The expedition left on the 1st. january 2004, from the small town of Puerto López, Meta (geographic center of Colombia). The first big challenge he faced: humidity. With average temperatures of 35ºC during the day, and 7ºC at dawn, the logical solution, although uncomfortable, was to keep the JVC cameras inside the raincoat along with a silica bag almost permanently. This seemed to work, although the constant appearance of the "head cleansing" signal ended up becoming a real headache. On the other hand, although the image quality is surprising, the waiting time for them to start recording (3 to 5 seconds) is eternal, especially when you have a crocodile in front of the camera.
The dust and roughness of the road proved deadly for the Sony Handycam DCR-PC 105 Mini DV. In less than a week the drag cart of the tape had already broken at three; at one, the liquid crystal display broke and made it impossible to access the menu. Finally, two of them died when one of the vans ended up submerged in a river after leaving a road in Venezuela, and the other, which despite the ailments ended with us the journey, disappeared along with much of the equipment, victim of a robbery upon our arrival home.
The low temperatures in the Strait of Magellan, which sometimes reached -60 ºF, the permanent humidity and the high salinity of the wind in the Pacific Ocean, were the hardest test for the two Sony DSR PD 170, and the solution ended up being the same as in the rivers, plus a constant and permanent cleaning. The tragic end of these had nothing to do with their operation, since one died of "cardiac arrest" when we followed a pod of dolphins and a wave soaked it; despite efforts to save her, the seawater proved fatal.
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