08 Oct USA: The Congaree Swamps: Timber and Water

There are weekends that start so badly that you either do something to change the course of events, or you are lost.

And mine was off to a very, very bad start. My trick to get out of these cases is to take the road and do as many kilometres as it takes in search of something different (something different but painless, mind you, you're too old for certain experiences...).

Fortunately, I remembered one day (while sitting in my tiled reading corner) that not too far from home, in South Carolina, was the Congaree National Park, also declared a biosphere reserve. So, determined not to miss the weekend altogether, I headed there.

The bad thing is that to see things like this in the United States, in the end you have to spend many hours in the car, with no other company than the voice of the GPS. And not even that, because after this last trip, we don't even talk to each other, he always wants to be right.

Going back to the park, the best thing is that it is hardly visited, people don't know what they have. Finding myself alone during the whole itinerary, surrounded by cypress trees and the constant song of the woodpeckers, made me forget for a moment that I was in the United States, that a few kilometres away there would be a Mac Donalds and an Outlet and that the gin and tonics were a disaster... And then I thought again about how lucky I am to be able to see these things (for the heck of it).

The park is in two words spectacular. And if you are lucky, even though the park is more suitable for bird and flora watching, along the way you may come across lynx, wild pigs, alligators, etc. And if you're not lucky, that's OK, the luck is that you're there, watching this.

As a picture is worth a thousand words, and I suspect that almost nobody reads me, I leave you with some pictures I took of the marshes accompanied by a bit of wikipedia.

These trees you see down here are tupelo trees,

and these others are bald cypresses or swamp cypresses.

To help you distinguish them, cypresses are taller and thicker and are often surrounded by cypres knees, which serve to provide oxygen to the roots when they are submerged.

Sometimes I surprise myself with my ability to blend in with the landscape. If you look very, very carefully, you can see me hidden among the cypres knees. By the way, here I was empirically testing whether or not orange attracts mosquitoes irresistibly. Well, nothing, it has been proved, (it attracts them and it must also make them hungry), if what I don't do for science....

There were also billions of mosquitoes. As you can't see them in the other photo, you might think that I'm exaggerating a bit or that I've been deleting them one by one with photoshop, but to show you that I'm not exaggerating at all, here's the photo I took of the mosquito meter of the day, although I think it's a bit late, because it should have been marked more.

We owe the existence of this park to many (human) people but I will highlight two, firstly Harry Hampton, who spent much of his life exploring the area and doing all he could to preserve it. No wonder he was hooked on the area.

And on the other hand, the Spaniard Hernando de Soto, the first explorer to travel through this area, back in 1520 on his way to the Mississippi. This feat alone is enough for me to include him in my personal gallery of heroes.

I took all these pictures while I was walking the Oakridge trail, you can't miss it. And now I leave you with one of the pictures that don't say much, I know, but it's where this one brings out the artist in me, so here it goes.

The truth is that I didn't manage to do what I had planned for the weekend, (which was what I wanted to do the most), but at least, I won't remember this weekend for what I couldn't do, but for what I did...

And now I'll leave you, be good