The trip begins very shortly. This last week I´ve been non stop with an endless to-do list. The most difficult has been to meet everybody but I´ve nearly achieved that and I´m happy about it.

My sister has been the person that I´ve spent more time with, we decided to go for a trip to spend time together so we went skiing to Baqueira, that is the Spanish ski resort that has better snow quality and that’s where we went.

During the trip, totally excited, I tried to explain the feeling you have when skiing in virgin snow, especially in powder, I was not very sure if I made Ana understood what I meant… In summary  for me it is the smoothest feeling I could think of, something like being over a spongy cloud. In one of our funny conversations we came to the conclusion that caressing a cat was very smooth also even though you only use your hand. On the way back Ana understood the explanation by herself, we had incredible luck, it snowed a lot and the snow was perfect powder, here are some pictures that explain this better than me.

After four days of snow, this is what we saw when waking up.

Me snowboarding out of piste.

Ana as photographer from the lift. I love the pictures.

This slope didn´t have a lift, you had to walk 200 meters by the road.

Ana skiing as she liks. faaaaaaast.

OK, i confess. I falled after the turn.

Down Luis Arias double back diamond piste.

Last day and the last time we ski, the lifts were already stopped, nobody on the slopes any more. The last day has always to be taken advantage of, plus normally there’s not that much snow. On the left Ana, on the right Laura, both speeding at my request. They were my perfect models!!

In the last post I promised some pictures, I´ll start with a picture from the Tate Modern Gallery in London, it´s about an exhibitiion I loved. The very high ceiling of the gallery was covered in metal material, the background had half a yellow circle and they created fog, with me in the picture, this is the blur result.

Al took the picture.

The second are pictures of the Calatrava bridge just opened in Dublin. In fact it is as beautiful as any other from Calatrava, surprisingly the colour is white, hehe.

A curious thing is that the bridge was constructed in Holland and it was brought to the Liffy river by boat, where it was set up.

It´s located in the renewed docklands area, surrounded by modern buildings, all together looks amazing.  It´s not far from the harbour entrance to the city. Here the plan was to build two skyscrapers on the banks of the river, one was going to be the U2 building designed by Foster with a recording studio on top, the other was going to be by Zaha Hadid, but seems that the plan is stopped now, what a pity.

I was taking pictures for a while so the night came.

I took this picture with my cell phone a day they where testing the bridge. ¡it turns to let the boats go through!

This  is simply a picture I felt like publishing here. I love this corner with the sticks moving the lights at night.

To finish, a little summary about what I’ve been preparing, there are still 1000 things to do, but these are the important ones, enough to depart:

• Backpack, without doubt the bag I´ve thought about more in all my life.
• Renew my Spanish ID. It was falling apart  and I afraid I would have problems at the borders, recently in an airport I sweated to be allowed Through.
• International driving license, needed to drive outside of the EU. Getting it is just paperwork, showing the normal driving license and paying 9.49. It is a little book with the driving license in several languages

• Vaccinations. I´ve got vaccinated for typhoid as it  had expired, apart from this I haven´t needed anything else, I already have the A and B hepatitis and the tetanus. I also have the meningitis from a trip I did to India, good to have it for food in dodgy conditions.
• Glasses. Review them to be sure I´ll be fine during the trip.
• Dentist. Routine review that may have saved my trip!!!! My dentist found a deep cavity, he was pretty sure it would have given me issues on the trip. I´m happy to have gone to the dentist, I don´t really like the idea of being in an Uzbequistan village with an inflamed mouth like a fugu fish while a local dentist pulls the tooth out with a rusty pliers.
• Prepare money, cards and other stuff.
• Prepare my kitesurf, whitewhater kayak and skiing equipment. It´s possible that some of my friends will visit during the trip to do our sports in special locations so I needed to leave all prepared
• Laptop, I´ve bought a small 12” to be able to write and prepare the pictures for the blog. An Asus EEE1012.
• First aid kit. It even scares me to see so many medicines that i´ve never used.
• MY FIRST VISA STAMP! I show you a picture of the Syrian visa, really happy to have the first sticker.

And I keep doing things every day non stop.

I have a little surprise for my next entry.

See you soon

Fernando