"What a hell am I doing here?..." - My own thoughts… Spread over time there are lots of situations when this comes to my mind…

I guess the reasons that take us to do whatever we do can be so diverse as just doing because everybody does or just doing because it makes us feel good disregarding of what others think… The strange thing for me is that although I never take to much time thinking about what lead me to do something, there are lots of situations when I'm already into extreme situations wondering about what took me there…

Two months ago, I was in Montesinho Natural Park in the north of Portugal trying to create some fall pictures. Along with the previous this fall wasn't very rainy. This meant that mushrooms where not easy to find and rivers had even less water than they did last year… After my first day along one of my favorite valleys I looked up and saw some hints that there would be a nice color display at sunset, so I drove uphill looking for a nice spot and after finding one I only stopped shooting when there was no longer light in the sky and my hands where freezing to the point I could not feel them anymore…

After packing all my gear and getting back into the car I stayed there in silence for some time wondering what would lead someone to be alone in a dirt road at 1400m with sub zero temperatures with the single purpose of enjoying the sunset… Being in this place at the north east extreme of the country looking down south reminded me that in several months I'll be in this region again, looking to the other extreme, this time not with photography as the main purpose but for starting the Transportugal (1000 km of mountain biking in 8 days, traversing the country from one extreme to the other)...


Again… Why did I get into do this?... Well I did not think much… At 1'st it looked like a good idea... Now I feel that having some kind of impossible mission in the horizon seams to give me energy for doing all sorts of positive things...

Some people ask me if I gave up photography in favor of mountain biking… It's true I'm dedicating less time photographing actively due to the time I spend with physical training… Still whatever I'm doing, I'm breathing the world around me and whatever the outcome may be the passion is certainly the same...

"thank you for your note... yes the ryokan got the key..." - the booking service attendant confirms that the temple in Mt. Koya received the key we forgot to deliver at checkout.Those who had the patience to read my previous posts, will remember my description of our trip from Mt. Koya to Miyajima as an example on how everything goes according to expectations in Japan. The single small unexpected detail during that day was cased by me when I forgot to deliver the room key at checkout from the Henjoson-in temple…

I noticed I had the key in my pocket during the trip down Koyasan's Cable Car, and when we arrived at the Gokurakubasi station I asked the station manager if he could deliver the key back to the temple. Despite our language differences he understood my request and answered politely that he would… And so it was… And… For some reason I'm not amazed, this was the thing to expect...

Typically I finish one trip focused on the next… Not that there are no plans crossing my mind this time, but for some reason memories from Japan don't let go easily. Many have asked me about the trip, and many received the same kind of answer containing something on the lines of: "Between good and bad things Japan is still a civism lesson for everyone…"

"You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand?"… - The 1'st "Zen koan" from Alex Kerr's book "Lost Japan"…

Besides travel guides this was the only book I took with me to Japan… The idea was to read it during the trip, but I only started reading on my trip back… Today when I woke up at 5 am due to jet lag reading the rest of the book looked like the thing to do…

While reading I wondered if I should have better read the book before or after the trip as I did. In one hand Alex's personal vision of Japan differs from what's written in travel guides in a way I found by myself to be closer to my own vision. On the other hand if I had started before the trip I would not have enough context to enjoy the book as I did…

One idea from the book is that Japan is fascinated by secrets and the quest is always more important than knowing the final answer… This means that most of my inner questions about Japan probably won't be answered, but at the same time the quest will make me wish to go back there again and again.


Like any other country Japan is far from perfect… Although being a pleasant and safe place, the country is visibly destroying it's natural beauty in trade of progress and there's a clear disconnect between the present and the past as western influences taken to extremes seam to dominate the life of Japanese people…

Kyoto is a good example of a disconnected place as far as I see it… I did not read much about the city, and I just took for granted from the travel guides that Kyoto should be the number one travel destination in Japan. Don't get me wrong, Kyoto is nice, but it's also a place where past seams to be disappearing bellow thick layers of concrete. The temples in Kyoto may be between the most magnificent in Japan, but somehow the silent and calm spirit of being in Japan does not seam to be there.

The proud owner of the Yamatake-Shõten restaurant in Takayma told me that Kyoto was a copy of Takayama, at that point I though he was exaggerating, but after arriving in Kyoto, I found out that he was just wrong… Kyoto may have been similar to Takayama in the past, but not anymore… Being small and isolated, Takayama looks much more genuine and appealing to my senses… I hope Japan will understand this on time for protecting the roots of each place...

As usual, when finishing a trip that we ready to start it… We come back thinking about the next time, but most probably the next time wont exist in the near future as there are other places to discover...

My quest is yet to be unfolded… I came back with more images that ever from any other place, but at first they look as disconnected and superficial as Kyoto was to my eyes… I'll have to give them and myself time to settle and find the way… I'll probably have to go back over and over again, but most probably my images will just show small steps... Secrets and prcecise answers don't look urgent anymore...

"yes we can change your reservation, no problem..." - The attendant at Japan Railways tells us that she can change our reservation so that we don't have to wait one hour for our next train…In the day before I had one of my last silent meditation moments… I was at the sacred precinct in Koyasan, creating images of the temples at night. Each image took around 4 minutes so I had plenty of silence for myself. During my last couple of images (before exhausting the camera battery completely) I had the company of a monk doing his prays… I don't remember what I though about, only that my spirit was in peace…

(If you did not do so before, take a deep breath now)…

On paper, our plans for the next day looked somehow crazy (they would probably be outside Japan): Our day started at 6 am, attending the morning prays in the Henjoson-in temple where we had spent the night (as Sara said in her comment to my previous post this is something someone has to do once in life), at 7 am we had breakfast (a feast to the eye and the belly), at 7:30 we had a Taxi waiting for us to take us to the Koyasan Cable Car Station, we took the cable car at 7:45 and arrived at the Gokurakubasi station by 7:50...
At 7:55 we took the local train on Nankay Koya Line to Hashimoto, arrived at 8:55 and changed to the Nakai Rincan express departing at 9:15 and arriving in Osaka (Nankai Namba Station) at 9:44… Then walked for 6 minutes a caught the Osaka City Subway on Midousuji line (not sure about the departure na arrival for this) to the Shin-Osaka station where we had a coffee and asked our reservation to be changed from the SHINKANSEN HIKARI RailStar 461 departing at 11:19, to the SHINKANSEN HIKARI RailStar 459 departing at 10:59 to Hiroshima, arriving at 12:28…
We then took the local train on JR Sanyo line at 12:49, to Miyagimaguchi, walked for 5 minutes and took the JR Ferry Boat to Miyagima (I'm also not sure about the times for these, but probably nobody's reading this to this point)…There you go… 437 km… Everything as expected, except for the early arrival due to the reservation change granted as something completely normal… Outside the spiritual side of things this is Japan for you…
I'm writing this in the SHINKANSEN HIKARI 384 departing from Himeji at 17:59 and arriving in Tokyo at 2140 (644 km) the last leg of the trip before heading back to reality tomorrow…

"please take off your shoes..." - The signal precedes the entrance of each temple or Shrine, and without knowing all the reasons for the ritual it just looks rigth…


I can't help thinking about what went on during the 10 years since I 1'st came to Japan. At that time I had no idea that traveling would become an addiction and that photography would also come into the equation…

I've learned through life that there's no purpose in asking why for things that just happen… I'm sure I'm glad I got to go to every place I did, and I'd like to come back from each place with images that fulfill my feeling of being there, but I never seam to accomplish this entirely…


Back to Japan, I'm not a religious person but I have to admit that I like to be around and inside temples and Shrines in Japan… Not just for how they look, but also for the peace they transmit and for the feeling that there's lots of room for improvement in everything we do...

"taxi here tomorrow at 7am… ok..." - The 1'st time I came to Japan, I had some instructions from a fellow colleague, some of them where an almost funny set of topics regarding how to go from the Narita Airport to the hotel, the remaining where some interesting topics about Japan, one of them being the fact that in Japan everything works as expected…


We left our Ryokan in Nikko at 7 am, before any of the owners or servants arrived. In the day before we had asked for a taxi to pick us up at 7 am to take us to the train station… In Portugal there would be a considerable probability that the taxi might not be there, but in this case there it was… As expected…

Japanese people act like precise pieces of a huge machine that was fine tuned to perform according to the expectations (this does not directly mean fast, and sharply, although sometimes it does)… What's amazing in the middle of this is that people keep their kindness and warmth to the maximum...

"no, we don't see many Portuguese people around here, I know a bit of Spanish, but not Portuguese"... - The attendant at one of the Ginza shops was helpful and nice as usual in Japan, he was also fond of Brazilian food and could say some words with Brazilian Portuguese accent.


Japan is different from what I remember from 10 years ago... Probably I'm different too and this adds to the sensation of change. This time I'm seeing a country that is much more open to foreigners than before, old people don't run away from us anymore when we approach them in the street and even those who don't speak English are always willing to help.

Those who know me, know that I'm much more a "middle of nowhere person" than someone that enjoys crowded places... "crowded" could be a 1'st, a single word description for Japan... So some of you might ask "what a hell am I doing here?"...

This was not a trip we planned for a long time and in fact it all started one month before departure when all the other options we where considering did not seam to be viable... Still Japan looked like a good idea for breaking with my usual stile of large and insolated landscape pictures...


Crowded is not really close to the best word for describing Japan and in fact I'm not sure there is one... Even in crowded places there's some kind of silence that brings me back to my own thoughts, there's a sense of order and respect from all those who share the same space with us. Sometimes I wonder if this sensation of silence might come only from the fact that we can't understand the language... But I guess that's not the only reason...

"Are you alone?... Aren't you afraid?..." - The first thing someone asked me 10 years ago, the 1'st time I came to Japan...


I remembered this today as I walked through the Narita Express train platform... 10 years ago, Japan was my 1'st business trip and also the 1'st time I traveled alone... Coming here on hollydays 10 years after that is olny casual (it hapened) but I can't help thinking about what went through my life since that time...

Japan was the 1'st of many, the start of this addiction for discovering places and was also a lesson on how different other people can be and on how things we take for granted are not always all there is...

"This may look impossible but my car is dirtier than yours..." - A colleague comments that my scratched and beaten up 4x4 looks cleaner than her fancy car…

My answer was somewhere of the lines of "this is probably because I'm not having much fun these days"… I have no explanation for this, but sometimes I feel that my capacity for using the 24 hours of each day to my advantage does not depend only on how crouded my agenda is…

Sometimes there's some kind of rhythm that seams to make everything possible... Sometimes, the simplest task (like updating this blog) seams to take an enormous amount of energy…

Sometimes we need a plan or something in the horizon for helping us keep the focus… And many other times when we get to that point in the horizon we get that empty feeling of "now what?!"… Today I feel like I'm in this same point in several dimensions of my life...

The image you see here is part of my Canadian Rockies portfolio from 2 years ago… Along with others most of these images where still not seen by anyone outside my home office… For now they're just waiting here for the next wave in order to get out in the world...

"ask one of our monitors at the beach what are the good spots to get into the water..." - The lady at the Surfboard Rental shop tells me about the tide at the Juquehy beach…

(image from a previous trip in 2003 at Ilha Grande ~ 200km north of Juquehy)

2 minutes after getting into the water I was thinking to myself if I should start this post with a good thing or a bad thing about Brazil, the previous title I had in mind was something like "you should not be carrying your laptop outside alone at night..."

Those who know me, are aware that I usually say that Brazil is my most hated Business Travel destination… I fact I lived in São Paulo for almost two years, and for some time I even enjoyed the experience but today I see that period as a burst of mixed feelings…

I once read a statement from someone famous saying that São Paulo is one of those places where you find the best and at the same time the worst that can be found around the world. Although I've traveled a lot I still find this place has the best Restaurants and Night Life that can be found around the globe. Still you can get out of a fancy restaurant and be shot by someone that did not eat for the last couple of days…

If you get out of the typical tourist traps, Brazil has some really fine beaches, where you can walk freely and even leave your wallet unattended without fear of not finding it when you get back… Unlike Portugal, there's plenty of room for surfing and surfers are really friendly (even when they notice your not from the place and not very skilled they're always available to help you - pretty much like mountain bikers in Portugal)... In fact I gave up surfing in Portugal due to the unfriendly and elitist character of surfers back home…


Back to the bad side, I feel that the worst part of me comes to play whenever I come to this place… I wake up in the morning before work wondering who's going the stab me in the back during the day, I deal with people that see corruption as something normal, companies that use their power to abuse their workers and keep them in fear so that they don't react, people that try to take advantage on anything anyway, you name it… As a result, I always go back home using more slain that what's normal in Portugal…

Summing up: two weeks in political hell, T-shirt stock reestablished, one hour of surfing, four waves surfed… Pictures: almost none… Sandy beaches and palm trees: yes… Caipirinhas: I stay far from them after the only real hangover in my life… Worth it? Well…

"how much did your laptop cost?" - the customs officer at the Guarulhos Airport (São Paulo - Brazil), approaches me in a tone that suggests I'm coming into the country willing to sell or offer my laptop to someone...
This reminds me that my adventures with customs world wide would be more than enough to fill up a blog by themselves... Don't get me wrong, I understand countries need to protect themselves from parallel imports and smugglers, and in fact this has happened to me before and I was never harmed or arrested in the process... But after flying for 10 hours and waiting for another 2 before seeing my suitcase coming out of the carpet, the last thing someone needs is to have to explain something so obvious as why he's bringing a laptop into the country... Anyway, after 10 minutes of questioning and checking my passport stamps one by one, they let me go...

I know I should be writing about Brazil and what brings me to this place, but there's something else I need to mention before we talk about "Tropical Beaches and Caipirinhas"... I have a simple question that crosses my mind most times I enter and airplane: "Why do people assume that paying for a plane ticket gives them the freedom to lower they chair and crush the knees of the person behind them?"...

One does not need to be a master in biology and math in order to figure that the leg room in standard economy class areas is not comfortable for most people, due to this I never lower my chair in airplanes if I have someone behind me, and if I'd ever need to I'd ask first... This sounds like common sense to me, but what I perceive from my experiences is that I'm wrong... The correct procedure seams to be something like: lower the chair until you touch the knees of the person behind you... Then push harder until you've lowered the chair completely... If the person complains, stay silent and pretend you don't understand whatever language the person's using...

"Where are you going on hollydays???" - This is one of the most common questions people ask each other during this time of the year...


As time goes by, my mindset goes more on the lines of: "where would you go if this was your last trip"... At the same time something inside tells me that I should be happy enough because i already traveled more that most people I know... And I just made it back from 6 weeks outside the office...

The conflict becomes even harder when I face the evidence that I've already been to most of the easy and comfortable places one can remember about, so now I'm left with the remaining 95% of the world that is not so documented and that will take some time to get ready for...

Questions come and go and usually go back to: "where do I start?..."

"a 20 ounce Dark Sumatra with nothing in it, rigth?..." - Google's Courtesy: 20 US fluid ounces = 591.470591 ml... After a little more than a week the lady in the cofee shop allready remebered my preference...


Whenever I talk with someone from Portugal abut the things I miss whenever I'm out, the conversation will eventually go through something like: "how can someone live without our good, small and strong espressos!?"

Back home we're very serious about coffee (among others)... One thing I found while traveling is that it's usually a mistake to keep looking for the same things we have home while visiting another country...

If we insist on doing so we'll probably be frustrated as espressos elsewhere will never feel the same way they do in Portugal and we'll end missing other good things like beer, wine, bagels, cheese cake, ans yes good and large cups of coffee...

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a while waiting for a suitable picture, but for some strange reason, during the last days I've spent most of my image creating time around water... I decided to let it out anyway...

"Any soup or salad while you wait?..." - The waiter just brought my beer and took note of my order...


It's past 9 pm and Síamsa Irish Pub is one of the few restaurants still open for Dinner...

I'm living to fast again, it's Wednesday and all I remember about since the weekend is work and sleeping from time to time... I'm in that stage when my thoughts are a mix of: "What am I doing here" and "I'd better get ready for the weekend"... I think I have referred before to the "dark side of my trips"... This is actually one of those days that make everything look darker...

"Heck, nothing is going really wrong" - I think to myself as I ask for a cup of coffee wondering if the right choice might have been just going for another beer...

"The park entrance is free, all trails are open until sunset, enjoy your day!..." - I'm back to Rickets Glen State Park PA, the park ranger answers my request for a permit...


If I had to re-name Rickets Glen I'd call it waterfall heaven... With more than 20 waterfalls spread over a 5 mile trail with lots of intersting details in the middle, I got back with the sensation that I could live in there...

It's one of those places where you look at someting amazing, spend some time there creating images, but can't help but wonder that arround the next corner something even greater can be found... Anyway, knowing that whenever I stop at one place I'll take more than 1/2 hour to move to the next, 20 waterfalls is too much for one day... So here's another work in progress in my list...

"in case you wonder... that's me in the picture..."

"i happen to like this... Listening to the night critters and looking at the stars"... - Maria's comments after 1/2 hour of star trails....
One year later I got back to this exact same place for more star trails... I'm almost pleased with the result, but there are still reasons do come back... Still I could not avoid a short trip back to this place, even so considering that...

"turn rigth on 9'th avenue, then arrive at your destination on the left"... - The GPS... 48 hours have passed...

Against all recommendations, once more I'm driving in New York trying to buy some equipment before driving to the Poconos...


"Sometimes a stranger has a fresher view when contemplating a whole new place than the locals do"... - I remember Antonio's words during his last workshop as I walk through Stroudsbourg...
Houses, sign-posts and even sidewalks... They all look attractive to my eyes... One more week goes by with more work than desirable, I'm finishing my writing on my 2'nd glass of merlot... The weekend is here, at last...

"it's uphill now"... - someone tells me... 25 km done, more than 50 to go, I'm leaving the 1'st assistance zone of a mountain bike marathon...


I've spent the last days looking at weather forecasts... The predictions changed from heavy rain showers to rain showers and back to heavy rain showers... In reality after one and half hour riding in the rain the difference does not matter anymore... I'm soaking wet and freezing from the waist down... Not just from the rain, but also because most of my time was spent riding on enormous mud puddles...

My altimeter shows a little bit more than 300 meters, and in front of me all I see is a cloud formation hiding my next destination at around 1000 meters... The rain storm continues as I go up... At 850 meters the rain turns into hail... I can feel the temperature going down as my feet get colder and colder... This makes me think about Nuno and his last reports from the mountains in south America, the sensation that I'm still galaxies away from his efforts, lead me to look up and keep on going...

Near the top the weather clears a bit... For a couple of kilometers the trail is more or less straight, as I increase the speed trying to warm my legs, I feel like I'm sprinting on the top of my world... At a distance I can see some of my usual photography spots... The light is amazing... I stop for two minutes and take a couple of photos with my cell phone... I look around and see water flowing down the mountain all around me, "this feels like seeing inside of one of my images" I think to myself...

"Some days we leave home in the rain, thinking how insane we are... Some days we come back wet and tired... Some days we feel like having a soul as big as the world..."

"I have to concentrate on building my web site"... - I have said this millions of times, but it seams that there's a cosmic conspiration that prevents me from doing so...

Actually the fact that building websites is more on the software side that on the photography side explains why instinctively I tend to spend my free time around photography instead of concentrating on building a web site... Still i can't help but thinking that ultimately my message as a photographer wont be spread out to the world otherwise...

There's a saying in Portugal that states something like "there's no two without three"... So here it is: my 3'rd blog that I hope somewhere in the future will turn into my photography website...

Some of you may ask, what's the difference from my three "so called personalities", well I'm the same person, and as everybody else I have different mind sets...

“AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRHHHHGGG!!!...” – My last day in Sweden, on my 3 hour drive back to Stockholm Airport… I see images jumping from everywhere I look…


Snow… Clouds, light changing from one moment to the other… Small patches of blue sky… And the clock does not stop ticking… There are kilometres to go through and a plane to catch…

I probably said this a thousand times before, but there’s something in Scandinavian light that caught me from the first time I’ve been in Sweden… I actually think that 2003 was the year that defined a lot in the person I am in a series of ways and also defined the way I look for light everywhere I go… Every time I come back I feel that this is probably the land of my dreams…

Back to reality: 5 trip days, never ending meetings, probably no more than 2 hours of picture taking… 700 kilometres of images that only my dreams will see… one year less till the end and still a long way to go…

Birthday???... Ah, yes today’s my birthday…

"There's a Chinese restaurant across the square, here on the left you have an Indian, and close by, there's an Italian..." - In case you did not guess I'm in a small city in the middle of Sweden...


I once said something like this to a colleague before her 1'st trip: "your credit card is your best friend... In case something goes wrong you can always rent a car and drive back home"... This crossed my mind today when it took me more than one hour to find my car rental company desk at the Stockholm airport...

What if you can´t find a rental company?... Well, you'd better not be in your 1'st trip and be aware that worse things can happen... Things like getting into an hotel room and not finding the bed...

Talking about that, i finally got the car, drove for 3 hours and finally got to the hotel... The bedroom had a bed... But it was the 1'st time I got a room with a single small bed, smaller than the sofa bed from the other time but let's not talk about that...

Two days have passed, Scandinavia still has the best ligth one can wish for... I was forced to pass on two amazing sunsets before actually being able to go out and shoot... When I finally did, nature greeted me with a snow storm...

"Can I let the visitors in?..." - I've just attached the last picture tag... And barely had time to take some pictures of everything ready...

The next couple of hours where faster than I can remember... So here it is for the ones that were there and I barely had time to talk with and the ones spread all over the world: Thank you all!!!...

Today I finally went out, to the middle of nowhere, for 15 minutes and shot one image just to get the feel of it again... What's coming next?... I'll go out to shoot again in the morning and then we'll see...

"all you've ever wanted was ..." - this is just an extract from a song... Yes, I do hear Linkin Park and heavier stuff from time to time, mostly when I need to focus...


During the last month or so, i might have written several posts, starting with... have a great wolf day... bye, have a safe trip home... I hope we meet in India some time... you've been selected by a computer to be hand searched along with your property... i do hate Christmas and new years... i'll have a sam adams winter brew... pedantic... invisible light... coming back for a little more... this is the cover for that magazine... tell me to go...

In summary: I've been working like crazy... At the same time I'm preparing an exhibition and to elevate the odds even further my pictures made it into the cover of a magazine... In the middle of all this, I really feel I miss having time to go out and take pictures... It's been almost two months now...