The Grey NATO - Ep 62 - Goldenboy And The Megafaunas

Published on Tue, 26 Jun 2018 09:00:04 -0400

Synopsis

The episode features a discussion about Jason's recent work reviewing watches like the Mido Commander Shade and the gold Seiko Turtle for articles. Jason also shares his experiences driving a Rolls-Royce Wraith and going on a helicopter tour in Vancouver. The main segment is Jason's guest, James, recounting his recent trip to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, where he went diving and saw incredible marine life like whale sharks, manta rays, and colorful reefs. James also talks about going on safaris and seeing elephants, leopards, and monkeys in Sri Lanka.

The final notes include recommendations for vintage manual focus camera lenses, the return of the "Descending" diving adventure TV series, a documentary called "Everest Unmasked" about the first oxygen-free Everest climb, and a video called "Sea Trekking" featuring coastal swimming and camping.

Transcript

Speaker
Jason Heaton Hello and welcome to another episode of the Grey Nado, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 62 and we thank you for listening. Jason, you are fresh back from a huge time zone change coming home from Sri Lanka. How are you feeling?
James Stacey Well, at the moment, I'm doing fine. I've been up since 2 in the morning. It's about 11 a.m. now, so I'll probably be getting tired here shortly, but I think we hit the sweet spot for recording, so I'm reasonably alert.
Jason Heaton Well, I'm glad to hear it. I've been working some longer days recently, and I'm just enjoying a nicely iced double espresso, so it should either be a yawn-heavy show or maybe some jittery rants. We'll find out as we go. I think it's going to be a pretty loose show. Obviously, I want to hear mostly about your trip. Anything else new? Anything else kind of in the flux between the trip? Or you've been gone for most of the time that we've had between the episodes?
James Stacey Yeah, I think we recorded episode 61 the day before I left, and then I'm back just as of about 36 hours ago or thereabouts. So not much other than the trip to talk about. Nothing terribly watch related today, but, uh, you know, there's plenty to kind of recap for my trip. So, uh, happy to do that.
Jason Heaton Okay. Yeah. I can, uh, I can give a brief rundown of what's been going on in the last couple of weeks for me. I've got some fun watches in.
James Stacey So the, uh, yeah, your Instagram feed has been, been really interesting to see sort of a mix of, of helicopters and, and, and swanky cars and, and, and gold watches.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. So I, I pitched this, uh, loose idea for, I think I've already mentioned it on the show, but maybe not, but I pitched a loose idea to Houghton Key for some went up just recently, and that was with the Mido Commander Shade in rose gold. That watch I liked a lot, and I know I've talked about it on the show, so we probably don't have to do that again. I think it turned out well, and then the second one I'm working on is with the Seiko SRPC44, which is the gold turtle. Yeah. So it's a PVD gold. The price is very similar to the standard turtle. Like, I think list is 550 bucks. So you're not paying anything for the gold. It's literally just there for an aesthetic, which I think for a Seiko is perfect.
Unknown Mm-hmm.
Jason Heaton And it's kind of a thing. I struggle to say that I like it or I would wear it. It's a yellow gold treatment. I definitely don't not like it. It's a weird thing. And I think it's mostly like you have to find the right strap for it.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton But I was wearing it out yesterday, you know, taking some photos of it and that sort of thing. And I'd really enjoy having it on. You know, for some reason, the gold makes it feel bigger, but it might just be that it makes it feel a little bit more conspicuous. Yeah. Because it is a huge gold diver. Yeah. And I also think that while the Mido is kind of like effortless and light and kind of like, just kind of fun, there's something kind of badass about a Seiko diver.
James Stacey I'm not sure there's a precedent for it. Is there? I can't think of a previous, other than like the golden tuna, you know, the, I think it was like a PVD gold treatment on the titanium. big tuna that they made back in the 70s, the first quartz one. I can't think of another precedent in terms of a gold Seiko diver, and I'm sure a listener who's kind of an avid Seiko guy will probably prove me wrong there, but I can't think of any.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I'm sure it's not the first one, certainly, but I don't think that there were any gold 6139s or 6105s or any of those. And what it reminds me of is Do you know that like the SNA, the 411, they're kind of like a Breitling-esque quartz chronograph with an alarm for a couple hundred bucks? Yeah. And they come like in a black dial with yellow accents and steel and then a white and red and blue one in steel and then a black dial in gold. Yeah. That's what connects for me because I remember seeing those when I was younger and first getting into watches. Yeah. And I had the black and steel and really rather liked it. The effect of this one is really Really fun. I don't know. It would be definitely in the running if I was buying a Turtle to go for the gold one. I think it would come down to kind of if you could find the perfect strap match for it. Right. But I think it definitely looks really cool. I'm just not sure how much I would wear it.
James Stacey I'm not sure. You know, you talk about straps and I agree that that sort of vented rubber dive strap that comes on all the Turtles, you know, it's a great strap. It is. But somehow on that watch, it seems too to all business for the watch itself, even though that watch is perfectly capable and there's nothing that really separates it from the standard turtle. But I don't know that... I haven't tried a turtle on a leather strap. It would certainly work on NATO if you had some matching hardware.
Jason Heaton Yeah, either black or gold, yeah. Yeah. I've wore it around on one of the analog shift leather straps in 22mm and it looks great. It works really well. I think there's a picture on my Instagram of that combo. It works really well on the included strap. It's just a bulky strap physically. So I think like summer shorts, t-shirt, beach, whatever, fine. But I think given the sort of mid-70s styling, or arguably you could say late 60s styling, you know, given that look, I think you go a long way with one of those Uncle Seiko tropics. Yeah, I agree. Which would get a little bit flatter, a little bit closer to your wrist. Obviously a little bit less helpful if you're diving and it compresses or whatever against a wetsuit. But still, I think for normal wear, I think that might be the ticket as far as a look. Or I also think it would work pretty well on one of those rubber Nados that we've had before, the Bonetto Centurini ones from Watch Gecko.
Unknown Oh, sure. Yeah.
Jason Heaton I think that could be a fun fit because that's kind of a brighter gray, which works pretty well with the very bright sort of yellow gold finish.
James Stacey The difficulty for me would be finding the correct hardware match with an aftermarket strap simply because, I don't know, personally, some people don't really get a real hang up about that, but I just can't stand sort of, you know, a steel buckle with a gold watch, especially if you go NATO where you've got all the extra hardware.
Jason Heaton Yeah, no, I fully agree that what was the first thing I did was threw it on a gray NATO. And then I realized like, oh, This looks terrible. Yeah. Uh, so then I, yeah, I put it back on to a leather strap where you couldn't see the buckle at least. Yeah. And then, I mean, the, the, the rubber strap that it comes with comes with a plated gold buckle. So conceivably you could move the buckle to that strap.
James Stacey Yeah.
Jason Heaton It's pretty wide though, isn't it? It is.
James Stacey 20 millimeters at the buckle maybe? Or something around that. I don't think it's a straight strap, so I don't think it's 22.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it's 20 at the buckle. And, uh, so, I mean, that would be an option if you had a strap that that tapered by two millimeter. Yeah. You could conceivably move the buckle over or you buy a strap that has a plated yellow gold finish of some sort. Yeah. Really cool piece. And that should be on Haudenkey, you know, soon enough, probably not before this episode goes live, but sometime in the near future. And, you know, with these gold pieces, they're less about the watch because a lot of them we've already done the hands-on for, and it's more about contextualizing the kind of way the gold feels differently from the steel version. And then trying to find kind of an interesting hook just to, you know, do some good photography or explain kind of a funny concept behind the way that my brain connects with gold, which I think might be similar to other people, you know, in the same age range.
James Stacey I think that's a good approach. And I think kind of what you did with the Mido piece resonated with people. And I think it's what a lot of readers nowadays are looking for with you know, quote unquote, watch reviews is, is a bit more, um, of a different angle. I mean, you know, the, that turtle, the base sort of turtle has been reviewed so many times by so many different people that I think it's, it's just kind of a neat approach to kind of frame it around, you know, whether you can warm up to gold. And I think, you know, having not seen that watch in person, when, when I look at it, it, I could see myself wearing it. I mean, it has, It has a lot of black, you know, the black really stands out against that gold. And I think it, it kind of mitigates the, the goldness of it, uh, as opposed to the Mido, which I can't, you know, I, I sort of get where you were coming from with that article, but I still don't see myself, uh, wearing that one. It's just a little too, little too outside my wheelhouse on that one.
Jason Heaton But, uh, it went, uh, it went back, uh, earlier this week and I miss it. I like that watch and it is it's definitely the bracelet is what does it. I don't think I would have the same fondness for it if it was just the head of that watch on a strap or something like that. It's just a lot of gold and it just has like it's super summery, which I think is pretty fun. Yeah, definitely has me looking at old ones on eBay. Oh, yeah, it's always fun. Outside of that, yeah, like you'd mentioned, I did a this sort of varied tour of Vancouver with Lexus, the pieces on Nouveau magazine. You drove around Vancouver in the new RX, which is their kind of crossover midsize SUV, which has been hugely successful for them for many, many years. And they've just recently announced a version that has a third row. So it's a little longer and you can fit a little bit more, a few more people in there, depending on how tall they all are. And we basically toured a handful of like Vancouver's artisan craft scene. And so after all of that, the other side of the story that I haven't quite covered yet as I'm breaking it into two pieces, but we drove east of Vancouver to a place called Pit Meadow, where there's some small airport activity. And in Pit Meadow, we connected with Sky Helicopters and they took us for a flight up into the mountains. And we went to a place called Wigeon Lake. You can see it on my Instagram. And we were actually able to land on a flat piece of rock and get out and walk around a little bit. And it's this huge, high alpine lake. And then from there we flew kind of back in along the Indian arm, which is a water, a water system that feeds into the Burrard inlet and then out into the ocean. And then we were able to land right downtown and then go to a dinner stop.
James Stacey Wow. That's quite a, that's quite a day. That was one day.
Jason Heaton That was one day. Yeah. So it was, it was a, it was a very full day and it was my first time in a helicopter. Certainly my first time. And then it was, it was not, no, not a big helicopter. It was a four person helicopter, a Ranger. And what a thing. I would love to learn how to fly a helicopter. That's super fun. And the pilot who we had, he was saying that the smaller ones, they fly also a smaller one, which is what I was quite excited about was to be in a little one because apparently they're quite sketchy. They wiggle around and they move and they're pretty fast. And he said they're a little bit more like a sports car. So hopefully I can get a chance to try out a small one at some point, some point along the way. But yeah, helicopters are... Helicopters are good. I like a helicopter.
James Stacey Yeah. I think the first time I flew in a helicopter was in Canada also. In fact, in British Columbia, it was that I did this heli hiking trip to the Bugaboos. The Bugaboos. Yeah. Yeah. And that set the hook for me. I mean, there's just nothing like landing on a ridgetop or something and jumping out of the helicopter. You just feel so adventurous just merely stepping in or out of one. It's so cool.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It sounds it's I mean, yeah. And they make a lot of noise and the pilot was describing how the controls work. Oh yeah. Yeah. Which is cool because it's a, you know, it's a fixed speed. You don't increase the speed of the rotor to go up or down. Yeah. You change the tilt of the rotor. So they actually move quite aggressively if you want them to. Yeah. Which is really, really neat. I liked it a lot. I could definitely, definitely see that being something I would try, try to get into more often. Yeah.
James Stacey And then you had, you had, this would have been very fitting for a gold watch. sort of companion piece. You were in a Rolls-Royce for a day or something?
Jason Heaton Yeah, I borrowed a Rolls-Royce Wraith for a day and drove it up to Squamish and got some tacos with my brother. Wow. And that's a thing. The Rolls-Royce, obviously, I mean, I'll talk in Canadian dollars, that's what I have on my mind, but it's about $400,000 before you check any boxes. And then the one I had was something like $485,000. And, you know, it was, it was good. I mean, it was like an impressive car. It's fast, but it doesn't feel sporty. You know what I mean? Like it just kind of goes 624 horsepower, big V12, coach doors, uh, wild interior. Um, they, they cut this from my story, but I had described it as a Cruella de Vil spec, uh, which is my, my brother saw it and that's what he said. And, uh, it was, uh, black on, or sorry, it was Mugello red, a very bright red leather on black kind of high gloss accents. Huh. Yeah. And I mean, beautiful stereo, nice place to sit, kind of some weird ergonomics that I wouldn't expect, but I don't think the car, I think in many ways they, that's probably part of the charm of a Rolls Royce. Like you can't see all the buttons from where you sit. Huh. Whereas like, I feel like you get into a car now, especially like that Lexus, which is probably, there's probably hundreds of people that work on the ergonomics of the interior of a Lexus. Yeah. And everything's kind of tilted towards the driver. Yeah. Whereas the Wraith felt more like I was in a boat. Oh, sure. Where everything's on more of a flat surface. Yeah. So you had to know where some of the buttons were or like lean to take a look. And the steering wheel was very large and very thin, like a boat. And yeah, it was an interesting thing. In many ways, it was exactly what I expected. In some ways, it was not what I expected. Yeah. Because I always had it in my mind that it would be a huge jump up from anything I had ever been inside of in terms of interior quality. And I would say like, it was very much comparable to the Bentleys that I've been in. And some of those Bentleys are of the same price, you know, like a Molson long wheelbase, something like that. That was a fun, fun car and a nice way to go get some tacos and that sort of thing. And I don't know, maybe, maybe I think, I think maybe I have trouble contextualizing a Rolls Royce as a car. Yeah. Cause it's just so expensive. Was that the first one you've driven?
James Stacey It is. Yep. I mean, it just feels like one of those sort of boxes you check in life, you know, it's just kind of such an iconic name, whether, you know, you like the individual car itself. It's just, there's something sort of mystical about a Rolls Royce.
Jason Heaton Oh, for sure. And I, and I think they definitely like they've, I mean, they've earned that reputation over a very long span of time. And, and the interior of the car was incredible. The paint was unbelievable. It was so quiet on the inside. Yeah. And like there's no input anywhere in that car that takes any effort. Like none of the buttons are like heavy, the seats look super comfortable. You don't have to push the gas pedal very hard. You don't have to really, you could drive it just with the tips of your fingers. And you know, it's a weird thing for me because like for expensive cars, my, probably both my tastes and my experience leans towards sports cars or super cars. And then to see kind of where the same amount of money or even more money goes when their goal isn't to, you know, go harder in a corner or make a louder noise. Yeah. A cool thing. Definitely. Wow. Nice. Was that for a review? Uh, yep. That's for a write-up with, uh, with Nuvo.
James Stacey You've got some travel coming up here next week, right?
Jason Heaton A couple of days. I do. Yeah. I'm going to San Francisco and LA for a series of small projects with Hodinkee. Some really fun stuff that, uh, I'm excited about, but probably won't talk about just quite at this point. But the one thing I can talk about is I have, uh, as part of the whole thing is the new Tudor Black Bay GMT. Oh, lucky. Yeah, exactly. I got lucky that I guess nobody else in the office wanted to fight me for the right to review it. So we're doing a week on the wrist with that, which includes a big video and then a huge write up and tons of photography and that kind of thing. So stay tuned for that. And you'll see more Instagram stuff as that travel kicks off. So the day this comes out, I'll be flying to San Francisco for a couple of days and then L.A. for a couple of days and then I'm home. Finally in your own time zone. Yeah, I get to jump around in my own time zone. There's a fantastic travel watch and I'll have to fake the offset. Yeah, that's right. How ironic. Yeah, exactly. And then my next trip after that is in the same time zone as well. I'm going to Portland.
James Stacey Oh, cool. How about bags? Any new bags for this travel? It seems like every time one of us takes a trip, we try out some sort of a new travel bag.
Jason Heaton You know, oddly enough, back before Concorso, So the end of May, I finally picked a hard suitcase for travel. I'd been planning for a little while. So I bought an Away carry-on. We met with Away when we were in New York. I was impressed by their product. I like their people. And so I bought one of their suitcases and it came, I think like about two hours after I left for Concorso. So it's just been sitting in my office and it's dust cover. But yeah, so I'll get a chance to finally use that for this little rip around California. Uh, which should be good. I mean, the suitcase looks great and, and I, you know, I've, I've unzipped it and kind of looked at it, but I'll learn a little bit more when I actually start packing stuff into it. It should, uh, should, uh, definitely cover the need. Nice. Yeah. I mean, other than that, I, I mean, I haven't been having like a, I'm, I'm glad that you had like a big trip with a bunch of different adventures because like, I haven't had a lot of adventures. I've been working a lot through June and like now, now I'm realizing like June's basically over. Ah, no kidding. I know what eight days left. Geez. Yeah. Yeah. So we're almost, we're almost through June. I think I've had my head down through most of it. And, uh, that's good. Sometimes you got to grind. That's how it is. Uh, definitely hoping to find some hikes in the next little while. Yeah. But, uh, other than that, yeah, it's like, I got a, uh, you know, it's, it's great stuff with holding keys. Amazing. I've got a ton of watches coming in and out and these kind of fun pieces I get to work on. And, uh, and then some, some really cool projects kind of, uh, just, just lining up in the future that I'm pretty excited to be able to share at some point. So I think that's pretty much all that's, uh, that's new here. I'd, I'd love to get, uh, like a recap on your trip.
James Stacey Yeah, so it's still fresh in my mind. It was, as I sort of previewed in the last episode, I spent two weeks in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. And just as a little background, my wife is from Sri Lanka, so it's kind of a regular trip for us to visit family and kind of go back to the homeland, so to speak. But this was our first, I think it was our first time going in June. Last year we were there in August and I did my big Hermes dive adventure, which was very memorable. But, but this time we did something that we've always talked about, which is, uh, take a little side trip over to the Maldives, which, um, anybody kind of even casually familiar with, uh, you know, ocean adventures and diving and, and wildlife, uh, has probably heard of the Maldives, but it's, it's like an hour flight from Sri Lanka and, and, you know, seven or eight trips to Sri Lanka. We've never taken this short little flight. over there, and we decided this time to do it. So, you know, we looked into where to stay with the help of some relatives over in Sri Lanka that are in the travel business, and they had a good recommendation that we stay on an island at a resort called Vilamendu in the South Ari Atoll. And so, you know, after three days on the ground in Sri Lanka, kind of burning off some jet lag and just sleeping a lot and visiting friends. We went back to the airport and flew over to, to the Maldives. It was like I said, a very quick flight and then a hop of about 25 minutes on a, um, de Havilland twin outer seaplane, which, um, you know, you mentioned your first flight on a helicopter. This was my first flight on a seaplane and it's something I've always wanted to do. It just, just the sight of a seaplane to me is just a, I don't know, it just conjures up, you know, adventures and just, you know, just cool stuff. So that was really, really fun and Trans-Maldivian Airways, which flies out of the capital, Mali, is the biggest operator of seaplanes in the world, which shouldn't be surprising given that, given that the Maldives is made up of like 2000 islands and the only way to reach them is by speedboat or by plane. And so that was quite fun and, and, uh, very efficient travel. And we were on the island by, you know, mid afternoon and kind of checked in at the dive shop because our main goal there was to, to just do as much diving as we could. over the course of three days that we were there. And it was, it did not disappoint. I mean, it was, it was fantastic. You know, I'm not, we're not much for kind of, you know, sort of high luxury, sort of just beach sitting and, and, you know, sun tanning and that sort of stuff. So, you know, even though the resort had plenty of, you know, spa treatments and restaurants and, you know, snorkeling excursions to do, we, you know, we just jumped on the dive boat every morning and, and would go out for, for morning uh, two tank, uh, boat trips. And then the afternoon we would go out for, uh, shore dives just, just right off the beach. And this Island, you could probably walk the full length of it in about 20 minutes from end to end.
Jason Heaton Oh, wow.
James Stacey Okay. It's, it's just, it's lush, you know? I mean, there, like I said, thousands of these little coral atolls that make up the Maldives and they're just little scrubs of land with lots of palm trees and, um, interesting birds and wildlife on them. And I literally, once we checked into our little bungalow that we rented, I, I, I never put on a pair of shoes, you know, for the whole time. It was just all sand. So I was just walking barefoot, you know, even into the dining room, you know, going to the buffet barefoot. And, um, so that was fun. But, uh, what was really cool is the, before I kind of get into the, the, the big critters that we saw underwater was, was the shore diving was the most remarkable shore diving I've done. And, and, you know, having, sung the praises of Bonaire over the past several years, which has some great shore diving. This just blew me away because the island is sort of long, sort of cigar shaped. And then off of each side of it, there were about four or five shore dive entry points through the reef on each side. So about 10 entries. And you'd put your request in at the dive shop and they would wheel your gear, your tanks and stuff to the entry spot and just sort of leave it there for you. And then you'd shoulder your tank and walk into the water. And at some points, at some of these entries, you would walk maybe 20 meters off the beach and there would be a buoy and you'd walk and it would be waist deep water. And then the next step would be a sheer drop. Like into the blue, like that close to the beach, that close to the shore, you'd walk out and you would empty your BC and you'd go straight down. And it was like vertical dive sites within, you know, 10 meters, 20 meters of shore all the way around the island. That's awesome. So when you'd come up to the surface, you do like a little safety stop and then you'd basically just swim up a little short distance. You'd be standing up and then you'd walk onto the beach and you were done. And it was just. It was so novel, it was so interesting to kind of dive that way. It really gives a sense of how sort of vertical these atolls are all over. And really colorful stuff, you know, Indian Ocean diving, especially in a healthy reef system is pretty spectacular. You know, you get a lot of different species there that I just am not used to seeing, you know, whether in the Pacific or in the Caribbean. You know, lots of soft corals and anemone and clownfish and You know, native lionfish and unicorn fish and big schools of little stuff. And, uh, and then on the boat dives, we, um, we did, uh, one dive that we went to kind of a known, uh, Manta cleaning station. Oh, okay, cool. Um, sort of, you know, you know, they always say on the boat ride out, oh, we can't guarantee you'll see a Manta and whatever, but we, I mean, literally dropped in, emptied the BC and we're headed down and everyone's pointing. And sure enough, you know, there's a, a Manta kind of circling over this sort of shallow, you know, bump of, of coral. Uh, that's kind of a known cleaning station. So you get lots of little wrasses and fish that, that come up to clean all the parasites and dry skin and stuff off of the Manta. So they really like it there. And, and so we just went down, I don't know, it was probably, you know, 15 meters deep, not, not deep at all. Um, and just kind of hung out and you could just kneel on the sandy bottom around this coral head. And the manta, it was just swooping over us, you know, coming really close. It was, you know, having been in Rovillajigedo just a few weeks earlier where, you know, it's open ocean, kind of pelagic diving, deep blue water with these giant Pacific mantas. The reef mantas in the Maldives are a little more skittish, slightly smaller, but, you know, largely a similar experience. They kind of swoop over your head and dance up and down in the bubbles and that sort of thing. You know, the lighting was great cause it was pretty shallow. So we got some great photos and so that, that was certainly a wonderful dive. And then on, on one of the next days we did a longer dive trip kind of out to the South end of the overall atoll system to a kind of a known long reef that, that is known for whale shark sightings. And. Oh yeah. Yeah, we did, we did three dives and we saw two whale sharks on two of them and. Wow. It was incredible. I mean, so there were drift dives. So you get kind of this current that flows along this, this kind of wall dive along a reef. And, you know, we dropped in and the visibility wasn't all that great. And you're sort of drifting on this very slow current, sort of looking at the reef, you know, lots of little stuff and a handful of sharks every now and then. And then, um, kind of our group had split into two and kind of half of the group, you know, there were only about six or seven of us and about half the group had gone further on ahead. And it was kind of murky, like I said, and all of a sudden we hear this, um, you know, one of the dive masters had like a noisemaker, like a little bell on her BC. And she was, I could hear this faint sort of ringing and it was getting louder and louder and louder. And I could tell she was swimming towards us against the current. And I knew, I knew, I knew she was, I knew it was going to be a whale shark, but I hadn't seen it yet. And then out of the murk comes this huge mouth that was just, it was, it was beautiful. It was, it was probably a 20 foot, you know, long whale shark, kind of a juvenile, maybe half grown, just right at my eye level. I mean, I was perfectly situated. It just came right at me and I was almost kind of paralyzed. I just sort of pivoted my body as it swam past and I could have reached out and touched one of its pectoral fins. I mean, it just, it cruised right past and everybody else was just like flying along behind it, trying to keep up with it against the current. And I was just sort of dumbfounded. I just sort of pivoted and watched this thing go past. For sure. And it was really wonderful. Man, I'm so jealous.
Jason Heaton I've wanted to see a whale shark for so long. And then you've had so many in the last little while. That's so cool, dude.
James Stacey Yeah. And they move really fast. So, you know, you can't really, you know, like with the mantas, you can kind of hang out and they sort of cruise around you. But the whale sharks, they're big and it's like a bus going by and you just sort of watch it go. And then on the second dive, sort of the same story, we saw there was kind of a snorkeling excursion of several boats that we saw people splashing around in the water, and these boats kind of highly active. And we jumped in and looked, and sure enough, there was a whale shark underwater, but a little too deep to kind of enjoy. So we all got back on the boat and kind of kept going. And the captain sort of knew that the whale shark that the snorkelers were seeing was going to be headed in a certain direction. So he just motored on ahead for I don't know how far, but another five to ten minutes and said, OK, well, you know, if we if we just sort of drop down here, the whale shark should be along any minute. So we suited up and jumped in and and descended. And, you know, sure enough, I mean, again, kind of like the manta dive, it was like no sooner was I, you know, 20 to 30 feet underwater, still descending that that there was this whale shark cruising past. And this time I had brought the camera with me and I was quickly turned it on and you know, swam like crazy to somehow keep up with it enough to take a few photos. And I fired off some shots and, and, uh, it was a little bit above me kind of cruising along the top of the reef. And, and, uh, so that was, that was pretty awesome. So, you know, Maldives was, it's known for, for mantas and whale sharks. Um, and you know, the soft corals and the interesting fish and, and super warm water and just kind of that whole experience with the shore diving. It was, uh, It was pretty awesome. I, we were, we were pretty sad to leave after, after four days. Yeah, I can imagine. But, uh, then we, we flew back to, to Sri Lanka, you know, sea plane back to Mali and then short flight back to Sri Lanka.
Jason Heaton And were you shooting in, were you shooting those dives with the Sony? Yes.
James Stacey In fact, the Sony was the only camera we brought on this trip. Oh, lovely. Okay. So yeah, the Sony in the, in the Nauticam housing and, uh, you know, worked great again. I can't say enough good things about that camera. It's been a great sort of underwater workhorse camera for the past about three years and shooting in a lot of places and it's been great. And then, yeah, then back to Sri Lanka and we went directly the next day to, we were kind of picked up by Ghoshani's family. It was her brother and sister-in-law and their kids and then Gushani's parents and they picked us up at the airport and off we went kind of to the northwest of the country to a, the largest national park called Wilpattu. And Wilpattu is known for a resident population of leopards. Oh, cool. We got there kind of mid afternoon and sort of dropped our bags and jumped in some open top Jeeps and headed off to the national park and kind of did a several hour sort of cruise through the park. It was, you know, kind of bumpy and buggy and hot and whatever. And Wilpato is sort of, it's not a lot of sort of open terrain. It's very jungly. And so, you know, if you're going to spot anything, you have to have a good spotter with good eyes and kind of be looking pretty hard. And leopards are sort of the, you know, the big species there that people, everyone goes to see. And we did see one, although it was kind of up in a tree and you could sort of just see a tail moving in some spots. And, um, but other than that, you know, we saw like a, an eagle that had caught like a lizard that was sitting on a branch and we saw lots of kind of wild deer and, and things like that. So, um, it was cool. Um, you know, it wasn't the most spectacular safari. Um, but then that night we spent kind of in this sort of tent, uh, camp where they had set up sort of those sort of out of Africa style, you know, um, hard floored tents, you know, safari tents and ate dinner outside by the fire. And in the night you can hear farmers shooting off firecrackers to scare the elephants away from their crops. And, you know, it sort of had this very sort of raw experience. So that was, uh, that was fun. And, um, and then the next day we, we got up and, uh, headed off to the East coast to a city of Trincomalee, which is kind of the big East coast Harbor, um, where, I had been last August and it's a really neat kind of old town, really strong Hindu presence there. So they get some interesting temples and sort of cliff topography right on the sea. And we stayed there for two days and managed to do a couple of dives one day there. And after the Maldives, it certainly wasn't quite the same experience because it's not a protected marine area, but it was It was good, it was good diving, good to get in the water there and kind of good to see some of the reef rebounding there after, you know, sort of some bad news about the reef systems in Sri Lanka. So that was good to kind of get some diving there. And then we finished off on our last day driving back towards Colombo, which is where we started and had to fly home from. And we stopped off for two nights near another national park, this one called Manaria. It was probably the highlight of the whole trip because the resort we stayed at, or the hotel, or whatever the property we stayed at was called the Haberna Lodge. And it was, all the buildings had a very old sort of lodge-like feel, sort of on this huge sprawling sort of jungle campus with its own farm, and it had kind of a big kind of lake in the middle of it, and beautiful buildings. And the place was absolutely overrun with monkeys. And if anyone saw my Instagram feed from that part of the trip, there are two species of monkeys that live there. One are called the macaques and then the others are gray langurs. And they both just run rampant. I mean, they get on the roof of all the buildings and tear the tiles off and throw them on the ground. And they steal tourists' sunglasses and phones and throw them in the pool. You know, no sooner did we arrive than we were walking past the pool area, which is near the dining room. And there was a monkey kind of drinking out of a coffee cup. And I mean, it's just they're a little bit menacing. I mean, they're not that big. I guess they're kind of a medium sized dog size. But they're so agile and they're so smart that you kind of have to be wary. And they're just running in these packs, sort of just looking for mischief. And I had one experience on the last day there where I had gone back to our room to get something. I went in and I looked on the balcony side of the room through the closed patio doors. There was kind of a small family of these langurs just sort of hanging out on the balcony and I just sort of waded and looked out the window and they saw me and they started to get really curious and they were sort of performing for me, like playing, you know, rolling around and this little baby came right up to the window and peeked in at me and I was like, it felt like this reverse sort of zoo situation. I was on the inside and they were watching me and, um, I don't know. It was a really, really neat thing. Um, and we, and we did, uh, another safari there. This one was, um, was pretty spectacular. We jumped in a Jeep again and went out to this huge, um, water reservoir that had been constructed, you know, centuries ago by some ancient King for, um, irrigation purposes and it's a meeting place for huge herds of elephants.
Jason Heaton Okay.
James Stacey And so they kind of show it's sort of the beginning of the dry season there. So they kind of come out of the forest and they go there to bathe and to drink and to eat the grasses that grow around the lake. And, you know, it's like if you want to be guaranteed to see elephants, that's the place to go. I mean, it's just a herd. We counted in one area there were 72 and in another area there were 42 more and they're just in huge herds. That's awesome. With the babies and the tuskers, you know, the males that grow the tusks and the females and, um, you know, they walk right past the jeeps and, and, uh, yeah, it was, uh, it was pretty awesome. I mean, you know, when I look back at the trip, you know, it was a bit of a blur. I mean, you know, two weeks seems like a long time to go on vacation, but it was, uh, it goes by pretty quickly when you're that many time zones away and kind of half of it is spent sleeping. But, um, you know, to see, on kind of one small part of the globe to be able to see some of the biggest animals in the world, you know, whale sharks and mantas and elephants and then monkeys and leopards. I mean, it was, uh, it was, it was pretty spectacular. Um, and you know, having gone there many times and seen elephants and stuff before, and I suppose I was starting to get a little jaded, but I don't know this trip sort of combining it all together. Um, and then that great experience in the Maldives was, uh, it was pretty special. So I'm, I'm happy to be home. You know, I've, I've been traveling a lot this spring and it's nice to be home for a little while. But yeah, it was pretty awesome.
Jason Heaton So what are your plans now that you're home? It's Friday. We're recording this on a Friday. What's your weekend look like?
James Stacey Well, I got to cut the grass. It's about knee high. So it's starting to look a little like the jungle. But yeah, I've got a lot of catch up work. I've got some articles I have to finish up for Hodinkee and some other places and just sort of, you know, do a lot of laundry and catch up on sleep. And, uh, and then actually on, on July 1st, I'm off again. I think I mentioned it the last show, I'm doing a dive trip of a very different sort over in Lake Huron to dive this shipwreck. So that's, uh, that's coming up. So I've got to kind of sort my gear and get ready for some dry suit diving and, uh, kind of some technical wreck diving in a couple of weeks. And, um, but between now and then it's, uh, Burn off more jet lag and drink lots of coffee and get caught up on some riding.
Jason Heaton Some late, late night rides in the Land Rover. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
James Stacey Before any traffic gets on the road.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. It's a good way to, to, to spend some, some jet lag hours, a night drive. Yeah. Yeah. All right, man. Well, that sounds like a killer trip and I'm really happy that you're able to kind of give us a recap on it and man, so much wildlife and like in just a couple of weeks is so, uh, so, so cool. Those safaris sound amazing and the elephants would be, uh, in many era of just, that sounds so, so rad.
James Stacey Yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing is I came home and I was kind of sorting some laundry and digging a t-shirt out of my drawer in the bedroom here. And, and I opened up the drawer and this centipede crawled into my t-shirt drawer and I like jumped back and it got goosebumps. I was like, Oh geez, you know, there's a centipede in my t-shirt drawer. And I was like, you know, coming from where I just was, it's, it just seems so, you know, it shouldn't be that daunting, but you know, I still get spooked by the strangest things, you know. Centipedes are gross though. Centipedes are gross.
Jason Heaton Yeah, real gross. How about some final notes? You feeling it? Yeah. Why don't you get started?
James Stacey I'll catch my breath here.
Jason Heaton Yeah, for sure. So, uh, my first one is more of a concept than a specific thing. And it's just something that I've, I think I've talked about plenty on the show, but I've slowly gotten more and more into, and it's become like a fascination, not that different than watches is just vintage lenses. So anyone who's listening, who has a camera that allows for interchangeable lenses. Consider picking up vintage glass instead of buying that new autofocus lens that you've had your eyes on, especially if your camera offers focus peaking, which makes it really easy to use these lenses. Even for work like taking pictures of watches, I find that the focus peaking works pretty well. But there's a whole world of these lenses, like lenses that have otherwise, because people want autofocus, have otherwise expired in terms of their usefulness, so their pricing generally isn't very high. I have a couple that use an M42 mount, which is easily adapted to, like I have an adapter for my Canon, I have an adapter for the Sony, and these both of these lenses were less than $50. And I just highly, highly recommend giving it a try if you're into photography, or if you want to experience a little bit more of an analog option, like kind of like driving a manual car this is your manual focus lens if you want to have a little bit more fun with it and sure you might miss it occasionally you may not get the focus perfect but these lenses have like a certain character to them that isn't the same as these kind of optically perfect lenses that you can get now and don't get me wrong there's definitely a time where I want to use the Zeiss with autofocus so I can get the shot in one or two tries and move on to the next thing I have to do for work but if I'm just walking around my neighborhood and I want to take pictures of all the beautiful flowers that come out in the summer around Vancouver, or I want to take pictures of people that I'm probably never going to publish anywhere. These lenses are the best and they don't cost much and they're not that big. Like you could have a ton of them and there's like a small group. I'd like, there's definitely the same handful of people on the Vancouver Craigslist that are kind of trading them. And then, you know, a lot of them apply back to film cameras, which is something that you can get into if you want to. as well. But my first pick for today is just to encourage you to buy a $20 adapter, buy a $50 lens and start having some fun. It's like the antithesis of cell phone photography. And if you really enjoy it, maybe consider picking up a film camera. I'm kind of on the edge of a Canon AE-1 right now. I'm considering it, but I'm absolutely loving these lenses. And then there's even brands that make new lenses that are only manual focus, like that Rokinon I've mentioned before, the wide angle, and then there's Voigtlander. I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly. And yeah, there's a whole world out there of these fantastic manual focus lenses that kind of slow down the whole process of photography and make it a little more thoughtful. And depending on what you're taking pictures of, like if you're trying to take a picture of your cat for the internet, the cat's going to move around, maybe not the best lens. or your kids playing soccer, maybe not the best lens, but for a lot of stuff where things aren't moving around that much, I think this is a really fun way to spend a little bit of money. Maybe just keep an eye at garage sales in your neighborhood, or maybe your local camera store has a cabinet of old stuff that just kind of sits and they take an offer.
James Stacey Yeah, and I can't agree more. I mean, I've got sort of a collection of old manual focus prime lenses for Nikon, Um, I just keep my eyes open at the, like at the camera store, they have a tent sale every year and there's always a big table of old lenses and there's always a big crowd of people around sort of grabbing for, for them because they're so cheap and they're so well made. I mean, metal bodies, you know, um, really good glass, you know, as long as you check that there's no sort of fungus sort of inside the glass or, or fogging or anything like that. I mean, these are as good if not better than, than a lot of the lenses you see today just without the, the auto focus. And from a Nikon perspective, the, um, The Nikon mount hasn't really changed since the fifties, so you can use the old Nikon lenses on pretty much any modern DSLR Nikon.
Jason Heaton So like you could, so you could go out and buy like a used entry level, like I want to say like a D 3000 or D 4200, something like that. Like one of the ones that was five or 600 bucks when it was new. Yeah. You could snap up one of those off of Craigslist for not that much money and then just throw any old Nikon glass on it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, that's, that's gotta be the, that's gotta be the, the move, right?
James Stacey What's cool too is that, um, I'm not sure, you know, which Nikons do and don't do this, but the, we have a D4S and then I've got a DF and both of them have a menu feature called non-CPU lens. And you can actually go into that menu and program in what the, the old lenses that you're putting on the camera that, you know, these, these lenses, new lenses that have autofocus and everything have a CPU connection that when it mates to the camera, it tells the camera what aperture and focal length and all this sort of stuff it is. But if you program that in, all you do is program in the maximum aperture and the focal length and the camera will then, as you're clicking through the aperture ring on the lens manually, the camera knows what each stop is and it will actually, it'll actually allow you to do sort of aperture priority shooting and it will, Also record all that in the metadata for photos. So if you import it into Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever, and you want to read back, okay, I took that photo at, you know, F4 or something like that. It'll, it'll actually detect that and kind of allow you to use these old lenses on modern cameras in a little more, I don't want to say friendly way, but a little more modern way kind of splits the difference, I guess. And so, um, that that's, that's pretty cool. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I think it's a I think it's it's really fun. I like that it's super cost effective because there's not a lot in photography that is. And if you can go out and buy an old Canon Rebel or an old Nikon and not even have to adapt the Nikon. Yeah. And then go to your local store, have them match up a lens, you know, get yourself a fast 50. It's not going to cost that much money. And I think that you could you could cut into like a more interesting level of photography than a camera with its kit lens that at best is going to shoot at 3.5. Like I, you know, I have one of these super Takamars, the Asahi lenses, and it's a, it's a 55 millimeter F2. So you can shoot that really wide open. It has really nice bokeh. And then you have a, I have another one, which is the Helios 58 F2, and it has this really strange swirly bokeh that looks kind of dreamy. So if you go to my Instagram, there's like, I think it's a flowers. Or no, it's in the old glass collection. And there's a handful of shots of flowers that give you an idea of what the bokeh looks like from that lens. And I've seen these for as little as like 25 bucks on Craigslist. And then Amazon carries the adapters. I'm sure that someone who's deeper into this could tell you which adapter, like if one adapter is legitimately better than another. I don't care if the metadata passes back to the camera. So it's really just, is the adapter the right depth? Right. to have the lens function on the sensor. Yeah. And I have one from this company Gobe, G-O-B-E. I'll put it in the show notes. And it was like, I want to say $20. And it works perfectly to mount these M42 screw mounts, which are a nice common lens format that was used, you know, through the seventies and eighties, you know, easily mounted to the E-mount for the Sony. Very cool. So what do you got for us?
James Stacey Um, first one is, uh, something I think you talked about, um, boy, probably a couple of years ago now in one of our earlier episodes, it was the, the series. Uh, I think there was a British Columbia based team of, of divers, um, that produced this series called descending. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, um, outside TV, uh, sort of the video arm of outside magazine. Um, you know, they've, they've done a lot of television productions over the years and they have sort of an internet presence. Uh, outside TV has picked up. descending and is running. Oh, that's great. I don't know if it's going to be all new episodes. Um, and I just sort of dipped into this just before we recorded this. I haven't done a heck of a lot of research on it, but, uh, they're actually running descending as a feature piece in the outside TV app, which you can download for Android or iPhone. And I watched a couple and they've got kind of a series of sort of three and a half to five minute sort of short clips, um, which I didn't recognize. So I'm guessing it's new material since I kind of watched the, the seasons that you gave me from the existing Descending show from a couple of years ago. And it looks like they're going to start producing new content. So that's pretty exciting. And just to kind of recap, you know, I guess if people don't remember us talking about this, Descending was kind of the show that I think we both probably felt was kind of missing. And that is sort of an adventure travel show that revolved around diving and diving in various places around the world.
Jason Heaton Yeah, so people remember the show Departures, which went for many seasons on Outdoor Life Network in Canada. So it would have been maybe the Travel Network or something like that. And that's so that's the guy Scott Wilson is the main guy, like one of the two guys from that show. And he does this. He started this series called Descending, and I had no idea they were doing more of them. I remember having a really hard time even being able to see all of the first season. Yeah. Which I think was eight or 10 episodes. Each had like a feature dive in a location.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton And it was, uh, it was this guy, Scott Wilson and, uh, uh, Ellis Emmett and Andre Dupree was the, this diver that worked with them and they did these. It's a great, it's just a really great show, but I had no idea, like, and even the IMDB still says listed as a 13 part documentary series. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, oh yeah. And it looks like it was originally done by, uh, OLN. So there you go. Yeah.
James Stacey So very cool. Yeah. Something to check out. I mean, I, I, I downloaded the, uh, outside TV features app and, and I'll certainly be checking those out. So yeah, take a look at that.
Jason Heaton Yeah. I'm excited if they're doing more episodes. Cause I really enjoyed the, uh, the original series and I'll see if there's some way to find the original series. And if so, I'll put it in the show notes. Like if I guess there's some of it's on the app, they've, they've cut it up into smaller pieces. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Very cool. We'll check out that app. Yeah. And my second one is a documentary that's on Vimeo. It's called Everest Unmasked. And I've been starting to read more and more about the 1978 first ascent of Everest without oxygen. So this was Reinhold Mesner and Peter Habler. And at the time there was a whole side of the sports medicine community that said that you basically couldn't do Everest without oxygen. It wasn't possible to go that high to be above, at the time they said something like 8,200 meters, uh, you would die and, or, or, or would cease to function well enough to keep yourself alive as maybe even more accurate. And so in 1978, Messner and Habler, neither of whom had ever climbed Everest, uh, made it a point of doing it without oxygen and, uh, and they were successful. And it's essentially the four minute mile. of that, of the, of the mountaineering world at the time. And, uh, and it's a really fantastic story and both Messner and Habler seem like very like interesting guys. Messner's like hyper philosophical. He thinks that it's, you shouldn't be climbing Everest if you have to do it with oxygen. Uh, and that there's not, there's not that he's like, there's not an exploring aspect left to this mountain. It's about climbing the mountain. And if you're climbing it, like under a dishonest, uh, function, then like, what are you doing? And then He took it a step further in 1980. He went back and did it from the Northern side, which I believe is the Tibetan side on an unclaimed route alone with no oxygen. Incredible. Superhuman. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The two guys are at the absolute top of their game and they did something that everybody basically said couldn't be done. And the documentary is really good and you can watch it for free on Daily Motion. I'll put the link in there. And then of course it's 1978 is when they did this in May 1978 and They're both wearing Rolex Oysterquartz, which was just months old at that point. And, you know, they're in bright blue Fila, like fantastic Italian snow gear. Yeah, yeah. With Guerrera glasses, goggles. Oh, exactly. Yeah. It's like, it's so stylish. Great hair. And then the Oysterquartz, it's, I mean, it was a really sweet spot for mountaineering. And I highly recommend checking this documentary out. So that'll be in the show notes. You got one more for us?
James Stacey Yeah, I do. This came via one of our favorite outlets, Adventure Journal. It was a sort of pointed to a video that's on Vimeo as well called Sea Trekking. And it's I think it's about four or five minutes long and it's kind of a novel approach to travel. And it's sort of it's a couple of guys that they travel coastlines kind of in and out of the water so they're wearing wetsuits and they have free diving fins and a mask and then they use sort of you know waterproof sort of dry bag style backpacks to carry all their gear and they're sort of swimming along coastlines and camping on coastlines and they call this sea trekking and it's a very sort of moody stylistic video so there isn't a lot of sort of information given about where they are what they're doing or how they're doing it But it's beautiful to watch and there's some great sort of underwater footage as well as sort of topside, beachy, sort of rugged coastline footage, really well filmed. And I just thought it was interesting because it's a very different sort of format of travel than, you know, hiking or bicycling or ski touring or something like that, because these guys are sort of doing it in the water, you know, not even on a paddleboard or surfboard or anything. kind of swimming along coastlines and sort of camping on the beach. That's wild. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty cool. So, um, again, came, came through a adventure journal, but the videos on Vimeo and it's called a sea trekking. Very, very cool. Yeah. So that pretty much wraps it up as always. Thanks so much for listening. Hit the show notes for more details. You can follow us on Instagram. I'm at Jason Heaton. James is at J E Stacey and do follow the show at the Grenado if you're not already. If you have any questions for us, please write to TheGreyNado at gmail.com and be sure to subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts. Music Throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the Free Music Archive.
Jason Heaton And we leave you with this quote from the late Anthony Bourdain. Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world, you change things slightly. You leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life and travels leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks, on your body or on your heart, are beautiful.