Wind turbines in the corn fields

The wind turbines are pretty big

Chicago river trip

We had a great forecast so decided to head into Chicago and do a river tour. It certainly was a good day for it, nice clear skies and pretty warm for Autumn. We had a great day walking around, checking out the city sights and doing a little window shopping.

Marilyn wows the crowds

So it was time for our boat trip, nicely timed for late afternoon light...

Looking towards Lake Michigan from the base of Trump Tower

Heading along the river

The Sears Tower (now Willis Tower)

Trump Tower - now headed back towards the lake

Chicago likes going up!

In the lock about to enter Lake Michigan

Starved Rock, Illinois

Went to Starved Rock, Illinois for a walk and a look around. Lots of carved canyons and a lookout over the Illinois River and one of the navigation locks. I took a few photos and stitched them together with Autostitch (http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/brown/autostitch/autostitch.html) which usually does a good job. In this case it is a near 180 degree view.

One of the water formed canyons

Panoramic of the Illinois River from Starved Rock

DeKalb Cornfest 2011

DeKalb Cornfest! Music, cars, plane rides, food stalls, carnival rides and those shooting games that you almost win, topped off with corn eating competitions - apparently this is quite the DeKalb event. We had a beautiful day for it anyway.

Plymouth Fury

Dodge Chargers

SS Chevelle

Yes - chocolate covered cheesecake - on a stick!

Corn eating competition

Chicago!

First time back in Chicago in a long time, took the opportunity to go have a look through the city centre and get a few photos - although it was a bit cloudy.

Remember married with Children? The famous fountain (bit windy today)

Millennium Park bandshell

Nice to see the bean finished!