We bought the land up on laguna espejo so we are more or less your neighbours now. I would really appreciate to meet you one day in the near future. We want to build a loghouse from september on because now the winter is here and it is impossible to do anything up there.

Maybe if you interested in, we could get in contact.

So far, best greetings and have a nice weekend.
Angi and Guido

Eloísa turned one on May 7 and so far she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed her first year on Earth. She has skipped crawling altogether and is learning to walk, still with assistance, but getting more sure-footed with every step. She loves music and starts “dancing” as soon as a good beat gets going. She seems especially interested in the Blues, with Popa Chubby being among her favorites.

She has also learned a few words; she says “agua” when she wants something to drink, “pan” (or something along those lines) when she’s hungry, and “papa” whenever I walk in the house or room. She also mimics the dogs she hears barking outside, as well as the Austral Parakeets that come into town to eat the remaining apples at this time of year. She laughs a lot, too, which is a good sign, and still likes to sleep all night long, though she prefers to stay up later than she probably should. She’s all but given up the milk bar at this point and enjoys eating out at the Highchair Restaurant. They serve yogurt, fruit and all sorts of good homemade food there. She eats it all without complaint and even tries to share it now and then. She’s a generous girl.

Eloísa has enjoyed visits from her grandparents and aunt Anne at different times during her first year and is always sad when those visits come to a close. She has also received many wonderful gifts from extended family and friends, and though her parents have fallen a bit behind in some very over due thank you notes, she wants everybody to know that she has gotten much use and enjoyment out of all the clothes, books, toys and keepsakes that she has received.

Soon, Eloísa will have to start thinking about spending some time in day care, if for no other reason than to start making friends other than her parents. We sure don’t want her to burn out from boredom before she realizes that there are many cooler people her own age out there. She does have a few friends already, but is still trying to figure out why they only appear randomly from time to time. I think she’d rather have a regular schedule where she and her buddies can get together and pick up where they left off the previous time, plotting against the big people and whatnot.

Don’t forget to click on the image to open the photo gallery of Eloísa at One.

We also put the finishing touches on both docks. I actually had to add a whole second level to the base camp dock, as I had misunderestimated how high the lake would rise (misunderestimation seems to be the common denominator in general). I had to cut up 15 more beams plus a bunch of floor boards, but there were a couple logs left over from other things that provided all the lumber. One of the next objectives will be to build steps from the dock to part way up the hill. Mom got that project underway.

We finally got a pickup truck. It was sorely needed and immediately proved itself useful. It’s a 2001 Toyota Hilux. With it, I was able to bring a lot of firewood back to town for the winter and it also greatly facilitated the construction of the first four bridges. After finishing the shelter and docks, the bridges were next on the agenda. I was trying to figure out how I could co-opt/trick someone into helping me with that when the phone rang one day. It was my buddy Patricio, who did our survey last year. The owner of the company’s son had just got into town and was looking for an internship with a startup tourism project. To make a long story short, he plans to do an internship with us next season but in the meantime volunteered to help me with things like bridge construction, firewood hauling and whatever general hard, manual labor I needed help with. Talk about a gift horse. We got four bridges done in a couple of weeks!

We had amazing weather all summer (at least, from January through March) and it is still fairly good half way into April, though a bit overcast most of the time. Didn’t do much fishing this year, as the late afternoon “return trolling to the car” was replaced by “return with load of firewood to the truck”.� Now, I’m resting up in town for a while and focusing on other priorities for the moment.

Click on the photo to open the gallery in a new window.

Shawn Strange, an old college friend from American University, was here to visit. We got reconnected through Wendy after Shawn ended up doing a stint at Palmer Station, Antarctica. She’s in Santiago for a year now, and came down to visit and help out at the land.

Elo�sa is growing fast and is already 4 months old. She is very sociable, doesn’t complain much (unless she is being ignored while she thinks she should be part of whatever is going on), and makes all sorts of noises and sounds. She has pretty good coordination and studies things intently. She loves the guitar and tries to play it with me after studying my hands for a while.

Click on the image for a hodge podge of pictures from the past three months or so.

She had her first checkup today and all is well except for an irritated throat which won her some evil medicine drops and a new pacifier. We don’t really plan to lend her the pacifier too often, but even the pediatrician agreed that in her case, or at least until her throat clears up, it’s a pretty good thing to have around. Ironically, I found out that the game of jumping frog, which she stops crying to take part in, is probably one of the things that irritates her throat if played too soon after feeding. All that milk comes part-way back up. Oops, I probably could have figured that out on my own if I’d thought about.

Claudia is healing up and is getting around without much problem, though she still has a way to go before claiming herself fully recovered.

Here are some photos of Eloísa. As always, click on the image to open the gallery…

Oh, by the way, in Spanish, “Eloísa” is spelled with an accent on the “i”. We don’t care if anyone else spells it that way, but I just thought I’d mention it in case it comes out as jibberish on anyone’s computer. You can let me know and I’ll just spell it the Amerkuhn way.

As I have said before, I have a new appreciation for how much time and effort goes into jobs like these, so I’m happy with the way things turned out despite the fact that I originally thought I would have the docks finished over a month ago. I had Muttell help out with more lumber, as well as Cristian who once again provided great assistance in hauling lumber and helping me build the campsite dock. Claudia’s cousin Cecilia’s husband, Marc, helped me haul some lumber and finish off the first dock during two non-contiguous days while visiting. He got to see the best and worst of the weather at our land on those days.

I’ll put the finishing touches on the two docks when we get another stretch of good weather. In the meantime, I need to start planning out how to go about organizing the bridge work, who I’ll get to help, etc. All of the lumber is cut and hauled into place (more or less) but needs to be painted. I also need to cut up a bunch of 1 meter lengths of tree trunk that will serve as bank reinforcements for each bridge. I’ll be working all winter on these, no doubt

As always, click the image to open the photo gallery.

We are building seven short bridges to cross drainage ditches on the access road we are building behind Alejandro’s house. We decided to go with 3 10cmX10cmX3m beams per bridge, plus crosspieces and floor boards. That meant that a lot of trees would need to be sawed up. Since we want to limit the number of live trees we are cutting down, we started by looking for usable deadwood, both in the forest and along the shore. The lake is at its low point right now and the shore is strewn with old fallen trees, most of which spend a good part of the year under water. A lot of them have very nicely preserved wood inside and we were able to get a lot of beams and boards out of these. Muttell also found a number of usable trees lying on the forest floor (actually, slightly elevated off the ground), so we limited the number of live trees we cut to just a few. All of the wood is Coigue (Nothofagus Dombeyi). One of the first trees we cut into on the shore turned out to be Tineo, or Palo Santo as it is called here. It is a beautiful wood, far too good to use for bridges, so we cut it up into some nice slabs. I hope to be able to dry it properly and make a dining room table and other furniture out of it.

Of course, sawing the lumber was only half the job - the other half was getting it out of the woods or shore, onto the raft, hauling it across the lake, and then getting it to the site of the bridges. I should have guessed ahead of time that the jeep would only last long enough to crap out on the beach as soon as we were ready to haul the first load. One of the locals has a team of oxen, so I was able to hire them and get the wood off of Alejandro’s beach and over to the access road in two days. We still have at least one more day of hauling, but it doesn’t seem like such a daunting task anymore now that we’ve done it a few times.

In the end, I think I’ve more than made up for all of the hard labor I may have ever weaseled my way out of in the past, but it was all rewarding and I even learned to saw beams “al pulso” (by hand). I know this is only the beginning, but all in all, I’d say we’re off to a good start.

As always, click on the image to open the photo gallery.

As always, click on the photo to open the gallery.

Here are some pictures of the kayaks we got. I’d wanted to get a couple of touring kayaks for use on the lake. Importing from the US or elsewhere would have been far too expensive, so I searched around and found a guy in Argentina who makes fiberglass kayaks. The guy’s name is Ricardo and his company, SDK Kayaks is located outside Buenos Aires. I decided that if I was going to make the effort to get two, I might as well get four and have extras to rent or use in groups. In the end, I don’t know if fiberglass was the best choice for someone who has little kayaking experience or lives in an area where roads are rough. Fiberglass kayaks are fairly delicate as we found out when we got back to Coyhaique and discovered that two of them had been cracked in transit somewhere. Not sure if it was our fault or the shipping company’s, but thanks to my kayak-knowledgeable friend, Jerome, and a Spanish guy named Diego who subsequently rented a kayak from us, they were easy enough to patch up and will only suffer from some cosmetic blemishes.

We had the kayaks shipped to Comodoro Rivadavia, on the Atlantic coast due east from Coyhaique. It’s a long, hot, dusty drive across barren scrub land, but Argentina is always a welcome adventure. Customs told us not open them until we’d gotten them back to Coyhaique and had them approved, so we’ll never know at what point during transit the two were cracked. Ricardo sent us the paint to patch them up and I got the rest of the materials locally.

The kayaks are definitely nice. They row smooth and fast and are comfortable. Ricardo did a nice job building them. I flipped one on the far side of the lake, luckily near shore, and so learned my lesson about being prepared. I’ve got a lot of practicing to do, but it’s a hobby that will provide good exercise and a different perspective on the natural world, so I plan to learn as much as possible despite the relatively short warm-weather season down here.

As always, click on the photo to check out the image gallery.

We are advancing slowly but surely at the lake and getting to know people in and around Coyhaique.  We got our kayaks (which is pretty much just a taunt to Claudia at the moment since she can’t use them) and have started renting and learning how to use them.  I flipped on the far side of the lake but fortunately was next to shore and accompanied by a Spanish guy who rented one to row from Puerto Chacabuco to Laguna San Rafael, a ten day trip (he flipped in 10 foot waves on the second day, two miles from shore and had to mayday for rescue - a boat from a salmon farm picked him up in ten minutes, fortunately).  Still, they are very nice kayaks and despite the fact that two were cracked in transit around the cockpit (our friend Jerome helped us fix them easily enough) we are pleased to have them and plan to get a lot of use out of them exploring lakes and fjords in the area, once we get comfortable that is.  We got them from an Argentine guy named Ricardo who makes them in his shop outside Buenos Aires.  Check him out at:  http://www.sdk-kayaks.com

I am looking for a better way to post pictures, so if anyone stops by here and has a recommendation (Justin?) I would be much obliged.  I’ve been using a plugin through Dreamweaver and Fireworks (after resizing through Photoshop) but I’ve been getting errors since changing cameras and it’s too lengthy a process anyway.  I’m happy enough with editing in Photoshop but would like to use an online gallery service to host pictures.  It would have to offer an easy way of creating specific galleries and linking to them.  PBase looks like the most promising solution at the moment, but if anyone can recommend another reasonably-priced image hosting service I’ll be sure to check it out.

That’s all for now, but I have photos from Anne’s trip, Pete, Pam, Cynthia and Tim’s visit, kayaks, work progess at the lake and, of course, Claudia and “Porota”, which I’d like to post soon.