What makes a good souvenir, then, to bring home from this wild coast?

Being an unenthusiastic shopper and anti-collector (keep it simple and carry a light load), I have the tendency to shun accumulating material memories from my many trips.

Too often, all that stuff just takes up space, and becomes more a hassle than a wonderful memory-provoker of a unique time and place.

Still, I had a sea-crazy loved-one at home with a natural history museum in the making, so something had to make the trip home with me. So I was on the lookout.

Yet, gathering while kayaking is particularly difficult. As I scoured the landscape for the perfect shells, as my buddies mined the coast for ancient dinosaur shark teeth (seriously, and they found two!), as we stumbled over indigenous arrows, as we picked up dozens of whale vertabrae discs and used them to put the mate kettle on, we were always reminded of space.

The discs were all left behind for the next expedition.

On a kayaking trip, of course, space is at a premium. Each and every item we had, everything we needed, had to fit into our four kayaks. Food, tents, sleeping bags, change of clothing, emergency gear, water, mate gourds…. all the essentials.

So finding something extraordinary, but big, was out of the question. And there were some truly big temptations (mainly whale ribs and jawbones).

In the end, I came home with a half-foot whale baleen, and a handful of shells and coral. Just before loading the car and driving home across the Steppe, I picked up an incredible whale vertabrae bone to share with my naturalist geek/bone collector husband.

Then, there was all the sand and salt that came pouring out as I dumped my drybags in the yard and dripping down as I washed my hair….