Prawn Catching and hot springs

Masa and me being setup for a photo by Taylor

Janice, Skye and me enjoying the hot springs-our modeling career almost over

Janice, Skye, Taylor and Masa Cooling off in the inlet- water was still warmer near the shore due to the hot springs.

Janice, Skye and me waiting for masa to come back with the dingy to pick us up.

View of the mountains coming back to Bella Coola.

Photographer Taylor Kennedy (national geographic photographer !!)and freelance travel writer Masa Takei have been staying at the lodge and have spent time doing some adventure travel with the boss. They did some heli camping/fishing/hiking and yesterday Swede invited me and Skye (lodge manager) to join them for a photo shoot doing some prawn catching and a visit to the hot springs in a coastal cruiser. We left Carole, Annalee and her sister Nina with a full house of guests but they got to go up in the helicopter hiking yesterday so we didn't feel sorry for them!

First Captin Kiff and his great cruiser Nan (Nuhulk language for grizzly bear) took us through crazy choppy water down the betnik arm (if we kept goining it would take us out to open ocean) to pick up some prawn traps he had set earlier the day before -He said the deeper you put the traps the better but then it gets harder to pull them up, especially full of prawns. Guess what the bait was! Cat food in a can-whiskers is his favorite, but you have to make sure you only put a few holes in it so your prawns don't end up smelling like catfood-blah. Unfortunatly our harvest wasn't that great as the winds and current had sent the trap into shallower water and thats when the starfish and crabs have a feast!

After we pulled up our catch we headed further down the straight and encountered some pretty rough waters as we hit the convulgence of several different water sources that gave us a pretty rough ride-good thing I had a gravel earlier. Things calmed down after we shot off into an inlet towards the hot springs.

Once we got as clo se to shore as we could in our boat we pulled the dingy of the top off the boat and skye did 2 trips to get us all into shore save for the captain and his wife who chose to stay on the boat.

After Taylor took a billion photos we were left alone to enjoy ourselves in the spring and ocean with some beer.

Lots of fun!!!