From the You've Got to be Kidding category of things to do on a weekend:
Muskoka, ON (PRWEB) May 21, 2005 -- Deerhurst Resort is offering guests an adventurous trip down the road-less-traveled...road not always included. Canadian Hummer Adventures have arrived at Deerhurst Resort and are a great new way to experience the rugged terrain of Muskoka's wilderness and the true capabilities of the world's most capable off-road vehicle.
Sit back, hold on and revel in the journey as a Canadian Hummer Adventure driver guides the custom-designed Hummer H1, with seating for up to 11 passengers, through the seemingly impassable dense forests around the resort. You won't believe your eyes when you see the terrain ahead. The wraparound rear seat is elevated to give passengers an unobstructed view of the surroundings and there's even a detachable roof when weather permits. The tours cater to any comfort level, from the gentle sightseer, to the more adventurous adrenalin-junkie.
Hummer tours will be a very popular addition to our already lengthy list of outdoor activities," according to Mark O'Dell, director of sports and leisure activities at Deerhurst Resort. "Our guests lead active, busy lives and this is just the kind of adventure they're seeking."
The one-hour tours cost is $50/person, $30 for children under 12.
That's how I like my adventure, too - without active participation, separated from the outside (unless weather permits), with engine noise to cover up that wilderness quiet, and as far from leave no trace as you can get, to the tune of $50/hour. I think calling this a "wilderness tour" is in the same category as subdivisions named after the trees that got chopped to make way for cookie cutter houses.
Sheesh.
When I talked to Burke about doing something canoe-related on the weekend, I was appalled when one of the options presented to me was a paddle under two hours in length. That would make the crucial drive to fun ratio about 2:1, which I deemed unacceptable by the Johanna weekend algorithm. I was sold on a five hour paddle with two possible extensions (*of course* we’ll do the extensions, I thought to myself…) and thus a ratio closer to 1:3.
The five hour paddle was the Big East River, from well above Arrowhead Provincial Park (where Burke’s office is) to Lake Vernon (the straight line distance from end to end to paddling distance is a ratio of about 1:10) (Correction. It is 1:2.6. My need for precision required that I look at the map. Total paddling distance: 27 km. As the crow flies distance: 10.5 km). Before we could start, though, we had to deal with all the normal logistics of a day paddle: shuttle cars, get boat, put on bug dope (though I was the only lemon-scented person in the canoe yesterday) and change mind about what to wear at least three times (then again, I think that was just me too). 
On top of that, I proclaimed that I had never, ever been to Arrowhead before, so of course that had its desired effect of getting Burke to show me some stuff, like the waterfall and the lookout. Consequently, by the time we put in, my drive : outdoor fun ratio was already close to 1:1 (though I’d only driven the one way to Huntsville at that point).
The Big East is one of those rivers you’d curse if you were on a long canoe trip and you hit it at 3 p.m. and just wanted to get to your site – so close as the crow flies, so many paddle strokes away. 
Make it an increasingly sunny afternoon, though, and it’s the perfect lazy river to explore. It has carved its way through massive sand deposits, and thus in places has huge sandy banks. It’s got the mature river morphology of many meanders (including often seen evidence of cut-off oxbows) and requires a minimum of alertness (ie. you can’t totally lie back and nap) because the rapidly eroding and changing channel also means plenty of debris and treestumps to be avoided.
Maybe it’s because I poked fun at the whole biogeek mode last weekend, but Burke seemed very restrained in the ecology interpretation department (or maybe it’s because, as he later hinted, he figured I was disinterested in learning new stuff). Despite the limited amount of stuff he talked about, the ratio of what he explained to what I retained is about 15:1. Here is a list of things I did learn: white trilliums turn pink as they age. 
The holes in the bank are bird nesting sites, and the birds were swallows (there are many kinds, including the somewhat obviously named bank swallow). The spotted sandpiper is a very common bird, and one that I can now sort of identify. If you find a nest and you visit it at two or more intervals, you have a much better chance of accurately figuring out what’s going on with respect to when the eggs were hatched. Some bird chicks and their nests are hard to identify, so you need the parent to visit while you watch. There is such a thing as a “bat detector”, which is not a late-night infomercial commodity but something that picks up high frequencies – and that if you are carrying a bundle of keys, the bat detector goes batshit because their rubbing against themselves gives off a frequency picked up by the device. A rapidly eroding meander in this system erodes banks at the rate of a foot (!) per year, prompting parks people at Arrowhead to winch the whole observation platform back every single year. When mergansers are agitated, they start to make all sorts of clicking noises. The Breeding Bird Atlas people divide the world into 10x10km squares based on UTM grids. There is a provincially rare sort of bulrush on Lake Vernon.
And that, alas, is all that I retained from the educational aspect of this trip. But if the information imparted : information retained ratio is 15:1, the information imparting : fun ratio is about 1:5 (and I know they’re not mutually exclusive, but here’s how I make the distinction – I already know how to have fun, but I know diddly about birds). That’s what the day really came down to: it was a lot of fun. Not just because I hadn’t been in a canoe or on an inland waterway so far this year (and in spite of the weird aluminum stains on our hands and the blackfly and mosquito density) – I got to see something and go someplace I’d never been to, which already guarantees a high fun rating. Add to that lots of interesting things to look at, 
like anthropogenic erosion-control structures along many of the cottage-lined banks in an effort to stop an entirely natural process that would, however, result in your house teeter-tottering into the river at some point. And Burke knows lots of other stuff to talk about besides ecology (a fact that was demonstrated only too well when his team kicked my team’s ass at Trivial Pursuit the night before), so the company was great too.
An entirely fun weekend, as far as I’m concerned, and worth the drive to Huntsville. If I include the barbecue the night before (but not the Trivial Pursuit game, because I am a sore loser!), the poking around before launching, the paddle, and the pub dinner we enjoyed after the endless paddle (we failed to bring snacks. About an hour before we finished the five hours, I started the annoying “how much longer, I’m hungry” routine – which resulted in destroying the rest of the Girl Guide cookies in Burke’s truck and no further paddling extensions because the pub was calling our names), the ratio of driving to fun was about 1:7. A most satisfying ratio, that.
My face hurts. It's bad enough that my lips cracked from the sunburn, but my left ear and just under my eye have done this bizarre skin-thickening thing that people tell me is a "blister" (I of course expect blisters to look like the kind you get from poison ivy, or at least from paddling for hours when your hands are all soft. These battle scars don't do the discomfort they're causing justice!). My hairline is shedding skin like mad, it looks like I have dandruff. And I'm peeling randomly all over my face. A few minutes ago, I touched my right earlobe and got some dry, brownish skin coming off. Wow, I'm pretty.
I know all about sunscreen, and hats. But I've already explained that I first forgot the regular hat and then was too vain to buy the hat that made me look stupid and thus had no head covering until Burke pulled out the red wonder. But! I hardly ever wear hats! Hats *are* kind of goofy (except of course my new red hat, which is cool) and they get in the way of my ponytail and pulling the ponytail through a ballcap hole is even stupider than the goofiest of the floppy hats and besides ballcaps don't cover my ears which are the most painful.
And the sunscreen, I had the spray-on kind *somewhere* in my boat. I could have pulled it out. If I emptied out my boat. It just didn't seem that important at the time. So now I pay the price. It's a gorgeous day, and I'd want to be out in the sun, but the sunburn recovery is actually keeping me desk-bound like I should be. Except... in the car is the red hat. And after work, I shall wear it!
Last night, I covered my ears and face with a thick layer of that zinc sunblocking stuff, strapped on my bike helmet, and went for a ride. Being out of shape means that, at about the 25 km mark, I'm kind of done with the bike riding. Unfortunately, that was still 9 km from home, and the bugs hitting my face whenever I got up to "wheeeee!" speed kind of hurt, what with the sunburn tenderness and all (upside? the bright red forehad is additional safety, no way you can't see me coming, even with a helmet on). But even the hair that had escaped from the ponytail (bike helmets are also not good with ponytail) hitting me in the face on the downhill stretches hurt. And sweat was irritating too (and you thought I was done with the sunburn whining. Almost... there's a new whine coming on).
See, the good thing/bad thing about the farm is that pretty much any direction you choose to bike, you will have to go over a hill. The biggest hills are to the south and east, and I came home via the south, which just happens to be on Guelph Line, and Guelph Line is a busy road. I was only 250m from the crest of the hill when I felt the need to shift to the smallest chainring. My derailleur, no doubt in solidarity with the bike which is not happy about not getting a professional tune-up this year (what? I don't think I even put 1000km on it last summer!), decided to drop the chain and jam it real good. I was clipped in, on the steepest part of the hill, with zero momentum. At least I had plenty of time to realize I was about to hit the gravel shoulder while cars whizzed by. Sigh.
This getting fit again thing, it's a lot of work. On Monday, I dragged my ass to the gym and hopped (if a low energy slouch can possibly called a "hop") onto a treadmill. After 5K at a sloooow pace and no incline, I had enough of that too (I did a bit more, but not before walking for a while).
That's the problem with all this digital feedback: there is no way you can hide from your own awareness that what you can do is nowhere near what you could do two years ago. Just wait for my enthusastic burbles when I actually use the heart rate monitor and realize that getting up from my lawnchair probably puts me into target heartrate zone...
The last time I went to the McCoy island group, I titled the trip report "The Bay that I Love". I could recycle the title, really, for this trip to the same place. I wouldn't say that I've ever forgotten how I feel about the Bay, but - I suppose like so many things that are so close and accessible that you can do them any weekend in the summer - I suspect I sometimes take it for granted.
There's nothing to be taken for granted about Georgian Bay. Yes, parts of it have many cottages, and yes, the jet-skis and motorboats buzz through various sections with alarming frequency. But on the May long weekend, we had this sometimes-busy part of the sixth Great Lake all to ourselves.
"We" is a motley crew of GLSKA kayakers: there was Lee, and there was me, and together we were the organizers of this escapade. Joining us was Peter (who I have tripped with frequently, and always enjoy), Dave H. (who I'd never 
"done a wilderness trip with, though we had been at several rescue clinics together) and Burke, Rick and Cindy (who were new to me). 
This group of seven represented the truly dedicated, healthy bunch with their priorities in order, for a whole host of people cancelled on us because something else came up, they had bad luck with injuries or vehicles, or a number of other reasons. But it all worked out: I think 5-8 people is the ideal kayak tripping group size.
The McCoys is the ideal spot for an early season trip with six tents, too: there are so many great campsites, and at this time of year the one that I wanted most was free. There is plenty of stuff to explore near there, so you can base-camp for two nights and not get bored. And, with a paddling distance of 12 km from Dillon Cove, it's close enough that you don't need to love the long days to go.
Add ideal weather to the ideal group size and ideal camping spot: despite rather dire forecasts, we had nothing but good weather. It was warm and sunny on Saturday (I even paddled in a t-shirt for a while), warm, sunny and windy on Sunday, and fairly warm and still dry on Monday (at least, it didn't rain before we had taken out and loaded up our gear). So good. Except for the solar radiation part, I suppose: I had forgotten my cap at home, and when I tried on a floppy-brimmed model at White Squall, Lee a little too honestly told me that I looked stupid and I went without.
One of the things I love about GLSKA trips is the independence you still have: since we all show up equipped for solo trips but travel together, you are not dependent on other people's meal schedules or taste in food. Alas, as I discovered this weekend, this means that you can spend some time feeling like your provisions are boring: 
I watched Rick and Cindy cook up some bacon and egg delights and generally get rather fancy. I commented on this, and they assured me that they eat easy meals too, and that the next night would be plain mac and cheese. I'd pictured Kraft Dinner, they concocted a tortellini extravaganza featuring asiago cheese and all sorts of gourmet fixings. Similarly, they claimed they were just having oatmeal, but oatmeal Rick and Cindy style includes two kind of nuts and chocolate chips!
Rick and Cindy weren't the only ones eating well - we all were, really (even Burke, who forgot part of his provisions at home!) There was pancake making and can opening and hash brown frying and such things as mashed potatoes, fresh fruit and three kinds of vegetables with two kinds of dips (though not all at the same time). There was also the generosity of Peter, who filled his boat with beer for 
everybody (and nobody appreciated him more than me! because, really, if someone goes to so much trouble, it would be impolite not to appreciate! that, and I didn't have time to go to the beer store, since I decided that this wouldn't be important - but when I was presented with a cold one or several, I certainly didn't understimate the pleasure). Even my oatmeal out of a packet got garnished with chocolate chips and almonds courtesy of Rick and Cindy!
The trip was much more than a gourmet/gourmand feast. It was also an educational experience. We were lucky to have our own parks guy with us, and when Burke slipped into biogeek mode, people paid attention. I'm told that he charmed a snake (I was on a walk with Peter at the time, 
so missed this), and he certainly greeted every bird by name, a particularly impressive skill to someone whose repertoire of birds she can identify is limited to seagulls, cormorants and turkey vultures. And I even got educated about cormorants. Most special of all, though, Burke wanted to go to the Limestones - which are off limits to mere mortals at this time of year because there is a high chance of flushing out nesting birds. However, when you accompany the parks dude who 
needs to take some field observations and *promise* to stay well away from the nesting areas (and he tells you where well away is), you can land there while he does his bio-geek activities. Landing there of course lets you pull out your food bag and have lunch... and maybe even a nap in the sun (actually, Lee had a nap in the sun. Always true to myself, I made fun of him. And then had a nap myself). Of course, the nap in the sun may be too much for your hatless head, and you may have a nasty sunburn after this - but even that can work in your favour, if it prompts Burke to lend you his oh-so-cool hat - much cooler than the one you forgot - for the rest of the weekend.
While we were off on the day of open crossings paddling adventure to the Limestones, our campsite stayed unguarded. This of course allowed some random rascal to stuff some of our sleeping bags and various items of clothing with rocks. The placement of the rocks - and the selection of which tents could benefit from some additional anchoring - had a strange, Swiss-like precision to it, I must say, and we got a good laugh out of it once we figured it out. Peter, Lee and I have vowed to return the prank at some point (but I like to live by the rule, if you receive a gift, you should give back an even greater gift).
Our last day was cloudy, but still good weather, and we took advantage of a relatively early start to explore the Hertzberg archipelago - which is beautiful, but too infested with cottages for high season paddling, I think. I geeked out with my new GPS while paddling sweep, and those of you 
who make fun of such geekery, let me tell you: for some of us (me!) there is no better way to work on technique than to see the constant feedback that different strokes have on my speed. No torso rotation? 5.5 km/hr. Good rotation? 7.5-8 km/hr, and my arms don't get tired. However, without the feedback, it would feel like I'm paddling just as hard or harder using just my arms, based on perceived exertion, so I might not even notice when my technique takes a nosedive into distraction. I have much to learn, obviously, but the GPS feedback does help.
Total paddling distance? 55km. Oh, and Burke let me keep the red hat. How cool is that?
Ah, but the trip was too short. When can we go again?
So... the main website looks woefully neglected, which is not only a function of being lazy about updating, but - well, there haven't been as many wilderness adventures as there used to be. Let me recap the last six months for you:
December. I go to Quebec City, where I tour an icebreaker, go for drinks at the Chateau Frontenac, and discover that my new camera is great at timed exposures. Later that month, I head to my parents for Christmas, where I do little more than sit around and eat too much. New Year's eve saw me co-hosting a party at the farm.
January. A quick weekend trip to Sam's cottage with Lee, where we goof off outside. A trip to West Virginia to go caving, where I realize that maybe caving is not meant to be my passion. Work springs a quick trip to Helsinki on me. I delightedly go and finally get to meet Matti face to face. I take the opportunity to hang out in Germany for a few days. I spend time in Stuttgart and Wangen, and get to see some people I never get to see enough of anymore. I get all melancholy about landscape. I both eat too much and drink too much.
February. I come back from Europe. I go to Edmonton for work, during which trip I do nothing but work and go out for meals.
March. I go to Iqaluit for work. I get very little exercise and eat too much. I go to Ottawa for work, and meet up with my brother on the Rideau Canal and Damian in the pub. I do some work at home. I bail on all outdoorsy adventures. I get very little alternative exercise.
April. I go to Denver, where I meet cool people and drink too much. I go to Yellowknife. I go to Holman Island and get to go for a very cold but super fun skidoo ride. I go to Chile, and realize that I need to learn Spanish because I want to explore South America. I keep up the drinking too much, and discover that Chile is also a good place to eat too much.
May. I come back from Chile. I go to Montreal, booking my flights so as to leave the minute work meetings are done. I see no reason to stop with the eating and drinking, both while in Montreal and upon my return home.
Which brings me to - now. I've been home for two weeks, as of today. I looked forward to the magic day when I would be done with this round of travel and yet I feel... sad. I suspect that I am slightly bored at the prospect of buying groceries for more than the three days until the next trip. I realize that I need to hit the ground again after all this hanging out in airplanes. I become aware that I haven't exactly been living in the real world for a long time - and as a result, I've not only gained weight and lost fitness (a lot, on both counts), but I probably made some out of character decisions along the way. I resolve to live life like the past winter didn't exist. My jeans refuse to cooperate in this plan and are still too tight. I locate my gym membership card, which as only been used about five times so far in 2005.
I don't regret the travelling. I maybe regret some other aspects of the past six months, though, and most of those are related to travelling so much.
I'm back. I gotta go put my roofracks on my car.
Still in the Elqui Valley
The Elqui Valley isn't all water management and agriculture. It's also a way to get to Argentina - at least in the summer. When Phil, Darryl, Gwen and I (and the trusty Toyota rental of the day) tried to see how far we could get before the snow stopped us, we failed: the Carabineros stopped us first. See, the "border" crossing is over a 100 road km from the border, on a dirt road, at Juntas del Toro. The only other things up that dirt road are a mine, some hotsprings, and another big dam - but we didn't see any of that. We did, however, see plenty of jaw-dropping scenery along the way. See?
But, you know, even if gawking at mountains, looking at agriculture, or snooping into water management aren't your thing, there's still something for you here. Say, for instance, you're into great literature. Did you know that Nobel prize winner Gabriela Mistral was from the Elqui Valley? If you don't know that before you go, you're certain to find out about it while you're there. They're very proud of Senora Mistral in the Elqui Valley - they've made monuments out of her tomb (I impertinently asked if she's really in there, or if it's just a memorial - but apparently, the lady was indeed interred in Montegrande), her schoolhouse (which has a replica of her bedroom - I don't get it either), and everything else she touched. A big deal, apparently.
But the villages aren't just monuments to dead poets - they're places where real people live real lives. Although, to be honest, I didn't see a whole lot of real people living lives during the afternoon (unless "living life" is interpreted as "staying indoors and sleeping"). After dark, though, the Valley comes alive. You could shoot a cannon down the streets of Diaguitas in the middle of the afternoon and not hit anyone, but try and avoid seeing people at 9 p.m. and you'll be hard-pressed to hide.
We spent our after dark time in Pisco Elqui - we go there just as the sun was setting. We were hungry, so we found a restaurant that was full of people watching a soccer match - but you won't get details on that from me, because I'd show my ignorance where sports are concerned - and ate some sandwiches. 
After that, after some screwing around with timed exposures, it was time to go home, with only a brief stop to look at the stars. It gets really, really dark in the Elqui Valley - it is the site of several world-class celestial observatories (one of which offers public viewings, but we never got around to going) and they try to keep light pollution to a minimum. Couple that 
with over 300 nights of clear skies and the fascination of unfamiliar southern hemisphere constellations, and you'll see why we felt the need to stop. If you *really* look at the picture that looks plain black, you'll see what my camera managed to capture with the longest exposure and widest aperture available to me.
Of course, it's not just the world-class scientists flocking to observatories who have a thing about the sky in the Elqui Valley: there is also a significant new-age colony in Cochiguaz, and UFO and similar sightings are not that uncommon. The story goes that the centre of world energy shifts from the Himalayas to the Elqui Valley every 12,900 years (I don't know either, so don't ask - all I managed to figure out is that, if you sent a pole through the earth's middle and poked out the other side, the Elqui Valley is exactly opposite the Himalayas and therefore as far as you possibly can get from Nepal). This cosmic energy is shifting as we speak, and said shift is scheduled to be complete by 2012. At that point, another planet will be revealed. And, presumably, yet another bottle of pisco will be empty and there are high value agricultural crops that our tour missed...
There's also a more conentional alternative sort of thing happening in the Elqui Valley - in Vicuna, we went to a solar-powered (they claim) restaurant. It's pretty much open-air, with screens to block the wind, and out front they have a gazillion solar ovens and this parabolic thing that apparently, if the sun is out - which it almost always is - can bring a liter of water in the black kettle to a boil in 15 minutes. Only thing is... Chileans eat late, so this must be a lunch-only restaurant: the sun sets around 6 p.m. at this time of year, which is still three or four hours before dinner...
So yes, we have myth and magic as well as poetry and cultural life and wine-making and border patrols and rivers and reseroirs and dams and really, enough not to get bored for months if, say, you had a bicycle and a few months to kill there. Alas, I didn't, and, after the star-gazing interlude, I returned to La Serena and, the next day, to Toronto via Santiago.
Finally, we finish off the trip report with some pictures of La Serena (stay tuned).
(This is the longest trip report ever. I'm looking forward to finishing off these entries so I can move on to other things!)
Agriculture in the Elqui Valley
All that water management in the Elqui Valley is for several reasons, and of course the big one is agriculture. The area is known for its pisco, which is a kind of brandy that comes in various strengths and can be consumed straight or in mixed drinks. The most famous mixed drinks are pisco sour - pisco, lemon juice, eggwhites, sugar - or serena sour (or serena sunrise), which is papaya-based. (You can also mix it with Coca-Cola, in which case,
you get piscola. But I was not impressed with that concoction.) Pisco is made from distilled grapes, so the vineyards are the most visible presence of the pisco (though we also toured a pisco plant in Vicuna, and there is another one in Montegrande. The latter is home of Ruperto, the pisco donkey. Ruperto is apparently quite the tourist attraction and
Gwen and I, never ones to avoid making assess of ourselves, happily posed with his painted image since the real Ruperto was not seeing visitors when we stopped by). 13% of the agricultural land in the Elqui Valley is covered in vineyards. The vineyards, however, are not just for pisco grapes. There is an increasing table wine presence,
and I know of one certified organic winery and another one that is in the second (of three, in accordance with international standards) transitional year. We visited the transitional winery, Cavas de Vallee in Montegrande, and they did a wonderful tour and tasting for us: first, we got to taste the sweet, young wine before fermentation, and then the finished products. They make a sweet white wine (to which I paid little attention, since it didn't interest me much) and a wonderful syrah. The syrah comes in two aged categories, and was simply wonderful. We enjoyed it sitting on the winery's beautiful patio, snacking on cheese and fresh pomagranates while the vintner answered questions. This was one of the few moments on the trip where I could actually indulge my curiosity and ask questions, since she spoke perfect German as well as good English.
Less well-known than the grapes are the fruit trees in the Elqui Valley. There are bananas and citrus and loads of apricots and papayas and pomegranates and a bunch of fruits that I have never encountered before (cherimoya?). The papayas were particularly special: they're not like the ones we're used to, they're tiny and don't taste particularly 
good fresh. But cook them for a while in sugar water, and you get this velvety wonderful thing that is like the most delicately-flavoured peach you've ever had. It's a frequent dessert in restaurants, and I can see why (I bought a jar of these papayas, they're readily available at the roadsides). 27% of the agricultural land in the valley is fruit trees. I don't know if that number inlcludes cactus plantations - I could argue that it would, since cactus fruit (the one I tried was called capao) is delicious; but the cacti are grown primarily (I think) for dyes.
Vegetable production accounts for 21% of the commercial agricultural land in the Elqui Valley, and this includes things you'd expect, like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and artichokes, and stuff you wouldn't, like potatoes. I'm not sure if avocados are considered a fruit or a vegetable in the official statistics (I expect fruit, though), but you see the avocado plantations marching up the hillsides. I've heard concern about the pesticide and fertilizer cocktail used in monoculture productions here, and I can see it: there is no organic matter to speak of in these rocky hillsides, and vegetable crops are often heavy feeders - it's got to come from somewhere...
A small proportion of the valley (about 5%, and declining) is under grain (mostly wheat) production. These categories together (fruits, vegetables, viticulture, grain) comprise the lucrative "agroindustry" of the Elqui Valley - and these producers are the ones who are sure to have water rights, judging by the scale of the operations. A further 33% of the Elqui Valley is classified not by predominant crop but as "small farms". I'd term these closer to "subsistence farms" - the plots that individual households maintain for part or all of their livelihoods. I can see why these are not included in tallies of individual crop types, since they generally involve more than one in the same space: some papaya and citrus trees, vegetables, maybe a chicken coop and a place for goats...
Ah, yes - livestock. Judging by the abundance of fresh, cheap goat cheese, goats are a dominant presence here, along with sheep. On Saturday, Darryl, Phil and I ventured as far along the road into and over the High Andes as we could (it was closed past Juntas del Toro). When you head up that way, you see less and less irrigated land, until finally the stream is wild again and there are no villages. There are isolated holdings, presumably used by goat herders, and evidence of campsites along the alluvial flats on the river. We also met some shepherds on their way along the road well past Huanta, the last of the string of agricultural villages in the Valley. Now that was an experience to warm a photo geek's heart...
We finish the Elqui Valley tour with some standard tourist fun.
Semi-arid Water Management
On Friday, a whole bus worth of us went for a visit to the Elqui River Basin. We had a schedule and a tour guide and appointments. It was fun, but there just wasn't enough to see all that I wanted to see or to stop at things I wanted to look at, so when Gwen and I ran into Darryl (who had rented a car for the weekend) outside the internet cafe on 
Friday night, and he said they were heading back up the valley, I came right out with "I keep hoping you'll invite us to join you, but so far, nothing...". Daryl was perhaps too polite to say no (but I prefer to think that he liked our company) and arranged to meet him and Phil at 8:30 a.m. Since both trips - the post-meeting group trip and the Darryl-Phil-Johanna-Gwen independent Saturday trip - were to the Elqui Valley, I'm departing from my standard "and then we did this" (and there was this one time, in band camp...) format to just give a more generic description. But before I do that, I need to point out: Phil, Darryl and Gwen were the perfect road trip companions, because we were all obsessed with our cameras, and thus thought nothing of pulling off every 500m and having conversations that sounded like "well, I thought I'd underexpose by two thirds, but then I think I might lose some detail in the shadow, so I'm going to..." - as in, I could be a photo geek to my heart's content and not have to rely on anyone else tolerating it. They were too busy fiddling with their own cameras to notice my photo geekery.
So. The Elqui Valley. The Rio Elqui is what defines it - it's about 170km long, from end to end, and drains an area of just under 10,000 square kilometers, from the high Andes past Juntas del Toro and the Argentine border (>6000m) to sea level at La Serena. 
Along the way, we move from a glacier in high altitude tundra through cool steppe type zones to mediterranean semi-arid climate. The Elqui itself is the combination of the Rio Claro and the Rio Turbido at Rivadavia - and if you go there, you can see the clear and the turbulent water mixing - and has a mean flow rate of 7.1 cubic meters per second (though the sign claimes >9 cu m / s, but I'm going with the paper I read during the meetings. Then again, I read it in Spanish, and we know how well that works for me...).
Like some of the other rivers in El Norte Chico, the Rio Elqui is the lifeblood of the valley. It is fed by higher precipitation in the high Andes, including snow and glacier melt. Because both snowmelt and water demand vary seasonally, the basin includes two large reservoirs. We visited the lower one of these, the Puclaro dam and reservoir. Puclaro was built from 1996 to 1999 - it is 600m long and just over 80m high, built across a narrow rock gorge that Fred described as "an engineer's dream". The reservoir, which took several years to fill after the dam was completed, has a full supply level capacity of 200 million cubic meters (think about it: even if every single drop of the Elqui's total flow were to go into 
the reservoir, with no evaporation and, more importantly, zero agricultural use, it would still, given average flow, have taken 326 days to full supply level). The reservoir itself is 7 km long (covering 760 ha) and, as you'd expect, its creation necessitated flooding certain things - in particular, some villages, two of which were relocated further up the banks. 
We visited one of them, on the south side of the reservoir - and it's a bit odd, just outside the village, you can look down at the flooded vineyards and old village layout, because the reservoir is nowhere near full right now. You can see another one of the relocated villages, Gualliguaica, on the north side of the reservoir lower down in this trip report.
One of the cool things about the two visits to Puclaro was that, on the first, we met with the dam engineers (who spoke in Spanish, but there was translation) and on the second, I was with Darryl and Phil - both engineers. Thus I can report that the dam is a concrete face rockfill dam, which means an gravel embankment faced with an impermeable concrete membrane. Because the dam itself is built on the alluvium of the riverbed, a dam can expect significant leakage under it - so much so that the dam is under-tunneled - unless the impermeable membrane extends way under the dam. It does - the concrete membrane goes down about 60m below the 80m dam, and it's around 80cm thick. It has had the effect of reducing seepage to about 0.25 cubic meters per second, which is, apparently, considered perfectly acceptable.
The dam, as you'd expect, has turbines for hydroelectric power generation. I saw a split tunnel, with water coming through only one side, but there wasn't enough time to get a tour of that. In the case of the tunnel not being able to handle high flow rates, there is, of course a massive concrete spillway. The spillway has never yet been used (there also has been no serious drought since the dam was constructed), but apparently it was designed for a one in ten thousand year flood. Given most probabilities, I'd say a major earthquake will it before then. Chile is, after all, on a plate contact border, and its last "big one" was in 1906 (Valparaiso). Others can be expected, but the concrete face rockfill dams have a higher probability of withstanding seismic shock (so the engineers).
And I'm starting to sound like an engineer, aren't I, what with all this dam babble. It was fascinating. Particularly so since the loss of the 760 ha meant secure irrigation water for a further 21 000 ha downstream, which sounds like a good tradeoff, no? But perhaps not for everyone - I'm still trying to understand water management in Chile, but here's what I think I understand: surface water is not a public good, you're not allowed to extract anything from lakes or rivers unless you have "water rights". Water rights are measured in liters per second, and are free market commodities (like buying a car, the dam engineer explained - it's nobody's business how much you pay for my car except the two of us, it's a private transaction - when pressed as to how much a water right costs). So the Puclaro dam allowed, I think, 20 000 water rights (ie. 20 000 l/s equivalent). 
Every one of those rights must pay a monthly "maintenance" fee which - by our standards - is not exorbitant, between $1 and $2 CAD per l/s. But! the villages that were relocated? No water rights, apparently - though they were promised some as part of the relocation package, my understanding is that this never happened. Can you imagine that? Living on the shores of a reservoir which covers your former home and garden, and not being legally allowed to use the water to irrigate your new garden? Bizarre, from a Canadian perspective.
But then, water as a free market commodity is a bizarre notion for me - even though I know it works that way in many parts of the world. All water use requires water rights - the only exception is the use of groundwater (through wells) and spring water on your own property for domestic use only. The water management regime here was reformed through the Water Law in 1981, which set up these water rights. Originally, it was "by request", and if there were competing demands, by auction (though generally, first to request, first to grant - with no restriction on asking more than I needed at the time of the request). No preference is specified - ie. if I requested my water for a Coca Cola bottling plant and you requested yours for farming, there is no hierarchy of requests though if I can outbid you, I can of course do so, see you later sucker. Once I have my right, it becomes real property - ie. I "own" that water, and can sell it as I choose. 
What I find fascinating about this is that it opens the door not only to speculation but has the potential to reinforce industrial concentration: if I'm producing a good, say, avocados, I'd prefer not to have too much competition - thus I make sure I have lots of water rights, more than I need in the next ten years even, so there are none available for a new entrant. Yet another part of the get big or get out dynamic of agricultue, I guess (though I don't know to what extent this has happend in the real-life situation). But, you have to concede: water management has the potential to create water scarcity for certain users, in legal terms, even if there is more supply than real demand. I wish I had a few months and the linguistic capabilities
to really figure out a few questions, such as the social equity of this type of water system both in theoretical and applied terms, and mechanisms for conflict resolution, especially in times of extreme scarcity (which can be expected at some point in the future, seeing as total precipitation in this region has decreased by a third or more over the past 60 or so years). What role does the state play, given that water is entirely in the hands of private institutions like our friends the dam people? Are there uses - such as municipal water use - which are guaranteed? 
And, if rural municipalities manage their water through independent organizations (the water boards) and it is up to these towns to establish said organizations, what if a town simply doesn't have its act together? And, if it is entirely possible to have far more water rights than you currently use, what is the incentive for water conservation? I don't know. I want to know.
Of course, the water nosiness didn't stop at the dam. In the Elqui valley, the water appears to be primarily used for agriculture (papayas, avocados, some citrus) and viticulture (most grapes are grown for pisco, though there is an increasing winery presence). 
Water is delivered through a system of "canals" - ie. ditches - that run along the valley and hillsides. I think they're high on the hillsides to help control the gradient, since too steep = too fast flowing = too much erosion plus not good delivery mechanism for the spurs. The spurs are the private little canals, which open on the main canals, with gates. A water right is translated into so many hours daily opening the canal, and you get all the water that is in the canal at that time (there is no metering, as far as I can see). 
Since you don't irrigate in a twice-daily inundation, I don't think, a lot of the large volume consumers have their own storage facilities, by way of private lagoons, which they then use at whatever rate they please. You can tell the canals by green lines, due to riparian vegetation, but there are many pipes visible too - and obviously, there must be pumping facilities, since irrigated agriculture is starting to extend a fair way up the hillsides. Fascinating stuff. I saw some furrow irrigation, 
but I'm told much of it is now drip irrigation. In addition, there are these huge nets, which we speculated were for wind control but a colleague who has done research on them explained that they're to capture moisture from the fog. Neat.
There was lots of nosiness on agriculture and rural tourism and a pisco plant visit and a winery tour and following the road as far up the mountains as possible and even some cerveza drinking in Pisco Elqui, but that will have to be the next entry. The Chile trip is taking a while to write about... just so much *stuff*.
Oh - and a lot of the good pictures in this entry were shamelessly stolen from Darryl, Phil and Gwen... muchas gracias.
Of course, we didn't just learn about water, we also investigated agriculture.
In Search of Penguins
On Thursday of the La Serena meetings, I heard a rumour, team members who were not involved in project administration might not be missed if they failed to return after lunch. Well, that's the sort of hint I don't need to hear twice... only problem was, not that easy to discreetly disappear if you want to borrow the car, so I pouted to Gwen that I always asked for the car, and enterprising fun chica that she is, she of course charmed Polo into agreeing that we could take one of the little Toyotas that afternoon. Then, Lorenzo boldly followed through and relieved Polo of the keys, I busily consulted the map, and Stephanie came along for the ride.
My map had a mysterious green spot at the very northern edge of Coquimbo labeled Reserva Nacional Pinguino de Humboldt. Now, I don't speak Spanish, but I made the leap that this might be a place I might find Humboldt Penguins. Imagine that - penguins! We were, after all, in the southern hemisphere, and my toes had already discovered just how cold the Humboldt current is, so off we zoomed to find us some penguins.
The map, of course, was not all that great, but it did have a village, Caleta Punta Choros, marked - and with some great guesswork along with Lorenzo stopping oncoming traffic to check, we got there, and what do you know, a park office. The park office - so the Lorenz translation - very wisely declined to take our pesos, however, before we secured a local fisherman to take us out to the pinguins. You see, they hang out on the islands - Isla Damas and Isla Choros - and there are no organized tours. Thus, you need to find your own hombre con lancha to take you out there. Lorenzo (for purposes of Spanish speaking) and Gwen (practicing her hombre-locating skills) set out for the main part of the village to do just that, while Stephanie and I stayed near the pier. Stephanie started focusing on seashells, and I wandered among the many boats and found an hombre of my own: he just popped up out of one of the boats (I think there was a bit of siesta involved) and started chatting at me. I, being a great chatter but not en espagnol, could do little more than grin at him and play the sign language game, before wandering off further.
There was plenty to look at: boats and rocks and shells and waves and more hombres and Isla Damas in the distance... I concluded that, even without a boat-equipped hombre willing to take us, it was already a worthwhile trip since I spied a nice beach in the very near distance that I wanted to explore. I patiently waited for Gwen and Lorenzo to come back: they'd had much success locating the hombres, but not so much on getting anyone to take us out. As near as I could figure, the fishermen are unionized, and can't just take the tourists out willy-nilly. We were just four, and these boats can take seven or so people, and one boat travelling alone is not the safest way to go, so the easiest answer was no. Oh, but for a sea kayak: so close, so full of penguins, and so inaccessible.
But no matter. There was still fun to be had, and I poked along the shore until I came to my destination beach, where I quickly lost my shoes and started frolicking. I could have spent hours there, just... sitting (once again, we have the low output version of Johanna). The others did their own bit of exploration, but the pull of the beach meant we all ended up in the same place.
The Coquimbo Region is in el Norte Chico (the "small north") and north of the small north is el Norte Grande (you can do the translation, no?), and in the big north, there is the Atacama Desert, and the Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth. Thus it follows as the night the day that when you go north from La Serena, it gets drier - 
by the time you hit caleta Punta Choros, you're looking at 30 mm annual precipitation. Which, for those of you playing at home, is less than a third of the dry parts of Fray Jorge. Still, though, you see a fair bit of grazing (we saw lots of goats, many horses, and two pigs) - and there are oases, like Choros Bajos, which is considered "Chile's most southerly desert oasis" according to the smart guidebook, which also tells us that they grow olives there. But we didn't have time to explore - we managed to snap some pictures of the dunes near the village as we drove through (said dunes 
were busily encroaching the road, and it looked like someone had plowed the sand out of the way recently) and took a break to watch the sunset over the desert (all right, we watched the sunset over the semi-arid landscape. Somehow it does not have the same ring. Details...).
Next we learn about water management in the Elqui Valley
Fray Jorge National Park
To get to Fray Jorge ("Fray Hor-hay", if I'm to write it phonetically) from La Serena, you get on the Panamericana and start driving toward Santiago. Between La Serena and Santiago, the highway is a four-lane marvel of controlled access and speed (except for the toll booths). I had my trusty map (you know the kind: you get it in a guide book, and it has pretty pictures that were drawn by some graphic artist that likes for things to look cute) which didn't really make it clear how we'd get there, but there was a sign off the highway and the trusty Yaris that could hit the dirt road within an hour and a bit of leaving Coquimbo.
I'm not a stranger to dirt roads, though - particularly after last summer's logging road adventures - I'm very conscious of the shocks on my car (there are definite advantages of being in a rental). The approach to the park was long, and windy, and a little bit bumpy - but nothing like you'd expect around here. No freeze-thaw, I guess, and maybe that's why there is very little washboarding. In any case, we found the park office in no time - all you have to do is try to go to the park, and the park office will find you, complete with gates and a ranger who wants not only some pesos (no problem with that) but to register you with your passport number before giving the interpretive talk in the visitor centre. I forked over some pesos and then looked at the pretty pictures while Lorenzo listened to and translated the interpretive stuff. There was an explanation of how the cloud forest works, but - and this is the part that stuck with me most, maybe because it was illustrated with pictures - there is a surprising amount of wildlife in the park. Chinchillas and cougars and foxes and guanacos and a bunch of other rodents...
Past the park gate, the road got more narrow. Along the way, we of course stopped the car to look at the landscape a couple of times. It's not really desert here, it's semi-arid - they say the rainfall is around 100 mm here, and that supports a surprising amount of vegetation - mostly cacti. I'm not sure, but I suspect that the flowers on these cacti may be parasite flowers. It would be amazing to see this area in the spring, after the winter rains. It must bloom so vividly...
There is a tiny stream, the Quebrada Las Vacas, which flows into the Rio Limari to the south - and in the stream valley, there are trees and all sorts of lush vegetation. Four kilometers after the park gate, you get to the campgroud - and since the bumpy roads had their effects on various bladders, this was our next stop.
The campground is in a grove of trees, and the first thing Lorenzo noticed that one of them was a fig tree, and the figs were ripe. The first thing I noticed was that I really like fresh figs. The second thing I noticed was that I couldn't reach most of the ripe figs, because to about six feet up, they were all gone. Fortunately for me, Lorenzo grabbed a fig-retrieving stick from the ground and supplied all of us with fresh figs. All of us except the campground fox.
The figs momentarily distracted me from my bladder, but then, I remembered. For some reason, I didn't want to use the official toilets (I'm sure there was nothing wrong with them, I never even looked at them) and I started down a little trail. My venturing in this direction was met by a very noisy farting sound. I stopped, and looked up - and there was a gunaco! And then, when I really bothered to look, there were quite a few guanacos hanging about, and they are probably the fig-eaters since the six feet is also about the height a guanaco could reach! But the guanacos, they kept making the farting noises (with their lips) when I got near them, and since I've heard lots of llamas and spit, I stopped and thought about it. 
I didn't, however, retreat right away, and one particularly aggressive animal reared on its hind legs, which prompted me to back up. Then, however, they wandered away, and I was ready to pee - but the farting and the rearing had attracted Barry to where I was, and I couldn't very well squat and rogue pee with my boss standing right there... I had to wait until he migrated to another part of the campground along with the guanacos...
If you enlarge the picture at left, you'll see the road snaking up the hill. If you were there, you'd see that most vehicles that go up it have four wheel drive. But let's not forget the little Yaris with the experienced dirt mountain road driver. Lorenzo had that little sucker going straight up, through sand traps and over big-ass rocks and past scary drops. A few times I thought we'd have to get out and push, but the car didn't quit and its driver teased more out of it. We did pass another vehicle which had overheated, and were repeatedly passed by big trucks on the few stretches where two cars might fit side by side if one pulled over far to the right.
And then, at the top, the cloud forest! Fray Jorge is right on the Pacific Ocean. The dry, inland areas heat up rapidly under the intense sun (average January temperature is 23 degrees). The Ocean, due to the Humboldt Current, is bloody cold. When cold and warm meet in such a sudden transition, you get coastal fog (which is, apparently, called camanchaca here). 
The mountains here soar to 1800-2200 feet within a few hundred meters of the ocean, and there is no place for the fog to go, and as it gets higher on the mountains, it condenses. Relative humidity in this area is 85%, and moisture is equivalent to 800-1000 mm annually. This allows the maintenance of patches of Valdivian forest in the semi-arid environment - things like cinnamon trees! It's not a rain forest, not like we think of them - it's still on the dry side, but for this area (the Coquimbo Region, which is just south of Atacama!), it's phenomenally lush. For this reason, Fray Jorge is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. They say that, during the Quaternary, the entire region including Atacama looked like this. But it's been 30,000 years since this area was last glaciated...
It is, of course, a park, and parkification exists even in Chile. There is a parking lot at the top of the mountain, and a trail that tours you through the forest. The trail is boardwalked, and easy, and includes viewing platforms that let you look down on the camanchaca and does not, under any circumstances, raise your heart rate. I was okay with that, since there was enough to look at that I didn't need to get a workout to justify being there, but I think Bruce - who had come prepared for hiking - was a little frustrated by sedate not-really-wilderness experience. Despite the low energy output, I fell asleep (after, of course, Lorenzo piloted the car down the crazy mountain roads and we reached the Panamericana. But then I snoozed all the way back to La Serena).
Next, we look for penguins
Coquimbo
Just down the beach (the seemingly endless beach) from La Serena is Coquimbo, the port for the region. Coquimbo appears and disappears depending on the seemingly ever-present coastal fog, but Gwen managed to snap this picture - including the Cruz del Tercer Milenio aka the massive cross that sits on top of the hill - one night at sunset. Coquimbo, so I'm told, is much more working-class than swanky La Serena - and it's got lively docks. In part that's because it's an important port (though by no means as important as it was before the Panama Canal opened), since the iron ore from the Romeral mine leaves the region this way. However, there is also a whole lot of fishing based in Coquimbo.
On Sunday morning, we went for breakfast at the fish market in Coquimbo. What great fun: some of the fishermean are cleaning their catches at the docks, and tossing the refuse in the water, where it's fought over by pelicans and sea lions. If the mood strikes you, you can wander among endless stalls selling all manner of raw and prepared fish products.
One of the things that struck me was the number of stray dogs and cats. They were everywhere (not just in the fish market, but there was a very high frequency of them there). They live on whatever scraps they find (and sometimes, as was the case with one cat I watched for a while, whatever choice bits of seafood they can steal!). They look pretty awful by our standards - skinny and raggedy - and yet, oddly enough, they were all very tame. I'm used to non-housecats being of the shy sort, but I could have had my pick of kitties to pick up here.
A fish market does not sound like the best breakfast place in the world to some. It smells fishy, after all. I, however, wasted no time in ordering my seafood empanada (I skipped the instant coffee) and happily tucking in, surrounded by fish stalls, hopeful dogs, naughty cats, and the many other smells and sounds. I thought it was great! Who needs bacon and eggs... (I can eat breakfast food at any time of the day. Conversely, I can eat non-traditional-breakfast food at any time of the morning. There are advantages to having a cast-iron stomach and a love of diversity in food).
I did, however, have to draw the line at raw fish. It's not that I mind eating sushi, not at all, but we'd been warned by the locals: the ceviche is to be avoided these days, due to bacterial outbreaks (ceviche involves marinating raw fish in citrus juice, ie. no cooking). Even my cast-iron stomach did not want to risk spending the rest of the trip in the bathroom.
There were nine of us at breakfast, and we'd come there in two Toyota Yaris cars. One of the cars had to stay in La Serena, on account of more people coming to the airport and details like that, but Polo and Dave offered the other one up for adventure. Strangely enough, the group was very reserved (or, not strangely enough, polite). Fortunately for me, I'm not so very reserved when it comes to having the chance to have an adventure. I had a map. It showed a national park near Ovalle. I had read in Gwen's book that there is a "cloud forest" in the park. I declared my intentions. In no time, we had Bruce, Barry, Gwen, Lorenzo and of course me laying claims to the little car that could...
On to Fray Jorge National Park
The Adventure Begins
A week ago last Saturday, I hung out in an apartment in La Serena, Chile, drinking my admittedly horrid Nescafe (this was before I figured out where to buy real coffee). At 10 a.m., the doorbell rang, and I was generously presented with car keys for the day. At 11 a.m., I'd convinced Lorenzo, Stephanie and Bruce to go on a road trip (not that it took much convincing).
One of the greatest pleasures for me is to go places I've never been. I sometimes have little fantasies where I envy explorers - the folks whose life mission was to discover new, untravelled places. I'll never have that, but there's that frisson of excitement every time I go somewhere new. Which is why I was plenty excited by the prospect of getting on the Pan American highway and just driving... fortunately for me, Lorenzo has much experience with Latin American driving (and, fortunately or not, he'd be able to understand it if someone were to curse him in Spanish...) and he declared himself willing to take the wheel. And thus began the Chilean Road trips.
Road Trip #1 was a simple drive north on the Pan American. The newness of it all was enough that I was entranced with the semi-arid landscape, despite loads of garbage where we stopped. It was my first experience with open shrub steppe - in hindsight, I suppose just stopping at random points along the highway (which is two-lane north of La Serena) is not that exciting. But in the context of a whole new landscape, very exciting.
We took a long break in the village of Los Hornos, which had no fog even though La Serena was stuck in (under) its all too frequent inversion. So I sat on the shore, perched on a cobble beach, staring out at the wide open Pacific. For a while, I tossed rocks into the surf, and watched them be sucked out to sea as evidence of a ficerce undertow. Not that there was any temptation to swim, since the Humboldt Current is cold. Really cold. So cold you don't want to stick your big toe into it...
After Los Hornos, we continued along wicked switchbacks on the Pan Americana until the La Higuera turnoff, where we bought some drinks at a truck stop and just sat for a while. It's difficult to explain the magic of that now, since I've seen so much that topped it since then, but... it was special at the time. It was special to see gardens with geraniums that are taller than I am, watered entirely by (no doubt) grey water, with chickens scratching through them. It was special to step beyond the cities of Chile which, while beautiful and all, are not *that* much different from my own lifestyle. It was early enough in the trip to be fully aware that I was in a whole other hemisphere.
I can't fully capture how cool it all was at the time, because it seems as if everything since then has eclipsed it. And yet, if it was the only experice I'd had in South America at all, I would remember it as the coolest thing in a long time. So it gets its own entry (that, and I'm tired and going to bed now...)