So, what can one do for 12 days in Torres del Paine National Park??? Not escape the rangers, that´s for sure, so we paid our entrance fee of 6500 chilean pesos (10 dollars). This one is actually the only park in Chile which charges tourists more than locals. Now what do you think of that???
I guess people have different ways of letting time pass but we passed it mainly walking. Did the famous ´Circuit´ and also the now even more famous (at least more popular) ´W´, had some rest and lazy days inbetween and enjoyed life. Ok, the park is a big tourist attraction and has become very commercial (I hope we will never build hotels and all that in the Icelandic highlands) but still I absolutely love it and can actually not think of any single trek I´ve done so far that I´ve enjoyed more. The weather played a big part, it was so good that it was almost uncanny. Sun every single day. Not windstill and not entirely dry either, but we never got wet walking and never had to wait for the weather to clear up. Pretty good for an area notorious for its unstable weather.
fimmtudagur, janúar 24, 2002
miðvikudagur, janúar 09, 2002
Wow, the 14 hour bus ride yesterday as a killer. Made it to Punta Arenas and am now waiting for the bus to Puerto Natales. Buses are terrible.
The first morning in the Antarctic Peninsula was amazing, pretty much like the first morning of the first cruise I did in Spitzbergen. Dennis, the expedition leader, woke those of us silly enough to be still asleep through the loudspeaker system at 7 o´clock. We were in the Neumayer Channel, the sun was shining and not a ripple on the sea. It took a while for the eyes, even with sunglasses, to get adjusted to the light. Every little patch of land was covered with snow, not a single dark spot to be seen. Steep steep glaciers descend into the sea, broken and crevassed. All the peaks are jagged and white. We even caught a sight of a huge avalanche before breakfast! Later in the morning we made our first landing, at Port Lockroy. There is a big gentoo penguin colony there but since there is so much snow down there this season most of the penguin eggs didn´t make it. It was a sorry sight. Some blue-eyed (now for some odd reason renamed Bransfield) shags were nesting within the penguin colony, they had better success and already had chicks in their nests. Poor penguins, some were still trying to incubate the eggs while the others were just roaming around the colony, not quite sure what to do with themselves.
In general we tried to make two landings pr. day but this was not always possible. On New Years Eve we didn´t make a single one, because of wind and ice conditions. Our cruise had the goal of reaching the Antarctic Circle at 66 deg. 33 min, but we encountered ice which held us back. For a while we were breaking the ice (the Polar Star is an icebreaker modified for passenger transport) but in the afternoon of Dec. the 31. we got stuck in the ice. It wasn´t really thick ice but still attached to land and completely unbroken, so it had nowhere to go when we broke it. The captain decided to turn the ship 180 degrees in the ice, instead of simply backing out the lane we´d made, and this kept us occupied until late in the evening. It was a cool experience for most of us, even if it wasn´t quite as dramatic as some other instances where ships have become trapped in the ice. Shackleton´s Endurance Expedition for example... he seems to be THE hero in most people`s minds nowadays (we saw two movies about that expedition and had one lecture about him, on his 80th death anniversary, the 5th of January), well, and in my mind too. If you don´t know what he and his men did you´ll have to find out, by for example reading his own account of the expedition, a book called South. You won´t believe what you´re reading.
Even if the average age of the guests on this cruise was some decades lower than on most cruises to the Antarctic (the geologist on board, James Collinson, said he´d never been on a cruise with such young people) there wasn´t too much of a party going on on New Years Eve. The Filipino crew came and sang us a gospel song (later in the night my Norwegian friend Tine and I found out that the favorite pastime of the crew is to sit in their lounge and sing karaoke... we were invited to join them but bailed out after watching them perform Cliff Richard and Stevie Wonder af mikilli innlifun), and then the youngest member of the cruise got the honour of ringing the ship´s bell (16 times!!!) to signal the arrival of the New Year. She is only 5 years old and wasn´t happy at all with the attention and the terrible noise of the bell. People were dancing for a while, but by 2 in the morning most of us were in bed. Except for Emily, the oldest passenger in the boat; she was dancing with the filipino guys until 5 in the morning. She´s incredible. Over 80 years old, she used to teach creative writing in South California and she still speaks Norwegian even if she moved to the US at the age of nine. Dirty old woman who had us in stitches the whole cruise, especially when she started reading her erotic poetry...
New Years Day came with fog and snowfall. We went on a Zodiac cruise which was very cold but absolutely beautiful. The snow falling formed a mushy slush in the surface of the water, damping the waves and making everything feel like Christmas. We had about 5 cm of fresh snow on deck! There were a lot of small icebergs (called bergy bits down there) in the sea and when Mike (our assistant expedition leader and zodiac driver) stopped the engine and told us all to be quiet (which was incredibly hard for some people in the boat...) we could hear the swell (undiralda) beating softly against the bergs. Even the small `pop´ made by the air bubbles trapped in the ice breaking loose as the ice melts could be heard, but not for long as some people just could not keep their mouth shut. The engine was not going for a while longer (providing a perfect opportunity to discuss such important things as which brand of rubber boots keeps your feet the warmest) and even if we did not hear the silence we were rewarded with a school of krill swimming under the boat and all around it. This is not a common sight Mike told us. These tiny creatures (bonsai-lobster as Ingrid, our marine biologist, told us) are the base for all life in the Antarctic seas and form red spots on the surface of the ocean as they sim around in groups looking for plankton to eat.
As we sailed north again it became easier to do landings. We went to Point Hannah on Livingston Island (in the South Shetland Islands), a beautiful place with 3 different species of penguins, seals and giant petrels, plus fossils and you name it. I went on a small `private excursion´ there, climbing up a scree ridge ending in impressive lava walls and made my way over to the other side. It was absolutely wonderful, to be finally alone in the Antarctic and not surrounded by guides and other tourists. Not that I have anything against these people but sometimes it is just sooooo good to get away. Am beginning to understand my tourists at home better ;) We also went to Deception Island (where we had a bath in some hot springs dug out by the Expedition Staff, with heavy rain falling), Paulet Island (millions of penguins and the remains of the hut some members of the 1901-03 Nordenskiold expedition overwintered in) and also Paradise Bay, an absolutely beautiful spot of Earth. Can´t but recommend a trip to the Antarctic to all of you!!!!
The first morning in the Antarctic Peninsula was amazing, pretty much like the first morning of the first cruise I did in Spitzbergen. Dennis, the expedition leader, woke those of us silly enough to be still asleep through the loudspeaker system at 7 o´clock. We were in the Neumayer Channel, the sun was shining and not a ripple on the sea. It took a while for the eyes, even with sunglasses, to get adjusted to the light. Every little patch of land was covered with snow, not a single dark spot to be seen. Steep steep glaciers descend into the sea, broken and crevassed. All the peaks are jagged and white. We even caught a sight of a huge avalanche before breakfast! Later in the morning we made our first landing, at Port Lockroy. There is a big gentoo penguin colony there but since there is so much snow down there this season most of the penguin eggs didn´t make it. It was a sorry sight. Some blue-eyed (now for some odd reason renamed Bransfield) shags were nesting within the penguin colony, they had better success and already had chicks in their nests. Poor penguins, some were still trying to incubate the eggs while the others were just roaming around the colony, not quite sure what to do with themselves.
In general we tried to make two landings pr. day but this was not always possible. On New Years Eve we didn´t make a single one, because of wind and ice conditions. Our cruise had the goal of reaching the Antarctic Circle at 66 deg. 33 min, but we encountered ice which held us back. For a while we were breaking the ice (the Polar Star is an icebreaker modified for passenger transport) but in the afternoon of Dec. the 31. we got stuck in the ice. It wasn´t really thick ice but still attached to land and completely unbroken, so it had nowhere to go when we broke it. The captain decided to turn the ship 180 degrees in the ice, instead of simply backing out the lane we´d made, and this kept us occupied until late in the evening. It was a cool experience for most of us, even if it wasn´t quite as dramatic as some other instances where ships have become trapped in the ice. Shackleton´s Endurance Expedition for example... he seems to be THE hero in most people`s minds nowadays (we saw two movies about that expedition and had one lecture about him, on his 80th death anniversary, the 5th of January), well, and in my mind too. If you don´t know what he and his men did you´ll have to find out, by for example reading his own account of the expedition, a book called South. You won´t believe what you´re reading.
Even if the average age of the guests on this cruise was some decades lower than on most cruises to the Antarctic (the geologist on board, James Collinson, said he´d never been on a cruise with such young people) there wasn´t too much of a party going on on New Years Eve. The Filipino crew came and sang us a gospel song (later in the night my Norwegian friend Tine and I found out that the favorite pastime of the crew is to sit in their lounge and sing karaoke... we were invited to join them but bailed out after watching them perform Cliff Richard and Stevie Wonder af mikilli innlifun), and then the youngest member of the cruise got the honour of ringing the ship´s bell (16 times!!!) to signal the arrival of the New Year. She is only 5 years old and wasn´t happy at all with the attention and the terrible noise of the bell. People were dancing for a while, but by 2 in the morning most of us were in bed. Except for Emily, the oldest passenger in the boat; she was dancing with the filipino guys until 5 in the morning. She´s incredible. Over 80 years old, she used to teach creative writing in South California and she still speaks Norwegian even if she moved to the US at the age of nine. Dirty old woman who had us in stitches the whole cruise, especially when she started reading her erotic poetry...
New Years Day came with fog and snowfall. We went on a Zodiac cruise which was very cold but absolutely beautiful. The snow falling formed a mushy slush in the surface of the water, damping the waves and making everything feel like Christmas. We had about 5 cm of fresh snow on deck! There were a lot of small icebergs (called bergy bits down there) in the sea and when Mike (our assistant expedition leader and zodiac driver) stopped the engine and told us all to be quiet (which was incredibly hard for some people in the boat...) we could hear the swell (undiralda) beating softly against the bergs. Even the small `pop´ made by the air bubbles trapped in the ice breaking loose as the ice melts could be heard, but not for long as some people just could not keep their mouth shut. The engine was not going for a while longer (providing a perfect opportunity to discuss such important things as which brand of rubber boots keeps your feet the warmest) and even if we did not hear the silence we were rewarded with a school of krill swimming under the boat and all around it. This is not a common sight Mike told us. These tiny creatures (bonsai-lobster as Ingrid, our marine biologist, told us) are the base for all life in the Antarctic seas and form red spots on the surface of the ocean as they sim around in groups looking for plankton to eat.
As we sailed north again it became easier to do landings. We went to Point Hannah on Livingston Island (in the South Shetland Islands), a beautiful place with 3 different species of penguins, seals and giant petrels, plus fossils and you name it. I went on a small `private excursion´ there, climbing up a scree ridge ending in impressive lava walls and made my way over to the other side. It was absolutely wonderful, to be finally alone in the Antarctic and not surrounded by guides and other tourists. Not that I have anything against these people but sometimes it is just sooooo good to get away. Am beginning to understand my tourists at home better ;) We also went to Deception Island (where we had a bath in some hot springs dug out by the Expedition Staff, with heavy rain falling), Paulet Island (millions of penguins and the remains of the hut some members of the 1901-03 Nordenskiold expedition overwintered in) and also Paradise Bay, an absolutely beautiful spot of Earth. Can´t but recommend a trip to the Antarctic to all of you!!!!
mánudagur, janúar 07, 2002
It was brilliant, can´t put it any other way. However, I´m not going to tell you all about it now, you will have to wait a bit because I have to pack, sleep a bit and then get on a bus at 8 o´clock tomorrow morning to Punta Arenas in Chile. 14 hours, it´ll be wild fun. From there I´m heading to Puerto Natales where I´ll join Arnon again. Guess we are going to Torres del Paine National Park straight away (we´ll have to get there while the CONAF-people (N.P. wardens) are still on strike, then we won´t have to pay the entrance fee!!!) and do the circuit.
Anyway, the penguins really won my heart over, and the whales we saw were really tourist friendly, breaching (jumping out of the water and falling on their backs) and swimming around the boat. The scenery was pretty wild as well, and a personal highlight was our landing at Brown Bluff, a hyaloclastite volcano erupted under ice a long time ago. As some of you know I was studying similar volcanoes in Iceland in 1999 and at that time read some (pretty scary, actually) articles about Brown Bluff. Did not for a second, at that time, think I´d be standing on shore there looking up at the volcano anytime within my lifespan. And now I have. Cool.
Since there are no man-eating creatures in the Antarctic (as far as I know) I didn´t try to moon any of them (as I did in Svalbard way back when). Instead I managed to scare the shit out of some of the penguins down there (imagine standing outside the supermarket buttoning your coat and when you look up there is Hulk or King Kong standing an arms length away. I´m sure you´d squeak and run into the supermarket again), it was actually hard to avoid it because there were simply so many penguins. And they are so comic, I just love them.
More later!!
Oh, forgot: Happy New Year!
Anyway, the penguins really won my heart over, and the whales we saw were really tourist friendly, breaching (jumping out of the water and falling on their backs) and swimming around the boat. The scenery was pretty wild as well, and a personal highlight was our landing at Brown Bluff, a hyaloclastite volcano erupted under ice a long time ago. As some of you know I was studying similar volcanoes in Iceland in 1999 and at that time read some (pretty scary, actually) articles about Brown Bluff. Did not for a second, at that time, think I´d be standing on shore there looking up at the volcano anytime within my lifespan. And now I have. Cool.
Since there are no man-eating creatures in the Antarctic (as far as I know) I didn´t try to moon any of them (as I did in Svalbard way back when). Instead I managed to scare the shit out of some of the penguins down there (imagine standing outside the supermarket buttoning your coat and when you look up there is Hulk or King Kong standing an arms length away. I´m sure you´d squeak and run into the supermarket again), it was actually hard to avoid it because there were simply so many penguins. And they are so comic, I just love them.
More later!!
Oh, forgot: Happy New Year!
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