Antarctic Continent get ready...Ren is approaching!!!

16.50, 27th february 2009, upper deck of my Antarctic ship, 7 degrees, bit windy, not rolling anymore, finally seeing land after more than 2 days in the Drake Passage, exciting

Strange feeling seeing land again after so much ocean, waves, nothing in the distance. A kind of relief, it’s Cape Horn out there, the scary point for mane sailors over the centuries, but safe land for me. It’s out there, in front of me! We had just had a very deep conversation about global warming, and me questioning myself about those 126 flights I took last year…happy for these 3 months I will only travel by land and sea. And then…we saw land, I just couldn’t resist, took my camera and jumped outdoor. I’m now lying down on one of the benches of the upper deck, listening to Ligabue (Balliamo sul mondo) and writing this mail.

Antarctica…..what’s Antarctica for you all? What’s Antarctica for me? What was before and what is it now? To be honest up to 4 months and 8 days ago Antarctica was just a remote mass of ice at the end of the world, something you can hardly reach, surely not me. A place with no human life, many animals and an amazing number of icebergs, that’s it. Then on that Sunday this world opened to me, meaning my 3 months off travelling in Argentina and Chile, and the immediate subsequent idea to reach this remote land on a cruise ship. I knew nothing about it, and although I kept reading web pages to find the best cruise option for me I did not actually read much about down here, and I boarded the ship completely ignorant on what I would be doing, what I would be seeing. I kind of like to arrive super fresh in a new place, so that I can make my own opinion of place, people, nature, culture. So, nothing new for Antarctica.

Leonie was asking me many questions which I could not answer to. Leonie is the swiss girl I had met in Punta Arenas and who bought a last minute ticket for my same ship. She paid it 2000 dollars less than me, but who cares, I really wanted to do this trip so didn’t want to risk missing the chance if no last minutes available.

16.18, 2nd march 2009, hostel room, trying to warm up after funny but strange hiking, 8 degrees outside, cloudy, tired

Haven’t managed to write any line in the last few days, hectic life as usual ;-)

Antarctica…many of you told this is their dreamland, it is a dream to reach it, it’s such hard work that I really feel privileged having set foot on it, one of those few thousand per year. I’m still freezing if I think of the landings we did, ah ah!

It was about 4pm on Thursday 19^th feb when Leonie and myself headed towards the harbor and the Grigoriy Mikheev. The ship looked good, big enough to carry the 48 of us passengers all the way through the scary Drake Passage. A bunch of people was already starting the boarding operation, a smiley guy welcomed us, was Jamie, our guide later on. Next I saw myself setting foot on the ship, with Peter asking to smile for a nice picture, followed by getting into my room, number 305, twin shared facilities. The first surprise…I was going to have the cabin all for myself, we were not fully booked, cool!!! This meant I could be as messy as I wanted, and I didn’t let you down my readers, my cabin by the time to leave the Peninsula on the way back was like ground zero, everything lying around in dispersed order, the proper me!!! Excitement, is what I was feeling. Exploring the ship, going to the deck to see Ushuaia in front of me, the divers boarding with all their big bags, seeing faces, looking for someone young… The ship was ready to go, and we were ready to meet other passengers and got to know the team. First impression: too many English and too old ;-0 Second thought: it’s not so bad, this people look funny! So they were. People kept introducing to me and Leonie, and we kept forgetting names. The team introduced himself and they seemed young and funny. Dinner was served and I had my next surprise: the food was very good!!!Oh dear, I’m gonna put on many kilos during this trip, breakfast, lunch and dinner, I do not do 3 proper meals even when I’m home! And there our adventure started. Most of the people were divers, 25 of them, while we were 14 “special needs people”, or “topside people” or “non divers”, all the names to recognize all those not crazy to dive in the cold waters of Antarctica! Many characters in the group, we all had a great input in making this trip unforgettable. Jamie, the “fantastic” lover of “krill”, with his stripes shirt but above all his colored striped underwear (please check the pictures!!). Lynn, the 62 years old perfect English woman if you see her, but when she starts talking she is so funny in her naïve way, with her comments on people and her suggestions. Ann with similar acute humor as Lynn, nice chat about life and work. Joe the Lebanese/French dental surgery passionate for oceans and diving with his young and very nice Iranian wife. Joe is so full of himself, with what he did, his videos, his pictures, he wasn’t bad but a bit too much for my taste. The Chinese and his lifelong friend Peter, they were sharing the room, and they had a double bed…the Chinese ended up sleeping on the couch…not that good friends to share a bed! The Chinese is a very rich guy, he had a camera worth 8000€, he invited the whole crew for a diving trip to the Maldives all included (?!?!?!?!) and he mentioned to Joe that if Joe organize any nice diving trip to let him know, within 24 hours he can be ready to board a plane to whatever destination in the world…I should have asked him if he had a son ;-) Javier the Spanish weird guy, his English was very very poor, his eyes were always half asleep and he commented on Antarctica: it’s a chicken farm in the ice…argh! (we do a very good imitation of him, keep making us laugh!). Mike the crazy, just like this. Asgeir the Norwegian who got biten by a leopard seal and was always talking with double meaning. The 3 americans who would not smile even if paid and who would dive so covered that they looked like a terrorist commando in Antarctica! Guido the german who has been given a birthday cake 10 days after his actual birthday and who didn’t manage to make a laugh of it, he was almost irritated! Willem, dutch, and Luci, german, who spent a much bigger amount of money to sail to Antarctica but their boat broke down so they ended up in our ship, and who were deeply in love, although they had just met on the broken sailing boat. Gemma the hotel manager, kiwi, red hair, she resulted being pretty funny when I forced her to wear my greenish dress! Jordi, catalan photographer and infinite diver, patient till the bone upon requests for pictures by other guests, he has even managed to teach me something about photography and he made me laugh a lot, which is not bad! Masa…even here at the end of the world Japanese are following me, but he was nice, and unfortunately for him he got stacked in the room with Javier, pobre chico! Leonie and obviously me have been the stars of the trip, but this is a later story! Oh, I cannot forget the young third officer, a Russian guy who bet a bottle of wine with Leonie for sunrise time, she won, but he managed not to give her the bottle. And the captain Andrey, a bit looking like my grandpa, very serious from the outside but he resulted being funny and very nice.

Mr. Drake has been very nice with us, completely flat, 2 perfect days to cross it, full knots, time to look outside to spot animals (whales, seals, penguins, albatrosses, skuas…), to attend lessons about Antarctica, animals, behavior and whatever else, eating, sleeping, chatting, making new friends, and again same. By the evening of the 21^st we had seen land again, the South Shetlands, our first landing point. Excitement the next morning, we were landing!!! Wear warm clothes, wellington boots (like for fishing), lots of memory space in your camera and you are ready to land! Hop on the zodiac and a short ride to reach Halfmoon Island shore. Penguins penguins and more penguins, chinstrap and gentoo type. How do you behave when you see hundreds of penguins around you? You get crazy and start shooting pictures!! Or at least this is what I did. I don’t know, probably shot 200 pictures that morning, luckily I have a digital camera! Some more gossips about penguins (not mentioned in previous mails!): they are bloody smelly, they stink!! Or better, to be more precise, they do not stink, it’s their shit which stinks terribly! On the second landing I had to keep my nose closed for half an hour not feeling sick because of the smell. Another curiosity about penguin shit is that it has different color depending what they eat: red if they eat Krill , green if they eat fish, so you can imagine the beach all covered in different colors, and stinky! Next, still on similar subject, it’s how they actually shit. They have a kind of tail which is normally low, but when they need, they lift it very quickly and “pluff” a jet of shit comes out. Very difficult to catch on a picture as very quick the whole act, but your lovely heroine spent hours and hours taking pictures and managed to portrait this special act (basically I got it without noticing!). Check out the pictures! On the beach there were also seals, and the best one I saw was a Weddell Seal, it was so sweet, all on her own, sleeping, waking up, looking around, squeezing the eyes and sleeping again. I took some very nice picture of it! Back to the ship for lunch, we were just waiting for next landing: deception island. To be honest I was a bit disappointed: I wanted to see real Antarctica, I mean ice, glacier and icebergs, but on that first day we just saw land and penguins. Beautiful places, just was expecting something different. Anyway, Deception Island is a volcanic island, last time erupted in the 70ies, destroying the base which was there. Big base I would say, many building left over, also some big oil tanks (Plopsa had a look at them!!). The island has the shape of the mouth of a volcano, and the sand/stone is dark grey, a bit like Santorini but with 35 degrees less. We climber up to a view point, and we saw the most amazingly called birds in the area, well not, there are others which are funny. Anyway, these birds are called “Antarctic shag” (shag = sex). Jamie was telling us that once he was in a group with a perfect English couple, you know the typical lord behauvoir… he was very enthusiastic for birds. When they were reaching the island by zodiac she saw the shags and she said loud “oh love, you can have your antartic shag”…. You can imagine the laughter of the whole zodiac!!! As we are in the subject, the other bird with funny name is the sheatebills, with is pronounced like “shitbills”…well…their job is to eat the stinky shit of the penguins… what a dirty job!!!

Back to Deception island…one of the (many) highlights of the trip…the swim! Yep, because this is a volcanic island, they “sold it” to us that the water was warm, so we could have an Antarctic swim there. Well…it was bloody cold outside, but myself, Leonie, the doctor and 2 guys took off our clothes (we had bikinis of course, men too, ah ah) and run into the water. It was BLOODY cold! I did get in, even with my head, and got out, like the other girls and one guy, instead another one stayed there for ¾ minutes swimming around! Anyway… now I can say I swam in the Arctic region (well, North Cape, back in September 1998) and in the Antarctic region!!!!!!!!!!!! Who else has been that crazy??? Out of the water there was towels waiting for us, and a long way back to the ship on the zodiac: a hot shower was what I was dreaming!

This mail is long enough i'm afraid, so I will stop here, and will not tell you yet of the second part of the trip, the crazy one, the real antarctic one!

AntarcticSwimmerRen

The white continent!

23rd february 2009, 18.14, Paradise Bay, Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica, SO HAPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Hello, Did you miss me in the last 5 days? Eh eh eh, maybe not ;-))) Antarctica, the white continent, the 7th continent, the biggest desert of the world, the biggest reserve of water of the world, the less inhabited, and the place with the biggest amount of penguin poo…you can’t imagine how much it stinks!!! Ok, that was maybe not the best way to start this e-mail ;-))

Anyway, here it’s fantastic, this afternoon it has been the most amazing landing and site so far, I see it from the amount of pictures I took, at least 300 of glaciers and icebergs!! Possibly I will delete most of them, but they were so nice, so amazing the holes in the ice, with their blue color, and the towers almost falling down… it’s a sight I have been waiting for the last 4 months, this is the Antarctica I was longing for.

The first 2 days were just navigating the Drake Passage. It’s normally very bad, rolling, but Mr. Drake has been very good with us and let us sleep and enjoy the landscape: the ocean and the Albatrosses, the petrels, the whales - we struggled with these ones, but saw some blows, and some jumps, far away unfortunately! We spent lots of time on the deck, and when weather got bad we moved to the bridge. The crew is Russian, and the captain looks very serious but he is nice and he tells us lots of things about the ship, he also gives us infos about the sunrise. Tried to catch it for a couple of days but it’s far too early!!!

The group is nice, we are 39 in total plus 5 expedition leaders. I would have been the youngest Leonie wouldn’t have joined. I met her in Punta Arenas with also other 2 guys, and we had dinner together there and also when we arrived in Ushuaia. In that occasion I mentioned I had seen a last minute for the trip to Antarctica I was taking and it was almost 2000 dollars cheaper than what I paid. She started thinking of it and finally bought the ticket the same morning we left. She is nice, making good company. Anyway the other people are really nice. Mainly English, some aussie, some germans, average 50 years old if not more. Most of them are divers, yes this is a diving and photography trip. There are very very expensive cameras, most of them have underwater housings which are huge, one guy has published a book of ocean animals, another guy is a professional underwater photographer, you can see their shots, amazing! So, we are enjoying lots, not big parties, but nice chats. The expedition leader looking after non divers is also nice, he knows a lot about animals around here, he lived in South Georgia for 25 months, so we keep asking him questions, like showing him a picture we took and asking which animal it is (so many different kinds of petrels, of whales, of seals, of penguins!!) Yesterday morning we finally made it to land, South Shetlands Islands.

We did 1 landing early in the morning (wake up call at 6.30, argh!) and one in the afternoon. We saw thousands of penguins, Chinstrip and Gentoo species. And fur seals and Weddel Seals, my favorite. There was one, alone on the beach, I got very close and shot some very nice pictures. In the afternoon we went to Deception Island, a volcano island which is an historical site as buildings there are from 1920s and have been wiped away more than 30 years ago by a volcano eruption (in Antarctica everything older than 30 years is historical, and can’t be touched…does it means I am historical down here???). We went into the caldera of the volcano and walked around there. And… swam there!!! They were saying the water was going to be warm because of the volcanic activity, but it wasn’t I can tell you! I got it, and it was very very cold!!! But it was a nice experience. After swimming in Honninsvag at North Cape, now I swam in Antarctica!! WOWWWWW

Today we got closer to the Peninsula. More penguins and more penguin poo, some seals and finally the first real big icebergs. Huge, blue, strangely shaped. But the highlight so far, for me at least, has been this afternoon, Paradise Bay. It’s what I was expecting from Antarctica, the land and the glaciers, the icebergs and the ice. The sight is amazing, you land on land, but immediately snow started. We walked uphill and arrived to a view point with view on the whole amazing bay, the glaciers and icebergs. From there we had a walk in the snow/ice, on top of the glacier, for another beautiful view. White, completely white, no pollution at all, no traces of humans before us. All white around, even the sky, cloudy but it wasn’t cold at all. Because the sky is cloudy, the blue of the glaciers and icebergs is even more pronounced, more blue if possible. The blue comes from the absorbing of the red light by the clouds and by the ice. So there’s only blue left to reflect, so here you go. We also had a bum slide down the hill, so so so fun!!! From there, the best bit so far… zodiac cruise through the bay.

AMAZING!!! You can’t imagine the views, the canals, the canyons, the icebergs around us, small and big. I just can’t explain it, it’s overwhelming, it’s huge, it’s big, it’s blue, it’s quiet, it’s Antarctica, the least visited place in the world!!!! And I’m here!

I really had the time of my life today, and they say tomorrow it’s gonna be much much better, can’t wait!

So, that’s it so far, I’m not sure I have actually been able to transmit you the feelings I have, the emotions I felt in front of this hugeness, this marvelous environment. I will have to digest it, to get it through my veins, in my blood.

I will not annoy you further this time, please dream with me ;-))

IcebergRen

Ren and...the 7th continent: Antarctica!!!!!

9.31am, 19th february, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, excited

Yes, excited....this is gonna be the trip of a lifetime! Just 35000 people per year visit Antarctica...and I'm gonna be one of those!!!
The day I decided to take these 3 months off I already had in mind to go all the way there, then I booked the trip, but still seemed far away but now not...I need to board my icebreaker between 4pm and 5pm, and there off we go, me and another 47 crazy people like me. 10 days, crossing the Drake passage, and landing in Antarctica, on some of those 2% of land it has, then on the ice, seeing penguins, whales, albatross and whatever else. We checked the weather this morning, somewhere at a research station it's 2 degrees above zero, so not that cold! Better than the south pole: -47 C!!! (but I won't go there!).
There's a girl I met a couple of days ago and she might join as well if there are still places available, there are last minutes much cheaper than what I payed, but I'm happy to know I'm going, I would have been too disappointed not making it in case I could come here and no offers, so whatever, the money will be terribly worth!

Anyway, all this is just to say that I will be offline for the next 10 days, no chance to connect to gmail from there. So no worries and be ready for the very very long mails I will be writing during the trip and you will be receiving starting the 28th february!!!!!!

My icebreaker is already al the harbour, I could see it from the window of my room this morning when I woke up. It's the Grigoriy Mikheev, check out this link http://www.lastfrontiers.com/hoteldetail.php?id=603 you can imagine me there for the next 10 days!

Right, time to set off for last shopping (sunglasses, sea sickness pills, book, antarctic equipment for landings, ...)and then..ready!!!

Take care, please keep writing me and I will read when I'm back.

AntarcticRen

punta arenas, almost the end of the world!

Right, another time 5 days without news...but this time I have a big excuse... been without internet connecction for the whole time or almost, just checking very quickly.
Been camping, hitchhiking, enjoying nature and penguins, enjoyed a lot!
Now i'm down south in Punta Arenas in the chilean patagonia, very very south, and of course it';s colder... 10 degrees instead of the 30 of yesterday! It's ok, need to get ready for Antarctica!!
that's all for now, need to take a shower and head to a nice restaurant for my birthday dinner!!! hope for some drinks later too!!
ren

i'm not very good in updating this blog, eh?? Sorry, it's just not natural to write here...I prefere my loooong mails ;-))
Anyway, many kilometers done since last time I posted here. I was in BA back then, hoping to dance tango. I made it and enjoyed it. Then I had a road trip on a Ford Falcon 1973 from BA to Bahia Blanca, good fun, especially speaking spanish the whole day! Asado waiting for me in BB, and of course my Guille, the crazy ISFiT friend. Loved every minute there, also when I got a bit pissed off because at 1am we still hadn't had dinner and instead of getting ready he was singing and dancing in his bathrobe, ah ah! We went to the sierra and to the beach, I learnt the mate ritual and I noticed that people drinks it even if it's 30 degrees outside, lying on a beach!
From there I moved to Viedma, 4 hours south, already in PATAGONIAAAA. And with the luck I normally have, Guille organized me to meet one of his friends and her boyfriend + another friend, who welcomed me like an old friend. We went to the river, and to the beach, we did shopping and ate together. At 2am this morning I waved them goodbye, and made my way further south. I'm now in Puerto Madryn, here it's the real Patagonia of my dreams!
I'm gonna meet a belgian girl, we should buy a tent and keep going camping..it's gonna be fun!!
I promise I will write here more often but for now...HASTA LUEGO!!
Ren

BA day 3: it's still sunny!

I'm still here, enjoying sunny BA, european BA, cultural BA, food in BA, soaking up this city!
It's very nice, it's strange but I do feel at home. There are corners remind me of Brussels, many more reminding me of Torino...maybe I never moved from europe??? ;-))))
Been to Palermo yesterday, unfortunately (or maybe luckily!!) I didn't have much money with me so could not buy anything...there are such wonderful shops there! Today Recoleta, the high end area, big mansions, nice parks, and the grave of Evita Peron, it's a must to check out! Walked down Florida, hated it, too crowded, any via Garibaldi or Rue Haute of the worlds look the same.
tonight no plans yet, either out with Luchito or maybe a movie somewhere, still didn't manage to go and dance/watch tango, maybe tomorrow or friday...I need to!!!
till next time...enjoy ;-)
ren

Buenos Aires, first day

Quick update to let you know I arrived safe although some turbolence here and there. 25 degrees in Buenos Aires, good to know that most of you are covered by snow today ;-)
Í'm pretty tired as not much and confortable sleep, but I can't miss to discover the place a bit, have some food and enjoy!
That's it for now, sun is waiting!
ArgentinianRen