Neat facts from the road.

Jes' suitcases: 10.6+7.6=18.2
My suitcases: 15.1+2.1=17.2

We both rule. In other news, I'm winning!

I'm in chile! There was crazy all the busses in town conflicts this morning but we made four new friends in the bus station and hailed a cab across borders. Sounds legit!

We saw a guy in Puerto natales wearing a packers hat. We stopped and told him good job. Really we stopped and stared at him and then when he was confused we managed to explain and be happy.

The nanny state is a thatcher quote, a pr campaign invented by her to break the British social system. Another reason there to find it troubling as an idea.

If you were feeling tense about crime since Salvador, you might be heartened by the guy who took a credit card a tourist left and started calling to him on the road til he came back.

Stuff we said we couldn't possibly lose at the start of this trip but we could live without anything else : passport, credit card, phone

So far we have lost /had stolen:

5 credit cards
1 passport
1 phone

And we're still rolling. I guess you can live without a lot.

Send the sherpas to find my body

For the next three weeks or so, Dec 27-Jan 20 we are working our way up the Andes, on the Chilean-Argentine border seeing lots of cool things. We'll be on the move a lot and in and out of network so here's a rough itinerary.

December
27 Figure out some of the below, fly to El Califate in the afternoon.
Sleep in El Califate.

28 bus back down to Puerto Natales to see the Torres del Paine National Park.

Hopefully a short afternoon hike in Torres del Paine

29 full day Torres del Paine, do a proper hike.  It's called Torres del Paine because there's these towers of basalt left by the volcanos. Also notable lakes of different colors.

30 8am bus back to El Califate. Plan is to take the 1:30 pm shuttle returning at 7:30pm to El Califate to see the perito morales glacier.

This glacier is famous because it calves like all the time like basically every five minutes so you get to see and hear it a lot. There's paths around it and a boat you can ride, we'll see how we do.

Stay in El Califate.

31 So if that all worked out take the 8am bus to El Chalten, where there is another we'll regarded national park.  This is where the Fitzroy mountain is. There's a nice long 6-8 hour hike around but not up it I want to do.

January
1/2 do that hike and others

3 Here it gets squirrelly. We want to do Cueva de Los manos, a cave with prehistoric hand paintings that's supposed to be really good. It's in the middle of nowhere, out in Patagonia proper. And I'm excited to see that more desert plains kind of landscape too. 

Made contact with a tour company. But we're talking 6-12 hour transfers with about that much uncertainty.

4 See that cave

5 transfer out to Las Antiguas a lake where there's supposed to be turquoise waters and flamingos near here.

6/7 Las Antiguas

8/9 Marble caves just over the Andes but on a really bad road but supposed to be kind of a Cathedral cave.

10/11/12 Work out way overland through jungle villages along the Coyhaique Puerto Aysen route. 

13 take the ferry over to Isla Grande de Chiloe

14/15/16 Work our way up Isla Grande del Chiloe

17 take the ferry over to Puerto Montt in the morning to catch our 2:40pm flight into Santiago

18/19Santiago. We booked an apartment with a spa in the building. Recover, get pretty for our loved ones to see us again,  maybe see some of the city.

20 10pm flight out of Santiago. Go home young man.

A history of the global south

So I'm in Glasgow, a really working class city, and our neighborhood has like the plaza of the people and stuff in it.  And we go into a little book shop nearby one of our days there.

And it's run by get this a union organizer who in his spare time decided there wasn't a good leftist bookshop around so he'd run one, basically breaking even on the poor side of town and they had everything from books on the Scottish working class football team to Marxist pamphlets to scholarly chronicles.

I picked up a book which seemed pretty scholarly and I just finished it bc I had to leave it behind. Fav quotes:

-What does the South have?... The answer is obvious, but too often overlooked : the energy of the people.

This one just reminded me a lot of a thing I've felt a lot traveling in the third world. Like wow these people lack everything. The only thing there's a surplus of is people. So like if you need intelligence, or hard working labor, or energy, or creative solutions to random problems, definitely come here there's an oversupply of that. Everything else, under supplied.

About the slums: - - They will tell you that they are secure in their neighborhood because everyone knows everyone else, no outsider can enter without someone noticing the person, and at times of need most people come out to help. Gadgets like CCTV cameras cannot enhance their sense of security.  What they want is secure housing, a place where they do not need to worry about the municipality's demolition squads, or the designs of a builder wanting to redevelop the land on which they have lived for decades.  No one speaks of that kind of security.

I thought that was interesting on its own terms but also in how we think about security. Like my favorite line from grapes of wrath - And money that could have been spent on food was spent on poison and money that could have been spent on food was spent on fences and the salaries of the guards and rifles and the grapes of wrath kept growing, ripening on the vines.

But like what makes you unsafe depends so much on your circumstances.

He had some other interesting more general ideas as well,  about the third world/ developing world as initially this very optimistic movement as opposed to a stand in for lots of poor people.

Or intellectual property as core to the issue of development, because third world nations can't catch up without being able to more quickly produce and replicate technology.

And the importance of Nyerere as an international figure.

And what the international standard for currency exchange is. He argues the dollar is the new gold which protects the dollar from inflation.

And he was a left wing author capable of seeing left wing and right wing populist movements both as populist movements.

It was also interesting to read his book, with a southern hemisphere left leaning bias, so soon after my African history, with a euro centric Centre right bias so soon after each other because they treat some of the same time periods and figures.

And the benefit of reading left wing bias texts, even if you don't buy any of their prescriptions, is that they treat with ordinary people in their discussion at all. You can read a whole centre right book and never hear anyone but a world leader mentioned. So there was a mine of interesting facts and statistics just dealing with, percentage of people in rural areas, in slums, living in absolute poverty, how much hunger grew or shrank in different time periods, world equality indices, indigenous movements, etc. Which gives you really good and interesting information that can sometimes be leapfrogged right over.

Antarctica 2

17/12/16 Camping on the ice

We had the biggest day ever.  Two excursions then the long awaited campout on the ice.

Stop 1: a bay overlooking a glacier.  The glacier calved twice while we were there.  There was a lovely hike up a tall snowy hill to a view of the glacier and the bay.  I marched up on my own slow with lots of stops for looks.  You went up on a beaten path through knee deep snow.  Maybe deeper but that was how far you would sink. 

At the top there was a little cliff rock you could sit on and admire the glacier.  That's where I saw the best calving from.

On the way back down it was a sleep snow path and a lot of people were falling over. I decided to check out of that whole scene and instead decided to roll down the snowy hill.  Oh it was so much fun, like playing in the snow on a snow day back at home.  So I tumbled down the hill in my waterproof clothes with snow flying and me dizzy and silly.

Stop 2: Penguin Beach

Summertime and the living is easy.
Penguins are jumping, and the ice is high

Jes and I decided that the beach was so good that I not only wouldn't go on the hike on that island but we wouldn't even go to the rookery. I have seriously not gotten tired of watching the penguins go in and out of the water.  They do it in this series of little hops one then on the stomach in the water then away. And the reverse on the way out.  They spin and seem to almost scrub themselves in the water.  And then they stand on the beach and preen. 

The beach was covered in variegated pebbles of beautiful colors, from deep purple to clear white to lovely stripes all over.  And the penguins were coming down from the rookery onto the pebble beach and into the water and back out again and resting or preening or making their way over the rocks. 

We walked all the way up it both ways and at the end of that it had kind of used our time.  Which was wonderful.  We had so many times we just stopped and let them roll by. 

This bay was also excellent for the beautiful clear ice bergs littered around it.  Apparently when the glaciers calf impressively they can create mini tsunamis which push the ice bergs way up the beach. 

While we were there a giant ice berg way off shore cracked in front of us and started to sway to and fro as it tipped on its side, like a giant clock.

3: Camping on the ice overnight

They took us over after dinner. We had been briefly trained to put up the tents, but everything is harder on knee deep snow.  Jes went in to over her knee on her sprained ankle which was bad but not reinjuring.  So first we had to trample the snow enough that you didn't "post hole"  every time you stepped so the tent would stand straight.  We had these little gauze tents- I was expecting a lot more you know sturdy thickness, but they were really easy to set up and stayed basically warm enough.

Jes and I built a couch by sitting in the snow with our next door neighbors and enjoyed the view some.  Then this guy Tian was playing around trying to build a snowman with the powdery snow and this other guy David began building a full sized one and called him to join.  I joined in too and together we built a real snowman.  We called him Neko after the glacier that was shedding this morning and dressed him up in our stuff.  We even gave him a life jacket as a jacket, one of the ones we wear on the zodiacs. That was adorable.

So then Tian decided he wanted to build a snow fort and I climbed the little hill to the penguin colony with some people. They took us over to the island after dinner so by this time it was like 10:30. We climbed up and then lay there in the snow watching penguins and talking for a while.  Then we headed back down around 11:30, close to midnight. Tian's fort was going well, real walls, so hung out there with Jes til the sun went down. This just made it a dimmer twilight look. I thought about staying up til the sun came up because it wasn't much more of a feat than staying up til the sun went down, but Jes said she wanted to sleep on the ice properly for the full experience of spending the night.

So we bedded down. The tent felt warm in the air,  but the cold of the snow had no trouble getting through the tent bottom and the foam pad, and the sleeping bag to my bones.  So whatever bits of me were in direct physical contact with the ground would get steadily colder til I rolled over. It was all good though, the weather was so nice we hung out outside for hours there really enjoying being on the island.

I went to bed at 12:30 or so and woke up at 4.  Tians snow fort was all done, chest high with crennelations and a shelf and a portal. He had slept out there sort of. We hung out some more and then I did maybe another hour of sleep and then our wake up call came. We had to tear down the tents and load up.

Jes and I were like the second to last people to sleep and the second to last people on the boats.  We love you ice.

18/12/16 Whale day

So we got up like lambs at 5am and packed our tents and got back on the boat.  I felt good but very little sleep meant a bit of nausea and of course I was pretty cold.  But we got on the ship and to breakfast as it opened so legendary breakfast followed by a legendary hot shower followed by almost napping but in my pj's on my way to buy a few postcards this guy says to me, "you know there's whales out there right?" So I run out half dressed and there they are, three humpbacks virtually napping just under the surface of the water.  They would blow breathe regularly as they felt like it and you could see their whole fins and fluke just below the surface and really the whole outline of their bodies cause it's so high up like I've never seen. 

So I have a good gawp and then go back for my camera, my jumper and Jes.  And we go take pictures and watch for ages.  They even stuck their heads up out of the water some which were covered in horny little bumps.

Soo then we go to the historical research station.  It was an old 1960s mapping station which had been restored and was also located on top of three penguin rookeries and a cormorant rookery.  So we looked at both.  Also cool news a guy who works on our ship worked the restoration the first year it was happening.  They even have a post office on the island.  Technically the first British territory base.

We went through more ice covered passages today as well.  The coastal mountains are so high here.

And a little napping.  But very little.  I'm a sleep so hard.

But there was a last coda to the day,  I was passing out after a long day and sooooo tired when the announcement came on.  And I was like that better not be whales because I am not getting up, there's whales on deck the announcement says.  Jes and I groan in unison and also throw off the covers in unison.

It must have been someplace full of krill, because there were in excess of 20 whales out there.  Now some were really far away,  you just saw the spouts go off in the distance.  But some were right by the boat,  diving for food and coming up.  So there were lots of cresting backs and some tails.  Often three of them diving together. 

19/12/16 Our last real day

Two excursions in the Shetlands today,  heading back north.  The first was called Deception Island,  a really cool island because it is a volcanic caldera, so it is in like a 300° crescent shape.  It's formed from a ring of seeping volcanos and last erupted in the 90s, so the whole island is that black volcanic basalt, including the beach which is a black sand beach like Hawaii.

This was the first day we had anything approaching real weather.  They said 30 knot winds coming off the mountains and there was real swell in the water.  After the second excursion we had to time our getting off the boat to be between the waves.  Like wait for the wave to lift the zodiac up, then climb out quickly, then the zodiac drops down, next person gets ready.

Some props need to be given to the weather here.  It's been incredible.  Above freezing temperatures, very little wind, bright sun out at least a few hours a day.  Our drake passage was really easy both ways (though jes did throw up on the way back so not limitlessly easy,  but not the infamous choppiness).  When we camped out and it wasn't even cold til really sunset that was a blessing.  I mean we're rugged up but that works which is enough.

Ok so we had a zodiac cruise first along the cliffs but it was very splashy and cut a bit short because of aforementioned weather.  But we got along some of the caldera but not as far or outside it. 

Then we landed on the beach and you could take a quick walk up to Neptune's bellows,  a dip where you can see a volcanic cone.  Jes didn't love the uphill but the view was fantastic,  you could see straight down the steep crag of the caldera, and literally you know it's formed from all these little volcanos and one of the crags framing this depression was the inside of one of the volcanos, the cone, and you could see the circular curve and the blasted on volcanic ash like a patina. 

Today was the day of the polar plunge, and we stayed up there til there were like 15 minutes left. So we had to kind of forced march out. I was on the fence as to if I wanted to do the polar plunge, but you know in the end I never stay out of the water. 

If you'll recall it was extra cold and windy that day so stripping off my six layers of clothes didn't seem that smart, but I had been jogging back soooo I just went quick.  And the more I took off the more I was totally gonna do it.

So I got down to underwear and ran in.  The water was like one degree, but the air was like two before wind chill, so when the water hit my body it wasn't even a shock, just like getting into a cool pool. So I ran in, with the ice all around, and when I got about thigh deep I dove.

That was a shock, but I stopped for a short celebration before running back out.  The cold got pretty intense back on shore in the wind, but clothes were like an active and intense pleasure. I put on my shirt, and could like feel its warming properties like a balm on my skin.  Surprisingly quickly.  The only bad bit was my feet which had spots of both pain and numbness, which makes you more nervous about the numbness. But I got them into socks and had a nice sauna back on the boat. 

By the time I changed, showered, saunad, and ate lunch we were pretty close to our next destination. Jes crashed, so I went out alone. I lucked into another splashy zodiac cruise.  By now in half moon Bay,  the swell had gotten big, which again limited the length of the cruise, but also made it like a roller coaster, up and down the waves.

So we got some party time crashing through the waves and some good views of the basalt cliffs.  Then we landed, this was a big colony of chinstrap penguins. One special thing about this colony is that the island is made all of rocks. And to get from rock to rock the penguins have to adorably jump.

I was tired, but I stayed til the last return boat because it was our very last excursion.

20/12 /16 - 21/12 /16 Going home

And then we turned back and headed home. Back to ushuaia for me and Jes,  back actually home for most.

We went into an antinausea meds coma for the first day, and Jes even threw up this time, but still a like completely unheard of calm drake passage.

I went out one time and the water was like spilled oil, mirrored glass.

Orcas showed up but I seriously only got out there in time to see the splash. Jes saw them though.

There was also a single young whale who hung out waving. Like it would roll on its side and and flap its fin to and fro in the air. I was in the shower for some of that too, but caught the act enough to definitely enjoy.

We made great time because of the calm drake and decided to sail around Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean. We got great views of the land, clear day and we got close.

And then up through the beagle passage in Terra del Fuego. We saw dolphins leaping, their whole bodies whip cracking out of the water.

We spent the last day in the library studying guide books and picking the brain of the guide. We got a great itinerary for Argentina and Chile going, I'll post that later.  And then the night before we pulled into port. We spent the last night listening to the cruise musician, who followed across the universe with feeling good just for me.

We traveled 1700 nautical miles. Most southerly latitude 65° South at lamer channel.

I felt, as we embarked, watching lands end fade into the distance again like I had gone as far as I could go. I had reached the end of the earth, and then I kind of sailed off of it.  Now in two directions, to the east and the south. I don't know. Not like my travels are over but like that bark turns again home. I think I have done it as much as one can or something, seen the world. It's an awfully big world. And an awfully small one too.

Antarctica 1

15/12/16 I woke up to penguins swimming next to the boat. We watched them through the portal out of the window. This happened yesterday and already I had to confirm it with Jes. Did that really happen? Was it a dream? It seems like something that couldn't have happened not really.

Today is iceberg day,  it's written right on the daily program. And so true to form I saw six penguins riding an ice berg.

But yesterday, Drake's passage was really calm,  so we got to the Shetland islands early enough to get off the boat for a while, like four hours. It was my first time really testing the cold weather gear and well the cold. I was trepedatious but it was a huge success!

So two islands. The first one had great petrals nesting on it and a hike up to a view point. Where my heart cried,  on the way up there was a nesting pair. One of them was sitting the nest and the other one swooped and coasted in,  so near to me 2-5 meters away at closest swoop.  It came in to the nest and fed her,  they communed for a bit. And the viewpoint at the top,  black crags and snow but nothing compared to what we're seeing from the boat today on iceberg day.  But you know these crags and the snow and the circling birds and it was our first day in Antarctica. We'd passed the convergence the night before.

Second island was the real penguin rookery and it was off the hook. Hundreds of penguins of two types, the chin strap penguins and the gentu penguins. They are about the same size, a little bigger than the fairy penguins maybe a foot and a half tall. And all nesting. So on the beach they were all hanging out and getting in and out of the water. So remember the swimming ones I woke up to? These were swimming just off shore and they would do this horizontal leap out of the water.  So swimming horizontally, and then kind of bounce off the shore still half under water and with a double bounce make it up to a waddle on their feet. Same in reverse getting in,  they would waddle in looking at the water,  then a hop, then kind of a belly flop to swimming. But once swimming they would twirl and twirl like ballerinas. They said they were bathing, close to shore like that. And then deeper they dive and fish for krill.

Ok so rookery right? So they all have these rock nests they have made.  And they are still building them, at least stealing rocks off each other for them. So someone's mate will show up with a new rock in its mouth.

Most all of them were sitting eggs and sometimes they would stand up and readjust the egg in their feathers and you could see it.  It was early,  but there were a few chicks as well. I saw about six chicks under about four parents. And I got to watch two of the parents feed the chicks from their mouths. Bending down and the tiny head reaching into its beak.

There was one penguin who had lost his egg so was nudging the shell and calling out,  trying to fix it.

Right before we left a gentu penguin came right up to me, like a foot away, and just stood there.

Ok warm clothes, I'm doing really well, layering and they told me once I was on the boat that waterproof pants were mandatory. Ulp. But then they found me a great pair someone had donated. So they are awesome and of course cut the wind as well. They are like overalls and have the cool inner close fitting pants leg and outer over boot pants leg.  Plus the big galoshes plus the big parka which is a really high quality item I might keep.  It has a fluffy zip out lining as well as the waterproof windbreaker layer and a million handy zips and attachments that make it fit really well.

So back on the boat, we take these inflatable rafts (zodiacs)  in and out and they cruise fine through the water, hold about eight people and are how we get ship to shore.  But to get in you have to step from the boat ladder onto them and to get off you scoot and then splash into the water.  Hence all the waterproof stuff.

The day ended with special magic. We were invited down to have champagne and meet the captain and crew. The expedition leader or whatever was in the middle of a speech about tomorrow's itinerary when someone shouted whale! And there was a humpback just out the window. It breached and showed its fluke and fin. Rolled over a couple of times like that and then went on its way,  swimming the opposite way of the ship. The excitement was just dying down again when someone else shouted whale! And there were two, a mated pair probably, cresting and diving you know like dolphins do.  They swam in synchronicity and then dove and we saw them no more.

16/12/16 Palmer Research Station,  iceberg day

We woke in the fog today and there was ice floating by through the portal. We spent like three hours out on deck today just watching it go by.  The research station we were going to was through a narrow channel half locked in the ice.  So we spent all this morning steaming through ice bergs with big craggy snow covered mountains on each side.

So apparently it's a thing for seals and penguins to hang out on the bigger ice bergs, sunning themselves and playing.  So I saw maybe 5-10 seals and similar numbers of penguins on different icebergs.  One ice berg had like six penguins on it.  At one point we saw two jump out of the water onto the iceberg, and then,  because the boat was coming too close,  jump back off again.  Another time we saw two tabogganing around the iceberg on their stomachs. 

The seals were mostly sleeping and sunning themselves lying out on the icebergs like little warm rocks.  A couple of them were awake so lifting their heads and flippers around.

Then the scenery was just spectacular, indescribable really.  Totally covered in snow unlike the Shetlands,  with massive ice bergs all around,  the ice blue to pure white down to dark gray.  And the mountains, sometimes the black rocks would show through and sometimes pure white snow, and the ice cliffs sheerly falling down to the sea.

As we got closer to the station, the ice got thicker, until it was a floating sheet of broken ice, from little broken up stuff to huge icebergs the size of a house.  We cruised through this and you could watch the prow of the ship cut through the ice.  The icier blocks it would shove out of the way or sometimes tip over spectacularly, showing the under ice.  The snowier blocks the ship could cut right through and you could watch the blocks get sliced and break up into smaller chunks like an explosion. 

The station itself was doing phytoplankton research and atmosphere research.  It was made of shipping containers.

12/12/16 - 12/13/16 #CruiseLife

The first two days were at sea and I spent them largely in a medically induced coma.  We took antinausea meds which were actually needed, Drake's passage is rough,  but they made me sleepy, and I'm a sleep so hard took on a new meaning. 

The average age of this cruise is totally under 50, which is cool but also the older people here are amazing adventurers, bikers and world travelers and everyone has super cool stories to tell.

The food is also strangely better than the average cruise, more of an ethnic and spice palate which appeals to my taste a lot more.  There's been a daal and a west African satay stew already.

And best of all we have a portal! I think I mentioned this before but it's been fantastic. We saw ice bergs floating by this morning and you could watch the mountains of Ushuaia recede the first day. We can both lean out and look out and we've kept it open the whole trip so far.

It's only dark 3 hours a night and shrinking, like midnight to 2:30 tonight.