Kakaw! Kakaw! Tookie Tookie!

"Ah Wayne? I think we have established that 'kakaw kakaw' and 'tookie, tookie' don't work!"

I apologise profusely but unashamedly for the title. I do tend to get obsessed with random things and over my life they seem to have built up somewhat. The above was all I could think about. It is a line from the comedy movie Evolution which I found to be hilarious at one time (who doesn't want to see the guy from the X Files blow up a bunch of nasty aliens with anti-dandruff shampoo?)

It is however partially relevant to this post. We have reached Argentina on the South America trip. The first thing we did upon arriving in Buenos Aries (after we ate a 380g steak each, accompanied by red wine and then slept) is take off to the northern border with Brazil to visit Iguazu Falls. These falls are spectacular and are in the rainforest - complete with tapirs, jaguars and toucans.

And what did we happen to see within the first ten minutes of being there? A toucan, whoo! They are pretty awesome birds - vivid and enormous beaks.

The unfortunate side to this story is that we were kind of rushed. Now, you regular readers would know of my rule of not photographing things that move because it's too hard. That's actually kind of a lie. If it was up to me, I would have chased that thing all morning. The reason I tell myself not to is because it is inevitable that I become depressed.

We were on a guided tour and we had to catch a train on time, so I couldn't spend too long chasing it. I didn't exactly sneak up either so what happened? The inevitable - it flew away. Several times. Plus I was having to continually adjust my settings - auto was too bright but for the life of me I could not run, watch the toucan and adjust the settings in time.

In the end I managed to snap proof that we saw a toucan, but not much more. The photos are grainy because they were irreparably dark. Insert sad, disappointed face. Lifetime opportunity of photographing a toucan in the wild = missed. At least I have proof we actually saw one!

Toucan at Iguazu. Canon EOS 50D, f/10, 1/1250 shutter, ISO 500, 200mm. Cropped and edited in Photoshop. The high ISO would not have helped the grainyness, and I should have lowered the aperture I'd say. You live and learn.

Canon EOS 50D f/10, 1/800 shutter, ISO 500, 200mm. Ahh Why on earth did you adjust the shutter??? 

Clearly I need some strong lessons in Exposure. Something to be rectified in 2014...