Touristing in Alberta

It seems shocking that we've covered a large part of the world's surface and hadn't (until last Thursday) been north of Red Deer in our own province. So we decided to deal with that.

A couple of months ago we reconnected with Ron's cousin Ralph at a family reunion. When Ron was growing up Ralph was one of the old kids and not part of his circle at all. Funny how 50 years can change all that. Five years don't make any difference at all now. So we were delighted to discover how well we clicked as friends.

Ralph and his partner Raymond live in Edmonton. I'd been to Edmonton on business in 1989, but that doesn't really count as a visit. We needed to see the place, and Ralph was eager to show it to us. So last Thursday we drove up that way via Custom Woolen Mills, an extraordinary fibre factory in the middle of nowhere somewhere east of Carstairs, giving us a chance to get off the highway and into some real farm country. I picked up a Turkish spindle and some slubby, bumpy wool to spin with it.

I'm afraid I'm hooked on spinning now!

Friday we discovered that Ralph missed his true calling: he should have been a tour guide. He drove us all over the place, showing us the Edmonton he loves. We shared lunch with two of his lovely daughters, Judy and Jodi (we'd met Judy at the reunion, too) at a fine sushi restaurant, and then "did" the West Edmonton Mall - you haven't seen Edmonton unless you've seen the Mall.

Ralph's daughter Shelly came over after dinner to share my birthday cake (apricot-pistachio torte: yum!).

Saturday morning was a trip to the Edmonton farmers' market, where I picked up more wool to spin - actually hand-dyed kid mohair from the supplier's own flock. Oh dear, I'm going to have much too much spinning to do, just like I have far too much to knit. Then, off to Mannville and cousin Charlene, via Vegreville's giant Easter egg.

Charlene had arranged a tour of a Hutterite colony for us that evening. What an interesting place! About a hundred people share the work and earnings of a large piece of land, making everything possible and living almost completely self-sufficient lives together. They were completely open and willing to answer every question we could think of about how and why they live like they do. And they gave us some awesomely delicious pie to finish off the evening. I don't think we could live that life - you have to work too hard - but I think they're the richest people we've ever met; they have more than enough of everything a human being could ever need.

Sunday Charlene, Paul and the two of us visited the Ukrainian village near Edmonton. Interesting place - old buildings rescued from destruction and set up in groups as they would have been in the 1930s or earlier. Each building is staffed by a young person who acts in character for the time and place, very knowledgeable and able to answer all sorts of questions. Definitely a place worth another visit.

Sunday night we spend with cousin Gay and her husband James near Wetaskawin. After moving from High Prairie last winter they lived in their RV for a couple of months. It worked out so well for them that they bought a 5th wheel to live in permanently; they have their two homes parked next to each other in a small RV lot just outside Millet. They put us up in their RV that night, leaving us full of admiration for their ability to get along together for a long time in a very small space. We're certainly not made of such stern stuff!

Monday we made our way homeward via Rocky Mountain House, where I picked up more fibre for spinning - bison this time, from a couple who raise bison and non-allergenic horses just outside of town. I envied their two little kids who had the run of the place and looked full of health and life. Every child should have that much fresh air and sunshine!

Rocky Mountain House reminded us of pre-tourist boom Canmore, very plain and not at all affluent - but you wouldn't call it poor, because it was tidy and well-kept. Its greatest treasure is its historic site, well worth the couple of hours we spent exploring it. The Canmore museum has been celebrating the bicentenary of mapmaker David Thompson, who was based in Rocky for some time, and I found their display on his life interesting in comparison.

We were going to spend the night in Lake Louise or someplace like that, but the weather began to turn rainy, so we retreated to our own mountain resort home. It's still the most beautiful place in the world, but the rest of Alberta isn't too shabby, too.

We're home

As usual, I neglected to let people know we made it home safely. I didn't know there were that many people reading this blog, but several have expressed surprise at seeing us around Canmore - "Aren't you still travelling?" So this is formal notice that we made it back home.

And the picture to the right is what we faced in Toronto. We knew there would be a bit of a temperature difference - we left Santiago on a 35C day - but did it have to be this much?

Canmore is its usual beautiful self and much less wintry than Toronto. Thank heavens for chinooks!

I've just finished uploading pictures to Flickr, so have a look.

Do we gotta go home?

So here we are in Santiago, within hours of having to leave for the airport, and I really don't want to go. Chile is very much to my taste (in every sense of the word), and I'd love to spend more time here.

To continue our voyage north from Antarctica...

We made our way through some of the fjords on Chile's coast, dropping in to visit a glacier, heading out to the rough Pacific beyond Chilean waters so the gamblers could have their casino, nipping back in to see the Darwin Channel – and there we were met by a pod of porpoises playing in our bow wave and wake. Oh wow! Wonderful. Amazing. Awe-inspiring. There were cameras going off all along the starboard rail, but I don't think any of us got a good picture, not even the ship's photographer. You just couldn't tell where they were going to come up. I have a few splashing tails off at the edge of one of my pictures, and that's the best I've seen. Never mind; the images will stay clear in our minds for a long time.

Landed again at Puerto Montt, still in southern Chile but in a more temperate climate – rather Vancouver-like from what I could tell. We'd signed up for the “Traditions of Chile” tour, which turned out to be the best I've been on. They took us out to a small resort town, Puerto Vargas, in an area originally settled by Germans in the mid-19^th century. It's a pretty town on the edge of a lake with a view of two only slightly dormant volcanoes not too far away. So that took care of the requisite shopping opportunity; then they took us to an estancia (ranch) owned by a former Chilean rodeo champion who is dedicated to preserving the traditions of the Chilean huasos (cowboys). They greeted us with food and drink (setting the tone for the afternoon), folk dancing by a group of talented teenaged girls and boys with music on guitar, paraguayan harp and tormento (a percussion instrument kind of like a washboard with a sounding box). They showed off their Chilean horses – a special breed that's probably very close to the original Spanish horse, intelligent, gentle and nimble, and able to run sideways. Then they took us out to the rodeo corral and gave us a demonstration of the Chilean rodeo – kind of a bullfight that does no damage to the bull except to his dignity: the idea is to get him running around the ring several times in a perfect circle and then stop him with the horses. There's a lot of skill on the part of the horses and riders, and the sideways running comes in handy. There was more food, music and dancing, and then we had to leave. Alas!

On up the coast for one more day at sea to give us a chance to pack. As we were moving about the cabin trying to fit things back into the suitcases we'd take the occasional glance out the window, and twice we saw whales right beside us. Just a glimpse of a fin or two, but definite whales. There were fishing boats out there, too, so I assume the whales and the people were after the same thing.

Landed in Valparaiso and got bussed through pretty mountainous scenery to Santiago. The next morning we navigated the metro system to the Plaza de Armas to experience the Mercado Central. We saw more kinds of seafood than I ever suspected existed and had some abalone (not all that good) for lunch. Prowled around the area some more, seeing the wool shops close for Saturday afternoon just like in Buenos Aires, and found the Museum of Precolumbian Art that Evan's friend had recommended. It is indeed a lovely place full of objects collected mostly by one man on the basis of their beauty and artistic merit, not scientific interest. They were well displayed with bilingual signs giving all kinds of useful information about what they were and the cultures they came from. Definitely a place we're glad to have seen. In the evening we went up a small mountain that's a park near our hotel and had dinner in a fine restaurant with a view of the city and the sunset on the mountains opposite.

The next morning we picked up the car Evan had reserved for us and drove south to the Colchagua Valley wine district, finding our hotel in the pretty town of Santa Cruz with no trouble at all. We enjoyed the brunch Evan had arranged for us, then booked a few wine tours for the afternoon and next day.

We saw four totally different wineries – I never suspected they could be so different. One was new and modern with its building designed along feng shui principles and its premium wine ageing in casks to the sound of Gregorian chant. Another was in an old estancia; they treated us to a horse-drawn carriage tour of their fields and a sampling of raw wine from one of their vats (smells like baby poo, one young mother in our group commented). A third had a lift to carry us up the mountain side to their display of native Chilean cultures (including Easter Island, which of course belongs to Chile) and their observatory with a collection of meteorites. The fourth, my favourite, was just a competent winery in beautiful old buildings, although the owner did like to display his collection of antique cars there, too. They have an elegant small hotel attached; my idea of a good thing to do would be to stay there during the wine festival around the second weekend in March.

It was wonderful being able to get out into the countryside and see a few things on our own. It was my first time in South America when I didn't feel like I was in Turkey. The old farm buildings are definitely sui generis, unique to Chile – long, low brick buildings with wide roof overhangs, one room thick, enclosing a central patio. The ones we were in felt cool and breezy even on a hot summer day. There were gardens full of flowers everywhere, and orchards of apples, pears, peaches, citrus fruit – whatever, all ready to be shipped to wintry Canada. It was all quite lovely.

Back to Santiago pretty well uneventfully, except for some fun trying to get back onto the highway after we got off to fill up the car, and more fun when we turned one street too early to get to the hotel. Never mind. I don't think divorce is immanent.

So today, after we've found some way of packing our souvenir wine safely, we'll leave our stuff at the hotel and head off into the city again, back to the Plaza de Armas area to find my wool shops and see what we missed there (handy hint: in South America look for the Plaza de Armas in whatever town you're visiting; that will be the old and interesting part of town), maybe back up the mountain to have one last look, and then (alas!) off to the airport for a day of flying and waiting to fly.

Final impressions of South America: don't miss it, but learn some Spanish first. Surprisingly few people speak useful amounts of English here. Fortunately Spanish is not all that hard, at least at the basic bodily needs level, but I sure wish I knew more. And I'm going to learn more. I must come back.

To Antarctica and back

So Ron made it out of quarantine in time for the Falkland Islands and our first view of penguins in the wild. Our ship couldn't get into the inner harbour at Stanley, so we tendered in and were met by a fleet of minibuses to take us on our tours. We chose to go to Bluff Beach Cove and its Gentoo penguin flock. That was a half-hour trip along nice roads and another half hour in landrover over tussocks and bog. What the Falklands lack in trees (thanks to the eternal, everlasting wind) they make up for in peat. Until recently peat was the main fuel on the islands. Now they use bottled gas and wind-generated electricity.
We had an hour to walk among the penguins, most of which were this year's chicks waiting for mom and dad to get back from their 50 km daily swim in the ocean. Most of the parents set out on their fishing trips at dawn; some fish at night and hang around to babysit during the day. The chicks are almost as big as their parents – just about knee high – and losing their fluff, but they've got a couple more months of hanging around on the beach being fed – lucky clucks.
It was good to meet some of the Falklanders, too. The guys who drove the minibus and the landrover were basic salt-of-the-earth sheep farmers but full of opinions and snippets of information. I get the feeling you've got to be both tough and gentle to live as they do. The Falklands seem like a place full of good and caring people. And they love their Queen and their Britishness. One guy told us, “When the Argentinians landed in 1982 they thought they'd be greeted as liberators. Boy did they get a surprise!”
After the penguin visit we grabbed some fish & chips at the pub and prowled around the town. It's the same latitude (south, not north) as Canmore and many of the same things grow there – potatoes, peas, lupines, poppies. And they love their gardens. I could feel at home on the Falklands, I think. I found a few balls of Falkland Islands wool (spun in England and shipped back for sale there) to make Ron a hat and scarf.

Then we headed off to sea for almost a week away from “civilization” as we cruised around Antarctica. We were hugely fortunate in the weather. We were told our ship was able to sail places no other vessel our size had been able to visit before. For most of the time the weather was clear, the winds were calm, and the icebergs were relatively small. So we saw scenes of beauty that are beyond description. Even photographs just skim the surface. It was utterly lovely. Glaciers, ice sheets (disintegrating), penguins, whales – the whole deal. Maybe when I get a chance to upload some photos to Flickr you can get some idea, but really you have to go.
It wasn't all smooth sailing, of course. Our first evening in Antarctic waters we experienced a real gale with winds as strong as any I've ever experienced. I really thought I was going to be blown off the deck. Bits of the ceiling of the promenade deck were ripped off, leading to a violation of the Antarctic treaty by our ship – we actually left a few strips of aluminum behind in the water, and maybe a few deck chair cushions. Holland-America takes the Antarctic regulations so seriously that people aren't allowed to smoke on the deck (making the smokers' areas of the ship even less pleasant to pass through) in case they drop cigarette butts into the ocean. And instead of treating and releasing grey water, which they do everywhere else, they asked us to reduce our water consumption so the ship could store all its wastes. And we were warned not to let our hats be blown off into the water.
I was struck by the number of other ships we met on our travels there. They were all smaller vessels; the largest was the Marco Polo carrying 400 passengers instead of its usual 800 (and our 1300). That was so everyone could get a chance to walk on Antarctica. The regulations allow a maximum of 100 people to go ashore at once, so the Marco Polo spends a day letting people off in batches of 100. We, of course, never got a chance to really touch Antarctic snow, except the flew flakes that blew into our faces one evening.
For three days we sailed through fjords and past ice and islands. Air temperature was about 3C, and the water was just above 0. For three nights it hardly got dark with sunset at 9:50 and sunrise at 3:45. And then we headed back north to Cape Horn.

We got an idea there of why the ancient mariners wanted to find some other way of getting past the tip of South America. About an hour before we got within sight of land another mighty gale blew up and fog enveloped us. We had a dim view of an island with a big cliff on it (that was Cape Horn), and then we continued east towards the entrance to the Beagle Channel (named after the ship that carried Charles Darwin around the world as he mulled over the origin of species).

Yesterday morning we found ourselves in the Argentinian town of Ushuaia, which calls itself the most southerly city in the world. But I don't think so. It can't be a city because it doesn't have a cathedral, and there's a Chilean town across the passage that is more southerly. But never mind, it's awfully far south. It was warmish – 14C? - but certainly didn't feel much like midsummer. Ushuaia used to be a penal colony – much of it was built by prisoners, who also stripped the trees from the mountains around and constructed a little railroad. These days there are government subsidies for things like the natural gas people use to heat their houses, but the town still has a frontier feel about it. It doesn't look all that prosperous, either, with abandoned construction projects even downtown Lots of tourist-oriented businesses though, with emphasis on outdoor activities. It's the jumping-off point for many trips to Antarctica, but there are lots of wilderness activities in Tierra de la Fuego too – camping, hiking, climbing, and in the winter skiing. It's kind of like Banff, but less prosperous.
We had a look around town and a bus and train ride through the countryside – so nice to see green things again! But no pines or spruces, just 2 or 3 kinds of southern beech - and then explored the town a bit. Found some more wool in a tourist shop, locally grown and spun. And we had some fantastic king crab soup and some great locally-brewed beer in “the Irish pub at the end of the world”. Then off again through the Beagle Channel to see yet more stunningly beautiful glaciers and mountains – the southern end of the Andes.

Today we're in Chile, in Punto Arenas on the Straits of Magellan. It's a bigger town than Ushuaia and a little more prosperous-seeming. Before the Panama Canal was built it was a major stopping-off point for shipping, and now it does a lot of tourist business. Prices seem lower than in Ushuaia. Got myself a nice handwoven jacket for $28 and a cute sweater for Dima for $12 that would have been $30-40 in Argentina. And they have superb king crab here, too – I had a huge crab salad for lunch.
But the wind! I could hardly stand up against it, and really did get blown around. The air temperature was quite warm, but the wind was so fierce and cold that I was glad to have my winter jacket on. Our taxi driver said there was just a little wind today. There are some trees around, but most of them seem to be carefully tended. It's not an easy place to be a tall object.
I didn't find any wool myself, but at dinner I met someone who'd found a store full of it – hand spun, hand dyed – and got 2.5 kg of it. Lucky thing!

Tomorrow we continue our journey north, back to the land where summer feels like summer.

Quarantined in Montevideo

Well, we got onto the M.S. Amsterdam just fine and had a lovely smooth departure from Buenos Aires. I would hate to have to navigate along the Rio de la Plata. It's essentially a river delta just waiting to happen. At some points, we were told, there were only a few meters between our ship and the bottom - and with this being a huge drought year, the situation can only get worse. The water is sort of a liquid mud soup, so come back in a few hundred years and Buenos Aires will be landlocked.

We sailed overnight to Montevideo. And during the night Ron's stomach bug came back along with a severe back spasm, which he went to the health centre for. They were more interested in the stomach thing. He got some pills for that and was told to stay in his cabin until 24 hours after the last symptoms. Yippee. I'm not quarantined like that, but things aren't as interesting without my best friend so I've been spending an awful lot of time there, too - and living off room service.

I did get out to see a little of downtown Montevideo. A very smart leather shop ran shuttles from the boat to their store in the old town, so I took advantage of that and fell for a rather lovely soft fur-lined hooded waterproof lambskin coat - just the thing for the Falklands and Antarctica (and also Canmore in February). Also walked around downtown, of course, although my hip is being stupid this trip and literally puts a cramp in such activities. What I saw was very nice of its sort. It's another Izmir-type city - cement buildings, palm trees and crumbling sidewalks. There's a lovely cathedral, simple and modest inside (Uruguay didn't have a lot of gold to start with, and what there was ended up in Spain and not on the reredos). The town square had an open-air antique market going on, and it's always fascinating looking at other cultures' antiques. In Montevideo they're not all that different from ours, actually, except for a few more mate tea mugs and straws.

So now we're somewhere off in the South Atlantic heading for the Falklands (oops, sorry: Malvinas). Today and tomorrow we're at sea, then we get some cool weather and some penguins.

Turista in Iguazu

So we got to our gaucho show, which turned out to be Opera Pampas, a song, dance & horse-riding survey of Argentina's history. Brief summary: there were native people who sang and danced, then the Spaniards came with their horses and gave them a really hard time and sang and danced, then settlers came and wiped them out and sang and danced, and now we're all happy, singing, dancing Argentinians - sort of a southern hemisphere Oklahoma!. I'm not doing it justice, though. It was very well done, and the horses were amazingly well behaved (as they would have to be for the sake of the barefoot dancers who followed).

The next day we left for Iguazu falls on a LAN flight, a small and seemingly very competent airline. They avoided having to give us headsets by playing soothing classical music quite loudly during takeoff and landing (how's Ave Maria for takeoff?) and showing Just For Laughs Gags during the flight. Just for Laughs is perfect for multilingual situations. The whole plane was laughing for much of it (interesting hearing cultural differences in humour, though) and we got off in a very good mood.

Unfortunately I began paying the price for inadequate hand-washing on Saturday's expedition. Remember, children, WASH YOUR HANDS! I was really reluctant to be out of sight of a washroom all that day and much of the rest; Ron caught up with me the next day. So we got to know our hotel in Puerto Iguazu very well. We were right up north in Missiones province, within sight of Paraguay and Brazil. The Iguazu river flows into the Parana just there, and about 20 km east up the Iguazu are the most amazing falls in the world. We got to see them for a much-too-short visit the next day - Tuesday - on our way back to the airport. Utterly stunning. When I can, I'll post some pictures to Flickr, but they won't begin to capture the full impact of this mass of water surging over a 2 km-wide wall of basalt. And the falls are relatively small this year, with northern Argentina/southern Brazil going through a record-breaking drought.

The drought was a blessing for us, though. We'd expected masses of mosquitos and had to get yellow fever shots to go there. I think I heard one mosquito. And the humidity was low enough (30-40%) that the 35-degree heat was not a problem. This is the year to see Iguazu, I think. But we're going to have to come back another year to see the parts we missed. Maybe then we'll experience tropical rainforest heat.

Back to Buenos Aires and a relatively quiet evening to recover from our illness. But Wednesday (yesterday) we were off and running again. First an excursion into the Parana delta, at the western end of the Rio Plata. Only 40 km or so away from BA, it's a labyrinth of streams and islands that's a summer refuge for many city-dwellers and permanent home for about 3000 people. We cruised past estates and modest homes on stilts, and even a church and a school that were accessible only by boat. I liked the floating supertiendas - supermarkets - that move from dock to dock. It would be a lovely place to live if you liked mosquito repellant (although there were none around at that time of day - we're living charmed lives on this trip).

We ended up in downtown BA, so we got ourselves to a nearby English-language used book store to replenish our stock of reading material - a day and a bit of tummy trouble meant we'd finished all our Christmas reading. Then home to rest up for the evening's show at Senor Tango.

Ron described the show far better than I could. Here's his report to Evan:

Wow! What a spectacle last night’s tango show was. We had vaguely imagined it would be an evening of flashy sexy dancing, and it was but with lots more. It started with four friendly table mates – a Brazilian couple a little younger than us, she being built about like me leading to merriment all round as we all wedged into a booth that wasn’t quite big enough, and another Brazilian woman and her teenage daughter. The daughter was the only one at the table who could really function in both languages so she had a busy time. Anyway we started off well and after a few bottles of good Argentinean wine (which turned out to be included in the price of the evening) we were all buddies.

The show itself when it finally began at 11:00 started with two horses (!) riding on to the stage as part of an enactment of a simplified Argentina creation myth (Once there were Indians, then we Spaniards came and vanquished them. And now here’s Argentina. That’s a surprising view, to these Canadian eyes, because the people here look a whole lot more mixed Spanish + native than Canadians look European + native, so I had though the myth was “we vanquished some of them and integrated the rest”).

There followed much dancing, singing, and orchestral interludes complete with random lighting and smoke effects (one admirable non-random lighting effect was to shine a bright spotlight on a guy ignoring the request not to take pictures, though he didn’t get the hint until an usher had a chat with him). The stage was cunningly arranged in three concentric circles that could turn independently, but I thought their main function was to call attention to the great skill of the women dancers who never once put a heel into one of the spaces between the circles. For most of the night the orchestra was a group of about 6 very capable, if loud, musicians of various ages. For the last half hour or so though, we got a whole new orchestra of old guys. Evidently they were well known, though we couldn’t follow the rapid Spanish introduction, and their leader was treated like a serious celebrity. They REALLY rocked. Four violins, four accordions, bass and keyboard. The distinctive sound was from the accordions as a percussion section playing very staccato ONE TWO THREE FOUR one two three four. It was wonderful.

The finale was a version of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, complete with Argentine flag-coloured drapery flowing from the ceiling, and all of the dancers and singers and musicians playing loud, but disappointingly no horses. Everyone left smiling, probably the Argentineans to one of the bars that don’t get going until 2:00 am or so and us tourists happily home to our beds.

And now we're packing for the next stage of this adventure - a cruise around the southern tip of South America to Valparaiso, Chile. It will be good to settle into a comfy cabin, unpack all our stuff and spread out a bit. Further reports to follow.

Sunburned in Buenos Aires

The thing about Canadians in winter is: we're pale. So a day on an open tour bus can have some painful results. Nevertheless, it was a good thing to do.

We arrived in Buenos Aires New Year's afternoon after a 12-hour flight from Toronto. To my surprise I was able to sleep through most of it, waking in time to see dawn over the Orinoco River and Guyana. The sun really does come up fast at the equator.

Woke up a few hours later to find us flying over Paraguay. Realized I know nothing about that part of the world. Must find out more.

Landed uneventfully in Buenos Aires and immediately began mapping it onto Izmir. The airport is like Izmir's old one. The buildings are the same. The highways are the same. The taxis are similar. It just feels like home.

We didn't have much energy left for anything but a shower, dinner and bed. But yesterday morning we were ready to go. Walked along a pedestrian mall near us (on Florida), discovered a lovely mall made out of some old buildings with an arts centre on top, and stumbled upon an open-top bus tour of town. That's the way to get your bearings in a new place, we've always found, so that's what we did - all 4 hours of it. And with no top on the bus and the sun beating down almost directly overhead - lobsters are pale compared to me, at least. Never mind, it doesn't hurt too much any more and we did get something of a feel for the place.

Today we tried out the subway system. It got us near the yarn store area I'd heard about in this blog. After a bit of a walk through a definitely un-touristy part of town (that's why I like to hunt down yarn shops) we noticed that the shutters were being fastened over the shop windows. Oops - it's Saturday, and in much of the world stores close on Saturday afternoons. Oh well.

So we found ourselves in nearby Palermo Soho, a very trendy old part of town with yuppified shops and a great little craft market in one of the squares. It was a good one - the real craft makers were selling their stuff, and it wasn't like you see in all the craft markets in the rest of the world. I got a mother-of-pearl necklace (because I forgot to bring any jewellery at all) and enjoyed seeing what the latest things are in knitting and other woolen stuff: woven shawls in big wool seem the current trend. So it was good.

Taxi to the National History Museum across town didn't take long or cost much. The museum, though, was a letdown. We'd hoped for a bit more than 4 rooms of paintings of the fathers of the country; a bit about the indigenous people and the lives of early settlers would have been nice. Pity.

And now we're waiting to be picked up for an evening gaucho show. Touristy, yes, but we've kinda gotta see it. And it's another excuse to eat Argentine beef, which is turning out to be rather nice indeed.