Helloo
Venturers arrived a couple of days ago - I drove to San Jose to pick some up and dropped off my laptop at the same time. Still waiting to hear what the issue is there. Will chase them up tomorrow as they were supposed to get hold of me on Tuesday.....
This morning the zoom mechanism on my main lens has gotten itself busted. I suspect some grit got into there. The whole thing kind of jammed up and the flash wasnt working properly with it. I've spent a lot of today pricing up replacements and researching etc, walking to Turrialba to try the two (utterly useless) camera shops and trying to find stores in San Jose. Fortunately Julian, the big country manager person knows a photography instructor and gave her a call and got a number for a store that sells lenses and could possibly fix my current one.
The prices of photgraphic equipment here is, I understand, quite unreasonable, so I initially placed an order with B&H in the states, but they are not happy that my Visa billing address is in a country different to my shipping address, so require the money wired. BNZ seemed to require me to go into a branch or spend half an hour on the phone to them at international rates for that to happen. Add to that the potential for a huge duty tax should I actually manage to get anything delivered and it's all a bit hard.
I gave it a good twist just before, doing all sorts of terrible things to the remaining mecahnics, but now at least I can manually pull and push the front of the lens to get the zoom working. Will still replace it if the price is reasonable, but wll do for now. I just dont trust it to last!
On more 'why I'm actually here' news: I'm off on Saturday morning for 3-4 days of trekking up Volcan Turrialba before being back at Field base for a few days. Then I'm off for about 10 days making my way around Costa Rica visiting the various project sites. I very strongly doubt I will be around then - but if I have my laptop I can probably get some wifi somewhere so who knows!
But yes, the Venturers are here - it has been super busy but tonight they are at jungle camp and it is beautifully quiet here <3.
Pizza time (even though I already had dinner and a chocolate....
