Countdown

I leave for Iceland at 9:10 P.M. on August 18th, which is one week from today! I'm getting pretty wound up, and I'm really starting to lose focus at work. Ah, who am I kidding? At one week from vacation time I finally have a valid excuse for my usual lack of focus. I've booked myself into a couple of day trips from Reykjavík, which has actually left me with only a couple days that are free while I'm there. I thought that was for the best this time since there are a lot of things that I don't want to miss. Chief amongst those was a hike on one of Iceland's numerous glaciers, so that was the first thing I locked in. I've booked with Reykjavík Excursions (www.re.is) and if you're interested in seeing what I'll be up to have a look in their "Activity Tours" section. I'll be doing two tours with them; "Take a Walk on the Ice Side" is obviously the aforementioned glacier hike, and "White River Rafting" strikes me as pretty self explanatory. I've never gone white water rafting before, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Covering events of the recent past: over the August long weekend I was in Tobermory working on my Scuba certifications. In the three days we did eight dives, five for the Advanced Open Water certification, and three more for the Deep Diver Specialty. One of the dives for the open water cert counted towards the deep diving specialization, which is why we were able to complete the specialization with three dives.

I travelled up to Tobermory with another diver who was taking the course. Pictured below in his snazzy new wetsuit is my new good buddy Arnon:

I actually met a lot of really great people that weekend, too numerous to mention here. It really was an incredible experience that I'd highly recommend to any diver with their Open Water certification. Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of pictures, largely because it was an incredibly active weekend and I was pretty tired for most of it. Also, half of our dives were off of a boat and I was feeling more seasick than I usually do. That really drains a person of their will to photograph.

The first day of diving started with a Peak Performance Buoyancy dive where we focused on getting our weight set correctly and doing exercises to test our control underwater. We did that one as a shore dive right in Tobermory. The second dive was Underwater Navigation. We did a series of exercises to test our ability to use a compass underwater. That was another shore dive that we did in a bay just outside of Tobermory, pictured here:

Love that water clarity!

We finished the day with a night dive back at the original dive site:

That was an incredibly surreal experience. You can only see as far as your flashlight beam. Even though we were in a familiar dive site, having dove there just that morning, it was a completely different dive at night. I really enjoyed that dive, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do more night diving.

Our second day consisted of two Deep Dives, one of which counted as both an Adventure Dive for our Advanced Open Water as well as a Deep Specialty Dive, and the other was just for our deep specialization. We were diving on the wreck of the Niagara II, which was intentionally sunk a few years back to be a dive sight. It was incredibly interesting! I always think of wrecks in Tobermory being old wooden ships, so it was very different to dive down to a modern metal container ship. The wreck was deep (obviously, since we were doing deep dives there) and so we couldn't stay down for too long, but what I got to see what still incredible. We finished the day, and the Advanced course with a DPV (Diver Propulsion Vehicle) dive. For those of you unfamiliar with these devices picture a small torpedo that you lay on top of. They aren't as fast as they look, the purpose being more to save energy than to FLY through the water, but they're still a ton of fun.

Our last day consisted of two boat dives on the site of a much older wreck. The King is a wooden vessel consisting of massive timbers, the likes of which I don't imagine you could buy for any amount of money these days. I wasn't feeling great between dives, but the captain of our dive boat gave me a Diet Coke and it helped me feel better. Apparently the phenylalanine in the aspartame is an essential amino acid that works as a mild analgesic and antidepressant. I can certainly vouch for its effectiveness against seasickness.

That's all for now. I'll try to get one more post in before I leave, and from there we'll just have to see what I can manage in terms of blogging from the field. Wish me luck!

Getting Behind Again

Yes, I know it's been awhile since I've posted. Honestly I haven't had much to say for the last little while. I apologize for the drought. One of my biggest hindrances at this point has been that I wanted to post ideas about what I'll be doing in Iceland as I research the matter further, but I really haven't been doing as much research as I'd like. My Lonely Planet guidebook mentioned an interesting sounding island off the coast of Reykjavik that I may do as a day-trip, but I'll talk about that once I've got a few more items to discuss. The issue is that I'm used to booking a trip FAR in advance and then spending the next 6 months being REALLY excited about it. What I've done this time is I've booked the trip far in advance and then booked a lot of other things before it. So there's always something coming up to look forward to before I go to Iceland and it's been distracting me a bit. The time's getting close though, just a little over a month to go. Time to start getting my act together!

One of the things that I did recently is vaguely travel related, so I'll discuss that here. I have recently got my M2 motorcycle license. Now, I'm sure you're wondering how that relates to travel and not just joyriding. Here's my logic: there are areas of the world that are considerably more accessible via light vehicles such as motorcycles and scooters. I'm actually thinking more of the scooters than anything. I saw a ton of them in Japan, and the reasons are obvious; they're cheap to operate, they're great in heavy traffic, and you can just park them on the sidewalk. Perfect for the fast-paced urban environment. Here in Ontario you can drive a scooter if you have an "M" license with an "L" condition, which limits you to vehicles that can do no more than 70km/h. The thing is, the process for getting an ML, and getting a normal M which allows you to ride anything on two wheels is quite similar. So I thought, why limit myself?

Motorcycles in Ontario fall under the same graduated licensing program that cars are subjected to, so I had to start with my M1. That's a 90-day beginner's permit with heavy restrictions on what time of day and what roads you can travel on. After 60 of those 90 days you can take the test for your M2 which lasts for 5 years and only carries the restriction that you can have absolutely no alcohol in your system. After 2 years (or 1.5 years if you've taken a safety course) you can get your full M license. The sweet thing about the aforementioned safety courses are that they are allowed to administer the test for your M2. So, I went out a couple weekends ago and did the course, which was two full days, Saturday and Sunday, but at the end of it I did my test. So, I just had to take the paperwork into the Ministry of Transportation and I've got my M2. Cool!

My original intent was simply to hold this license for the required 1.5 years, take another safety course with a test at the end to get my M license and be happy knowing that if I ever get the opportunity to ride a motorcycle/scooter in my travels that I will be able to. Owning a motorcycle in Toronto always seemed a bit pointless since I the roads are so crowded and awful. Riding a motorcycle is about having fun on the roads, and I see no possible way to enjoy a drive in Toronto. That said, I may have to end up getting a bike of my own if I want to continue down this path. The reason for that is that the refresher courses and the course to get your full M license all require you to have your own bike. Also, having taken the safety course, I now see how much muscle-memory is involved in operating one of these machines, and I really see that practice is going to be key to being a good rider. The safety course was held entirely within a parking lot, so even though I'm on my second level of the graduated licensing system I've still never operated a motorcycle on the road, and I feel like I'm going to need that experience here if I'm ever going to operate a bike elsewhere. Also, riding a motorcycle is two tons of fun. That obviously doesn't affect my decision much though.

For now I'm sitting tight. We're already well in to the riding season, and I'll be away for a good stretch of August, so I think I may call this season a miss. I'm hoping to be able to pick up a good starter bike at the end of the season, put it on blocks for the winter, and put plates on it at the beginning of the next season. The Rider Training Institute (www.ridertraining.ca) who I did my course with offers a refresher course, which I may start next season off with. Then I could spend the season riding, sharpening my skills, and take the M2 exit course the next summer. Of course that all hinges on me being able to find a place around Toronto that wouldn't terrify my to drive in. We'll see about that.

Next up: the August long weekend I'm up in Tobermory sharpening my scuba diving skills with the Advanced Open Water and Deep Diver courses. I'll keep you all posted!

Let's Try Something New

Good morning everyone!  Yesterday I got my hands on a Flip Mino portable video camera and I've decided to try posting a video to my blog.  This is just a little something I recorded at my kitchen table this morning.  Have a look at my first effort:

So there you go!  I think that turned out okay actually.  I was trying to keep it short, so I didn't go into a lot of detail, but my main problem with the video on the point-and-shoot is that it's TINY, and saves in the MOV format.  For those of you not in the know, MOV is Apple's proprietary format.  It's viewable on a PC, but Quicktime is appaulingly bad on the PC.  I've been assured by my numerous Mac-fan friends that it's a wonderful program on a Mac, but I'll have to take their word for that.

The video weighs in at 45Mb, which isn't too bad at all.  I'm actually writing this post as it uploads, and it's still going, taking its sweet time about it.  That may actually prove my greatest deterent to using the video as a blogging device in the future.  I won't want to add to many videos on the go if it's going to take me all day to do so.  Only time will tell.

Okay, somewhere between 5-10 minutes later my video has been uploaded, and it is now "Processing" the video.  No idea how long that takes, but it's assured me that I can save this post and return to actually post it when the processing is complete.  That indicates to me that this could take awhile.  This has been a good experiment actually, it's good to know that this is a time taking process, and something that might not always been possible while on the road.

For now, I'm going to save this and head to work.  I'll get it posted for you all this evening when I get home.

*UPDATE, 7:38PM EST:  Okay, here we go, I'm back from work and I'm making the post.  Woo!

The Great Outdoors - Part 2

It's time to continue the tale!  When I left off we had just decided to shorten our camping trip by a day due to weather.  We did the long haul out of the park and were fortunate enough to be able to get our room at the lodge a day early.  One of the big advantages to being in Killarney that early in the season was that there were still very few people up there.  We got into the lodge late Tuesday afternoon, just in time to get cleaned up and have dinner.  There's nothing quite like a hot shower and a good meal after a couple days in the bush, and that feeling is amplified when your last day was a rainy one.

The next day we did a bit of hiking out from the lodge.  The Lighthouse Trail (guess where that leads) was a bit flooded near the start of the trail so we just followed the road to the lighthouse and picked up the Tar Vat Trail which starts nearby.  After a lunch composed of leftover food from the camping trip we just wandered around the lodge grounds.  We weren't feeling to adventurous at that point.

On Thursday we got a guide to take us out fishing.  Fear not!  No fish were harmed in the making of this fishing trip.  The wind, still brisk and coming out of the south, had the Georgian Bay stirred up, and even the sheltered coves we were fishing in were quite murky.  I don't think the fish could have found our lures if they'd wanted to.  I did manage to catch something, although it turned out to be a bit unusual.

Yes, that's a clam.  Don't ask me to repeat the performance, I'm still not entirely sure how one goes about enticing one of those to take the bait.  You can see that I was using a three-pronged hook, and the clam seems to have closed down around one of the prongs.  We just slipped that out of his grasp and tossed him back to his watery home.  Still, the entire situation was quite humorous.

Despite not catching enough clams to really make a meal (and incidentally no fish either) it was a terrific nature-watching voyage.  We saw a few Bald Eagles, which is an exciting sight in this part of the world.  I've seen them in British Columbia when I've been out that way, but in Ontario they still seem to be pretty rare.  We saw more than one at a time though, which I'm taking as a very good sign.  We also spotted a Sandhill Crane, which Dad informs me is a rare sight.  The water-dwelling creatures were in abundance as well, and we got close to a couple River Otters, and saw Beavers on numerous occasions.  Heading back we rode up the Chikanishing Creek (I apologize to the people of Killarney if I spelled that wrong) and got a great sight of a Beaver, who even stopped to pose for a few photos.

Back at the lodge we got to spend some time with a more tame variety of wildlife.

There was some discussion about getting kayaks out and going for a sunset paddle, but we were both viewing the prospect of lifting those boats with a certain hesitation.  They we securely fastened to the car, and seemed quite happy there.  Those boats spent a great deal of time on our shoulders Tuesday afternoon.  The decision to stay on land proved to be a bad one.  You can imagine what this sunset would have been like out on the water.

Friday was our last full day in the area and we decided to finish off the trip with a nice hike.  We headed back to the George Lake campground and set off on Cranberry Bog Trail.  It was a pleasant hike that got us back in time for lunch at Herbert's fish and chip truck, our last chance to do so.  Here's a shot from the trail that I particularly liked, showing the industriousness of the Beavers, who really seem to be having a great year.

We spent the afternoon at the lodge, and after dinner managed to find the motivation to actually get the kayaks out one last time.  Having missed a rather spectacular sunset the night before we were didn't want to risk missing out again.  As you can see, it wasn't quite the riot of colour that the previous evening had in store, but it was lovely all the same.

That just about finishes off this adventure.  We got up Saturday morning, enjoyed one last breakfast at the lodge, and hit the road.  It was an uneventful trip back, and I got into Toronto in the early afternoon.

Well, that's all for now.  It was great to get out for a trip, since I still have to wait till mid-August for my journey to Iceland.  Still, that has become my sole focus right now.  It's time to ramp-up my research and start coming up with ideas about what to do with my time in Reykjavik while I'm not diving.  I will, of course, be sure to keep you posted.

The Great Outdoors

I just got back to Toronto on Saturday after spending a really great week up in Killarney. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Killarney it's a town on the North shore of Georgian Bay (Lake Huron if you're going to make me get really specific) which happens to be situated very close to a Provincial Park which shares it's name. We were in both Killarneies. I apologize for that strange pluralization of Killarney.

I went up with my Dad for the week. We headed to the Killarney Mountain Lodge in town for the first evening (last Saturday) so that we could head into the interior of the park feeling fresh on Sunday morning. We put in at George Lake. I've got a picture here of our boats fully loaded. As you can see, we managed to keep the gear pretty light, and didn't end up with huge amounts of equipment strapped to the decks of the boats.



This next shot was taken shortly after we got underway, and I think it's a good example of the kind of landscape that the park has to offer.



We had a pretty strong wind at our backs as we travelled East across George Lake, and we made pretty good time. I had the GPS monitoring our progress, and it informed me that I was travelling at 8 km/h while I had the wind to help. Not bad for a kayak, given that I wasn't really paddling that hard. You can see a bit of the wind's effects in the roughness of the water here:




If you look to the centre of that shot, to the right of the bow of my boat, you'll see a narrowing. That's actually showing the portage into Freeland Lake. It had quite the nice waterfall running along it.



That was a short portage, we just had to carry the boats around the waterfall. We continued through Freeland, and into a longer portage into Killarney Lake. It was a longer paddle through Killarney, and we had the wind in our face for awhile as we turned back to the West. After that it was another short portage into our final destination, O.S.A. Lake, named after the Ontario Society of Artists that helped found the park. We got a campsite on an island in the lake, and spent the next two nights there. Here's a shot of the site once we'd made camp:




I'm facing West here, and what you can't really see in this photo is how exposed the camp was to the North and South. Unfortunately that's where the wind came from on Day 1 and Day 2 of camping respectively. Things were quite calm on Monday morning though, and I got some great shots of the lake.




Shortly after sunrise there.




You can really see the clarity of the water in the shot above. O.S.A. is a dead lake, and as sad as that is, it makes for stunningly clear water.


Having made camp on Sunday night we were free to explore on Monday. We wandered around our little island, and then headed out to the mainland for a hike. The lake is surrounded by granite ridges, so we just picked one and started to climb up.



As you can see, things got a bit vertical there. The climb offered a great view of the lake.

I'm looking south in this shot at the island that we were camping on. We were on the Eastern tip of the island, to the left in the photo. We got to this height in the afternoon, and you can already start to see the wind picking up in the ripples across the lake below. It was a South wind, but it was cold, and things got pretty chilly by the evening. Fortunately, someone who was at the site before us had cut a huge number of green branches and left them in a pile. We were pretty confused by that, and thought that they were just gathering kindling, however that pile of evergreen boughs proved useful in the evening as the wind really started to get cold and fierce. We moved the pile of boughs in behind were we were sitting and they made an excellent windscreen.

The plan was to wake up on Tuesday and move back into Killarney Lake, and camp there for an evening. It would give us a chance for some different hiking, and remove one portage from our final trip out of the park. However, we woke up on Tuesday to a steady rain. We tried to wait it out, but by noon we were forced to get a move on, and had to break camp in the rain. We were managing to keep out of the rain, and keep our equipment dry, but once we started to break down the camp it was inevitable that critical items like our tents would get soaked. We got packed up as quickly as possible and got out of there, but not without a good drenching first. Since it was still raining quite steadily by the time we got to the next camp site, and our gear was already pretty wet we decided to call that last evening a failure and continue on out of the park. That made for a pretty long haul, and we were quite tired by the time we got back to the Lodge, but fortunately they had a room for us, even though we were a day early getting back.

We stayed at the Lodge until Saturday morning, and then headed back home. I'll save the details of that part of the trip for another post, as this one is starting to run a bit long. The camping aspect of the trip was excellent, despite being cut short. I'll write about the rest of the trip soon.

Iceland Confirmed!

Good news everybody!

All of the critical pieces of my trip to Iceland have come together. I was able to book my flight by going into Flightcentre in person. I'll be flying out on Tuesday, August 18th at about 9:00 p.m. That will put me in the airport at Keflavik around 7:00 a.m. local time on the 19th. For those who are interested Iceland operates in the GMT timezone, and don't bother with daylight savings. In a country that has no sunset at certain times of the year, and no sunrise at other times it would be a bit silly to attempt daylight savings.

I've got a room reserved at the Guesthouse Ísafold in Reykjavík. That sentence alone has made me realize that if I'm going to continue blogging about this trip I'm going to need to learn the shortcut keys for accented characters. You can check out the guesthouse at http://www.isafoldguesthouse.is/ for a few pictures. Obviously I'll have a few of my own when I get there.

This morning I also got confirmation that my deposit has been paid for the final piece of this puzzle - my diving trip! I'll be diving the 20th, 21st, and 22nd. An extra day in between when I arrive and when I dive would have been ideal, but sometimes you take what you can get. Either way, it should be really fantastic.

That leaves me until August to figure out what I want to do with my remaining time in Reykjavík. I'm looking at some glacier hiking, whale watching, and puffin watching. Haven't booked anything yet, and I may just leave some of it up in the air to give myself a bit of flexibility. I've picked up the Lonely Planet guide to Iceland because I found their Japan guide to be an invaluable resource back in '07. These days there's a wealth of travel information online, but sometimes it's nice to have a bound book with you. I found that I used a lot of online resources for planning the trip to Japan, but that I really relied on the Lonely Planet guide when I got there. It's nice to not have to find an internet cafe to look up a map of your area, or re-confirm the location of a spot you wanted to visit. Also, I love the Lonely Planet show, and I try to show some support. For those who are interested Lonely Planet is known as Pilot Guides in some areas.

Anyway, enough product placement for now. I'll keep you all posted on my research of the Reykjavík area as it progresses. Don't expect anything for about a week and half, because as of Saturday I will be in the middle of the Killarney wilderness, and completely cut-off from my beloved Internets. I'll have pictures and stories to post when I get back. Until then, be well, and start planning your own trips!

Travel Plans Update

I haven't made any official plans yet, but I thought you'd all be interested to know that it looks like a trip to Iceland is in my future! I'd originally abandoned my plans to see Iceland when Jay said he wouldn't be able to make it, but I've decided to do a small solo trip there this summer. We'll see if some of my friends feel like a longer, more adventurous trip next year.

For now, here's the plan. It looks like I can get a flight on Icelandair direct from Toronto to Reykjavik the evening of August 18th, arriving at 6:25 A.M. local time on the 19th. I would be leaving Iceland at 5:00 P.M. local time on the 27th. Flightcentre was quoting me $736 for the round-trip flight on their website, but was having trouble processing my payment. I believe the problem is stemming from the fact that their website wanted to charge me $687, which doesn't jive with the originally quoted price. I'll just go into their store and see if I can book that in person. Traveller's Tip #896, book in advance so you can be flexible with your departure dates! From what I could tell on the Flightcentre website Icelandair doesn't run from Toronto to Reykjavik on Mondays... at least not that I was able to find. If I'd already locked myself into a Monday to Monday vacation I'd be taking an Air Canada flight to Heathrow in London England and then catching a flight to Reykjavik... same routine on the way back. That would have cost my a charming $3500 round-trip. Yeah, it pays to shop around and be flexible.

Accommodation has been my biggest stumbling block so far. August is a popular time to be traveling in Iceland, and hotels in Reykjavik aren't cheap. Wikitravel, as always, has been a wonderful resource. Also, I'm booking into a 3-day tour (more on that later) and the people I've been in contact with there had some suggestions. Rumour has it that it's become much cheaper to travel in Iceland since their currency the Krona is in bad shape. What you need to watch out for is the fact that a lot of hotels, presumably catering largely to European clientele, list their prices in Euro. Note, as of the time of writing this article the Euro is a VERY strong currency! So hotel prices probably haven't dropped off that much, and they can be STEEP! Something that I'm looking at right now is the Guesthouse, which is essentially a house that's been converted into a small, cozy hotel. There's plenty of them around, and they tend to be considerably cheaper than your standard hotels. I'm trying to get booked into one of those right now, I'll keep you all posted on that.

Another interesting accommodation option that I was considering if all else fails is simply camping. There's a huge campground located right in Reykjavik, and according to their website it can hold 650 campers and there's no need for a reservation. If I can't find a room in my price range I may just show up there with a tent! The great thing about that being that it's 1000 ISK per night, which as of last night was about $9.20 CAD. Not bad for traveling on a budget. I'm thinking that the Guesthouse may prove more comfortable though.

Okay, and now onto what's drawing me to Iceland. Just drop by www.dive.is sometime and have a look at the photos on that site. Now pick your jaw up off the floor and we can continue. The scuba diving looks phenomenal! I'm getting booked in for a 3-day trip that consists of 3 individual day-trips out from Reykjavik. I'm really, really excited about this. In Thingvellir National Park there's a dive site called Silfra which is what really grabbed my attention. It's located at the point where the North American and European continents are pulling apart, and you can dive right down into the fissure that's being formed. It looks incredible! If this all comes together along the timeline that I'm shooting for I will have just finished my PADI Advanced Open Water and Deep Diver certifications. I'm hoping at some point in the summer that I'll be able to do the Dry Suit course as well. The water at Silfra is a constant temperature all year round... unfortunately that temperature is between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius. So the dry suit is going to be a must. The team from dive.is can teach me how to dive in a dry suit, but I'd much rather know what I'm doing in advance of those dives so that I can focus on just enjoying the scenery.

That's the game plan so far. As you can see, nothing is booked yet, but it's all starting to come together. Obviously I didn't want to book anything until I was sure that everything was going to match up, but it's looking like I can get a reasonably priced flight, and I've got a Plan B for the accommodation, so now it's time to start getting everything booked!