Thursday, 8 November 2018

Urabá Antioquia Colombia - 8th November 2018

Urabá Antioquia is a sub-region in the Colombian Department of Antioquia. The region is made up by 11 municipalities. Most of this regions northern portion is part of the Colombian Caribbean Region bordering the Caribbean sea and the gulf of Urabá

The Wildlife

Banana Tree Frog

Spectacled Caiman

Three Toed Sloth (Can you see the baby?)

Red Tailed Squirrel

Great Egret

Yellow Billed Cuckoo

Black Vulture

Black Chested Jay

Blue Heron

American Kestrel

Tropical Mockingbird

Yellow Headed Caracara

White Peacock

Two Pupil Satyr

Plain Satyr

Orb Weaver Spider

Earwing Assassin Bug

Yellow Spot Millipede

Dragonlet

Giant Ameiva

Common Basilisk


The Plantations

The following pictures are from the loading docks which containerise the fruits and send them for loading onto container ships for Europe and the United States.

Refrigerated containers loaded onto barges.

The barges are towed by a tugboat out to the Gulf of Uraba for loading onto the ships.

Local fishermen in the gulf with a container ship anchored in the distance.

Part loaded container ship

A container of Bananas being loaded from the barge onto the container ship

Newly planted pineapple seedlings (have to wait 18 months for a pineapple)

Nearly mature pineapples

The finished product


Picking the fruit is done by hand

The fruits are loaded into metal containers to be transported to cleaning, sorting and packing.

Bananas are grow in tropical climates. Here a drainage channel is being dug to take away excess water from tropical storms.

This is a transport system for moving people, materials and Bananas around the plantation.

Light aircraft are used to fumigate the plantations

New Banana plants

More new Banana plants

Washing station. Here a 'Great-tailed Grackle' is taking advantage of the insects washed of the bananas

Bananas being transported to the washing, sorting and packing stations.



Bananas being sorted for either export, domestic use in Colombia or for recycling into compost.

Labels being added to the Bananas

Bananas being packed. This box is destined for the United Kingdom


Bananas for domestic consumption being loaded onto trucks.

Beautiful plant growing on the plantation (sorry I still need to identify it)

Dot-leaf Waterlilly


Thursday, 4 October 2018

Bogota Colombia - 4th October 2018

Andres DC

This is the place to go for most younger people in Bogota. Andres DC is a themed pub with four floors. Each floor has its own theme based on Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. Well worth a visit, but it is a little pricey.






The Irish Pub

The Irish pub is a great little bar, that makes you feel like you are back in Ireland. It has one strange area where the bar stools and tables are upside down fixed to the ceiling, or had I had one too many?





Museo del Oro

The Museum of Gold (Museo del Oro) is a museum located in downtown Bogotá, Colombia. It is one of the most visited touristic highlights in the country, with around 500,000 tourists per year.

The museum displays a selection of pre-Columbian gold and other metal alloys, such as Tumbaga, and contains the largest collection of gold artefacts in the world in its exhibition rooms on the second and third floors. Together with pottery, stone, shell, wood and textile objects, these items, made from a sacred metal (Sacred to the indigenous cultures), testify to the life and thoughts of the different societies which lived in present-day Colombia before the Spanish conquest.









 Catedral del Sal

The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá (Catedral de Sal de Zipaquirá) is an underground Roman Catholic church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200 metres (220 yd) underground in a halite mountain near the town of Zipaquirá, in Cundinamarca, Colombia. It is a tourist destination and place of pilgrimage in the country. The temple at the bottom has three sections, representing the birth, life, and death of Jesus. The icons, ornaments and architectural details are hand carved in the halite rock. 

The Salt Cathedral is considered one of the most notable achievements of Colombian architecture. The cathedral represents a valuable cultural, environmental and religious patrimony for the Colombian people.

The cathedral is a functioning church that receives as many as 3,000 visitors on Sundays, but it has no bishop and therefore no official status as a cathedral in Catholicism.
 





















Zipaquira