Fly Fishing in Oregon and Washington

While I am really excited to be back in South America, returning to the Pacific Northwest for six week allowed me to pursue my favorite pastime, fly fishing, on a number of occasions and in some familiar locations. July and early August provided a great opportunity to visit some trout rivers, pursue some warm water fishes, some summer steel head, and cast a fly into Puget Sound.

Columbia River Small Mouth

Upper Williamson River, Oregon

Dad hooked up to a Puget Sound Salmon

Beach deer and a Deschutes River Raccoon.

Pink Salmon

Four Mile Lake, Oregon

A pink salmon fly and the Dechutes River near Maupin, Oregon

Green Lake rock bass

Central Oregon landscape

Davis Lake large mouth bass, Oregon

Puget Sound resident coho

The best part of fly fishing is often the unexpected natural events you witness while out on the water for extended periods of time.  In this case it was a greedy tufted puffin gorging itself on a school of candlefish.

Pink salmon, this one was invited home for dinner.

Central Oregon landscape

Washington and Oregon 2015

We have recently returned from a great visit with our family and friends in Washington and Oregon after two years in Paraguay without a visit. We traveled to some beautiful places and topped it off with tons of amazing food and beer. It was wonderful to see so many people and spend some time in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.



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Yakima Valley hops and a trip down the Yakima River. 

 

Backyard garden salad and a recently steamed crab in Port Townsend. 

We had an awesome day on river tubes while visiting our friend's yurt.

Some backyard camping and marshmallows.

Josh's cows

Hardcore tubers, Kristi and Adrianne

Peru

We have some more photos to share from our travels through Peru in January. We arrived in Cusco from Bolivia. We traveled to and from Machu Pichu, then went to Lima, Iquitos, and finally Trujillo to study Spanish for two weeks. Unfortunately we had a bag stolen from a bus station towards the end of our break. Because we are lazy, all of our pictures were not backed-up properly.  Consequently, we lost most of our images from Lima as well as numerous pre-Columbian ruins, gorgeous Peruvian beaches, and the Peruvian amazon. 

In the hills directly above Cusco lie a series of partially reconstructed ruins.  They are called Saksaywaman, but most tourists refer to them simply as sexy woman.

 Cusco is an interesting destination in itself.  The city was the center of the Inca empire in the 13th century and has been continuously inhabited ever since. Despite being incredibly touristy, we enjoyed spending a couple days in the old part of the city.

We especially enjoyed the municipal market which sold  great looking produce, meat, hot meals, textiles, and hallucinogenic plants for shamanistic rituals.  This friendly lady made really good juices. 

Pork vendor

Purple corn, the main ingredient in a refreshing drink called chicha morada.  Coca leaves in the green bag to the right are commonly chewed for a high altitude energy boost.

Inside Quirkancha, the most sacred temple in the Incan empire.  It was converted into a Catholic Convent during conquest by the Spanish.

Kristi poses shamelessly with some people selling baby llama photos.

Really tasty bowl of soup from a Cusco street vendor.

The Sacred Valley en route to Machu Pichu.

 Kristi taking in the ancient terraces and an old road at two pre-Colombian sites in the Sacred Valley.

Stopping for a snack at a small town in the Sacred Valley: choclo and chicha, a traditional beer made of corn.

On the train to Aguas Calientes

Machu Pichu

We ate a ridiculous amount of ceviche once we arrived on the coast.  We made a few trips to specialty cevicherias which feature a variety of amazing ceviches. We also ate a typical ceviche on an almost daily basis consisting of nothing more than white fish, lime juice, onions, and chili.

Exploring nature in the Paraguayan countryside

 Laguna Blanca

Over our last holiday weekend, we took a trip with about twenty other teachers to a camping area we had been wanting to visit for quite a while: Rancho Laguna Blanca.  The area is a private reserve that does conservation work and hosts campers.  They also offer meals and have a couple of simple cabins.  It turned out to be a great place to camp, hike, and swim.

Laguna Blanca Website

 Fuzzy caterpillar and butterfly we encountered on a walk near camp.

Kristi and Neil and our roommates Elesa and Baranda enjoying the beach.

Our friends Linnea and Brian kayaking and Dave fishing.

San Ber

Last weekend we decided to take advantage of the fall weather to go on another camping trip. Timing camping trips in Paraguay is tricky.  Hot weather makes it difficult to sleep outdoors for much of the year and frequent rain storms followed by flooding can result in camping in calf-deep water.  To the left: bridge construction on the road passing through Parque National Yparcari.

For us, driving through the countryside is often the most enjoyable part of our trips around Paraguay.  The countryside is beautiful almost every where you go here.  The quaint towns and extensive cattle country often give the impression that we have traveled back in time.  Bad roads, bad weather, and police checkpoints can make road tripping around an unpredictable adventure.  Generally, things work out fine and encountering unexpected stuff is part of the fun. Driving to San Bernadino around the north end of Lago Ypacarai, we found this bird observation area that had an elevated viewing platform, binoculars, and two canoes available.

 We found a nice campground right on the lake just a few minutes north of San Bernadino called Brisas Del Mediterraneo.  This place is great because it's only about an hour from our house.  While we were drinking coffee in the morning this fox appeared in the campground and paused for a photo.

Brisas Facebook Page

The next day had a lot of rain in the forecast, so we packed up and went into the towns of San Ber (where some folks had brought their monkey for the weekend) and Altos.  From Altos we took a particularly beautiful drive through the hills 

to an ostrich farm near the town of Nueva Colombia.

Mbuni

Mbuni (which means ostrich in Swahili) is a working ostrich farm and has a very nice restaurant, cabanas, and rooms.  They also sell ostrich meat, eggs, and all sorts of crafts made from ostrich feathers and leather.
Mbuni Page

They also have a farm pond full of tilapia.  I caught a few before heading back to the city and we had a very eclectic diner of grilled ostrich and tilapia.

Epiphytic plants: Mbuni

Flowering plant: Mbuni