te kaihöpara - the explorers

A Brief Call into Dubai

2011-09-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

To get between New Zealand and Durban, South Africa, we flew a slightly convuluted route via Sydney, Bangkok and Dubai, breaking the trip up with a couple of nights in Dubai.

Now Dubai really is everything you think it might be - huge construction projects, weird roads to nowhere with grand plans for future development, the desert sitting just beyond the narrow developed coastal strip ready to blow back in again, a mix of people from all over the world.

The Burj al Arab at Jumeira Beach

We ended up staying in the older area of Dubai down by The Creek, the important vein of water around which Bur Dubai and Deira City were developed around over the centuries. We loved the perspective of the place seen while cruising up the Creek - a mix of old and modern architecture. And we were grateful for the cool breeze out on the water - it reached 44 degrees while we were there!!

Looking up the Creek with the local water taxis

Whether tourists or on business, its a pretty good way to get around :-)

And when it all gets too hot, you can always simply have a siesta on the back deck of your boat

Our visit to Dubai coincided with the first day of Ramadan. Walking past road construction crews, working with their pick axes in the 44 degree heat, you suddenly realise that until the sun goes down they are not drinking any water let alone eating!

We spent quite a bit of time exploring the old souks - the gold souk, the textile souk and the spice souk:

These guys sold some yummy roasted cashews :-)

Dubai really is a narrow coastal strip of development, and it doesn't take long heading inland before you find yourself in desert........................

Winter Scenes

2011-07-24T22:47:00.000-07:00

Give it six days or so and we should be in ~35 degrees heat in Dubai as we make our way to Durban.

But for now we have this at home - isn't it beautiful?!

Awakening to snow

Out by the Avon River - there was snow on Brighton Beach too ;-)

Coming to a blog near you........

2011-07-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

Call this a bookmark.

We're well aware that we have been off the blog scene for quite some time. We are intending to remedy this in a very short while, with plenty of tall tales and photos of our exploring. You see, while the past few months have not been anything I would wish anyone to experience, we are set for a battery-recharging adventure in a week's time.

We're heading for South Africa and Swaziland for the month of August - plans are to hire a car from Durban and explore the Drakensburg, Kruger National Park, a couple of Swaziland reserves and the Elephant Coast area, with a fair few places in between.

Stay tuned for the trip reports :-)

Holiday Snaps

2011-01-28T14:26:00.001-08:00

We had a lovely break over Xmas/New Year, catching up with friends and family in various places and spending a good amount of time in the hills :-)

This blog post is largely a series of photos, but I guess there’s a bit of a story to be gleaned from the captions! Essentially, our holiday went like this:

Xmas in Christchurch with family and friends – Neil’s parents came up from Dunedin and we stayed at the home of Frances’ workmate’s for the three days Gill and Dave were with us. Annette and David, F’s aunt and uncle from Australia, were over as well, and we kind of ran out of room to fit everyone in at F’s parent’s place :-) So, thanks to Christine and Kevin for being so easy in letting us stay at their place while they were away!!
After Boxing Day, we headed for the Seaward Kaikouras for a four day tramp with our friends Mark and Sylvia. Sorry, no photos as yet, but see their blog link on the left with some photos and tales. All in all, a really cool trip in different country, and most of all, a great 4 days of catch up with Mark and Sylvia.
Passing through Christchurch for a comfy night’s sleep and hot shower, we continued south to Dunedin for a New Year’s Eve sushi party. We had a day around Dunedin, F biking out on the peninsula and N helping the boys out kitesurfing in a good strong nor-easter. Then a day mountain biking at Naseby.
We caught up with Neil’s parents and his bro, Paul, over from Melbourne for a couple of days – including a lovely afternoon in the sunshine at the beach! We had a beautiful turkey dinner all together :-)
Next, we headed for Mackenzie Country and met up with F’s dad, Pat in Omarama with the intention of heading up the Ahuriri Valley and Canyon Creek, towards Mt Barth. This is where the photos cut in:

Waiting for the weather to clear in the hills, we spent a couple of nights camping near Twizel - drying gear out ready for the next trip

We went out for a bike from the camp and ended up at the Pukaki spillway, which was in impressive flow!

Time to head into the hills - lunch stop overlooking the canyon of Canyon Creek

About to cut up past the bluffs and into the upper valley

Beautiful blue water fed from snow and ice on Mt BarthAbove the bluffs, with Mt Barth beginning to peek out around the corner

Our home for the next couple of nights - a fantastic rock biv in the upper valley

Summer wildflowers beneath Mt Barth
There is some amazing slabs of rock in the valley - out for an evening explore from the biv

Morning light on Mt Barth as we head towards to snow col off the east ridge of Mt Barth (to the right of the skyline ridge)

Nope, that way just ain't going to work! Neil downclimbs back to the snow.

Heading back down to the col - we then crossed the glacier beneath Mt Barth looking for other routes up

Now on the west side of Mt Barth, but to no avail - turns out the schrunds had cut off access to the peak, but the views are amazing and where else would you rather have spent the day?? :-)
The view from the glacier back into the upper valley - there was hardly a breath of wind and we were roasting at times on the glacierPat at a tarn (apline lake), looking back up at the glacier that we had spent the day crossing back and forth!!

The next morning, we headed up to this ice covered tarn for a look-see before walking back out the valley

Us and the morning mist in Canyon Creek

Walking out Canyon Creek - a typical NZ mountain valley

Neil amongst the native beech forest

Driving back to Christchurch, we had a gorgeous view of Mt Cook (NZ's highest mountain) above the glacial blue of Lake Pukaki

Making Windows

2011-01-15T19:01:00.000-08:00

So I (Frances) have recently been taking a course in Stained Glass. I guess the idea was possibly something like 'well, if we are going to need to rebuild our house, then we need windows for it, and what a good excuse for another art project!'. The idea really started as we left Canada, as the quip was made by Karen, one of my co-workers at Connect, that I might need a new window or two, so here we go.......

My first Stained Glass window

Catching the light
The basic steps to stained glass/lead-lighting are:

1. Creating a suitable design on paper and finding the glass you want to use

2. Cutting out the glass pieces - yes, this does involve a lot of sticky plasters and blood (well it does when I do this anyway!)
3. Moulding lead came around the pieces and fitting it all together
4. Soldering the joins
5. Cement and polish - the cement fills in any gaps and seals the piece so it is weathertight.
6. Take photos of your piece in kind lighting that doesn't show the mistakes and gaps in the glass work!!

Next project is a big round piece that I am making for my sister in celebration of her recent graduation with her PhD (well done Kate! :-)

Then maybe as we find out more about what's going on with our house I can start to dream up more designs to go in the house - I was thinking a good start would be one of the evening skyline along Okanagan Lake (as viewed from our beach at our old apartment). Will keep you posted on how it all goes.......

Living with 'The Earthquake'

2010-11-20T14:41:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, hello and love to you all out there! :-) We've been quiet on the blog front for nearly three months – sorry to everyone far and wide about dropping off the radar. Our hometown of Christchurch had a 7.1 earthquake on 4th September, and really this earthquake has a lot to answer for!

While it was completely incredible that no one died in the event (which fortunately, if it's going to happen, occurred at 4.35am on a Saturday morning) and family and friends in Christchurch were all okay, our home in Christchurch (which we have been renting out while over in

Canada) was rendered uninhabitable - due to issues such as the chimney falling off, the

plumbing being ripped out in the wall, cracking in literally every single panel of gib in the house, walls no longer vertical, floors no longer horizontal and the house generally moving

eastwards on its foundations! So we found ourselves having to make the decision to head

straight for New Zealand and put off our travelling plans - apologies to all of you along the way in the US and UK that we were planning to visit, we'll get back your way, promise!

Once back in Christchurch, Frances's sister Kate, a geologist at the local University, took us out to see the fault rupture zone on the Canterbury Plains – the fault rupture extends 22km across

the plains, approx. 30km out of Chch and is the surface expression of the earthquake rupture – in other words, you can see where and how the earth moved, with cracks in the ground showing areas moving up to 4 m sideways, as well as vertical change. You stand in the fields looking at

the cracks displacing a road by 4 m, then think of the energy and sheer mass of earth that has moved in the area – phenomenal!

Line of fault rupture through paddock

This fence was straight - now it is off-set by ~4m. Headaches for the surveyors and property boundary definitions!

This road was dead straight - now the centre line lines up with the left edge markings, as the ground moved ~4 m north-east (right). You can also see some

vertical change in the trees on the left (higher to lower in the distance).

There are some pretty funny stories to come out of all this (we have to find humour in it all, right?) – like the homeowner near the fault rupture site who found the contents of their fridge in the oven when they got up in the morning after the earthquake. So during an earthquake, the strong motion is sideways shaking – you lurch one way, then back the other. During the earthquake, SLAM, the fridge door swings open, SLAM, as everything moves back the other way, the door of the oven opposite the fridge falls open, SLAM, back again and everything in the fridge falls across into the oven, BANG, the oven door jolts shut, BANG, the fridge door slams itself shut. Voila!

Some farmers woke up in the morning to find their nice flat paddock a mess of cracking and wonky fences and shelterbelts. It was a race for the scientists (such as the geologists from the University) to get measurements and information from the rupture zone, before farmers needed to plow the fields as the cracked ground caused a hazard to their animals who might trap a leg in the cracks.

Since the earthquake we have had over 2000 aftershocks. At my parents house, you can hear them coming – a low rumble starts a couple of seconds before it hits – just enough time to think - “oh here we go again, hope this one ain't too bad....". The sizes of the aftershock vary, but because the main event was a big event at magnitude 7.1, we have the occasional 5.something aftershocks, which are pretty decent. After these 5.something aftershocks, we have to go round to our house and shut it back up again, because most of the windows and doors fall open. We have aluminium framed windows with the usual handle latches, but the house is moving and twisting so much that the latches pop on the windows and the doors pops out of its lock. Everyone feels more aftershocks at night, largely because that's when you're lying still – you're not going to feel the small ones when you are moving round, cycling or driving. They have definitely become less frequent these last couple of weeks, but then we were woken yet again by one last night......

At our place, the front end of the lounge (to the right) has moved north from the main part of the house (this is the small end of the crack)

Typical cracking damage around doorways that many people have in their homes - however, our levels are all out and usually you don't have bits of plasterboard falling out!

Less visually obvious, but more significant in terms of structural integrity, we have fresh cracks through our foundation wall that have spat out concrete

The view under the floor - those concrete piles should be vertical!

While our house is uninhabitable, we are living between Frances's parent's house and her sister's house. Both their houses are fine, with Kate and Dave's property unscathed, while her parents had some significant liquefaction. It took them five days to clear their section of sand that was ejected from the ground during the earthquake. they have a lump in their driveway that grew for four weeks but seems to have settled down now, and their street was growing new lumps and potholes daily as the ground settled and moved after the quake. The land on our

section is undamaged, just soft and peaty as always, but we are looking at rebuilding on our section (as its not likely worth trying to repair our existing house) and this will give us the chance to get the foundations right for being on soft ground. The timeframe for all of this is a complete unknown – our insurance company has entered into a contract with a construction company and an engineering consultancy (which just so happens to be the company Frances works for!) to manage the process of repairing and rebuilding houses for their clients. From the earthquake, there have been over 120,000 claims made for either house or contents damage. In the big picture, for such an event, the way in which houses have come through the earthquake is actually quite incredible – so our house is one of the ones in the worst case basket, but it didn't collapse (other than the chimney falling off). The earthquake itself was of similar magnitude to Haiti's 7.0. There is a lot of learning and research going on from the effects of the quake and understanding how we can design and prepare for such events.

Since some suburbs of the city had significant liquefaction and laterally spreading (around river and estuary areas), the Earthquake Commission (our national earthquake and landslide insurance agency (government funded)) is looking at suburb-wide land remediation for those areas, to help prevent such extensive land damage happening in future big earthquake events. Therefore, for people whose houses are damaged in these areas, they will be waiting for this suburb-wide remediation to be decided on and done, before they can start to address their house repairs or rebuilds, so it is going to be a long-haul for many people. Some people will not be able to rebuild on their land because the ground condition is so poor in terms of liquefaction and spreading risk, and will be paid out for their house and land. There's a lot of high-pressure decision-making going on while trying to get this remediation done as effectively and efficiently as possible, and this also applies to other services such as water and sewer.

Both of us are working back in engineering now, and both working on some earthquake-related projects (assessing damage to land and water services). At times it feels a bit like we're living and breathing earthquake stuff at work and at home, but it is very good to be busy and useful! We have been house-sitting for Kate and Dave while they have been away overseas for the month (well, we say house-sitting, but actually it's cat-sitting their two cats, Sinbad and Apollo), then when they come back next week, we'll go stay back with Frances's parents for a while........

Meet the boys - Sinbad and Apollo - two of the biggest softies you've ever come across!

Apollo in a typical sleeping pose

Sinbad trying to sleep and hide from the world at the same time!

At Kate and Dave's the day our shipping arrived! Not that we could really unpack it anywhere - we've just shifted stuff around so we have essentials in a backpack and everything else is packed away either at Kate and Dave's place or parents' houses........

So there's a bit of a long post about the current legacy of this earthquake and the experiences around it. We'll try to get some more NZ photos up soon for those overseas – we have been away a few weekends to catch up with family and friends and also reacquaint ourselves with some favourite local places.

Take care

xxx

Neil and Frances

Mt Begbie

2010-08-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we decided the summer sunshine and heat were really all too much and we went and found ourselves some snow and ice pellets! Well, it wasn’t exactly intentional, but we certainly found them :-)

But that belies what was actually a really great trip - up Mt Begbie, just out of Revelstoke, at the northern end of the Monashee Mountains. After a rather leisurely departure from Kelowna on Saturday morning, we walked up that afternoon to a lovely camp spot at the edge of the alpine (~2000m asl), looking down over Revelstoke and the Columbia River.

Neil coming into the alpine zone near our camping spot for the night

Home Sweet Home for a night

That night we were both woken by bouts of heavy rain, but fortunately the morning dawned relatively calm and we headed up from camp towards the glacier. The glacially carved rock terrain above the campsite was fascinating, with its bands of quartz and linear scour marks. We skirted the old glacial ice and headed up across the snow to the start of a ledge that cut its way across the rock buttress to the prow of the ridge. The schrund at the edge of the rock was pretty deep and wide, with a very convenient tongue remaining across to the ledge.

Scoured rock, overlooking the Columbia River and Revelstoke township

Looking up at Mt Begbie - our route skirted the glacier on the right to the obvious ledge that cuts from left to right, then up the skyline ridge

Frances makes the first foray onto the snow

Once on the ledge, there were a couple of exposed, narrow sections where we belayed each other through, before the ledge widened.

Checking out the way ahead - ok, time to rope up, we say

The scrambling up the ridge was wonderful – lovely solid rock. The mist had really come in by that stage but we were following cairns (plus adding a couple more), and it seemed before we knew it there was nowhere further upwards to go.

Hmm, you get to use your imagination to fill in the view....

We could only imagine how beautiful the views are from the ridge on a sunny day, but the enveloping mist lent a peaceful air to the place and it was wonderful to be up there. Unfortunately, once on top, the mist started throwing ice pellets at us and the pause there was brief before we headed back down.

Working our way down the ridge in the mist

Once the sky had run out ice pellets, we started to get big fluffy snowflakes instead, but the downwards route was good fun and we were back to the ledge soon enough. We had tossed up the idea of abseiling off the ledge before the narrow section, however with the way the schrund looked we ultimately decided to repeat the belay back across the narrows and retrace our steps off the end of the ledge onto the glacier.

So, ah, not much beneath your feet then?! Having fun though :-)

Enjoying the big fluffy snowflakes, about to leave the ledge for the glacier snow

We wandered back to camp as the sun came out (of course!) and enjoyed a leisurely second, or was it third?, lunch, before decamping and pounding our way down 1300 m to the car.

Cathedral Provincial Park

2010-08-27T18:40:00.001-07:00

Happy belated BC Day! Well, it was happy for us – we got a long weekend out of it, so we were off to Cathedral Provincial Park in the South Okanagan-Similkameen area. Cathedral Park has a ‘core area’ up above 2000 m asl, focused around several lakes and an old private lodge, that was in the area before it was designated a provincial park. We skipped the private lodge option and found ourselves a perfect walk-in campsite at Lake of the Woods. We used this as our base to go explore the many trails up into open alpine meadows and ridgetop routes. The landscape was very diverse and we had never seen so many different species of wildflowers.

Lake of the Woods

Neil amongst the wildflowers

The first afternoon, we did a loop up past Lake Quiniscoe onto the Rim Trail and up Mt Quiniscoe. We came across a family of seven mountain goats, and they were not the least bit worried about us being there – especially the one fast asleep!

Wandering along the Rim Trail to Mt Quiniscoe in evening light

The local contingent of mountain goats

Neil enjoying the view from Mt Quiniscoe - we camped at the smallest lake you can see in the photo.

Due to several large wildfires burning in BC at the moment, there was a lot of smoke haze in the air. That evening, the setting sun glowed a brilliant orange.

The next day we set off back towards the Rim Trail, via a different route. We did a there-and-back route on the ridge past Smokey the Bear, Giant’s Cleft to the top of Grimface (got to love whoever named them!). The route to the top of Grimface was a very fun rock scramble.

The dry rocky landscape of the Rim Trail, with the craggy top of Mt Grimface in the back right.

Neil puts some scale to the rock walls of Smokey the Bear

The beautiful blocky rock of Grimface

The final day, we headed across valley, away from the Rim Trail and up through some alpine meadows to the rocky tops of Lakeview Mountain. From here, we could look back on where we had been the day before. The brief rain of the previous night had also cleared the air somewhat of smoke, and we could see across to Mt Baker and the North Cascades, down in Washington State - very nice!

Ptarmigan in the alpine meadows

The panoramic view from the top of Lakeview Mountain, looking over at the ridge we had explored the previous day

Neil running off down off Lakeview Mountain

All in all, Cathedral Park was a very different landscape from what we've seen elsewhere in BC, and we loved the big rock landscape and open ridge wandering. Definitely very glad we made it here before disappearing off from BC :-)

Idaho Peak

2010-08-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

OK so I think this has been our longest gap yet between postings. Must mean we’ve been busy or something.... Well, there was the mountain biking in Wells Gray Provincial Park, a couple of weeks in SE Alaska, catching up with Frances’ Dad in Whistler and Kelowna.....but we’re getting ahead of things. Photos of those adventures will turn up soon, but in the meantime, here’s the story of our recent weekend trip with the bikes to Idaho Peak in the area they call the Silvery Slocan.

The Slocan Valley is a lovely little area west of Kelowna with a deep history of silver mining. We headed over after work on Friday and set up camp for the weekend at Rosebery Provincial Park. The next morning we set off on our bikes from camp up an old rail trail , the Galena Trail, that runs 13km from Rosebery up a local river to the turnoff to the old mining town of Sandon (with the crossing of the river being made via cable acr with bike rack). We continued up the road to Sandon, with intention ultimately being to then bike up the 12km access road beyond Sandon to Idaho Peak – only catch was we were gaining over 1600m in that last stint up from Sandon.

Frances in the cool forest of the Galena Trail

Neil crossing the river via cable car - good fun!!

We stopped in Sandon for a look around and emerged 1.5 hours later after a very fun tour of the museum with Andy, a right jokester who could spin a great yarn. So we learnt that Sandon’s glory days were back in the early 1890s. Galena ore was discovered in the hills and several mining claims set up. Sandon Township grew to 6000, with the usual accompaniment of hotels, restaurant and brothels, and today several of the old buildings are still standing. Two separate railway companies developed lines into the town to pack the ore out for processing. Naturally there was fierce competition between the two companies, with the Kaslo & Slocan independent company being the popular underdog to the Canadian Pacific Railway. The K&S got their line in first which prompted the CPR to speed up their act in completing their line to Sandon. The CPR strategically built their station house directly adjacent to the existing K&S station house, so one night the K&S guys strategically wrapped the CPR house in metal straps and used their locomotives to haul the house off into the creek. The town was later razed by fire, then ultimately died in the aftermath of falling silver prices, assisted by a massive flood that ripped the heart out of the township (not helped by the fact that at the time of the flood, they had trained the river into a flume and boarded it over to form the main street of the town – whoops!).

After our exploration of Sandon, we began the grind up the hill to Idaho Peak. Well, let’s just say it took a while but we were rewarded with open alpine meadows brimming with wildflowers. And besides, it’s not like our car would have been able to get us up that road. We ditched the bikes in some trees and continued along the ridge trail out to a fire lookout, with amazing 360 views of peaks and lakes.

Indian Paintbrush in the alpine meadows atop Idaho Peak

Frances on the final trail to the Idaho Peak lookout

Made it!! Looking back along the ridge towards the Wakefield Trail.

Slocan Lake from Idaho Peak - we camped on the delta just north of New Denver (the silver town centre left in the photo)

Then came the really fun part – we now had to lose the height back to Slocan Lake and the Wakefield Trail was the perfect way to do this – single track through the forest, across old tailings slopes, through wildflowers.

Frances sets off on the Wakefield Trail - get ready for the smell of hot brakes!

Neil playing (no further comment needed really! :-) And no, the trail did not go straight down that way - that's just an old tramway piece.

Got to love the views, and the riding! Going.....

Going..........

Pretty much gone!

We flew down through the trail into a valley that spits you out in the town of Silverton, back on the bank of Slocan Lake. After a very refreshing swim in the lake, we continued back onto the Galena Trail and back into camp. We’d spied a Mexican-food cafe walking distance from the camp, near the end of the Galena Trail, so returned there after dinner to toast a nine hour day in the saddle with fantastic dessert, complete with the entertaining view of a young black bear on the neighbour’s garage roof, trying to steal cherries from their cherry tree (let’s just say the bear was a bit uncoordinated - the branch broke and bear came tumbling down – very funny :-).

A view from our swimming spot on Slocan Lake, looking back up towards Idaho Peak

We travelled back to Kelowna the following day, after an exploratory ride from the camp (trail directions provided by the bar staff at the cafe of the previous night). Found some very fun and flowy forest trails. Unfortunately, Neil’s front fork on his bike had been making some unhealthy noises the day before and not before long, Neil was walking his bike down the trail.

Hmm, should your wheel be pointing that way, if your handlebars are pointing the other way??

We drove home via the Arrow Lakes and Revelstoke, making the most of the ferry wait to go for a swim.

May Days

2010-05-29T18:18:00.001-07:00

It’s been a busy finish to May – we’ve been away these last two weekends and week nights fill up fast!

A couple of weeks ago we were up biking through Knox Mountain Park – thought we’d throw in a photo of the typical tracks up that way. The park is just to the north of downtown Kelowna and has many walking and biking tracks; its a pretty popular place to be when the sun is shining on a Saturday morning. We mainly spend time in the park walking or running, but there is also a nice bike loops that goes out and returns via the park. Neil also sometimes comes via a ride through Knox on his way home from work.

Frances heading up the hill amongst the shade of pine trees on the east side of Knox

Neil heading down on the drier south slopes of Knox

We were keen to head out camping again, but this time hoping to be able to leave the down jackets at home for once! So with a warm weekend forecast, we headed off to Christina Lake (SE from Kelowna, on Hwy 3). We packed the bikes with the idea of spending the weekend exploring from the campsite by bike and foot, which worked a treat. The Saturday, we explored some forest trails trying to link onto the local Rail Trail that ran down the valley around the south of Christina Lake.

Neil crossing the creek out of the campground

A bit of bike hauling, some lovely riding and we found ourselves on top of a rock outcrop with great views. We then joined through onto the main highway for a couple of kms before cutting up a side road and onto the Rail Trail. The Trail wound through a very cool bluffy section overlooking the lake and local township (we could spy the ice cream shops for the trip back!) before coming to an impressive gorge on the Kettle River. Normally a nice, smallish waterfall and slow gorge with deep green pools, in spring freshet, it was completely raging the entire length of the gorge.

Spot Neil, the red blob in the centre, on the rocks above ‘the falls’

We rode back from the gorge along the Rail Trail and cut off into Christina Lake township in search of icecreams. Mission accomplished we returned to camp via the highway and forest trails we'd discovered that morning (uphill this time on the highway, but a great downhill on the forest trails). After a brisk wash in the lake, yet to warm up for the season!, we found ourselves still in tshirt and shorts at 9 that evening - exactly the warm weather camping we had been looking for! The next morning we awoke the rain (you can't win can you?!) so we went for a couple of hours wander on a trail traversing above the lake, before heading homewards.

Wild strawberry flowers in the morning rain

Last weekend, four of us headed to the nearby Monashee Provincial Park for three days hiking. We walked into Spectrum Lake, through some lovely cedar and hemlock forest (such a contrast to the dry ponderosa forest around the Okanagan).

Mike, Neil and Josie at the trailhead

The campsite at Spectrum was pretty fancy really for backcountry camping - tent platform, firepit, jumbo-sized picnic table complete with shelter over top for every two-person space. We based overselves there for two nights.

Arriving at Spectrum Lake camp

On the middle day we went for a day walk further up valley onto a plateau between the peaks. We found ourselves in snow on the final stretch onto the plateau, some of it fresh from the day before.

Looking across Spectrum Lake towards Peters Lake plateau, where we went for a day walk

Lunch spot beneath the peaks

Update for April

2010-05-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

A bit of a catch-up session then. Amongst the camping and enjoying the spring here in Kelowna, we’ve also been busy with a few visits and other going-ons.

We briefly caught up with Neil Hudson, when he was out for a ski marathon with Dave Aubrey (I think they managed 12 days in the two weeks :-) ), and got out for a mountain bike ride with him.

Then we got word from Paul Cannin that he would be passing through town with Anthony Goile and a mate, Andrew (whom he’d bumped into on the flight from NZ to Vancouver, of course). They gave us a helping hand at beach volleyball – the first game of our All Sport season – before retiring to our place for a BBQ. They were then Vancouver-bound the next morning, but it was great to catch up with them and scheme about the next catch up :-)

Meanwhile, we continued our All Sports on a Thursday night – playing a different sport each week (which basically means that no one has any idea what they are doing, ever!). We’ve just had soccer this last week, and touch footy is up next (does anyone else see Frances getting continually pulled up for fouls accidently trying to play touch rugby instead of American Football rules?! Never mind.)

And then we’ve also had the Ski-to-Sea race again, that we were in last year. We had a number of teams from Golder, including a full women’s team that Frances was doing the mountain bike leg for. Neil skate-skied the cross country leg for his team. The race goes as follows: Downhill ski – cross country ski – mountain bike – road bike – run – canoe. Neil’s teammate had a blinder of a downhill leg and started Neil off in 8th place overall, so Neil enjoyed his ski amongst some pretty amazing athletes (which he didn’t really quite keep up with). Overall, his team ended up 3rd in the Corporate category – nicely done! Frances meanwhile started her bike ride across the bulletproof ice of the ski-hill carpark – interesting! - before heading off on the ski-hill access road and onto the very muddy and gritty Forest Service Road to the main highway. Her team went really well and came in 2nd Womens. A very fun event.

A couple of weekends ago, we went north to Kamloops in search of MTB orienteering. We went for a run in a local regional park on the Saturday afternoon, which started in sunshine, but went through rain, hail, thunder and lightning, before returning to sunshine. We decided to push our luck and go up to a local Provincial Park with a picnic area and campground, amidst some rather dark clouds and fresh snow (from the afternoon’s stormy skies) on the nearby hills.

Paul Lake was a lovely wee area – there were some pairs of loons (yes, the bird you find on our $1 coin here), which have the most amazing haunting whistle that echoed off the hillside. A bald eagle cruised the shoreline and we went for a wander to the top of Gibraltar Rock, a massive lump of rock that falls into the lake – makes for great views. The sunshine stuck around and we made the call to camp the night there.

Neil on top of Gibraltar Rock at Paul Lake PP

Next morning, we were at Kenna-Cartwright Park in Kamloops ready for orienteering, except no one else was there. Amid thoughts of incapable navigation to the correct start area on our part, we gave up and went for a bike ride on the lovely single tracks in the park. Chance discussions with others in the park lead us to these owls that are currently nesting in the park – pretty awesome to see this many owls in broad daylight.

We eventually got back to the car to find the orienteering event in full swing, so what could we do but head back out again, this time with map and SportIdent. Neil tore off on his bike, admittedly sometimes in the wrong direction, but man, were the tracks good and he was having way too much fun to care. Frances, meanwhile, was off on a foot O course, getting rather distracted with the camera!

The yellow flower of the Arrow Balsamroot, which flowers everywhere around the Okanagan and Kamloops area at this time of year

So when the map says 'uncrossable fence' you really don't want to cross it...... Welcome to the Kamloops Jail :-)

The landscape of Kamloops is pretty dry and hot - scrabbling around on scree to get to the control

So, a bit of an update – hope you’re all doing well. Til next time.......

Springtime in Kelowna

2010-05-01T18:17:00.000-07:00

Spring has sprung in Kelowna, so here's a couple of photos capturing what exactly that looks like in the valley.....

Gazillions of yellow forsythias go mad for a couple of weeks

A view down the freshly green orchard terraces to our area of Kelowna - if you can make out a white blob at the right end of the photo, then yes, you have spotted our lakeshore apartment building :-)

Despite Kelowna's growth boom in the last 5-10 years, there is still a lot of orchard land across the terraces above the lake - cherries, apples, pears, peaches, apricots - hmm, give it a couple of months and we will start seeing the spoils at the local Farmers Market.......

First Camping of the Year!

2010-04-20T21:29:00.001-07:00

So last weekend, we went to Manning Provincial Park – we had explored some of the park last year in June just as wildflower season was getting underway, so were more than happy for an excuse (Neil needing to do some site work at a property by the park entrance) to get back there.
We were also eager to try out our new tent, newly purchased in November last year, that had yet to see anything more adventurous than our lounge floor.

So we checked, and yes, the winter campground was open. Then 10pm Friday night, having driven up after work, we made it to the campground....... and indeed there was at least half a metre of snow on the ground......hmm, that wasn’t quite in the plans!

We staked out the shelter instead, but of course, we had to put the tent up, just because.

Breakfast the next morning in a melted tree well - the sun was shining and all was good :-)

OK, so not many photos from the next day as Frances managed to not notice the camera exposure setting was +2, which is not the most effective for snow! We went for a 5 hour wander in the snow around Lightning and Flash Lakes (and yes, further along the chain are Thunder and Strike Lakes). We followed an old snow shoe trail and the trail alternated between bulletproof ice, decent compacted snow and soft thigh deep fluff. Good fun :-)

Frances sitting - or is it perching? - at a park bench. Nearby snow mounds told of picnic tables and more benches, waiting for summer and the thaw.

Olympic Fever in BC

2010-03-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

The Olympic Torch passed through Kelowna in the month prior to the Winter Olympics. We headed into town to see what Kelowna would make of all this, being a quiet town in winter otherwise.

But the crowds were definitely out, bigger than even when the local Hockey team have an important game on, which is saying something :-) Actually, the crowds and vibe in town were awesome.

In the waterfront City Park, they had a big noisy stage set up which we happily avoided, instead checking out these ice sculptures carved by a local sculptor - depicting figure skating, alpine skiing, snowboarding and hockey.

And a final view from the lake edge of City Park, looking over downtown Kelowna

Winter Sports

2010-03-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

We’ve had quite a few things on locally over the weekends in February/early March, keeping a bit closer to home for a while. So here's a bit of a summary, grouped by 'sport'.

SNOWSHOEING

A local outdoor shop put on a Snowshoe Scavenger Hunt event at the local Nordic ski area – awesome fun :-) We had to bring a digital camera and had about 20 items to either collect or take a photo of while out on a supposed 2km loop. I say supposed because we, as well as many more teams, ended walking way beyond the bounds of the loop accidently (possibly because there was no definition of that bounds :-P ) We still came in second in our category, and don’t you dare say that’s likely because there were only two teams in our category – we’ll never admit it! Got ourselves a free bike tune-up, free day’s X-country skiing and free snowshoes rentals.

Our team was Neil, Frances and Linda –first foray on snowshoes for Neil and Linda, with Linda keen to try a snowshoe experience before being simply too pregnant! All good fun :-)

Linda and Neil at the start by the Day Lodge

On our list: get a photo of your teammate sliding down the toboggan hill.

So Neil prepares himself........

And he's off.......

Next on the list: Snow angel

Turned out surprisingly angelic like!!

A couple of weeks later, there was another snowshoe outing, this time with the husband of one of Neil's workmate, and of course, Zoe, the yellow lab :-)

Zoe leading the way....

X-COUNTRY SKIING

The weekend following the Snowshoe Scavenger Hunt, the N+F and Linda returned to the Nordic ski area with skis this time. Another thing Linda was keen to try, and let’s say our rubber arms didn’t need too much twisting.

Heading off on That Damn Trail (yes, it does involve an old beaver dam)

As this blog is being typed, they have stopped grooming the X-country ski trails for the season, a bit of an early end unfortunately. But we got out for a mission last weekend, knowing it was our last chance to get to the outlying Panorama Trail that we had been eyeing up all winter.

On ungroomed trail, at the start of the Panorama Trail

The Panorama Trail has been described as not really a X-country ski trail, but a flimsy excuse to go find a view. The trail is steep and you practice your herring bone style constantly. But the views at the top were lovely - we looked over at Big White, the local ski hill, and the rest of the McCullough Plateau. Only problem then was the getting back down the hill bit. Well, some hard bomb outs later, not helped by laughing too hard, we were down and back on the main trails for the ski back to the Day Lodge.

Our lunch spot in the sun at the top of Panorama

WANDERINGS

We've also been out exploring on foot, with such little snow having fallen in the valley floor all winter. This time last year we had ice and snow around still!

Icicles along a rock band

The quirky, gnarled shape of an old pine tree

DOWNHILL SKIING

We had a day downhill skiing up at Big White - the morning started off beautiful with blue sky and fresh powder.

Frances amongst the ‘snow ghosts’ at the top of Big White

Neil’s in there somewhere – nice view too :-)

Unfortunately the afternoon turned to the other version of ‘big white’ in the form of big white clouds fogging in the hill, particularly about the tops. However, we used it as an excuse to go explore other areas of the ski hill, because, let’s face it, we were struggling to tear ourselves away from the lovely snow of the top basins.

Plans are for one more day out on the downhill skis, then the bikes are coming out to play :-)

The Annual Lantern Ski

2010-01-31T14:09:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, a big thank you and hello to all you lot that leave comments/messages on our blog - i.e. Kate, Emily, Kylie, Mark etc. It's so very nice to know you're out there somewhere reading away - we certainly are reading lots of your blogs, but we're rather more hopeless at leaving messages - sorry! :-)

Anyway, here's another short tale with some piccies - this time it's the annual lantern ski at Sovereign Lake Nordic Skiing Centre. The deal is you come for a pot luck dinner (and it turns out all X-country skiiers are gourmet chefs, well at least that's what it tasted like :-), then you all head out into the dark forest on your skis following a string of flaming lanterns. It really is beautiful - the forest is silent...and no one can see you fall over......

That afternoon Neil redeemed his Xmas present - a 1:1 hour long skate ski lesson.

Late afternoon light from the day lodge, looking towards the trails heading into the forest.

Frances ready to head off into the darkness.......(you can see the string of lanterns starting off on the right hand side)

Into the forest proper........

Back near the start of the forest trail, with the glow from the day lodge area behind us. Got to love the pencil-shaped alpine firs......

The Great Annual Xmas Tree Hunt and other Kelowna musings

2010-01-26T18:56:00.000-08:00

It was coming up to that time of year – we desperately needed a Christmas Tree to decorate and make our home look festive, so there was only one thing for it. Time for the Great Annual Christmas Tree Hunt!

We took ourselves off into Forest Service Land in search of the perfect tree (ok we might need to qualify that – perfect in our eyes, that is). So many trees, which one to choose?!

We’ve found it – this is the one. Poor unsuspecting thing had no idea what was in store for it:

Yes, we know it’s rather scraggly but we love it!

Christmas Eve dinner with our friends Maude and Paul – we all chipped in for a full turkey roast dinner with trimmings, yum.

Then on Christmas morning we headed into the hills looking for snow – X-country skiing up at McCullough.
Then a few shots from around in town with the snow –

Neil finds he’s not alone after all with biking up Knox Mountain at the north end of downtown.

A family outing to the beach – the winter version.

Kelowna has many, many orchards that provide beautiful colour and even more beautiful fruit in summer – a slightly different look in winter.

Looking north up Okanagan Lake towards our apartment building from Sarsons Beach.

Winter sun over Okanagan Lake and Kelowna from Westside

The century old Thompson Farm and its lovely old barn – this farm and wetland is five minutes walk from our place and is a great spot for a wander, a run, or some bird watching any time of year.

Skiing, skiing and more skiing

2010-01-16T16:31:00.000-08:00

What to do when winter hits, the snow starts flying and temperatures drop?! Why, skiing of course! :-)

Here's some photos of our recent trips into the hills for skiing........

This is our 'local' ski hill, Big White - with a village on the hill that accommodates 16,000 overnight! Not quite like the Craigieburn fields. A lovely blue sky day with fluffy powder - pity it was -16 out there, oh and then there was the wind chill.......

The following weekend we headed further afield for some skiing - into the West Kootenays, first stop: the lovely town of Rossland (great MTBing in winter; great skiing in winter). The town was an old mining settlement back in the day - they found a lot of gold in them hills - and today has many an old wooden building with facade. Looked kinda cosy with the Xmas lights strung out and a light dusting of snow.

So we spent Saturday skiing at Red Mountain - the local ski hill/resort. It was the first day of season and everyone around was excited to be getting out. We discovered the 'Paradise Basin' area pretty early on and found it had the nicest snow, so we were set. Lots of exploring to do and trees to be skiied between :-)

Next up was cat skiing - 12 of us from Kelowna got together to hire a cat for a day. So Saturday night we drove to the tiny town of Ymir (pronounced as in '"Why'm I" Here?' apparently!) Another old mining town, this one has shrunk considerably more than Rossland. The 12 of us holed up in the Ymir Hotel for the night - a rather eclectic place. Turns out there are only two hotels in Ymir, but this one has the only liquor license, so that keeps it busier. Although with our group of 12 in there, there was a grand total of 12 patrons, hmmm.
The proprietor is a Dutch man who lived on Vancouver Island for a number of years before selling his nursery land to developers and buying the Ymir Hotel from the local bikers sight-unseen 4 years ago. He removed the burn-out marks off the lounge floor, renovated everything and added his own touch through a mix of original masters art works, wooden carvings and a collection of musical instruments that a sign says 'you are most welcome to try'.......

We wer up early the next morning to get to the Cat, load up and head into the hills. The guide Trevor paraglides also and therefore knew a number of people in our group from gliding, hence the opportunity coming up. We had a mix of boarders, skiiers and those on teles between us - all good fun :-)

Here we are all excited and bouncing as the Cat heads further and further into the hills......

The guys at the 'Wildhorse Cat-Skiing and Powder Mining Co.' prepare for the season developing the tracks to access the skiing areas. The area is on nature conservancy land just south of the Whitewater Ski Area out of Nelson. Beautiful snow and terrain.........

At the top of the first run - Trevor would take off and set a line for us to keep to one side of. We would then each set off, finding our own fresh snow. Trevor reckoned that even if it didn't snow for two weeks at all, they had enough lines for 12 days skiing before ever coming back to tracked lines!!

And she's off - Frances starts off through the powder.....

Steve emerges from the trees on his board - all is good!

End of run - time to reload gear and people into the Cat, head back up the hill and find more snow to play in......

We skiied into twilight - the Cat had been playing up and going a bit slower than normal, so Trevor was determined to get us as many runs as possible. So the trip down in the Cat was pitch black. Two of the guys went and picked up a second snowmobile with toboggan to get us back down the snow road quicker, leaving the Cat behind for the night. Here we are loading six people per toboggan, towed behind a snowmobile - awesome!!!!!

Unfortunately we had to head for Kelowna that night, with work the next day :-( Early on in the drive the snow was really falling and the plows weren't out on the highway yet, but thankfully it did eventually clear and we rolled into Kelowna under starry skies.

Fall into Winter in Kelowna

2009-12-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

Wow, 3 months since we last put anything up on here. Since it has been so long, here’s a condensed version of what we’ve been up to coming through autumn and early winter.

The weekend after going to see Dave Matthews play, we packed up and headed back to Rossland again! The chance to ride 7 Summits with a bunch of friends was too good to pass by. The trail was just as much fun this time as last, and it was really good to see how much trail maintenance had happened in the intervening month – the locals are serious about keeping it in good shape. This time, we finished the ride in sun instead of hail, so did the last stretch down below Rossland. Neil enjoyed this as it was a solid 5 km downhill blast on flowy singletrack. The next day just happened to be the Taste of Rossland event put on by local hotels and restaurants, so in between good local food we managed to ride some of the nearby trails in the forest and had fun on some of the structures built on them. Frances took over Neil’s full suspension bike that day and enjoyed riding it so much that finding her a new bike came to the top of our list.

So after a week of scouring the classifieds and trialling bikes from the bike shops we settled on a shiny (supposedly second-hand but practically new) Giant Anthem for Fran. We got a great deal since it was from the BC Giant Rep who was selling it to make room for the 2010 model – despite the fact that the little spindles of rubber hadn’t even been worn off the tyres! Maybe there is something to be said for changing fashions and colours after all....

The following weekend we decided to go riding again (what a surprise – it really was the summer of riding) to try out the shiny new bike. There was a mountain bike orienteering event at one of the XC skifields near Kamloops, so we stopped in at Merritt to try the singletracks on Saturday. The trails were great, with the usual (for BC) fun singletrack uphills leading to a fantastic downhill through a steep gully including a lot of boardwalks over boulders and scree slopes. Frances had a personal first there – her first structure!! It was a huge fallen tree across a gully that had been flattened out on top to make it rideable. That night we headed towards the orienteering and camped at Lac le Jeune Provincial Park, which had just officially closed for the season. We had our first frost of the season that night, which at the time seemed mighty chilly, though as I write this in December we have just gone above freezing for the first time in almost 3 weeks. The bike orienteering event was all on the ski trails, which were big enough for the groomer in winter, so the navigation wasn’t tricky. There was quite the network of trails, so the challenge was more about route choice and avoiding the all too friendly cows on the trails! We both had the fastest times of the day for our respective courses.

Tim Sikma then dropped by twice on his way past on an epic BC biking trip. In 3 weeks he managed to visit most of the trails that we have ridden this summer and a couple more too. While here, we rode a couple of my favourite local trails, which compared pretty well to the bigger stuff in the province. There’s certainly enough to keep me out of trouble in the evenings. While here, Tim also got to try out the Canadian medical system for us. He gave them a positive report, especially their fee charging skills.

Then we really started to notice the descent towards Winter. Lac Le Jeune was to be our last camping weekend for the year, as the temperatures dropped away and everything turned golden for fall.

Maples ablaze in the streets of Kelowna

Fall colours at Waterfront Park, downtown Kelowna (x2)

(PS Yes, that's Frances in the distance on her new bike :-)

Frances and Tony cruising the streets of downtown Kelowna as part of a Critical Mass Bike Ride

The second weekend of October was Canadian Thanksgiving - it is the last long weekend of the summer season, as well as being 1 year since we had arrived in Kelowna :-) We took off early on Friday to get ourselves (along with Tony and Linda) down towards the ferry out to the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound in the US. It was one of those weekends where everything fell into place perfectly: great company :-), the weather was lovely, the whales were there for watching, the trails we chose to walk were nice, we found a different beach front campsite each night, and ate at one of the best restaurants we’d been to on Sunday night. There’s something about islands away from the mainland that puts you immediately on holiday time – and that was very much the case for this weekend.

The funky form of the Arbutus tree that grows in coastal Pacific Northwest

Atop the watchtower on Mt Constitution, highest point on Orcas Island, and excellent 360 degree vantage point including Mt Baker, Puget Sound, Vancouver Island and the Canadian Coast Mountains.

Sunset at camp on San Juan Island

(random fact: San Juan Island is the only part of the US to have another country's flag officially flown at the same time as US occupation (the British Union Jack)- google 'War of Pigs', another example of stupidity in the name of claiming land)

Early November saw us down in Vancouver for a weekend exploring, but man was it cold!! A good time for inside activities such as the aquarium - we saw whales, dolphins and all sorts of cool fish while we were there.

The jellyfish tank!!

Now that the weather and darkness have stopped us going away so much we’ve been finding some fun things to do around home. Neil has found a yoga studio just around the corner and is really enjoying classes there, while Frances has started going to the new gym at the fancy new pool that the city has built 5 mins walk away from our place. The pool is great too, with waterslides, a 50 m lane pool that always seems to have plenty space for my slow swimming and the usual hot tubs and steam room. We have been to a couple of ice hockey games (one with Kurt and Bridget while they were visiting), and also one with Linda and Tony as part of their leaving Canada activity list. We had front row seats for this one, which gave a good impression of the real speed of the game. It was fun to be so close that you flinch when the puck comes your way! We also tried curling one evening, which turns out to be very difficult to be good at, but very easy to have fun trying at. Frances has also joined up with a couple of her colleagues to play guitar evenings for the residents at her work.

Frances up to her usual tricks trying to cross-country ski

An old tree snag seen on our wanders in the hills - this time of year it's pretty quiet in the forest - just the silence interspersed by woodpeckers going mad :-)

We finally got the first major snow in Kelowna itself for the season last week. So Neil's bike commute to work has become a bit more of an adventure :-) We've got fingers crossed for a white Xmas here in town.........

Hope you are well, thanks for staying in touch by reading this blog and have a wonderful Xmas wherever you may be!!!
xxx
Neil and Frances

MUSIC (DM) = Dave Matthews = Dan Mangan = Disastrous Melodian (dat's me!)

2009-10-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

Every year at Labour Weekend (which is shared by Canada and the US), Dave Matthews Band plays for three nights at the Gorge Amphitheatre, Washington State. The Gorge is an awesome venue in central Washington, across the Cascades from Seattle, with a natural grass amphitheatre overlooking the stage, with the Columbia River Gorge in behind :-)

Late afternoon at The Gorge, as the sun sets and the place begins to really fill up

We had only picked up tickets for the Friday night (though many get tickets for all three nights and camp there) so took the long route down from Kelowna, via the central coulees.

We went exploring in the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River – the largest dam in the US, producing 6800 MW (Manapouri produces less than 10% of this). A Depression-era project, they added a third power house in the late 60s/early 70s. The primary goal of the dam was irrigation, but this was side-lined during World War II, as it focused on supplying electricity for aircraft manufacturing (hence Boeing developing its headquarters at Everett, WA – directly West of Grand Coulee). Unlike many of the dams further downstream on the Columbia River, Grand Coulee does not have a fish ladder (particularly for the salmon) – decision was that it would be too long and the fish would be too exhausted to make the distance if they put one in. So that has firmly scuppered the annual salmon migration (~ 1 million fish). The Okanagan/Okanogan catchment that we live in here in Kelowna, flows into the Columbia upstream of Grand Coulee. The only salmon species that lives up this way is the Kokanee – they live entirely in fresh water, in the lakes and spawn up in side creeks during the fall (it has just been happening in the last two weeks).

The concrete behemoth that is the third power house at Grand Coulee Dam

The rest of the Dam - they have a lazer light show on the dam face every evening that shows lifesize things to scale the dam against (e.g. a Boeing 747, the pyramids at Giza...)

We headed south from the dam along the Grand Coulee – a formation of downcut channel in old lava beds. This area has seen some pretty awesome old geology: first up there were volcanic eruptions ~15 million years ago that covered Central/Eastern Washington state under thick layers of basalt from the lava flows. Then at the end of the last Ice Age, 15-13,000 years ago, came the Bretz Floods, a series of ice dam build-ups and breaches that sent massive floods across the landscape and scoured out the coulee landscape (known as scablands) through the basalt. They reckon the largest flood flows reached 40-60 cubic km per hr, and speeds of up to 130 km/hr – insane! And all the stripped material ended up forming the fertile soils of the Williamette Valley, stretching north from Eugene, OR, up to the Columbia River on the OR/WA state border.

Steamboat Rock, a basalt remnant that was an island in the raging flood channels.

Neil larking about on top of Steamboat Rock

The view along the Coulee from the top of Steamboat Rock

Artist's Impression of the floods that created the Coulee landscape, with its butte and dry channels

That afternoon, after exploring the Coulees, we arrived at The Gorge for the concert. Sunset was gorgeous and the support bands were good fun. The place slowly but surely filled up with people – ended up with 25,000 there that night. Amazing musicianship from DMB and we loved seeing so much violin, sax and trumpet played live, though that’s not to say drums, bass and lead guitar were missing out on great solos and riffs :-)

Things starting to look serious as the concert gets underway
The next day turned to custard weather-wise so we pottered north back towards the border via a circuitous route: some driving, petrified wood, coffee in a warm dry place, more driving, lunch in car out of rain, bugger it – let’s go for a walk in the rain, more driving, amazing flat grasslands, amazing rainbows, rain finally stops – okay then, time to camp for the night! Then across the border and back into Kelowna the next morning.....

The endless road under a heavy sky... and yep, when we reached the slight rise at the end of that straight, we found ourselves looking along the next 5 kms of dead straight road :-)

Never seen such an intense rainbow - doubled and forming a perfect arc across the sky (this photo just doesn't do the intensity justice)

So then for a different music experience: last night, we went to see Dan Mangan at the Habitat in downtown Kelowna. Now I (Frances) first heard Dan Mangan in one of Gary (my workmate I carpool the 30kms to work with :-) and mine’s music swapping sessions on the drive to and from work. Gary had heard this guy playing at the Vancouver Folk Festival and picked up his EP then and there. Check out his website: www.danmanganmusic.com – you can play all his songs through the website – he is from Vancouver and currently touring around Canada, then onto Europe and Australia – good luck to him!! So this performance was a bit more intimate than DMB – ‘front row’ table in a room with 150 or so other people. Best was when Dan stopped mid- song to hand out percussion amongst the audience to help with the final chorus – good fun! :-)

I have also been a couple of times to the ‘Basement Musicians’ Circle’, held a couple of times a month in Kelowna’s Centre for the Arts. You bring along your instrument of choice and play with whoever else turns up – in the two times I’ve been we’ve had plenty of guitarists, a couple of piano players, a bassist, some with harmonica, and a right spread of music influences. We take turns in leading songs and joining in however we want (or can!) – it’s been great playing with other people for a change, and of course having the loan of Gary’s second guitar to get me back playing again :-)

Almost Famous

2009-09-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

More painting for Frances - I entered a couple of pieces in a local exhibition titled 'Almost Famous'. The agenda was to produce a copy of a famous masterpiece, then after a month of exhibiting, all the pieces are auctioned off and the money raised goes to the local Arts Collective to help fund the upcoming year of exhibitions and workshops.

Your chance to own an 'Almost Masterpiece' by an 'Almost Famous ' artist. How could I resist?

These are the two pieces I did, both gone to good homes :-)

Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'

Georgia O'Keeffe's 'Red Canna Lilies'

Weekend Exploits

2009-09-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

Next up was BC Day long weekend in early August. We headed for the US and northern Washington State figuring that since it wasn’t a holiday in the US we would escape the crazy summer crowds and the crazier summer heat.

It’s about a 2 hour drive from Kelowna down the Okanagan Valley to the US border. As usual the US border guards excel in friendliness (not), while the Canadians are more interested in how your weekend was than whether you’re a threat to national security! Across the border the Okanagan somehow becomes the Okanogan and you switch from a summer hotspot to a year round dead spot. The lakes (irrigation source), forest, vineyards and orchards (irrigation users) disappear and you end up in arid sage brush desert country much more reminiscent of the Kamloops area. It was fascinating to see the sudden change, partly due to the lack of lakes, but largely due to the border. While in Canada the southern Okanagan is well populated due to the friendly winter by Canadian standards, there are plenty less arid options in the States that people can go for and so the Okanogan is a pretty quiet corner of the country. Plus it got to 107 degrees Fahrenheit that day which is just too hot.

Into the Okanogan

We turned towards the coast and headed through Winthrop into the North Cascades for a couple of nights. We camped on the shores of Diablo Lake, where the tide mysteriously went out over the next couple of days. Well, ok its a hydro lake so they must have been generating a bit.

Winthrop - with its pseudo Wild West building frontages

OK so this going a bit overboard on track descriptions! Translation: a 500 m walk in the park.....

Turquoise-coloured Lake Diablo by day

Lake Diablo by night, at our campsite

We hiked up Sourdough Mountain the next day, up early to beat the hot afternoon temperatures (i.e. 35 C plus!!), with lots of wildflowers and awesome views of the volcanic Cascade peaks around us. The trail was built to access a forest service fire lookout on top of the peak – what a summer job that would have been! No-one could tell us exactly what they replaced the lookouts with, but we can only assume satellites, radar and helicopters do the job now.

Neil up on Sourdough Ridge

There was quite a lot of smoke in the air due to the numerous summer fires in both Washington and BC. The North Cascades management plan involves leaving naturally set (i.e. lightning) forest fires to burn themselves out, unless the fire begins to threaten populated areas. So that weekend there were at least 20 fires burning in the park, with some hiking trails closed temporarily and all fires being nowhere near us. The next day we headed to Washington Pass and the Blue Lake area for a walk on the way home. The rock spires were awesome, and even have some relatively simple rock routes on them....next year! While there, we spied this very shaggy and unconcerned mountain goat.

At Blue Lake

Molting Mr. Mountain Goat

West Coast rainforest lushness

The trip to the North Cascades was the first of three consecutive weekends away – mountain biking in Revelstoke and Rossland (again) the following weekends. Both these trips involved some incredible biking on alpine singletrack. Think Craigieburn with wildflowers brushing the handlebars. The Revelstoke ride went in to this cabin, which was something out of Hansel and Gretel.

The start of a long sidle through alpine meadows near Revelstoke :-)

Hansel and Gretel's Cabin...or maybe not....

Some of the gazillion purple daisies out in flower

Rocky peaks, icefalls and glaciers across the valley

Then the trip to Rossland was to ride the Seven Summits ridge ride, which is (deservedly) listed by the International Mountain Bike Association as one of their few epic rides outside the US. It is 32 km of continuous singletrack undulating along a ridge and crossing, yes you guessed it, 7 peaks. Most of the trail is built specifically for bikes, and in fantastic condition with no unrideable sections or nasty eroded corners. Neither of us had ever ridden that far solely on singletrack and were pretty worn out by the end from the concentration.

The weather started badly for the trip, with 40 mm of rain falling in Kelowna on Friday (the most since records began) and a long drive in pouring rain. By morning it was just thick cloud in the valley, and as we climbed up we went through the cloud into the sun. Stunning. As the day progressed we had drizzle, hail and some spectacular thunder and lightning, by which time we were thankfully off the ridgetop. The start of the ride was the best singletrack Neil has ever ridden, and was so good that he went back and rode it again the next morning, including a hike-a-bike section to the top of Old Glory Mountain (the triangular peak in the second photo of Neil on the switchback). The 1000m descent was worth every ounce of energy on the climb...sweet flowing trail, roots to jump over, a few good rock drops near the top, and the occasional tree that jumping out at me!

Spot the black bullet weaving her way down the ridge

Well, OK, on closer inspection it's actually just Fran and we all know how speedy she doesn't go!

Meanwhile the grey ghost does exactly that.....

........and vanishes rapidly off into the distance! (Old Glory in the background)

Time for a break - looking downvalley into the US

Since then we have had a couple of weekends at home to gather our energy for some more weekends away in September before the cold weather hits. We have taken our canoe out on the lake a few times, enjoyed the beach, spent a few mornings at the local farmers market (the fruit is excellent at the moment), been running and swimming, as well as the odd ride. Neil went to ride the wonderfully named Spanky’s trail near Vernon last weekend. This involved riding up the skifield access road before bombing down yet more great singletrack through the forest, getting lost and finding our way out of someone’s driveway!

A small sample of the spectacular Okanagan grown fruit that we have gorging ourselves on all summer

Gill's Visit

2009-08-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

In late July we had Gill, Neil’s mum, come to stay with us for a couple of weeks. Neil’s Dad stayed in New Zealand recovering (very well we might add) from knee and ankle operations that barred him from any long haul flying. So I guess you could say the three of us in Kelowna felt obliged to explore a goodly amount to get ideas for when both Gill and Dave can come over this way next!

The first night Gill arrived, so did three of Frances’ friends from NZ, and with Neil also returning that day from two weeks in Ontario, the household shot up from a measly one to six people :-)Beach time and swimming was a great way to spend that night and the following day.

That afternoon we noticed a small plume of smoke rising from the forest across the lake from us, above the suburbs of West Kelowna. An hour later it had grown to a fair size and planes were busy water-bombing. They seemed to have it reducing in size when the wind suddenly changed and it was all over for them. The fire bloomed and took off and the evacuation began. That night they had 11,000 people evacuated, and 6,000 more on evacuation alert. News came in of another fire at the northern end of West Kelowna, and a third fire even further north up the lake at Terrace Mountain. An incredible number of firefighters and water bombers worked on the two West Kelowna fires until they were fully contained, then out. Only four homes were lost, which seeing the burnt area now, is simply amazing. It took another three weeks to get the Terrace Mountain fire under control and some people up that way were evacuated for over two weeks. It’s been a crazy fire season in the province.

The fire just getting underway, viewed from our beach

Smoke filtered sunlight blazing on the lake

Anyway, so with smoky skies, the three of us spent the next couple of days: at Kalamalka Lake and Ellison Provincial Parks; having Neil’s birthday lunch at Summerhill Winery; canoeing on the lake; and wandering up Mission Creek. Then on Tuesday we headed out of town for five days, on a route that took us through Revelstoke, Golden, Radium, Invermere, Lake Louise, Golden, Kamloops and home. Three of the four nights involved listening to outdoor live music, we were eating dinner outside in 25-30 degree heat every night, and swimming at least once a day. Very nice!!

Some sights from the trip:

The ubiquitous chipmunk, up close and personal!

Alpine wandering - Neil and Gill try to outrun the bugs in Revelstoke National Park (they get a bit vicious in these parts!)

Ah, this is the life....an afternoon in the sun and water on Lake Windermere (a tad different from its English namesake)

Falls in Kootenay National Park - one of the typical milky, powerful rivers of the Kootenay-Rockies region

An old photo from Kootenay NP: makes our mid-summer journey seem a relaxing jaunt in comparison, but then again it was really.......

Boaters out on Lake Louise, with the icefalls looming in behind (a bit of a change from last time we visited, and could walk out on the frozen lake)

Erm, do you think it's really the manual transmission that does that...or an incapable driver....

They meant it when they said 'road not suitable for RVs', and if you didn't listen, the switchbacks would sort you out soon enough......

Dinner outside, live music playing across the street....all is well.....

The local Market in Kamloops. We have a local market here in Kelowna that also worth a visit if we are in town for the weekend, currently full of enormous peaches, nectarines, cherries, plums, apricots etc. etc.

Gill and Frances feeding beavers at the local wetlands, 5 minutes from our house

Cruising the Kettle Valley Railway

2009-07-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, having been to Manning Park the previous weekend, Neil and I, and Linda and Tony, headed out of town again, this time to bike from Kelowna to Penticton at the south end of Okanagan Lake via the old rail bed of the Kettle Valley Railway. Like the Central Otago Rail Trail in New Zealand, the KVR has had its rails removed, leaving a nicely graded trail perfect for biking on.

The weekend started with a drive down on Friday night to Penticton to drop one car off at the end of the 80km bike ride. So we made the most of it with a yummy dinner out, ice creams and a wander on the beach before coming back to Kelowna to prep ourselves for a decent bike ride....by getting a good night’s kip of course!

Next morning we got dropped off with our bikes via shuttle at Myra Canyon on the KVR. This was a sneaky way of effortlessly gaining 900m elevation to start the ride at 1200m asl, heading down to 300m asl. Myra Canyon must have been a headache for those building the KVR – it required 18 trestle bridges and a couple of tunnels to get the railway through. In the big fire of 2003, several (i.e. most) of the wooden trestle bridges were burnt out and the Myra Canyon section of the KVR has only recently reopened with beautifully rebuilt trestles.

A photograph of a photograph of Trestle #15 going spectacularly up in flames

The gang on one of the newly rebuilt trestles

We cruised our way round the canyon, stopping for plenty of views and photos, then we continued our sidle towards our lunch spot at Chute Lake. The morning ride had lots of viewpoints across Kelowna and Okanagan Lake, and took us through a new area of the local Provincial Park where we most often mountain bike. Again, lots of wildflowers, and LOTS of berry patches. Just wait til they’re ripe – then we’ll see more bears around!!

Looking back at Kelowna on a hot, hazy summer's day

After lunch, where we decided against paying Chute Lake Resort $10 to use one of their picnic tables (what the !?) and opted instead for a shady forest floor out of sight of the road, we began the downhill descent to Naramata and Penticton. The going was a bit slow due a soft surface layer on the railbed – sucking up all that energy that should have gone to forward momentum. Didn’t help that my front brake pad, newly replaced, was rubbing badly on my disk – a bit discouraging to have to pedal that hard to keep speed going downhill – never mind! :-D Plenty to keep us side-tracked anyway – such as the old rock ovens along the track that Italian workers on the KVR had built to cook their bread in.

What do you reckon - any good for a backyard bbq or...

The trail made a couple of big switchbacks across the hillside as we descended into Naramata and the heat. It was 35 degrees that day back in Kelowna – must have been something similar where we were. But that was fine as we were heading in the right directions for the wineries and swimming lake, as well as passing by a ‘help yourself’ water station put out by a kind soul for users of the KVR.

Linda at the water station provided courtesy of our 'KVR Trail Host'

We called in at a couple of wineries once we reached Naramata – our only criteria for choosing from the several wineries on the Naramata Benches was that the drive way couldn’t be too long or too far above or below the road – we’d done plenty enough biking for the day thank you. They didn’t look too perturbed about our less than conventional transport method and sheer grime covering us.

We then cycled past more vineyards and orchards of red cherries, soon to be ripe for eating, before continuing on the KVR to Penticton, the car and a swim. They had a very cool slide on a raft out in the lake – possibly for younger kids ;-), but we found if we folded our limbs just so we could fit down the chute which was all the encouragement we needed! Good fun :-)

Hmm, maybe that swim was well-needed for reasons other than just cooling off.....

The town of Penticton is sandwiched nicely between Okanagan Lake (which Kelowna also sits on, half way up) and Skaha Lake, so plenty of beach and swimming spots to choose from. We camped the night by Skaha Lake then went for a wander the next morning up at the Skaha Bluffs, a very popular rock climbing area, before surrendering to the day’s heat and going for yet another swim in the lake. Plus more ice cream.

Wandering at Skaha Bluffs - notice no one going anywhere without tightly clutched water bottle, rather precious in this heat!!

On our way back to Kelowna, we stocked up on some of the fresh fruit that is now turning up at the roadside stalls and the farmer’s market in town. Cherries, raspberries and strawberries at the moment, then the stone fruit that the Okanagan is famous for will be ripening.......

Manning Provincial Park

2009-07-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of weekends ago we headed off to Manning Provincial Park, near the border with the US, for some camping and hiking. We were accompanied by Linda, Tony and Craig, regular partners in crime ... or, as the case may be, hiking.

On the Saturday, four of us (minus Tony with his uncooperative knees) took the Skyline Trail (promising name, we thought!) in hope of getting out of the endless pine forest to some views. And views we did get! The trail climbed up onto an open ridge, covered in wildflowers, and looking straight into the Cascade mountains and their snowy, craggy tops. The Cascade mountain range starts in California and runs up through Oregon and Washington states over the border into Manning Park, its northernmost extent. All volcanic (including some rather active ones in the States – the Three Sisters, Mt St Helens, Mt Rainier etc.), many of the tops are sharp and angular. Our ridge was, by contrast, a lovely wander, and we were able to make a loop of the trail with an easy car shuffle.

Gaining the ridge, amongst burnt pines and wildflowers

The wildflower carpet

Not a bad spot for lunch eh?

After our walk, we found Tony down by the shores of Lightning Lake, reading (or possibly snoozing) in the sun. It was purely guesswork on our part that he might be down there, and we wanted to check out the lake anyway, but we had found him within ten seconds of looking :-) He was surrounded by noisy, squeaky ground squirrels that have made underground tunnel networks all through the grass by the lake.

Neil and Tony being watched by Mr Ground Squirrel

While I've got my camera lens on one of its buddies...

We were joined that night by Jeanette and Greg around the campfire – though the fire wasn’t really that necessary for warmth, unlike the previous night’s frigid temperatures (when, of course, the camp warden didn’t come round with firewood until 11pm!).

The next morning Neil and I took a head start over the others and headed up onto the tops on the opposite side of the valley from the Skyline Trail. Hoping to find more wildflowers, we found snow patches instead! Though there was some cool ridgelines to follow.

On the top of First Brother

Looking up the ridge followed to the top of First Brother

We never did see the others again that day, as they had ended up going for a much shorter wander and had arrived and left while we were still out. We were pretty tired on the homeward journey having walked ~20km one day and ~25km the next – we’re beginning to wonder if hiking distances here are like the car journeys: always further and taking longer than you realise they’re going to be! Or maybe it was simply our over-enthusiastic wandering......

The wild version of a Tiger Lily - the wildflowers here in BC are just amazing

Back to (evening) School for Frances

2009-07-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

I signed up for an art class on 'People and Faces' through the local council's culture and recreation program. It was for four weeks, three hours on a Wednesday, and we could use any medium we liked.

I tried out charcoal first then got going on chalk pastels for the last couple of sessions. And boy did I have fun!! :-)

Here's some of my creations:

Using willow charcoal

Chalk pastels, from a photo we took in Ollantaytambo, Peru

Chalk pastels, from a photo my sister Kate took of our cousin's daughter, Grace

Out East

2009-07-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

For the first three weeks of June, Neil was working in the Golder office in London. London, Ontario, that is.

He kept super busy with design work during the day, then got out exploring aplenty in the evenings and weekends. He took his mountain bike with him (as obviously he couldn’t handle the thought of unnecessarily being away from it for three whole weeks! Which is fair enough, right?)

Here are some photos from his trip:

Well first things first, instead of scuppering a weekend due to Neil flying East, we headed down to to camp at Squamish for the weekend, then I dropped him off at Vancouver airport on Sunday.

The beautiful granite of Yak Peak on the road from Kelowna to the Lower Mainland - hmm, more trip scheming....

Shannon Falls, Squamish, in spring flow - now thats A LOT of water coming down there!

On top of the mighty Stawamus Chief above Squamish

And then a few thousand kilometres away:

A refreshing change from signage you'd find in London, UK, where you may be forbidden to walk, play ball or generally do anything that 'would pose an unnecessary nuisance to others'

First weekend foray, to the big smoke: the CN Tower in Toronto

Looking back at downtown Toronto from an island park in Lake Ontario. CN tower on left and Canada Geese in the foreground :-)

Just in case you forgot Toronto is actually a really big city with some really big buildings!

A bid for the Guiness Book of Records - over 1600 guitarists playing the same (Neil Young) song at the same time.....(The entire square is full of guitarists)

OK, competition time - can anyone guess why on earth Neil took this photo? Entries accepted via Comments tab and winner announced in next blog :-)

(it's easy really!)

Mountain biking trail around Lake Fanshawe on the outskirts of London

The view over London from Mt Boler Ski Hill (which boasts 30m vertical relief - honestly!)

I guess when you want to expand your ski terrain, you do literally have to truck in dirt and build it upwards in these parts...

London (pop. ~400,000) has a big university and quite a few old stone buildings in its central area:

It also has some very confusing parking regulations!
And some very cool reptiles, which Neil nearly rode over on his bike!

Following a weekend trip to Toronto, Neil then headed for Niagara Falls on the follwoing weekend:

Standing upstream of the lip, the falls are eerily silent. The flow is maybe a metre deep as it pours over the edge.

On the way back to London, just in case you forgot how flat a lot of Ontario is and how much is farming land....

The May Long Weekend

2009-07-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

The Canadian equivalent of New Zealand’s Queens Birthday weekend happens in mid-May with Victoria Day. We decided to make the most of the three day weekend to go a bit further afield and head southeast to the West Kootenays – a mix of camping with Linda, Tony and Craig, then some mountain biking thrown in as well. Heading out of town on Friday night after work, we drove to Christina Lake and pitched our tents in the dark.

We awoke to find ourselves by the shores of a lovely lake nestled in the hills. It did take us a bit by surprise though to see so many houses along the waterfront around the lake. While we were in a Provincial Park, large chunks of shoreline are private property here - not quite a case of find yourself a nice camping spot on the beach for the night!

We went for a day walk, traversing along above the lake, slowly baking as the day got hotter and hotter. Pity the lake was still pretty much freezing or it would have been perfect for swimming.

A vulture soaking up the sun above Christina Lake

Then it was mountain biking time, and we headed further east to the town of Rossland, home of an extensive mountain biking trail network and an awesome ski hill (or so we’ve heard). We got out exploring on the bikes and found some snow, some wildflowers and lots of garter snakes sunning themselves on the bike trails. Turns out Neil’s not so good at discerning a snake from a stick and nearly rode straight over several of them :-) The area reminded us of some of the West Coast towns in New Zealand – old mine shafts in the hills, camping at the local sports ground, a nice laidback town, great ice creams etc.

Working our way up to the top of Kootenay-Columbia Hill At the top, overlooking Rossland

We headed home via Nelson and the Slocan Valley. Another area to come back and explore further.......

Local Flora and Fauna

2009-06-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

Spring arrived rather dramatically here and within the space of about six weeks we went from below zero overnight and highs of 10 during the day, to lows of 15 and highs of 32 (it’s a bit scary to think its reached 32 already and it’s still spring – if you don’t hear anymore from me on this blog, it’s because I’ve melted away in the heat). The snow line has been creeping up the hill sides, and more and more tracks are opening back up for running and biking.

That’s not to say we didn’t manage to sneak in a weekend of downhill skiing at Silver Star on the second to last weekend of the season (i.e. mid-April :-) Could you imagine decent skiing in mid-October in NZ? Nope, me neither.) We got a deal that gave us two days of lift passes each and a night’s accommodation, then shared the accommodation with a couple of our friends, Linda and Tony, who had season passes - perfect. We haven’t got any photos of the weekend, but that was because the four of us were having too much fun pratting about on our skis - hardly any lift lines and lots of terrain to be explored.

Meanwhile back down in the valley, wildflowers and blossom came out all over the place:

Arrow balsamroot on Knox Mountain:

And more and more animals are coming out into the sun as the snow disappears, including turtles, snakes and bears :-) The painted turtles are hanging out in the local pond, across the road from our apartment building, and we get ‘serenaded’ to sleep every night by the frogs that also live in the ponds. I’ve yet to spot a bear, but Neil spooked one on his mountain bike the other evening, when he was out on a group ride (He’s got out on a few of these Tuesday night group rides so far, with up to 45 riders in the group!)

Painted turtles sunning themselves in the local pond

A yellow-bellied marmot keeping lookout up Knox Mountain

Then we’ve been spending some time with some other furry creatures of a slightly smaller stature than a bear – our friends, Linda and Tony, have been fostering kittens for the local SPCA, and we get called in as backup when they have to be out of town for work :-) Five tiny bundles of fluff wrecked havoc (well, tried to...) in their place for a few weeks until they had all their inoculations and were big and strong enough to be put up for adoption. We watched them learn to jump and climb, meow instead of squeak and alternate between sleeping on top each other (or us) and scrapping.

Isn't it just tiny!?

A favourite kitten pasttime - scrapping

Which looked so much fun that they all joined in....

Neil and I managed to lose one of the kittens one night when we were round feeding them. We eventually found it after a good 30 minutes of looking when Neil opened out the leg-rest on the lazyboy chair that he had been sitting on earlier and a kitten tumbled out from the fold of fabric underneath the chair. Oops. Kitten hadn’t made a sound all that time and wasn’t least perturbed about its misadventure.

Other things keeping us busy:
Orienteering for the first time in Canada up by Kamloops. Lots of sage brush and grassland with scattered pines, plus some nice scrambles up small bands of rock around the hilltops. A really fun course, rough underfoot and some steep climbs but a great way to explore new country. Super-friendly bunch of local orienteers (of course!)

The Dewdrop Map - long course (5.9km)

A woodcarving course through the local council’s recreation program. Three days of evening classes learning to hand carve with knives – we produced a couple of nice wooden spoons from chunks of birch, then Neil carved a knife handle while I made sheathes from birch bark. Oh, and all our fingers are still intact.

The results of our woodcarving course

I’m now doing an evening art class through the same rec program – this one’s on people's faces, and you can use any medium you like. I’m really loving it. I’ve taken a shine to willow charcoal and am keen to try playing with chalk pastels next week :-D

Ski to Sea

2009-06-07T15:54:00.000-07:00

Every year, Neil’s work puts in corporate teams for the Ski to Sea race here in Kelowna. The event is a six-part ‘relay’ involving:

1. Downhill skiing – run up Big White ski field in your ski boots carrying your skis, then ski straight back down again (while trying not to pass out from the uphill slog!)

2. X-country skiing – ski 8km on forest trails, and yes, it starts heading downhill so there’s a lovely hill at the end waiting for you

3. Mountain biking – down the ski field access road and onto a forestry road, so actually a very fast and muddy downhill blat

4. Road biking – down the Highway into Kelowna, with some nice undulations to ensure you get some good uphills in there too

5. Running – a 14.5 km run along Mission Creek and up parallel to the lake, into City Park

6. Canoeing – two people paddle across the lake, up parallel to the shore to a brightly decorated houseboat, then loop back to finish, an 8km circuit

Sounds good fun, right, so we signed ourselves up! Initially down for the run (Neil) and the canoe (Frances) with five other team mates, the usual last-minute change around happened and we found ourselves in a team of four! So we had Casey doing the downhill ski and canoe, Neil doing the X-country and the run, Matt doing both bike legs and me in the canoe and as chief support crew.

Registration on a slightly chilly morning in City Park - then off up Big White ski hill for the start:

Neil had a good X-country ski (especially for one whose not spent much time on skating skis!) and a good run despite cramping (likely due to using a lot of energy and muscles in the ski). Neil's workmate, who has lent us the pair of skating skis all this past winter :-), offered to wax the skis in preparation for the event - turns out racing wax is pretty effective and Neil reckoned he spent a good few minutes trying to keep up with his speedy skis before finding his rhythm!

Neil awaiting his team-mate at the change-over (hmm, are those poles out to stop those slippery skis from taking him off down the hill unexpectantly?):

After Neil's run, Casey and I headed out on a choppy lake and completed our there-and-back circuit without going for an unintentional swim like a few teams did (the lake was only 5 degrees C, so swimming was not an inviting thought).

Lining up the canoes in the morning - the route past along this side of the bridge, where there was some interesting currents coming through the gap....

I have no idea how long we took for the whole event, but our team mate Matt did have an awesome road ride and posted fifth fastest time on that leg – nice :-) There were a few hardy souls that did the event as an individual and I know everyone else on the canoe leg took the time to cheer them on as they came past (distinguishable in their single sea kayaks) – all in all, great fun and a good excuse to spend the rest of the day in a hot tub at team mate Matt’s place......

Easter Exploring in the Rockies

2009-06-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

Oh dear – its been a while since this was last updated, hasn’t it. I’d love to say its purely cos we’ve been too far too busy but I think the usual side-tracking and not wanting to be inside on a computer on a nice sunny day has more to do with it. And finding a rainy indoors day to catch up on these things can be hard to do round here – I’ve never lived anywhere where it just doesn’t rain like here!

And we have been keeping busy, either out exploring Southern BC or around in the Okanagan Valley. For Easter (only a three day weekend here – no Easter Monday off), we went for a long drive to the Rockies (BTW who came up with that name?! They're mountains. Of course they're rocky.). Heading out of town on Thursday night, we dossed down in Revelstoke for the night, then got away bright and early to drive east up through Yoho National Park and into Banff National Park. It was a nice time of year to be doing this drive as the summer crowds had yet to arrive, the road was clear of snow (finally) but the mountains were still plastered in white – absolutely beautiful :-)

First stop in Banff NP was Lake Louise. Famous for its deep turquoise colour, fed by glaciers and ice falls from the impressive cirque above the lake, we of course saw the lake in all its glory still frozen white and covered with snow – not even a hint of that turquoise colour! But being frozen did mean we could go for a wander on it which was nice........

From there, we headed north up the Icefields Parkway, amongst the beautiful snowy banded peaks that appear in so many photos and posters around the place – and make this National Park the most visited in Canada. With the snow having melted out of the valley areas in the Okanagan, we really hadn’t realised just how much snow would still be around up the Icefields Parkway (when will we learn --> Canada = lots of snow for lots of the year!). Should’ve brought the X-country skis we thought as we floundered round in soft deep snow in our boots. But to be honest, only touring skis really would have cut it in the spring snow – and there were lots of people out for day trips on skis which was cool to see.

We passed the Athabasca Glacier where you can go on a tour bus that drives up onto the glacier (we didn’t!!) and then wandered around the frozen Athabasca Falls, where the river that runs up the Icefields valley (see photo above) pours into a slot canyon. Stopping at Jasper for the night, we went for a walk on one of many local trails around the town and met some local wildlife:

Next morning we went exploring at Maligne (said ‘Ma-leen’) Canyon, a very narrow slot canyon, with, as it turns out, some good ice climbing still happening this time of year. Further up the Maligne Valley is home to one of three caribou herds in the area – you’d be lucky to see them though!

That afternoon we drove through Robson Provincial Park, past mighty Mt Robson – the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies – onto Canoe River for the night. With layers of cloud around it, Mt Robson is one of those peaks that you look at and think, ‘okay that’s a pretty massive peak’, then a bit of cloud clears further up and you see that it just keeps on going higher still.

We enjoyed getting out camping for the first time since winter on this trip – though we were the only ones camping at Canoe River! We called the campground owners before arriving to see if they were actually open yet. They were a bit surprised but said yes, they just hadn’t got the water running yet for the season. Upon arrival, we selected a beautiful wee site right on the river bank (not all sites were snow-free by any means!), filled up our water bottles at their house and settled in for the night – perfect :-)

We travelled back to Kelowna the next day, via the very quiet Highway 5 - and got a good sense of the isolation, big country and big distances you find in BC once out of the main centres......

A Week in the West

2009-03-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

Neil had the next week off work and so the four of us were headed for the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island. We planned to drive out of the Okanagan Valley for the Lower Mainland on Saturday morning, and sure enough we awoke to snow and wind on the Saturday that would make driving over the 1700 m Connector route a bit horrible. We bunkered down all morning hoping it would simply all go away, then mid-afternoon we decided to run for it and try to make Hope at the edge of the Lower Mainland before dark. Well, the Connector, as a passenger, was great (Neil drew the short straw and got to drive!)– lots of flurries, big swirls from the snow plows as they worked up and down the highway and some lovely golden afternoon light on a freshly snowy landscape.

The snow plows were working hard over the Connector, but we've made it over the first pass and the sun's started to some out......

We didn’t even bother to stop for a breather upon reaching the main Coquihalla highway, but continued to the next pass hoping the snow conditions might have eased up. Well, it would have been much better except for all the lumpy grooves created by the trucks as they struggled up the pass with their chains on. But all in all, we made Hope in good time and we were now on our way!

Of course, the next morning we woke up to 10cm of fresh snow on our car. But we trundled our way across the Lower Mainland and into central Vancouver for a brief lunch stop and wander in Stanley Park. Then we crossed Burrard Inlet and headed for the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay. To access the Sunshine Coast, which runs north from Howe Sound and Vancouver, you have to take a 50 min ferry ride, but then you are on quieter winding roads, away from the sheer numbers of cars and noise that is the Lower Mainland. We settled in at Sechelt, a small town sitting between the sea and a narrow inlet, for the night......

......only to awaken to over a foot of snow on the ground the next morning! Locals reckoned they hadn’t anything like in March for the last 15-20 years or so. We thought it was fantastic as the sun soon came out and we headed on up the freshly plowed highway.

They were out with the brooms, sweeping the snow off the floatplane wings at Sechelt Inlet:

The pier at Sechelt Beach in the morning:

That afternoon, we walked into the Skookumchuck Narrows, a pinch point in a long inlet where the strong tidal flows create standing waves. That day the tide was ‘only’ flowing at 9 knots, but can get up to 15 knots, creating a playground for keen kayakers. We spent the evening feeding ourselves well and watching the moon come up from the cosy confines of a sea-side pub/accomodation – definitely a place to come back to, especially with sea kayaks.

The next day saw us continuing up the Sunshine Coast to the ferry for Vancouver Island. An hour and a half later we had crossed Georgia Strait and were making our way across the Island to its West Coast. We went wandering in the old growth Douglas Firs at Cathedral Grove – home of 800-year-old trees that somehow escaped the logger’s saws, and now stand dripping with moss and lichen, ferns underfoot. Interestingly enough, at Cathedral Grove, you can go for two different circuit walks – one either side of the highway. So yes, this beautiful stand of old growth forest has the main highway bisecting through the middle of it – go figure!

Totem Pole at Westview Point, before boarding the ferry to Vancouver Island:

We then had a couple of evenings in Tofino, from which we climbed a local hill, Lone Cone, that has an amazing view out over Clayoquot Sound, complete with several soaring bald eagles riding the thermals off the hill top. As we hauled ourselves to the top of the hill, we startled a yound eagle from its perch on the rocky cliffs and we had a fantastic close-up of a soaring eagle as it took flight from only a few metres away.

Twilight at Tofino with the numerous islets of Clayoquot Sound:

Clayoquot Sound and the Pacific Ocean beyond, from the top of Lone Cone:

Further down the coast at Ucluelet, we spend a lunch sitting in the sun at the ocean’s edge, watching the spouts of Grey Whales as they continued their migration north for the summer feeding season. There were a few signs of spring on the Island, though with the harsh winter we’ve had everything is at least a couple of weeks behind the normal progession into summer. The yellow spikes of Skunk Cabbage (yes, it looks kinda like cabbage, and definitely smells like a skunk!) were started to come up in wetland areas. These cunning plants produce hydrogen sulphide (hence the small) but as this is an exothermic reaction (generating heat) it gives them a head start on other spring plants by melting away the snow around the new shoots. Definitely looking forward to wildflower season now!!

We also had yet another beautiful sunny day at the southern end of the Island, exploring the Sooke Potholes (deep pools in a small river canyon) and the view across Juan de Fuca Strait from the East Sooke Peninsula. Way back in 1988 when my family was trundling our way to Winnipeg in our VW Camper from southern California, we spent a very rainy week driving around the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, US. Never saw the mountains, and it definitely made it clear to us why Olympic is famous for its moss-dripping thick rainforest. Well, finally, two weeks ago, Mum, Dad and I got a lovely clear view across the Strait of the Olympics in all their snowy glory – gorgeous.

Our final day was in Victoria, with Neil and Dad checking out the Provincial Museum and Mum and I heading out to the world-famous Butchart Gardens. Developed on land that had been used as a limestone Quarry, the garden included a wonderful Japanese Garden (as close to the real thing as I’ve seen outside of Japan – the local climate really suits the carpets of moss under the wonderfully sculted pine trees) and a ‘Sunken Garden’ in the old quarry pit. Crocuses and miniature irises were peeking up in splashes of colour everywhere.

The most colourful rubbish bin you've ever seen - crocuses, daffodils, irises and pansies at Butchart Gardens:

Then that afternoon, we said goodbye to Mum and Dad as they went to board the Victoria Clipper boat that conveniently runs between Victoria and downtown Seattle, where Dad had his conference starting the next day. It had been a wonderful two weeks of showing the area that we currently call home, then exploring somewhere new together. Now, Neil and I took the car back across on the ferry to Tsawassen on the Lower Mainland and headed for home in the pouring rain. And sure enough it snowed yet again on us driving over the Connector route into the Okanagan and there was fresh snow on the ground at our apartment in Kelowna. So looks like we get to wait a couple more weeks before we get spring in the Okanagan.....

Frances' Parents Come to Town

2009-03-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

For the first two weeks of March, my parents, Pat and Nicky, were over visiting. With Neil still working the first week, we three took every opportunity to get out exploring the local area with several walks in the snowy hills........ Knox Mountain, Scenic Canyon, Mission Creek, Kalamalka Provincial Park.

We spent one beautiful sunny day on snowshoes – something none of us had tried before, and they turned out to be perfect for loping round in soft snow. Lightweight and lots of fun. We went up to a local nordic skiing area (where Neil and I had scouted out a good snowshoe trail the previous weekend with James). Called ‘Panorama Ridge’, the trail wove up and along the ridge, with lots of clearings in the fir trees for great views of the surrounding hills, soaring eagles and Okanagan Lake.

We could even see the white smear that is our elegant and subtle (not!) apartment block across on the opposite shore – mind you, you can usually pick the building out from most viewpoints in the area (on a complete side note, apparently the building was used by pilot flying in across the lake to line up for the airport! Anyway! Back to snowshoeing........). As we rounded the ridge and headed back for the chalet, Mum spied a moose and her calf stalking through the forest. We all froze and watched as they stopped to have a good munch on some tasty leaves, gave us a thorough looking over, munched some more leaves, then stalked off on their gangly legs deeper into the forest :-)
That evening we headed into the local rink at Prospera Place to watch the local hockey team, the Kelowna Rockets, play against Spokane (they play in the Western Junior Hockey League, with a combination of junior teams from the north-western US and western Canada). The Kelowna goalie deservedly got Man of the Match with some amazing saves and it was a really fast, flowing game to watch – all good!

On the Friday we went north to Kalamalka Provincial Park, site of Neil and mine’s adventure in early season snow where we came across some bobcat tracks. This time we came across a strange mark in the snow where there was a freshly broken hole in the snow, but no tracks at all in the area. We were wondering how it got there as we were in an open field with no chance anything could fall from trees above to create the hole (nor was there anything in the bottom of the hole)......Any theories?? Well, my latest, or only, theory was formulated after reading a book on animal tracks. Apparently owls may leave imprints of holes in the snow when they hunt. They sound out out prey scurrying around under the snow then swoop down and burst through the snow to pluck the hapless animal from its hiding place. So maybe this is what we saw? Would be cool if it was.....

That evening, all four of us headed up to Big White to take advantage of the $5 Friday Night skiing and the live band playing at one of the cosy lodges up on the mountain. It was a pretty cold evening, but there was some gorgeous soft powder and with days getting longer, we managed a number of runs through the trees and away from the main lit run before it became too dark.

Another Visitor!

2009-03-22T14:41:00.000-07:00

For a brief few days at the end of February we had the company of our mate James, working his way up from southern California to catch the Prince Rupert ferry to Juneau, AK. His summer-tyred Californian car did remarkably well as the snow kept falling in Kelowna but James did rapidly change his shorts and T-shirt attire (admittedly entirely appropriate for a day’s driving up from Portland in a heated car) once he stepped out into the -10 Kelowna air.

The day after he arrived, we piled on the down jackets and headed out cross-country skiing for the day. Though can you really call it cross-country skiing when one of you has classic skis, another is on skating skis and yet another on back-country touring skis? We probably didn’t look the most graceful, but we were having plenty of fun! It was kind of interesting to see how each type of skis set had its strengths and weaknesses – I mean, sure James had to put skins on to get up the hills, but he could sure whip down the hill on the other side (that’s if he bothered to remove his skins, particularly when he could see the next hill coming up). I managed a couple of lovely bruises for my classic skis’ hopelessness at making corners on steep downhills (though perhaps that was in part the skiers weakness). All-in-all it was a gorgeous day out in the sun.

James and Neil at our lunch spot in the sun:

Ode to Harry

2009-03-01T14:45:00.001-08:00

A foot note on the life and times of our beloved Xmas Tree, Harry. Inevitably it came time to send him to the big chipper in the sky.....

At least he was in good company, thrown in with hundreds of other discarded Xmas Trees on an empty section in town, from where the City Council collected them for final 'disposal' (i.e. the city composting plant :-)

Daily Distractions

2009-03-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

So what else has kept us busy? Well, on Wednesday night we play in an All Sports team, where every week we play a different sport. So far we’ve played Indoor Soccer, Dodgeball, Handball, Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Footy (American Football not Rugby rules of course!) and are playing Volleyball this week. We were fortunate enough to get on the team though a girl Frances met at a recent work placement at a non-profit community organisation that runs children recreation and support programs throughout the Okanagan Valley (as part of a Canada-wide club). A really great place to be involved in, but then she moved onto another work placement, this time at an engineering contracting company. Most recently, she volunteered at a conference on ‘Building Sustainable Communities’ that was held here in town. Loved the conference.

Both of us also volunteered at a Sustainability-themed Film Festival a couple of weekends ago where we helped set up the films, then could sit down and watch them – perfect! We’re also going to weekly Spanish Conversation classes and have been swimming a lot with a six-week pass that has just finished.

We’re still getting out exploring in the snow, with Neil having been biking these past two weekends in somewhat dubious biking conditions. We went for a tour across the lake and found some wonderful frozen lakes, complete with ice-fishing holes. Though spring is surely on its way as there have been a lot more animals out and about, with sightings of ospreys and bald eagles by Mission Creek. Squirrels and chipmunks are back running themselves dizzy up and down the trees.

Some photos taken when out and about:

Bald eagles nesting on Mission Creek:

Don’t think the birds are going to come back to this nest in a hurry though:

Our local favourite, the Mission Creek Greenway, has been wonderful for running, biking, skiing and wandering through all seasons:

Looking north up Okanagan Lake from Knox Mountain, another of our favourites, located right on the northern side of downtown Kelowna:

Can't wait for the spring blossoms and new leaves in the orchards and golf courses, but in the meantime, the snow and bare tree patterns are pretty cool:

We simply had to go play on this frozen lake just out of Kelowna:

Turns out everyone else had the same idea, except they came prepared with fishing line for some ice fishing:

An ice fishing hole - the ice must have been a foot or more deep:

And literally ten minutes drive from town, we found some people playing on this frozen seep. Unfortunately it thawed too much before we could get back to explore it, but at least we know its there for next winter:

Skiing, Skiing.....and More Skiing

2009-03-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

Well, what else are you going to do when the snow won’t go away?!

In mid-January, we decided to remedy our lack of downhill skiing this season and take advantage of the $5 Friday night skiing put on by the local ski resort, Big White. Apparently Big White has been doing this $5 Fridays since at least 1992 and never upped the price – good on them I say. Ski rentals were $10 for the full set, and we definitely got our $15 worth out of it with plenty of runs – good fun with a group of us up from Neil’s work. While it got crazy busy after 6.30, some of the group headed up early (Neil and I included of course :-) and started skiing the slopes at 4pm. Only one main chairlift was open but it went most of the way up the mountain so it was a decent run back down. Getting up there early also meant we were skiing in twilight with a gorgeous orange sunset and silhouetted snowy mountains. Then the stars came out.....The lifts closed at 8pm, but 4 hours of going for it was good enough for us. The next day we spent X-country skiing at the local Nordic ski area, exploring new trails and enjoying the blue skies and sunshine. Forgot our camera all weekend, so no proof of how beautiful it really was being out there!!

Then last weekend, we headed up with some friends to some X-country night skiing put on by the Sovereign Lake X-Country Ski Club for Valentines Day. They set up a 5 km trail lit with 100 lanterns following a fantastic pot luck dinner, where people had bought the most amazing, varied, tasty dishes to share. So lets just say it was a nice slow ski round on very full stomachs! All good. Some snow was falling and they had a great bonfire going outside the main hut. They had lit the fire on the snow and it slowly sank as it got hotter during the evening! We had got up there earlier in the afternoon and also gone out for a longer ski before dinner.

Working up an appetite before the Pot Luck Dinner at Sovereign Lake:

The following morning Neil and I dragged ourselves out of bed to head back up into the hills for some Ski-orienteering put on by the local Nordic X-country Club. I think we were hoping it would be a score event and that we could go as far and as fast as our tired bodies felt like, but it turned out to be a regular orienteering course so there was nothing for it but try to get to the end asap....and it was on all the black expert runs (= very steep uphills and even steeper downhills!). Not too many crashes and had lots of fun exploring new trails. The Club members are a very friendly bunch (just like PAPO back home really :-)

Plenty of snow throughout the Valley - looking down Okanagan Lake at the Bridge from one of the local Provincial Parks:

Gill and Darrin's Visit

2009-03-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it's been a while since we last added photos and tales here!! Sorry! We've added a few stories this time to get you up to speed with what we have been doing these last couple of months.......

In the first week of January, we were visited by a couple of Kiwi friends, Gill and Darrin, who have been on the road for 13 months now. We had kind of followed them up through a lot of South America, then leap-frogged them to come to Kelowna while they were somewhere in Central America. It was great to catch up, share stories, hear Kiwi accents and linger long over evening meals with them.

We went for an evening wander up Knox Mountain, a mountain park near downtown Kelowna perched on the edge of the lake. Funnily enough not so many other people were up walking in the dark and snow! But we had great fun making a snowman and nearly getting our car locked in at the park overnight! Oops! Thanks nice security man!

PS. Neil's still been getting out on the bike to work throughout January and February, with the days getting longer and the snow finally starting to melt.......

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year :-)

2009-01-04T21:23:00.000-08:00

It turned into the first true Canadian White Xmas (i.e. a Xmas when all main centres have
snow, from Victoria to Halifax) for a fair few years. On Xmas Day we headed out carrying our
X-country skis, walked across the road from our place and promptly put them on. There was
enough snow that we could literally ski from our place down the streets and along the
Greenway - very nice! Our Xmas lunch was out in the snow, thermos in hand. People were out
skating on Mission Creek and there were plenty of walkers and a few skiers out too. Thanks
to everyone who sent us christmas emails or packages - much appreciated when you are away
from home over Christmas.

Xmas Lunch out on the Mission Creek Greenway

Exploring upper Mission Creek in Scenic Canyon - the creek's there somewhere under all that snow.....

The following Saturday we went car shopping - the bout of very cold weather and the return
of car to Dave had made us realise that we really weren't going to get far without a car. We
succeeded with our mission to find a reliable (well, hopefully) car that will handle winter
and be reasonably priced. Test driving a car on snow is interesting....you can't exactly
check the brakes to make sure they work well as you can't stop regardless! Besides, Frances
still needed to get to work somehow out by the airport (some 15kms away).

Around New Years, we took the car out for a longer drive and went over to Kamloops for the
night. We were driving in falling snow for a lot of the way there, but then it cleared
beautifully the next day.

Mmm, lovely driving....

The pier at Little Shuswap Lake:

Preparations for a White Christmas

2009-01-04T20:50:00.000-08:00

So the snow has definitely arrived now. Shortly after our post bemoaning the lack of snow it began (surprise, surprise!) and the cold temperatures and snowfalls haven't really let up.

We had a weekend in mid December up at Big White - the local ski resort - for Neil's work
Xmas party. The resort was a bit of a surprise to those of us used to skiing on Craigieburn
club ski fields. Neither of us has seen a groomer for a few years, and all of a sudden we're
at this resort with 10,000 or so beds on the mountain. We had great fun driving up on the
Friday night as the snow really set in to the extent that the outside of the windscreen was
freezing up. Unfortunately as it was the first major snowfall of the season, most of the ski
field wasn't yet open, so instead of downhill skiing on Saturday as intended, we spent most
of the day on skates - good fun! Since it is the national sport, we had a go with hockey sticks and a puck....much to Neil's disgust, the stick slides on the ice and cannot be used as a tripod!

We had the Xmas Dinner that night, then went X-country skiing the following day as the
temperatures plummeted to -15. Fran's hair froze. But we did find a cosy cabin out on the
trails with a fire going that was perfect for a lunch break. It was just so hard to leave to
ski back to the car.....

The cosy cabin, with smoke puffing merrily out the chimney - perfect!

On our way back down to Kelowna, we cruised slowly along the forestry road scouting out the
perfect Xmas tree. You see, you can get free permits from BC Forests, allowing up to 3 Xmas
trees per family to be cut from BC Forests lands. We found Harry, our lovely Xmas tree,
chopped the poor thing down and shoved him in the back seat for the ride home. All class!

Harry (i.e. the Xmas Tree) all dressed up at our place:

Then followed a week of temperatures down to -30 and no higher than -15. It was a bit cold
waiting for the bus and they plowed all the snow into the bike lanes so biking really wasn't
a great option, but we did have the good fortune of borrowing Dave Aubrey's car while he was
keeping warm in Thailand. Neil did experiment with X-country skiing up the Mission Creek
Greenway to get to work, but it took him a very, very long time. So he tried biking up the
Greenway instead, which avoids the roads, and found that a much more suitable option :-)
Though at -25 the seals on his rear shock shrank to the point that he lost all the air which
wasn't ideal. One of the guys at work suggested that may be mother nature's way of saying it
is too cold to bike....Neil prefers the option that she was telling me to put an extra hat on and ride my hardtail! Frances started a temp work assignment out by the airport so she had
the car. It's also a bit slow going in the mornings after a fresh snowfall :-), but the
Council does get out frequently with a quadbike and attached plow and create a bit of a
compacted path which is great.........

The beach at our place- anyone for a swim?

Notice the steaming lake - the sudden drop in air temperature had the lake steaming trying to cool itself down to the air temperature. This created what is called 'Arctic Sea Fog' where the rising moist air off the lake condenses when it mixes with the surrounding cold air, forming a thick fog. Another side effect of temperatures below -20 is that you get sticky nostril syndrome. On each breath in, the air freezes your nostrils on the inside; much like having a cold and squelching your nostrils between your fingers! Yum.

Mission Creek all frozen over

Changing of the Guard

2009-01-04T20:39:00.001-08:00

We now have a new Bread Master in our midst - Fran seems to have got the hang of the Canadian bread ingredients and is churning out some jumbo loaves :-) And doesn't she look pleased!!

Tracks in the Snow

2009-01-04T20:19:00.000-08:00

We headed south down Okanagan Lake towards the US border for a weekend of checking out the local area. Somehow it seems odd that the border simply crosses a lake and runs over the
hills - but I guess that is what happens when borders are drawn with rulers rather than
following rivers/valleys/other natural features.

The other end of the lake is in the US:

Haynes Point Spit in Osoyoos Lake:

The Osoyoos area is officially a desert and apparently has rattlesnakes and many other cool reptiles during summer. At this time of year, we had to use our imagination for it to seem anything other than cold!

The next day we continued our exploration, and headed to Kalamalka Provincial Park to walk
to Cougar Canyon. We’ve struggled to find decent maps of many of the trails. In their absence, we’re currently employing the Hansel and Gretel method (only go as far as you can be able to turn around and walk back before it gets darks, and leave plenty of signs of where you’ve been) I’m still trying to convince Neil that the H&G method definitely involves copious amounts of chocolate, ostensibly to use as trail markers, but of course actually to eat on your way back out.
The bears are all long in hibernation now (thank goodness! They can’t eat my chocolate markers now!). We never did find the trail to Cougar Canyon, but found these cool footprints instead.
While I'm pretty sure they're not cougar prints, they do look rather cat like - perhaps they
are lynx or coyote prints??

Tracks in the Snow:

And we found some other tracks that we think were moose. Put it this way, they were hoofed, enormous and spaced wide apart – the only other option is some type of mutant giant horse roaming the wilds above Kelowna. I prefer the moose theory. Guess which one Neil prefers.

We also found a few trees like this one, which have been well shredded by the ever-present woodpeckers. Tap-tap-tap!

The Woodpeckers Round Here Have Been Busy:

Apparently the woodpeckers will flourish as the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation moves south
to the Kelowna area. It has devastated the forest in the Kamloops area, about 100 km north,
with somewhere around 80% of the pine trees killed. It has now spread to the Kelowna area,
and similar loss of forest is expected over the next few years. These losses are obviously
huge, both for ecosystem balance and also for the forestry industry, which until recently
was the biggest single employer in BC. Turns out that the natural habitat for the pine
beetle is over east of the Rockies, where they get incredibly cold winters. The larvae are
vulnerable to severe frosts and therefore the spells at -40 kill the larvae during winter.
However, over the last few years the beetle has spread across the Rockies and into BC, where
the larvae can survive all winter and therefore the forest loss is far greater here than in
their natural habitat.

I think this area is typical of the hills around Kelowna: thick pine forest, rolling hills,
and a few trails. We ended up on the Okanagan High Rim trail, which runs for about 75 km
along the watershed for the lake. Looking forward to running it in summer....

The Perfect Lunch Spot (with Thermos of course!):

Let it snow, let it snow......

2008-12-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

Well, come on – snow then!!! Seems it’s a slow start to the winter here. The downhill skifields were meant to be open back in mid-late November, but they’re still not open! We are starting to see more fresh snow on the hills though, and we got out X-country skiing a few weekends ago with Dave Aubrey and his friend Hayley from Vancouver.

We headed up to Sovereign Lake near Silver Star mountain resort, about an hour north of Kelowna. As it was the first weekend, the X-country trails had been opened, only two trails had been groomed – the Early Season trail and the World Cup 2005 circuit. Now, you might think that, all of us being fairly hopeless on X-country skis, we’d steer clear of the World Cup experts trails, but to be honest this was where we found the biggest hills and the closest terrain to a downhill trail – perfect!! We felt right at home until we realised, halfway down the slope, that X-country skis really don’t have good edges and are actually completely useless for retaining any level of control on a slope steeper than, say, 10 degrees. Lots of slow-motion crashes and much laughter – we were buggered by the end of the day. And we thought it so much fun, we’ve now picked up one set of gear via the local equivalent of Trade Me – we’ll keep you posted on our progress :)

What a nice view – our lunch spot lookout down the Okanagan Valley

Dave said we couldn’t eat our sammies until we’d each thrown a snowball that hit the top of a designated fir tree. I think we collapsed of hunger before any of us hit it.

I briefly wondered what those two were grinning at me like that for. Then Dave's snowball hit......

It's surprising how in control we look in this photo - not representative of the day I assure you

The next day, we stretched out our bruised muscles biking up the Mission Creek Greenway from our apartment to Layer Cake Mountain. The mountain is an old volcanic outcrop on the side of Gallagher’s Canyon. We then followed the track onto the terrace above the canyon and hooned back on the roads to home.

Layer Cake Mountain and the Pinnacle

Time for a food break as we head up into Gallagher's Canyon

We get some awesome sunset lighting here in the afternoons, unfortunately far too early for our liking - it gets noticeably gloomy around 3.30pm at the moment. The following photo is in the afternoon of the day we biked up to Layer Cake mountain, back down by the lake near our apartment.

My Friend Melanie......

2008-12-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

You may be pleased to hear I have a new friend here in Kelowna. Her name is Melanie, Melanie Rogers. She’s one of those earnest sorts that tries to be as helpful as possible, but somehow ends up being a hindrance instead. A harsh judgement you might think, but then you don’t know her like I do.

She’ll earnestly inform you that she can understand everything you say, then go into meltdown when you start talking back. You see, Melanie is the Personal Voice Assistant in the Rogers prepay phoneline. She is the only possible means I have of topping up my cellphone account. And I, for one, can vouch that she does not understand in any way, my kiwi accent. Particularly, the affirmative -‘yiies’ (you’ll have to imagine it being said by a ‘squeaky kiwi’ as Dave A likes to describe such people with my delicate accent). As in:
Melanie: Would you like to top up your account?
Me: Yiies
Melanie: I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you are saying. Say yes if you would like to top up your account………

Last time I tried to top up my phone, she gave up on me completely and put me through to an actual person on customer service. Though she still did that with a cheerful “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand you. We seem to be having a few problems here. How about I put you through to a customer service representative?” I just managed to restraint myself from agreeing out loud, as another ‘yes’ would have surely thrown the poor girl.

All said and done though, I would have thought the most important thing would be not how I said my ‘yes’ but the fact that my ‘yes’ sounds a lot closer to a Canadian ‘yes’ than a Canadian ‘no’!!

PS Neil has a new job as my personal translator. When someone can’t understand what I am saying because of my accent and kiwi vowels, I simply get him to repeat it and they understand straight away! Must be those good old proper English vowels of his ;)

PPS Neil found this lovely poem the other day on the joys of the English language - though strangely enough the last couple of lines don’t work for me :)

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.

A Circuit in the West Kootenays

2008-11-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

Having spent the last couple of weekends exploring Kelowna and its local area, we’ve found ourselves getting itchy feet to go further afield, especially before the snow starts settling. So last weekend we hired a car and headed east (despite Neil assuring his workmates that he was going west into the Kootenay Mountains for the weekend, to cries of “Well, I really don’t think you’ll have much luck finding them if you go that way!” You see, it just seems instinctive to go west into mountains, like you do from Christchurch, right? Or are we just hopelessly confused?)

We headed across Monashee Pass to Lower Arrow Lake on a wonderfully cold day, with fingers of clouds skirting the hillsides as if a storm had just passed through.

Wintery scene: Coldstream Valley on the way to Monashee Pass

At Arrow Lake the highway simply rolls down onto a ramp into the lake – every half hour, a free car ferry arrives to take you across the lake onto the next bit of highway. The ferry had an ingenious system of pulling its way across the lake on three cables – no big motors churning propellers in the lake, just small motors for the cable runners.

We drove along the lake shore, through Nakusp, before arriving at the next ferry crossing on Upper Arrow Lake. This crossing takes a bit longer and only goes every hour, so we had some time to soak up the views and be grateful for our down jackets as we waited for the ferry. To be honest, it was really quiet out there – very little traffic on the roads and ferries, as it’s definitely the shoulder season here at the moment, before the snow arrives for skiing. To us, it was the perfect weekend for this sort of exploring, as it was raining in Kelowna anyway.

Waiting for the Ferry:
We stayed in Revelstoke overnight then went wandering the next morning on a couple of trails in Revelstoke National Park that were closed for the season J (i.e. they lock the carpark gates, which fortunately are easy to walk around) It was definitely worth it cos we saw a beaver dragging sticks through a wetland to his lodge, lots of woodpeckers, and very very green mossy forest with huge cedar trees. And not another soul around – it was only raining a little and I think the temperature was a wee way about zero.

Look as hard as you like, but you won't see the beaver in this photo, though this is where we saw him swimming:

There is something very cool about hearing the sound of a woodpecker as you are out walking, biking, running - they are everywhere here!

It can't get this mossy and lush without plenty of rain......

We came back to town via Shuswap Lake, famous for its houseboating in summer. Though I heard from someone who works for the local Regional District Council (don’t ask!) that every year the council does a dredging operation after the summer season ends and they drag up all sorts from the lake – appliances, batteries, bikes, chairs etc. sent overboard by merry houseboaters. There definitely looks to be some wonderful kayaking on several of the lakes in the area, including back by the Arrow Lakes, so we’ll have to start scheming for summer……

Weekend Distractions

2008-10-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

We're rather enjoying being back renting again, especially in an apartment with its self-mowing lawn! Weekends are all for play too (though admittedly interspersed with buying useful things like plates to eat off, cutlery to eat with and mugs to drink from!)

Our second weekend, we got out on the bikes tracks at Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park, which is about 20 mins bike (but uphill, never mind) from where we've ended up renting. The park was badly burnt in the huge fire they had in 2003 that started from a single lightning strike and covered 250 square kms. It makes for a fascinating landscape to bike through, and wildlife is definitely returning with the chatter of woodpeckers and lots of chippies to sidetrack you.

Neil tries not to get too distracted by the view:

We had also checked out the wooden trestles of Myra Canyon, in the next valley round from the biking tracks. Most of these trestle bridges got burnt out in the 2003 fire and they have only recently reopended the trail with rebuilt trestles. The trail is the old Kettle Valley railway, in a similar style to the Central Otago Rail Trail, only if you want to do the whole of this one, its about five days biking..... It traverses the hillside above Kelowna and the lake, and has some awesome views over the Okanagan Valley.

We had a great day in sunshine with our old flatmate, Dave, who turned up to live in Kelowna on pretty much the same day as we did :-) So we spent a day catching up down at the Skaha Bluffs climbing area at the south end of Okanagan Lake. The rock there is so solid and forms these wicked outcrops dotted around the place.

Dave making nice work of his first climb of the day:

And sometimes, the climbing is not so much about technique, style and control, its simply about FUN!!!!

Dave regrets that extra sandwich at lunch... But no, he's made it! Pretty unique moves he's pulling too...........

Oops, looks like he's disappeared into a black hole.......

What a stunner of a route - maybe there's a good reason why there's no bolts to be found!

Now the snow's starting to fall on the uplands, so we start to dream of all the skiing - downhill and X-country, as there's lots of tracks for both. And now that's we've sorted the plates, cutlery, mugs etc., surely skis are next on the essentials shopping list......

Kelowna, BC

2008-10-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

So we thought we'd show a few pics of our new home in Kelowna, BC. It's truly autumn here - the autumn colours are gorgeous, but it also means that Neil heads out the door with his bike to go to work in the morning as the radio announces an outside temperature of -6 C........ Can't wait til winter eh?

We have found ourselves an apartment right on the shores of Okanagan Lake - sometimes you can hear the swell breaking on the shore when the wind gets up, then at other times the lake is smooth and serene. It will perfect for morning swims before work in summer......

The lake from our apartment's patio - we're on the ground floor, and it takes about ten seconds and you're on the beach - awesome!!

The view along the beach.......

The landscape around Kelowna is of rolling hills with scattered pines, with a huge lake in the valley floor and lots of orchards and vineyards. The main roads all seem quite huge to us (as are most of the cars!), but it really doesn't take much to find the quieter streets and walkways.

We are close to a walkway/cycleway that follows along Mission Creek - this is Neil's bike route home:

Mission Creek in autumn colours - the Kokanee salmon have been spawning since we arrived, bringing the occasional black bear down for a feed.

All good things must come to an end??

2008-10-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

And so suddenly we found ourselves in the final week of our South American trip! We flew from the Galapagos straight to Quito and so ended up doing day trips and overnighters from Quito in the final week before flying from Quito to Vancouver.

17km north of Quito is the Equator Line, so of course we had to go explore and have a bit of fun...

Neil officially crossing to the Northern hemisphere from the South:

Apparently it is easier to balance a raw egg on a nail at the equator due to the forces being more balanced. Either way, Neil was successful and declared an 'Egg Master' for his efforts (we even have a certificate to prove it!)

Despite the photographic evidence being one-sided, we can assure you that it wasn't solely Neil looking ridiculous at times (maybe Frances is better at avoiding the incriminating camera.........)

After three months without biking (surely the longest stint for Neil since he was ten years old!), we booked ourselves on a two-day mountain-biking trip to Cotopaxi National Park and the Quilotoa crater lake. The format of "we'll drive you to the top of the hill, then you hoon down on a bike, then we drive you to the top of the next hill....." particularly suited us and sure bet more bus rides (which admittedly we were a little bit over by now).

Day One: We were dropped off at 4,500 m up the side of beautiful Volcan Cotopaxi, and got to hoon down into the valley, past a lake and on to our lunch spot - perfect!!

Neil at the start opf the downhill, happy to have his mitts on a mountain bike

We had a really fun group for this trip, and ended up able to do some extra biking as everyone was so keen to keep going:
Doesn't Neil look a happy chappy so close to all these mountain bikes:

Day Two: We stayed the night up by a crater lake in the wee village of Quilotoa. We went for a walk around the crater rim in the morning sun before breakfast, then hooned down the road dodging chasing dogs and wandering stock.

In between trips, we explored Quito, which we found to be probably the nicest big city we had visited in our travels up from Santiago. The clincher was the green space - lots of parks - with one park as long as Hagley Park is from north to south, just not so wide. Enough to get away from the traffic noise, and every man and his dog was out there enjoying it. Lots of families, cyclists, runners, walkers, football players - really cool to see. Sitting in the park yakking away together, we found people would come and sit near us just to hear us conversing in English, then they would say a few words trying their English with us - nice! If shyness overwhelmed them, we all speak Spanish until they were game to try a bit more English (likely encouraged by the fact that our Spanish could be rather wonky but we were happy to still use it).

Our final trip was done into the cloud forest at Mindo, an area well-known (locally) for its hundreds of bird species, second only to the Amazon. Needless to say, we didn't see any birds (except for one grey and white sparrow-like bird, hmm) but there were certainly plenty of other life out there in the lush forest, as these well-chewed plants testify:

Then it was time for our 3 am wakeup to start our 24 hour journey north to Vancouver via a 9 hour stopover in Houston. But we made it fine, and they let us into their country with 2 year work permits (except for Neil who has a shorter period on his permit because his passport expires too soon!!)

We can't believe how much Spanish we are hearing spoken on the streets now that we are a bit more tuned into the language. We had a few moments early on where we were wondering how we going to explain complicated things to the bank etc. before realising we could explain in English, not Spanish!! With moving to settle in a new country, we've definitely avoided any sense of post-holiday blues..............

Just Cruisin'

2008-09-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

Now for eight days on a boat in the Galapagos Islands - a 1.5 hour flight east from Ecuador into the middle of the 0cean. We settled into our home for the next week aboard a 14-passenger motor yacht, with our own cosy cabin with drawers to put out clothes in (no more living from our packs!!) and our own bathroom with 24 hr hot water. Positive luxury for us and just so enjoyable. The basic daily plan was breakfast, snorkel, walk, lunch, snorkel, walk, dinner, move overnight to new island or some vague variation thereof - we could handle this!!

Our yacht, the Golondrina, with turtle surfacing in foreground:

The snorkelling was the best we´ve ever done - we saw lots of brilliant coloured fish, sealions playing (blowing bubbles and chasing fish), pufferfish (very cool), Galapagos penguins, lots of sharks cruising, a snake eel (looks like a sea snake but thank goodness is not!!). Also snorkelled with several sea turtles as they munched happily away on sea algae, then lazily eyed us up before flapping onto the next spot for some more algae grazing - we were rather speechless after that particular snorkel where we swam with about ten of these graceful turtles :-)

The Galapagos is one of those rewarding places where you think ´I would love to see a .... ´and chances are very good that you will see it, and really close up, and it will be really relaxed so you can observe it going about its daily routine. On land or in the water, the animals are simply not wary at all of humans - seabirds nest in the middle of the walking tracks and simply watch you as you carefully skirt past, or you have to step over a sealion to get onto the wharf.

There were so many animals with young ones - week old baby sealions, fluffy chicks and iguanas the size of your thumbnail -the adult marine iguanas, endemic to the islands, are the world´s only truly amphibious lizard. Due to the limited food sources on the Galapagos, they have evolved to eat marine algae, and can be seen swimming out through the surf to a rock reef, where they will dive up to 10 m deep to pick off the algae - bizzare, but kind of makes sense in the context of the Galapagos - there are many species that have of course originated from the mainland SA continent etc., but because of the poor volcanic soils and cold currents at the Galapagos, have developed some pretty quirky methods to survive. Not only is it seeing evolution of species clearly, but the way and why of their evolution is so damn interesting!!

The Birdlife:

Blue-footed Booby - source of all sorts of wonderful puns.....

Frigate bird breeding male - rather a funny sight when in flight, wobbling through the air with his enormous inflated pouch

THE LIZARDS:

These land Iguanas grow up to 80 cm long and are quite a sight

Slumber party on the beach!

THE LANDSCAPES:

The landscape is very volcanic on all the islands - very fresh looking and unvegetated

Bartolome Island, and we had some great snorkelling around the Pinnacle rock to the right of N's head

THE TORTOISES:

The breeding program at Charles Darwin Research station appears successful

But boy are they grumpy (and these two are female too)!!

The loser of the argument above decided to hide in her shell

They're really quite big!

ON THE SEASHORE:

There are thousands of crabs on the islands, all called Sally (Lightfoot that is)

A few more Sallies

Here's looking at you, kid

We also had a lot of fun with a single-film underwater camera, but we have yet to develop it and so have no idea what the photos have come out like. These photos above of life on land are only one half of the story really.......

Back to the Jungle

2008-09-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

The day after Spanish school we headed for the coast for a couple of days in the National Park Machalilla. We caught a bus from Puerto Lopez, the main coastal town, then walked into the national park to the village of Agua Blanca (white water - they have cold sulphur springs there). These pools are used mainly for therapeutic purposes, but also for ceremonial purposes. The people avoided the missionaries, so still worship the sun and moon, so thier important dates are the solstices and equinoxes.

We stayed the night there in a wee bamboo cabin (most of the houses are bamboo - cheap, cool and readily available here), then hired a local guide for the next day to walk into the cloud forest. Our home for the night, top left.

Turns out 20 families in the village each have one family member working as a guide and they take it in turns to share the demand amongst the 20 guides. 60% of the cost of the trip goes to the village, and 40% directly to the guide and his family. To be honest, they manage the whole tourism aspect really well, and our guide was keen to show us all sorts of interesting things about the plants and animals in the area. Only 4 - 5 groups per month go into the cloud forest, so tourism is still relatively quiet there.

We started in the very dry coastal forest and headed uphill into the cloud forest, where sure enough it was cloudy, hot and very humid. The whole forest literally drips with moisture and makes for some very lush and bright vegetation, togerther with a lot of mud (note the guide wearing gumboots, sensible guy!). Anyway, we saw orchids (still not properly in flower yet), monkeys, a shy tarantula, tiny frogs, lush and brilliantly coloured bromeliads, lizards. All very tropical.

After the trip, we went back to the guides home and had an awesome lunch, just as all the extended family arrived for tea that night :-) We were curious about their way of life, and they about ours so we had a good chat. When we asked where the fruit was grown, they could point out the individual trees in their plantation - no wonder it tasted so fresh and good!

Approaching Middle Earth

2008-09-21T16:13:00.000-07:00

OK, sorry we've got a bit behind, but we have been quite busy for the last while. Having finished trekking in Cusco, we flew to Lima to save oursleves the torture of a 20hr bus ride and spent a day exploring the coastal part of the city. We found some more Pre-Inca ruins, though these ones were surrounded by suburbia! That night we started our rapid trip up north towards Ecuador. We visited these ruins near Trujillo, which were the capital city of the Chimu people (a pre Inca race), and covered about 20ha. They were all constructed using Adobe mud bricks, and the details have largely been washed away by the rain. This picture shows one area that has been restored in one of the palaces - they constructed a new palace for each ruler!

The north of Peru is remarkably desert like, with huge sand dunes drifting across the landscape, punctuated by very green river valleys where the food is grown and the towns are located.

Once we crossed into Ecuador, we noticed quite a change in the people and the country, together with the weather: turns out it actually rains here! There is a lot more international influence too, and a lot more wealth around. It may be cynical, but we wonder if the US provides beneficial foreign policies to Ecuador on the grounds that Ecuador is a relatively major oil producing nation....

Our first stop in Ecuador was Cuenca, conviniently located about 30 mins from a stunning national park. We headed into Cajas NP for 3 days trekking, in a very infrequently visited little spot. We had even managed to get our hands on a real topo map, the first we have seen since NZ, and it was free too! Cajas is a rolling, windswept, misty landscape set at 4000m, so is plenty cold enough when the sun isn't shining. It reminds me of Scotland (or middle earth, hence blog title), and some pictures I have seen of Ireland: lots of granite cliffs, hundreds of lakes, rolling mist, etc. With that in mind, we tried to find a guide to no avail.

Fortunately, the theme of sun on this trip contiunued, and we had great wether for the first two days. Good job really, because there are so many lakes, and the trails are so indistinct that navigation in mist would be very tricky.

We encountered this little fellow on one of the trails, and saw a few more too - no idea if he is poisonous, but he certainly looks like a scorpion.

That night, we camped out in the middle of nowhere by a beautiful lake, and woke to blue skies and a mirror lake as well as frost on the tent, despite being about 3 deg S of the equator. (See our wee tent at the right of the picture)

Few more pictures from the trip.....

We completed the circuit that day, passing through the forest and lakes in the pics, then stayed at the ranger station that night. Turns out that we had company - there is a security guard who lives there to look after the place. Once again, we were very glad of our spanish (and his patience) as it would have been pretty awkward otherwise. We were surprised they needed a guard there, and asked if they often have problems - he said: no, es muy tranquilo (no translation needed...)

The park was definately one of our favourite places of the trip so far, the peace and quiet was particularly nice having not really been away from it all for quite a while.

We spent the next day in Cuenca at language school, working on our use of the past tense and also trying to rid ourselves of any bad habits we picked up in the couple of months since we last studied Spanish.

Inka Trail II

2008-08-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

This time, our Inka trail is actually ¨The Inka Trail¨and also included 4 extra days walking around Nevado Salkantay.

This was trekking with a twist when compared to back home - we had these sturdy beasts to carry all our gear for the first 4 days, and then swapped for a team of porters when we reached the Inka Trail.

We were a small group of tourists - the two of us, and two Canadians (also engineers), but became a remarkably large entourage with a guide, two cooks, two horsemen and eight porters! The first 4 days on the Salkantay trek were really nice and quiet, with just our group and the mountains. We had some spectacular campsites, like this one immediately beneath Salkantay itself, at about 4700 m.
On the third day we started encountering Inka ruins, part of a network of Inkan trails across the landscape. Many of the sites are thought to serve as checkpoints and resting houses at strategic points in the network - most were undiscovered by the Spanish and are in pretty good condition having been hidden in the forest for the past few centuries.

This was the first set of ruins we saw - local kids are playing in the ruins after their school has finished for the day.

As we dropped further into the forest the vegetation became thicker and lusher and we found all sorts of cool plants like these Bromeliads.

On the fourth day we came over the highest point on the Inka Trail, called Dead Womans Pass, at 4200 m. We dropped from there into the campsite in the valley (pic below) for an early lunch - the food was amazing for the whole trip, with 3 course lunches and dinners prepared on the go. A lot of the food was local Peruvian dishes. It was a shame though that the agency did not provide for the Porters and Cooks to eat so well despite working a lot harder than we did. There seem to be definite perceptions of class amongst Peruvians that see the hard working porters missing out on basic provisions such as sleeping mats and sleeping bags - a single blanket just isn´t adequate for camping in these climates. This was despite our agency signing the local porter welfare accord, and it seemed that our agency treated their porters better than most. From our point of view, we had a great team who were willing to help, worked hard and deserved more. Tip: if going on a guided trip, bring plenty snacks and things to share with a big team of porters - it goes down a treat, and is nice for everyone. More Inka ruins, nearing Machu Picchu. This is Wiñay Wayna (meaning forever young) and was the agricultural centre that grew food for the religious and royal centre of Machu Picchu, 2 hours walk away.
One of the permanent residents of Machu Picchu, unlike the 4000 visitors that come and go every day.
The classic view of the citadel, perched high above the Urubamba river on all sides. Waynu Picchu peak is behind, and was a great side trip in the morning. Not sure if you can see in the picture here, but there are quite extensive terraces right at the top of the peak. There are also numerous terraces on the flanks of the mountain, some of which were only uncovered 6 years ago. Makes you wonder how much more the jungle is hiding.
The view from Wayna Picchu, looking over Macchu Picchu and towards Salkantay (snowy peak in the background).
We caught the train and bus back to Cusco and finished off the trip with a fantastic dinner with Bill and Barry, our hiking mates, before they headed back home to Canada the next day.

We´re flying down to Lima tomorrow and then heading north up the coast of Perú and into Ecuador - it will be the first time we have seen the sea since Chile.

In the land of the Inka

2008-08-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

Well, back into Bolivia for a couple of days to explore Isla del Sol , legendary birthplace of the Inka civilisation, and besides that, a beautiful island in Lago Titikaka.

There is a network of Inka trails over the island, which is also extensively terraced. We took a boat to the northern end of the island, visited some ruins and headed along the spine of the island to a village at the south end for the night.

This time, we had wised up and decided to rely on finding a cheap hostel rather than lug a tent and camping gear for 2 hot days. We did not expect it to be this good: a million dollar view from a $10 room!

Moonlight in the village of Yumani:

The next morning we headed to the southern end of the island (the road less travelled, a nice change from the hoardes of the previous day) and the ruins of a 2 storey Inka palace. This was the first time we had seen the incredibly tight stonework they use on palaces and temples, though there was plenty more to come.

We then crossed the border again (no overstayers fine this time) and headed for Cuzco on a day tour, stopping at different pre-Inkan, Inkan and colonial sites. Below is the temple of Raqchi, the remains of a huge fort, all encircled with a 6km long wall.

We´ve just got back into Cusco from exploring the Sacred Valley over the last couple of days - the Sacred Valley is the valley leading up to Machu Picchu, with many fascinating Inkan sites. We stayed overnight in Pisac, a small town famous for its Sunday market and a huge terraced Inkan citadel on the hillside above the town. We got up early and spent 1.5 hrs exploring the citadel before the crowds (we saw two other people there in the whole time). The Inkans developed it in sections of residencial, agricultural terraces and a religious area (with temple etc.)
One of the 8 residencial areas (Machu Picchu has 3....)

The stone work is amazing - all hewn from the distant granite mountains tops and transported via ramps and rough forms of stone rollers (remember they didn´t really have the wheel !?!), then chipped and polished to shape and interlocked without any mortar.

In Cuzco, many of the buildings are built on old Incan stonework - its everywhere you wander in the streets :-)

After exploring Pisac citadel, we went up the Sacred Valley to Ollantaytambo (another huge citadel - 12,000 lived in the area during the Inkan period) and back through Chinchero (Inkan citadel with colonial buildings built over top) to Cuzco. In their rush to spread their religion, the Jesuits destroyed most of the Inkan temples and built their churches immediately on top, using the old stonework for foundations. Our guide was pure Ameri-Indian (Quechuan is his first language), and he gave some interesting insights into the locals way of living. In Chinchero, they still barter without money and have a policy of ´For me today, for you tomorrow´- in other words, today we all chip in and help build me house, and so then we will all help build your house later when you need help.

Tomorrow we´re off on our 7 day trek through the Salkantay area and along ¨the¨Inka Trail to Machu Picchu.

A short circuit in Southern Perú

2008-08-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

We´ve had a bit of a change of pace now that we´re in Perú. After crossing the border we headed for Arequipa, which was rather less hectic than La Paz. And we got ridiculously excited about the supermarket there - ok so we hadn´t been to a supermarket in Bolivia at all, and it was an endless struggle to find tasty food. We stayed in a great hostel (not even mentioned in Lonely Planet....) that which was right in the Plaza de Armas (the central plaza in a city of 800,000 people), and had tables on a balcony overlooking the plaza. Huge stone columns and arches everywhere in the local white volcanic stone.

From the balcony of our hostel, with Volcan Misti (about 5900 m) behind the cathedral. We noticed that people had a lot more leisure time than across the border, and sports clubs etc abounded. It also felt like we had really hit the tourist trail - seems that Perú attracts a lot more people for short organised tour type trips.

The ubiquitous yellow taxis in Arequipa-though these guys actually stop at red lights which is a change after Bolivian driving!

After a couple of days in Arequipa we headed for Cañon de Colca, which (when measured the Peruvian way) is the second deepest canyon in the world, after the nearby Cañon Cotahuasi. They measure from the surrounding 6000 m peaks to the river, giving almost 4000 m depth. In fact, we started trekking into the cañon from Cabanaconde at 3400 m, and reached the oasis in the bottom at about 2000 m.

The landscape was really arid, and had some cool cacti

There were a few small villages in the cañon, based around agriclture using water from the springs in the cañon walls. Once again, all the tracks are main thoroughfares for the locals, who use mules and horses to bring everything down into the canyon, across the river, and back up the otherside to the villages (all foot access only). We were told by the guy at our night´s camp to call in at a wee ´´museum´´ in the first village - so we did - and he had all sorts of tools and crafts that the Incan ancestors used, through to what they were using on the fields nowadays (not so much has changed). Fascinating!! The local women all wear intricately embroidered dresses, bolero jackets and hats - multicoloured and multi-layered. The locals have also taken to making their sandals out of old tyres (tread on the sole and rubber straps) The man at the ´´museum´´ said they cost 5 soles ($2.50) to make and last for at least 5 years - ingenious - they seem to have a knack and enjoyment for making the most of such things, in a way that is beyond just bare necessity.

We stopped once we reached the top of the cañon rim to cook dinner - nice to take advantage of this view for a while longer. There is a pale line just above Frances´head, which is one of the small villages on the other side of the cañon. We had wandered through the village earlier in the day. Then we wandered back into town as it got dark. After our trek, we caught the bus out via Cruz del Condor, which is a lookout right on the cañon rim and above some condor nests. We cooked up some breakfast and watched the condors wheeling in the morning thermals below us. These are HUGE birds, with a wingspan of up to 3 m.

El Choro - Inca Trail 1

2008-08-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

Our next trip out of La Paz was trekking the Choro Trail - an old pre-Incan trail with amazing stone paving, dropping from alpine 4,800 m through the cloud forest to 1,200 m and humid heat in the space of 3 days and about 60 km.

Right at the start we passed three ladies walking up the trail in their skirts and dainty slippers (note the 3000 m ascent!!), and one guy pushing a wheelbarrow load up the trail to who knows where. It is still quite an active trading, access route for the locals - you kind of have to laugh at yourself doing it as a trek for fun - what luxury!! We saw more locals walking with their goods to the city or taking llama trains up the trail than tourists. Lots of smiles and ´buen dia´s as always from everyone. We passed through some tiny, isolated ''villages' on the way - some were literally 4-5 houses, hours walk from anywhere.

Seeing the old road was amazing.It is in such good condition, and the sheer amount of work that must have gone into placing the pavers is hard to imagine.

We did it without a guide but actually ended up with 3 other guided groups on the trail with us which was really nice. This is our first night´s campsite, in one of the little villages, Challa´pampa.

There were lots of wildflowers on the walk - fuschias, orchids (not flowering unfortunately), begonias plus so many bromeliads. Lots of birdlife too - parrots, hummingbirds. The variety of vegetation was amazing, ranging from barren alpine at the top, through a tussock belt, scrub (very reminiscent of NZ), then into lush cloud forest.

We managed to share a lift with one of the guided groups out from the tiny town of Chairo to Coroico (saving us a very hot 4 hour or more walk to the main road). Its amazing how well things can work out.........This is the view of Coroico from our hostel - you can see why it is called cloud forest. We found a great German bakery for breakfast the next morning with the best bread of the trip so far.

So back to La Paz for another day before heading to Perú while they have elections in Bolivia. A couple of pics from the tourist district of La Paz (spot the llama foetuses!)

We have now crossed into Perú for a few days - thought it would be best to be well out of the way of the elections. The crossing was quite fun - we had overstayed our visa by a few days because we had heard it was easy to leave late. We were informed very seriously that we had overstayed and would have to be fined....the princely sum of 10Bs per day (about 5Bs to $1!) So having paid our $8 fine we left, and were assured we did not have a black mark and could return the next day for a new visa if we wanted!

In the jungle, the mighty jungle.....

2008-08-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

Ok so now we have that song stuck in your head, let us introduce our latest adventure - a ''3 day tour'' travelling from La Paz by bus (1 day), then boat to the jungle town of Rurrenabaque........

We set off at the ungodly hour of 5am heading down the La Cumbre - Coroico Road - while the old road is known as the World's Most Dangerous Road, this new version we were on was much better. As in, yes it was tarsealed, mostly, but I really don't think the drop-offs were much smaller. The two-laning was a definite bonus though.

Of course once we passed Coroico, we were back onto an old bumpy dirt road, often one-lane, above a steep river gorge - you have to love the Bolivian roads! We travelled down to the town of Guanay, where we were meant to hop on a boat and set of downstream to camp for the night. Well, we ended up camping right there on the riverbank, as there was a blockade downstream until the next day - you have to love Bolivian politics! Somewhat strangely, the transport companies always know when the blockades will finish, and also have about 24 hr prior notice!

We got underway the next morning in a longboat with outboard motor. With 19 of us on board with gear it was not sitting too high in the water. There were some great rapids to start off with - we were given these ingenious splash protectors (i.e. rolls of blue plastic sheet) but Frances still got soaked.......

We had a couple of long walks into the forest/jungle over the two days we were on the boat, and saw warthogs, snakes, piranhas and lots of ants (including some really cool leaf cutters carrying great big chunks of leaf). We camped on the banks of the river at night, with fireflies and bats flying around.

We had a stop for a swim in this nice freshwater pool, just above the main river which by this stage was brown and anything but fresh.

One of our short walks was in the Madidi National Park, where we saw some really cool trees including this spiky thing. Unfortunately the locals had chopped down a large area of forest in protest against a planned eco-lodge for the area. Shame they couldn't stick to blockades like the rest of the country.

Once we reached Rurrenabaque, we haded off to the pampas area for another three days. The Pampas is an area where during the wet season (i.e. summer - Jan to April) the whole lowland area floods out of the Rio Yacuma and forms huge wetlands. In winter (now) you can travel by boat along the Rio Yacuma, seeing literally hundreds of alligators, some caimans (think big alligators), lots of capybaras (having mud baths :-), turtles sunning themselves, monkeys and huge storks and herons (over a metre tall).

These monkeys were amazingly human like, and even walked on 2 legs.

Capybaras, the world's largest rodent, and boy do they like their mud!

Paradise Birds, mighty strange looking things, and always fighting with each other!

We stayed in a camp beside the river and went out on trips in the boat to see sunset and sunrise, and also went swimming with the Amazonian pink river dolphins. It's quite funny as the water is brown and murky and you can't see the dolphins until one surfaces right beside you and splashes you in the face with it's tail! The alligators steer clear of humans and the dolphins, so you can happily go swimming with alligators on the river bank.

We also went for a walk across the plains that became flooded in summer to an old river channel and found two anaconda - not particularly huge one (this is a good thing no?) but beautiful markings. One was in the water which was cool to see - again they don't come in the main river channel because the dolphins will eat them. There's quite a hierarchy between all the different species.......

We were awoken on the last morning by a dawn chorus of howler monkeys - very cool. They make this wonderful undulating roar that you can hear for miles away it seems.

We returned then to Rurrenabaque, planning to fly out the next morning to La Paz, but woke to a fantasttic thunder and lightning storm. Unfortunately this meant they canceled all flights that day as the Rurre runway is dirt and grass (i.e. it was now very soggy mud). A forced relaxation day lying in hammocks wasn't so bad though, and we flew out over the jungle and Cordillera Real mountains the next morning, and ended up flying right past (and below) Huayna Potosi!

Huayna Potosi

2008-07-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

We headed for the hills with a group of 10 and 5 guides, to Huayna Potosi which is a 6088 m peak very close to La Paz for a 3 day trip to climb it. They do offer shorter trips but we thought an extra day in the mountains and acclimatising would be more fun. On the way out there (in a landcruiser again) we stopped randomly and the driver yelled out "esta bien?" into the air. The roof replied "Si", and it turned out we had an extra passeger hitching a ride! He had got a flat tyre and we were dropping him and fixed tyre back at his car about an hour out of town. This doesn´t surprise you in Bolivia!

The first photo shows the refugio at the bottom of the mountain, beside a lake used for hydro-power for La Paz.

The view north from the second refugio, at 5300 m. We had spent the first day playing on the glacier, then after lunch on day 2 headed up to this hut. After the luxury of the first refugio, this was a bit more like our expectations (basic, single room with mattresses on the floor). The first day was all on rock, with a bit of nice scrambling on granite near the end, and the landscape very much like the Darrans in NZ.

For some reason our guide was keen to start at 2 am, despite it only being approx 4 hr to the top. Fortunately for us, we all slept through the 1 am alarm and got underway at 4.30, which was much more civilised! Another group the day before us had started at 2 and got to the top before sunrise....being 6100 m, it was to cold to wait, so they didn´t get to see the view from the top!

We started off well, with great views of the lights of La Paz and the mountains and the moonlight strong enough that we did not need torches. After quite a while the sun started rising over the jungle, which was beautiful and much appreciated to thaw hands and feet.

Then the altitude really kicked in, and we slowed right down. Heart and lungs were really working hard even at snails pace. The last 250 m seemed to go on for ever, and it was a real teaser being able to see the summit for about 90 mins before getting there. It was a really different set of challenges to climbing back home.

And we made it....view from the top, looking towards the Condoriri Massif, and Lake Titicaca. The ridge in the foreground was our route up and was nicely exposed at the top! We could also see the volcanoes on the Chilean border and the Altiplano stretching far into the distance. Looking the other way, we could see some huge thunderclouds over the jungle - our next destination....

On to La Paz

2008-07-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

From the Salar de Uyuni we headed into the hills off the Altiplano to Potosi - a city that provided Spain with much of its wealth through the 16th Century from the silver mined from Cerro Rico, the hill behind the city. It is said that nobody knows exactly how much siver went to Spain, but that they could have built a silver bridge to Spain and still carried more silver over it. The hill is riddled with mines and tunnels, each owned and run by mining co-operatives of the miners who work there. The hostel we stayed in was showing the film, The Devils Miner, which is about children working in these mines and is a really good film. It tells of the Tio, a Devil, who is in each mine and worshipped by the miners since the influence of their God cannot penetrate beneath the ground.

We really enjoyed Potosi and ended up staying an extra day in town. The town was really vibrant, with lotds of activity on the streets and in the markets. One evening we stumbled across a local high school brass band practising in the school yard, despite it being sub zero and at 4000 m elevation. It was quite a sight with 60 odd musicians marching and playing.

Typical market stall in Potosi - this senora was more than happy to have a photo taken of her and her stall. They dont have supermarkets over this way, but instead have markets with probably 50 or more of these stalls clustered in one place. It certainly makes for more entertaining shopping than at home.

We then got a bus from Potosi via Oruro to La Paz. We had a night in Oruro, and found it much less lively than Potosi - they have a huge carnaval in February each year, but not much for the rest of the year. La Paz is another lively city with a lot of markets - the shot below shows some typical chaos on the streets. Each of these minivans is a taxi, and has a "barker" who hangs out of the door incessantly yelling the destination and cost. Add to that the Bolivian road code (whoever honks first has right of way, irrespective of anything else) and it makes for a really noisy traffic jam! La Paz is set in a deep canyon right on the edge of the Altiplano, and has great views of Nevado Illimani (6500m) further down valley. The sight of the houses spreading down the canyon walls is incredible, though this picture doesn´t really do it justice.....

The sight of the mountain got us inspired to head for the hills..next post...

Southwestern Bolivia and the Salar de Uyuni

2008-07-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

From Tupiza, we took a 5 day tour around the SW Circuit. Turns out that this is actually a very popular route and there was quite a convoy of Landcruisers running around.

Our Landcruiser: in the 5 days we only saw 1 vehicle that wasn´t a cruiser

Home for the first night - many of the pueblos (villages) were deserted during the day as they were all out with the animals (llamas usually)

Flamingos and Laguna Colorada. We saw hundreds of them, despite this being winter and large areas of the lakes being frozen.

Aside from all the wildlife (llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, vizcachas, ostriches, condors), there were more funky cacti.

Volcan Licancabur, and the Laguna Verde. This is the far SW corner of Bolivia, on the border with Chile. The landscape was beautiful and amazingly barren. All the lakes had fantastically vivid colours due to the high mineral contents (including green, red, peach, yellow). There were a couple of Laguna Hediondas (meaning stinky in Spanish, due to high sulfur content).

The desierto de dali, re-named due to it reminding someone of Salvador Dali´s artwork.

Sunrise on the Salar. Bitterly cold but well worth it. See how long our shadows are...

Isla Incahuasi, an island in the middle of the Salar de Uyuni (salt flat)

Fun with perspectives.... the flat is about 12,000 sq km, so you lose the horizon and can get up to all sorts of mischief!

On our last day of the trip we climbed Volcan Tunupa, a 5500 m peak immediately north of the Salar. On top we met this Bolivian family (Dad and 4 sons), from one of the local villages. They showed us all the local features, and we really appreciated our broken spanish so we could have a good yak with them. At 5500 m the effects of altitude were amazing - it was very slow going up the hill, and the heart-lung system really had to work hard!

We had an amazing trip, hopefully the pics speak for themselves somewhat.

Quebradas of Northern Argentina and Bolivia

2008-07-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

We began our climb up onto the Altiplano via a few leisurely days in the Quebrada (´gorge´) de Humahuaca, first exploring the town of Tilcara. People have been living in this valley for the last 10,000 years, and Tilcara has an old pre-Incan hill fort on the edge of town that we spent some time exploring. There was also the local Botanic Gardens there - many different species of plants, but all from the one family - cacti!!

We liked this place so much we stayed another night, wandering up to the Garganta de Diablo (impressive name huh?) - a small slot gorge. The surrounding landscape is very dry and volcanic - semi Badlands formations everywhere. The town itself was very different from the previous towns in Argentina, with adobe and thatch construction for almost all of the buildings, including the hostel we stayed in. We soon saw why they used adobe, as it provided a welcome relief from the burning midday sun and also stayed relatively warm during the freezing desert nights.

We then made a dash for the border to catch the train from the Bolivian border town of Villazon, north to Tupiza. It was a leisurely crossing actually - not much of a queue and the border official took less than 20 seconds to stamp us through - easy! But what a change on the streets - there is literally a short bridge separating the Argentina and Bolivian boder town, but visually they were so different. The most noticeable difference was probably in the people, with many more women in traditional dress, which is typically finished off with a very colourful woollen blanket to carry their goods in (including young ones!). Unfortunately there was also a lot more litter and dirt around. They have a huge plastic bag problem to the point that every small bush seems to be growing plastic bags, caught from the ever present wind.

We met up with another few travellers heading north on the train, and all headed to a very cold hostel in Tupiza. From there we did a couple of day walks up into the canyons behind town. Neil also got a much needed haircut, which was quite an experience....sterilising the clippers with a meths flamethrower....cut throat razor (blunt!)....and leaving Neil with the neatest comb over we´ve ever seen....and the cheapest haircut ever too (about NZ$2).

From Valpo to Mendoza to Salta

2008-07-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

So we finished off our awesome Spanish course last week then headed out the next day to the Cajon del Maipo - a river gorge close to Santiago, in a desert-like landscape. We saw some amazing cacti and maybe as many as ten condors soaring on the thermals on the the ridge tops. Two were obliging enough to come over for a closer view as they swooped and soared in the canyon below us :-)

The next morning we headed out to the coast to Valparaiso, once a strategic port for the trip around Cape Horn (but then they finished the Suez Canal). Now, the city is a jumble of colourful houses piled against each other up the hillsides. We stayed in a great old three-storey house with a central spiral staircase and sunroom and open deck on the roof for some amazing views over the port and town.

Valpo is well-known for its street art, such as this one down the road from our hostel:

And the view from the deck that night, past the spire of the neighbouring church on Cerro Concepcion:

The sea-mist rolled in and out several times a day when we were there - ghost spires of the navy ships out in the bay:

Then off across the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina - what an awesome bus ride. Chcek out the switchbacks shown below:

These switchbacks are near Portillo, a big Chilean skifield, where one of the chairlifts goes over the highway, and the skiers fly down over a snowcovered bridge as the road goes through a tunnel.

From the switchback the road goes through a long tunnel (at 3,200 m elevation or so), with a sign halfway through announcing the border from Chile into Argentina. The colours were so vivid, with the volcanic bedrock and crisp snow:

From Mendoza (very flat in a desert landscape), we took a overnight bus to Salta in Northern Argentina, arriving slightly bleary-eyed at 7am :-)

Today we´ve gone out to the local Quebrada (or gorge) just out of Salta. We had a good couple of hours wandering on random tracks up the quebrada, after not finding much help at the Information Centre there (well, you just wouldn´t expect much help from a white painted box building with a locked door and no windows, but the sign outside promised more!!)

Where to next? We´ll be checking out some more quebradas further north over the next couple of days, before crossing into Bolivia to Tupiza and the Uyuni Saltflats.

In the streets of Santiago

2008-06-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

We went down to Dunedin on our last weekend in NZ - this photo is a group of us night-riding on the Pineapple Track above Dunedin on a balmy norwest night.

Now back in Santiago:
Well, the Spanish lessons are going great (well they are fun but our Spanish can still be pretty bad at times!) We´re now down to only us two in our class. There were two others who started with us on Monday - they are in Chile for a month of skiing but one of them has pulled a ligament only two weeks in, so decided they may as well spend the rest of the time learning more Spanish. However, they obviously couldn´t resist the snow and were nowhere to be seen yesterday. Well, we saw them again today when they called into the school to say that yes they did go skiing yesterday, but one of them broke their collarbone and now can´t write, so can´t do Spanish lessons either. Some people have all the bad luck, no!?

So with just the two of us we are getting a lot out of the classes - quite a focus on useful travel Spanish for us.

We´ve been exploring Santiago in our ´lunchbreaks´from Spanish lessons. Together with the time we´ve spent here over last weekend we´ve seen a fair amount including going up Cerros San Cristobal and Santa Lucia - two hills within walking distance of the city centre and with their heads above the ubiquitous smog (we´ve been getting the daily rag from the local Metro station and trying to read it - every day there is a story about the air pollution problem here).

We went out to a local artisan market on the outskirts of the city - easy on the Metro and bus systems. Always, wherever we go, the Andes loom (albeit through the smog). Although you don´t want to spend too much time gazing up or you might trip over a sleeping dog on the footpath!

Here are a few shots from our wanderings:

Looking out from Cerro Santa Lucia to San Cristobal (L) and the Andes (background)

Old and new: reflection of the Cathedral in central Santiago

Let sleeping dogs lie eh? Note the other typical sight in the background (minus heads:-)

Sunset from the corner of Avenida Vicuna McKenna, one block from our hostel

Homework time...

One of the few colourful streets in Central Santiago

Welcome to our first post.....

2008-06-23T18:18:00.001-07:00

Well! This was nearly our undoing. There are easier things in life than setting up a blog in Spanish. As it turns out, there seems to be no way of viewing Google websites in English from Chile. But at last here it is...

The adventures started before we even left home with all the excitement of packing up a house and saying hasta luego to a lot of good friends - thanks for the help and good times. Our first flight was cancelled (great omen) but we arrived, as did our bags, then out came the first lot of Spanish to get us into Santiago (yes, our booked shuttle never did turn up at the airport). Though of course we could have got a taxi ride in at least a hundred times over judging by the fact that taxi drivers peddling their wares seemed to outnumber passengers. The buses and metro served us fine, and we settled in at Bellavista for the night.

Bellavista sits in the shadow of Cerro San Cristobal near central Santiago. After dodging the numerous sleeping dogs in the street (and crazy drivers - red, green, same diff!) we headed up San Cristobal the next afternoon for a great view (albeit smoggy) over Santiago and the Andes looming behind.

We´ve now moved to another hostel run by the Spanish Language School that we are at this week. Our three hour lunch breaks give us good time to explore central Santiago before afternoon classes, although the homework is keeping us busy in the evening!!

After we finish the school on Friday, we´ll head out to Valparaiso for a couple of nights, then back inland over the Andes to Mendoza in Argentina. Hopefully, we´ll then head into the Andes near Aconcagua for some wandering as long as there is not too much snow.....

Oh and maybe some pictures next time eh? Never mind!