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Day 1 – A Coruña

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Sunday 28 April 2024 – We arrived here in A Coruña yesterday, after a largely unremarkable journey. Only a couple of things were noteworthy: firstly that the Vueling flight from Gatwick to Santiago both pushed back and landed some 10 minutes early; and secondly, the hire car.  I had booked a small saloon (Seat Leon or similar) and asked for an automatic gearbox, a strong preference for me, since driving on the wrong side of the road is bad enough without having to worry about where the flaming gear stick is all the time.  It turned out that the only automatic car they had was

a BMW X5, which is much more modern and sophisticated than anything I have ever driven before (on either side of the road).  It’s also much larger; I’ve driven full-sized Ford Transit vans, and this felt bigger than one of those. It took several minutes even to work out how to engage forward gear but I gradually got the hang of it without actually crashing into anything, and we made it from Santiago airport to our hotel, the Melia Maria Pita, without any incident other than an unexpectedly closed road which we had to navigate around. Thank heavens for satnavs, that’s what I say. Thank heavens also for a wife who’s armed with Google Maps for when the satnav traduces the driver.

It’s a nice hotel and we get a splendid view across the bay.

Remember the hotel name, by the way; I’ll come back to that later.

We have just the one full day here in A Coruña, so we went for a walk. Obviously.  Jane did her usual great job of looking for items of interest, because if you believe the internet you’ll form the impression that there’s only one thing worth seeing here.  We did see it, of course, but Jane had unearthed a route which passed all sorts of striking scenes.

A significant chunk of A Coruña is a headland, somewhat appropriately named since it sits atop a neck, and it was a very pleasant walk to go around the perimeter.

Before crossing the neck, we walked along the prom

(tiddley om-pom-pom) which is allegedly the longest promenade in Europe.  It certainly winds its way a long way beside the sea side (beside the sea), where they appear to have shipped in a load of spare sand, in case the beach runs out.

Crossing the neck took us by some lovely architectural flourishes,

The dove is by Picasso, who lived in A Coruña as a child (1891-95)

through the Gardens of Méndez Núñez

past the Kiosko Alfonso with its decorative windows

and “La Terraza”, once a leisure centre, now the headquarters of the broadcaster RNE Galicia, which is a very ritzy building,

and into the Plaza Maria Pita (remember the name?), with its impressive local council HQ.

Maria Pita is a good example of nominative determinism, as she was, at least as far as Sir Francis Drake was concerned, a Pain In The Arse (PITA). She was a heroine in the defense of A Coruña against the English Armada attack upon the Spanish mainland in 1589. It’s worth noting that although Drake did a number on the Spanish Armada in 1598, he wasn’t always successful in his military exploits, as well as being, basically, a pirate. Anyway, there is a statue of Maria Pita in the square, obvs,

but what was also engaging was what the square was being used for – there was a lot of noise and bustling activity.


A Zumba session, and lots of kids’ sports made for a great atmosphere in the square – so energising, in fact, that we immediately had to go and have a coffee.

Also in the area is the church of St. George,

so we had to visit that, of course.

Also nearby is a very quirky square, called the Plaza Humor.

Having crossed the neck via these engaging sights, we then embarked on the Paseo Maritimo, which could very well count itself as the start of that long promenade I mentioned earlier. Whatever, there’s a path which winds right around this headland, across the bay where our hotel is, over to the other side and round where Monte de San Pedro overlooks the city. It’s a very well-designed path

with separate walking, running and cycling tracks and very distinctive lampposts.

It passes evidence of the once-fortified state of the city,

including the Castelo de Santo Anton.

Not all the buildings are old, though. The Port Authority building is strikingly modern

and rather cleverly designed, since, as you walk round the Paseo Maritimo and look back, you see varying reflections of the city.

The Paseo Maritimo also leads past a cemetery, which is catnip to Jane, so we went and had a look around.

The Paseo winds its way past a very attractive little beach, the Playa de San Amaro,

which features an interestingly decorated restaurant.

By this stage, we were approaching the top of the headland, and various strange-looking items could be seen.  As we neared them, they resolved themselves into: Monumento aos Fusilados, which has the appearance from a distance of a henge,

and, in a contrasting nomenclature, the Menhirs for Peace, a set of standing stones.

As you can see, the stones have openings through them, and it is, of course, a great game to use these as frames for futher photos.

and one of these openings frames the One Thing that the internet thinks that A Coruña has to offer the visitor.

The Tower of Hercules, the oldest known extant Roman lighthouse, and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


As you can see, I whizzed the drone up to get some footage, and in doing so discovered a couple of things: firstly, the best time to do this would have been in the morning so you can have the light behind a shot looking from the tower to the city; and secondly that I’d pillaged the drone’s memory card to use in another camera – which I didn’t have with me. Fortunately, the thing has some internal memory which was sufficient for this short clip, so carrying it all that way wasn’t in vain. But still – rapped knuckles for me for not checking it over before we set out.

The Tower is very photogenic

and also very useful as a secondary subject in photos of other things, such as the menhirs and this installation called “A Cup of Sunshine”.

The relief flooding through me that I had at least some footage of the tower almost immediately gave way to the realisation that it was time for one of our signature Late Lunches. Jane had picked out a couple of likely restaurants and so we headed off to find them (thanks again, Google Maps, the eSim capabiiity of modern phones and my brother for suggesting an eSim as a way of getting data cheaply whilst in The Foreign).

En route, we passed a building that would once have been magnificent, but which was now clearly disused;

the old prison.

We discovered quite swiftly that 3pm on a sunny Sunday was not the best time to rock up to a restaurant in A Coruña without a reservation. But the nice people at La Maritima managed to squeeze us in and so we got a decent and copious lunch there, after which we tottered back the couple of hundred yards to our hotel. Even that short distance was not devoid of photographic interest; it passes a big mural of Neptune and Hercules,

a rather oddly-shaped statue called Escultura soldado Botero (Botero being the name of the sculptor, who is known for the exaggerated proportions he gives to his subjects)

and, in the rocks below our hotel, a statue of the mermaid with the big boobies*.

So, for a place with supposedly only one point of interest, A Coruña had shown itself to be a charming place full of interesting sights, scenes and vignettes.  We’d had a great day wandering round, and we’re glad that we added it into our Camino itinerary.

Tomorrow sees us departing for another noted town in Galicia, Lugo; Jane has also spotted a couple of things we should investigate on the way there.  I’ll report back on it in due course, so stay tuned to these pages to find out what we got up to,

 

* This will only mean something to anyone who ever watched ‘Allo ‘Allo!

Videos – and learnings – from the Southern Ocean

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Sunday 31 March 2024 – I’m pretty happy with the way that the images that Jane and I captured during our time on Hondius convey the look and feel of the places we visited and the sights we saw.  However, there’s the small matter of the 460 video files that we accumulated during the trip, so I have spent the last couple of days trawling through that mass of content – about 100GB – for sequences that supplement or complement the images which you’ve already seen.

To be honest, the pickings are much slimmer than I’d anticipated.

It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with the videos.  Though many are utterly unusable, there are a good number of clips which will serve brilliantly in the future to remind us of the dynamism and variety of the scenes that unfolded before us. But I think you might find them dull, because of the lack of context; and buried within that bald assertion is the first learning.

For example, at Port Charcot, I took a video panorama from the ship

and it gives a nice impression of the place, the weather conditions and the scenery.  But from the point of view of showing you, dear reader, what the place was like, it’s not really any better than the photos I included in the blog posting about it.

The learning?  That sort of video has a place on Instagram in showing where I am and what it’s like there. But the restrictions on using internet bandwidth (oh, OK, the expense) meant that its value, as an ephemeral “Instagram-look-at-me” kind of post was negated. So I have several of these panoramas, but will keep them to myself for now.

That said, there were a couple of video pans that I think worthy of noting (as opposed to nothing) here: the view of Elephant Island, which was just, basically, lovely in the sunshine;

and the rather contrasting view of the south end of South Georgia.

So: no more landscape video pans, then;  I have numerous ones of bays, waterfalls or rivers, but their relevance is only to our memories, not to your insight.

I rather like, though, this view of Grytviken, on South Georgia, as we approached it from the water.

and, as a scenery/landscape topic, I thought the general amazingness of some of the icescapes was worth a collage, too.

Oh – and there was that spectacular crumbling glacier in King Haakon Bay, which makes for good viewing, I think.

So, enough of the scenery, already. What does that leave us then?  The wildlife, of course. It was a very rewarding trip for me, photographically, as I got several still images that I’m pleased with, and most of which you’ll already have seen, having assiduously read all my previous posts, you wonderful reader, you. But there are some times when a still image simply won’t do to capture or convey a scene.  Sighting a leopard seal, for example, gave me some good stills, but seeing it come under our Zodiac is a sight which stays with one.

(I have to credit one of our guides, Aitana, with the footage of the seal swimming underwater; I was unable to capture that, so I’m glad to have her snippet as a record.

Penguins, too, are very cute and photogenic even in stills. But one needs to see them doing penguinish things to get the full charm.

It was generally more rewarding to encounter wildlife on land – it gives one a better feeling of connection to what’s going on.  That sense of connection was a bit tenuous in places.  The Falklands, for example, was so windy that at times one felt one was going to be blown off the cliff face.  Here, video can give a sense of what it was like.

It was fucking windy.  I managed to get a vantage point elsewhere which felt a bit less dangerous, to capture a bit of albatross behaviour – feeding a chick until there was no more food, then flying away to get more…a parent’s work is never done.

Capturing footage like that is quite rewarding even if it feels a little perilous at some times. I suspect I’d have been OK; there were plenty of other photographers around to break my fall if I’d stumbled.

There was a second and third learning from gaining this footage. One is to listen to the experts; Ursula was nearby and told me that the parent albatross would fly when it had finished feeding.  All I had to do was to keep an eye out and I would be able to capture the decisive moments.  The other was – patience.  I had to stand and try to keep my camera trained on a particular parent-and-chick for quite some time (whilst being blown to buggery by the winds) in order to get the footage I wanted.

One development of my skill, such as it is, over the trip was to become more interested in behaviours, rather than simply seeking to get a good sharp close-up of an animal. Jane helped me a lot, and having the guides around for extra information and education was excellent, too.

Close-to was definitely the place to be for most photography purposes. But it was possible to see wildlife from the ship.  Most of the time, someone would shout “whale!” and there would be a surge of people to one side or other stare out of the windows or to rush on deck, there to catch (if lucky) the disappearing fin of a humpback some fair distance from the ship.  Having had a very rewarding whale watching experience in New England recently, I tended to stay in my place rather than join the giddy throng.  But there were some occasions where the sights were excellent even from on board. Here are a few: particularly, the fin whale feeding sequence is something that no still photography could do justice to.

And so ends our South America and Southern Ocean Odyssey, a very intense month in our lives, probably never to be repeated.  We might try an expedition cruise to the Arctic at some stage, which will be similarly intense and challenging, but I doubt we could ever be so lucky again as to the weather we had when Due South; the weather gods were incredibly kind to us and our experience was the richer for that.

That’s it for the pages about this expedition. There will be others; in the current plan we have one not-so-ambitious outing and one which could be astonishingly varied and content-rich.  As ever, an internet being available, I will write about them here, so Stay Tuned!

Fogón Conclusion. Well, sort of.

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Saturday 16 March 2024 – or, in another way of looking at it, Thursday 28 March 2024 .  It’s actually nearly a fortnight after our return home as I write, a lacuna caused by a couple of health-related items, but mainly the Worst Cold In The Known Universe, which basically laid both Jane and me low from the day we arrived home (Monday 18th) until today, some 10 days later.

Also, “sort of” in that the first thing I’m going to write about, Fogón, is a conclusion only in the sense that it was the last thing we did in Buenos Aires, it wasn’t the last thing I’m going to write about for the trip as a whole; but I just couldn’t resist the pun.  Below, I also write about something we did on our first night here; well, the first evening of the first full day of the three we had on our second visit to BA, that is, this being the hub we travelled through.  Come on, keep up at the back.

Anyhoo….

OK, it’s a restaurant, in the up-market Palermo neighbourhood, and the word “asado” tells the foodie cognoscenti among you that it’s a barbecue-style meal.  It being in Buenos Aires, one can reasonably expect it to involve much very high quality meat.  The other key word on the sign is “experience”.  This is not just some guys chucking burgers onto a barbie; this is Food Preparation As Theatre.

There will be pictures of food in the following.  Many people will mutter and make rude remarks about me posting photos of food.  To them, I say two things:

  1. it’s a piece of theatre and it involves food. Conveying the experience photographically without showing a scrap of food here and there is a nonsensical ambition. I’ve minimised, but not eliminated, the actual food content in the pics.
  2. Actually, what I object to is people sharing a photo of the plate of food they’re about to eat, to show the viewer what cool, cultured cats they are and what posh places they’ve managed to get into. I really object to that, and so you don’t see it on these pages. Also,
  3. It’s my blog. I make the rules and I can break ’em if I want. So, there.

Sorry, got carried away a bit there….back to the evening at Fogón.

It’s very, very well managed theatre that provides very, very good food.  You are shown, with a flourish, into the “auditorium”

where you take your seat and have the idea of the evening, and some of the rules, explained. For example, if you want something refreshed (e.g. the soda siphon below, or your wine glass), you put it up on the counter. When delivered, you take it down and use it.

The setup shown above is a bit of audience participation – making a chimichurri sauce. They’ve made it pretty idiot-proof, with the ingredients nicely parceled up and a little recipe to follow.  This will be used, we are told, with the main course.

A big part of the theatre involves the central barbecue apparatus which is large, complicated and hot.

It has many moving parts and every so often someone, normally this chap (who is wearing a gaucho cap and is therefore a chef)

would pick up a shovel and wander around in the confined space on his side of the counter with a shovel full of glowing coals to put them where they were needed, often without injuring anyone.

The meal has nine courses, and they are all explained in some detail,

so above was the talk about what meat we would be eating.  The pine cones were not just decoration, by the way. They were used to smoke some of the meat.

Each course is carefully assembled in front of you before being passed over.

For the main course, in possibly the most pretentious part of the evening, you are asked to make the reverent selection of Your Knife from a box of them.

The main chunks of meat were mainly prepared, cut and cooked by this chap,

who, Jane reckons, is actually a moonlighting James Anderson (if you don’t know who Jimmy is, you should be slightly ashamed of yourself, but telling you will make no difference to your life).

It was a great evening – very entertaining, brilliantly choreographed and engagingly presented.  By the time my main course came around I was so full I could only manage a token mouthful, and, as usual, I passed on dessert, but all the other courses were very good indeed.  I have, of course, plenty of video, but I won’t be sharing that with you at any stage, oh no.

So, Fogón was the finale of our time in Buenos Aires, but it’s not the end of this story, because I wanted to finish the BA part with an even more dramatic piece of theatre, which we saw on the evening of our first of three days here.  Argentina is known for its meat (which is all originally from imported British stock several hundred years ago, by the way); it is also known as the home of The Tango.

Yes, we went to a tango show.  It was at a place called Aljibe, over by Puerto Madero.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. On one of our drives, we passed a great glittering place with “TANGO” writ large in lightbulbs outside, and I wondered if the experience there would be like an Argentinian version of Moulin Rouge (the Paris show, not the film).  This place, however, was clearly a lot smaller, with a charming foyer

where we were greeted and taken to our seats in a compact, but nonetheless attractively decked-out auditorium.

At the far end was the stage, where the entertainment would presumably happen,

and where one could get one’s photo taken in relevant fancy dress as a memento of the evening. At a charge, of course.

As well as the dancing, there is eating. The menu is brought, followed by one’s food, in pretty brisk succession, carried in towers of plates in order to get it out to the punters quickly.

Yes yes, I know it’s more pictures of food… get over it.

We were there for one of three shows they were staging that day, and they had about an hour to get our orders (only made slightly more intricate by our habit of not drinking wine and therefore demanding G&T), deliver them and clear away before the entertainment started. It’s very obviously a production-line, but it’s done with assured efficiency and the food was pretty good.

After a short while, the musicians ambled on to the stage and looked like they were debating which pieces to play

and the place filled up nicely, in time for the show to begin.

and we were off!

As one would expect for something as flamboyant and exciting as the tango, the evening’s show was eye-catching and engaging. It started with an ensemble piece involving six dancers,

who managed to whizz all over what was quite a confined space without actually stabbing anyone with stilettos, or whatever. There was the occasional song break

much individual skill and flair displayed among the cast

not all of whom were in the first flush of youth,

but who all danced with great skill, athleticism and passion.

In a departure from raw tango, the show featured a middle section of gaucho-style entertainment, with a very theatrical couple

who didn’t just dance, either.

These two also provided the most left-field piece of theatre of the evening when they got their balls out.

Not only did they whirl their bolas around with great skill and energy and without breaking any lightbulbs or knocking each other unconscious, but they also used them as percussion instruments!

It really was a spectacular centrepiece to a great evening of Argentinian theatre.  Most of the photos above are from Jane, because I was busy videoing bits of the show. If you have five minutes to spare, you can watch this video that I cobbled together from some of the snippets.

Fogón and Aljibe were two very different pieces of theatre that conclude the story of our three days based in Buenos Aires and so (if you’re still awake) you’re pretty much up to date with the story of our travels to South America and the Southern Ocean.

Despite the “conclusion” in the title, I think I have one more piece to write.  Over the course of three weeks on Hondius, we collected a fair bit of video footage.  Because the internet aboard was slow, but much more importantly, metered, uploading video would have been ridiculously expensive.  So I will go through what we have and try to weave a few stories from those pieces of footage.  Give me a couple of days, though, won’t you?