We’re back from our 11 day trip to Ecuador (Quito, the capital city, and the Galapagos islands). The most difficult part of preparing for the trip was deciding what photographic equipment to take with me. The Girl insisted that we carry my 180mm macro lens, which I never ended up using.

What I did end up using was my brother’s Crumpler Whickey and Cox camera/laptop backpack, his 70-200mm f/4, my 17-40mm f/4 and 24-105mm f/4, 1 light stand, 1 shoot through umbrella, 1 580EX II flash, my SD500 compact with underwater case, and of course the 5D II. Add in assorted gels, filters, blower brush, lens pen, and wireless triggers, and there was barely enough room for clothes.

Luckily for us we didn’t need a lot of fancy clothes.

We toured the islands as part of a GAP Adventures group. There were 15 of us tourists in the group and GAP gave us duffel bags to repack our suitcase contents into. This made for much easier travel between islands.

The trip was an extremely active adventure full of hiking, biking, and snorkelling. The weather cooperated, the animals posed for photo ops, and our assorted bangs, bruises, and electrocutions were minor issues compared to our rewards for enduring them.

Not only did we luck out with all of that, but our group leaders were absolutely fantastic.

I’m slowly posting pictures of the trip to flickr. The lack of high-speed at home means that it’ll take at least a couple of weeks for all of them to get there, but as you’ll be able to understand once you see some of the shots, I’m glad that I carted all of that camera equipment around with me.

The islands truly do live up to their nickname, “The Enchanted Islands”. Their enchantments will remain with me for as long as I live and I’m pleased to see that the Ecuadorian government is taking extreme measures to preserve the biologic uniqueness of which the islands boast.

At some point in the near future, I’m sure we will all be able to look at the stewardship of these islands as an example of how we should all live and interact with the world about us.

And…we’re back.

In fact, we’ve been back for a while now, but I just haven’t been able to find the time to be on the Internet as much as usual. This is because of work and dancing, but mostly because of the Dog Whisperer. Cesar Millan has captured our interest to the point where we’ve been working diligently with his techniques and have been achieving amazing results. This all stemmed from a simple question which was posed to us at the Humane Society, “Cattle dogs can be very aggressive. How will you manage her if she becomes increasingly aggressive over time?”. We had no answer of substance. Now we do. More on this in the future.

Our office trip to Punta Cana in the Domincan Republic was loads of fun as we expected. We stayed at the Majestic Colonial resort over there:

The next vacation that The Girl and I will be taking is still in the planning phase, but will be a more adventurous trip somewhere on the continent of my birth. I’m looking forward to that one later this year.

I’ve finally finished editing our video of our St. Lucia vacation over the week of Christmas.

Anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction): Life-threatening allergic reaction when cells in the body’s respiratory system swell causing the victim to suffocate. The immediate treatment is the use of adrenalin (epinephrine) to counteract the effects- this is usually given as an injection.¹

It was a typically beautiful afternoon in St. Lucia. We had parked ourselves on a couple of lounge chairs near the pool bar and were soaking in the atmosphere.

Looking at our empty cups, I wandered over to the bar and noticed that the drink of the day was rum punch. I’m not a “punchy” guy, but the description listed at least 4 different fruits and 3 different liquors in the drink. It looked interesting so I asked for a couple glasses of the concoction.

The drink went down pretty easily and fairly quickly. We started dozing off again.

It must have been about 10 minutes afterwards that my nose started to itch and run a bit…as it does when my seasonal allergies kick in. I started sneezing.

Hmm. That was strange for my allergies to start up so suddenly. I looked around and saw that we were parked right beside a number of shrubs and so I figured that one of them must have just spewed some pollen in my direction. I tried to return to my nap.

Over the next half hour, my symptoms didn’t improve but instead marginally worsened. The sun was heating up and so we decided to return to the room to continue our nap there (this was our typical daily routine).

We fell asleep on the bed.

Maybe it was an hour into that nap that I realized that I was tossing around quite a bit. I opened my eyes and found that I couldn’t breath through my nose at all. I can’t remember a time in my past when I have been as severely congested. I had to breath through my mouth. Even with all of the congestion my nose was still running.

I sat up in bed. I was becoming a little concerned now.

That’s when I noticed that my lip felt a little itchy. Hmm. Not only my lip but one of my eyes. I touched my lip then my eye. My lip, then my eye started to swell.

It slowly started to dawn on me that I was undergoing more than a pollen allergy here.

I ran to the mirror and looked at myself. My lip was now almost twice it’s usual size (and it’s already large to begin with), and my eye looked like it was attempting to swell shut. The itchiness was continuing, but I was able to keep my hands off.

I forcibly inhaled and exhaled through my mouth a few times to see if my airway was constricting, but that seemed ok. I turned to The Girl and shook her awake.

“Hey, I think I’m in trouble!” I said.

“Huh?”

“I’m having an anaphylactic reaction to something,” I stammered out.

“To what?” She asked.

“I dunno, but I’m going to take one of our antihistamines and go outside for some air. If I don’t come back in 5 minutes come and find me.”

“Can you breath?” She asked still half asleep.

“Yeah through my mouth. Nothing is constricting there.”

“Ok.”

And as I went out onto the patio for what could have been my last glimpse of sun and surf ever, my love rolled over and went back to sleep.

My symptoms lasted for at least another 12 hours but were controllable with Tylenol Allergy. Thinking about what might have initiated the reaction, which was the worst Type I reaction I’ve ever had, I decided it must have been the rum punch.

Fruit skins have become more and more problematic for me over time. The raw skins of cherries, peaches, and apples will cause some mild oral itching and swelling for me. I’m assuming that the rum punch probably had blended skins in it and that’s what set things off.

Moral of this story: If I’m dying, be sure I really am before I wake The Girl.

1. http://www.ect-hk.com/ect_glossary_bot.html [↩]

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Strong sun, a warm breeze, friendly locals, and reggae engulfed us over the week of Christmas. This was part of the magic of St. Lucia.

It is no wonder that it took us an hour and a half to get through Customs and Immigration. The people of St. Lucia are just extremely laid back.

Whenever we’ve gone away, we’ve found that what makes or breaks a good vacation ends up being the locals and how welcoming they are of foreigners. Our vacation to the Sandals Grande there was a “make” holiday.

The resort turned out to be very quiet…on the verge of not enough activity, but this ended up to be a welcome break for us. A hot/cold plunge pool, steam room, sauna, and beautiful gardens were almost a match to the beautiful people and island of St. Lucia.

Oh, also the bartender that did tequila shots with us was cool too.

“No problem, no pressure,” is what they say over there when you refuse something. It’s also actually how I try to work with my patients. I’ve caught myself saying the same thing during some of my consultations since then.