Geoff Jones

My very good friend Michael, who has such a way with words, today emailed me “I’ve just requested a PAC from Orange so I am heading inexorably toward an iPhone. You will have to recommend 10 must have apps.”

So here are my favourite apps. (Skewed towards travelling) – In no particular order…

so:

Skype  – Great when travelling to avoid the stupid O2 roaming fees and those £1 for 1 second calls because the folks you are calling aren’t at home.

WifiTrak – Essential when travelling to find those open networks and to move around to get highest signal strength – warning it eats the battery!

Brightkite – finds out where you are and Twitters it – note that the iPhone GPS only seems to work if there is a cellphone signal

SOStorch – converts the iphone to a torch, neat for those midnight soirees to the GOT (Great outside Toilet)

AroundMe – Great if you need to know the  nearest Apple store is 3.500 miles away! or that the hospital is around the corner!

Bloomberg – so you can keep track of your stocks and see how much money you are losing or gaining.

Currency – great for checking out exactly how many Bolivars there are to the pound or if the local dealer is ripping you off.

Facebook – so you can see what your friends are up to and where you should be heading next.

BP Tracker – Not so handy when travelling but good for home so you can see how stressed and unhealthy you are.

Google – quick access to all your google stuff.

TwitterFon – My favourite twitter client – has neat way of displaying which Twitter folks are replying too..

Fatwatch – Another home based app. pretty cool at generating nice graphs like this.

DualLevel – Handy for checking out that the buildings actually are leaning by 5 degrees although I forgot to measure how steep the Inca staircases actually are.

DailyMug – take a picture of yourself every day – pretty neat – my series is here.

NewsUk Lite – Akin to walking past a newsagents stand and glimpsing at the headlines – all you really need to know about what is happening.

Wordpress – ideal for posting blog entries, OK I never used it, whilst away

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From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/09/metropolitan_police_photo/
The Metropolitan Police has issued guidance to its officers to remind them that using a camera in public is not in itself a terrorist offence.

This could be helped by setting up “vantage points” when cordoning off an incident so that camera crews and photographers can do their work. Senior Investigating Officers are reminded to allow media access to crime scenes as soon as possible after evidence gathering is completed.

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Sally seemed keen for me to upgrade my iPhone, checking out the My 02 website it seemed to indicate that my contract had expired on the 9th May:-

However, O2 knows better, after the usual lengthy frustrating call with them , I was told the contract, according to them, expires in December! and no they were clueless as to why My 02 is not the same as there O2

So it looks as if Sally will just have to wait – although I’m tempted to buy a SIM free one and remove 02 from my life with the bonus that I can also use it on my travels with those lovely Peruvian SIM cards at £3 each…..

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Sorry to my regular readers about the lack of updates
It is simply due to me enjoying myself so much and having an active social life.

From 26May

The fact is I am  simply loving travelling here, especially with beer at $1 a pint, hotel rooms at $8 night and decent meals for less than $5.
The scenery is fantastic and my fellow travellers excellent.
I find it hard to believe that I will ever visit The Flying Pig in Cambridge again with beer over 3 pound a pint.
I’ve been using Picasa to store my pictures (it works better than flickr at autobacking up on the computer). My pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/geofones

Some of my trails can be found at Everytrail

Some action videos are on Youtube

Of course I twitter when I can.and if you are lucky you can catch me on Skype.

Now its a question of convincing Sally to get the travel bug

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After 12 hours here in The Galapagos I decided to extend my stay for another week!

A quick bike ride to the airport,then about 12 steps from parking the bike to the AeroGal office followed by about 10 clicks on her computer and the job was done, no charge, no fuss. Airports and booking as it should be

I then decided to cycle up the extinct volcano to see the El Junco crater lake, after  a few hundred yards a local taxi driver in his Toyota pick up suggested a lift up the 1000ft ascent for $10, since it was in the thirties I thought it was a grand idea (sorry Andrew you are 19 and I’m 62!). A lovely walk around the lake watching the birds washing the salt of their wings then back to the bike and the mainly descent to the La Galapguera de Cello Colorado Tortoise breeding station and then onto the white sand and beach at Puerto Chino.

On the way back the taxi carrying my 2 new American friends, who I met on the beach, stopped to give me a quick lift up the worst incline, I learned from him that you can rent an apartment for $150 a MONTH here, interestingly his girlfriend hs just arrived after his 3 months away

The trip with pics is here.



San Cristobal, Galapagos cycle/walk/taxi

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Tomorrow I’m boating over to Isabela via Santa Cruz for $55 a 4 hour ride. co

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Finally, about 50 years after Stan and I marvelled at huge tortoises, I’ve arrived at The Galapagos islands interestingly at the same place that Darwin landed t 200 years ago! I guess better late than never

This afternoon I did a little walk by the cultural centre which is full of profoundly depressing stuff about the slaughter of the local tortoises to provide oil for lamps and the maltreatment of prisoners ( it was a prison colony for a while) plus the introduction of non native animals oh dear we homo sapiens are a stupid lot!

Here is a map and some pictures of the walk.



San Cristobal, Galapagos

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Now the debate in my head is how long to stay, I’m booked out on a flight on Friday but I think that will be changed

My problem is that I do really love travelling just hanging out in cafes listening to other folks and the ocean…

Maybe I can turn Sally into a traveller too, sounds s though she is getting fed up living where she is at the minute …….

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Today I tagged along with Margaret and her driver for an all day shopping trip up north from Quito.

First stop was Calderon where they specialise in making highly coloured figurines from bread dough or masapan. Reasonably interesting and I guess where Oxfam gets some of its clutter from. A little factoid garnered was that apparently Gap clothes now makes its buttons from nuts, so called wood ivory (see the image)

We then moved onto Otavalo market which must be famous for its tiny people anyone who is 5 foot tall would look big here! Brilliant array of stuff , although how you get to carry hammocks and carpets home is a problem that clearly needs resolving!.

Then onto Cotacachi which is a village devoted to making leather goods all very reasonably priced if you like walking around in dead animal skins, apparently it has been hard hit by the new purchase tax regime.

Finally after lunch we visited Ibarra apparently renowned for its wood carving, they seem to specialize in concave breasts and statues of a mother holding a baby above her head plus various other religious themes.

The images are here:-

and no I didn’t buy anything, as all I could imagine was more trips to the charity shops in a few months time….

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Today I ventured out of Quito with Margaret (who I met in Samara in my first language class) to find The Equator.

Armed with my Garmin GPS we took the public transport buses, 50 cents for a 30km journey, to Mitad del Mundo where the Equator was determined in 1736 and the nearby Museo Inti-Nan which claims to be on the actual equator as determined by someones GPS. However , my Garmin told a different story! Here are the traces for the day:-

The lower trace is Mitad del Mundo, the centre one is museo inti-Nan and the one at zero is my Garmin…
Wikipedia has more on the subject here

Before we did the Equator we visited the rim of the old Pululahua crater which was interesting to see a community sitting on top of a volcano, like Yellowstone National Park in the USA!

The photographs of the day are on Picasa.

B

By the way the trick of showing the water going down the plughole in opposite directions in each hemisphere is revealed in some detail here

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Just back from an excellent white water rafting experience with Explornatura. The trip was good value at $220 including an overnight stay at the remote and beautiful campsite by the river.

Its now the end of the dry season so the river was running a bit low but still plenty to have fun over the rapids and also to get some swimming in between.

All my photos are on Picasa at:-



White water rafting the Rio Pacuare

and a map of the route (including breaks in the GPS where I went swimming) is up on Everytrail:-



White water rafting the Rio Pacuare

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We also went to visit a local indigenous community and their new school and sewage digestor. They hope to make it into a tourist attraction

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Today was canyoning day, originally it was going to be real canyoning . However, Ronald of Exploratura managed to convince me to go on their simpler local trip that incorporates zip wires and a hanging bridge. Mainly I suspect because he was going to be doing it anyway to show Kerstin, who is the Costa Rica Reisedienst for TravelDesign based in Traunstein, Bavaria and as such has the awful job of inspecting adventure holidays around the world! Well someone has to do it!!

Its a pleasant half day and a good introduction to canyoning and zip wiring.

My pictures are at Picasa:-

and there is a short video of Kerstin in action on YouTube

and the trip is also on everytrail too

I’m afraid the new Flickr uploader is proving very unreliable and Everytrail cannot import from Picasa as yet.

Tomorrow its a 2 day rafting trip with a night in the jungle and yep Kerstin gets to do that for free too

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