Adventuring with Herbert Putkey

Back to NY for another 2 week trip. This one straddled the Easter weekend, which I wasn’t too happy about. Our company keeps a bike at the hotel we stay at, so I managed to get in a couple of rides on the Bethpage Park bike path  The path is quite nice through a forest and around a couple of small lakes, and is entirely separated from the road. On the second day, I did the same path, but biked from the hotel instead of driving there, which added about half an hour each way.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/873605/best_bike_trails_around_long_island.html

From new_york_april_09

I also went in to Manhattan on the Saturday. Unfortunately the weather was cold and wet. I went in to the Natural History Museum, which was interesting, but packed with people.

Theresa had a Conference in Palm Springs, so I tagged along. The hotel hosting the conference was pretty fancy (valet parking only!) so i tried to take advantage of that. I arrived on Thursday, and went to see The Living Desert. It’s basically a zoo dedicated to the flora and fauna of the deserts of the world. They had animals such as Giraffes and Zebras. It also had a 5 mile hiking trail, which I did part of.

See the pictures on picasa.

On Sunday, June 15th, 9 of us gathered in Glasgow to embark on the West Highland Way - a 95 mile walk north through the highlands of Scotland. The team was David Eaton, Cliff Eaton, Fei Tan, and the Vancouver Clan (mom, dad, Steven, Sharon, Theresa and myself). Unfortunately Oli couldn’t make it due to a broken leg suffered just before the trip (full of excuses).

The trip was really good, despite many pairs of painful feet. The scenery was great for almost the entire week, and everyone got along really well. We used a company called Transcotland to book our rooms and move our luggage each day so that we just needed to carry a day pack. Mom took all forms of transport (train, bus, taxi, ferry) to get between the stages she wasn’t walking and David had to leave before the last stage. The rest of us completed the Way. Steven, Sharon, Dad, Cliff and I climbed Ben Nevis, the highest peak in Britain, on the 8th day - a tough finish on tired legs.

During the trip David celebrated his 63rd birthday (on our longest stage - 20 miles), and dad his 60th. Interestingly our oldest members were the fastest walkers, with David always in the lead.

A day in the Way went something like: wakeup; eat big Scottish breakfast; pack up and apply blister treatments; walk/eat for about 7 hours; nap/laundry; eat big dinner; watch some footy in a pub over a pint (Euro 2008 was going on).

Fei created a google map with the different places we stayed. As usual, I’ve made an album of the pictures.

The second stop on our trip, after Dublin, was Dingle. In the south west of Ireland, we’d read that the Dingle peninsula was a beautiful drive, and that you could bike it too. We decided to rent bikes in town to ride around the 47km circuit, and we had a great experience. It was really misty, and we got wet even though it wasn’t raining. We didn’t get the views we were hoping for, but it was still beautiful.
I’ve created a google map of our route here.

The pictures from the whole Ireland visit are up on my picasa albums.

Unfortunately we only had a week for our tour of Ireland. There were some sights I really wanted to see, so that meant a few days of long driving.

We started in Dublin. I used my Hilton points for a free stay at the Conrad for two nights. It had a good location right next to St. Stephen’s Green, a large park in the heart of the city. We did a tour of Trinity college and a historical walking tour of Dublin. We also met Tessa for a dinner and some bevies.

Next stop was Dingle, in the southwest. We rented a car and drove there, stopping at the Rock of Cashel in the Plains of Tipperary along the way. It was a beautiful sunny day as we explored the rock and it’s cathedral - a striking site as you approach since it is so much higher than the surrounding land. We stayed at the Mileston B&B in Dingle, and the owner was full of information on what to see and do, including a detailed map of the peninsula. We rented bikes and did the 47km loop, which was great.

After that we went on to Doolin, famous for it’s traditional Irish music. Unfortunately it’s now completely for tourists. It was still a nice place to stop, and it was close to the Cliffs of Moher, which were well worth going to.

From Doolin we went on to visit Theresa’s relatives in county Monaghan, about 1 hour north of Dublin. We had an interesting tour of their home-made hydro-electric dam and 12 ft water wheel. I was very impressed.

Our final stop in Ireland was Belfast. We dropped the car off at the airport and took the bus from there with Tessa. It was already late afternoon when we got to Belfast, so we dropped our bags off at the hostel and walked around the “Golden Mile”, which wasn’t really that golden. We then went for dinner and then drinks at a cool place called Muriel’s. We were all tired so we tried to get a good night’s sleep, but unfortunately we were staying at the loudest hostel in the world. The next day we were exhausted so we went for breakfast (at McDonald’s - everything else in downtown Belfast was closed on the Sunday morning) and Theresa and I took the ferry to Scotland.

The Ireland album is up on picassa.

We went to visit Jenna Linn Putkey, our niece, born in the middle of March. Of course she was very cute, but still too “newborn” for us to figure out who she looked like.

See the whole album.

Perhaps she looks most like her grandfather.

Our final stop on the trip. We took a bus through the Andes to Santiago from Mendoza. On the way, we went past Acongaua, the highest mountain in the Americas. Unfortunately we couldn’t figure out how to get on a bus that would stop in the park and let us hike around a bit before moving on, but we did manage to get a picture of the mountain from the moving bus! We also had a ridiculous 3.5 hour delay at the border, even though there really weren’t that many people in front of us. We only had 2 days in Santiago, so we basically just walked around the city as much as we could. We went to the pre-Columbian museum, and up Santa Lucia park, and Cerro Cristobal for the views…which showed how much smog there was around. For me, Santa Lucia park was the highlight - I thought that it would be a grassy hill, but it actually had series of stairs, fountains, and buildings built into it.

Santiago is also famous for its Lapis Lazuli, a blue stone found only in a few places on earth. Theresa really likes it, so she bought a necklace there.

The pictures from Santiago are up here.

We had 4 nights in Mendoza, which is the longest of anywhere on the trip. The city has big tall trees lining all the streets and was quite nice. Unfortunately they had gotten as much rain in the previous week as they normally get in a year, so it was a lot wetter than we were expecting! Mendoza is Argentina’s wine region, so we went on a bikes and wines tour which was pretty good, although the bikes were terrible. We also went on a rafting trip that was a lot of fun. Other than that, it was the usual exploring and eating. Whenever it wasn’t raining there were a lot of people out in the streets and plazas - I think it was our favourite city on the trip.

As usual, some of our Mendoza pictures on our picasa page.

A reserve just south of Mendoza, Payunia has the densest concentration of volcanoes on the planet.

After the lake district, we went north towards Mendoza. After a night in Malargue, we went on to stay at Kine, a eco-turism place on actually inside the reserve. We didn’t know what to expect - we thought it would be some sort of small town, but it was actually just a single family home. It was miles from anywhere! On the way in, the road had been washed out and a truck was stuck. It took a couple of hours for them to get through. Since the road went through a dried river bed, we think it must get washed out every time it rains, with is just about every day during the summer.

We went horseback riding and had a couple good walks. It was spectacular scenery all around - red rocks, guanacos, volcanos. On the way out, we joined a tour of the volcano circuit. It was hard being squeezed onto a minibus with 15 people after a few days with the whole world to ourselves. The black barren landscapes around the volcanoes were really impressive, though.

All our pictures are here.

We flew from Buenos Aires to Bariloche, which is the centre of the lake district turism. We did a half day kayak trip on Lago Gutierrez as part of a group, and then a 2 day trip with camping on Lago Mascardi which was just Theresa and I and our guide Joe. After that we took the teleferico up to the top of Cerro Otto, and then did a short hike to some different viewpoints around the mountain. The next stop was Junin de los Andes at the north end of the lake district. We took a bus along the famed Ruta de los siete lagos to get there. Junin is a much quieter town with much less tourism and we both really liked it. Our main purpose in going there was to explore the Lanin national park, so we did a day hike to the base of Volcan Lanin, that had spectacular scenery.

Some of the pictures are here.