a final post on Antarctica

I don't feel that my posts on Antarctica and South Georgia were really that coherent, but they are places that assault the senses rather than the intellect, and that for me is quite difficult to capture in writing.  Many of the boat crew are of the opinion that visiting Antarctica changes your view of the world; it didn't do that for me - perhaps I'm just too well-travelled for any one place to have that strong an effect on me now - but it seems that it has left me lost for words.

If I had listened more attentively to the lectures on board and other information shared with us (or rather if I had retained the information, which seemed to go in one ear and out the other), I could write about Shackleton and other Antarctic explorers, or about the whaling and sealing industries, or the Antarctic Treaty, or the eradication of rats on South Georgia.  But all I can really add to my earlier posts is that Antarctica is a stunningly beautiful place - and add a couple more photos as no words I can write will do it justice.

being close to nature

Something that quite surprised me about my time in Antarctica, and in South Georgia especially, was the rawness of the experience – the smells (guano and sometimes rotting animals), the sounds (trumpeting king penguins, belching elephant seals and the wail/howl of the fur seals), and also the occasional death and suffering around.  Overall the sights were stunning, but this was not Disneyland.  We saw a penguin with a shocking wound from a leopard seal bite (apologies if you find the photo disturbing), standing there apparently calmly, but sure to die.  Also a young leopard seal lying on the sand on Deception Island, one half of its tail bitten off by an orca – this animal rather more obviously in distress and also unlikely to survive.  Later I watched a pair of gentoo penguins standing around their now empty nest in obvious bewilderment, not understanding why their chick was not there (taken by a skua) nor what they were supposed to do next.  I also watched a skua feasting on the remains of a king penguin.

Another factor in the experience was that it was clearly the animals’ and birds’ territory, with humans very much the visitors.  Several times trying to get somewhere we found fur seals hidden in the tussock grass growling and even charging at us.  The male elephant seals, their noses inflating as they rear up and bare their teeth at anything they consider an irritation, look like big mounds of blubber but they can apparently move faster than humans over short distances so we tried hard not to get too close to them.

The penguins were not threatening at all, indeed one laid down on the beach only two feet away from me – but we tried not to approach them too closely in case this caused them stress, as they need all their energy to survive.  Moults are particularly stressful experiences, including the ‘catastrophic’ moults of elephant seals as they shed all of their skin to get rid of all their parasites after the breeding season.  Penguins go through a major moult when they lose the brown fur of youth that is not even waterproof – they just stand/lie around on the shore while all this happens, as they cannot go out into the sea to feed until they have their adult coat.

I should also mention the ‘rawness’ of the environment – we heard of one ship unable to get out of Ushuaia due to the weather only a week after we had left, another forced to return to get medical attention for two passengers who suffered broken bones in rough seas, and our sister ship en route from the Falklands to the Peninsula but taking four days rather than the usual two as it battled the elements.  We were extremely lucky to get our landings on all four days in South Georgia, particularly in St Andrew’s Bay which is rarely calm enough – but like the vast majority of ships we were unable to get to Elephant Island, and the optional night sleeping out on the ice was cancelled at the last minute (when I was ready to go in my seven layers of clothing!) as the wind got too strong for it to be safe.

Our first landing on Antarctica, at Brown Bluff, was a close call, with everyone getting soaked by the waves breaking across the zodiacs as we battled to get to the shore, and freezing cold snow being driven horizontally at us on the land.  Some opted to stay on the ship but those of us who made it actually enjoyed the experience – isn’t Antarctica supposed to be cold, bleak and inhospitable?  Although I must say we also enjoyed the sunshine and calm seas of the next day!  The temperature rarely fell below freezing but the wind chill could make it feel colder some days.  Many people on my ship were seasick at some point (luckily I was not), and one lost the end of her thumb as a door slammed shut on her when the ship was being tossed around crossing the Drake passage.  Not a trip for the faint-hearted although on a big cruise ship it would be easier (and less exciting) than on the little ice-strenghtened expedition ship that I took.

a blubber of seals

Another creature that is superbly adapted to a life in cold water but that has to struggle ashore for certain parts of the life cycle is the elephant seal.  These were mostly lying around moulting when we visited.  Every so often one would snort, or hump its massive body a few metres along the beach (moving rather in the manner of a giant maggot), or open its mouth wide and belch – they were fat, slobby and bad-mannered!  The males were bad-tempered too, easily upset by another elephant seal – or we humans getting too close – when they would inflate their nose sacs, rear up the front half of their bodies, and if another elephant seal responded in the same manner then a fight would ensue, the two seals thudding their bodies into each other whilst each tried to get a bite into the other’s neck region.

However when lying calmly on the sand they had the largest, most appealing puppy-dog eyes…

The males also have a pretty hard life, totally geared towards gaining a stretch of beach with females on it, which the victor apparently has to fight for, on around an hourly basis, to retain it against the other males who challenge him.  A successful male gets to mate with all the females on the beach – which can be around fifty – but many males never get control of a beach and thus never get the chance to mate at any point during their lives.  The constant fighting for this right takes its toll and the average male elephant seal lives only half as long as the average female.

Quite a bit smaller than the elephant seals are the Antarctic fur seals, of which we saw many hundreds (or perhaps thousands).  They are also quite appealing when calm, but frequently bad-tempered and aggressive and some of our group found it hard to follow the instructions when challenged – to make yourself big and noisy rather than running away!  Their babies were incredibly cute and also tried to intimidate us but without any success whatsoever.

Unusually we didn’t get to see any weddell seals, but we saw a number of crabeater seals lounging on icebergs.  These are the second most numerous mammal on earth (second to human beings), which I thought was amazing given how few people ever see one.  We also saw a number of whales, mostly humpbacks but a few other species including, possibly, a blue whale.  The humpbacks were feeding in groups and put on quite a display – I think most of us eventually managed to get the classic photo of a tail fluke.

a cacophony of penguins

I’ve split my account of this trip into a number of posts, partly because I couldn’t pick out only two or three photos to share, and more posts means I can share more photos!  It’s hard to explain quite how difficult it is to stop taking photos of penguins.  They are just so cute.  Superbly adapted to their freezing cold environment, and apparently very graceful underwater, they don’t look quite so elegant when they have to be on land, either the youngsters who don’t yet have the waterproof adult coat they need to go to sea, or the adults when they come ashore to moult or breed.  We visited a number of different penguin colonies, including one of an estimated 200,000 breeding pairs of king penguins at St. Andrew’s Bay in South Georgia, and no-one on the boat ever complained!

The young king penguins, in their brown hairy coats, look so different from the adults that they were originally thought to be a different species – which was named the woolly penguin.  Some of the cuteness shows through in a photo, but this doesn’t capture their curiosity (many waddled up to investigate us), nor their tendency to try to run and then fall flat onto their bellies.

The adults were fascinating to watch, too, their social interactions seeming so human.  I watched small groups of them walking, then stopping and turning to face each other for a while before continuing on their walk; it looked for all the world as though they had stopped to have a conversation – perhaps to discuss whether or not to keep walking – really it was impossible not to attribute human characteristics and motivations to them.  It seems that a lot of their interactions were to do with courtship, and although the males and females look alike you could easily pick out the males as they followed the females around, sometimes two or three following one female and having the occasional squabble, slapping each other with their stubby little wings as they tried to impress her, and stretching up their necks as they trumpeted their call to the other penguins.  I don’t know whether there is an official collective noun, but to me it should be a cacophony of penguins.

These on the left are chinstrap penguins, of which we saw plenty in Antarctica (as opposed to the king penguins which were all in South Georgia).  The king penguins were my favourites as they are so beautiful, but as well as these and the chinstraps, we also got to see gentoos, adelies, rockhopppers and a lone macaroni penguin lurking in one of the chinstrap colonies.  Each species seemed to have their own distinctive ways of behaving, but all of them were adorable.

OK, I can't choose between them all, so here are two more penguin photos:

A history lesson

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to visit Antarctica.  I think initially the desire sprang from seeing some spectacular photos of icebergs, then later the penguins became another draw.  & if you want to see penguins then there’s no point going all the way to Antarctica without detouring to South Georgia en route for the massive king penguin colonies … and it all gets a bit expensive.  But as the desire to go there was never going to go away, last year I decided to bite the bullet and signed up for a trip.

As is standard, this also included the Falkland Islands, in which I didn't have all that much interest, to be honest.  However it proved to be not only rewarding in terms of the wildlife but also in filling in some of the big gaps in my knowledge of the Falklands war and its aftermath.

The British are still not welcome in Argentina, it seems, or at least not in the town of Ushuaia.  The photo above reads “Mooring forbidden for English pirate ships” – and although I acted like most English tourists by laughing in delight and taking a photo, the intent is serious, as this prohibition has actually been written into Argentinian law.  For the Argentinians the whole of my three week trip around the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula have been in Argentinian territory.

I missed the Falklands war as I was volunteering on a kibbutz in Israel at the time, and with Israel having invaded Lebanon during the same period there was no news of the Falklands filtering through at all.  By the time I got back to the UK in September it was all over and my mind was too busy with all the novelty of starting at university to want to investigate this little bit of history that I had missed.  So I found the lecture on the ship about the geo-political history of the Falklands very interesting.  As a Canadian-operated ship with a multi-national crew and passenger list, I presume the lecture was unbiased – certainly they covered the African origin of the land itself, the history of British occupation and the claim of the Argentinians based on the short-lived settlement founded by a Frenchman born in Germany but at the time (in the mid-1820s) based in Argentina.  

But of course on the islands themselves everything is ultra-British, from the telephone and post boxes to the ubiquitous Land Rovers.  

& I was lucky enough to get a history lesson from a third-generation resident, after he had scuppered my plans to visit the museum by giving me a lift out to a place where it was possible to see the rufous-chested dotterel.  Much to the envy of the some of the more serious birders on my boat who were not so lucky.  This retired gentleman was kind enough to drive me, a guide and another tourist out to a rocky spit of land to see the bird, and then on the drive back he volunteered plenty of information about the war and the subsequent period.  I asked him whether the islands had gained in any way from the war and he explained how before the war the people had long been asking the British government to declare a fishery zone around the islands but this had not been done as it would have been counter to the secret negotiations over sovereignty between Britain and Argentina – but following the war a 150 mile zone was declared, resulting in a rise in the annual income of the Falklands government from £6 million to £35 million.  This transformed the islands, with a programme of capital investment including a new school and roads and full funding of sixth form education for islanders at boarding schools in the UK, and now the islands are self-supporting financially with no subsidy from the UK. 

It was a fascinating day, and probably the only time in my life when I could claim to be in two different countries at the same time.

Also very enjoyable was the mixed nesting colony of black-browed albatrosses and rockhopper penguins.  As you can see from the penguin photo-bombing the picture below, the albatrosses just sat calmly and serenely on their nests while the penguins squawked and waddled awkwardly around them.

The (flightless) Falklands steamer ducks were also enjoyed by many of us as they fed on the beaches.

trade-offs in life

Last week I went to Amsterdam for a three-day meeting.  A long way to go, 18 hours getting there and 21 hours getting back, and the airport experiences were particularly bad this time.  In Amsterdam perhaps they were jittery after the Paris attacks, but I counted six times I had to have my passport seen or scanned, neither the automatic check-in or luggage check-in machines would accept my booking or my luggage, my hand luggage was swabbed and emptied out for examination and I had to be interviewed by a personal profiling agent.  The queues were awful too - though I suppose the flight itself wasn't too bad as at least I got to see the Amy Winehouse documentary and finish a book.

Then in Atlanta the usual rigmarole of having to go through immigration into the US and then straight back out again to catch the connecting flight.  I do not understand how the US has failed to grasp the concept of transit, as used by the rest of the world for several decades.

Checking in for my return leg to Panama is never straightforward, as Panama does not, at least in theory, allow non-residents in without a return (outwards) ticket.  So of course when airlines see that my itinerary does not include another part to leave Panama they always want to see my residence visa (this is why I cannot use online check-in or even automatic check-in machines, although the staff always make me try).  Having gone through that issue in Amsterdam, and checked right through to Panama, I was surprised to hear my name called in Atlanta to go and see the staff at the gate.  The steward expressed concern that my itinerary ended in Panama and I explained that I live there.  I showed her the residence visa in my passport.  But she couldn't read the expiry date on the visa (to be fair it is written in very strange hand-writing) so was not prepared to accept it.  I realised that on my laptop I had the emailed electronic ticket for my next trip a week later, so she waited while I powered up my laptop to show her.  I suppose I shouldn't complain, they are only doing their job, but it is tiring gong through this sort of thing so frequently.

As the cheapest flights to Amsterdam get in early in the morning, and my boss didn't want me going straight from the airport into our meeting, I was allowed to arrive a day early (particularly as my 6:30 am arrival at the hotel was only 00:30 - ie shortly after midnight - for my body clock).  I didn't want to sleep for too long though so I got up mid-morning and then went to the Van Gogh Museum.  It was terrific and I spent three hours in there.  I like his work so it was good to see the Sunflowers, for example, in the flesh, but I was also impressed by some of the lesser-known stuff like his Japanese-style paintings.

There was an exhibition on comparing Van Gogh and Munch (yes, they had The Scream in the exhibition), which also had works by Monet, Manet, Gauguin, Pissaro and several other well-known artists.  It was an excellent exhibition.

What particularly interested me, however, was a small participative display, where visitors were asked to write something on a card about how they were feeling - the most powerful emotion in their life.  I wrote loneliness on my card.  Not that being lonely is something I am upset about, if that makes sense, rather it is something that I am aware of but that I consciously accept as the price I pay for the wonderful opportunities I have in my job to see so much of the world.  Indeed I knowingly make decisions that make it harder to establish any social life by adding days, weekends and weeks on to trips whenever I can rather than rushing home to attend social events in Panama.  But my situation - my lifestyle - is very unusual.  I was surprised then, as I stuck my card to the board, to see those already there, saying fear, sadness, and in several cases loneliness.  Many more 'negative' emotions than positive.  I doubt that many of the people who wrote those other cards have the same degree of choice over the matter that I have.

It reminded me of a recent conversation with a colleague - a follow-up to an email from him apologising for not delivering something because he had been "in a dark place" and so unable to focus on his work.  Like me, the frequent travel made it hard for him to establish a social life. Evening classes or sports teams were out because of the inability to attend with any regularity, and he clearly doesn't have the ability I have to fill a solitary evening in sorting out a music or photo collection (or writing a blog post!).  He is drinking rather too much, in my view, and whilst he denied this he did say that if he wants company the only available option seems to be to go to a bar.  It reminded me of a friend I made in my early days in Senegal, who (whilst I was away on a business trip) had a breakdown and was shipped home by his employer, never to return as they decided he had a drink problem. In his case I hadn't noticed it, but we didn't see eachother very often as one or other of us was usually away on a trip...

I recall during my early days in Senegal, when I was still adjusting to the loneliness that comes with the job, I consciously avoided pouring myself a glass of wine when I got home, aware of the danger of it becoming a need.  As a consequence I have lost my tolerance for alcohol and now on the rare occasion I do have a glass of something, my sleep is very disturbed that night.  I'm also aware of the danger of social media - it is too easy to have a kind of social life on facebook, to sit there waiting for a virtual friend to post something you can like or comment on - and to feel unappreciated if no-one likes your own posts.  So again I consciously restrict my use of it.  For one thing I do not have data on my phone, so am not able to constantly check for messages and updates as some people do.  I prefer to live in the real world, to be aware of where I am and what is around me!  But I think you need a fair bit of inner strength to resist all the crutches.

I'm still happy with the choice I've made, the loneliness for me is not a great price to pay for the fantastic travel experiences I have, and although I work long hours I also find the work quite fulfilling.  But I know I couldn't live like this for the rest of my life, and I also know that when the time comes to settle somewhere and live a 'normal' life it will be quite a big adjustment - but as Amsterdam showed me, that I shouldn't assume that everyone living that kind of life doesn't have their own difficulties to face.

getting into hot water in Guatemala

Every year on 1 November, the Day of the Dead, the communities of Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez in Guatemala hold their kite festivals.  My assignment in Guatemala finished on 30 October so clearly I had to stay on to see this - and then for a few more days as there was no point rushing back to Panama when the office would be closed for three days for public holidays.

So I organised a trip with the Quetzalroo Hostel to the Sumpango festival.  Being a hostel trip, we set off late, and we had to stop en route for people to buy beers, and then again for people to eat fried chicken ... but eventually we arrived and of course being Latin America we hadn't missed anything by arriving a little late.

The kites were mostly waiting up one end of the field, although a couple had already been gingerly lifted up above people's heads and taken to the launching site at the other end, awaiting lift-off.  Except that it is very difficult to get such large kites airborne.  During our two-three hours there we saw I think seven successful launches and a great many more failures.  Up to sixteen metres in diameter, and made entirely by hand of brightly coloured tissue paper on bamboo frames, the kites apparently take months to make and can cost thousands of dollars so it must be heart-breaking for those that see their creations come crashing down, bamboo splintering and paper tearing, after rising just a few metres. Although it is good for those that succeed in getting their kite up as there is significant prize money given out by the event sponsors.

There seems to be no consensus on the origin of the festival nor the exact meaning of the kites, although most stories suggest the kites were originally advised by a shaman as a way to scare off evil spirits on the day when they would otherwise disturb the residents of the towns.

The next day I set off on a long trek: city bus across town, long-distance bus taking me five hours north-east of the capital, a tuk-tuk taking me the next 3km along a dusty road through the banana plantations - and later, after a couple of hours looking around the Mayan ruins at Quiriguá, a long hot walk back through the plantations and three different 'colectivo' small buses until I finally arrived at the town of Rio Dulce around 7pm.

This meant I was ready the next morning to take a launch along the river to Livingston, via floating gardens of water lilies and a spectacular winding canyon dripping with greenery.  This trip is usually done by tourists for the journey itself rather than for the destination, but Livingston is a lovely little town, very different from the rest of the country as it is the home of the Garífuna (mostly descendants of escaped African slaves) and sways to a Caribbean rhythm.  Sadly I did not have time to stay overnight but caught the next launch back to Rio Dulce, with time at least to see the old Spanish fortress of San Felipe.

Could I squeeze any more sightseeing in the next morning before the long journey back to Guatemala City?  I hadn't planned to, but the hostel manager insisted I go to see (and bathe in) a waterfall an hour outside of town.  He told me it is unique in the world as a hot waterfall.  So I borrowed a bikini from a very kind woman also doing the trip there, and we made our way to the falls.  They don't even seem to have a name, but are indeed hot (presumably coming from a hot spring somewhere up the hill) and although I had only ten minutes to swim around under them they were definitely worth the trip.