I finally decided on a photo hosting site. Though it’s not all that inexpensive at around US $60/year, SmugMug is well organized and provides all of the features I was looking for. It’s very user-friendly and it will make posting and linking to pictures much easier for me. I’ve already redone the previous galleries and will start posting the photos I’ve had backlogged for some time now.

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.

I have slacked off far too much in posting pictures of our “progress”(es).  I can initially blame things on the fact that our old Nikon digital camera finally gave up the ghost, for which it won some last minute points with me (I hated that thing).  Anne brought us replacements though in December (Panasonic FZ50 for me, Canon A630 for Claudia), so I have no excuse for not posting since then.  Since the last time I posted, Claudia has advanced to 6 months and Porota is active as ever.  The doctor says she has long legs.

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.