Tag Archives: Tourism

Back to “Reality”, or Buenos Aires, at any rate

1 Reply

Tuesday and Wednesday 12 and 13 March 2024 – So that was it, then. No more expeditions.  Just the run back to Ushuaia and the flight to Buenos Aires.

The former started well – the weather gods continued to be kind to us, and the crossing to Ushuaia was quite smooth.  We had one final day at sea, and this gave the guides a final chance to impress us with their knowledge and passion in a final set of lectures – on minke whales, on endangered species, on the general topic of survival in the Anthropocene age – we humans are having  a dramatic and dramatically accelerating impact on the planet’s climate and biosphere.  The impact has almost always led to damage to the environment, the animals living alongside us and, indeed us, too. This has rarely been done out of malice, and normally out of ignorance of the consequences. Only recently has the human race really taken note of the impact, and steps are being taken to mitigate it.  The time that Jane and I spent on expeditions in these southern latitudes has increased our understanding of the consequences of human activities and our determination to lessen our own impact on the environment in the hope that this encourages others to do the same.  For example, the greatest predictor of the likelihood of a household adopting solar panels is the proportion of its neighbours already using them; so perhaps, as we improve the way we go about things, others might become interested to follow our example.

It’s a very tricky topic.  For all our improved understanding of the environmental impact of human impact and our determination to do better in future, we still flew down there on a jet,  cruised on a fundamentally diesel-driven ship and embarked on expeditions transported by petrol-engined Zodiacs. There are many factors to balance as we consider our future actions.

OK, enough of the philosophising and its none-too-subtle undercurrent of moralising.

During the morning, we noticed some shenanigans seemed to be getting under way around the Zodiacs.

It turned out that this was a Team Photo, which was one of the mystery prizes at the auction a couple of days ago.  We’re not sure what the real deal was, but we got a decent shot of the guides (and the auction winners) out of it.

There were also opportunities to try for more photos of the birds flying round the ship, principally petrels and black-browed albatrosses.

After the lectures came the thank-yous.  Everyone gathered in the lounge and were given a drink with which the toast people who had made our trip such an amazing success:  the captain, seen here with his staff captain, Mia, the first female to hold that role in Oceanwide;

and the guides, a critical part of the expeditions and so ably led by Pippa.

That session was ended with his usual drollery and deadpan timing, by Sasha

before we went into dinner, during which the fantastic jobs done by the hotel manager and his staff and the crew of the ship were also celebrated.  Jane managed to get a shot of Marvin, the steward who had looked after us particularly well, as he celebrated with a table of punters and guides.

And so to bed, awaking early the following morning, because we were being turfed off Hondius at 0830 – remarkably enough so that it could depart at 1800 that day on another Antarctic cruise, taking a new bunch of punters down as far south as possible – maybe as far as 70° S – on an out-and-back journey; 15 days and none of this mucking about with Falklands and South Georgia.  Even more remarkably, the expedition team would be led once again by Pippa, whose drive and energy are utterly admirable.  We wish the ship and everyone aboard it well.

First, though, we had to disembark in Ushuaia, which looked pretty in the morning dark.

and the sunrise gave us some more glorious colours.

Around breakfast time we discovered how our bags were transferred off the ship – not sophisticated, but perfectly effective – a human chain of crew – including our guides – down the stairwell.

Finally it was time for the inevitable and emotional farewells as we all disembarked.

Just after 0900 we were on the bus to Ushuaia airport, along with quite a fair proportion of the other passengers.  On our flight to Buenos Aires It was quite a surreal experience to get on a plane with so many familiar faces in other seats.

The flight was uneventful except for the inflight catering which handed us an unimpressive sandwich and a drink that struggled to be on the same plane of existence as a cup of tea.

Our arrival was more noteworthy.

If you remember, the first piece of baggage on the carousel as we arrived in Ushuaia was mine. Astonishingly, and, it seemed, within seconds of walking into the baggage hall,

Jane’s bag arrived, first on the carousel!  That was at 1730, and about five other pieces came along behind Jane’s.

Then – nothing.

After 15 minutes, the hatch to the outside world closed and the belt stopped.

At 1750, a chap wearing an official-looking shirt looked out through a neighbouring carousel’s hatch

but still nothing happened.  Jane got a message from Mariana, the agent who was looking after us for our time in Buenos Aires, which explained what was going on.  Apparently, it had started raining and the baggage handlers stopped work because they didn’t want to get wet.

A few minutes later, it had obviously stopped raining, because the rest of the bags came through, and we were able to go out to meet our cheerful driver, Gustavo, who took us to our hotel, once again the Casasur Recoleta. At times the rain came down in torrents, and I did have momentary sympathy for the baggage handlers.  Gustavo explained that Buenos Aires had had a month’s-worth of rain in just two days, and there were areas around the city under water that would normally have been fields.

We got to the hotel with no problem and were able to get ourselves outside a room service sandwich and a bar service G&T before heading for bed.  In front of us lay three days of relentless tourism around Buenos Aires, so we needed to catch up on our beauty sleep.  I will write about our time in Buenos Aires in these pages in due course.

Being A Tourist will be strange after the three weeks we’ve had.  Nether Jane nor I want to lose the memories of the past astonishing three weeks and city tours seem to offer a bit of cognitive dissonance.  For now, I’ll try to hold on this image, taken as we entered the Beagle Channel south of Tierra del Fuego, as a symbol and an aide-memoire of our time in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

Falkland Islands 3 – New Island

3 Replies

Sunday 11 March 2024 – Overnight from Carcass to New Island was “not too bad”, a phrase which has been a running joke throughout this whole trip.  When Pippa and the skipper first discussed our overall route and a possible transit through the Drake Passage, the major decision to reverse the direction of our entire outing and make it anticlockwise was done on the basis that the captain’s view was that the wind forecast was “not too bad” – apparently the most sanguine description he ever gives of weather possibilities.  With the exception of maybe two nights, our transits from place to place have been “not too bad”, i.e. absolutely bloody miraculous.  It has been astonishing how good our weather has been, to the point where I was considering (jokingly) the possibility of submitting a complaint about the trip because it wasn’t the “authentic Antarctic experience”.

Anyway, not too bad.

We were able, courtesy of some more skillful navigation from the captain, to get quite near New Island. You can see from the state of the sea that it was pretty breezy.

Closer examination shows it to be a settlement that’s a little more substantial than the one we’d recently visited at Carcass.

Indeed, it has its own shipwreck

and a small but beautifully formed museum

dedicated to supporting the New Island Conservation Trust. This was originally set up by the two co-owners of the island to ensure that it never got exploited and was always a conservation area for wildlife.

Outside, the museum has a gentoo penguin statue

and inside

there’s a lot of information about the trust, many relevant artifacts from the surrounding area

as well as an opportunity to indulge in some retail therapy.

Having perused the place, we started the relatively short walk towards another black-browed albatross colony. On the way, we passed kelp geese,

more of the ubiquitous upland geese

and more rockhoppers using cormorants for added security against marauding skuas,

but the albatrosses were the main objective of the excursion.

An albatross is a big bird and, like the cormorant, one that a skua won’t fuck about with, hence the rockhoppers get the added protection.  The location shown above is also a good demonstration of why rockhoppers get their name, since they’ve clearly hopped up all those rocks to get to a place of relative security.

There were cormorants among the other birds, too;

these were imperial cormorants, distinguished by white on the front of their necks and those yellow-orange eye decorations.

It was windy. Again.  And, as well as some dramatic cliff scenery,

there was tucking fussock grass. Again.

It really was somewhere between “trying” and “dangerous” to find places to watch the penguins and albatrosses – but ultimately rewarding.

The rockhoppers are very engaging creatures

and the wind made their hairstyle very distinctive

and clearly left them at times severely unimpressed.

The albatrosses were feeding their chicks, each residing on the nest that they won’t leave until they can fly.  They’re very demanding.

and it was interesting to watch the way their demands affected the parents.

After a while it was time to head back, this time thankfully with the wind behind us, to the boat, but the final image that stayed with me was this extremely punk rockhopper.

For Jane and me, this was our last landing on the Falklands.  Pippa organised another one, more to the north of New Island, but, frankly, both of us were pretty tuckered out by this stage, and the northern landing didn’t hold the prospect of seeing anything dramatically different from what we’d already seen.  So we awarded ourselves our second Afternoon Off. Which was delightful, I have to say.

And now we had to leave. After our time in the Falklands, all that remained was a Sea Day whilst we headed back to Ushuaia and the end of three weeks exploring Antarctica and the Southern Ocean Islands. We simply hoped that the weather would continue to be “not too bad”.  One of the other captains in the Oceanwide Adventures fleet reportedly has another weather saying: “One day, you’ll pay”. We had to hope that  maybe it wouldn’t be down to us to pick up this particular bill.

 

Falkland Islands 2 – Carcass

3 Replies

Sunday 10  March 2024 (pm) – The stabilisers on Hondius did a good job of countering the waves as the ship was carefully navigated around to Carcass Island, also off West Falkland; the wind was still strong, but the landing area looked calm enough.

We landed near a settlement and – praise be! – there was a jetty.

Mind you, because of the state of the tide and the slime at the foot of the jetty, we had to disembark part way up, which was a bit of a step up.

There were, broadly speaking, two options for the afternoon: stay near the landing area and drop into the settlement for tea and cakes; or go for a longish walk before dropping into the settlement for tea and cakes.  I suppose there might have been an option which didn’t include tea and cakes, but no-one seemed interested in that one.

On the path to the settlement, a tussac bird checked us out.

(I assume that the “tussac” in the name of this bird means the same as the more familiar “tussock”.  On several occasions we have had to deal with tussock grass, which, believe me, is not just grass growing in tussocks, oh dear me no. In the Falklands and South Georgia it is a specific plant, Poa Flabbelata, as any fule kno, whose growth builds an ever-increasing pedestal which supports its leaves and can grow up to the height of a man.  This provides shelter for animals and a major trip hazard for humans. For example, one passenger on Hondius had been medevacked on his first attempt to do this trip because the tussock grass concealed a hole which caused his ankle to break in spectacular fashion.)

So, off we went on the walk along a track normally used by local 4x4s.

The info we’d been given asserted that this walk was a chance to see local wildlife, and I suppose it was, provided what you wanted to see was upland geese. There were loads of them,

but for most of the walk out, very little else.  Jane spotted a dark-faced ground tyrant and I managed to catch it before it buggered off,

but apart from that and a few kelp geese spotted in the distance

there was nothing on offer on a long and, frankly, dull walk.

After a couple of wildlifeless kilometres, we decided to turn back, and discovered that what was dull became tedious in the extreme, as we had to stumble back against the infamous Falkland Island wind.  It really was hard work, with the only photographic reward being the spotting by Jane of a couple of magellanic penguins standing guard on their burrows.

I guess I’m being a bit harsh in describing the walk as dull – under other circumstances a bracing walk through the countryside in streaming sunshine would be a pleasure. But I felt that an expedition-style outing should have a bit more pith and moment – or just make it a brief stop for tea, cakes and a look at the wildlife around the landing area.

Having struggled back against the wind, it was nice to get into the house where the tea and cakes were on offer (we had to take off our Muck boots before hand, which is not too surprising, as there was a certain amount of mud around on the paths).  It was an impressive spread

and the tea was very welcome.  Everyone rhapsodised about the how wonderful the baked goods were, but actually I wasn’t as impressed as they were; I thought the chocolate stuff wasn’t chocolatey enough, the shortbread wasn’t quite as sweet as I like, and the macaroons were nice enough but not quite the melt-in-the-mouth treat that a proper macaroon can be. They had ginger biscuits, which were nice, and Jane gave the mince pies the thumbs-up; and it was nice to have a rest after struggling along against that relentless wind.

It was less fun to discover, when I got outside, that someone had taken one of my boots and left one of theirs which was slightly, but tellingly, smaller.  It wasn’t a disaster, but it didn’t help my mood having to hobble back to the landing area with one painful foot.  Not even seeing an austral thrush could lift my spirits much.

The tea house had effectively a pet caracara which entertained the guests for food,

and we had further entertainment at the boot-scrubbing party which was a necessary precursor to getting the Zodiac back to Hondius.

After this somewhat dull interval, the day finished with a flourish, though.  Our one-time Stanley resident, Martin, had extolled the beauties of Falkland Islands sunset, and as we headed out of the bay towards our next rendezvous, we were treated to a great display.

The next day, we were due to visit another West Falkland Island, New Island, which also held the promise of seeing some more albatross action – if the conditions allowed.  But the wind was rising, and we would have to wait until the following morning to see what was possible.