Tag Archives: Trvel

Intermission: we take to the trees

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Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Warning! Photographic Nerdery Alert!

The activity that Jane found for us this evening was prompted by a conversation she had with Peter, in whose company we spent the day with Kiwi Dundee, back in the Coromandel Peninsula. He’d mentioned that Sue and he had walked a trail through Redwood trees near Rotorua, the trail being walkways actually up in the trees. Jane discovered that these walkways are open during the evening as well as in the daytime, with the process of teetering in the dark across narrow, bouncy rope suspension bridges leavened by lanterns hung among the trees. I had also heard passing comments by some American tourists in our hotel about doing the Redwood walk, so I knew it was A Thing. It’s also a Popular Thing, so we went late in the hope that the queue might have died down a bit.

There was space in the car park, which was a good omen as we approached the trail.

However, there was a substantial queue,

which an operative opined was about 45 minutes’ worth. I nearly bailed out until I saw the expression on Jane’s face. We joined the back of the queue, which moved slowly forward as people were released into the treewalk. It wasn’t too bad, actually – I suppose we queued for about half an hour – but immediately in front of us was an extremely annoying American student, who clearly came from a wealthy background and spent pretty much the whole time in the queue talking to his companion in a gratingly loud voice about his two million dollar trust fund and what he might do with it when he got his hands on it.

But eventually, at about 2215, we reached the front of the queue and were released into the treewalk. One walks up a spiral ramp to get to the start.  The trail consists, as I’ve said, of narrow and bouncy suspension bridges between platforms; the platforms encircle the trunk of the various trees. The rules said no photography on the bridges and there were theoretically limits on the number of people allowed at any one time on bridges or platforms, but it was never an issue for us – it was not at all crowded once we got started.

The lanterns hung among the trees were pretty spectacular.

The entire lighting was designed by David Trubridge, who specialises in designing pendant lamps, and it’s touted as New Zealand’s “first design-led tourist venture”. There are 85 lanterns in total, with designs inspired by New Zealand’s flora and fauna, including the owl, cicada wings, falcon, and Kowhai flowers. Some more numbers: the walk is 700m long, with 28 suspension bridges and 27 platforms.

The challenge posed by this lighting is capturing it photographically.  I took my Nikon with me on the basis that the bigger sensor would give me the best chance of capturing decent images; and both Jane and I also used our Samsung phones which have a “night shot” facility to help capture images in dark situations.

See? I warned you that there would be some photographic nerdery.

The comparison between what you get with the Nikon and with the phone is quite striking.

Samsung

Nikon – with HDR processing

The night mode of the phone takes multiple images at different exposures and overlays them to fill out dark areas.  On the surface, it looks like the phone has done a good job, but examining the details reveals that the noise processing algorithm as part of night photography has smeared quite a lot of the detail in the darker areas. The Nikon produces a much darker photo, because I dialled in a 2-stop darkening exposure compensation when I took the photo. In the above example, I have tweaked the photo to bring out the darker areas, but it’s still left things quite dark in the margins.  To match what the phone has done, I had to push the exposure back up by those two stops

and apply the world-class noise reduction that DxO Photolab offers. The result looks similar to what the phone produced all on its own, but the details show that the Nikon image is technically cleaner.

I actually took the same photo again on the Nikon, this time without the -2 stop  exposure correction

and this has actually come out really well.  What does this demonstrate?

  1. The phone does a pretty good job if you’re going to showcase your results on the web
  2. For most of the photos I took on the Nikon, I was too aggressive with my exposure compensation; I didn’t do a god job of judging the exposure
  3. But at least with the Nikon I had the option of control. With the phone’s night mode, it makes all the decisions and you’re stuck with those in whatever the results are.

Here’s another comparison, in a section where a laser was playing multiple beams across the trees below the walkway.

Samsung

Nikon

You can see that the multiple images used in the Samsung shot has resulted, unsurprisingly, in a much brighter image with more laser reflections. The Nikon image again is technically much superior, with deeper blacks and much less noise. But which is “better” really resides in the eye of the beholder: which do you prefer?

It was in this area that Jane took a picture to show the bridges that are slung between the platforms.

A fundamental point demonstrated by the exercise of taking photos in these tricky situations is one of individual preference. I took several images of an owl illumination (all with the Nikon), and this is the version I settled on.

I did this by using High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing, taking advantage of a RAW image – I compressed the dark and light parts to bring out the dark areas a bit.  On the other hand, I could have simply pushed the exposure up by two stops, and got this.

Neither is “better” than the other – they’re just different ways of processing a tricky subject. I also took a version without stopping down the exposure so much, and this is what I got.

Now, I think that’s over-exposed. But someone else might not.

We saw again the difference between phone and Nikon later on.

Samsung

Nikon

actually not exactly the same scene, but once again it shows the propensity of the phone to provide a brighter image.

The walkway splits into two about half way round; one can opt to carry on at the same level, which is 9m above the forest floor; or to go up to a higher walkway, about 20m above the ground.

On the higher route, the bridges are outlined in light.

Samsung

Nikon, HDR processed

Nikon, exposure pushed +2 stops

I think what matched best what one saw is shown in the last image; the Samsung photo is dramatic but overdone.

OK, enough with the nerdery.  Here are some more images from the rest of the walkway.

Samsung

Samsung

Samsung

Nikon

Nikon

Samsung

Nikon

Samsung – Jane being artistic

Samsung – me not being artistic

Nikon

We eventually reached the end of the track, with a spiral down that runs outside the spiral up to the start.

As you exit, you pass a section of Redwood trunk cut in 1952. It is, of course, set up as a selfie- or group photo backing

Someone with much better eyesight than me has counted the rings in from the outside to determine that this tree was over 2,000 years old. And then put labels on to show what was going on in the world as the tree grew.

Thought-provoking, eh?

It was fun walking the trail, and, with thanks to Jane, I’m glad I overruled my usual impatience with queuing to walk the trail at night. That was our last activity in Rotorua. Tomorrow, we move on a short way down the road to Taupo. There are a couple of possibly interesting things to see en route and a cruise on Lake Taupo once we’re there. I shall report back and hope you return to read all about it.

 

Getting there – and getting essential supplies

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Saturday 3 August 2024 – The agency, Audley, which is managing our itinerary (under the beady eye of the household travel co-ordinator, i.e. Jane) has done a distinctly average job of creating, and, critically, presenting us with, our schedule. Quite early on in the planning process we were given a very good general idea of where we would be and when, and what we would be doing when we got there; but important details (timings, meeting arrangements, etc) were missing, in many cases until a couple of days before our departure, and a few things had to be corrected after regression errors crept in as we moved from version to version of our schedule.  However, it looks like the whole – and very substantial – itinerary has come together nicely. As well as to Jane, thanks are due in no small part to Judy at Spear Travels, who cracked the whip very effectively for us.

STOP PRESS: Two days into our vacation, our trip is at last visible to us on the (admittedly cool-looking) Audley Travel Companion app, which will be a convenient way of accessing our itinerary details, which would otherwise be a bit of an encumbrance to  carry round with us everywhere.

The longest of journeys starts, as the saying doesn’t quite go, with a single taxi ride. Our taxi turned up early and got us very comfortably to the airport, whence everything moved very swiftly and unproblematically through the journey to Perth, our arrival point in Australia, reached via Singapore.

I say unproblematical; actually our departure from London was delayed, but only around 30 minutes. Any more than that and our transit through Singapore might have been rather inelegantly brisk, but the timings worked out fine.  We spent a long time on the various taxiways between terminal and takeoff, and I got an opportunity to capture a timelapse of the rather elegant ballet that goes on when there are several aeroplanes converging on the relevant runway.

I was interested to see a Concorde parked on the outfield; I didn’t realise that there were any left in the wild.

The arrival process of getting through customs and immigration and picking up our bags at Perth was impressively smooth and swift. We had to fill out an arrival card on the flight from Singapore, in which we promised that we weren’t convicts (no longer, it seems, an entry requirement to the country), didn’t have tuberculosis and weren’t bringing with us anything untoward, meaning, basically, foodstuffs. Because I knew that the Powers That Be in Australia are quite pernickety about such things, I had decided that we shouldn’t bring any home comforts that might cause a ruckus at the border; so we actually arrived in The Foreign without any of Twinings Finest Earl Grey just in case. Or, more accurately, not in either of our cases.

We were greeted at Perth’s airport by a very cheery chap called Stephen, who whisked us swiftly to our hotel, the QT, whilst simultaneously giving us a useful commentary about Western Australia and Perth, and making a useful recommendation of an outing we should undertake (Fremantle) and when (Sunday, i.e. tomorrow) because The Market Will Be On, and that’s a Good Thing.

The hotel is quite posh and is extremely conveniently located in downtown Perth,

but is architecturally unremarkable beyond being 18 stories tall with a Sky Terrace at the top (the highest bar in Perth, we understand), which sounds like something we should definitely acquaint ourselves with before we move on.

Another key datum that Stephen vouchsafed was that the shops were only open until 5pm, and, it being by this stage about 4.30pm, as you can understand we had an important shopping mission to undertake, which was to find a supermarket, and fast. Google Maps promised that there was a Woolworth’s (no relation, for those of a certain age) a couple of minutes away, and so off we scurried – not in quite the right direction, as it happens.  The Woollies was in a mall, and our efforts to find the entrance led us down a rather disreputable-seeming alleyway, which was, however, decorated rather beautifully.

Suffice it to say, we eventually found the shop and returned to the hotel bearing our spoils, whereupon we discovered something that raised the hotel in my estimation. They provided a kettle in the room. And largish cups for the tea. And milk in the minibar fridge.

Having used the shopping expedition to help us orient ourselves, and still being fairly full of Singapore Airlines (really rather nice) food, we needed to spend a few minutes before finding further sustenance. So we went for a walk. Obviously.

We didn’t cover much ground because it was heading towards sunset and, being winter, it was likely to get a bit chilly after the sun had disappeared.  But we were able to get a sample of the colonial buildings one can still find in Perth, squeezed in between all the modern high rise stuff.

Perth Town Hall (you can just see the side of our hotel on the left)

The old Treasury building

The Old Courthouse

We headed down to the water – the Swan River – also passing more modern buildings such as the Bell Tower

which has definite shades of Sydney Opera House in its side view.

Nearby is Elizabeth Quay

which has a very distinctive footbridge giving access from the west.

As you can see, the sun was going down by this stage, and it was indeed getting a bit chilly, so we headed back to the hotel, past another part of Perth’s architectural vernacular,

modern buildings in a faux-old style.  I think a lot of the colonial-era buildings have been demolished over the years, and in many cases replaced by steel-and-glass constructions; but there was more than a sprinkling of this more welcome style as well.

The QT Hotel offers an Italian restaurant called Santini, and we repaired there for an early evening bite to eat.  It was Saturday night and there was a wedding going on, so it was a tad on the raucous side, but provided a decent enough meal, after which we retired to our room to try to stay awake for a while to try to stave off the worst of the jet lag.  Crossing time zones can be unsettling enough, and crossing them from west to east is the more challenging direction, and we wanted to try to avoid the usual wide-awake-at-4am consequence of losing seven hours of the day.

I have to report that we failed, although not spectacularly.  It was around 8.30 at night when we both decided that we were losing the struggle to stay awake, and so we turned in. We had no formal schedule to have to work to, just an inchoate plan to get to Fremantle somehow. Stay tuned to see how that all worked out, eh?

Day 24, Part 2 – First flight of Angel’s

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Tuesday 14 March 2023 (0900) – Having got our wellies on, we trotted off after Angel as he led us on our first tour.  It wasn’t especially hot – I don’t know in detail, and there was no internet available to check up on this kind of thing – but I suspect it was a few degrees short of 30°C.  But when we got into the forest, it became clear that the humidity was pretty high.

Angel explained a little of the history of the La Sirena Ranger Station as we headed off on this tour.  The site was once home to an airstrip and so there was a certain amount of exploitation of the resources – forest one side of the airstrip was cut down, leaving primary forest only on one side.  In the mid-seventies the government stepped in and closed down the exploitation by setting the area up as a National Park, and now the side that had been cut down is growing again, as secondary forest.  Numbers of tourists are carefully controlled, as is their behaviour when they are in the park.  The desire is to make it as natural as possible, so there is no feeding of the wildlife, which is left to get on with its own business in its own way.  The rangers maintain tracks through the forest and it is these trails which the various tours go along.

The experienced guides (and Angel is one such) know the patterns of wildlife behaviour in the various areas of the Park and so can do a little bit by way of tailoring their routes to match the desires of their groups, some of whom will have detailed and arcane species to seek, and others have a more general desire to See Stuff.  I’d put Jane and me about midway on that spectrum; having been here for over three weeks (and having been lucky on other tours) we’d seen a good selection of wildlife and only had a few boxes we’d like to tick.

So, come with us on a typical wildlife tour in Corcovado National Park.

The first thing that struck me as we walked along is that for an area which holds a reputed 5% of the world’s biodiversity, bugger-all happens. I had some kind of fanciful idea that the wildlife would be running, flapping and flying around us and making loud wildlife kinds of noise.  I suppose this image comes from having visited the Galapagos islands, where you actually have to step over some creatures because the buggers won’t get out of your way.

Corcovado is not like that.

A three-hour tour, such as we did this morning, consists mainly of following your guide and trying not to fall over the innumerable tree roots that cross the path – because there are a lot of trees in this forest, many of them quite magnificent.

Every so often, the guide will stop and peer around, sometimes trying to foment some kind of action by imitating animals or birds.

Then the guide will suddenly stop, point and tell you what can be seen. In the case of our group, this consisted of Jane quickly being able to see things, followed by many minutes of (normally) patient explanation by the two of them to tell me exactly which tree I should be looking at and exactly which branch the practically-invisible bird is perching on. Many more minutes follow whilst I try to get a photo of whatever it is that’s in focus and not obscured by the fucking vegetation which grows abundantly in these parts, for some reason.  Photographically there tend to be three outcomes; Angel uses his spotter scope, considerable skill and one of our phones to get an image; I get a fix on the animal and shoot off several frames in the hope that one might be in focus; or I give up because whatever it is that Angel has found I simply can’t see because of my deteriorating eyesight.

Occasionally it works, and I managed to pierce the vegetation to pick out a shot, like this Agouti, munching on mushrooms. (I have to say that the combination of a Nikon Z6, a 100-400mm lens and the camera’s ability to help getting the focus right by a capability called “focus peaking” was at times essential and hope this shot demonstrates that).

Sometimes (rarely, of course) the wildlife in question moves into a spot where in theory it’s possible to take a more satisfactory shot (the Agouti again).

Sometimes what the guide finds is so unutterably tiny and so distant that I have no chance of seeing it for myself, so a mobile+scope shot is the only way to get an image, like this long-nosed bat

which is tiny but which Angel not only could see but could find with his scope and muster the photo with Jane’s phone.  Very impressive and, for me, very frustrating.

The reason it’s frustrating is a philosophical one with its roots in copyright law. Because Angel took that photo, it’s not mine and so I can’t take any pride in it.  It’s lovely to see the creature an’ all that, but as I’ve said elsewhere in these pages, if I didn’t take a photo of it, it didn’t exist or never happened. There were times I was able to see things and still couldn’t get a decent shot. For example, we were wandering along, and I was several paces behind Jane and Angel when all of a sudden an anteater – a fucking anteater, one of the things we Jane really wanted to see! – calmly wandered across a log not twenty yards from me.  Could I get a decent shot? Could I buggery.

A combination of my own incompetence and there being too much vegetation in the way.  The best I could do, before the benighted creature disappeared from view was this.

Jane maintains this is a great image, and it is indeed sharp.  But I never caught the head and face, which means it’s not, to me, a satisfactory image. Angel was pleased that he saw it, too, even though all he got was a dwindling rear view.

Anyhoo…

When groups meet or get in earshot of each other, the guides communicate among themselves to say what they’ve seen and where.  And every so often there’s a frisson as something worthwhile is visible, like this Collared Forest Falcon

and you take your pictures and then turn round and see that The Word Is Out.

The guides all can hear things that normal people can’t and so they might hear the peep of a bird and know (a) where to look for it and (b) what they should be looking out for. They also look at the ground to see what clues there are there.  Often, it’s just scuffing where a Peccary or two has been rooting around for stuff; but sometimes it is another frisson, like, in this case, Tapir footprints.

We ended up scurrying through the trails, along with many other people, following reports of a Tapir having been seen.  Eventually we persuaded Angel to break away from this scurrying as we’d already seen Tapirs and we were getting fed up with (French) people pushing in in front of us.

The trail we then followed led to the beach

where, after a while, we saw a Black Iguana.

At first I thought it was a wooden carving that some unkind soul had put there to annoy punters like me, but no, it really was a genuine Iguana.

Other things we saw included a pair of Trogons, man and wife;

Male Baird’s Trogon
Female Baird’s Trogon

a decent view of a Tinamou, the “Forest Chicken”;

and a male Curassow (apparently auditioning for Yellow-Nose Day)

which was disinclined immediately to make way for us; but mainly what we saw were scenes of serene sylvan boskiness

which were pleasant enough but devoid of any further wildlife sightings of any pith or moment.

And then we were back at the Ranger Station and it was time for lunch, which is very works canteenish, but set up very efficiently.  Jane went vegetarian whilst I opted for the beef.  Jane’s decision was definitely the wiser.

Thus ended our first Flight of Angel’s.  We didn’t know what excitement (or otherwise) the afternoon might bring, and neither do you, which is why you should come back to read the next thrilling instalment. Yes, really.