Today, I have realized that I have followed Scotty’s work for over two and a half years. It has started with a lonely baseball centerfielder and has brought me all the way to musings about nostalgia, accompanied by a stunning portrait, beautiful landscapes in the middle of nowhere and to the most stunning picture of a kiss ever.

If you are into photography, or writing, or — better — both: you should start following Stray Matter.

Before I came to Ecuador, I had never been above 4,000m (~13,000 ft) of altitude. Back in Mexico, I was dreaming about climbing Iztaccihuatl (5,230m / 17,158 ft) — but that didn’t work out. Between traveling, studying and partying, there was just not enough time for acclimatization or training. Over here in Ecuador, though, high altitude is defined differently than in other parts of the world. Sitting at 2,800m (~9,200ft), Quito is the second-highest capital in the world. Being above 4,000m (~13,000 ft) is nothing — a number of important streets actually reach this altitude. Living in Quito, you are so well-acclimatized that being above 5,000m (~16,000 ft) hardly makes you breathless.

Ecuador also bears some real challenges, though: the country’s nevados are so high that they are glacier-covered in spite of their proximity to the equator. Ecuador’s highest mountain — Volcán Chimborazo — is 6,267m (20,560 ft) high. While we haven’t actually made it onto that icy monster yet, we did climb Ecuador’s second- and third-highest mountains: Volcán Cotopaxi (5,897m / 19,347 ft) and Volcán Cayambe (5,790m / 18,996 ft). Climbing one of these mountains is quite an experience: you get to a climbers’ refuge a day before the climb. There, you spend a restless nap in your sleeping bag waiting for midnight to come around, when you start climbing while the snow is hard from the night’s cold. You spend the rest of the night climbing, waiting for the sunrise on or near the summit. The views are absolutely unforgettable!

Similarly unforgettable, however, is the torture you have to go through to get to the top (or well, maybe not everybody — but I did). Above a certain altitude, your body simply starts shutting down (that’s about 5,500m for me). Taking even one more step seems a close-to-impossible task. I literally had to drag my ass up that mountain half the night, using up every last bit of energy I could summon. But, boy, was it worth it!

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Enjoy! As always, with any problems, just email me!

Enjoy! As always, with any problems, just email me!

Download here!

While you can certainly make fun of Indians for trying to evangelize vegetrianism, you cannot argue about their food which is excellent and all over Singapore.

We also had the pleasure (?) of trying out “Hainanese Steam Boat” (that’s from China, btw) — it’s basically a wok heated at your table filled with broth (it resembles fondue). Now, fondue is great so when some Chinese woman tried to lure us into this slightly seedy restaurant we let ourselves be dragged in. After all, lots of enthusiastic locals were sitting on plastic chairs devouring what seemed to be excellent food. Well, they just seem to have a different taste. We ordered a beef and a fish plate (sounds ok, doesn’t it?) and got some undefinable beef innards along with incredibly gross mussels, fishcake (it’s some kind of condensed fish that feels like foam when you chew it) and some very yummy liver. Oh, I forgot the stuff that felt like a sponge in your mouth and tasted like nothing (it was on the fish plate but God only knows what it was…).

It was such a great cultural experience. Whatever. As you might have guessed we left half the stuff untouched. All along people were looking at us as if we were from Mars — they didn’t seem to be very used to Westeners there. I was starting to feel bad about being such an intolerant Westener when some of the employees noticed the fact that we were not even touching their best stuff and started giggling unscrupulously (while standing right next to us!). In the end, we all had our laughs, the food wasn’t too expensive and it was quite the experience. Honestly, though, I am not going back.

I just want to highlight this little feature of our appartment: it has a pool attached right to the house. As hot as it is around here, this is awesome. I love the place.

I am just now getting around to post-processing and posting the images I shot last year in Japan. This leads to the kind of absurd situation that I am on my semester abroad in Mexico and posting pictures from Japan. It also reminds me of how ridiculously little time I had for my hobbies while I was still in Germany.

Anyhow, I like these shots a lot. Go check them out at Flickr.