Last winter Tawn, our buddy Danno (D-Lo Baggins) and I flew down to Mexico to meet up with our friend Scot and Angie for a long weekend in a small town called Sayulita. It about 30 miles north from Puerto Vallarta. We had such a great time in the short three days we were there, we decided that we would come back again this year for a week or longer. I’m so glad we did.

This year, we rented the same “condo” we did last year. The crew this time (Left to right in the pic below) was Kristi, Phil, Danno, Me and Tawn:

You can find all the picture we took following this link.

We rented surfboards for the week. And spent the days getting up early and surfing for a couple hours:

Then siestas in the hammocks, haning on in the deck and enjoying the view:

Then more surfing. We also did alot of exploring, hiking, scuba diving, sailing, and a lot of drinking:

All in all, we had a great, great time. Time to start planning the next trip!

Oh and this is my favorite picture of Tawn:

She will probably hate it and make me take it down, so enjoy it while it last.

I uploaded all the pictures to our Flickr account. You can view the full collection of photos from the whole trip here.

I broke them up in to small sets, based roughly on the town or area we stayed in. I’ll break them down a little below. The order they are listed below is the order we visited them. Starting on October 9th and returning home on November 2nd 2009.

Sorry if this update is so short and not up to my usual witty standards.

Santiago: Link to pictures

Our first stop was the Capitol of Chile, and the largest city in the country (+5 million). We were completely exhausted after flying 13 hours from Seattle to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Santiago. But we took a bus from the airport to downtown and then jumped on the subway and explored the city. We did not really want to spend much time in Santiago. As in our view, big cities are big cities. But we did have 8 hours to kill before our bus south to Puerto Montt left.

We traveled from our home in Seattle to Puerto Montt, Chile. Which as the crow flies is a distance of over 6800 miles. But only actually walked probably less than a mile to get there!

• Walk a hundred yards from our boat to the parking lot and into a car.
• Get out of the car and walk another couple hundred yards into the Seattle airport and to the terminal.
• Sit all the way to Atlanta, then walk from one terminal to another, a distance of another hundred yards or so.
• Sit all the way to Chile, walk out to a shuttle bus, get off that bus and on to another and sit all, until we get to Puerto Montt.

All told, we could not have walked more than a mile. Not sure why I find this so interesting?

Puerto Montt: Click here for pictures

After sleeping most of the overnight trip from Santiago to Puerto Montt (11 hours) on the most comfortable bus in the world, we showed up in Puerto Montt around 10am. We spent the next two days exploring the town and getting used to the way things worked here.  This process actually took longer than a few days. But we had to start somewhere.

Isle Chiloe: Click here for pictures

We rented a car in Puerto Montt for a week and drove all over this large island. The largest island in Chile, maybe even South America. We stayed in a number of little towns, Quellon, Castro, Ancud. And visited many others. By the time we turned in this little rental, I sorta felt bad. We drove the shit out of that thing. And I think that the car was actually the guys personal car that he rented to us. Not some random rental car. It was a little expensive, renting cars anywhere in Chile is. But we thought this would be the best way to see the most of the island.

Puerto Varas: Click here for pictures

After leaving the island, we drove to a town named Puerto Varas, which is north of Puerto Montt about 15 miles. The town sits on the southern tip of a large lake named Lago Llanquihue (pronounced Yankeeway). Very cool little city with a heavy german influence.

Mount Osorno: Click here for photos

Still having the car, we drove east from Puerto Varas to hike around a very large, very active volcano named Mount Osorno. The volcano was covered in clouds most of the day, but just as we were about to turn back, the clouds cleared and we got some awesome photos.

Frutillar: Click here for photos

This was another very small town on the shore of Lago Llanquihue, again very heavily influenced by german immigrants.

Valdivia: Click here for photos

After returning the rental car, we started taking the buses everywhere. It is very cheap and they go everywhere. For the longer trips we took the more comfortable buses with the larger bus companies. (Pullman, Turbus). And would take the local buses for trips around town or to closer towns. Valdivia is on the coast. We visited a few old forts that protected the city from pirates way back in the day and also stopped off at the Kuntsman brewery for dinner and some local beer.

We also saw what had to be the largest freaking sea lion in the world.

San Baralocia, Argentina: Click here for photos

When we came down here we had just over 3 weeks total. And no schedule or plan. So, for what ever reason, we decided to take a bus from Valdivia to San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. We figured, we were all the way down here, might as well take a visit to Argentina. Bariloche is a ski town and much more touristy than the other places we’d visited so far. But it was a very cool town. And as you can see from the pictures, the modeled themselves after a typical swiss alps villages. Again, heavy on the german/swiss influences here.

Osorno: Click here for photos

Prior to our trip down, Tawn had been email back and forth with a british couple that had sailed from Britian down here to Chile 15 years ago. They had sold their boat and bought a chunk of land and started a ranch/b & b. We had planned on stopping there for a few days to meet them and visit. But the guy was going through some medical stuff and they were up in Santiago. They thought they would be home while we were there, but were unsure of the dates. So we started moving in their direction and visiting towns and areas along the way in case we could setup a visit.

It turned out we never did get to meet them.

Pucon: Click here for photos

This town was a very cool town. Sitting on the shore of a large lake. It reminded me a lot of a mountain town in Colorado. A lot of outdoor tourism goes on here. Just about anything you can imagine. White water rafting, kayaking, mt biking, hiking, horse back riding, motor cycle tours, zip lines. They had it all here. We rented some mountain bikes and took a ride on day and took a bus tour up to some natural hot springs on another day.

You probaly also notice we have a lot of pictures of random dogs. Chile loves their street dogs. Every town has a crap load of them. They are all friendly, dirty as hell, but very well fed. Some are owned by people and some seem to just belong to a certain neighborhood. Out of all the street dogs, we liked the ones here in Pucon the best. Not sure why.

Constitution: Click here for photos

Leaving Pucon, we decided that since we were running out of time. We would head north and visit some towns in the famous wine regoin of Chile. This would also get us a little closer to Santiago, so we would not have to take a huge 11 hour bus ride again.

We decided on going to a town called Talca. To me the funniest thing about this town, was people kept asking us why we came to Talca. They could tell we were americans. I guess Talca was not high on the list of tourist spots in Chile. On our first day in Talca we jumped on a crowded bus and headed to the Town of Constitucion. Which is on the coast. Sort of a small coastal town, and we really had no idea what to expect. But after walking around abit, we found these very cool caves and a HUGE rock outcropping.

We were told to take the train back. We did, that in and of it’self was a very interesting ride. When we saw the train, I thought it was an old piece of shit and kept wondering when the real train would show up. We sat in the back and the lady checking tickets kept coming back and yelling at me for opening the back door of the train to take pictures.

Talca: Click here for photos

As I mentioned, the main reason we went to Talca, was to visit some of the wineries. But it turned out that the day we were there was  national holiday and all the wineries were closed. Booo!

So on our second to last day in Chile, we jumped on a bus and went out to a national park and went for a hike.

We jumped on a (nice) train the next day to Santiago. We wandered around town checking things out before jumping on our flight that night.

We have been in Chile for four days. It’s a little over whelming sometimes. In mexico our Spanish is passable, but here they speak unbelievably fast and drop words short. And tons of slang. But we are getting by. Tawn is doing better with the language than I am. That’s one more thing that makes us a good team.

We spent two days in Puerto Montt. Rented a car today for a week and are staying in a town called Castro tonight. Will be headed a little further south tomorrow to a town called quellon.

Ill update more details and add pictures when we get
home.

The first leg is leaving from Seattle around noon to Atlanta Georgia. Then a overnight 10 hour flight from Atlanta to Santiago, Chile. Then on a bus for a 12 hour ride down to a town called Puerto Montt. From there, we have no plans. No reservations. Just 3 weeks in which to hangout and see what it is we can in that short amount of time. Most likely will be renting a car.

I plan to update the site at least a couple times while we are down there. But I”m not taking my laptop. So, it will be short sweet updates from my phone as we can find Wifi. Most pictures till we get back will be phone pictures.

See you when we get back.

My last update was back in May. It is now, somehow September and we are planning for our big trip to South America next month. But more on that in a bit.

Normally we take a 2 week or longer cruise on the boat and go north to the San Juans or Canada, during July/August. This year however, we did not. We wanted to be able to take as much time as we could on our trip to Chile this fall. So we limited our sailing trips to just weekend outings. And trust me, we had some doozies.

We had some great, trips this year. Hit all the usual spots and a few new ones. The weather out here has been spactacular this year. Super warm and really good wind for sailing. We spent the 4th of July rafted up with a great bunch of friends in Poulsbo for the fireworks, and Laborday with the same group rafted up in Port Gamble Bay. And tons of anchorages and weekends in between, up and down the Puget Sound. There are more than a few pictures up on various “friends” facebook pages to tell the story of my 42nd b-day, and laborday, and other random weekends in between……up and down the Puget Sound. Yeeeeesh!

I don’t think i’ll go into the details of each trip. I’d be typing for days. I did however want to get this post started and the webpage in general updated.

As I mentioned earlier, our big trip this year is three weeks down in South America. Chile, to be more specific. And to all you non boat people reading this. We are NOT taking the boat down. We are flying.

Leaving here on October 11th and flying into Atlanta, then on to Santiago, Chile. From there we are taking a bus down to Puerto Montt, which is about 700miles further south. There we will rent a car and see the sights. Other than that and the fact that we have to be back in Santiago to catch a plane home on November 4th. We do not have any plans or intenerary. No reservations, no schedule, no checked luggage to carry around, no nothing.

We do have a small back pack each with a couple changes of clothes, a guide book, a brand new camera and 3 weeks to see as much as we can. I or Tawn will be updating this site and our facebook pages as often as we can when I can find a free Wifi hotspot.

I thought to myself, “hmmm, maybe I’ll look at the pictures on my camera”.

And then it hit me. Each weekend was sitting right there, in chronological order. Mostly out of focus or poorly framed, but there none the less. So instead of racking my brain trying to remember details from 2 or 3 weeks ago, I’ll fire up the camera and take a trip down memory lane.

The weekend after the last update, Me and Tawn sailed down to Quartermaster Harbor, which is on the south end of a Vashon Island. There was almost no wind so we ended up getting there a little later than we thought we would. We had brought our mountain bikes with us this time, so we went for a  bike ride after we had tied up at the docks. The sun was setting just as we got back.

We woke up the next morning to a little more wind and a nice sunny day. We sailed out of the harbor and headed a short distance away to a little town called Gig Harbor. It had been 5 years or so since we had last visited Gig Harbor. And that was on Thanksgiving on our little boat “Strange Crew”.

The wind was actually blowing pretty good, but as we got out of Quartermaster Harbor, we had to go against the tide. And while the wind was not blowing very hard, it was enough to push us along at 2 knots, however, the tide was running against us at 3 knots. The net result was us moving backwards at 1 knot. That was not very productive.

Gig Harbor is probably the most protected harbor in the entire Puget Sound. The entire anchorage is surrounded with the exception of a small opening on the southern side that requires a tight “S” curve to get in. It’s even tighter at low tide, which is when we just happened to come in at.

As usual, pictures just do not do it justice, but I’ll post them anyway to give you an idea of what it looks like. This is the entrance into Gig Harbor. The picture was taken about 100 yards from shore. As you can see, or not, it looks like there is no way in. The plan is to head straight ahead towards that little grey house in the center of the picture, then turn right towards that lighthouse on the right of the picture:

Once you get to about 20 feet from shore, you’ll see the entrance open up and it looks a little more inviting. The grey house is just out of the picture to the left and the lighthouse is just out of the picture to the right:

Since the tide was out, the depth in the entrance was very low, the depth meter showed we had about 4 feet of water under the keel. Tawn was on the bow keeping an eye out for rocks, just in case I got out of the channel. Once inside the depth increase to a respectable 15-20 feet. While Tawn was on the bow, she shot a quick little video of the entrance as we came through:

We headed home on Tuesday, unfortunatly there was not a puff of wind, so we had to motor the whole way home.

The next weekend is the cheesiest boating related weekend in Seattle. It’s called “Opening Day”, and it’s basically when the retards with the blue blazers and scramble egg “Captian” hats parade their boats up and down a piece of water called the Montlake Cut, to much pomp and crapenstance. It really is very stupid. I’ll not speak of it again.

Since Tawn and I had to work on on Saturday, we would be a couple hours behind them, and by the time we got there, dinner was almost ready. And holy crap was it good. A big ass ham and scalloped potatoes….and a bunch of other stuff.

After dinner we sat around with a few cocktails and ended up talking each other into trying our luck at Squid fishing. Either our luck was lousy or we had no clue how to catch squid. And in all actuality we did not really give it that much of a try. 30 minutes tops.

We woke up on Sunday morning to some spectacularly shitty weather. It was absolutly pouring rain. The plan for easter was to have B-fast on our boat, then a boozy easter egg hunt. Tawn made our traditional Easter B-fast, “Eggs Germeraad” for everyone. They were a huge hit…oh and bacon….mmmm bacon…

The second part of the plan involved hiding plastic easter eggs that we had filled with little bottles of booze. But since the rain would not let up, no one really wanted to go to shore and hid them. So we hid them on the boats and everyone looked for them and stayed nice and dry.

Everyone else had to be back to work on Monday so they headed back to Seattle around 2pm. Tawn and I headed south a short distance away to a little marina called Brownsville, that we had never been to before. Nice sleepy little marina, but since it was easter sunday. There was not a lot going on.

Monday we headed to Poulsbo and grabbed a slip at the marina there. In the summer time this marina will be filled to capacity with visiting boats. In the spring, fall and winter, we had the place to ourselves:

Tuesday found us back home in Seattle. The weather was awesome and the wind was perfect. Managed to take a very cool picture of Mount Rainer:

Word on the street was that the next weekends weather was gonna be sunny and warm. So we invited a few friends to go for a sail with us on Sunday afternoon. We also made plans to meet up with Phil and Kristy on TipToe again.  At first we thought we would all just pile in one boat, but the list of people kept getting bigger and since the weather was supposed to be nice, everyone showed up. So two boats it was.

Things got a little delayed, but we left the dock at around 2pm. The sun was out and the wind actually picked up to between 15-20 knots out of the North.

On our boat was Me and Tawn. A buddy of mine from work, Zach. A friend of Tawn’s from her work, Lola and her B-friend Josh. And Jen from Epic, Dave was down in California working, so could not make it.

We had a great fast sail over to Port Madison. By the time we got there, the other boat, TipToe, was already there and anchored. On board were Phil, Kristy, Jackson, Erin and Sam. Once we got tied up along side. The sun was even warmer and the winds were blocked. We had tons of food and drink. Holy crap was the food good. Zach grilled up some Thai chicken and Lola brought some sort of awesome ass rice salad freaking delicious good thing. Then Sam made these killer tacos. And and I don’t mean those bullshit tacos that you make at home. But those really, really good tacos, that you get from the taco trucks at construction sites. Soooo goood.

I stung up the hammock we all just hung out laughing and telling stories till around 7pm before pulling up the anchor and heading home. The wind had almost completely died by then, so we motored home.

I can tell already, It’s gonna be a great Summer!!

Last weekend Tawn and I got up early and met Danno at Steven’s Pass ski resort. Actually, he met us, since he over slept a little. Normally we’d all drive up in one car, but he had to be back to work on Monday and Tawn and I decided we were going to go snowshoeing and stay the night in a NSF (National Forest Service) ranger cabin for a few days. We had never done this before and it sounded pretty cool.

Snowboarding on Sunday was great. As you can plainly see by this awesome action photo of me flying through the air on my board:

Tawn couldn’t go cause she tweaked her back at work a few weeks earlier. So she went snowshoeing instead. Sunday afternoon, instead of heading back to Seattle and home, we headed east and down in to the little town of Leavenworth, Wa. (Towns website) As you’ll gather from their website, it’s a cheesy little tourist town that models it’self after a little German Alpine village.

A few days before Tawn had found this site: www.recreation.gov and further in she found this Ranger cabin  and we reserved a night to stay there.

We woke up Monday morning and started heading towards the cabin. It was only 50 some miles way to drive so we got there about 11am. Parked at the trailhead and unloaded the packs and snowshoes from the Jeep. The trail to the cabin was actual pretty well packed down. So we did not even need to put on the snowshoes, even though the snow was probably 2-3 feet deep.

The hike to the cabin was only 2.5 miles and we got there in about an hour or a little more. Here are a few pictures of the outside of the little cabin:

And of course a few pictures of the inside for balance and closure….if you need that sort of thing:

As you can see we had to hang our packs up off the floor as there were a couple very industrious mice that lived in the cabin. They worked there little ass off all night trying to get into everything. Tawn kept throwing boots at them during the night as they rattled around in the kitchen trying to get into the pots on the stove.

That little stove may not look like much, but we got a little over zealous in the loading of the firewood and got the tempature in the cabin up to 90 degrees F. We had to go outside and stand in the snow to cool off and open the windows a few times.

We mostly sat around, read some books or took a few hikes, oh and tawn found a small piece of an old sleeping pad or something under one of the bunks, so she decided to climb up the hill behind the cabin and slide down on her new found ‘booger’. And as luck would have it, I had the camera with me, and turned on:

On tuesday we were going to do some more hiking and try to find a few Geocaches that were in the area, but when we woke up. It had snowed 6 inches over night and was still dumping. So we decided to just cook some breakfast and head out. We did not want to get stuck on the East side of the Pass if they closed it due to avalance danger.

This is a picture of Tawn getting ready to leave, wearing her Snoopy hat that she has had since she was 5 years old. Her head is still the same size!! WTF

And one last shot of Tawn, Me and the cabin……Thanks cabin!

My hat is not that old and my head size is steadily increasing in size….! WTF indeed.

Tawn had to work on Thanksgiving this year…I however did not. So me and my buddy Dan drove up to Canada to Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort for 4 days or so of early season snowboarding.

We got a pretty late start out of town on Wednesday, the day before T-day. So we got a room in downtown Vancouver for the night. Roamed around downtown and sampled some of Vancouver’s finest beer….and rum…and scotch….and…….

Woke up close to 11 am turkey day and headed toward Whistler. Which in case you did not know is going to be the site of the 2010 Winter Olymipics! meh….whatever…the olympic suck. But, it is a very scenic hour drive from Vancouver to Whistler Village however.

We hungout for three days and snowboarded and of course participated in much apres ski. The snow was not exactly awesome but it was the first trip of the year, so you can’t really complain.

I can however complain about this:

That was the only picture taken on the whole trip. It’s seemed funny at the time. Now it’s creepy. That is my buddy Dan.

The following weekend me and tawn sailed the boat over to Blake Island. We had not been to the island for almost a year and due to some annoying mechanical issue, had not had the boat away from the dock in over two months.

We built a couple bon fires on the beach and did some hiking around the island. And the sail back home was sweet. Rainy and cold but fun.

There were a few more weekends snowboarding, then on Xmas. We had a bunch of our friends that were orphans and had no family to spend xmas with over to the boat. We all just hung out, watched movies and ate a crap load of turkey and noodles. It was a fun time.

The next big trip was in Feburary. Me, Tawn, Dan flew down to Sayulita Mexico to meet up with Scotty and Angie. We had rented a condo on the beach and spent 4-5 days hanging out, and learning…sorta…to surf. That was an awesome trip. We will be going back next winter.

After a few missed flights and a days detour down to San Diego to visit very quickly with Tawns Aunt Jane, Uncle Tom,  Aunt and Cousins Jilly & Brian and there kidsWe flew into Puerto Vallarta, then grabbed a cab to Sayulita. I was the last one to arrive. Tawn got on a flight 2 hours before I did. So by the time I got there, they were all waiting for me on the balcony. It got more than a little drunk out that night. Surfing the next day was a bit rough, but fun as hell. The water was like 78 degrees. Much, much warmer than it is back home in Seattle, even in the middle of the summer.

Unfortunatly as we were packing for the trip down, I decided that the batteries on the camara were charged up enough. They however were not.  So the only pictures we have are the few that Scotty took.

The first part of March found us back up in Whistler BC for another Snowboarding weekend with Danno, his brother Reid and a couple of his buddies from Tennessee.

Which brings us up to date. Boring quick and not too many laughs….I must be losing my touch. I’ll try better next time.

CB…