Just Imagine...

Sat 14 Jan 2012, 21:01 GMT

Photo update: Vancouver and Whistler

It's been almost exactly three years ago since I last posted photos from my travels online. Real life happened not too long after that, preceded by a rather devastating computer crash. I had backed up all my original photos, but not the results of editing, so that was quite a bit of work lost. The combination proved to be rather insurmountable, and photo editing languished near the bottom of my list of priorities for quite a while. I posted some photos of the fantasy fair and castlefest in the meantime, and worked on photos of various weddings I attended, but didn't have any routine anymore.

For the last four months, I've been slowly building up a photo editing routine again. I still lack speed, but at this point I've quietly brought online three batches of photos, and now have the confidence that I have enough momentum to just continue to chip away at this huge mountain of photo material. So, for your viewing pleasure, I present the photos of the flight from Arequipa to Puno (from my 2008 RTW trip; a small first step to recreating what was lost in the crash), Vancouver and Whistler. I've also updated the first Canada tripreport to include those photos in context. (I still have to post my tripreport from the last three weeks in Canada, which I hope to do sometime soon, too.)

My backlog at this point consists of the following: Canada 2011 (~4000 photos to go), Patagonia 2011 (~3300 photos), Sevilla & Granada 2010/2011 (~750 photos), Scotland 2010 (~1500 photos), RTW 2008 (~9500 photos to go), Norway 2007 (~3200 photos) and various shorter trips with at most a few hundreds photos each (from 2006 onward: Dublin, Germany, London, San Francisco and Yosemite, Belfast, London again, Stockholm, Sevilla, Germany again and various trips throughout the Netherlands, chiefly to the Japanese Garden in The Hague). My general plan is to switch my editing between batches of the most recent trip (Canada) and whichever random trip from the past strikes my fancy, but if there's anything from that past you'd particularly like to see, I'm willing to entertain requests.

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Thu 1 Dec 2011, 20:55 GMT

Thanksgiving 2011 at the American Book Center: the spoils

Last week was Thanksgiving, and so I once more made my way to the ABC to pick up a few books. "A few" actually is the correct description this time around, as a consistently short commute has meant little reading time over the last year, and resulted in to read piles which stubbornly refuse to shrink. Still, reporting of the haul is tradition (2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005), so here's what I brought home this year:

* Iain M. Banks - Surface Detail. Another Culture novel. The previous one, Matter, left little impression, but I did enjoy reading it (and on the whole it was way better than The Algebraist), so I guess getting the new one was a no-brainer.
* Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer. The sequel to last year's purchase, Stone Spring. The pre-historic fantasy aspects of that one were once again pretty bad, but still it had enough going for it overall that I'm willing to sit out this series and see where he's taking it. One thing you can't do with Baxter is accuse him of thinking on a small scale! :)
* Ernest Cline - Ready Player One. The only "gamble" of the year, and not really something I can justifiably classify as such, because even though this is an unknown author, I've seen plenty of marketing about the book already, and have a good idea of what to expect. We'll have to see what kind of an effect that'll have on my enjoyment of the book...
* Greg Egan - The Clockwork Rocket. This year's only hardcover, which is likely to be one of those books where he goes off the deep-end of physics again; but time time in the form of a series! (At least, this is "book one", so there'll be at least one sequel.) Looking forward to see how he's handling those nowadays.
* Charles Stross - The Fuller Memorandum. I've never been that big a fan of the Laundry books, but still, picking up new Stross is a no-brainer (now that it's out in paperback).
* John Twelve Hawks - The Golden City. Finally out in paperback. (Is it just me, or did that take forever??) Not having high hopes for this, but want to at least see how it ends.
* Connie Willis - All Clear. The second part of this year's Hugo winner, finally out in the same trade paperback edition as I bought the first part in last year. I'm already halfway through it; it started off a bit annoyingly, but it's slowly dragging me under again.
* Connie Willis - Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. Apparently the time travelling historians from Blackout/All Clear featured in many previous novels. I'd been eyeing them in Canada and reluctantly left them behind, but now seeing these two at the ABC, it was a rather obvious choice to pick them up. I do hope all of these novels can safely be read out of order, though!

So yeah, that's the pitiful total this year: 9 books. I didn't even get a single shiny ABC bag, as I bought them in two parts (at the two different stores), too. Still, on the positive side, I managed to avoid buying any stupid B-format books (other than Banks, who has always been published in that format, which I don't mind). Was tempted by Gibson's Zero History, but am going to wait and see if his US publisher might still release a mass market paperback in regular A-format, so that it'll fit on the shelf next to Pattern Recognition and Spook Country.

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Tue 26 Jul 2011, 07:22 GMT

Tripreport: 2011-07-14 - 2011-07-25: The whales of Vancouver Island

For now, only the ferries between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay are experimenting with providing WiFi, and so as we're leaving Vancouver Island today, taking the ferry from Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay, I have nothing to do on this laptop but to try and get myself in the writing mood, and tell you all about this rather large piece of land which floats just off the west coast of Canada, going by the name of Vancouver Island. We drove to the ferry with WiFi from Chilliwack, made an uneventful crossing (passing unimpeded through US waters), and on the other side drove for a little bit until we arrived in Victoria, Vancouver Island's largest city. As budget accommodation of reasonable quality is extremely scarce in Victoria (there's one okay-sounding hostel which was full; the remaining options being soulless motels), we'd opted to book a slightly more luxurious hotel. We rather failed in the "slightly more" department, in that our room ended up being an apartment larger than a floor in our house, containing not only a full-fledged kitchen and king-sized bed, but also two bathrooms (both with bath), and two fake fireplaces. We totally failed in taking pictures, so you'll just have to take my word that it was a little extravagant, and would have been even for people not accustomed to hostel-type accommodation. :)

Anyway, we went out into Victoria, having dinner at a very nice and quirky restaurant we'd found by searching online for vegetarian-friendly places, and then started wandering around town. I'd seen some signs outside the restaurant about a busker festival, and had commented that we should find out when this'd be, as it sounded worthwhile seeing. Turns out that it'd start the very next day, and Victoria's local busker population was taking an early start by just doing a lot of unscheduled busking. We wandered by the water front, marveling at the garishly lit up monstrosity of a building on the other side of the harbour, and listening to the musicians. One who stood out particularly on this first evening would turn out to be our absolute favorite: "One man band" Dave Harris, playing an old-timey guitar, harmonica and drums all at the same time (playing the drums with his feet). For me it was his warm and quirky smile as he eyed the passersby which first drew my attention, for my girlfriend the sound of the guitar (particularly on the more bluesy songs), but we both ended up liking him quite a bit, buying two of his CDs over the course of the next week.

We started our first full day in Victoria with eggs benedict at an old bakery recommended by the lonely planet (very good indeed), and then wandered around town, browsing shops and just getting a feel for the place. I grew to like Victoria even more than I already did after the first evening of wandering around the waterfront, as there was an awesome bookstore (I bought just a few new books, being very good with not stocking up on too many *nods earnestly*), and lots of generally nice and quirky places. We also found a boardgame store on this day, although it was already closed by the time we got there.

So we went back the next day: Interactivity Games. My experience with stores dedicated to serious strategy boardgames is still pretty limited (mostly because there's such a great one in Leiden that I don't really need to go out of my way to search for others), but the depth of the collection found in this place was pretty awesome. They had several games which I've been wanting to buy for a long time now, but alas, the boxes were all too large to seriously consider getting them. Instead we just got a small 2-player game (The Rivals for Catan; a cardgame loosely based on the famous Settlers of Catan, if with a quite different feel to it) to give us a bit of variety with playing boardgames from the one we'd brought with us (Glen More). Moreover, we inquired about the boardgame playing days being organized at this place, learning that they'd hold one the very next day, and we'd be welcome to join. \o/

From here we headed out into the more residential are of Victoria, where the "Moss Street Paint-in" was happening: A hundred-odd local artists (mostly painters), who for one day all left their studios and galleries, packing up the better part of it to set up shop on this long residential street (on which a local art museum was also based). We lazily strolled past the many stands, examining the paintings on display and seeing the artists at work on their next paintings. Most of the art on display wasn't really our cup of tea; too generic, too commercial or just with subjects which didn't speak to us, but at least a few artists really got us excited, so it was a worthwhile activity for the day. We ended up at ocean front on the far end of Moss Street, and sat by the waterside for a while, admiring the pretty lighthouse on a nearby island, and awesome blue clouds (complete with rain streaks) rolling in. (We escaped the rainclouds by hopping into a bus back to downtown before we could get wet.)

The following day was a completely lazy one, puttering around our apartment, and in the evening we headed out to play many new and interesting boardgames (most of which I'd heard of, and had wanted to try for quite a while now) with a rather good group of people. We managed to play six games in five and a half hours, which is rather unheard of with our regular boardgame group (even if four of those six games were light card-based games).

To offset our laziness of the previous day, we started out very active on the subsequent day, heading straight into the harbour to book a whale-watching trip. We lucked out with there being space left on the boat leaving 20 minutes later, and so were swiftly whisked off to get suited up in rather bulky bright red life-/wet-suits. ('Necessary', as the trip we went on was on a small 12-person zodiac, zipping across the waves at high speed.) Waves were minimal, and although the wind was very brisk while we were racing along at top-speed, the overall experience was very good. After paying a visit to the local seal colony and bald eagle, we made a beeline straight for Henry Island, where one of the pods of resident Orcas had been spotted. The orcas were very close to the coast, and we got a decent view of them, but it was when they headed into open water that the experience got really awesome. Regulations state that boats must stay 200 meters away from orcas at all time, but it's even more important not to run your engine when close to orcas (so if they get too close, you can't get away from them), and there was a huge tanker passing behind us, which we had to keep away from. Thus, when the pod of orcas split up at that point, our little zodiac had nowhere to go, and we could watch the orcas from much closer than most people get to. As it was a nice and sunny day, and salmon was (presumably) plentiful, the orcas were in a rather happy mood. We not only got to see them spraying and swim close to the surface (where you only really see their big dorsal fins, and the white spots near the eyes), but also got to see a few of them breaching (jumping (most of the way) out of the water and splashing back in, just for the pure joy of it), as well as one which came up with its snout in order to get a good view around above water ("spyhopping"), and one which was just rolling around lazily. All in all, it was a rather magical experience, which I enjoyed more than I'd expected; definitely much more exciting than the whale-watching trip I'd taken on a big boat in New Zealand.

After a nice dinner at a Mexican restaurant, we once more ended up at the harbour front, watching some of the scheduled busking acts (which seemed to comprise almost solely of funny stage-banter accompanied by a minor bit of juggling, rather than of music), but eventually once more drifting back to Dave Harris, where we spent a very nice half hour just sitting there, soaking up his music and good humor.

The following day was spent on a daytrip to the Victoria Butterfly Gardens; a big hothouse filled with big and bright tropical butterflies, flitting from flower to flower, chased by hordes of camera touting tourists. Trying to take good photos of the butterflies was a surprising amount of fun; some species eluded me forever, but I did manage to get more-or-less decent shots of a vast variety of the butterflies there. We also made the acquaintance of a couple of insanely brightly colored flamingos (far redder then the flamingos I saw in the wild in Argentina), various parrots and parakeets, some weird walking birds (I haven't yet been able to find out what they were), a couple of tortoises and a turtle, etc. The humidity was pretty bad, with big clouds of fog being sprayed into the air near constantly (at times I just had to duck out into the shop to cool down a bit; I really appreciated the hot air blower they provided at the exit, specifically for the purpose of blowing dry your camera lens and preventing condensation), but overall the place was a very nice destination to just be out of town at for a while.

On our final day in Victoria I wandered over to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, rumoured to house the largest collection of Japanese Woodblock prints in Canada. Unfortunately very little of this collection was on display, and what was there was for an exhibition titled "War and Disaster in Japanese Prints". This was certainly an interesting exhibition, with a theme I hadn't really encountered before - but ultimately only a few of the prints really spoke to me, and it just didn't have the same appeal as landscape prints do.

Leaving Victoria behind, we embarked upon a long drive along the coast, before heading inland. The scenery along the way was quite pretty at times, particularly on the drive inland. We stopped (with some difficulty, as parking just wasn't provided for all the interested tourist hordes) by MacMillan Provincial Park to have a look at Cathedral Cove, a particularly nice example of the abundance of vegetation an old growth forest provides. A significant number of trees here had been uprooted in a huge storm in 1997, but for a forest like this, that's only good, as decaying trees provide a perfect starting spot for new trees (as the bark is much richer in nutrients than the ground). After walking around here for about an hour an a half, we drove on to our destination for the night, Ucluelet. The town of Ucluelet itself was a rather dismal place, spread out over far too much ground, with dinner options being either horribly expensive, closed, or fast food.

Our impression of the neighbourhood improved markedly the next day though, as we visited the Tofino Botanical Garden, a wonderfully irreverent botanical garden. No neat paths leading through a carefully arranged selection of representative vegetation, all approved by some institute of higher learning, but instead near random attempts to see what would and wouldn't grow in this climate, with the visitor guided around while reading the quirky entries in a folder provided to you at the entrance. We particularly loved the climb through the secret garden (our entry breaking the rule against no unsupervised adults being allowed in there), as well as the insane trees growing in all directions (except for straight up) which could be found along the mudflats and in the old growth forest. In between we sat at the cafe, drinking tea and eyeing the ducks. When we finally (and reluctantly) managed to leave the botanical garden behind, we made a quick loop through Tofino itself (less dismal than Ucluelet, but still not much), before deciding to go and see what hiking was like in the Pacific Rim National Park. This turned out to be a genius idea, as the hiking - Schooner Cove Trail - was absolutely stellar. A boardwalk wound its way up and down through an insanely dense old-growth forest to humble any other old-growth forest (an old-growth forest, for those who're not familiar with the term, is one in which multiple generations of trees have grown completely undisturbed, and each tree supports an entire ecosystem). I went just a little insane with trying to take photos to do justice to the denseness of the vegetation here, to the hugeness of the giant old towering trees, to the lushness of the ferns and the moss. To top it all off, the trail ended up at the far end of long beach, where the tide had just started coming in, a pretty island just off-shore was looking very photogenic, and I spotted a big crab claw, perfect except for not being attached to a crab (only by reminding me of this being a national park ("leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories") did my girlfriend prevent me from trying to bring it), as well as a huge sea star (30cm across at least).

The next day, good things were heralded right from the start, as we saw a bald eagle fly by right behind our hostel. The chosen hike for the day was the Wild Pacific Trail, which basically winds it way right around Ucluelet. Early on the hike felt a bit disappointing, with the forest paling in comparison to that we'd seen at Schooner Cove, and the Pacific only beating against the rocky coastline in a very mild manner. But at one of the numerous viewpoints along this trail, our impression of it all changed rather drastically, as a fellow hiker who happened to be at the viewpoint at the same time exclaimed "look, whale spray", and pointed to the far-off distance, where with some squinting and a good zoom lens, we could indeed make out a whale repeatedly surfacing and spraying water into the air. And then we spotted a second whale, right in front of our noses, directly off the coast, maybe 50 meters away from us. This turned out to be a (rather small) grey whale, apparently having found something most interesting right near the coast, as it stayed in position for a long time, coming up and going down several times. We learned to recognize the rhythm of its movements - surfacing 4-5 times where we'd just see the little stump which was its dorsal fin, and then going down, letting its tail fin clear the waters for the classic whale picture. I suspect that the sea was also quite undeep where this whale was, as at one point the whale's tail came up out of the waters just by itself, as if it was inquisitively nosing about on the bottom. Eventually the whale headed on, and so did we, though a short while later, we spotted another whale (or maybe the same one as the first one we'd spotted far off in the distance) from one of the next viewpoints. More bald eagles were also spotted, though all of these just sat boringly on their perches, overlooking the ocean.
As we returned to the hostel, we had our next wildlife encounter, surprising a deer which was nibbling on the plants along the edges of the road leading up to the hostel. I'd put my camera away at this point, but my girlfriend still had hers handy, and got to take many gorgeous photos from way up close.

In the late afternoon, I also went out by myself, back to the Pacific Rim National Park, there to hike the South Beach trail, starting at the other edge of Long Beach from where we'd been before and leading to South Beach, where the waves from the Pacific reportedly crash into shore a bit more spectacularly; but alas, not while I was there. Still, it was good to stretch my legs a bit more and see some more decent scenery, so I won't complain too much. :)

On our last full day on Vancouver Island, we drove inland again, crossing Vancouver Island once more. We stopped for lunch at Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park, where we hiked to the lower and upper falls, marveling at the color of the river and the gorgeous canyon it had shaped. The waterfalls were pretty impressive, too. We drove on to Miracle Beach, which our lonely planet had identified as being good for hiking, but that turned out to be a complete fabrication - no hiking was to be found - only beach (which was bizarre to Dutch sensibilities, as right behind the sea, the snowy mountains of the mainland rose us). So we ended up heading south again, searching for accommodation, which we eventually found in Courtenay, a pretty decent town with a nice river to amble along, and some good restaurants to eat at.

And so today we drove south from there, on to Nanaimo where we arrived just in time to secure ourselves places on the ferry back to Vancouver. We'll spend a few days here, and then head east to Toronto and Montreal.

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Thu 21 Jul 2011, 07:39 GMT

Tripreport: 2011-06-24 - 2011-07-13: Two and a half weeks in the Canadian Rockies

As I start writing this tripreport, I'm sitting out the second power failure in a week here in Banff. (And as I end writing it, I'm not that far away anymore from the end of my time on the west coast; oops, writing lag!) For a while I sat out on the patio reading my book and being eaten alive by mosquitoes (until storm winds came rolling in), but now the light's faded away too much, so I'm holed up here in our room with my laptop and some fudge, making backups of today's photos, and considering what all it'll be that I want to ramble on about.

When I left off writing about Kelowna, a chilly wind had just started blowing in. The following morning, that wind brought actual rain with it, and although for a while there it looked as if we could outrun it, halfway up the Okanagan Valley it caught up with us for real, and stayed with us for effectively the rest of the day. We drove through Mt. Revelstoke National Park, Glacier National Park and Yoho National Park, with rain our constant companion, to eventually arrive in Banff National Park. The first thing you notice upon driving into Banff National Park from the west is immediate improvement of the highway (two lanes of smooth asphalt each way, with broad shoulders) leading straight through it. The second thing is that the entire highway is fenced off to prevent wildlife from coming onto the road (I saw zero roadkill during my entire time in Banff), and quite a few beautifully landscaped over- and underpasses (with more under construction) purely to allow the wildlife unobstructed travel.

We checked into the YHA, and discovered that the WiFi was seriously crappy, with all but a handful of ports blocked; I had to do port forwarding on my server to be able to access email at all. (On the positive side, four days after filling in a rather negative comment card about this, the WiFi went down for a day, and came back up with all ports open.)

After enjoying our free pancake breakfast and observing the Columbian ground squirrels standing up tall on the meadow that our room was looking out on, the next day consisted mostly of exploring town (we had our first wildlife spotting just by walking into town; a Mule Deer was nibbling on the roadside vegetation). In town we hiked along the river to Bowen Falls (barely worth calling a waterfall; it's just the river dropping a few meters), and then hiked the Spray Creek loop (which had a few nice parts, but mostly led through uninteresting forest), stopping for a few minutes to observe the rock climbers on the steep cliff face next to the river. We ended up back in town next to the monstrosity that is the Banff Springs hotel, where we sat for a bit to observe the ground squirrels (and people ignoring the "don't feed the wildlife" rules of this national park; judging by how tame these particular ground squirrels were, that was a lost cause anyway).

A rest and research day later (doing the research to find some acceptable accommodation in Jasper, which was not an easy task), we went off to one of the major tourist destinations in Banff National Park: Lake Louise, a short 45 minute drive north of Banff. This wannabe-Tekapo-colored lake can look very pretty indeed, and has some truly excellent hiking in the vicinity. After buying sandwiches in "town" (a few kilometers away from the lake) and lucking out with finding a parking spot swiftly (the parking area here is far too small to deal with peak times during high season), we spent just a little bit of time at the lakeshore to snap the perfect postcard shot, and then set out hiking along that lakeshore. We sat down at the far end of the lake (which is tiny compared to Lake Tekapo; only 2km or so) to try to eat our sandwiches without gagging (worst sandwiches evar! Stay away from the Lake Louise bakery if you're in the neighbourhood), being amused by the Least Chipmunks scampering about between the rocks, and exclaiming to each other how perfect the sandy beach at the end of the lake looked. As we hiked on toward the Plain of Six Glaciers, our entertainment program was made up of Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels, overhanging cliffs swarming with rock climbers, more Least Chipmunks, gorgeous views back toward the lake and ahead to the snow-covered mountains, and large snowfields which we had to slip and slide over to get to where the path continued. Eventually we reached the tea house which was at the far end of this trek, and sat down on the balcony with a cup of maple tea (which tasted pretty decently) to enjoy the view for a bit. After the tea house we split up, to each walk at our own pace for a bit. I pushed on to the Plain of Six Glaciers lookout, for a view into Abbot Pass (a rather treachery snowfield slope, which didn't look all that special, actually), and then headed back, taking a different route up via Mirror Lake rather than going down back to Lake Louise. A bit after the tea house I spotted a large mammal quickly scampering off the path. I wasn't fast enough to take photos of it, nor of the one which followed, but half an hour later I reached a very narrow section of the path on a steep cliff face, and was lucky enough to 'trap' one of the animals on here (it could only stay on the path, walking out in front of me), which allowed me to take some photos. It turned out to be a Hoary Marmot; soon to be a very common sight, but for now still miraculously special. After a rather scary crossing of a stream tumbling down a 30 degree slope (all meltwater from the snowfield just above it), the new path I was taking mellowed out and the rocky slope turned into a dark forest. Another marmot, this one completely unafraid, took some time posing for me. I tried taking a detour from the path to Lake Agnes, but a steep slope covered by a far too slippery mass of ice canceled this plan halfway through. Instead I pushed on to Mirror Lake, which was green and round and pretty, but at this time of the day cast in shadow, and so only moderately photogenic. From here I switchbacked down the mountain, and ended up at the parking area - now mostly deserted - where my girlfriend had arrived a few minutes earlier.
We dined at the Chateau on the edge of the lake (another monstrosity of a hotel), and drove back to Banff in the twilight (spotting an Elk just behind the fence along the highway, but being good and not stopping).

The next day we stayed in Banff town, taking the bus to Sulphur Mountain, one of the nearby mountains which towers over the village. A far too expensive gondola brings you close to the top of this mountain, where you can munch on a horrible sandwich in the cafeteria (not recommended; this really caused us to learn our lesson and bring our own lunch) and unsuccessfully try to stay away from whining children and other annoying tourists on the boardwalk to Sanson Peak. We did this, and (despite the decent views of the surrounding mountains) found the whole experience rather unpleasant. What ended up making the trip worthwhile though, was the unmarked South East Ridge Trail on the other side of the gondola station, leading to the real summit of Sulphur Mountain. This was blessedly free of people, and led through much prettier scenery, with bright green trees set amongst the rocky slopes, and colorful flowers. Just before returning to the gondola, we were also once more entertained by a Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel.

Believing the promises of a sunny day (not yet knowing how completely unreliable weather predictions in the Rockies would be), we set out the following day on the road to Lake Louise, and just before getting there took the turnoff to Moraine Lake. We suffered rain for most of the drive, but suffered only a light drizzle as we hiked along the shore line of this new lake, which - it must be admitted - was a bit more successful than Lake Louise at attaining Tekapoesque colors. The rain meant that we only did a very short bit of hiking (to the end of the lake and back again), but despite that I retained quite a positive impression, especially of the far end of the lake, where a very pretty stream cascades into it. Many slow shutterspeed photo attempts were made (some might even have resulted in something worth showing you all here in an unspecified number of mon^H^H^Hyears). :)
Miraculously enough, some blue sky appeared in the sky by the time we'd walked back to the car, and so we decided to make our way back to Banff lazily, taking the Bow Valley Parkway, which runs parallel to the regular highway, but is unfenced, and has a reputation of having lots of wildlife show up by the side of the road. Constant signs warning us of "wildlife on road" were indeed our companion on this drive, but it was only near the very end of it that we actually saw one of the (soon to be quite familiar) traffic jams which announces an actual wildlife sighting: a huge Elk placidly grazing right beside the road. We were good little tourists and stayed in our car, but did roll down the window to take just a few pictures. :) (Five minutes later, as we rejoined the regular highway, we also spotted a Bighorn Sheep, grazing the grass right along the underpass below this highway.)

Another rest and research day later (on which we decided to skip out on going to Calgary due to the complete lack of decent budget accommodation, instead opting to stay in Banff for another week, and on which we found a wonderful vegetarian restaurant), we made our way to Lake Minnewanka, the biggest of Banff's big glacier-fed lakes, and closest to Banff town. The mix of people at this lake was decidedly different in a not-quite definable way. My best guess is that they were mostly 'locals', grown indifferent to most of the beauty surrounding them, and now just using it as a place to picnic and barbecue. We spent some time admiring this new lake and climbing over the rocks along the shore, before hiking through the beautiful forest alongside this lake for quite a while. For most of the hike our most exciting wildlife sighting was a couple of young Bighorn Sheep with small horns, far off in the distance on the opposite shore of an inlet to the lake, but on the way back we encountered another Bighorn Sheep - this one with huge horns - determinedly walking the path right toward us. Needless to say, we backed into the forest and gave it right of way.

A red squirrel was the newest addition to wildlife sightings as I climbed up the trail to Castle Mountain on the subsequent day. We'd first spotted Castle Mountain on our drive to Lake Louise, with my girlfriend exclaiming about how it was a perfect example of the shaping power of glaciers; a perfect bowl with high walls surrounding it, and a U-shaped valley leading away from it. Looking at maps and noting turnoffs off the highway on our subsequent drive to Moraine Lake helped us determine that this was Castle Mountain, and our hiking map for Banff included a likely looking trail up to that bowl. And so off we went, steadily climbing (and climbing, and climbing, and climbing) through rather samey-looking forest, with nothing much in the way of views, and a trail which got muddier by the meter. Eventually the effort was rewarded by the trail leveling out, the forest thinning out, and the bright green color of Tower Lake shining in the distance. I really quite liked this lake, and the many pretty flowers which could be found around it, but after some time spent puttering around here, I pushed on with a short but steep climb to the real gem of this hike, Rockbound Lake. No lake I've ever encountered had a more apt name, for this lake was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of rocks. Making my way through the deep snow to the edge of the rockfield, I then jumped from rock to rock to eventually reach the edge of this deep blue lake, marveling at the ice which was still (in July!) covering about half of its surface. Continuing to skip from rock to rock (now not to make the going easier, but to avoid damaging the fragile vegetation which barely clung on to life here in this gorgeous and desolate landscape), I made my way along the shore of the lake, enjoying the sunshine on my face (getting only a little bit sunburned in the process), admiring the pretty (tiny!) flowers hidden in various crags and other sheltered places and trying to find some vantage points from which my photos could do justice to the majesty of this place. Eventually I made my way to a viewpoint from which I could look back down to Tower Lake and the U-shaped valley leading away from here, getting a gorgeous view of the waterways (and big remaining snowfield) which drained this valley. On the way back down, I spent some more time taking photos of Tower Lake (which had gotten even prettier in the sunshine), and was entertained for a bit by a curious (if shy) Hoary Marmot.

Though the decision to skip out on Calgary turned out to be a good one, the decision to stay much longer in the YHA wasn't quite so good. Our room featured only bunk beds, and very short bunk beds at that (the mattresses were definitely not more than 1 meter 90 long), with slats at the bed ends which completely prevented people with long legs (such as myself) from sticking them out of bed. The contortions I had to put myself through to sleep in these resulted in serious back pain, and so the next day I spent suffering and not doing anything (other than taking the mattress out of the bed and sleeping on the floor for the remaining days). We did on the subsequent day head off to Calgary for a daytrip. Our first stop there, the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, turned out to be little more than a glorified park, ultimately disappointing, except for a couple of pelicans which were sitting in the middle of the Bow River. Next we went bookshopping in Kensington and downtown, visiting a nice little independent bookstore and a used bookstore, buying a few books each, but not finding any big bookstores with an actually worthwhile selection (according to google maps, the closest thing to that would be a big chain store in the suburbs of Calgary). We ended our visit to Calgary at a nice little tea store, where we sat on the backporch - away from the street noise - drinking Lapsang and a smoothie (respectively) and observing the group of people playing mafia (i.e. werewolf with different names for the roles).

A second visit to Moraine Lake took place under the clear blue sky which was our part on the next day (after the first week being mostly cloudy, the weather had now turned around, giving us stupendously gorgeous summer days which would last the rest of the week), with the lake dazzling us and for once maybe outshining even Lake Tekapo itself. ("Maybe", he says loyally. "Plus it's much smaller, and so inferior, really!", he adds desperately.) On this day we went on a longer hike, switchbacking up through the forest on the hill overlooking the lake, before heading deeper into the valley. Next we crossed several snowfields; really not my favorite activity: I feel horribly unsteady when crossing slippery half-melted snow and half-refrozen ice covering huge slopes, especially when the trail over these snowfields has steep ascending or descending parts - makes me wish for hiking sticks. On the positive side, the snow was used by a hoary marmot to cool itself down (?), allowing us to take some neat photos.
Eventually we reached a point from which you can look down upon Eiffel Lake, signaling the destination of this hike. Hardcore hikers could continue to Wenkchemna Pass, and from there on into Yoho National Park, but far too much snow was lingering for this to be a realistic option for us. Instead, I headed back (while my girlfriend lingered a bit), to hike the Larch Valley trail (which had branched off a bit before the snowfields) to the Minnestimma Lakes and the beginning of the trail to Sentinel Pass. I don't know exactly which of the lakes to be found along this track counted as Minnestimma Lakes, but either way, I found the views to be awesome. Sentinel Pass was completely snow-covered (a little later I would spot two people actually coming down from it), the lake at its bottom completely gorgeous, the waterfall leading out from the snowfield here very picturesque, and if I turned around, I had a perfect view of all ten mountain tops which give the Valley of the Ten Peaks their name. On the way back I spotted more marmots (*yawn*) :), and spent some time trying to capture the abundance of colors bestowed upon the landscape by the many alpine flowers. We dined back at the Chateau (this time with a view over the lake, and commensurately higher prices), and as we drove into Banff in the twilight, were amused to see quite a few mule deer nibbling on the hedges throughout town.

To take a break from all the hiking, the following day saw an adventure of a different nature: us on horseback, riding along bow river. I found the experience to be quite survivable (sitting loosely in the saddle, I totally avoided getting any kind of aching muscles), and only had a little bit of trouble getting my horse to stop eating all the yummy snacks it saw alongside the path. Problems occurred whenever the horse in front of me went for a snack, and then had to trot to catch up with the horses further up the line, as that made my horse trot, and me bump up and down: Yowwwchy! Dinner on this day deserves a call-out, as it was a very awesome stone grill and cheese fondue at the Grizzly House, with a rather chatty waiter, and generally great atmosphere.

Another break from hiking happened the next day, as we left Banff National Park to return to the next park over, Yoho National Park, this time with less rain. We drove toward Emerald Lake, stopping shortly at a natural rock bridge for some raging water photos (for values of "some" equal to "75" in my case). Emerald Lake itself is another gorgeous blue lake fed with glacier-water (how many of those do they have around here?? Well, at least one more still...), and after a decent lunch here, we decided to forego hiking around this lake in favour of paddling around it in a canoe. After all, when in Canada...
We never quite figured out how to reliably go straight in a canoe (me in the back paddling on one side of the canoe had far more influence on the direction the canoe was going in than my girlfriend in the front paddling on the other side of the canoe could undo), but we still made our way around the entire lake, zig-zagging all the way. 'twas nice to be out on the water and see the landscape glide by like this, though I suspect the photos taken from the boat won't win any prices; you're rather limited in viewpoint when down near the water like that.
After Emerald Lake we made our way to Takakkaw Falls, where a very cute Columbian Ground Squirrel entertained us before we set out on the short trail to the (very wet) base of the falls. The waterfall itself was very impressive; I'm sure that in a place like Yosemite it would draw endless crowds, but here in the Canadian Rockies it was more of an afterthought: "Oh yeah, and we have a waterfall; y'know, if you're interested in that sort of thing."

And so we arrived to our last day in Banff; we hiked the Hoodoos trail to the Bowen Falls (seen from the other side), but the weather was turning cold and windy, and overall the experience wasn't that good. And so the next day we packed all our stuff back into the car and drove north out of Banff. The day was cloudy and sometimes rainy, but overall not too bad. We stopped shortly at the crowfoot glacier (climate change having removed the lowest toe of the once distinct crowfoot shape which gave it its name), and for a bit longer at Lake Peyto, probably the most frequently photographed of Banff's blue lakes. Despite the overcast sky, the blue color of this lake still managed to impress, especially from the viewpoint a little ways up the trail beyond the regular lookout point, which we were pointed to by two people who'd just come from there. The silt plain leading up to the lake was especially impressive from here, reminding me quite a bit of the similar feature at Lake Pukaki in New Zealand (according to wikipedia, this type of glacial outwash plain is called a "sandur").

Shortly after we left Peyto Lake behind, we also exited Banff National Park, and entered Jasper National Park. The first stop of note in this new national park was also its most impressive, the Athabasca Glacier. The cloudy weather meant that the glacier wasn't at its most picturesque, but this was the first "proper" glacier (a really long tongue of ice flowing down from the mountains; not the tiny ice tongues which we'd seen at Lake Louise) to be seen here (plus accompanied by two other lesser glaciers), and as such very impressive indeed. Probably the feature which impressed me most was an actual creek which could be seen running down on top of the glacier (I really hope my photos of that will manage to do it justice), before (presumably) plunging down a crack in the ice and joining the more regular melt water river underneath the glacier.
Driving on through awesome and desolate landscapes, we eventually descended back into more regular forest environments, where in short order we spotted a black bear, a bighorn sheep, another black bear and a big elk, all by the side of the road (and very well signposted by virtue of the many cars stopped by the side of the road). Where Banff is the national park to go to for pretty lakes, Jasper was turning out to be the place to be for bear sightings.

Unfortunately Jasper is also the place to go to for mosquito sightings by the thousands, as we discovered the following day on a short hike just outside of town to Lower and Upper Mina Lake. The first part of the hike was relatively nice (excepting a near brush with death as a couple of mountainbikers came barreling down on us around a corner on the the steep trail we were on), but after the lake we were continuously beset by mosquitoes (during the middle of the day, and even while it was raining a bit later), making us resort to flapping our shirts around trying to ward them off, and every so often doing a mad dash at full speed to lose the current crop of mosquitoes (giving us a few seconds of peace till a new bunch discovered us).

We found relief from the mosquitoes the next day by going up the tramway halfway to the top of "The Whistlers" (another mountain named after the nickname for the resident marmots; this time we actually heard them whistling, too), and hiking further to the top from there. Gorgeous views of mountains surrounded us on all sides, including a very colorful red mountain set next to a pretty green valley, which kept drawing my lens back toward itself. The wildlife spotting of the day featured White-tailed Ptarmigan, an impressive camouflaged walking bird which I almost stepped on a few times. They can run very swiftly, but mostly seem to make their way around quite unperturbed by anything (especially when there's very few humans around, as was the case on the trail beyond the official summit), and so we spent quite a bit of time lying on the ground, trying to find a view with enough contrast between the birds and their background for them to show up in photos. :)

On our last full day in Jasper, we headed off to Maligne Lake, a 44km drive featuring loads and loads of wildlife. We gave in at the first traffic jam, as the brown black bear spotted there was quite a bit off the road (maybe even the 30 meters away which one should always keep between yourself and a bear), and actually got out of the car to make photos. In between all the blurry shots, I even have some pretty decent ones. Next up (and proudly not stopping for any of them, us at least leaving them in peace), we spotted a huge elk, another black bear, a bighorn sheep, and the traffic jam caused by an animal we didn't actually see ourselves. :)
Finally we arrived at Maligne Lake, where we hiked the short Moose Lake loop trail (fighting off mosquitoes again), and lucked out by being back at the car right as heavy rain started up. We drove a kilometer to the other parking area at the lake, waited out the rain, and then went hiking here, doing the Mary Schaffer loop trail. The sun came out and shone prettily on a mule deer which we saw here, not to mention on the lake (suddenly looking a whole lot prettier).

Two more elk sightings (one that evening on the slope behind our accommodation, one right on the street in broad daylight the following morning) made certain that we'd clued in to the fact about Jasper being the place to be for wildlife, and thus provided our goodbye. A long and mostly uneventful drive out of the Rockies followed; rain accompanied us most of the way west of Mount Robson. I was rather severely shaken by a crazy woman barreling (at far too low speed) from an onramp straight onto the left lane of the highway at Kamloops (causing some shrieking tires as I narrowly avoided crashing into her), but slowly mellowed out again by watching gorgeous mountain scenery unfold as we neared the town of Hope. Misty clouds hung low down the slopes of green mountains, while raindrop-bejeweled trees caught the sunlight. As far as I'm concerned, this is an area we'll have to explore a bit the next time we end up in Canada. We ended the day at a characterless motel in a characterless suburb of Chilliwack, a mere hour and a half from the ferry to Victoria, our next destination. A destination, it should be said, which we're leaving tomorrow, which means that sleeping in late won't be an option, and so I think it'd be wise to stop writing here and head to bed. To those who've made it all the way to the end of this rambling tripreport, I salute you. I hope you've found something of interest here. :)

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Sat 2 Jul 2011, 06:53 GMT

Tripreport: 2011-06-11 - 2011-06-23: British Columbia

As I alluded to in my previous tripreport, I'm once again on the road. The destination this time around is Canada, which I'm gracing with my presence for a mere two months. And for all the bad there is to be found in North American culture from a European perspective (the constant presence of televisions in restaurants, hateful advertising and pedestrian unfriendliness of cities (with their constant car noise and pollution) are the most prevalent examples in my mind right now), I'm glad to be returning to a land where there's places open for breakfast (eggs benedict! american style pancakes!) and drinks at restaurants come in larger sizes than 0.2 liter.

I arrived here with my girlfriend about a week and a half ago. For values of "here" which equal British Columbia, as the more accurate arrival locality of Vancouver has long since been left behind (and by the time I'm posting this, we've also long since moved out of BC and into Alberta). I visited Vancouver for a week back in 2007, and recalled many sights as we emerged into downtown from the skytrain (which now ran all the way from the airport \o/). "Look, that's the drugstore where I bought my umbrella" I pointed out to my girlfriend - and kept repeating perhaps a few times too many as we passed that same Georgia and Granville intersection during subsequent days.

Our hostel was small and friendly; almost B&B quality (breakfast supplies were included, but we had to do the cooking ourselves), and a welcome place to slowly recover from the effects of the nearly 10 hour long flight and 9 hour time difference. After staying awake as long as possible - just wandering around downtown a bit in a daze (Canada Place was still good for a stroll) - we had dinner and finally allowed ourselves to roll into bed. The following day started with an elaborate scrambled eggs breakfast, followed by a stroll down to the West End neighbourhood, where we had second breakfast. (Eggs Benedict!) From here, we headed in the general direction of Stanley Park, enjoying the sunshine. Stanley Park was definitely a lot nicer this time around than it had been in winter 2007; lots of people strolling (or cycling) the path along the seawall, and the few sandy stretches harbouring illusions of being called "beaches" were quite filled as well. After having walked along the water for a while, we headed inland into the park proper, where it was only the occasional bright red fire hydrant which made us realize that yes, this was still a park, and not the untouched redwood forest in the middle of a big national park which the rest of our surroundings made us feel we were in. In other words, we saw some pretty impressively large redwood trees, and had a good time strolling past them, spotting squirrels left, right and center.

After a late lunch at an overpriced restaurant in Stanley Park, we looked at pretty (and not-so pretty) paintings at the "Artist's Circle", gazed in lack-of-understanding at the "but _why_ would anyone want to be like Copenhagen?" woman-in-wetsuit-(and-without-fishtail) statue just off the seawall (dressed in hockey jersey for the Stanley Cup), and then found ourselves reading about and looking at a collection of totem poles. By this time we were thoroughly tired of a just-a-bit-too-long day, and headed straight back to the hostel where we holed up with a movie from their DVD library, before deciding we could now in good conscience go to sleep.

The next day we had a slow start, browsed around the city center a bit, and then headed to Granville Island, walking all the way there over a far too long bridge (and on the wrong side of the road to get a full view of Wyland's Whaling Wall, which had been obviously cleaned up for the Olympics). Granville Island is some sort of artist community cum shopping mall. Quirky mingled with (and was mostly overshadowed by) overpriced commercialism, but it was still nice to explore for a bit (we saw cool pottery and useless shiny stuff of various inclinations), and far away from downtown where the Canuck fans were watching the Stanley Cup. We eventually took the aquabus back to avoid the long bridge walk, and then dodged those Canuck fans back to the hostel.

Our last full day in Vancouver started slow again, playing a boardgame until it was time to head out for lunch with two people doing a RTW trip starting from Australia, Kate and Mat. Kate's the newest employee at travellerspoint, and the only one besides overlord Sam who I hadn't met yet, and thus someone I absolutely had to meet to make not yet having met Sam stand out even more. :) We had a decent lunch over at a cafe I dimly remembered from my previous visit to Vancouver, swapping travel tales and advice and talking only a tiny little bit geek. Chances are our paths will cross again in Europe; it's fun to make the world seem small like that. *g*

After lunch our paths split, and me and my girlfriend hopped onto a ferry to North Vancouver (the seconds counting down to the next departure are still extremely useful), where we took a bus to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. I'd tried visiting this (rather long) suspension bridge back in 2007, but it was closed then (I now learned this was due to one of the giant trees here falling on top of the bridge (and doing relatively little damage, but still enough to warrant the closure)). The bridge itself was ... well, long, and really not all that spectacular, with the huts and information boards leading up to it giving it all a bit of the dreaded amusement park vibe, but luckily the forest on the other side of the bridge was just nature being all spectacular and pretty. After having sat down for a bit to eat (being visited by a very inquisitive squirrel), we hiked around a bit here; I particularly enjoyed the greenness surrounding the Nature's Edge trail; very dark and lush, with loads of ferns, and pretty tiny flowers. Probably the best bit about being here was the freshly made fudge they were selling (so good! I got two squares: butter pecan and maple). After closing off our visit with the cliffwalk (where you're walking on a walkway suspended halfway down a steep cliff face), we bussed back to North Vancouver, stocked up on some groceries for dinner at the London Quay market, and ferried back to our hostel.

Whistler was our next destination, and I'm glad we decided on a destination so close to Vancouver, as Hertz apparently had major trouble getting enough cars ready for their customers, seeing us leave over 2 hours after we had booked for (of course, they had moved location as well, so part of that was just trying to find them in the first place). The drive to Whistler is a pretty nice one, and we randomly stopped to stretch our legs (and to eat some lunch) at a great roadside attraction, the Shannon Falls. (Insert many picture-taking sounds here.) From there on we were also startled by just how much snow there still was on all the mountains that were appearing.

Whistler itself is a rather weird town, which I never quite got a feel for. Our hostel was a ways out of the center of town, at the Olympic village, so we didn't visit the town itself too frequently, but when we did, it was always a weird experience. The town center feels like one big open air shopping mall, except here there's tons of very loud people (mostly drunk, or swiftly on their way to becoming so) wandering around and spilling out of the many cafes. I suspect this is something like Après-ski, carrying on in this resort town even when there isn't any skiing to be done anymore.

On our first day in this area, we made the mistake of taking an off-day on the one full gorgeously sunny day we'd turn out to have, mostly sitting inside, reading, playing a boardgame, and only wandering over to the disappointing town center of Function Junction in the afternoon. We did on this day have our first bear encounter, though, seeing a small black bear by the side of the road into Olympic Village. We were in the car, as we'd gone grocery shopping in Whistler itself, and the bear mostly ignored us, but it was still rather cool to see.

The solid cloud cover of the next day didn't stop us from now finally going out for hiking, and so we went to hike the Farside trail along Cheakamus River to a suspension bridge (not quite as long as the Capilano one), and on the other side went on to a rather boring circular lake by the name of Logger's Lake, hiking along the Crater Rim Trail leading around it. The forest was pretty, and the trail generally good, but the cloudy day made it all feel a bit miserable, and not really as nice as it could've been.

This feeling remained the following day, when rain was added to the misery. My girlfriend bussed to town to visit a museum there, while I stayed in, reading and hoping for sunshine. At the end of the afternoon this did finally appear, and so I drove as far along Cheakamus River as you can get by car, to from there on start in on the hike to Cheakamus Lake. This hike surprised me very positively on the first stretch, as the path leads through some very open forest, with bright green spring colors and yellow flowers, which then swiftly made way for a dark and ancient forest of towering redwood giants, standing cathedral-like on a long slope down from a cliff-face, with many huge splintered tree trunks lying everywhere, victims of suspected avalanches.

On this trail I had to trudge over the first bits of lingering snow I'd encounter during this trip (quite a common experience by now), to eventually reach Cheakamus Lake. The sunshine hadn't lasted till here, alas, so the lake wasn't as pretty as I suspect it could've been, but the hike had still been totally worth it.

On our last day in this region we headed to the Brandywine Falls Provincial Park, where we admired the almost elegant shape of this waterfall, plunging from a straight river channel into a big bowl cut out of the rock. After having taken some (okay, quite a few) photos here, we hiked the 'Unmarked' (or so the frequent signs which interspersed the trail markers kept telling us) trail to the Cal-cheak suspension bridge. This was a very winding trail through a very wet landscape, with hardly any other hikers on it, leading to quite a nice experience. The suspension bridge was longer than the one over Cheakamus River, if not as long as the Capilano one, but mostly provided a good point for us to turn back from. We took a much swifter route back to the car park, leading us over higher and dryer ground, through a forest which felt much more open and interesting than the pretty dense vegetation we'd previously struggled through.

Onward we went, driving north from Whistler through an increasingly pretty landscape. We stopped for a bit at Joffre Lakes, and attempted a hike to the first of these lakes, but after a few minutes of far-too careful walking over the icy snow which covered the entire trail, we decided we didn't really want to see these stupid lakes anyway, and headed back to the car to continue our drive. A short bit later we spotted our second bear, a brown black bear, happily nibbling on some roadside vegetation. We drove on for many hours, with the outside temperature swinging wildly (started at 13, going down to 9, up to 24, down to 17, and finally up to 26 degrees Celsius) to eventually arrive in Kelowna, in the middle of the Okanagan Valley. No more cloudy days; warm summer weather was here!

After Whistler as a hiking destination, Kelowna was intended to be a bit of a break from that, and it functioned admirably. We lazily explored town, with me being particularly happy to discover the Kasugai Garden, Kelowna's very own Japanese Garden. From there we wandered on through the cultural district (where they had funny signs and cool galleries), and back along the landscaped shoreline of Okanagan Lake. Quite a few people lying on the beach here, though few were brave enough to actually head into the water.

The next day I did attempt a hike, heading to Knox Mountain, but the sun was shining down just too fiercely, so I only went up to the first pavilion - not even halfway up the slope (albeit the views from there were already pretty decent) - before heading back into town. The evening featured a particularly awesome restaurant / wine bar, The Rotten Grape (so good they deserve a link), where a delicious extremely thin crust pizza was accompanied by a wonderful Chardonnay from Naramata (a town a little way away in the Okanagan Valley; I hadn't even known Canada produced wines, but apparently conditions in this valley are just great for them), and for dessert I tried a Penticton ice wine (ice wines are made from grapes which are left on the vine after the regular harvest, becoming sweeter and sweeter, and harvested frozen after three days of solid frost), which went down like honey. Mmmmmmm. (I'm thinking I might want to make a detour on the way back west and pick up a bottle or two...)

Our last day in Kelowna saw us visiting the Kelowna Art Gallery, and also included me actually going for a (short) swim in the lake. Was not that cold actually, but the really warm days we'd had before were slowly giving way for some cooler weather, with a rather strong and somewhat chilly wind blowing that in, and so the overall experience was not as nice as it could've been. Still, all in all it was a worthy conclusion to some lazy warm days, which thoroughly reinvigorated us, preparing us for more nature and hiking than we could shake a stick at. We were expecting to find these things aplenty in the Canadian Rockies, our next (and current) destination. The hour has grown late though, and so I'll have to postpone telling about the things we've seen here till some later date. I can reveal though that it'll include Tekapoesque lakes and pointy mountains!

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Tue 21 Jun 2011, 06:30 GMT

Tripreport: 2011-03-27 - 2011-04-08: Wrapping up with penguins and wines

As I'm nearly about to embark on yet another trip to a faraway continent rumored to be home to prettily colored lakes and pointy mountains ("Didn't you ever get tired of those?" they'll ask me when they write my definitive biography, and "No, never!" I'll answer), I figured it was now or never to wrap up my tripreport for the previous trip. (It's rather pitiful that writing this short entry took so long that when posting this, I've actually been on this next trip for well over a week already! More tripreports to follow soon, I suppose...) :)

Barely a week and a half of travelling still lay ahead of us when last we bussed out of El Chaltén - stopping at a viewpoint just out of town for some photos of the perfect mountainrange - passing by Lago Viedma with more awesome views of the Viedma glacier, and eventually arriving back in El Calafate. We had the same room in the YHA as on our first stay, way at the end of the long corridor (maddeningly just out of reach of the WiFi), and felt basically right at home. I spent the afternoon doing some postcard shopping, and we had a yummy dinner at La Lechuza, of which the delicious homemade Tiramisu is the only part I still remember, but wow, that was some seriously delicious dessert. :)
After an early breakfast, we were picked up the following morning by a minibus to bring us to the airport. Despite far too little capacity at the check-in counters, everyone eventually managed to get on the plane (us in exit row seats \o/), and so we were off to Ushuaia. A taxi deposited us in front of the Galeazzi - Basily B&B, which became our home away from home over the next few days. Truly the nicest B&B I ever stayed at (yes, even beating Braeside in Portree; sorry Philip!), with very welcoming and informative hosts, and a lavishly decorated living room where we spent many hours just hanging out, reading, drinking tea and catching up on the intertubes.

Ushuaia was the southernmost destination on our trip, and generally the southernmost place in the world most people ever get to visit, though it's from here that the vast majority of those lucky few who get to visit Antarctica depart. I suspect that before too many years will have passed, we'll be counted amongst that number, as the screensavers on the computers set up at the B&B cycled incessantly through heartwrenchingly gorgeous Antarctica photos, which quickly whittled down any resolve either of us might have had of not desperately wanting to go there. For now, we only got to wander the harbour, and watch the boats there...

During our time in Ushuaia, we visited the Glaciar Martial, climbing up a long rocky slope (over which people ski down in winter) and passing by some twisted trees decked out in pretty fall colors, to eventually reach a rather pitiful remnant of ice lingering from the previous winter; as the first snow of the next winter season fell the subsequent day, I guess this remnant of ice really did last out the entire year, and thus qualified for the moniker "glacier", but yeah, nothing much to write home about compared to Perito Moreno or Grey Glacier; views over Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel from up here were pretty decent, though.

A rainy day - which we spent inside - later, we set out in a minibus to Estancia Haberton, reached by 30 minutes of paved road and an hour of very bumpy gravel road. A quick photo-opportunity stop was included during this drive, for a rather extreme example of what the incessant Patagonian wind can do to the trees clinging on to life in this region. At Estancia Haberton we visited a private museum with the largest collection of southern marine mammals and birds (not quite uninteresting, though I'd never have bothered visiting if it wasn't included in this tour), before finally being allowed to board the zodiac to the real destination for this trip: Isla Martillo. Isla Martillo is home to a penguin colony of hundreds upon hundreds of Magellanic penguins (the purely black and white penguins in my photos (someday to come)), as well as 24 Gentoo penguin couples (those being distinguishable by their greater size, as well as orange beaks and feet). For the one type of penguin, this is the furthest south they go, and for the other it's the furthest north, but both enjoy the rich fishing to be found in the Beagle Channel, and are apparently unbothered by the few groups of some 20-odd humans which come to wander amongst them during the 'warmer' season. Not, it should be stated emphatically here, that "warmth" had anything to do with the weather conditions on this day. It might be 3 degrees above freezing in absolute temperature, but the lashing wind threw stinging rain against us, drenching and chilling us rather thoroughly as we trudged over this island, and so it rather felt to be quite a bit below freezing. Reportedly the penguins find such conditions very pleasant. Several did indeed seem to take perverse pleasure in coming to observe us, seeing how we were dealing with these circumstances: A path over the island had been set up, where we had to stay between the ropes, and always keep at least 3 meters distance to the penguins; but no such restrictions had been communicated to the more inquisitive penguins, who were quite happy to waggle toward us underneath the ropes, the better to observe our misery from up close.
Of course, since we were all braving these conditions for the specific purpose of seeing these same penguins, we did end up thinking that this was time well spent. Our guide explained a bit about penguin behaviour, telling us that the weird half-barking sounds emanating from them from time to time - for which they stretched their necks backward and opened their beaks wide - was them calling their mate back to the nest "my time to go fishing now!", and explaining about the different reproduction cycles they had (this year's batch of Magellanic penguins had recently all left their nests, while the Gentoo penguins were only now starting to build their nests).
Probably the most impressive display I saw on this island was a huge group of penguins coming back from fishing, jumping in and out of the water in a great school, as elegant as dolphins; at least up to the moment where the reached land and started to waggle again.

After an hour on the island, we were all more than glad to board the zodiac again, and warm ourselves on a cup of hot chocolate before setting out back to Ushuaia.
On our final day in Ushuaia, we headed out to Tierra del Fuego National Park; a day too late, as it turned out, as they'd just increased the entry fee by 30%. Still, we'd seen photos of this place, and definitely wanted to see it ourselves; and indeed, the views over Lago Roca were postcard worthy. We - separately - hiked a part of the Hito XXIV trail (which leads up to the border with Chile, at markerstone number 24) through gorgeous forest interspersed with lake views, and then branched up to Cerro Guanaco. Very nice views up here of the green-ness of Lago Roca and Lapataia River, as well as the awesome autumn colors. Pushing on beyond here through the mud lead me into the snowy highlands just below Cerro Torre; the snowy trail further up from here looked far too steep and dangerous to me (despite several people actually attempting it; my brother amongst them, though he did turn back halfway there), so I headed back down and hiked a bit more along Lago Roca, before turning back to catch the bus back to town.

I learned the following day that my brother had gotten somewhat overconfident by the experience of drinking straight from the rivers in the previous national parks we'd visited, and had done the same thing in Tierra del Fuego National Park; alas, the water here was not quite so clean, and so he'd gotten thoroughly sick during the night. This made the next day a rather wretched day for him, made even worse as we were taking a flight to Buenos Aires, which also ended up being delayed and horribly short on legroom. Not the most pleasant experience, in other words. Still, we survived, and I got to explore Palermo - where our hostel was located - a bit in the evening. It looked like a very nice and vibrant neighbourhood, filled with awesome looking restaurants (none of which we'd visit, alas; a reason to come back here, for sure). The rather warm temperature was initially a wee bit too warm for our tastes after Patagonia (and especially Ushuaia), but was quickly gotten used to.

A visit to the Japanese Garden was the start of our only full day in Buenos Aires; here we met up with Manu, my comrade in arms from the N'awlins campaign, back in '03, and a local to this fine city. As in N'awlins, here too he turned out to be good company for hanging out with and wandering; he showed us the Obelisk, introduced us to his (very smelly) :) dog, and had us try out Milanesa (think Wiener Schnitzel) at a local Parilla (the double-l locally being pronounced more like "sh" rather than "j"). My brother's intestines had luckily mostly recovered from his water drinking experience by this time, so he too could enjoy dinner.

Flying out again the next day, we now ended up in Mendoza, where we had our first (and only) encounter with the much-warned-for crooked local taxi driver, who first attempted to hide the meter, and then took us to our hostel in a big spiral. Sadly for him we'd looked at google maps before arriving, and recognized this, so ended up paying just a bit more than the meter indicated when we passed the highway exit he should've taken.

Mendoza is the capital city of a province by the same name, renowned far and wide for the quality of its Malbec wine. Our express purpose in coming here was then to enjoy great dinners and wines. Dinner this first day - at a restaurant called Don Mario, recommended by reception at our hostel - was unfortunately nothing particularly awesome, with slow service and meat that just wasn't that good, compared to some which we'd had in Puerto Natales and El Calafate.
And to be honest, the wines we drank here in Mendoza were - though good - not quite what we'd been hoping for either. We probably should've researched more, rather than trusting in all wines from this region just being good by virtue of coming from this region. Ah well, lesson learned. And we did have a good time on a wine tour we embarked upon the next day, taking a bus to Maipú and renting bikes there to drive (painfully, over roads which were (for a far-too-long stretch) under construction) to various wineries which could be found here. We picked two wineries to visit, of which the second, Carinae, was the highlight of the trip, with a very nice and informative tour, and a lot of personal attention during the tasting; the various wines we tasted were all pretty good, but the big surprise in taste was the Malbec rosé. (Also good was picking and eating a few of their grapes, if of course (should've known) less pleasant for our intestines.) The day got even better when that evening (after having waited for the appointed time of 20:00, before which decent restaurants shall not be open) we ended up exploring the western part of Mendoza's city center, and discovered this to be the place to be (obviously our hostel was on the eastern side), with a rather awesome restaurant by the name of Molokai, where we could sit under the stars in their garden (away form the street noise) and enjoy absolutely perfect service and very fine dining indeed. This restaurant was so good that after spending the following day being mostly lazy (our only adventure of note was a visit to Parque San Martin), we ended up back there again.

And with that we reached the end of our stay in South America. A bus trip (through very pretty and colorful barren mountain landscapes, with rocks ranging from red to green - and past a very confusing border post, where neither the bus driver nor anyone official bothered to explain things to some very obvious confused gringos) deposited us in Santiago. We wandered the streets a bit (not seeing anything particularly noteworthy; I'm glad that I didn't make this city a major destination during either of the two times I passed through), and in the evening had a very hard time finding a decent restaurant. Still, we eventually succeeded, slept, found our way to the airport, and flew back home.

Thus, South America. Again. I think my overall impressions from this trip through Chile and Argentina were less positive than they were for the month we spent in Peru back in 2008; prices were much higher, the weather worse, and unexpected delights somewhat rarer. Still, we did see nature in all its awesomeness, and in the final conclusion had a very good time. If I ever return, I'll be sure to be in better shape, and generally better prepared, but all the same, I don't really regret a single thing for this trip.

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