Johannesburg

As expected for this time of the year the weather is fabulous in Johannesburg. The evenings are cool since Johannesburg is as such high elevation but the days are nice and warm (in the high 20s Centigrade mostly).

Today I am taking of for a road trip to nowhere in particular but meant to be generally westward.
We'll see what happens. Well, I'll see what will happen since I am obviously going on my own.

Santiago, Museo de Arte Precolumbino

The amazing thing about Santiago was that generally there was no signs or advertisement about museums and the likes.
The little guide I had mentioned this museum as "one of the best museum on the continent". I can't say if it is "the best" having seen only 2 cities on the continent but I can say that afterward I went to the Museum of Fine Art in Buenos Aires and their Precolumbian section was not a 10th of what I saw in this museum.. You would think that makes it a very famous museum but I had a bit of a hard time finding it and when I asked a couple of policemen for directions (and I was only a couple of blocks away from it) they had no idea where it was.

You could take photos as long as you did not use a flash. So here are some of the treasures you can see there.

Santiago, Chile - part 2

Not far from where I was staying (not due to any planning on my part) was the Plaza de Armas. Santiago is a city of benches, sitting in parks and people watching. People go to parks and spend time there. Plaza de Armas is one of the large and very popular parks.
By chance wandering around soon after I landed I came across the Plaza. An orchestra came and played music and people danced while other played chess and children played in the fountain. It thought right away that I would like Santiago.

Around the plaza you have mostly old buildings (here a cathedral) but with one very modern building. You can see how large the plaza is.

People wander around.

Children play in the fountain.

And generally people sit around.

What you see a lot of in Santiago is couples kissing and doing anything you can do with your clothes on. This was a tiny plaza behind my hotel where out of the blue (to me) a small orchestra started playing.

Santiago, Chile - part 1

I loved Santiago. I hope I get to get back to Chile and get a chance to go all the way north to the Atacama Desert, all the way south to the Torres del Paine (Patagonia) and all the way outboard and west to Rapa Nui (Easter Island)....
For now all I saw was Santiago.
I found it a very easy city to visit. The people were very pleasant. Spanish turned out to be as easy as I had hoped it to be for a Francophone mixing with friendly people. It was a real pleasure all around. I walked miles and miles and had a great time. I arrived at the peak of cheery and strawberry season. Food was nice and easy to obtain there was small street markets, restaurants and large grocery stores everywhere. Everything was so easy. It was a very relaxing city to be in.

Santiago is a very nice combination of old and new building. It is very clean, you see street sweeper all day long everywhere.

Here are some views of the town.

Just a typical street with a small plaza.

In town there is a very nice big park (called Cerro Santa Lucia). It is a very peaceful place to go and spend some time in the shade after a nice morning coffee.

As one would expect in South America, or at least as I fully expected, one of the hills in the town (and there are several) has a large statue of Mary protecting the town (the tiny white dot on top of the hill in the photo). This is also the hill of Parque Metropolitano) another great place to go to. You can take the "teleferico" to go up the steep hill and get great views. The park is quite crowded on the week end but it is so big that it does not feel overly so. 

Another of the hills of Santiago. (For those interested the little bit of rock I could see was obviously a mixture of andesite and volcanic breccias etc, no surprise there)

I don't know if I can convince you but in the background you can see the Andes. The humidity level in the air was quite high while I was there and I never had a really good view of the Andes, but it was nicely compensated by a fabulous view from the plane while flying to Buenos Aires from Santiago. What a flight! if you fly that route, aim for day time with a window seat.

Waiting for a reasonable time to go to the airport

I am flying out this afternoon and all I am doing now is pacing (well right now I am taking a break from pacing to do the last of the internet stuff I want to do).  You'd think I would first finish my packing then pace! But really I have so little packing to do that I know I can sort it out in 15 minutes.

I still have to take the truck to storage, put it on jacks (the camper is a little too heavy for me to let it sit on the truck for months on end).

I wish I could just go to the airport and go.

So, the itinerary as it stands is:
Santiago, Chile (just for 4 days since I delayed my ticket out of Calgary)
Buenos Aires, Argentina (5 days)
Johannesburg .... with no ticket to get out of South Africa at this point..... And by the way, do NOT fly into South Africa without another ticket to get out. Sometimes (not often I'll grant you) the airline check that you have a way out or a visa before they let you board the plane....this is of course unless you have a visa... I have a visa until May 2013 or something like this.

I bought myself  "The Tiger: a true story of vengeance and survival" by John Vaillant to read on the plane. I can't wait to get on the plane to start it, maybe I'll cheat and start it in the lounge before boarding. I heard an interview of the author about it on CBC and it sounds great.

The Salt Streams of Wood Buffalo National Park

The streams you see here were actually very salty, so salty that just trying the water a little I had to spit it out and I had a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the hike. Obviously as a result different vegetation grows around them, and also obviously they are the last streams to freeze and the first streams to thaw.

Not far from then you do get normal vegetation.

But the dominant plants close to the streams are those red cacti-like plants which are full of salt water. Interestingly enough the level of salt they contain is lower than that of the stream where I tried both. So that if you were in desperate need of water you would be better off eating the plant than drinking water from the stream.

The Salt Flats of Wood Buffalo National Park

There are salt flats and fairly large salt springs as well as salty rivers in Wood Buffalo National Park. It makes sense that this is a great thing for the buffaloes but I honestly do not know how this thing was sorted out.
I mean that I do not know if the salt attracted the buffaloes and the national park was "built" around the buffaloes so that the salt springs happen to be included, or if the National Park was chosen to be around the salt springs so that the buffaloes would have less temptations to leave it. The buffaloes do leave the park and when out of it during hunting season they can be killed.
Anyway, here are some photos of a large salt flat I went to see on a long hike. I call them "salt flats" because even though you cannot see them in these photos the mud is full of salt crystals.

I was not the only creature interested in the salt flats.

Spider Webs like Flowers

To get this everything has to be right: the spiders (all of the same specie) have to be there. There has to be dew. The light has to be right to see the dewie webs ... and you have to be lucky to be there and notice it. I love this effect: "Spider webs like flowers".
I saw this on the first part of my trip. I hadn't made it to Hay River yet but already the landscape was the already northern landscape and I was starting to feel  the happiness of long road trips.

...and in Wells Gray Provincial Park I saw a great Moose

I should explain. I was in Wells Gray Provincial Park (a great place really) and I was walking along the river just above big thundering falls. I was following a cross country sky trail. There was nobody else around.
When I first saw the great moose I thought he was just going to drink. But he started crossing and I had that crazy thought: "If he falls in I won't be able to help. He is too big for me"...which is of course a crazy thought in more ways than one.
Not only he is too big, but there was no way that even on my own I could cross the river the current was too fast, the river was too high, and of course I can't see how a moose would let me approach to help.
Watching him cross I kept on saying "please don't fall down. Please don't fall down"

 Soon after this photo the water was just at his belly and he continued but was making guttural sounds as he went. I was really scared for him at that point I thought he looked nervous or at least uncomfortable.

 I am not sure that this photo show the mood but you can at least see that this river was fast and quite high.

 Then he past the mid point and stopped grunting and even took his time to look around.

 

 When he got there and was obviously going to make it all kept on saying "thank you. Thank you. Thank you"

Totally unaware of the "trauma" he had put me through he just wen on his own way and disappeared into the bush.

Some sort of Northern Fox

Since I am down to posting photos which did not quite work, here are photos of some sort of northern fox I saw just outside Fort Liard. I watched him hunt, jump in the air and catch something before grabbing the camera.
He made no pretense of doing anything but run away when he left.

Northern "big cat"

I really should mention that I saw some kind of big cat along the highway to Yellow Knife, north of the Mackenzie River ferry crossing. It is not a great photo but I just looked at the creature in awe and never realized until he turned around and walk away that I probably should take a photo. The funny thing was that he managed to convey the sense that he was walking away relaxed and very slowly all while he really was moving quite fast.
This is the only photo I have so here it it.

Caribous

I also saw quite a few caribous on my road trip up north.
They are hard to miss since they stand in the middle of the road.

I could never figure out what it was they were eating on the road. It could not be salt since it hadn't snowed yet and the roads had had no salt yet.

Sometimes they would go through the motion of running ... but not necessarily running away. I always find it nerve racking when they run along the road. I worry that they will suddenly turn onto the road.

Or they just stop and look at you as you pass them.

They are also quite comfortable ignoring the coming traffic.

Here is a close up of the same "guy" in this photo. It turns out that I caught him chewing.

Mostly it is nice to see them in the "wild".

They are gorgeous creatures though they are not graceful. They seem slightly dis-articulated especially when they trot.

Hotsprings I visited in Canada

All together during my trip in Canada I visited  five hotsprings, in the order in which I visited them they are:

Liard hotsprings on the Alaska  Highway in northern British Columbia right by the Yukon border.
Nakusp hotspring in southern British Columbia on the east shore of Arrow Lake, an hour south of Golden for people who know the area
Radium hotsprings in Kootenay National Park only 250 kilometer from Calgary
The least known of them all Lussier hotspring in Whiteswan Provincial Park 80 some kilometers south of Radium hotsprings and 18 kilometres off the highway (but still drivable).
Banff Upper Hotsprings, obliviously in Banff, so very close to Calgary (about an hour and a half drive from Calgary) I felt I had to stop there on my way back from Radium and Lussier last week.

My absolute favourites are Liard Hotsprings. They have little development (a board walk, a change room a wooden deck with steps) but the surroundings are totally natural, and they are VERY hot close to the source. The pool is so big that this allows to choose the temperature you like by choosing how close you want to be to the source.

 Lussier Hotsprings, they also have little development: a dirt road to get there, a path to walk to them and just some pool built with local rocks (no cement) the proximity of the very cod river makes them extra special for me because I like a cold plunge after/during soaking in hotsprings. they are unfortunately reputed to be very busy in summer but in the fall (I am just back from a short trip to Whiteswan Provincial Park) they were never busy, BUT I was never there alone either..... even on week days.

Nakusp Hotsprings, they are fully developed, so they are chlorinated, but they have a VERY hot pool as well as a normally hot pool and they have a reasonably priced campsite right by the hotsprings. The surroundings are pleasant and there are a few good hikes starting right from the hotsprings.

Radium Hotsprings, are basically hot pools, one of them they call "cold pool" and is design to swim lanes. Obviously they are chlorinated and since they are right by the road they can be too busy.

My least favourite of them all were Banff Hotsprings. They are alright but they are so developed that really they just feel like a hot pool. I don't even have photos of them.