The 2010s: A decade to remember

Tbilisi, December 12, 2019

A mere 19 midnights separate me from the first day of 2020, the third decade of the 21st century.  (Yes, I know; the century should really start in 2001, but who really thinks that way emotionally?)  It is hard to believe that I have been blogging on this site intermittently for just over a decade now.  A few days ago I did my year-in-review post; now it's time for a decade in review.

One of the more terrifying aspects of getting older is that not just months and years pass by, but decades, without me being really aware of how long I've been alive.  This year was full of thirty-year anniversaries:  the Tien An Men massacre and the fall of the Berlin Wall were both pivotal moments in my conception of the world, with the gloom and menace of the Cold War suddenly replaced by an exuberant, giddy freedom in Eastern Europe, while the Chinese Communist party stamped on humanity's face with a jackboot.  I was barely 21 when those things happened; now I'm 51 and the optimism of December, 1989 has morphed into the dystopian ethnonationalism of Hungary, Poland and the United States, while the Chinese state's relentless authoritarianism has plumbed new depths in the repression in Xinjiang.

So I think that the spinning of the decades counter on our calendar is a good time to take stock of what I have been up to for the past ten years, mostly from the point of view of travel.  I don't have much time to write this, so it will necessarily be a cursory summary of a lot of travelling!

2010--The post-Silk Road Travels

I welcomed in the 2010s in Malta, That same morning I hopped over to Italy and rented a car to explore Sicily, a fabulous corner of the world, before making my way up Italy with a stopover of a few days in Naples, once one of the richest cities in Europe and now a poster child for urban decay, although blessed with Pompeii, Herculaneum and smaller amazing Roman ruins.  I then headed into Venice on my bicycle for the symbolic final ride into the city that Marco Polo returned to in 1295.  

After a brief skiing and job-hunting trip to Switzerland, where my sister Audie was living (and still lives), I hopped a flight to Ethiopia in early February for a cycle tour.  I spent two and a half months exploring Ethiopia's mountainous landscape and ancient culture, and dodging incessant rockthrowing by a substantial fraction of the youth of the country.  I also crossed (by public transport) into Somaliland and Djibouti before looping back to Ethiopia after my hopes of getting a Yemeni visa were shot down.

In late April I flew with my bicycle back to Canada to find a job offer from a school in Switzerland waiting for me.  My mother had taught at Leysin American School from 2001 to 2003, and now I was about to follow in her professional footsteps for the second time (after my miserable first international high school teaching experience in Egypt in 2004.)  After a few months of relaxation in Canada, including a car trip out to Newfoundland for my mother's 70th birthday, I flew off to Switzerland in early August.

2010-2015--The Leysin Years

I ended up spending five years teaching in Leysin.  It wasn't a fabulous school (despite the eye-watering tuition fees) but it was a wonderful place for an outdoors enthusiast like myself to be based.  I lived in a century-old building that was once a tuberculosis sanatorium for the wealthy of Europe (Stravinsky and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia both visited in the glory days), with an unbeatable view out across the Rhone valley to the Dents de Midi and (on clear days) a tiny sliver of the peak of Mont Blanc.  The skiing in Leysin was decidedly sub-par most weeks of most years, but there were always places to explore via ski touring.  The cross-country skiing was excellent, and in the fall and spring the road riding on a racing bicycle was incredible.  There were tennis and squash courts, and great hiking to be had.  It was a busy schedule, with teachers worked absolutely to the bone, but I generally always had energy for adventures whenever I could fit them in.  I ran the pub quiz in our village pub for almost the entire 5 years, which was great fun and an intellectual break from trying to hammer physics and mathematics into my students.

That first fall I mostly explored around Switzerland, by bicycle and on foot.  I stayed in Switzerland for the Christmas break and tried to ski (although it was the beginning of an epic months-long snow drought).  I also ran into a sporty New Zealand woman named Terri who turned out to be a wonderful partner in exploring the mountains and the world, and who is still with me nine and a half years later here in Tbilisi

2010 new countries:  Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland (or Somalia, if you don't regard Somaliland as de facto independent).  

2010 year-end country count:  93

2011

I prowled around Switzerland all winter in a fruitless search for decent snow.  Eventually my supplications to Ullr the snow god were answered and enough snow fell for two weeks of excellent ski touring cabin-to-cabin in the mountains with some of my similarly skiing-obsessed colleagues.  

That summer I spent the entire break cycling from Tbilisi, Georgia (where I am typing this now) to Tallinn, Estonia, via as many of the ex-Soviet and Eastern European countries that I could.  I rode through magical Svaneti tragic occupied Abkhazia to Sochi in Russia, where Terri flew out to join me for a couple of weeks of hard cycling along the Black Sea coast, through Crimea (then part of Ukraine), Trans-Dniestria and Moldova.  Terri had to return to work, but I kept cycling across Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine again, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and finally Estonia.  I covered 5500 mostly flat kilometres and really fell in love with the countries I was crossing.

In the fall Terri and I got away hiking most weekends, all the way into early December since it didn't snow at all in the autumn.  When it started snowing, though, it didn't stop and we had a memorable ski season.  

At Christmas, I zipped off to the Persian Gulf to explore (very briefly and superficially) the UAE, Qatar and a tiny corner of Oman, before returning to Leysin for New Year's.

2011 new countries:  Denmark, Abkhazia, Russia, Ukraine, Trans-Dniestria, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, UAE, Oman, Qatar.

2011 year-end country count:  108

2012

The winter of 2011-12 was epic for skiing and ski touring, probably the best of my five winters in Leysin.  Spring break was spent doing more ski touring before finally retiring the skis and taking out the bicycle.

The summer vacation was spent in the highest mountain ranges of the world.  Terri and I flew to India and trekked through the magical mountains and plateaux of Ladakh for a memorable month.  Again Terri had an earlier work deadline than I did, so I flew off to Kyrgyzstan to indulge my Reinhold Messner-inspired fantasies of mountain climbing.  I had had my eye on Peak Lenin and Muztagh Ata for years, so it seemed like a good time to try my luck.  My luck wasn't in on either peak, with terrible weather, heavy snowfall and poor conditions.  I decided that really high mountains weren't really my thing and flew back to Leysin to start my third academic year.

That fall I finally made it to Slovenia, the one Balkan country that I had not yet properly visited.  At Christmas I decided that I needed a bicycle tour, so I flew down to Lome and spent three weeks cycling around Togo and Benin.  It was a good  bike trip, but I didn't really warm to the two countries as much as I would have liked.  It was my first taste of West Africa after several trips to the north and east of the continent, and I resolved to come back one day to explore in much greater depth.

2012 new countries:  Slovenia, Togo, Benin

2012 year-end country count:  111

2013

The 2012-13 winter was also fabulous for snowfall in the Leysin region, and I had a great winter of skiing, ski touring and cross-country skate skiing.  Terri and I had a March break that overlapped for once (we worked at different schools with very different schedules) and we had hoped to do a week of ski touring.  Instead it suddenly stopped snowing at the end of February, and after waiting with crossed fingers for a while, we eventually booked a last-minute trip to the Maldives instead.  It was slightly self-indulgent, but it was also a reintroduction to diving for Terri, which proved to be a great thing for our future travels together.

That summer we set off together for Iceland with our touring bicycles.  We had a wonderful time exploring this tiny gem of a country, even if Terri did find the steep hills on dirt roads a bit challenging and annoying.  Then Terri returned to work and I flew to Canada for the first time in three years, visiting my mother in Ottawa, my father in Thunder Bay, my sister in Jasper and my friend Greg over the border in Montana.  The summer vacation was not yet over (I loved my epic summer holidays in Leysin!) and I returned to Europe to try my hand at a new (for me) form of bike touring:  riding a racing bike, travelling ultra-light and sleeping indoors.  I cycled from Avignon back to Leysin over as many Tour de France cols as possible (Galibier, Izoard, Agnel, Iseran, etc), then returned to southern France with Terri for another week of cycling.

That fall, the start of my fourth year in Leysin, did not go well.  I was teaching five different fairly challenging IB science and math courses, and I burned out spectacularly from overwork.  Not long after a long weekend in Dublin with Terri, I ended up having a minor nervous breakdown in early November and being sent off on medical leave for a few months, during which I went exploring Gran Canaria by bicycle and Laos by motor scooter.  It was a sobering reminder of my own mortality and of how unsustainably hard I was working at LAS.

2013 new countries:  Maldives, Iceland, Ireland

2013 country count:  114

2014

I returned to work after Christmas on a reduced teaching load and had a reasonable time of it, although it was a miserable ski season.  A few skiing friends and I spent spring break skiing in the Dolomites in Italy which was an incredible time, although I couldn't ski the last few days because of an incredibly sore back.

That summer Terri and I decided to take it physically a bit easier than usual since we weren't sure how recovered I was from my breakdown.  I flew to Bali via a brief visit to sad, ruined East Timor, and then Terri and I spent a month diving our way around Indonesia, with visits to Bali, the Togean Islands and the amazing Derawan Archipelago and its manta rays.  Terri had bought a small house in northeast Bali a few years earlier, and it made for a perfect base for our expeditions. After Terri's inevitable return to work, I stayed on, exploring the Solomon Islands and expensive, dangerous and deeply unpleasant Papua New Guinea before crossing back into Indonesian New Guinea for a few weeks of birdwatching and diving. 

That fall was the start of my last year at LAS.  I had already decided that I was going to leave, but LAS' deeply autocratic First Family had decided that I needed to be forced out, which didn't make the final year much fun at work.  Luckily it was a charmed autumn with perfect weather almost every weekend and a never-ending series of hiking and biking weekends that lasted almost into December that left me with a permanent grin and indelible memories of the fall colours blanketing the Alps.

I flew off that Christmas with three colleagues to show them the Japanese powder that I had been pining for during the many snow droughts of my Leysin years.   

2014 new countries:  East Timor, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea

2014 year-end country count:  117

2015

After some epic skiing in Hokkaido, I returned to Leysin for my final ski season there.  The snow was miserable for most of the winter, and when it did snow, I nearly got myself killed in an avalanche that took away quite a bit of my skiing mojo.  During spring break Terri and I flew to Georgia for a few days of skiing which reminded me of how much I liked this small, historic country in the Caucasus.

2015-18:  Three Itinerant Years

Mid-June saw me say farewell with affection and great memories to my colleagues and friends in Leysin and to the outdoor playground of the Alps.  Terri and I headed off for a month of cycling down the Danube, followed (for me) by sailing and cycling in Finland and Norway while Terri finished up her 15th and final year at Kumon Leysin Academy.  When she was free, we abandoned the bicycles and set off on foot to trek in the Pyrenees and then the mythical GR20 hiking route in Corsica.  Terri flew back to Switzerland for her Swiss citizenship ceremony, and then we were off, both finally free of work and commitments for the foreseeable future.

We visited our families and then rendezvoused in Ushuaia, Argentina for the extravagant splurge of a lifetime, a trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula on the MV Ushuaia.  Despite a fire on board on the first night, and having to dodge between South Atlantic hurricanes on the return journey, it was an incredible, life-altering trip that always seemed to have a David Attenborough voice-over playing in our heads.

After that, we started cycling north through Patagonia, stopping to hike in places like Torres del Paine and El Chalten.  We said good-bye to 2015 in a little town along the Carretera Austral, the little-used dirt road linking the remote communities of southern Chile.

2015 new countries:  Finland, Sweden

2015 year-end country count:  119

2016
We kept cycling north in early 2016, finishing on the island of Chiloe.  After a few days visiting friends in Santiago from my year of working there in 1999, we took an interminable bus trip to Paraguay with our bicycle and spent a few weeks cycling there before ending our South American sojourn in the genteel urban settings of Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

From here we switched continents.  We had talked for years about driving a 4-wheel-drive through Africa, and now it was time to put the dream into action.  We flew to Zambia where we spent several weeks working at Olive Tree Learning Centre, Terri's school that she helped establish in an impoverished shantytown in 2006 and which she has been supporting and growing ever since.  A group of Japanese students from Terri's former school flew down from Switzerland to meet us and do a service trip for which they had raised a large amount of much-needed funds, followed by a wildlife safari to incompable Chobe National Park across the Zambezi River in northern Botswana.

Afterwards we flew to Cape Town and started searching for vehicles, preferably already fitted out for overland exploration and camping.  Just as we were starting to despair, we got tipped off about a vehicle for sale in Johannesburg, and flew up to inspect it.  It was love at first sight, and so Stanley (as in Henry Morton Stanley) entered our lives.  

Most of the rest of 2016 was spent driving Stanley around southern Africa.  We explored Kruger National Park, then cruised through southern Mozambique before being turned around by civil conflict further north.  We drove back to South Africa, survived a potentially deadly car crash and then (after repairs) drove north into tragic but beautiful Zimbabwe for a month.  We popped out into Zambia and then turned east into Malawi before returning to Zambia, where we explored the north before heading down to Livingstone and spending more time at OTLC.  Finally we headed south across the wildlife paradise of Botswana before popping back into South Africa.

We took two-month break from Stanley from late October to mid-December, doing some tour guiding in Greece and some road-tripping through the Balkans before flying to Madagascar and its enchanting, endangered lemurs.

It wasn't until nearly Christmas that we were back in South Africa, picking up Stanley after some expert improvements had been made at Blinkgat, the camper manufacturer who had first put Stanley together a couple of years earlier.  We spun down through Swaziland and into KwaZulu-Natal, where we welcomed in 2017 in a wonderful wildlife refuge, Bushbaby Lodge.

2016 new countries:  Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar, Swaziland.

2016 year-end country count:  130

2017
The year started with some of our favourite bits of Africa.  We drove south through KwaZulu-Natal and the Orange Free State and drove across the breathtaking mountainous country of Lesotho before getting tired of the rainy season and bolting north towards Namibia.  Namibia was incredible, and we had many unforgettable nights camped out in the depths of the Namib desert or the semi-desert just inland of it.  All good things must come to an end, though, and what ended this idyllic period was a summons home to Thunder Bay, where my father was trying to recover from aggressive thyroid cancer.  We drove across the Caprivi Strip for one last visit to OTLC in Livingstone, then bolted back to Windhoek to store Stanley until we could return.

The next few months for me were a blur, as my father's recovery stalled and then a terminal decline set in.  He died at the end of June, and most of July was spent cleaning out the house where he had lived for 46 years (and where I had grown up and returned to for three decades after leaving home).  At the end of July my mother and I drove to Ottawa with a U-Haul of family heirlooms, and I flew off to Bali to rejoin Terri.

We spent the rest of the year in Indonesia, doing a lot of scuba diving and (in my case) learning how to take underwater photographs of the strange and wonderful creatures that live on tropical reefs.  I was also hard at work finishing the manuscript of my Silk Road cycling book.  In mid-November I crossed to the next island to the east, Lombok, and spent three weeks training to become a scuba instructor.  It was an intense course, but I passed the exam and set off immediately with Terri for jobs in Raja Ampat, the legendary diving area off the western tip of Indonesian New Guinea.  The job wasn't all it was cracked up to be, but it taught both of us a lot, and we got to dive almost every day with manta rays, which is a priceless experience.  We said farewell to the year on tiny Arborek Island in Raja Ampat, after a whirlwind 365 days.

2017 new countries:  Lesotho, Namibia

2017 year-end country count:  132

2018
Terri and I said goodbye to Arborek early in January, glad for the experience but keen to move on.  We stopped off in Ambon for some memorable muck diving, then returned to Bali for a month of heavy rain and occasional diving.  I was still hard at work writing, and in early February I finished the first draft of my manuscript, just in time to fly to New Zealand for 2 months of exploring with Terri.  We covered much of the North Island of the country, more than a quarter century after my first visit there in 1992.  We hiked, biked, paddled and drove around many of the incredible natural sights of the country, and were amazed afterwards at how much we had seen.

A very brief sojourn back in Bali, and then we were off again, flying to Namibia to pick up Stanley.  We had had some serious problems with Namibian Customs about Stanley not having the right paperwork (we thought he did!!) and so we had to move him to storage in South Africa.  We decided that we should explore Namibia in greater detail while we did, and we ended up spending six memorable weeks in the Namibian desert, camped out under the stars, looking for elephants and zebras and giraffes.  Eventually we drove down to rainy Cape Town and put Stanley into storage there.

While we had been in New Zealand, I had accepted a job offer to teach in Tbilisi, so when we returned to Bali, I packed up my possessions and flew to Canada to visit my mother and then, at the end of July, on to Tbilisi.

2018-2019:  The Tbilisi Years

I had always enjoyed Georgia during my three previous trips to the country (2009, 2011 and 2015), so I was looking forward to living there full-time.  Terri and I spent the late summer and autumn exploring the beautiful mountainous regions of Tusheti, Khevsureti and Mtiuleti, with fall break in the enchanting western region of Svaneti, then loaded up our expedition van (Douglas the Delica) as the Christmas break began and headed off on a three-week skiing roadtrip.  We welcomed in the New Year in a small homestay in the frosty mountains of the Goderdzi Pass area.

2018 new countries:  none (first time since 2005!)

2018 year-end country count:  132

2019

I've just written a long blog post looking back on this year, so I will be brief about this year's travels.  There were a number of (generally disappointing) ski weekends north of Tbilisi, a week in France skiing with my sister Saakje and her partner Henkka in March, some fun camping weekends in the spring and then a summer of mountain exploration in Kyrgyzstan and back here in Georgia.  This fall we drove around Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh (now renamed Artsakh) and today (in a few hours) we are flying to Panama for a Christmas get-together with my mother, Saakje and Henkka.

2019 new countries:  Panama

2019 year-end country count:  133

I hope that the 2020s will be just as active, if not more so, in terms of exploring new corners of the globe.  With a new and much longer-range installment of Stanley's Travels coming up starting in September, 2020, I hope to add a lot of the countries that are still missing from my collection.  I still have roughly 90 countries left to visit; I would love to have that total down closer to 30 when I'm writing the next installment of the decade-in-review.

A quick update from Bali

Cycling Georgia back in 2009

Trundling along the Danube, 2015

Just a quick update from our little pocket of tropical island life here.  Most of you, my faithful readers, are already aware of big changes coming in my life, but for those of you not yet aware, our time here in Bali is rapidly drawing to a close.  Not forever, mind you; Terri is keeping her house here which has been such a great place to base ourselves over the past year.  I've loved living here, doing lots of diving and snorkelling in the ocean and running and cycling in the mountains, and writing.  I'm halfway through the second draft of my book on my Silk Road cycle trip, having written almost the entire first draft here in my writing eyrie perched high on a hill overlooking the waters and sailboats of the Bali Sea.  It has been the perfect spot to write, and I am frantically trying to get through the hard work of the second draft before I lose this base.  We will certainly be back here in the future, probably living here again in a few years' time.

Sailing in Finland with my friend JP, 2015

Atop another hair-raising climb on the GR20 in Corsica

In February, when I was at the northern tip of the North Island of New Zealand with Terri, I received an offer from an international high school in Tbilisi, Georgia to teach science and mathematics there.  It's been almost 3 years since I last taught, and I've enjoyed my "pretirement":  cycle trips along the Danube and through Scandinavia; hiking in the Pyrenees and Corsica; a cruise to the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula; cycling in Chile, Argentina and Paraguay; working on Terri's pre-school in Zambia; our year-long African odyssey in Stanley; diving here in Indonesia and qualifying as a PADI Open Water SCUBA Instructor; hiking in New Zealand.  Of course, there was also the less fun aspect of my father's death last July, although being free to help nurse him through his final months was an important part of saying goodbye to him.  

Happy in Antarctica

Terri and some of the staff and students of Olive Tree

Riding the Carretera Austral, Chile

At any rate, I have had an incredible time on the travel front with Terri, and there is so much more that I want to do:  drive Stanley all the way around Africa; hike the fabulous mountains of Central Asia; explore Central America, northern South America and Brazil.  However after 3 years on the road, the sad realities of economic life dictate that I need to earn some money, and while I would have liked teaching SCUBA diving, teaching high school is a much more lucrative profession, particularly on the international circuit, and Georgia is one of the few countries that I was willing to come out of pretirement for.  I cycled in Georgia in 2009 and 2011, and skied there in 2015, and every time I really enjoyed the feel of the country, the culture, the people and the amazing Caucasus Mountains.  I accepted the job, and so in August I will be moving to Tbilisi along with Terri to start a two-year commitment.  I am looking forward immensely to living in Georgia:  the food, the wine, the opportunities to hike and ski, the chance to polish up my Russian and learn some Georgian, and of course getting to try to inspire young minds to love mathematics and science.  I am very excited indeed.

Wild camping in Botswana

Before we go, however, we are heading back to Namibia to pick up Stanley and take him for a spin for the next 7 weeks.  He's been parked in Windhoek, and we want to do more exploring of Namibia, a country that we really enjoyed last year despite having to curtail our travels because of my father's illness.  The plan is to drive less and stay longer in the various spots that we visit, particularly in the northwestern deserts.  It will be wonderful to restart Stanley's Travels, if only briefly.  

I want to spend July in Ottawa, visiting my mother and working on my book under her eagle-eyed editorial supervision, before flying to Tbilisi at the end of the month.  I have to nip over to Switzerland to pick up my skis and other winter sports gear that I stored in Leysin back in 2015, and then I will have a little over a week of liberty before orientation for new staff begins at the school.  I would like to spend that week exploring some corner of the Caucasus on foot with Terri; I have done plenty of cycling but not nearly enough walking in Georgia, and it's time to remedy that.  I would like to explore a leg of the newly-developing Trans-Caucasian Trail system, perhaps linking Tusheti and Khevsureti, or maybe between Racha and Lentekhi.  There is so much stupendous mountain scenery to explore that I am sure we will be kept busy every weekend for the next couple of years.  

Damaraland, Namibia

The plan for next summer is to go to Kyrgyzstan, my other favourite Silk Road country, and do some serious trekking there:  Lake Sary-Chelek; the Inylchek Glacier; the Turkestan Range in Batken province.  I'd also like to have a couple of weeks left over for more Caucasus trekking as well.  Then in 2020, when my time in Georgia comes to an end, I want to go back to Africa to take Stanley on his longest trip yet, up the west side of Africa to Europe, and back down the east side to South Africa.  

Moremi, Botswana

So much to see, so little time!  I hope to see some of you, my faithful readers, in Georgia for some skiing, some cycling, some hiking or some wine-tasting over the next two years, and I hope you continue to follow my adventures here online.

Bali sunset

MV Ushuaia Expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula--November 2015

After sailing away from our unforgettable four days on South Georgia, life on the MV Ushuaia reverted to its usual routine during a crossing:  three big meals a day, a lecture or briefing every morning and afternoon, lots of reading and watching seabirds and a feeling of suspended animation.  When the sea was calm, I was fairly functional, but if the swell kicked up a bit, I took to my bunk to sleep and read.  In retrospect, I should have made use of the scopalomine patches that I had bought on the recommendation of my sister, but I preferred to try to sleep off the low-level seasickness.

Iceberg floating past South Georgia

Our trip down from South Georgia to the Antarctic Peninsula was long, the longest crossing of the trip.  We left on the late afternoon of the 5^th, after our sail up Drygalski Fjord, and didn’t come into sight of land until nearly sunset on the 8^th, when we passed Clarence Island and, in the distance, Elephant Island, another key site in the Shackleton saga in 1917.  We did have things to look at, luckily:  lots of icebergs are swept up along this route by the prevailing currents and waves, and some of the bergs were a perch for penguins, particularly Adelie penguins.  We spotted fur seals swimming in the open ocean, and two of the keen birdwatchers, Stefan and Andrew, thought they had seen macaroni penguins swimming by as well.  Of course we had our usual accompaniment of albatrosses (royal, black-browed and wandering), petrels (Southern giant and Cape), storm petrels, prions and terns.  However the sightings that got us most excited were whales.  The afternoon that we were sailing towards Drygalski Fjord, Ricky spotted a spout right beside the boat, and as we gathered to look, we realized that we were surrounded by between 15 and 20 humpback whales, feeding and displaying.  One of them turned on her side to give huge flipper slaps to the water surface, presumably to disorient or stun prey.  For at least ten minutes, there were spouts all around us.  At other times a single spout would appear and then there would be no further sight of the whale; the biologists said these were probably beaked whales of some sort.  Another day we had a good 8 or so whales running parallel to the boat, but not close enough to get a real look at them.  It was good to see that with whaling banned in the Southern Ocean, the number of whales is at least stable and may be slightly increasing after being pushed to the brink of extinction (for the right and humpback whales, anyway). 

We ran into more headwinds and contrary currents than anticipated, which meant that we had to jettison plans to visit Elephant Island as it was too late in the day to go visit in daylight hours.  This was a big disappointment to Oz, who wanted to see where Shackleton and his men survived for months under an overturned lifeboat.  In the event, we got a dramatic view of neighbouring Clarence Island as we sailed past; the icy slopes and big glaciers reminded me a bit of Muztagh Ata.

First view of the Antarctic Peninsula

We woke up early on Monday, November 9^th to find ourselves in another world.  Overnight we had steamed to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula at Esperanza Station, and most of us scrambled outside before breakfast to take pictures of the dramatic scenery.  On our right the Antarctic mainland extended in a series of ice cliffs and tumbling glaciers.  On our left a series of islands, ringed by pack ice, enclosed us in a long, narrow strait of ice-free water.  

Huge tabular iceberg near Esperanza

We spent the early morning on deck, taking photos by the dozens of the landscape, of the huge passing tabular icebergs, of the smaller bergs and their animal denizens (particularly Adelie penguins and Weddell seals).  The colours and shapes looked unreal, too straight-edged and uniformly white to exist in nature.  We used up a lot of camera memory as we continued steaming towards the Argentinian scientific station at Esperanza, one of the locations associated with Nordenskjold’s ill-fated expedition in 1901-04.

Adelie penguins hitching a lift on a berg

The plan was to land at Esperanza or at nearby Brown Bluff, one of the largest colonies of nesting Adelie penguins on the planet.  We put on our landing gear (insulated waterproof trousers and jackets, rubber boots, life jackets) and lined up for a Zodiac ride to shore.  As always, Monika, Agustin, Mariela, Ale and Kata went first to assess landing conditions.  I thought things looked too windy and rough to even contemplate a landing, as gale-force katabatic winds howled down off the ice cap to drive big white=capped waves across the water.  I thought that if it weren’t our first chance to land on the mainland of Antarctica, there was no way that we would even be thinking about landing.  Sure enough, in a few minutes the guides were back shaking their heads:  landing was out of the question given the conditions.  We were all pretty disappointed, given that we were keen to land on the seventh continent, but it was the right decision.

The iceberg that it took us an hour to circumnavigate

Instead, we did a cruise around the Antarctic Sound in the ship, taking pictures of the truly massive tabular icebergs, pack ice, Weddell seals and mainland glaciers.  One tabular iceberg was well over a kilometre long on a side and over 20 metres high (and hence about 180 metres deep!!).  The crew and the guides were impressed by the quantity of ice floating around; some of them hadn’t seen so much ice in almost 20 years of sailing to Antarctica.  They called it a “Shackleton year”, in memory of the fact that Shackleton’s 1914 expedition was doomed by a year of extraordinary quantities of ice.  There are suggestions that the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica are shedding ice into the ocean at an ever-increasing rate because of warming, because of water getting underneath the glacial tongue, and because of the collapse of ice shelves such as Larsen B which releases ice to flow into the sea more rapidly.  Whatever the cause, it was an unforgettable experience to see the huge, simple shapes and colours of the outsized icebergs, sort of like being part of a Lawren Harris painting. 

Imposing iceberg barrier at the mouth of Antarctic Sound

After lunch, since the wind had not yet dropped, we set sail early for a long haul around the tip of the Peninsula and down the west coast towards Brown Station, our next target.  As Monika said, the problem with visiting Antarctica is that the number of places where you can actually land on the shore is very, very limited, and with 2015-16 being a Shackleton year, some of that very limited supply of landing spots are ruled out by excessive ice.  Deception Island, a famous spot where a volcanic caldera encloses a hot spring bubbling into the Antarctic Ocean, is completely iced in this year and it seems unlikely that any tourists will swim within its natural harbour this season.  As we headed north and then west around the very northern tip of Antarctica, we had to pick a path between dozens of tabular icebergs, most as big or bigger than the monster we had sailed around earlier.  It was incredibly impressive to see this much ice, and even the crew popped out on deck to snap photos of the maze of icebergs on all sides.

Beautiful calm waters near Brown Station

We slept well that night, and in the morning we found ourselves steaming up the Gerlache Strait, close to Brown Station.  The weather was perfect, and the surface of the ocean was glassy calm, between the increasingly frequent small icebergs and their irregular surfaces.  One of my favourite images was of an irregularly shaped iceberg with a swirling natural Jacuzzi pool at one end in which a mother Weddell seal and her juvenile pup were swimming.  There was an almost unnatural calm over the water and the land, and it was clear that we would finally be able to land on the Antarctic mainland. 

Weddell seal in his ice jacuzzi

We split the passengers into two groups, and Terri and I were in the first group to land at the long-dormant Brown Base, another Argentinian scientific base.  We clambered ashore and were surrounded by hordes of gentoo penguins on shore and fishing offshore.  Cormorants flew by with nest-building materials in their beaks, snowy sheathbills flew silently by, and Weddell seals lounged on the shore nearby.  

Finally on the mainland of Antarctica, Brown Base

Dramatic glaciated peaks towered over the base, and the waters of Gerlache Strait looked almost black, like an ancient obsidian mirror.  We wandered around, took photos of the comical gentoos and revelled in the views.  When our shore time was up, we clambered into a Zodiac and cruised around the glassy waters for another hour, looking for seals and admiring the glaciers with their calving faces tumbling into the ocean. 

Amazing colours and textures

Monika told us that when she first came to Brown 20 years earlier, the 6 separate glaciers now visible all flowed together into the ocean some 2 km further out to sea.  We saw the cliffs where the cormorants were building their nests, and admired the icy architecture of the mountains.  Monika steered our boat between icebergs, and even through an icy passage where one huge iceberg had an underwater connection between two above-water sections.  When we returned to the ship for lunch, we were all greatly satisfied with our taste of Antarctica.

Gentoos at Brown

While we ate, the ship moved a bit up the Peninsula towards our next destination, Orne Island, a huge nesting site for chinstrap penguins.  The weather was perfect, and the views over the icecap that covers the entire central spine of the Peninsula were epic,  We passed a distant Quark Expeditions ship anchored near another penguin colony (the same ship that would hit an iceberg in the night a few nights later and put a big gash in her hull) and admired from afar another huge colony of Adelie penguins.  

Chinstraps dancing

Orne Island was a tiny gem, full of chinstraps (which we had not yet seen) and a few rogue gentoos.

Chinstrap penguin

  We spent our shore time photographing the chinstraps, the gentoos and the offshore icebergs.  Just as Terri and I were turning our back on the iceberg-filled bay, we heard a big crunch and crack, and running back uphill, we were in time to see a huge iceberg split in two and then turn over completely, unbalanced by its new shape and mass.  

Watching the iceberg rolling over at Orne Island

It was one of the things we had most wanted to see, and so watching an iceberg turn over felt like the icing on the cake.  We had a group photo taken at the high point of the island, and then headed back to the ship past a sleeping Weddell seal that had not moved a centimetre since we had passed it on the way to shore.

Lazy Weddell seal

That night we set sail for the South Shetland Islands, and in the morning we woke up to a driving blizzard, through which we could see the islands in the distance.  An after-breakfast briefing by Monika delivered the unwelcome news that a massive weather system was passing through (the tail end of a full hurricane) and that it was out of the question to try to land in these conditions.  In fact, we would spend the day hiding in the lee of the South Shetlands and then try to make a run for it across the Drake Passage at night between the receding hurricane and another approaching gale.  The Drake Passage crossing was going to be a 9 out of 10 for discomfort.

We spent the day in limbo, having a lecture, watching videos and then having a wonderful Antarctic Quiz, in which the team I was on led until the very end, when a round about music and film and TV themes scuppered us and handed victory to the Argentinian photographic safari crew. 

The two full days spent crossing the Drake Passage were truly miserable.  The ship rocked and heaved more than ever before, and meals were impossible, as I could not make it through a meal without being overwhelmed by nausea.  One of the expeditioners, Tom, was thrown clean out of his berth in the middle of the night and managed, through sheer luck, to land on his feet.  On the afternoon of the 13^th of November we finally came into sight of the islands south of Tierra del Fuego and within a few hours we were in the protective lee of the archipelago.  It was such a relief to have a stable ship under our feet that we were quite giddy as we had the traditional ceremony of getting landing certificates, having a final toast and then having an Olympian feast for our final supper. 

Orne Island bergs

The next morning we woke up to find the familiar confines of Ushuaia Harbour closing in around us.  We had a final massive breakfast and then lined up to collect our 10% rebate in crisp dollar bills (always useful in the strange currency exchange world of Argentina!) before being released.  Most people headed to the airport that day, but Terri and I headed to our hotel for long nap and then a walk around Ushuaia.  That evening a few of us who hadn’t yet left town gathered for a beer or two at the Dublin Pub.  It was hard to believe that after 20 days, our once-in-a-lifetime trip was over.  It was time to head off for new adventures in Patagonia.

Practical Tips:  I think that if you’re going to spend the big bucks and go to Antractica, it’s worth paying more to include South Georgia and the Falklands, both of which are visually impressive and have incredible concentrations of birds.  They also have more guaranteed landing spots than the Peninsula.  It’s also worth checking whether it’s a big ice year (a Shackleton year) and whether this will make much of the Antarctic Peninsula’s landing spots inaccessible.  A good starting point for any Antarctic expedition is Daniela Gonzalez’ Ushuaia Turismo website, which lists every single departure out of Ushuaia, its itinerary and its list price.  Last-minute specials are available; the best price we saw was for US$ 3500 for a 10-day Antarctic Peninsula trip.  The longer trips (such as ours) are discounted much less often and by smaller amounts.  It’s a lot of money, but I thought it was worth every last cent.  Just do it!

Click here for more photos from this part of our trip!