Back to the Apostles over Labor Day

On Friday morning, just a week after my first Apostle Islands trip, I had the wild and crazy idea of going back again this summer. I looked at the LAI schedule and saw that they had a 5 day/4 night trip over Labor Day that would head to Outer Island. Purely as a matter of curiosity, I sent an email off to find out whether there were any spaces left. (This was a bit like saying "Could I just look at the dessert tray?" I hadn't jumped in, but I was definitely sidling up to the water…)

The prompt reply came back that the 5 day trip had been cancelled, but that there was a 4 day trip with one space available over the same weekend.

I thought about it for the next day. The weather was supposed to be good, and I had really, really enjoyed the first trip. I was nicely in shape and ready to go. On the other hand, going back just two weeks later seemed extravagant. I had a long list of projects and tasks that needed doing. And most importantly, I wondered if a second trip could possibly be as wonderful as the first.

But as my brother pointed out, we usually regret the things we don't do, not the things we do, so the next day I called to sign up for the Labor Day trip. At that time, the planned itinerary was Oak, Otter, and Stockton. Not my first choices, as I had already been to two of those islands, but on the other hand, the Apostles are a place to return to over and over. As I registered I put in a plug for getting to Devils, and then spent the next week managing my eagerness to be under way.

Day 1
Labor Day weekend finally arrived. Everything about getting ready and getting up to Bayfield was much easier the second time around. I pulled into Bayfield on Thursday night with time to spare to listen to Obama's acceptance speech. The next morning, I felt like a regular at the Egg Toss café when I showed up for breakfast.

I headed off to LAI and was the first one from our trip to arrive. (Did I mention that I was pretty excited about this trip?) Met our guide, Joe Ko, who was the guide that Tom and Colin had on their trip in June. Also met the other participants as they arrived … a couple from Minneapolis who were avid outdoors folks and 3 young men from the Philadelphia area, where I had lived for many years. The three had been friends since middle school and high school, and had read about the Apostles in a National Geographic article a few years ago, and had decided they had to come. Marina and Adam (from Minneapolis) had been on a trip with Hovas (the guide from my previous trip), so there were lots of connections between us all from the beginning.

I was delighted to hear that our itinerary had changed since I had registered. Due to the fact that the Outer Island trip had been canceled and its campsites were available, Joe had cherry picked the best sites from those available for the two trips. We would now be going to Sand, then Devils, then back to York.

We packed up our gear (took me about a tenth of the time it had the first time), then headed off in the van to Little Sand Bay. We took the boats out to practice our wet exits, came back for lunch, loaded all of our gear, and were off.

We headed straight across to Sand Island, then paddled up the east side, Made a brief visit to the caves, though we would have a longer visit the next morning. Paddled around the lighthouse on the northeast corner, then around into Lighthouse Bay which faced north. Our campsite was on the west edge of the half moon bay. This may be my favorite campsite of all I've been to so far in the Apostles. The bay is much like the bay on York, although there is definitely a sense of being on a bigger island (on York, you can hear the waves on the shore of the far side of the island…) There's only one campsite on the bay, and there was only one sailboat anchored in the bay overnight, so it had a quieter feel to it. Joe, Adam and Marina and I pitched our tents right on the beach, while the other folks camped in the campsite in the trees.

As the sun set, we enjoyed the quintessential northern view of dark pine trees along the shore silhouetted against the darkening sky. The previous trip had been over a full moon. This time, two weeks later, there was no moon up, and we were treated to a sky full of stars that slowly appeared, starting in the east and then overhead and in the west as the sky darkened. I sat out each night of the trip and watched the sky before going to bed. No mosquitoes, perfect temperature. Saw one shooting star, and of course the Milky Way. From Sand, we could see lights of towns on the North Shore in the far distance.

In the morning, I got up early and walked to the east end of the beach and partway up the trail to the lighthouse. Turned around in time to get back for breakfast.

Day 2
On the second day we paddled back past the lighthouse, where we paused for a trip member to make a cell phone call in one of the few places in the islands with reception. Adam the polar bear went swimming. Back underway, we saw a pair of eagles, one immature, in a tree. We made another visit to the Swallow Point sea caves, and then crossed over to York. We had lunch on the beach there, then headed for Bear, saying hello to Raspberry as we passed it.

It was about 6 miles to Bear. When we got there we wanted to stop to get out and stretch our legs, but the west side of Bear proved to have limited landing sites. Most of the shore was steep bluffs, with rocky shores. As the bluffs slowly erode from the wind and waves, tall trees lose their footings and topple down the cliffs and into the lake.

We eventually found a spot where we could land, and enjoyed a break before heading on. The northern part of Bear has some thickly bedded sandstone, and while there were no caves big enough to paddle into, there were arches and massive slabs of rock that had fallen every which way, some on land, some which we could see in the shallow water.















From the northern edge of Bear we crossed over to Devils, where we landed in the small harbor. There was only one campsite up in the woods (ours), but there were several yachts moored in the harbor. We did a bit of good natured grumbling about the music coming from the yachts, but they quieted down before dark.

After setting up camp and having another splendid dinner cooked by chef Joe, we hiked up the trail to the north end of the island to look up at the lighthouse and down at the sea caves we would visit the next day. The friendly volunteer lighthouse keeper came down and chatted with us for a few minutes. He quickly put the kibosh on any thoughts of cliff jumping when Adam innocently asked a question about it.

We listened to a couple of owls call as we settled in for the night, and heard a loon in the morning.

Day 3
In the morning, we set off up the east side of Devils. There are sea caves all along the shore of the northern end of the island. From a paddler's point of view, it looks like there was a wedge of sandstone shoved over the northern end. As you paddle north, you start seeing a wider and wider band of sandstone emerging from the water. In some places, you can see a gray layer of sandstone over a reddish layer, representing two geological formations with very different characteristics. The gray sandstone is thickly layered; the red is finely grained and thinly layered. The intricate sea caves are carved into the red sandstone by the erosion of wind and waves and ice. During our visit the wind was calm, and we were able to paddle into and through the many of the caves. In one, all of us were able to gather with room to spare to listen to Joe's talk about geology.

Around Devils and back to the south end, we picked up our trip member who had chosen to skip the circumnavigation. Then it was back to Bear. We landed on a stone ledge where we had lunch, then headed on to York. A headwind picked up soon after we left Bear, and we definitely earned our dinner during the crossing through waves up to 3 feet high.

York was becoming fairly familiar by now (my third visit). While Joe started dinner, Adam and I practiced self rescues. After dark, we could see the red light from the Devils Island lighthouse flashing in the distance. There was another group of paddlers at the next campsite. They did a night paddle around the island and we saw them come back. Something to look forward to for another trip, after one knows the islands better.

Day 4
In the morning, Joe gave us a short lesson on J leans and braces after breakfast, then we headed back to the mainland and Little Sand Bay. Boats were unpacked, rinsed out, and loaded on the trailer. We had lunch at a picnic table at Living Adventure, then headed home.

And while the second trip was very different from the first, it was just as wonderful. Hopefully there are many more visits to come.

Addendum: I am officially hooked on the sport now, and have gotten a kayak of my own.

Apostle Islands Day 4: Sand Island and Home

Sunday morning I watched the sky lighten from my tent and the sun rise. We got up early to break camp, and in the sand we saw the tracks of deer that had come down to the water during the night. Fortunately, though, no bear tracks.

Our morning plan was to paddle to Sand, see the sea caves, and then land on Justice Bay and have breakfast. We headed off, once again into a wind, once again getting bounced around a bit by the waves until we got into Sand's wind shadow.

A geologist is probably going to cringe at what I'm about to write, but here goes. The Apostles are made up of and shaped by 3 different forces. Sand and gravel laid down by ancient rivers a billion years ago has turned into sandstone. The glaciers that last receded 10,000 years ago carved the northern part of the continent over millennia and left behind the glacial till that makes up most of the surface of the islands, including the hills and bluffs. And the waves and ice and wind and rain and plants continually carve and erode and collapse and construct what remains.

A billion years ago, when the sandstone was laid down, life on earth did not include land plants.

There are a few places in the Apostles where the sandstone emerges and can be found on the surface. Where the sandstone lies at the edge of an island (most spectacularly on Sand, Devils, and a stretch of mainland), sea caves have formed as the waves and ice cut into that ancient rock, and many of the caves are large enough to paddle through. Having read about these caves before the trip, I was really looking forward to seeing them. I wanted to paddle through them and listen to the sound of the waves gurgling and slapping and echoing against the walls and rocks. To look out into the bright sunlight, surrounded by rock that had once been sand deposited on a river bottom a billion years ago. To look up at ripple marks on the ceilings that captured a moment of time on a long gone river. To wonder at the patterns of light and dark rock laid down by those rivers.

A bit of luck is required to get a close look at the caves, as you don't want to be in them with an onshore wind, but we were in the lee of the island, and I was delighted that we had the chance to see them.

After paddling through the caves, we headed around the corner to Justice Bay, landed, and had breakfast. The coffee was welcome, to say nothing of the world's most stick-to-your-ribs helping of oatmeal. We hiked to the Sand Island light house, walking through woods of silver birch, cyprus, and other trees. Along the way, we saw a couple of bald eagles soaring off the northern point of the island.

After returning to our kayaks, we launched to cross to Little Sand Bay back on the mainland. This time the wind was blowing across our beam, creating a different rhythm to paddle in than the headwinds we had previously faced. It picked up as we left Sand's wind shadow, and once again we got tossed around a bit more than one is used to paddling on Lake Calhoun, but the previous 3 days had sharpened our skills, and we were comfortable and confident in the waves.

We landed on the mainland, cleaned out our kayaks, and carried the boats and our gear up to the parking lot. Our guide had a conversation with a couple of folks who wanted to take their recreational sit on top kayaks out to "Sandy Island". She convinced them that this would be a really bad idea in the rough water, and persuaded them to head to the eastern side of the Bayfield peninsula, which was sheltered from the day's winds.

The Living Adventure trailer pulled up, and we and our boats and gear returned to our starting point. We unpacked, showered at the Rec Center in Bayfield, and re-grouped at Maggie's Restaurant for lunch. And then it was time to split up and head home.

Driving back to Minneapolis, missing the group I had bonded with for the last 4 days, I found the details and demands of my "normal" life slowly popping up and re-asserting their claims on my attention. Where a few days ago I could lose myself in the wonder of a bay on Rocky Island, I now found myself juggling what I had to deal with the next day and what could be postponed. Where I had been able to simply watch an eagle fly, or listen to a loon, or watch the waves as my kayak climbed over and through them, or revel in the joy of having been able to paddle for 4 days with ease, now I was remembering details I had left behind and putting them back into place.

But the Apostles will be there when I return. In the meantime, I've added the beaches on Rocky and York, the dock on Oak, and the sea caves on Sand to the places I take out and hold in my memory. I wonder if anyone is doing a night paddle in the Apostles tonight, and what direction the wind is coming from. I remember the lighthouses flashing in the dark, and I imagine the sun coming up on another group's kayaks. I wonder what the sea caves look like in winter, and what the bears and the eagles and the loons do when the people are gone. There are special places all over the world, but this one has touched my heart, and I will return.

Apostle Islands Day 3: To Sand?

Overnight, the hissing and sighing of the waves on the sandy beach was replaced by the rush of wind blowing through the trees. In the morning, there was a high wind and weather passing by to the north and south. Although a more experienced group could have handled the wind, our decision was made for us – we weren't going anywhere until the wind eased up.

We went for walks and took pictures, We played cards … killer and spoons. Hovas let me try her boat, a Greenland kayak. We watched one of the sail boaters launch a small skiff with an outboard motor. We couldn't figure out why he kept zooming up and down the shore, but then we saw his dog running up and down the beach with him. Guess that's one way to exercise your dog. We were visited by a lone Canada goose who seemed to want to befriend us. We listened to the weather forecast on the radio (several times) and watched a storm pass over Bayfield to the south. I enjoyed just being there, on that island, with our group, on that day.

In the late afternoon the wind eased off. We quickly made and ate dinner, packed up, and started off to Sand about 6:30 PM. We stopped at Bear Island for a short break, then paddled on. We were traveling west into the setting sun, with the full moon rising behind us and Jupiter high in the eastern sky behind our left shoulders. First a yacht, then the schooner Zeto sailed across our path in front of the sun as it sank towards the horizon. To the south we could see heat lightning over the mainland. Shortly after the sun set, we passed Raspberry Island, and looked back at the lighthouse on its western shore flashing in the night.

Approaching York, we all put on our headlamps. It was wonderful to be in a group of 5 kayaks moving together in the dark, with the paddles steadily rising and falling, pushing on ever closer to York. Eventually the Sand Island light house came into view behind the far side of York. I thought I heard the call of a loon from across the water, though it could have been a gull.

There was some speculation that someone was pulling the island away from us as we approached it, but eventually we reached York. We were running out of gas and decided not to press on to Sand. We headed into the half moon bay, and a couple of kayakers who were camped on the beach apparently saw our headlamps bobbing in the waves and wondered what the heck we were. They were kind enough to shine a light at us, which helped guide us in.

It felt good to step out of our boats after the long paddle. Our campsite reservation was on Sand, so on York we ended up camping right on the beach. We built a small charcoal fire and made smores. Looking out from the bay, we could see the Devils Island light house flashing every 10 seconds about 8 miles to the northeast. I hadn't expected to see any lighthouses at night, based on our original itinerary, so seeing three in one night was quite a treat.

Apostle Islands Day 2: On to Rocky

After our breakfast of eggs and fruit (and more pesto tortillas), we headed up the western shore of Oak, rounded the northwest corner, and landed on a beach for a short break before heading off to Otter. We saw a juvenile bald eagle (all gray) and then a mature one with its distinctive white head perched in a tree, and then as I walked up the beach, another eagle launched out of a tree right above my head and flew powerfully off.

The crossing to Otter was a fun and playful paddle in the light air. Near shore we could look 20 to 30 feet down, sometimes at underwater boulder fields, other times at sand with ripple patterns from the waves. Our guide instigated a squirt gun fight with our bilge pumps.

On Otter, we pulled into the beach, swam (briefly – the water was chilly, though not as cold as it was between the islands), and had lunch, then continued on to Rocky, where we landed on another beach. Dinner was burritos (with pesto tortillas, of course). (We had barely made a dent yet in our tortilla supply at this point, and were trying to give them away to other campers. They were perfectly fine tortillas -- it's just that there were about 60 of them, and 7 of us, and we found a half tortilla per meal to be ample. At that rate, we had a lot of tortillas to go.)

There was no bear box to store our food on Rocky, so we had to hang our food and other smelly items like toothpaste in a tree. "Where food lockers are not provided, hang the food cache in a tree away from the tent and at least 12 feet from the ground and five feet from the trunk." Doesn't sound hard, does it? Well, it didn't help that we had way too much food (Living Adventure made sure we and several of our closest friends weren't going to go hungry). We looped together all the dry bags containing food and toiletries, and with half of us pushing up the unwieldy bundle and half of us pulling the rope, we hoisted away. It didn't help that the only likely tree we could find was barely big enough to hold the weight. We nearly snapped it in two before we got the food up. It didn't help that we had somehow left the fruit bag hanging down 4 feet below the rest of the bags, and when we got the rest of the stash up into the tree, the fruit was swinging slowly back and forth at a prefect height for a hungry bear. It definitely didn't help when half of us collapsed in laughter, or when Sally started taking pictures. But we persevered, and while we wouldn't have gotten an A on our result, our food cache was technically hanging from a tree, if nowhere near 12 feet up. In the morning, it was still there, unscathed and uneaten.

There were 3 sailboats moored in the bay that night. They all had lights on at the top of their masts after dark, and as we looked across to other islands at night throughout the trip we could clusters of mast lights atop boats anchored in the bays and on lee shores.

That night we had a discussion about what to do the next day. Our next night's campsite permit was on Sand, several islands away. We could either go straight there (13 miles) or go there via the sea caves on Devils Island (20 miles). We didn't make a final decision, but agreed to get up early the next morning and see how the weather was.

Apostle Islands Day 1: Off to Oak Island

The Apostle Islands are a group (or archipelago) of 22 islands on Lake Superior, just offshore from Bayfield, Wisconsin, and about 90 miles east of Duluth. I was about to begin a 4 day/3 night camping/kayaking trip, paddling from island to island. My brother and nephew had been up in the Apostles in June with their boy scout troop, and it sounded quite wonderful. My brother recommended the outfitter (Living Adventure), and I signed up for a trip shortly after they returned. I had looked for a 4 day trip over the a full moon in August, which just happened to coincide with Living Adventure's women only "Archipelago" trip. Fortunately, I qualified.

On the morning the trip started, I was excited and a bit apprehensive. I had been preparing for the trip for the last two months. Reading about the lake, the geology, the history. Building up my paddling. Tracing a map of the islands without the names to learn them. And yet ... I had been avoiding camping for a couple decades. How was that going to go? Would my 54 year old body that spent 5 days a week sitting at a desk hold up physically? Had I trained enough? Would that minor elbow pain get worse? What would the weather be like?

But the first day was gorgeous, and was an auspicious start to what turned out to be a truly magical trip.

We gathered at the Living Adventure facility just north of Bayfield at 8:30 on Thursday morning. There was Hovas, our guide. Mother and daughter Melissa and Becca. Friends Julie and Jodi. Sally from Milwaukee, and me. We collected our wet suits, life jackets and dry bags, packed our gear, and then headed out onto the water to practice our wet exits. After that we had lunch, and then we were off. The seven of us would be on our own for the next 4 days in two tandems and 3 single kayaks. We planned to spend the first night on Oak Island, the second on Rocky, and the third on Sand.

The first day's paddle was rough and mostly into the wind. I remembered how tired I had felt the first time I had been out kayaking this year, and was grateful that I wasn't tackling this paddle 3 months earlier.

We headed north along the coast of the mainland, into the wind and waves, ducking behind a dock to rest for a bit, and then later on making a landing on a beach for another short break. This was our roughest landing and launching of the trip, with an on-shore wind, and we picked up quite a bit of water just getting our spray skirts on and getting off the beach.

We paddled by the wreck of the Fedora, a 282 foot long wooden steam freighter that went down in 1901 after a kerosene lamp tipped over in its engine room. The entire engine room was soon engulfed in flames, while the ship continued to run at full throttle. With few choices, the captain headed the ship to shore and ran it aground. We could see the outline of the ship under the waves and a few places where it broke the surface.

At the closest point to Oak Island, we left the mainland and headed out into the lake. The north wind finally eased off when we got into the lee of the island, and we paddled up the west shore to Campsite 2 by the dock. We learned the drill of carrying our kayaks up, unloading them and securing them for the night, then carrying all the gear to our campsite.

Our splendid guide soon had a fire going and baked whitefish under way, and we had a lovely dinner of fish tacos. The pesto tortillas, in what would become a standing joke, would be with us for several more meals. In fact, I think the wraps we had for lunch were pesto tortillas.

We went to sleep listening to the waves slosh and gurgle against the rocks just below our campsite. The next morning was another beautiful day, this time with little wind, and we stretched on the dock and picked thimble berries before heading off to Rocky via Otter.

Valparaiso

On Thursday, Becky, Janet and I took the public bus to the port city of Valparaiso.

Valparaiso is a tangle of houses and stairs and alleys and streets and "ascensors" (funiculars) that spread from the narrow stretch of flat land along the coast up the steep hills. There are some magnificent stone and wood mansions built by old money, and lots more modest houses covered with corrugated metal and (if recently renovated) painted in a variety of colors. Lots of dogs, lots of graffiti.

The hosts of Janet's and Becky's bed and breakfast recommended a Valparaisan guide named Michael. He is originally from Germany, but has lived in Valparaiso for 3 or 4 years. If ever there was a city where you needed a guide, it is Valparaiso. Michael took us over and around the hills and in and out of buildings and through narrow alley ways and up and down stairs. He took us into the British volunteer fire company, and the German club (where there was a bust of Kaiser Wilhelm!), and into a building that was being renovated and provided a glimpse into the life of a wealthy family in an era long gone, and into a local pub for lunch and dozens of other places, pulling out black and white photographs showing what things looked like 50 or 100 years ago.

Like Punta Arenas, Valparaiso benefited from the California Gold Rush and was hurt badly by the Panama Canal. And like San Francisco, there was an earthquake here in 1906. Today the place is a UNESCO World Heritage site. There has been a lot of development and renovation in the past 12-15 years, and as is not at all surprising, those who have benefited by the tourism and renovation boom are pleased with it, while those who have not don't like it.

The municipal infrastructure was never well built and is showing its age. Michael said that were were house fires (often started by electrical problems) almost every week, and a gas main had exploded in the last few months.

Alas, this was where Becky's camera got stolen by a pair of smooth pick pockets, along with all her trip pictures.

After a long day of tramping the hills of Valparaiso, we headed back to Santiago on the bus and had dinner at a lovely tapas bar/restaurant.

Back to Santiago

We left Puerto Varas early in the morning to drive to the airport in Puerto Montt, which was a good thing because the main road was closed due to a wild fire and we had to take a stop and go alternative route. Apparently there have been a lot of fires lately due to an unusually dry summer.

We said goodbye to our wonderful guide at the airport, then had a leisurely cup of tea as our flight to Santiago was delayed for an hour due to bad weather in the previous stop.

After leaving, we had a stop in Concepcion, so we ended up getting fed twice on two short hops. The first time was tasty butter cookies with orange juice, and the second time was 3 tiny bite-sized sandwiches with toppings, with a truffle for dessert. Airline food is not particularly noteworthy, except that I'm always amused by the contrasts with the $5 box of stale cheese and crackers that you have the option of buying in the States if you aren't on a flight that serves a meal.

We were flying up the coast with the Andes Cordillera on the right and the ocean on the left. The mountains seem to go on forever. Most are "typical" mountains, but there are quite a few distinctive volcano cones scattered about.

It occurred to me as we landed in Concepcion (banking tightly in over the airport and stopping very quickly on what must have been a short runway) that it's probably more "interesting" to be a pilot in this area than in the States.

After landing in Santiago, we headed to our hotels. After settling in, I wandered to a park that had a number of very interesting sculptures and was also used by people of different ages and backgrounds for different purposes. The younger set was there with their mothers and having a grand time climbing trees and playing in sand areas and such. The adolescent set was seriously making out. The older couples were walking and talking. The tourists were taking pictures. Something for everyone.

Santiago has a Mediterranean climate (hot dry summers, cool wet winters) and is tucked in between the mountains and the sea. It's one of the smoggiest cities in the world because the smog gets trapped in front of the mountains. There is enough money to generate a lot of pollution but apparently not enough to do much with catalytic converters and such.

The areas we have visited have gotten progressively more prosperous and "modern" as we have headed north, perhaps partly because of the increasing level of natural resources available. I picked up an interesting book on Patagonian history and read that it took 300 years for successful settlements to start taking root because the land and climate were so harsh. The book also had an interesting comment on Spain and how it used the gold from the new world: "The affluence of gold could also be appreciated in commercial exchanges between countries: for example, Spain purchasing manufactured goods from Holland, France, England and Italy. These countries furnished Spain with all sorts of merchandise, and strengthened their manufacturing industries in exchange for the gold which Spain thought would last forever. Thus, Spain chose good living and luxury while the other countries emphasized their working abilities and production." Wonder how the history of the U.S. and the world will be told a hundred years from now...

Was people watching as I was having dinner. In a land that is supposedly very macho, there are probably more women drivers than men (at least on one street at one hour in Santiago) Very few American cars, and those pretty much all trucks. Mostly small cars.

We've had 2 women guides and 1 male guides, and all were non-Chileans - one from Peru, one from Turkey, one from Canada. Cynthia (our main guide) said that there weren't that many young people from this area who could guide and speak English well.

Tomorrow (Thursday), Becky, Janet and I head to Valparaiso on the bus.

Hiking on Volcan Osorno

The Osorno Volcano is an immense, perfect cone shaped mountain rising up from the lake across from our cabanas. The top is snow-covered at this point (early fall), and is part ice field and part glacier. After looking at this behemoth towering over us for 3 days, we finally got a chance to climb up it.

Climb shouldn't be taken too literally, though. We took a van up to a ski resort and then started hiking. It was a short hike (only 3 hours), but we went up about 1500 feet or so, and were high enough to see the ranges of mountains stretching away into the distance. The lake the cabanas were on was covered in fog and clouds, and there were clouds over a lot of the valleys, but the peaks were clear and the sky was blue. Clouds were curling over the top of Osorno in quite a magical way. The last time Osorno erupted was in the 1820's, although it is definitely still active, as are the other 2 volcanoes in the area. The trail, such as it was, was over loose volcanic scree. It was a great chance to get a sense of how mountainous the area is.

After coming back down, we left our cabanas and drove back along the lake to Puerto Varas, about 15 km away. This is another heavily German influenced town. We wandered around the town for a few hours, then had our last dinner together. In the morning we return to Santiago. By chance, 3 of us are staying in the same area in Santiago after the trip. Sounds as if two of the other folks will join me in an expedition to Valparaiso on Thursday.

Sea kayaking on Relonkavi Fjord

The group cooked a fabulous barbecue last night (steak with a wonderful marinade, roasted potatoes, salad, and home-made from scratch brownies). My stomach was still not happy, so I had mostly potatoes, but it was still good. We had a "parrot flyover" while eating dinner, as about 4 green parrots buzzed us while heading into the trees.

Today (Monday) we went sea kayaking on Relonkavi Fjord. It was warm and sunny and calm. We paddled about 15 kilometers in single kayaks, with the tide, with a stop for lunch mid way. As one would expect (given that fjords are carved by glaciers), we were in a steep valley with a series of forested hills and peaks rising on either side. It was amazingly quiet. We could hear roosters crowing up and down the valley, as well as other strange and wonderful birds, and if a car went by on the road you could hear it.

This is a good place for salmon farms (if any place can be said to be a good place for salmon farms, given their environmental impact) because the temperature is apparently ideal. Chile is the number 2 salmon farming country in the world, behind Norway, and will probably overtake Norway in a few years. Also lots of mussel farms, which don't have such a negative impact.

We are now back at our cabins and have started tonight's barbecue. One of our trip members is an amazing cook. We're having brined, marinated, baked, and then roasted chicken, roasted potatoes, a Chilean corn and cheese dish, a raspberry sauce he is making from black raspberries we picked at lunch, and smores. I think there was some salad mentioned too. I'm not completely over my stomach ailment, but am better.

Haven't decided what to do about tomorrow's hike. My right knee is definitely bothering me, but I don't have to decide until tomorrow.

Rafting in Ensenada

Today is Sunday and it's a beautiful sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky. I'm sitting in my cabin looking out at Osorno Volcano, a perfect cone shaped mountain topped with snow. The cabins are on a large lake called Lago Llanquihue (sounds somewhat like Yankee Way). It's a huge lake -- about 330 square miles. It's the end of the tourist season here, with fall approaching and school starting, so it's quiet, but normally these cabins are packed and there are kids playing soccer on the home made soccer field and swinging on the wooden swings. Temperature today is in the mid to high 60s.

The rest of the group went for a bicycle ride today, but I passed. Wasn't sure whether I'd go because of my knee, although I probably would have started in any case and just switched to the truck that was trailing the group if my knee was too bad. However, I ended up with a rather unhappy stomach last night and it has persisted into today, and I thought I should not stray too far from a bathroom.

Yesterday we flew up from Puerto Arenas to Puerto Montt, then drove to Ensenada. We dropped our things and headed off for our raft trip down the river. First step was the safety briefing. We learned what to do if we got knocked out of the boat and what to do if the boat tipped over. For some reason, the group was very quiet after that. I was wondering if I really wanted to do this. But the trip was actually quite tame. The rapids were theoretically Class 3, but the water level was low and they were barely that, according to someone who had done some rafting before. However, the chance to spend the time on the Petrohue river was wonderful. It was cloudy and misty and the river cut through black volcanic rocky soil of the Vicente Perez Rosales national park, winding through volcanoes and mountains amid a beautiful forest. The rocks on shore were covered with moss in different colors. The tops of the mountains were covered with clouds, and it was a bit like a Japanese wood cut print. The water was gray green glacier water. It was raining/misting, which didn't really matter since we were wearing wet suits, and two of us jumped into the water anyway. All in all it was a wonderful chance to see the countryside.

Ensenada seems a bit more prosperous than Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales. Fewer houses badly in need of paint; more houses having a sense of tidiness.

Tonight and tomorrow night we have a barbecue. Tomorrow is the kayak day and it's supposed to be another lovely day.

Torres del Paine National Park

Wow. What an amazing week. Last Sunday our group met in the lobby of the hostel. Four women and one man make up the participants. Our guide is a delightful young woman from Peru.

While I was eating breakfast that morning I started talking to the only other person in the room, a man in his 30s who had just been in Torres del Paine park and was headed down to Tierra del Fuego. Taking the bus and camping. He was from Germany and was taking a month long vacation. Good role model for us Americans, both for taking an entire month of vacation and for hiking and busing.

Anyway, back to the trip. Luis (our driver for the trip to Torres del Paine) pulled up in a van shortly after we gathered and we all piled in to head north to Puerto Natales, the jumping off point for the Torres. We first headed off to the Sego Otway penguin colony. It was about 20 miles along the way to Puerto Natales, then about 15 miles along a dirt road. The countryside is relatively flat and dry, and not exactly what you would think of as penguin territory.

When we arrived to the penguin colony, we walked along a path for half a mile of more dry grass and low brush. We started to see lots of penguin burrows scattered about, and several penguin trails, and one can only imagine the number of short little penguin steps needed to waddle from sea to burrow and back to create these trails. The human path crossed one of the penguin trails on a bridge, and there was a sign saying don't loiter on the bridge since it will keep the penguins from returning to their burrows. Near the beach there was a wooden blind so that we could watch the penguins resting on the beach without disturbing them.

There were only a handful of penguins actually in their burrows, and maybe 30 or 40 on the beach, and the rest were at sea. The ideal time to visit a penguin colony is apparently either at dawn or at dusk, when the penguins are heading out to sea or returning, but that didn't work with our schedule. In any event, it was a treat to see them and I'm inspired to watch The March of the Penguins. This bunch was molting, so they were a bit scruffy and there were feathers all around.

After we left the penguin colony, we spotted lots of other wildlife, including nandu (an ostrich-like bird), guanaco (a wild animal related to the llama and alpaca), fox, flamingos, and skunk.

We got to Puerto Natales late Sunday afternoon. Puerto Natales is on Ultimo Esperanza Sound (Last Hope Sound, named when navigators looking for a passage tried one last sound.) The town was formerly focused on the sheep (mutton) industry and fishing, but now is also a tourist town, serving people visiting the Torres del Paine park and paddling the fjords. It's also the end point of cruises down the coast from Puerto Montt.

After a wonderful dinner of Chilean fare, we headed off to sleep to rest up for our big hike.

In the morning we met our local guide for the mountains, a young man from Turkey. Another wonderful guide, he spoke fluent Spanish and English and was more on top of English literature than I am.

We left everything we didn't need for the hike in the hotel, and the only thing I forgot was the spare battery for my camera, so I was somewhat sparing on pictures on the hike. More sparing than I needed to be, but c'est la vie. I'm sure the group will share.

After arriving in the park at mid morning we finally headed out on the first leg of the "W" hike. The term "W" comes from hiking up 3 valleys. The first day we hiked up to Refugio Chileno where we would spend the night. We dropped our packs in our room, and then headed up to the Torres, three granite spires that rise up out of a lake. (The picture at the top of the post is the Torres.) The final kilometer or so was up a boulder field, which was difficult walking and probably contributed to a very sore right knee by day four, but it was well worth it. We also saw a condor along the way, and he was actually underneath us so we could see the white feathers that are on the top of his wings. The first day's hike was about 14 K.

We learned that this area is not part of the Andes ... it's only about 13 million years old, compared to 50 - 80 million years old for the Andes. As was the case in North America, the whole southern part of South America was covered by glaciers during the last ice age that carved and shaped the terrain.

Day 2 we contoured around Lake Nordenskjol, with the changing lake opening up on our left and the mountain peaks on our right. Our destination was Refugio Los Cuernos, with a total hike of about 13 K. The lake was so big that it was sun dappled, as areas where the sun was shining through the clouds were a different color than where the clouds were hiding the sun. There were at least two levels of clouds ... a constantly moving low level that often scraped the mountain peaks and squeezed through the passes, and a high level that appeared motionless. We saw several local birds thanks to our alert trip members, including a Magellenic woodpecker tapping away on a dead tree. As we neared the end of the hike, we saw Los Cuernos, another amazing set of peaks. These are granite on the bottom with darker sedimentary rock on top, giving them a very distinctive and unique appearance.

Day 3 was a long hike, about 18 K. We headed up the French Valley to a lookout over a hanging glacier. We saw and heard pieces of the glacier break off and rumble down the mountainside. Then we headed back down the valley and on to Refugio Paine Grande, where we spent the third night of the hike.

We had fabulous weather all 4 days, but midday on day 3 the famous Patagonian winds started to blow. Easily up to 80 kilometers per hour. The wind would pick up the spray off the tops of the waves on the lake and swirl it around, or suddenly slam into a nearby tree. If you didn't want to use trekking poles to walk or to keep your balance crossing streams, there were still almost a necessity in the wind. On a previous trip, someone had actually gotten knocked over by the wind.

Day 4 we were supposed to hike up to Grey Glacier and take a ferry back. Unfortunately, when we were about 3/4 of the way there, we found out (via the guide's radio) that they had canceled the ferry due to the wind. My knee was quite sore by then and I would have been very pleased to take the ferry as opposed to backtracking (the planned 11 K hike turned into 15 K hike in a howling wind), but it all worked out.

The amazing thing about the park was that every direction you looked and every mountain and glacier you saw was different and unique and wonderful. I'm fading tonight, so am not doing this hike justice by any stretch of the imagination. But it's time for bed.

Just to bring things up to date, we got back to Puerto Natales last night. Spent this AM wandering around town (typical hardscrabble tourist town -- lots of hostels and outfitters and cyber cafes and entrepreneurs trying to make a living.) We then caught a public bus back to Punta Arenas, where we stayed in the same hotel. As we were leaving for dinner, the German tourist I had seen last Sunday arrived back at the hotel from Tierra del Fuego. Good to see him. Sounds like that's another great place to go.

Tomorrow we leave at 6:00 in the morning to catch a plane to Puerto Montt. We'll take a bus to our cabins in Ensenada, then go rafting. After that it's a day of biking, then kayaking, then a hike up the Osorno volcano, then back to Santiago on Wednesday.

Sorry for the rushed post; will try to be more coherent with the pictures.

Saturday in Punta Arenas

Today wasn't quite what I'd planned, but then the entire trip hasn't started quite the way I'd planned. I had fantasies of having become far more fluent in Spanish, of having been reading the local news websites (in Spanish, of course), and being far more fit. But, while I hate to paraphrase Rumsfeld, you go on vacation as you are, and it all works out.

Today was a full day on my own in Punta Arenas. I had found a number of websites of local tour companies that offered day trips in the area, and thought that my biggest challenge would be deciding what to do (kayaking, visiting the island with more than 100,000 penguins, going to a national park with different terrain and history than we'll be seeing in Torres Del Paine, and a host of other options.) Most places require a minimum of two people, but I assumed I'd be able to tag along with SOME other group. When I checked earlier this week, there were no groups running. But I thought the public ferry to the penguin island would be a perfectly wonderful fall back option. Unfortunately, they canceled today's ferry trip to the island because it was too windy.

So I spent the day wandering around Punta Arenas. This is a city of about 116,000 on the Strait of Magellen, about 53 or 54 degrees south latitude. It relies on fishing, petroleum, shipping, duty free retail, and tourism. It was founded in the first half of the 19th century, in time to serve as a major shipping point during the California gold rush (as was Valparaiso, which I hope to visit when I'm in Santiago.)

One of the things I've noticed about the city is the dogs. A small thing, perhaps, but the dogs here are extremely self possessed. At home, a dog is on a leash, or in a yard, or, in rare cases, has escaped and seems to be aware of the short duration of his or her grand adventure. The dogs here seem to be full fledged citizens. They go where they wish and hang out where they wish, and to them, we're just another passerby.

I'm also finding myself very aware of what I'm eating and drinking. The travel clinic said "Drink only bottled water!" Active South America and the travel book I have both said that tap water was safe, so I decided to believe them, but it's a little nerve wracking. Getting sick in the mountains isn't appealing. But so far so good.

I met one of the people on the trip this evening. A woman from Boston named Margaret. She seemed to know all the people on the trip -- asked "Are you from Minnesota?" She said there were two other women and a man, for a total of 5 people. We join up tomorrow at 12:30. At that point we head off to a different penguin colony (only 15,000 penquins) and then to Puerto Natales, and Monday morning we start our 4 day hut to hut hike in Torres del Paine national park.

Arrived Safely in Punta Arenas

It's Friday night and I arrived safely in Punta Arenas a couple of hours ago. It's dark, so I didn't do much sight seeing. I'm definitely finding that being in a country where you don't speak much of the language feels a lot more foreign than New Zealand or Norway did. But everyone is friendly, and between my Spanish and their English, we seem to get by just fine.