So last week Kara and I went to beautiful British Columbia for a little break before she started her new job. We took the opportunity to relax, we also did some really nice sea kayaking. We flew to Seattle then took the Victoria Clipper to the city of Victoria, Then we rented a car and drove up Island (since we were on Vancouver Island) to the touwn of Tofino. Here are some highlights.

A few shots from that Jamaica trip I said I would post on. Just a few months late.

Here is the place Kara and I stayed at the begining of our trip, its an eco-lodge with a secluded beach. We almost made it for Christmas, but due to a late flight we had to stay the the night in the city of Manta, luckily we have no photos of the hotel we stayed in Christmas night. After a few days on the beach we decided it was time to head to the jungle to do some kayaking.


When we arrived in Tena we were greeted with our first real day's of sunshine. We went kayaking immeidiatley with our friend Jaime. Kara feel victim to some Ecuadorian trickery and had her face painted with "medicinal mud". After a short stay in Tena we decided to move on down to Banos to get ready for New Years.


Banos is a great little town nestled in the Mountains. We stayed at a nice little day spa/lodge where we were able to do some relaxing in the mineral baths before the festivities of New Years.


Ecuador and Latin America have different ways of celebrating New Years. First they spend weeks building these huge statues out of paper mache then at midnight they break it all and burn it. Along with some fireworks, that are probably just Quarter sticks of dynamite and some dancing in the streets it makes for a pretty good party.

Here are a few shots from
Ecuador.

Well I thought would go ahead and post some pictures of our house(kara and I). We still have lots to do but we are living here so we are not in a huge hurry at the moment. Most of what needs to be done is on the inside except for a few obvious asthetic things you can notice some of it in these pictures.






Lanscaping was one of the projects we hoped to tackle this weekend. Making some stairs and gravel walkway down to the front deck. Due to snow we had to cancel our plans which was very unfortunate. I decided to go take these pictures this morning so we could post them this morning.
On the way back inside I slipped in the slushy snow, my feet came out from under me and I dislocated my shoulder! A dislocated shoulder is a kayakers worst nightmare. Especially when you don't do it kayaking. By dislocating your shoulder you increase your chances of dislocating again. The one thing that was fortunate is that thanks to Kara with me coaching, we were able to reduce(re-locate) it almost immediately. Oddly enough shoulder reduction feels really good. I was also able to ice, and take I.B. profen so hopefully it will not cause future problems. So don't expect any kayaking advetures soon.

Also from time to time I will be posting some of my favorite pictures from the past and present. Here is on of my favorites from Colorado this summer, for christmas Kara got this picture and three others transposed into oil and canvas pictures they are incredible in order to see them you will have to visit our new home.

Here is an old favorite I thought was gone for good. I was able to recover it from a web site but I have recently made contact with the person who shot it, hopefully I can recover some pictures from Ecuador 2004.

Also stay tuned for updtes from a trip to Jamaica that is planned for next month.
I am a little late in creating this Blog since I am now homw from Ecuador. I will re-cap the trip soon until then you can read some other Ecuador stories on teamswain.blogspot.com.

This blog has been created to serve as an online travel and kayak journal.