tyax - wilderness resort

250 km north of Vancouver in the South Chilcotin mountains
Float plane assisted cycling and fishing in the summer, heli-skiing in the winter, hunting all year round.
We took the opportunity of the BC Day public holiday to make the great escape north to do a bit of adventuring. Our main goal of-course was to undertake the spruce lake riding tour, which included a float plane trip from Tyaughton Lake (at the resort) up to Spruce Lake at a higher elevation.
Once at Spruce Lake, all we had to do was ride home through a magnificent valley surrounded by naturally occuring meadows and snow capped mountains...not a bad ride!
























Leighton attaching the bikes to the back of Gonzo using hi-tech bike rack technology



















Float plane swooping in to collect us and the bikes.
The plane is a Beaver, and is over 50 years old...i wouldn't have got in had i known that!



















View from the float plane of the mountains - absolutely stunning!

























Vista along route





















Leighton in the meadows: native wildflower include: lupins (blue); indian paintbrush (red), native lilly (yellow)



















Lake Duffy on drive home from Tyax

Muhu to Saaremaa - in the rain

Second day of the cycling adventure, so of course we encounter the first rain of the European holiday. The rain didn't start off so bad, but it soon turned into determined, soaking rain, that kept up it's efforts for the duration of our ride.

Before starting our epic semi-aquatic adventure, one of the other guests at the bed and breakfast took us for a botanical tour of the local area, showing us a few orchards. Apparently this area of Europe is still in glacial rebound after the last ice age, rising out of the sea at a rate of 1cm a year. This has meant new land has appeared since human habitation, which has resulted in a unique environment of human administered meadows, which a rich diversity of species.

The lady at the bed and breakfast was also pretty adorable. She showed us some of the dresses she made for her wedding, in the traditional Muhu style. It's pretty rare to visit a place where the old traditions are still being practiced.

Anyways, after we got going, the rain set in, and we plugged away for about 45km, getting wetter with each passing kilometre. It appears there is a reason why all the plants are so green around here.

Cycling in Estonia

Well, we've finally managed it - we're doing some cycling around in Estonia. We met the very helpful people at City Bike, who have provided us with some rather flash bikes, and advice to spend our time riding around the island of Saaremaa. Usually they organise a route, and suggested accomodation along the way, but somehow we've managed to dodge most of their good intentions, and we're now winging it around the island. They helped us book the first night, which was very handy as most of the people at our bed and breakfast don't speak English!

After getting our bikes and leaving City Bike richer by about 35kg of our luggage (we seriously owe those guys), I managed to get us lost in Tallinn for the second time in as many days, before Ro navigated us to the bus station. The bus driver was a bit non-plussed by our bikes, declaring that 'We have a seriouuuus probleeeem'. However, a decade of travelling to downhill races in inappropriate transport meant that I soon had the bikes stashed. The bus driver may have even smiled a bit.

We got off the bus at Virtsu, before getting on the ferry (or more precisely, in the loading lines for the ferry, not the best place to perform the reverse of my disassembly trick. I think I saw the bus driver smile again...) However, after that it was all smiles. The ferry was smooth and new (I think we just saw a news item saying that it just started service, but maybe they were just putting a red rope on it - my Estonian is pretty poor), and we started following the signposted cycling route once we got off. The islands of Humu and Saarema are picturesque and unspoilt, as well as being delightfully flat.

We're spending tonight at a beatiful bed and breakfast in Koguva, an historic fishing village. The houses are still thatched around here, and apparently most of the residents are descended from the original inhabitants. The cycling holiday is starting well!

Tallinn and Raspberries

We've just spent two days sightseeing around Tallinn. The last time I visited was after being pithced off a bus at the Latvian border, and hitching a ride back with my tail between my legs. This time we arrived at 10:00 in the morning, to sstart the fun game of attempting to find accomodation, while weighed down with about 50kg of luggage. Flushed with success after managing to book ferry tickets, I had neglected to book a room - an oversight I was now regretting.

After some trotting around and recriminations, we managed to find a room in a hostel in old town, then set about doing some proper sightseeing. The old town of Tallinn has been well preserved, and is now a major tourist attraction. Some bit's were pretty nice, like the Lutheran church where we climbed up the steeple. Others were cheesy and touristy beyonds words - at the city square I was invited to try a medieval bear dish by a young tout who looked like he'd dressed by raiding a theatre troup's costume cabinet.



Tallinn's other treasure is good cheap food and beer, a relief after Sweden training me to associate hunger pangs with financial ruin. The biggest treat was a pancake restaurant called Kompresser. They had good savoury pancakes, but the biggest treat was one of the dessert pancakes, which had a topping of condensed milk and Raspberries! It seems people aren't to proud to pick them here, which is pretty cool. I've also seen them at markets, and even frozen in bulk in the supermarket.

Stockholm - Brollop madness

Still on the ferry, trying to get the blog up to date. Through the window, the northern sun is wrapping the Swedish archipelago in a warm yellow glow. The view is balanced by the disco of doom, which is now plowing through a bunch of very old and bland "hits" from the 60's and 70's. I was a bit worried when I thought the photo obsessed pelican was doing the rounds again, but it turned out to be a troupe of flouro clad dancers, of worryingly indeterminate gender. It's surprising what constitutes relief sometimes.

Anyways, back to the story. We left Kiruna the day after the mine tour (turns out that there is not a lot else to do...), and our little group started to split up. Hugh headed off to England, with Rob to follow the day after. As a parting gift Kiruna gave Hugh a dose of food poisoning, which looks to be even less fun when you're on crutches and an airplane. We split from Hugh at Stockholm airport, I can only assume he is still alive.....

For the rest of us, it was back to Stockholm for a last look. Rob, Ro and I headed out for the final dinner that night, then the tour became just Ro and I. Rob had a couple of days by himself before joining up with Hugh again (assuming he survived!), while we were heading out to Tallinn on the ferry the next evening.

Stockholm is presently in the grip of Royal Wedding Madness, otherwise known as Br öllop. The wedding is next weekend, and the city centre is filling up with a bunch of stages, dance areas, markets and other stuff related to the wedding. It appears the Swedes love an excuse of a party, and the wedding is a good excuse. On the upside for travelling tourists, they were also offering cheap icecreams, and free wifi in the city centre. Happy Times.

Once we checked out Stockholm, all we had to do was catch the ferry to Tallinn, and apparently simple task that we made a complete pig's ear of. We decided to not use the transfer bus (times weren't convenient), or the local bus (schedule was confusing), but instead took the train. The train, in it's defense, was ok, but the real kicker was that my map was incorrect, so that a walk that appeared to be a simple 1.5km walk (my current total baggage load is 27kg, and Ro's is similarly on the edge of her ability) turned into a 3km death march, complete with wrong turns up car entrances, a rock in Ro's shoe, and a horrible feeling that we would miss the ferry. We ended up making it, just, which at least meant we didn't have to battle any queues in checkin. And so I'm now in a surreal ferry nightclub, getting the blog up to date over a dodgy internet connection. I'll add some photos when I next get access to a good connection (apparently Tallinn is pretty wired), and try to make a bit more sense in the next few entries.

Kiruna - it's all about i-ron

I-ron (or iron, when not pronounced by drunk Kiruna youths), is the reason for Kiruna's existence. On my last visit here I was unable to do the mine tour, but I was determined not to be foiled this time. (An aside from the the cruise ship bar. Last time on this ferry, I spent my time trying not to be seen by a bunch of scarred up and very scary looking Russian labourers who were drinking their way from Tallinn to Stockholm and back again. This time, the band has stopped, but a bunch of retirees are doing the limbo. At least the photo-obsessed pelican hasn't come back...)

The Kiruna ore deposit is a shaped like a big credit card, jammed into a mountain. It's about 4km wide, a couple of hundred metres thick, and descends at least a couple of kilometres into the ground at a slight angle. The mine started as an open cut mine, but has been underground since about the 50's or so. Since the ore is on a bit of angle, the technique they use is to work from the side 'below' the ore. As the ore is removed, the rock from the side above (the 'fall' side) falls into the gap, which leads to the ground slowly subsiding on the fall side.

Guess which side the town of Kiruna is sitting on.

This leads to the development that they'll have to move the town in the next few years. They've actually tested out the idea of just picking up every house and trucking it down the road, but ended up being a bit of a hassle, so they'll just knock most of it down and rebuild again. I'm not sure which side this will be on, but hopefully it will be on the other side.

The mine tour was ok - we took a bus which went about 700m underground into the mine, where a tour guide took us through a bunch of installations that described how the mine worked. The mine seems a pretty simple affair - keeping in mind the credit card analogy, they drill down on the fall side, establish a level to work from, then knock out the ore from above the send it to the surface via skips. Everything is big, hard core, and occasionally surprising. The ore skips travel at about 70 km/h up the shafts, the dump trucks are electric with a windup cord (just like your vacuum cleaner at home), and a lot of the machinery is controlled by remote from the surface. Apparently a Peugoet once came up in the skip, so it would appear that miners are not devoid of a sense of humour.

Once they get the ore, they smash it into powder, bake it into little balls, then stick it on a train where it is taken to Narvik to get shipped to the rest of the world. They're very proud of their ore - it's the higher quality one (magnetite, as opposed to haematite), so it's more pure and less expensive to refine.

Cultural Experiences in Kiruna

"Why the hell would you come to Kiruna??!! This place is a hole!" - Local young male in pub, Kiruna.

Third post, second beer started, the band is playing 'Are you lonesome tonight', and I just had my photo taken with a man dressed up as a pelican. The blog is starting to acquire a Hunter S. Thompson vibe.

After being foiled by licensing laws in Norway, the boys (Rob and Hugh, and my good self when Ro wasn't looking....) were determined to make amends when we got to Kiruna. If anywhere was likely to have an interesting nightlife, we reasoned that the Swedish equivalent of Queenstown would provide it.

Well, we did manage to get a bit socially lubricated, but the night was sufficiently tame that most of it can be related here. First stop was a small pub, which was ok except for the bar staff's determination to server me green alcopop drinks. It appears your manly Kiruna Iron miner doesn't have long curly hair. With that lesson learned, and the pub closed, we progressed to the local nightclub with our local guide (who provided the quote at the top of the blog). Amusingly, Kiruna is blessed with 2 night clubs, so of course one is 'cool', with a huge line out the door (which looks weird at midnight, but full sunlight, and the odd hotted up Volvo doing blockies), and the other is dead as a door nail.

Spending an hour queueing with a bunch of Swedish teens didn't have a lot of appeal, so we decided on the 'uncool' club, which also doubles as restaurant. Rob is fond of pointing out that almost every destination so far has been 'just like Swan Hill', and then listing a few differences. At this club, the only difference was the language spoken - pretty damn funny. We met a few Swedes (who all expressed amazement that we'd willingly visited Kiruna), stayed until the club closed, then went back to our hostel, with mission accomplished.