Yellowknife, NWT trip, Day 4

Up around 8:00 and went to shower. Beautiful blue skies.

I made breakfast and bacon and eggs and decided to reorganize my car to fit more firewood. They have firewood for sale here, I plan on buying as much as I can fit into my car.

After rearranging and packing everything back up, I headed to the office and bought wood. $5 for as much as I could fit into my car. Pretty good deal, and I had made significantly more more in my trunk by rearranging.

I headed off to Fort Providence, which is less than 100km away. Very short day for me today. I crossed over the Deh Cho Bridge, a new bridge crossing over the mighty Mackenzie river. The bridge is just over 1km long and replaces a ferry crossing (in summer) and an ice crossing (in winter). It opened late last year.

Got to Fort Providence Territorial park and picked a spot. There are a handful of other campers here. When I went to register, the park guy said "I hope you have wood". I said I do. He said "Good, because I ran out." Good thing I stocked up on wood this morning at the other campground.

I unpacked my tent and got setup. I noticed one of my rear tires seemed low, so checked it and it was. All the wood in the trunk! There was an Shell service station just back on the highway about 5 km back, so went back there and they had a air and pumped it up and checked the rest of the tires for good measure. This is the last service for 300km, until Yellowknife. And there is no cell service for the whole way either, until Yellowknife. Big trip.

At the gas station is also a cafe and a store and a bar. I bought a Jones soda pop and sunflower seeds. The bar was closed, but will presumably be open in the evening, so I may go for a beer. This gas station is popular with truckers, going to/from Yellowknife. They can stop here and get coffee, a bite to eat before heading on.

I must talk about the bugs. There are these tiny flying bugs, they are incessant. They horde around you. They don't bite or anything, but they are SO ANNOYING! They fly in your eyes, in your ears, in your hair. I've swallowed a few. There's nothing you can do about them, but they seem temperature dependent. As I was cooking breakfast this morning, there were none, but as it warmed up, WHAM, all of a sudden they're all over you. At the new campsite, as I was setting up, swarming me. Later in the day, it must have got too hot for them, because all of a sudden they're all gone. I'm sure as the day cools they'll come back. The only other saving grace is wind, even the slightest breeze will keep them away.

Back at the campsite, I walked down to the Mackenzie river and sat on the shore, skipped rocks and searched for fossils.

I gave Lisa a call on Skype. I'll call her again when I get to Yellowknife tomorrow. She may be able to get off work early as well, and we can hang out.

Started a fire around 6:00 and did up some chorizo and made Kraft Dinner with sausage. Yum. I had a random plastic bottle with some sort of soap or detergent, so I used it to clean the dishes. I think it was shampoo. Sure smelled like it.

The campground is filling up. Lots of campers coming in later in the afternoon and evening.

Got an email from Lisa, she is going to try to get Thursday and Friday off and we'll do a kayak trip up the Yellowknife river for a night. That would be cool.

It was a perfect evening. Clear skies, no wind, campfire, beautiful stars, nice temperature (sweater weather). I stayed up quite late, almost midnight before retiring.

Yellowknife, NWT Trip, Day 3

Up around 8:00. It stopped raining, but overcast and cool this morning. I slowly got going and then had a shower (free!) and the hot water felt nice. I debated about cooking breakfast, as it seemed like it might start raining at any time. I decided to make breakfast (eggs and maple sausage and tea). I took the spiral staircase down closer to the Hay River and Louisa Falls for some pictures.

Got all packed up and left maybe around 11:00am and drove to Enterprise, then took did the quick trip to Hay River, as it's a fairly big place by NWT standards. Got some supplies at Megamart (or something like that) and filled up with diesel. Hay River is like an ocean community, along the south bank of Great Slave Lake. The Coast Guard is even here, and lots of fishing boats and such. It was weird that I wasn't at an ocean. Not a particularly attractive town, though.

Headed back to the main highway and up to Lady Evelyn Falls campground. Very nice campground. I checked in, and had the choice of spots. There's only one other camper here. My tent fly was soaked, so setup my tent and laid the fly out on the picnic table to dry in the cool air. Drove down the road to the small Dene (First Nation) community of Kakisa. Not much to see and the village store was not open.

Back to the campground and did the short hike to Lady Evelyn falls on the Kakisa river. Back to campsite and figured out the technology on how I may call Lisa. Rogers doesn't have any service up here, but I do have a Bell wi-fi hotspot, and they have spotty coverage, including the town of Kakisa, which the campground is very close to. Seems like the only choice is Skype.

Built a fire and made supper (Spolumbo's sausage and potatoes). Remember the squirrel tying to get my cookie!

The day started out cloudy, but as it went on, it cleared. By supper time, there were hardly any clouds. But it was chilly!

Even in September, there is still light in the sky at 10:00pm.

Funny story (to me). This morning, when I was in Hay River, I was imagining a scenario where I ran into some local who had no idea that they made diesel cars and how that conversation might go. I have no idea why this thought popped into my head. When I pulled up to the campground caretaker, he remarked that my vehicle sounded a bit rough. I told him it was a diesel, they sound rough. He was really surprised and said "Wow, they make diesel cars nowadays?"

Yellowknife, NWT trip, Day 2

Tent is soaked on the outside. I did a short hike to the other lake. I have no idea why they are called Twin Lakes, the lakes don't look anything like each other. One is short and fat, the other is tall and skinny. Whatever.

Stopped in High Level for diesel (I'm filling up often) and A&W for lunch. Talk about a boring drive. It's so flat and trees on either side, there's nothing to see. The highways are straight as an arrow. Further south, around Peace River, you swear you're driving in Saskatchewan, wheat fields, bales of hay, farms, etc. I lost cell service as I got close to the NWT border and won't have it again, until maybe Hay River for a bit or Yellowknife.

It was pretty much like that the whole way. When I entered the NWT, I stopped at the tourist info centre there for a bit, gathered up some reading material and got to Twin Falls Territorial Park about 3:15, where I'd reserved a campsite at Louisa Falls campground. I got there and the campsite I had reserved was occupied. The lady running it was busy cleaning the toilets, so I waited outside the toilet area to ambush her. When she came out, she apologized and just told me to take another, unoccupied site. I had reserved because the website indicated that only two sites were available. When I got there, there were a handful of sites available, so I didn't really need to reserve.

I got my tent up and laid the fly out to dry and headed to Alexandra Falls for pictures and sightseeing. Talk about a site! And you can walk right up the to the edge of the falls at the top and peer over, standing inches away. It was quite something.

Back to the campground and bought some firewood (they sell it by the "bundle", 10 pieces per bundle for $5. I wanted two bundles, but she didn't have change for a $20, so she said give her $5 and take a bundle for free. Haha. But it's not bundled, so you have to grab pieces from an almost empty wood pile and go on the honor system. I grabbed as much as I could fit in my little front seat in my car. This is one spot where a truck would be awesome, transporting firewood!

Back at the campsite, read my reading material, then went for the short hike to Louisa Falls. Not quite as spectacular as Alexandra Falls, but still a site to see.

Back to the campsite and started up a fire. The day was quite nice, a bit cool, but as evening came, it started to cloud over. I made hamburgers for supper. There's two (or more) families at the campsite next to me and there's a whiny, whiny kid, he won't shut up.

I sat staring into the fire for the night, and it got quite chilly with a few drops of rain. When I went to the bathroom, it was sleeting out, I could see it in the light of my headlamp. I'm hoping for clear skies, I want to see the northern  lights again, something I haven't seen since I lived in Saskatchewan.

Eventually went to bed quite late, and it started raining and it rained steady all night long.

Yellowknife, NWT Trip, Day 1

Up around 6:00, wanted to get an early start.

Got diesel and checked my oil at the gas station (something I kept forgetting to do during the week) and there was no oil on the dipstick at all! I had grabbed oil from my house, so dumped it in and got it back to within "normal" range. That's bad, good thing I checked it!

I headed north on Deerfoot and remember passing by 16th Ave. at 8:02am. On the way to Red Deer, I had electrical issues. I had bought a new electric cooler (DC and AC) from Canadian Tire a few days ago, and now my phone was saying it was almost dead, despite being plugged in in my car. I thought it had something to do with the electric cooler plugged in in the trunk.

I stopped in Red Deer at Canadian Tire and discovered that my phone charger had a bad connection where it plugged into the phone. Thank goodness it was not the new cooler. Got oil and some new DC phone charging stuff at Canadian Tire before heading back on the highway. I turned off the QE2 just after Red Deer, figured the other highways would provide better scenery and I could also avoid Edmonton.

Nothing exciting happened, and I arrived at Twin Lakes Provincial Recreation Area shortly after 6:00pm. As I was arriving at the campground, there was a nasty looking storm cloud and it rained a bit as I drove in. Nice campground, not too busy. I got my tent up and started a fire, and looked up and the clouds were swirling. I knew it was going to rain, so decided to not throw any more wood on the fire and instead grabbed all the stuff I needed for hot dogs and tailed it to the picnic shelter. It started raining as I ran and once there, it poured and hailed and lightninged and thundered. One bright flash and a second later, one of the loudest thunders I have ever heard. The storm was on top of us. I made hotdogs while the storm unleashed its fury. After 30 minutes or so, it subsided, so I headed back to the tent. The inside of my tent was a bit wet along one side. After investigation, I realized my tent was not leaking, but the hail and rain was coming down as such an angle and with such force, that it was bouncing off the ground, under my fly and getting into the tent a bit. I dried it up and tightened the fly wires a bit better and got everything ready and climbed in bed and started reading. It started raining again and more lightning and thunder. It was cool! As I reading, I had the scare of a lifetime. There was the brightest flashes of light I've ever seen, instantly followed by the loudest thunder ever. Crazy! My tent handled it fine, no leaks or anything.

Eventually the storm passed and I fell asleep.

Back to Calgary

Got a taxi to the airport around 4:00am. Got checked in and waited.

Nothing exciting happened today. All I really have to say is that going through US customs and baggage at Houston was a royal pain the ass. It took soooo long. It's a good thing I had an almost 4 hour layover or I would've missed my flight. It ended up that my flight to Calgary got delayed by couple of hours as well, so didn't get back to Calgary until about 7:15pm.

Tracy picked me up, we went out for supper, and then I went home and crashed!

And that wraps up my 34 day trip to Honduras and Nicaragua.

Off to Managua - Almost finished. :-(

Tried to sleep in a bit, as there's nothing planned for today. We are catching a shuttle to Managua at 11:30am.

We had breakfast then just hung around the hostel for the morning.

The shuttle was uneventful. It dropped us off at the Tika bus station in Managua, which has a hotel and where dad had a reservation. Our first air conditioning of the whole trip, brrrr was it cold when you're not used to it!

We headed out to find something to eat for lunch. Most of the places were closed, but we did find one place that was selling food "buffet-style", you picked what you wanted, she'd scoop it on a plate. You could then sit down in a open-air table area and they'll bring it to you, and get your drinks for you. We had white rice and another rice dish, kind of like chicken fried rice, then a chicken thing with some sort of creamy alfredo-type sauce that had a bit of kick to it (this was amazingly delicious!) and some beef ribs. It was all very good and very cheap, as it was a local restaurant, not a tourist one.

We walked back to the hotel and did nothing for the rest of the day.

Went to bed kind of early, as I have to get up at 3:30am or so to get to the airport.

Isla de Ometepe

Up early, 5:15 to pack and get ready for our 6:00am pickup for the Isla de Ometepe tour. It was about a one hour drive south through Rivas to San Jorge to catch the ferry to Moyogalpa, about 1-1.5 hours, where our guide, Erik, met us.

First we had some breakfast then we went to La Punta de Jesus Maria, a sand point filled with lots and lots of shells that you wouldn't expect to see in a lake. However, this lake was part of the ocean at one point, but got cut off from the ocean due to volcanic activity. It has slowly lost its salinity, and apparently has a lot of unique fish species because of this, including shark and sawfish. The sand point may have been connected to the mainland at one point as well.

Then to Charco Verde, a natural reserve with a green lagoon (because of the algae) and lots of flora and fauna. It was a very overcast day, so the colors didn't really come out, unfortunately. We saw half a dozen howler monkeys. It was hard to get clear shots of them through the foliage. Also saw plenty of birds.

Then to see petroglyphs, which are up to 5000 years old. Then we headed for lunch at a resort along a huge stretch of beach. Lunch was not good at all, both dad and I agreed.

Then we headed to a natural springs (Ojo de Agua). Our guide told us they were neither hot nor cold, but just right. I jumped and near froze to death! It was cold to me!

The morning started off very cloudy and both volcanoes were completely obscured and it even drizzled a bit on us. As the day wore on, the clouds somewhat cleared from the volcanoes, allowing some decent pictures. The bigger volcano is Concepción and is still active. The smaller one is Maderas and is now extinct.

Back to the ferry about 3:45 and back to our hostel after 6:00pm.

I really liked Ometepe. It would have been awesome to stay a few days and rent a motorbike and explore the island. Lots and lots of backpackers around. This is the first place I've been in either Honduras or Nicaragua that would make me consider another trip to Nicaragua.

Around 7:30, we headed to O'Shea's Irish Pub again, as we really liked the food we had last night. Danielle and Alice showed up randomly, so sat with us.

Back to the hostel about 10:00, did some journal stuff and then to bed.