photos, flowers

Flowers are in bloom everywhere. Not sure why, but there are entire fields of wild roses.

good days on Navimag

This is an old ship that ran aground and now serves as a navigational market (and house for seagulls). I really like this photo. We were very happy to see the sun come out again after the storm. It is taken in color. This ia a glacier the Captain took us to as a consolation for not seeing Pio X, the largest glacier in South America. I don't know the name of this glacier.

Here's our porthole in our cabin and a photo I took leaning out the window and the photo I took.


Here are peaks we passed just before we reached Puerto Natales. They might be from Torres de Paines.

Dawn looks rather cold as we pass through a very narrow channel.

The Captain had to navigate through several very narrow channels.


We were all happy to reach land again.

Navimag in storm

We sailed from Puerto Montt, Monday, 25 December. As we moved from the Pulluche Channel on Tuesday evening we sailed into bad weather. By one report, winds were 120 kilometer or 80 miles per hour and the waves were five to six meters or 15 - 18 feet high. The Captain found himself unable to navigate around a point of land and was unable to head south to the Penas Gulf. Instead we headed due West and at various times were headed Northeast, essentially treading water in a treacherous storm. I'm unsure why we sailed into the storm. We saw numerous dishes broken and heard many more. Soup flew in the air, spaghetti covered the floor, hot coffee went into laps, waiters made heroic efforts to save food and drink. A section of the bar in the pub was broken and lay on the ground. A medicine cabinet and locker were ripped from the walls. Numerous passengers were sick and many (including me) retreated to the realative safety of their bunks to wait out the storm. By one report, it was the worst encounter by Navimag in three years.



The NaviMag website shows sunny weather, dolphins, whales, glacier and smiling passengers. After we embarked from Puerto Montt, we had a pleasant cruise through the Moraleda Channel. It was overcast with a few sprinkles and a brisk breeze. However, as we moved through the Erràzuriz Channel and went thru through the Pulluche Channel, we could sense a change in the weather and could see the whitecaps and storm cloud ahead of us. We had been previously advised to take our motion sickness pills around 1 p.m. in the afternoon in preparation for our 3 p.m. arrival in the ocean. Our normal course put us in the open ocean for about 12 hours. As a ferry service, Navimag is different from Skorpios and others that stay inside the inner passages.

The wind and wave height were abnormal. While standing beside the bridge, I could watch the waves crash into the ship. About every sixth wave was large enough to spray foam across the bow and cause the anchos to bang against the hull with a large boom. The weather progressively worsened. At dinnertime, plates were flying off the table and passengers chose to remain curled up in their bunks rather than stumble down the hallway to the dining room where they would grope bolted down tables while attempting to move hot soup from its bowl into one's mouth. I found that lying in the fetal position in my bunk was the most comfortable position. Even so, my body physically moved in rhythm with the waves alternatively lifting me up to the had of the bunk and pushing me down to the foot; I was physically moving, being pushed around, up and down the bunk.

As the night progressed, the tempo of the anchor boom increased to a solid beat. The ship's hull and walls squeaked and groaned. Everything in our cabin table flew onto the floor. I could hear more dishes crashing in the dining room. The mirror on the wall swung back and forth and banged against the wall. Rain and waves darkened the portal view of the horizon pitching up and down. At midnight, I got up to take more Dramamine. Our compass showed we were going due west. Our original course at midnight was to turn left on a southwest course. In the morning, I confirmed the captain chose to go out to sea to avoid bad weather and potential conflict with land. I put my ear plugs in and slept well until 7.30 a.m.

We are now about 12 hours behind schedule. We are cruising southeast through the Penas Gulf (yes, it means Gulf of Pain). I think we will be happy to see the San Pedro lighthouse where we will enter the Messier channel and presumably escape the waves and wind. We are now running with the wind. The waves rock the ship back and forth like a ferris wheel ride in an amusement park. The scene outside the window changes from looking at the sea almost at our feet toward gyrating up through the horizon well up into the sky.

These are the flags before and after the storm.

photos, Los Alerces vistas

Here is a photo of the hosteria we stayed at and the view while we ate meals. It snowed one night. We tried to explain "Dreaming of a White Christmas" but I'm not sure our broken Spanish converyed the meaning.
The cho chos (lupin is the Latin name) were in full bloom everywhere.


The peaks were visible from the hosteria. The panorama shows Lago Rivadavia.

fishing Rio Rivadavia

We fished the Rio Rivadavia with guide Marcelo Coronado. We were impressed with the beauty of the scenery and number of trout we spotted. We were disappointed that our trend of hiring guides on bad weather days continued. We did catch some nice fish, but overall it was a slow day, especially considering the potential. The river was swollen with chilly water. A furious current ran through the river and from bank to bank in the turns. Marcelo lives at the downstream end of this short, several mile long river that drains from Lago Rivadavia into Lago Verde. Marcelo was knowledgable, skilled and friendly. We tried a variety of techniques: fishing while floating and anchored and wading the banks, sand bars and shallow parts of the river. We fished under trees and under banks overhanging the river. Marcelo said it wasn´t the fisherman and it wasn´t the guide. The weather had driven the fish deep underwater and they weren't feeding. For lunch, he set up a table and chairs on the side of the river. While we ate we talked about fishing, Argentina and the U.S. He couldn't understand why we didn't take siestas. After lunch, while Dawn and I fished, he took a nap. The river was a turquoise color.

Dawn caught more fish than I. She was using a Type IV sinking tip. I used a Cabela's rig which had kind of a shooting taper with various 12-foot tips that could be exchanged without changing the line. It was my first time using it. I found it awkward. The tip at 12-foot is accompanied by a 9-foot weighted leader with a 4-5-foot tippet. This 25-foot end sunk rapidly. The problem was I could not lift the full 25-feet from the river with a roll cast or a back cast because it was heavy and sunken into the water. This meant, I needed to strip the line in to a shorter length and the knot-to-knot junction slid through the forward rod guides, hanging up on the way in and out. Also, although the tip went down quickly, the line was very buoyant and tended to offset the value of the sinking line in the fast-flowing water. For these conditions, I think a full sinking Type IV is the ticket. I will try the sinking tip again. It worked well in the side tributary creeks where I could cast to the far side of the water and allow the tip to sink while buoyant floating section floated across the current. I will try it again and experiment with using just the sinking tip without the sinking leader

Los Alerces, the trees

We are standing in front of Lago Futulafquen and beside an arrayanes tree.

I'm standing in front of an araucaria tree. Silohoutte and macro of the same.

Christmas photos

Here is Dawn buying provisions for the long bus ride. Bariloche is full of chocolate shops, each of considerable size. Their chocolate is wonderful.
This is a view from the bus window on the way to Puerto Montt. It is Volcan Puyhue.

As we were driving on the bus, we went through a little town. I had my camera out with a long lens and was looking for photographic subjects. I saw this little girl and trained my camera on her. Before I could take the photograph, a bus came between us. In the meantime, the father noticed my attention. He was walking with his family on Christmas eve. I looked at him through the windows of the bus between us. He lined his family up for a portrait. When the bus moved, I snapped the photo before we moved on.

Here we are at our restaurant after dinner.

Here's the sun setting over the bay in Puerto Montt on Christmas Eve eve.

This is a view of our hotel with a cloudy volcano behind it. The other view is from our hotel room window.

Merry Christmas Cruise

We are about to embark on a four day cruise along the west coast of Chile from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. See the link for more info. We will keep posting as we have Internet access. I have lots of photos, but limited access time for uploads....
http://navimag.com/

Today is Christmas and all the shops are closed. We found a mall yesterday, and yes, they were playing Christmas carols and people were buying presents. We went out to dinner for seafood (Puerto Montt is famous for its seafood). The restaurant was on a jetty extending into the bay. I had sauteed crab, palm and avocado salad and fishermen's stew. Dawn had crab bisque, salad, and sea bass. My stew had a variety of seafoods. I am lucky Dawn's undergraduate was in marine biology, so I could identify everything. There is a big holiday tree in the town square. Restuarants and businesses have holiday lighting. But it's not as lit up as the US, probably a good thing.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas wishes from Puerto Montt Chile. Just arrived here after a 7 hour bus ride over the Andes mountain from Bariloche Argentina. Beautiful. Rivers, waterfalls, volcanoes covered with snow. All along the highways are lupine blooming in purple, pink and white. Masses, thousands of them, covering entire hillsides. And yellow scotch broom and trees covered with red flowers (Notros, the national tree of Argentina; it also has white blossoms in the fall) Have not yet seen an Andean condor, but did see Zorro de Darwin (a fox, rather rare) the other morning while eating breakfast. We have been in Argentinian Patagonia (really the Lake District) for the past month. I love the area. It reminds me of Colorado, with rivers and mountains, only the trout are about twice as large, and the pink flamingoes and bamboo let you know you are not in the Rockies. It has been too cloudy to see the night skis, but I bet they are amazing. I would love to spend more time here. The people are incerdibly friendly and so happy to find Americans that speak a little Spanish so they can converse. (It is rare to find anyone who speaks English there). I have finally figured out the Spanish pronunciation there, lots of ch and zh sounds for y and ll.
Tomorrow we get on a ferry and start a four day journey south to the Tierra del Fuego area, the end of the world. The passage is through the archipelago part of southern Chile, past islands, glaciers and near the mountains. Look for pictures in a few days.
¡Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo!

arrived in Puerto Montt, Chile

Yesterday, we drove from the National Park Los Alerces to Bariloche. After some shopping and dinner, we repacked our belongings. We got up early and took a taxi to the bus station. We took a long bus ride from 9 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. over the Andes to Puerto Montt. We had to go through customs to leave Argentina and customs to get into Chile. The Andes were impressive. We saw the remains of an imploded volcano, bamboo rain forests, lots of snow, and jagged peaks. Our route took us slightly north to Villa La Angostura and then due west to Osorno, and then south to Puerto Montt. Along the way, we got great views of Volcan Osorno (aka Petrohué in Argentina).

The bus was comfortable with large, tinted windows to take in the vistas. A small TV screen played DVDs of U.S. music videos and movies (remake of The Longest Yard). I was somewhat embarrassed as an American watching Michael Jackson, Millie Vanelli and the disco era. Usually we drive a rental car because we need to drive to fishing locations after arriving to the city of our destination. But it is somewhat easier to cross an international border in a bus and certainly less expensive because we would have a drop-off charge for leaving a car in a different country from the one we rented it in. We are staying in a Holiday Inn Express. I choose it because it is less than a year old and right on the water. But I must say, I also feel somewhat more at home. It's nice to have a king size bed, a coffee maker, and soap packaged with bold letters saying "Cleanse."

And so begins the next chapter in our journey. Chapter 1 was Spanish school in Santiago; chapter 2 was fishing in Junin; and chaper 3 was fishing around Esquel and Los Alerces National Park. The final chapter will take us south via ferry boat to Tierra del Fuego, Torres del Paine and Rio Gallegos. Tomorrow on Christmas, we board the ferry for our four day voyage. I left Argentinian Patagonia with sadness, a feeling that our stay (four weeks) was short and a desire to return. Our Esquel trip was very different than Junin. Our numerous fishing destinations around Junin were about an hour drive with others as few as ten minutes. Once I walked out the front door of our cabaña, walked through town and started fishing the river.

Esquel is in the center of tourist (and fishing) destinations in Chubut Province; but the distances are greater--we typically drove two hours to our destinations. We were disappointed that Arroyo Pescado, located southeast of Esquel, is now private and quite expensive. Rio Chubut needs to be accessed from the town of El Bolson. Rio Grande showed promised, but is large, deep and strongñ the biggest problem was limited fishing access from the road. That leaves some smaller lakes and lesser rivers--and the Los Alerces National Park.

Ultimately, after exploring our options, we moved to the Park. There are only a handful of places to rent a room in the Park, a hotel and several hosterias. There are also a fair number of campgrounds. It was early in the season and very rainy. When we decided to move to the Park, it had been raining a few days and we reasoned the rain would stop.

Happy Holidays

next destination

We have enjoyed our stay in Esquel. Our cabaña worked out fine. We visited some waterfalls. The fishing report is that the National Park seems the best. Arroyo Pescado is all private and very expensive, even by U.S. standards. Rìo Grande (aka Rìo Futulafquen) is very big and very full of water. There are not many obvious access points. We fished above the bridge right before the international crossing into Chile. We are still uncomfortable climbing under barbed wire fences to access the river by crossing someone's land.
We floated Rìo Rivadavia in Parque Nacional Los Alerces yesterday with a guide. We had difficult weather (wind, cold and rain), but worse, recent heavy rains had the river swollen with cold water and the fish sulky. We did catch some very nice fish and saw literally hundreds of them. Earlier in the week, we briefly fished Rìo Arrayanes and also saw lots of fish. (Arrayanes are a type of tree that looks like a Madron (if that helps?)). More than anything, it felt like the Patagonian Andes, wild, unpredictable and exhilirating.
Despite the weather, we liked it well enough to book it as our next destination. We will be staying at Hosterìa Cume Huy. We stopped by there after fishing all day. They had a huge kitchen with a large wood-burning stove; it smelled great. They provide three meals a day and a warm place to rest. We will be close to our fishing spots. From Esquel, it's a drive of 1.5 hours. After that, we move on to Bariloche and Puerto Montt.

photos, maroòn and Rivadavia

Here is an underwater photo of a brown trout I caught. The Riò Rivadavia flows from Lagò Rivadavia and later into Lago Verde.

photos, us and FUN

Here we are with Lago Verde and Parque Nacional Los Alerces behind us. We've been driving a Suzuki FUN. It has good mileage and holds all our equipment. But it is noisy and bumpy on the gravel roads. Also, we have to take our fly rods apart when we drive.

photos, flamingos and bamboo

I was very suprised to see pink flamingo and bamboo. I just didn´t imagine they were here. But they are.

map, Esquel area

We've moved south from Junin to Esquel. The park is to the west of us where al the lakes are marked. We drove up there for the first time yesterday. We visited a guide that we have engaged for a float trip down the Rio Rivadavia on Monday. His family has lived there since 1900. The park was developed in 1937 and they have the rights to continue living there. The lakes are deep and clear.

Thanks to William C. Leitch and his book, Argentine Trout Fishing, for maps, orientation and lots of information.
http://www.amazon.com/Argentine-Trout-Fishing-William-Leitch/dp/1878175068/sr=8-6/qid=1166283195/ref=sr_1_6/102-3868446-1564155?ie=UTF8&s=books

photo, BBQ

They have a different way of BBQing things here, parrailla. Note the gaucho has taken his hat off and hung it in the corner. See his red sash. You can`t see his dagger (faucon), but he has one tucked behind him. I was having an espresso in a cafe one morning and looked up to see a dagger.

photos, Patrick fishing

Here I am with a brown in a riffle that was very productive. The tree is an Arycharya Tree and the spot is called the Arycharya Pool.