Skillset have released a great handbook for those looking for a career in the visual effects industry. They collaborated with myself and many of my colleagues across a range of facilities, and utilised the wide range of knowledge and experience to come up with a simple but sensible collection of advice and suggestions for modules that could be taught in educational institutions to improve the outcome for both the student, and the industry.

To quote the handbook, it has ‘one simple, but ambitious aim; to improve the new entrant skills available for the UK’s VFX industry.’

You can download it by clicking here.

…when you’re having fun.

Flights: 39
Continents: 3
Countries: 13
Beds: 114
Photos: 19,543
Marriages: 1
McDonalds: 0

A picture usually says a thousand words… this one says two. Yes, we’re back in Buenos Aires!

It’s our final night in BA and luckily there’s enough time for one final steak!

It was worth posting this blog post just to write that title!

After a few days in Buenos Aires, we took the one hour ferry ride to Uruguay and spent a day wandering about the beautiful little town of Colonia – the oldest city in the country and a world heritage site. The historical area of the city was a wonderful place to spend the day, with its 17th century cobblestone streets shaded by huge sycamore trees, some great little places for lunch and coffee and a few tourist spots. It was also a place where the locals seemed to love cruising around in old cars, some classics, but mainly just battered old Fiats.

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Expect nice short posts from now on… Our time is running out!

We arrived from Rio at Foz do Iguaçu airport and immediately jumped into a taxi and headed for our last big location of our year off, the Iguazu Falls.

We walked the trail along the Brazilian side of the Iguazu River which takes you along progressively bigger and bigger falls, giving you a great overview of the location, until we finally got to see the spectacular Devil’s Throat – the biggest section of the falls at 82m high. Then we crossed the border into Argentina and the town of Puerto Iguazú. We found our hostel – the final cheap dump of our year – dropped our bags and spent as much of the evening out of the room as we could.

The next day we headed over to the Argentine side of the falls, which has much more intricate trails and platforms and allows you to really see many of the falls up close. The furthest point on the trails on the Argentine side is atop a platform at the very top of the Devil’s Throat. Standing at the edge of the platform and allowing the falls to completely fill your field of view is a simply awesome experience.

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Rio nearly didn’t make it into our travel itinerary. We had decided that we didn’t really have time to go into Brasil and even though we’d heard incredible things about this beautiful city full of beautiful people, we’d heard some pretty horrible stories about muggings and corrupt policemen too.

We decided to fly from Bogotá to Rio and fortunately had a night stop over in Buenos Aires where we left most of our baggage and travelled on with only one hiking pack and a small day pack.

We’d been a bit blasé about booking accommodation in Rio, we’d emailed a few places but even though some of them got back to us without availability we didn’t try and phone any of the others. We just assumed it would be like everywhere else and easy to find something on the ground. We were wrong. Upon arrival at our 2nd or 3rd hostel that didn’t even have a dorm bed available we were told that it was a public holiday in Rio on the Tuesday (Childrens’ Day) and Thursday (Teachers’ Day) of that week and that there was also a Bon Jovi concert taking place. Basically she told us we’d be lucky to find anything. In desperation we wandered into a holiday apartment block. They didn’t have anything either, but the guy behind the desk got on the phone and managed to communicate to us that he had found something elsewhere. We wandered a little dubiously the two blocks to the apartment he’d found and were met by Rosemary, who, it turns out manages the property and also lives in the same building. The apartment was perfect, and at the same price as a double room in a hostel, a real bargain. We took it for six nights.

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We arrived in Santa Marta looking for more sun and sand, and less insects. It was certainly hot but the beach was a little lacking as most of it looked across to a fairly large port. After a bit of a stroll to get to know the place, we stayed a night and headed on to a tiny town called Taganga the following morning.

Things got a little more rustic there, with dirt roads and many buildings in need of work although there was a solitary ATM, ominously located right next to the tiny police station. We managed to find a room at a reasonably nice place in the higher part of town. No AC but there was a small pool which was refreshing, and became even more essential once we realised that the beach front wasn’t really all that great for swimming.

We found a tiny coffee shop which claimed to be ‘the best little coffee shop in the southern hemisphere’. We couldn’t resist such a claim and had to try it. It certainly wasn’t the best in the southern hemisphere (we’ve had better coffee in Australia) but it was definitely the best we’ve had outside Australia on our trip so far. Despite coffee being Colombia’s biggest (legal) export there’s a saddeningly huge amount of Nescafé around – and having ‘made in Colombia’ on the label didn’t make it any less disappointing each time we were given some with our breakfast.

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After travelling from one side of the continent to the other by bus over the past few months, the flights to and from the Galápagos were an absolute joy… and the flights from Ecuador to Cartagena in Colombia were no different.

We arrived in Cartagena at lunchtime, the first time in a long time that we’d arrived anywhere at a decent hour of the day. I was reminded of the last time we stepped out of the plane into the thick wall of tropical heat and humidity – back in April at Kuala Terrenganu in Malaysia. The fleece went firmly into the bottom of my back pack and we took a taxi to our hostel.

We spent a few days getting to know the city. The old town section is a beautiful area full of historic public squares, cobbled streets and brightly-coloured colonial buildings with ornate overhanging balconies. It has a relaxed feel with lots of great bars and restaurants, galleries and museums. Our path was usually dictated by our hunt for the next cocktail to cool us down (because for some reason, water just wasn’t cutting it). Our location of choice for a few evening sunsets was Café del Mar which is situated on the old city walls, with an uninterrupted view west out into the Caribbean Sea… just perfect.

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After a short (1.5 hour) bus ride and an overly convoluted border crossing – involving getting a Peruvian exit stamp miles before the border, crossing the border, getting an entry stamp after travelling 20 minutes past the border into Ecuador, then having to leave our bus and catch a cab back to the border to get a different bus (10 hours this time) – we were on our way to Quito.

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