Our last outing from Banff was to Kootenay National Park. We drove out to Radium Hot Springs but neither one of us had a bathing suit so we did not indulge. We had a quick view of the town and the visitor center and enjoyed some stops on the way back.
The Kootenay River
Some other miscellaneous things… A land bridge in the Kicking Horse River Valley, Yoho National Park
A cool canyon we came across someplace or other…
And a few snapshots of Calgary…
Ciao Canada! It was great!
One of the best things we did was go to Sunshine Meadows, a hiking and ski area just outside of Banff. We rode a gondola up the mountain for about 30 minutes and then got onto a chairlift that took us the rest of the way up the mountain to about 7,000 feet. The views were spectacular. It was a beauty day. We hiked back from the top down to the gondola station, along the Continental Divide.
Back at the lodge we stopped for some after hike refreshments. It had to be Poutine, of course.
On the way down we saw a purple gondola.
All in all a very good day.
Banff has many hotels and lodges and shops. There are a couple of museums. And a large expensive hotel. We went to the Banff Trading Post where I bought some earrings. We went to the Banff Park Museum and the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. And we dined at the Fairmont Hotel just outside Banff. We also saw lots of “Bears” scatters about. My son actually saw a grizzly on one of his hikes. Very exciting. I saw a black squirrel and some chipmunks. And some deer were crossing main street in Banff. Next time…
The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is a luxury resort originally built by William Cornelius Van Horne in 1888. Van Horne was a Canadian railroad magnate who built the first trans continental railway in 1885.
Around Banff…
The Bears…
Next time – hiking the Continental Divide…
We headed north on the Columbian Icefields Parkway. We had a 3:30 appointment with the Athabasca Glacier so we stopped along the way to enjoy the sites. Our first stop was Bow Lake, shown above. It was right off the road. The next stop was Peyto Lake. We had to hike up to the viewpoint which was mostly uphill but it was worth it.
Our next stop was the North Saskatchewan River, a Canadian Heritage River.
From there we arrived at the Columbia Icefield Discovery Center. We piled on a bus that took us out to an area near the glacier where we transferred onto an Ice Explorer bus. This special bus was developed to drive onto the glacier while causing the minimal amount of harm. The tires are massive. At one point we were going down almost vertically. Quite the ride. Walking on the glacier was much like walking on regular ice. Some people tasted the ice melt that ran along the marked off area for visitors. It was all pretty thrilling.
It was a short ride from there to the Skywalk. This is a glass-bottomed walkway on a cliff with views straight down into the valley. Not really my thing but I did get some shots.
We got back to Banff pretty late after another long day. Next up – Banff and the Bears.
I had planned on starting the trip with two days in Jasper, Alberta, but due to forest fires in the area, Jasper was pretty much shut down and my boat trip on Maligne Lake was canceled. So we flew into Calgary and drove directly to Banff. Banff is a tourist town. The main drag is hotel after hotel after hotel followed by shops shops shops. And none of it is cheap. The town actually sits within the Banff National Park and is close to hiking and skiing in the area.
Our first day we headed for Yoho National Park which is actually in British Columbia. We hiked to Takakkaw Falls, the third highest falls in Canada.
Still in Yoho we stopped at a very crowded Emerald Lake where tour buses lined the drive and parking was non-existent. There is a lodge with cabins along the lake on one side. We hiked up to get a better less crowded view. The lake and setting were spectacular.
Our next stop was back to Banff National Park and the famous Lake Louise. I was excited to go because I had heard so much about the beauty of Lake Louise for many years. At the Lake Louise Ski Resort we rode a gondola up the mountain for about fifteen minutes. At the top there was a viewing area where you could see across to the Lake and the glacier above it. There was nothing else up there.
Back down at the ski center, we had to reserve a time and buy a ticket for a bus to take us to the actual Lake. Between the gondola and the bus this put me back about $70 per person. We opted for a return ride two hours later. Luckily we were able to get on an earlier bus as that was way too long to spend at an over crowded lake with nothing else available. There is a large expensive hotel on the lake but if you are not staying there, they are not welcoming. We sat on benches by the lake and watched people take picture after selfie after picture after selfie for ever. Yes, the lake itself was beautiful and the glacier above is impressive but really way too many people. And we weren’t even at peak season. All kind of a let down. Luckily I managed to get some clear shots.
It was a long day but it seemed like everywhere you looked was another breathtaking view. Stay tuned, next we head off on the Columbian Icefields Parkway.
Punta Arenas is an important port on the Magellan Straight at the very south of Chile. Of its 170,000 people, about a third are of Croatian decent.
In 1518, Ferdinand Magellan left Seville in Spain with five ships. After several problems including a couple of mutinies they found a route through to the Pacific Ocean. The Magellan Straight. It meant they didn’t have to deal with the unpredictable hazards of Cape Horn. One of the five ships made it all the way back to Seville but Magellan was not on it. He was killed in the Philippines.
Another historical figure who had ties to Punta Arenas was Ernest Shackleton who led three expeditions to Antarctica, not always with the best results.
I took a long walk by the water and saw some interesting things.
From there we drove to Torres del Paine national park. Along the way we came across a couple of gauchos crossing the road.
We also saw rheas, guanacos and flamingos.
Once we got to Torres del Paine we took a short hike.
We stayed in a hotel right on Grey Lake and at the end of the lake you could see Grey Glacier.
Next day we had a longer hike.
I found out that glaciers make a rumbling noise like thunder when they move. This one was moving a lot.
From Rapa Nui we made our way to Buenos Aires and a brief visit there.
Our first stop was to the memorial for the “Desaparecidos” or the “Missing”. During the dictatorship in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 they estimate over 30,000 people ‘disappeared’. We heard from a man in his 40’s whose mother was snatched off the street weeks after he was born. It was only recently through new processes that they were able to identify her remains. When his father discovered she was missing he immediately took the baby to her parent’s house and he fled. Eventually the boy and his father moved to Pategonia to get away from it all.
It was a long time before anybody was able to talk about what went on. Now there is a large memorial where names are listed on several walls like the Vietnam memorial. They list the name, the age when they disappeared, and if they were pregnant. Many children were taken away from their mothers and given to other people.
Our next stop was to the Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It is next to one of the ports and was originally founded by a mixture of immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is a working class neighborhood that is very colorful and begging for tourists.
During the pandemic people brought stones to the main square in front of the National Palace in order to say goodbye to their loved ones who died.
We ended the day with a delicious steak dinner and lots of good Malbec wine.
Early the next morning it was back to the airport and on to Bariloche, the Lake District at the northern edge of Pategonia. It calls itself little Switzerland and has some good chocolate for sale.
The only town in Rapa Nui is Hanga Roa. It sits right next to the ocean and sculptures line the coast.
I found these signs next to the sculptures. From what I can tell they are telling us who sponsored the sculpture. They are in the shape that is the local symbol of Rapa Nui. It looks like a boat with two heads and symbolizes authority.
Iorana is the word for ‘hello’ and ‘ goodbye’.
Easter Island or otherwise known as RapaNui is a five hour flight west of Santiago, Chile. It is actually part of Chile and everybody speaks Spanish.
As we approached the island I was pretty amazed anybody could find this little spec in the middle of the ocean. It is about the size of two Manhattan Islands. And the runway goes from the ocean to the ocean. I was glad the breaks worked. There is one flight in and one flight out to and from Santiago each day.
Today there are about 8000 people living on Rapa Nui and about 60% are native. They are Polynesian and originally populated from other islands in the South Pacific. The closest neighbor it has is over 2000 miles away.
It is known for its Moai. The large heads sticking out of the ground. There are over 1000 of them on the island. There was a large archeological effort in the 1980’s to excavate and restore them. Those are the ones seen today. There are also many Moai in museums around the world thanks to the usual looting – the British Museum, the Smithsonian, and various others. Two have been repatriated.
Here is a sampling. The Maoi are made of volcanic rock. There are many dormant volcanoes on the island but three main ones are Terevaka, Poike, and Rano Kau.
Rano Kau is the oldest volcano – 3 million years old. Avocados and Pineapples and other fruits grow inside the crater. people hike down into it to pick fruit and some go swimming. I hear the water is cold.
The view from up there was amazing.
We had lunch at a restaurant right in the ocean that happened to be just at the end of the runway. it came in practically on top of us.
Next up a walk by the ocean.
My photos look a little out of focus today. Kind of psychedelic. Or is it just me? The sky is an odd color. A rainy, dark day. But color starting as the trees adjust to winter.
I actually got a story published this week. No money but think of the fame! The notoriety!
Today is also gloomy and rainy. But that’s okay. We need rain. Rain is good. Winter is coming.
I read today that scientists think mammals will die out in 250 million years. All the land masses will collide, the sun will get brighter, and carbon dioxide will rise. We will suffocate and melt. I wonder if we will really last that long. Will we morph into something else? Will another species thrive on the new atmosphere? Will we build bio-domes like our science fiction writers predict? It is hard to imagine what 250 million years looks like. The dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 million years and then all blew up about 65 million years ago. Mammals showed up about 225 million years ago. So we are almost half way through our time here. On the other hand the earth itself is 4.5 billion years old. We are but blips in time. It’s like democracy in Russia. A nanosecond. Apparently Earth has another 4 billion years to go. Don’t think I’ll be around to see it.
I’m reading Isabel Allende’s memoirs and in it she mentions the filming of The House of Spirits. I never knew it was made into a movie so I watched it last night. It was star studded, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Antonio Banderas, Winona Ryder, and a million other people. Of Love and Shadows is another one of her books that was made into a movie. I haven’t read that one but looks interesting.
I read that people who are optimistic and have positive thoughts on aging tend to live longer. I’m feeling positive I am aging.
A friend just found out he is going to Burundi for work. The poorest nation in the world. The most unhappy nation in the world. I first heard about Burundi during the Hutu-Tutsi genocide of the 1990’s. So I have been trying to find positive things about it. It is in the African Great Lakes region bordering on Lake Tanganyika. This is what I found.
They make pretty sisal baskets.
They have pretty birds.
Nice landscape.
Drums are important.
Lake Tanganyika is big. It has hippos.
See, positive, positive, positive.