Brown Bluff Island

Having moved the ship back up the peninsula, we could break out the zodiacs for our next landing.  Brown Bluff Island, home to colonies of Gentoos and Adelies against a huge backdrop of brown volcanic rock.

The dark rocks always look quite dramatic against the white snow and ice, and often have other colours running through them.  The big boulders also make good shelter for the penguins - and sometimes for us too.
 

With plenty of ice along the shore line, it made for quite a nice island to sit and watch the penguins coming and going.

With the way that the colony was gathered, we were a little limited to where we could go without disturbing the penguins.

We tended to try to find places away from the main group and settle to watch the penguins and let them come past us without worry.
 

But we did find a few of our fellow guests a bit irritating here.  I would have been sat on a rock somewhere for a while, and the penguins would have just got used to my being there and start to come nearer.


Someone else would then spot that the penguin was close, and come over to try to get close to it too.  Of course as soon as this new person arrived, that the penguin had not yet got used to, it made a run for it.

Some people do have a tendency to just ignore the impact that they have on those around them - birds or people - and just do exactly as they please.  This appears to be especially the case when they have a camera in their hand.
 

For some reason those people seem to think that if they have a big camera - and it does particularly seem to be those people with the biggest cameras, especially if they regard themselves as something of a professional, then that somehow entitles them to do whatever they want in order to get their photos, even if that means upsetting the subject, or simply standing directly in front of someone who is already taking a photo.

OK, gripe over.  That kind of ignorance aside, this was not the best landing that we have done in Antarctica, but it was still very enjoyable.

Once I found a few more secluded places amongst the ice on the beach, I was able to watch the penguins porpoising through the water, and taking a break on the bergy bits, as well as those making their way up to the colony.
 

I spent quite some time watching a few penguins that were on the ice.



One in particular wandered up and down and around the berg it was on, not seeming sure whether it wanted to stay on the ice or get in the water. Eventually it made up its mind and dived in, but even then it quickly got back out onto some rocks nearby.

I concluded that it hadn't wanted to stay alone on the ice, but took a while to pluck up the nerve to get into the icy water.




It may sound strange, given that these birds spend their lives in the snow, ice and freezing temperatures of Antarctica, and now is their warmth of summer, but they do sometimes look as if they are reluctant to get in those cold waters.

 

 

Another big Jesus

Stairway to heaven

After our interesting experience with a large Jesus Christ at Tierra Santa in Buenos Aires, we had to go and see the even bigger, and rather more famous,  Cristo Redentor, or Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio.

At around 38 metres high, and 28 metres across the outstretched arms, it is a huge statue that towers above the city from its perch on Corcovado mountain.  Clouds permitting, you can see the Christ from all around, looking down on you and supposedly protecting the cariocas (people from Rio).

Having seen that the forecast was for rain throughout our time here, we decided to visit the Christ statue on our first full day, when the rain was supposed to stop for a while.  After a false start waiting on the wrong street, we hopped on a bus to the little rack railway that takes you up Corcovado to the base of the statue.

The train up Corcovado was engineered by Francisco Pereira Passos and Joao Texeira Soares as a result of the enthusiasm of father and son emporers Pedro I and Pedro II, for the view from the top. The first section was completed in 1884. It now covers the full 3824 metres and takes twenty minutes at a speed of around fifteen kilometers per hour.


The Christ statue came along some time later, being inaugurated on 12 October 1931, having taken ten years to complete and been paid for by donations from parishioners. Hector da Silva oversaw the construction of the Carlos Oswald design.

The statue is made from reinforced concrete, but is entirely covered in small triangular pieces of soapstone, giving it a softer and slightly reflective effect. The head was the work of Paul Landowski, and sculptor Margarida Lopes modelled the hands on her own.

Sugarloaf Mountain

The statue has had many visitors over the years since then, but I guess the most fitting was probably Pope John Paul II in 1980, when he blessed the city of Rio from up here.

The statue does look impressive. And I was pleasantly surprised at the relatively small amount of stuff for sale there. There was some of course, as well as the official photographers - we discovered why they were there later - but generally it was fairly unspoiled by the usual hoards of souvenir sellers.


Copacabana beach

We spent a while admiring the views. The weather wasn't great, and made for a slightly misty effect, but the clouds stayed high enough that we could at least see the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, Sugarloaf Mountain and the Maracana Stadium, as well as the hills and favelas that make Rio what it is.

We took some photos, including a few of each other, and were about to leave when we decided that we really should get a photo of the two of us with the statue. So we asked a guy to take one, which he did, but he cut off Jesus' head. Undeterred, we asked a woman, who carefully angled herself to take two pictures - and cut off one of Jesus' hands in both of them.

Despairing slightly now, I found a guy from the USA, figuring that if I could speak to him in English, then I could explain that I wanted the whole of Christ in the photo. He obligingly took a couple and he did get the whole of the Christ in both - but there was a drop of rain on the lens and it obliterated my face entirely.

Us at the statue - or not!

Almost at the stage of giving in, we decided to have one more go, and asked an older guy who had seemed to be taking a lot of care over his own photos. He agreed, and spent a while moving around to get the right position for the photo. And he did indeed get in the whole of Jesus Christ. But....we aren't in the picture at all! Not even the tops of our heads. Now why on earth would we ask someone else to take a photo of the statue without us in it when we can quite easily do that for ourselves?

At that stage we decided that it wasn't meant to be, and it would almost be a shame to actually get a proper complete photo of the three of us, so we gave up. But now we could see why they had official photographers.

On the way back down on the train, we were treated to some extra entertainment as a band got on and performed.  This seems to be a regular occurrence, so perhaps they think people will be bored on the way down otherwise.

Back in Mendoza for Christmas

Whilst clearly I don't expect much sympathy from those of you having to go to work every day, all this travelling is tiring stuff, so we decided that we would take a break over Christmas and stay in one place for a while.  We had already booked ourselves into a nice hotel in Mendoza for three nights over Christmas itself, and we had like the place when we were here before, so we decided to book ourselves into the hostel here for six nights too.

Part of the logic was that the hostel has a fantastic wifi connection, so we were able to use the time to upload all of our photos onto the internet so that we know they are safe should we be robbed or end up in another fire or anything.  I also used the time to try to catch up with a few blogs and getting some of the missing photos onto the blogs.  I have caught up as far as Raqchi now, so the photos of Machu Picchu are on, but I still have a few more to go, and for some reason that seems to be beyond my technical abilities, I can't get some of them to load onto the embedded slideshow, so I may need to find a workaround for that.

As it turned out it was as well that we stayed put for a while, because on our arrival at the hostel, Nic managed to cut his foot. It wasn't terrible, and I had my little first aid kit ready and able to deal with it, but it was best that he wasn't having to walk on it too much or be carrying a rucksack.  He heals fast anyway, so it was fine by the time we left on 27th.

So while the rest of you were running around making all of your last minute Christmas preparations and doing the food shop etc, we were relaxing in Mendoza drinking wine and beer.  Not that I'm gloating you understand (as if I would), it's just that it is a very different way of living.  We actually found it really strange not to be doing any of the Christmas shopping, writing cards, wrapping presents etc, and in particular to be in a place that was averaging 30 degrees centigrade.  It also is the kind of time that you most notice that you don't have your family and friends around you, which is of course the thing that you do miss when away from ´home´ for a long time.

Christmas is celebrated a bit differently here as they focus their effort on Christmas Eve.  We booked into the hotels traditional argentinian grill for its Christmas Eve dinner. It was an impressive buffet of starters, an unlimited grill of steaks, pork, chicken etc, and another impressive buffet of desserts, all washed down with as much champagne and wine as you could manage.  We had been chilling out in the spa and having a massage during the day, so we arrived fairly early for an Argentinian meal at 9pm and we wew some of the first there.  However we were also some of the last to leave a little after midnight, so we managed to empty a few bottles for them in that time!

Santa arrived at midnight, and had a little bottle of sparkling wine for everyone, so we had our photo with him, and then went back to our room to let the food go down before getting to bed late.  Happily breakfast was served until 11am, so an early morning was not required.

Christmas Day itself was very laid back, with a late breakfast, champagne cocktails on the sunny terrace, a few phone calls to family and, in keeping with normal Christmas traditions, more food and wine.  It was a nice day, and having treated ourselves to the good hotel it did feel good, but it didn't really feel like Christmas.  We will have to consider in future whether that matters or not, and if it does, we will perhaps need to find some ways to create our own Christmas wherever we may be.

But all in all, it was nice to stay put for a while, catch up with some of our tasks, and generally just relax before we hit the road again on 27th.

Taking photos - heaven or hell?

Is taking photos when travelling a good thing or a bad thing?  This may seem like a strange question, but sometimes I do wonder whether it's worth it.

Obviously there are good reasons for taking them.  Primarily they hold memories.  They can be a memory in themselves, of the particular person or thing that you saw, or they can jog your own memory into remembering other details about what was happening when the photo was taken.

They also give you a way to share some of you memories and experiences with other people.  When you want to describe the way a building looked, or an amazing view, it can be much easier to just show someone a picture.  An you can't really imagine the sight of a whole fried guinea pig on your plate unless you actually see it!

But does anyone really want to look at hundreds of holiday photos - or thousands as it will be in our case?  They are our memories, not theirs.  And how often do you actually look at your own photos?  I like the way that you can make them up into a book now, and I think that does make it a bit easier to look at more often, but even so, it just isn't something that most people do that often.

Then there is the quality of the photo.  I don't pretend to be a good photographer, and I don't have a fancy camera.  Even the settings that I do have I hardly use.  I am definitely of the point and click breed.  So the quality of my photos is a bit haphazard. But even when they are decent photos, the picture doesn't really do justice to the reality.  Frequently I look back at photos of something and they're not a patch on the real thing.  I took loads of the Bolivian altiplano and whilst some of them are nice pictures, they don't show the true beauty of the place or evoke the same feeling of wonderment that all of us there experienced when we saw it first hand.

But even if my photos were always perfect, I simply don't take some of the ones that I most want because I feel like I would be intruding or being rude.  I really wanted to be able to take some close up pictures of the women in Bolivia and Peru in their traditional dress, one about their day, but it felt far too rude to go up to a person and stick a camera in their face.  I would hate it if someone  did that to me as I was walking around London, even if they asked first.  And I know that there're still some people who believe that having their picture taken is bad; some even still believe that it can take their soul, and it would be terrible to cause that kind of offense to a person.  Then there are just the times when the opportunity for that fabulous photo is so brief that by the time you have your camera ready, you've missed your chance.  

Another issue is that when you are spending all of your time taking pictures, you often don't actually look properly at what you are taking a photo of and so don't spend enough time simply appreciating it, absorbing it, and forming the memory for later.  When I was on safari, I was so happy to see the male lion close up that when he walked right next to me I didn't even try to take a picture even though I had my camera in my hand.  And whilst I can't show anyone the picture of the lion, the memory is so vivid that's don't need a picture to remind me of it.

It's not just the time taking the photos either, you have to spend time uploading them, editing them, putting captions on so that later you can remember who or what they are of, and putting them in an album or book.  That time could be better spent actually doing more things.

But the biggest risk is one that has been brought home to me sharply over the last weeks.  And that is the devastation that you feel when you lose those photos.  We have had five people lose photos on this trip.  One person lost a photo card when it fell out of her bag.  Another got a virus of some form in his camera and it wiped everything.  A third, someone who was our most avid photographer and video taker who kept it all on his laptop, had his laptop stolen from a bus from Banos to Quito.  A fourth had her camera stolen at knife point in Quito old town.  And a fifth lost her camera in the fire at Shangri-la.  All of them are, quite understandably, very upset to have lost their photos, which they know they can never replace.  Of course others on the trips have all offered to give copies of our photos, but we know that it isn't the same.  If it isn't your photo then it isn't your memory.

And it's no point in saying well the photos should be backed up because it just isn't possible to do that all the time when you're on the move like we are.  Access to computers or Internet is limited and you don't have that much time available to do it regularly if you want to see the places you visit.  So you balance the risk and hope that you're not the unlucky person who gets affected.

So the sensible part of me says that taking photos doesn't make sense.  That we should focus our energies on seeing and enjoying what is there in front of us, forming the memory well enough to be able to remember without relying in the fragility of a photo.

Bu the sensible part is losing to that urge to capture the moment.  The knowledge that I won't remember everything I've seen if I don't have something to jog my memory into action.  The desire to be able to share at least some of those memories with others.

So I have taken far too many photos and will continue to do so.  I will try to make sure they are uploaded safely so that I don't lose them even if I lose the camera and laptop, but I will accept the risk that I still might.  And I will look back at them remembering not only the scene in the picture, but the story behind it and the photo that I really wanted to take but didn't or couldn't.