Where I've Been

I was screwing around on the internet today, when I found this html app I had seen a few years back. It lets you see how much of the world you've travelled, in a percentage point. Here's my map:

Create your own travel map - TravBuddy

Only 8%!!! I have more work travelling to do. And it's looking like Turkey in May...

Finale

I've been putting off writing this post, and now I figure I'm ready to do it. My trip is over. I arrived home on Saturday night after a day of hiking in Banff with a girl I met in Hawaii, who lives in Calgary. We had beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, and a great end to my trip. Prior to that I had been hanging with my good friend Dustin in Revelstoke for a week, hanging out with him and his family, and helping him out a little with his auto detailing business. I learned a little about auto detailing from him, and might even try to do it on the side next summer.

I made the right choice going back to Alaska and finishing my trip. Driving in a car solo is much different than backpacking; I definitely met a lot fewer people. The first week up to the Yukon was pretty lonely, I never really ran into people my age, mostly retired RV people. It was great to reconnect with my friends, Terry and Jessica, in Whitehorse, and definitely made some new friends there. The drive up to the Arctic Ocean, hiking in Denali, and the boat tour in Seward were the highlights for me, and I have some amazing pictures from all of them. The amount of wildlife I saw blew my mind! Grizzly bears, black bears, moose, a wolf, bald eagles, humpback whales, orcas, dall porpoises, dall sheep, stellar sea lions, and harbour seals made this trip the most animal plentiful trip I've ever taken. I apologize if my writing has been mediocre on this one, it was really hard to make it interesting when I'm really doing the same thing over and over. I can describe to you how the mountains look or what animals I saw, but what I was mostly doing was repetitive: camping in the mountains. This trip also gave me exactly what I needed after Australia: my mountain fix.

The number one question I get about my trip is what country was my favourite? My answer is always between three: Nepal, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea. All were amazing for different reasons. Nepal had the diverse scenery, jungle lowlands to the nearly nine thousand foot peaks of the Himalayas. The country is literally crumbling, but the people are so friendly and the culture so strong. Never have I been anywhere as interesting as Nepal. The Philippines was a true backpacker country, like something you hear the old hippies talk about the way it was in their day. You can easily get off the beaten track and to amazing beaches, and the people there are some of the friendliest and most hospitable I have ever met. Papua New Guinea was pure adventure; any adventurous traveller should make a pilgrimage there. The country is completely untouched: the reefs are pristine, the jungle unmolested, and the culture unlike anywhere I have seen. The people there can be some of the friendliest people around, but can also be incredibly violent and should not be crossed.

After nearly two years away from home, I'm ready to be back, and feeling good about it. I'm looking forward to expanding my career path and hopefully learning a new skill. I also have plans to develop my photography hobby and hopefully make some money off all these pictures I've snapped on my trip. Also, I was ecstatic to discover the pictures I took from New Britain and New Ireland in PNG are backed up on cd's here, so I'll be working hard to edit and upload those with the thousands of others I still have to go through.

So for the next year I'll be in travel limbo, and you'll be going through Kyle withdrawls. I doubt I'll make it on a trip between now and next summer, but if I do, be sure I'll make a post. The idea is to apply for a scholarship to Indonesia next summer, where I'll get paid to study and live in a tropical paradise, one that I really wanted to visit but wasn't able to. I'll keep posting the odd post on travel tips and whatnot, but the bread and butter of this blog is on hold for now. Thanks for following me on my adventures, and I look forward to entertaining you all next year!

Kyle Werstiuk

R&R

The Shuswap Lakes are the perfect place to unwind after three days of hard driving. I arrived at my Aunt and Uncle's trailer lot at Scotch Creek on Wednesday evening. They own a recreational lot inside a gated community called Caravans West, where many families and retired folks own lots they park trailers and RV's on, usually staying for a good portion of the summer. The community is perfect for families, there's an adult and kids swimming pool, a waterpark and playground. It's also a two minute stroll to the lake, and is right next to Shuswap Lake Provincial Park, where there's a decent beach.

The entire time I was there the temperature soared into the mid thirties, and I fiercely worked to even out the horrible farmers tan I acquired in Alaska. I split my afternoons between the beach and the pool. The first day my uncle Maurice took me in his boat up the Seymour Arm of the Shushwap Lake, one of the more remote arms. At the end of it was a small community, complete with a pub where we had a beer in the sun. The water was nice and calm on the way there, making the dead heads (tips of giant logs lying below the surface, dangerous to water skiiers) visible. The flooding they had there this year had washed a lot of the beachside logs back into the lake, posing a risk to water skiing and wakeboarding.

On Sunday my aunt and uncle left to make the trip back home, leaving me there to watch the place for one more night until my cousin arrived the following day. I decided to go out for a beer and shoot some pool at the local pub, and hopefully talk to somebody my age. The problem with Caravans West is the age is quite polarized; in the hut tub you're either talking to someone eighteen or sixty years old. I don a nice shirt and head to the pub, only to find it completely deserted. I wasn't content with driving back and calling it a night, so I said the hell with it, I'm going to Kamloops for a beer. I knew a couple pubs from my time on the railroad, being layed over for the night waiting to take a train back to Revelstoke in the morning. I walk into the pub, grab a beer and shoot a game of pool. Right after my game is finished I happen to look over at the bar and see a guy that looks quite familiar. I walk over and it turns out to be my old friend, Angry Dave, who's brother I lived with in Revelstoke, and who is also a fellow railroader. We call Dave Angry Dave because he is, well, angry. Example, yelling at a crackhead to fuck off when she begs for change. In the spirit of a reunion after four years, we go out and get very drunk. I woke up on his couch at 8am and Dave drove me back to my truck, where I got to watch him tell the same crackhead to again fuck off, this time with a more hangover induced anger. I laughed.

I got back to Scotch Creek at 9am, and thankfully my cousin, Mark, hadn't arrived yet, as I was supposed to be there to help him back his trailer into the tricky, confined lot. His wife Venessa wouldn't have been happy if she had had to do it alone. They arrived at 1:30, we got the trailer in quickly, and took his two young kids, Brayden and Ava, to the pool and splashed around for the afternoon. That night a couple of their friends, Wes and Claudine, came over and we had a few beers and laughs. The next day I said my goodbyes and drove over the Salmon Arm to stay with my Aunt Lynn and Uncle Ralph at their house.

And here I am today! The weather is still beautiful, so I'd imagine we'll walk around the warf a bit and find some other stuff to do.

Lazy Days

I'm currently soaking up the sun in the Shuswap Lakes and am too lazy to make a post about it.

Going Down

I'm midway through my long journey south through British Columbia. I bailed out of Seward on Friday, driving eight hours and camping overnight at a nice, free campground near the border. On Saturday I made it back to Whitehorse and booked back into the same hostel I was in before. A bit different of a crowd this time, I came back around 1am after drinking with Terry to find a guy passed out snoring on the kitchen floor. 

After Whitehorse I pulled a right turn at the Cassiar Highway, taking me into the heart of the British Columbia Interior. I really liked the drive, it's a paved but unmarked highway that has minimal traffic on it, and great scenery. It makes for a fun ride too, weaving through the winding corners up and down the steep hills that cut through the dense forest. I saw a shit ton of black bears, too. I camped in another free campground (BC Recreation Sites are awesome) for the night and headed out early this morning, pulling a good ten hour shift behind the wheel to get to Prince George. And here I am, tomorrow I'll head to Scotch Creek, on the Shuswap Lakes, to spend some time with my aunt and uncle at their trailer lot. 

It's a good feeling to be back in Canada, where the temperature measurement system makes sense, everything is back to kilometers, the people are far less ignorant and religious, and global warming is an acknowledged issue. The only thing I'm going to miss is the cheap beer and gasoline...

Happy Birthday To Me!

Yesterday was an awesome birthday! First off, the weather here has been incredible! On the 25th I hiked to the Harding Icefields, wayyyyy up behind the Exit Glacier, in the alpine. It was a very nice landscape, and I saw a couple black bears in the meadows, but there were a lot of people, making the trail quite crowded.

So yesterday I had booked an ocean tour to go see the Kenai Fords National Park and it's massive glaciers. Normally I am not a fan of tours, I like to go seek and find my own adventure and learn something in the process, but tours are the only way to see these glaciers, so I spoiled myself for my birthday and booked it. It was a beautiful morning in town, with a little fog hanging around in the harbour. I lined up with the plethora of senior citizens and boarded the boat. We departed the harbour and soon were mired in a thick fog and low cloud that would plague us for a couple more hours. Luckily it didn't interfere with our wildlife viewing. We were soon at the side of a cliff face watching various sea birds, including Puffins. We also caught a quick glimpse of a Humpback Whale. The boat captain was very generous when it came to spotting wildlife, he would stop the boat on a dime and call out over the speakers what he was seeing.

Shortly after we were out in the middle of the bay, cruising around a pod of Orcas. This was exactly what I wanted to see in Alaska, and seeing them completed my trip. They truly are magnificent animals. After that we took a long cruise toward the glaciers, stopping briefly to look at colonies of Stellar Sea Lions. As soon as we arrived in the fjord, the fog broke and we had amazing clear skies. This made the view of the Aialik glacier incredible. We sat near the toe of it for a good half an hour, watching a couple large pieces break off and crash into the seas below with a loud thunder-like sound. On the way back we were so lucky: we spotted around nine Humpback Whales! These were just as amazing as the Orcas, and much more amazing as the first. I managed to catch a few complete breaches, when the whales crash up out of the water, becoming completely airborne. All in all, the tour was incredible! I think it would be pretty hard to top that kind of a birthday.

And now I start the long journey back towards home, but first a stop in Salmon Arm to visit family...

Last Stop In Alaska

This is it, the last stop in Alaska before I start making the journey back to home and responsible life. I spent my last couple days in Anchorage getting my vehicle repaired, which went by without a hitch. I figured I would have to spend around $400, and that's what I ended up spending. It turns out only a plate inside the struts needed to be replaced, luckily not the whole strut themselves, which would have cost around $700. Due to the neanderthal like Swiss guy I was sharing the dorm room with, who kept snoring and farting in his sleep all night (seriously, it was fucking rank), I tried to pull a late one and went to the late showing of the Dark Knight Rises, which was heinously awesome. Whoever is responsible for the casting of that movie should be given a gold star.

I arrived into Seward today around 1:30, and couldn't check into the hostel right away, so I jumped around downtown a little and checked out some boat tours of the nearby glaciers, and I think I decided on a six hour tour. It's a little pricey, but it's my birthday on Thursday (when I'll do the tour), so I have to spoil myself a little. I went and checked out the Sea Life Centre, which is basically a small aquariam sort of thing. It was decent. Tomorrow I'll go hike up to the Exit Glacier, then boat tour and drinking!