Around China in 460 Photos

I know... it sounds like a lot of photos, and it is, but when you consider that I was away for 31 days, that's only 14.8 photos per day. To see all these exciting photos of China 2008, visit my Flickr page , or for some tales from the trails, visit my travel journal.

It was nice to escape Toronto in late March when it was still blanketed in snow, to hike around the spring flowers and trees of Hunan & Yunnan. But it was even better to return to Toronto a month later to blue skies and 22C weather. Good thing that I didn't have a stopover in Alberta. They had a huge snowstorm this weekend!

September Sunburn: One of the Dangers of Walking to Brooklyn

This photo was taken before the sunburn, on the first or second mile on our walk to Brooklyn. For my birthday, I thought that it would be fun to walk to Brooklyn. We started out in the East Village, at First Avenue and 3rd Street marched our way to Park Slope. Without a tour guide, we may not have chosen the best nor most direct route, but we certainly saw a lot of variety. At times, Dan didn't seem too happy, especially in the discount shopping area of Flatbush Ave in downtown Brooklyn, where we really stood out. Plus, it was HOT and humid! And I mean hot. Whenever it seemed like we were really on the wrong path, we would see the red double decker tourist bus go past, so we kept going.

Finally we made it to the lush Prospect Park lined with fancy homes and filled with young mothers and their babies. Exhausted and thirsty at this point, we made out way down the slope to 5th Ave and found the welcoming pub, The Gate. Across from a smaller park full of even more children, we had a delicious pint and then continued down 5th to Coco Roco, a delicious Peruvian restaurant. (If you go, try the Ceviche - it was heavenly!) At the end of a satisfying meal, Dan looked at me and asked: "can we take the subway back?" Of course! I am crazy, but not that crazy.

Look at this map and see our route (more or less - sometimes it wouldn't let me go down one way streets the wrong way). Apparently it was 6.6 miles, but it felt longer.


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Killarney

If you've never been to Killarney, then you really must go!

It is one of the most spectacular parks that Ontario has to offer. On the north shore of Georgian Bay, it is a longer drive than a trip to Algonquin, but certainly worth the investment. It was made famous by the Group of Seven, so if you can't make it to the park, check out their paintings.

The lakes are quite small and most of the park is not accessible by road. We went into Johnny Lake and only had to make one small 100m portage. The rocks and turquoise blue water was stunning, and the swimming was awesome.

We went on a day trip up to The Peak, which involved two portages and a 2 hour hike, in each direction. The final ascent was quite steep, but the 360 degree vista was reward enough. We could see all the lakes of the park, Georgian Bay to the south and the foreboding super stack of Sudbury to the north. It is a sad fact that many of the lakes in Killarney are dead, but they are on the road to recovery. The deep turquoise colour is caused by the acid rain delivered by the smoke stacks of Sudbury.

I believe that I was the only lady accompanied by four rugged and handsome men. Not bad for Fat Hand Lisa!

Fat Hand Lisa

It seems that on every camping trip I get some sort of strange ailment. On my first trip into Algonquin Park, I was inflicted with a bad case of Impetigo on my nose. It is a very unattractive skin infection caused by the strep virus. Since there were no mirrors on the trip, I had no idea what I was dealing with. I kept asking my canoe mates what it looked like and they assured me that it was just a zit and that it would be gone by Sunday. Well Sunday came and we portaged back out of the park to our waiting car. I gazed into the rear view mirror to take in the full horror of the skin infection on my nose. I turned to my friends, wondering why they had not told me how bad I looked. They all shrugged and nodded sheepishly, in solidarity, as if to say: yeah, we lied - you're hideous. I mean, what could we have done in the park? Needless to say, there is no photo of what we now refer to as my "SARS Nose". Ten days of antibiotics got rid of it, and I'm happy to report no repeat infections.

This year we are in Killarney, and I have tons of antibiotic cream, just in case. After our first meal of giant & delicious steaks, Joe and I were washing the dishes by the edge of the lake. Some persistent wasps kept buzzing around us and landing on our dishes. Then Joe got stung. Yikes. It must have really hurt. I am a bit more sensitive to insect bites and have been known to swell, so I tried to take it easy. But, I couldn't let the wasps keep me from my dishwashing duty. I returned to the rock and within seconds, one of the pesky things stung me on the finger. OUCH. It really, really hurt. I had a much better appreciation now for Joe's pain. And then it started. The swelling. From my middle finger, to my hand and then up my arm. I took some antihistamines immediately, which I'm sure helped, but they could not neutralize all the poison in my body right away. It took about three days for the swelling to go down, and I could not paddle on our day trip the second day. And for the entire trip I was known as Fat Hand Lisa.