The March

Today at 10:00 AM, sup­port­ers of the CBC Radio Orches­tra met at the Queen Eliz­a­beth Foun­tain. We waved to traf­fic going by on West Geor­gia, and heard speeches describ­ing how protests like this one were going on in Mon­treal and Toronto (and also in Roma­nia, where Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper is cur­rently visiting).

Some passed out song sheets (also with all of the names of all the BC Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, to send hand­writ­ten let­ters to). We sang some a cou­ple of protest songs — to the tune of Three Blind Mice and Baa Baa Black Sheep (or Twin­kle twin­kle Star, if you will). My favourite bit was the sec­ond verse of the Baa Baa Black Sheep:

Bah, bah, hum­bug to the stingy beast
In his office way back east;
How can pencil-pushing jerks
Screw composer’s hard-earned works?
Bureau­crats don’t know their avant-garde
From a hole in their back yard.

Then the whole crowd marched a block south to the main doors of the CBC. Some of the radio orches­tra mem­bers gath­ered at the door, and there were more speeches and chant­ing. There was no vio­lence, and I think that frankly, the folks in the build­ing were glad we were there. After all, I think they would have joined us if they could have. Here are a few other pho­tos (the rest are on Flickr):

Observations From a New Point of View

Since she’s got­ten back, Pam has said that she’s been see­ing the world (includ­ing our home) a lit­tle dif­fer­ently lately:

1. While the coastal moun­tains may look big to us (and they cer­tainly loom large enough that I use them to ori­ent myself when­ever walk­ing down­town), the Andes Moun­tains in the south of Chile and Argentina make them look small.
2. The ice­bergs she saw were ‘roughly the same size as the con­tainer ships’ we saw yes­ter­day in Eng­lish bay. Bear in mind that this is just the vis­i­ble tip of the object. 7/8 of it is underwater.
3. While it’s been pretty much dis­missed as a myth, Pam did notice that the water going down the drain where she was always went down clock­wise. We did a lit­tle test here and although the bath­tub goes coun­ter­clock­wise, the guest bath­room sink went clock­wise as well. I stand by the opin­ion that the Cori­o­lis effect, while clearly hav­ing an effect on large-scale weather pat­terns (like hur­ri­canes), does not pro­duce enough force on small local­ized phe­nom­e­non in order to lead to a con­sis­tent direc­tion either way when things go down the drain. Instead, in these cases, it’s more a func­tion of the size, shape, and angle of the bowl or tub.
4. When they left South Amer­ica, the cap­tain of the Pam’s ship said: “Say good-bye to trees for 10 days”. Indeed, there wasn’t a sin­gle tree on any of the pho­tos Pam took on any of the islands or the coast of Antarc­tica. A land­scape with­out a tree is some­thing I’d have a hard time get­ting used to.
5. Moss (which was found on these islands) always grew on the South side of rocks (as opposed to the North side here).
6. Birds in Antarc­tica (includ­ing the Pen­guins, Terns, Alba­tross and Petrels) were all much larger than the birds we see here. They call the Cor­morant (which we some­times do see here) a Blue-Eyed Shag.
7. Even on a cloudy or rainy day, you need sun­glasses in Antarc­tica because the reflect­ing snow is so bright.

I’m sure she’ll think of oth­ers as they strike her.

Last Dispatch

While I was at North­ern Voice, Pam’s final email came in:

There won’t be many pho­tos from the Zodiac cruise through Ple­neau Island, also known as ‘The glac­ier grave­yard’. Get­ting from ice­berg to ice­berg for obser­va­tion proved to be a wild ride. Wind, waves, and snow hin­dered picture-taking for all but those being paid to do it. The rest of us clung to the side robes with heads turned into sleeves. I sup­pose we learned that form of pro­tec­tion from the penguins.

When ice­bergs become grounded, it’s ero­sion that shakes them apart, even­tu­ally becom­ing ‘burger bits’. It might take an ice­berg 10 years to rot. They look snowy from a dis­tance but up close you see accu­mu­lated rocks frozen in the solid ice. We cruised through icy chunks where a leop­ard seal hid out and taunted Zodi­acs try­ing to land.

The next day oppo­site weather in quiet, sunny Cuverville Island. We observed more gen­too pen­guins in a big smelly rook­ery. One of the guides noted that in the past 3 years, snow cover has retreated from the shore expos­ing sharp rocks and pro­duc­ing new mosses. We could hear the pen­guins squish as they stepped across the tour trail.

In the evening a British base com­man­der lec­tured on ‘A Year in Antarc­tica’. He described how a par­tic­u­lar sci­en­tific group phys­i­cally and men­tally han­dled a 12-month rota­tion. In addi­tion to work­ing in pairs, they also had to deal with per­sonal annoy­ances such as soup slurp­ing. If a coworker got the bet­ter of you, they were asked to ‘repair a meter’ in the out­er­most hut. (It was equipped with essen­tial overnight gear.) When the base sup­ply ves­sel returned the fol­low­ing year, the com­man­der explained that, nat­u­rally, out­go­ing crew went through with­drawal and grief. Replace­ments were to allow them a few days for intro­spec­tion before they left.

Our stops over the last 5 days have included Decep­tion Island, Peter­mann Island, Half­moon Bay, Par­adise Bay, and Neku Har­bour. We crossed 66-degrees south lat­i­tude, a joy­ous moment for the cap­tain, within spit­ting dis­tance of the Antarc­tic Cir­cle, the fur­ther­est south this ves­sel and this cap­tain have ever been.

We’re now think­ing about home. Tonight at the Captain’s farewell party ‘Las Pen­guinas’ my picture-taking bud­dies and I will rem­i­nisce about this incred­i­ble jour­ney to the awe­some Antarctic.

Pam will be back on Tues­day, and I’m hop­ing that her pho­tos will be up shortly after that.

The View from 65.36.21S, 64.46.65W

The news from your’s truly is that today I finally was able to go back to work, after about 5 days of on-and-off fever and chills. It sure feels good to be almost nor­mal (cough­ing and weak­ness is fine by me com­pared to that other stuff). Unfor­tu­nately, dur­ing my retreat into a fetal posi­tion under the blan­kets, I missed about 5 days of sun­shine, or so they tell me. Never saw any of it. So much for any Vit­a­min D that doesn’t come out of a bottle…

Any­way, at least Pam wasn’t here to have to hear me whin­ing about how crappy I felt. The news from her is quite a bit more inter­est­ing and far more uplifting:

We’re all back inside after a morn­ing of see­ing and smelling Gen­too and Adelie pen­guin colonies on Peter­mann Island. We had to tread very care­fully as the lit­tle guys blend in with the rocks. For­tu­nately guides were placed next to chicks sleep­ing on the path. As we knelt to take their pic­tures, some curi­ous chicks approached to nib­ble on cam­era straps. At some point you don’t take pic­tures but just have to take a breath and stand in awe in the quiet, majes­tic, surroundings.

Today’s snow got every­one in the mood for explor­ing, but after the crew planned a fes­tive BBQ on the pool-deck, we had other ideas. Enter­tain­ment was pro­vided by a band and pas­sen­gers will­ing to dance in the slush (includ­ing me), and then an impromptu snow­ball fight broke out and every­one, includ­ing the cap­tain, were on deck as some point.

Out­side tem­per­a­ture is about 39°F/4°C. The red Explorer jack­ets are quite warm, as are the insu­lated rub­ber boots. It’s a good thing they are water­proof, as we have to step in “decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion” buck­ets before and after leav­ing the ship and zodiac rafts.

Just moments after every­one came in from lunch fes­tiv­i­ties, and as the crew was break­ing down, the ship sud­denly rocked, hard. Chairs tipped over and there was a loud crash from the kitchen fol­lowed by another crash on the return wave. The cap­tain has turned off the sta­bi­liz­ers as they also slow the ship and hav­ing them off is bet­ter for nav­i­gat­ing around ice. He’s announced that as of an hour ago, we’ve come far­ther south in this ship than ever before because of the good weather and rel­a­tively ice-free con­di­tions. We’re actu­ally now less than 6 hours sail from the Antarc­tic cir­cle. Although we’re not plan­ning to cross, it’s excit­ing to have come so close to that point on the Earth.

Yes­ter­day evening (after 2 land­ings and a zodiac cruise past ice shelves 40 metres high) we started head­ing through the Lemaire chan­nel. The Chan­nel is in every guide book of Antarc­tica. A National Geo­graphic ship was in the area and we watched it dis­ap­pear thru a tiny speck of an open­ing off in the dis­tance. At around 22:00 the cap­tain invited every­one up to the bridge as we slipped through the pas­sage. With shear moun­tains on either side, and glac­i­ers, which could have spilled off at any moment perched atop them, we glided into the open­ing and away from the sun­set. The cap­tain got a round of applause; it was an unfor­get­table moment. Many peo­ple have been moved to tears, (me included), by the astound­ing beauty of the scene.

Pam goes on to say that her next mes­sage will come on the sail back toward Tierra del Fuego.

Here’s the kind of pic­ture those guide books of Antarc­tica have of the Lemaire Channel:

Another Dispatch from the South

Another email from Pam arrived about mid-day today:

Today, Mon­day, we went to Decep­tion Island. The day started off sunny, around 37°F. Then it started to sleet but we nev­er­the­less got to take a dip in the ther­mal water of Whaler’s Bay. I handed my cam­era to a stranger and shouted “Please take me”, and she did, so I have some smil­ing pho­tos of me briefly dip­ping into the pool. I didn’t need my bathing suit as I only went up to my ankles.

I’ve been doing activ­i­ties with the woman from Chicago (men­tioned ear­lier), a woman from Annapo­lis who lives on a boat, and another woman from Texas who’s on the trip to cel­e­brate her 40^th. We had a birth­day bash last night com­plete with a Mari­achi band. It was fun but we all knew we’d have to face the dip this morn­ing. I can’t believe I did it but we ‘girls’ made a pact! It’ll be some­thing to talk about tonight.

Today I saw my first ice­berg. It’s so hard to describe; it takes your breath away. Also saw loads of chin­strap pen­guins and fledg­lings. We really wanted to run up and hug them, they are soooo adorable. Also saw fur seals, and yes­ter­day, an alba­tross with an 11-foot wingspan. I hon­estly can’t describe how awe­some it’s been.

This is the first suc­cess­ful attempt to send mail from my room and and I’m excited to send this off. Right now, my room faces an Argen­tin­ian mil­i­tary ship. They gave us a bit of a prob­lem com­ing ashore where we wanted to, but even­tu­ally relented. Our Cap­tain is a good negotiator.

Well, I have 35 min left on the clock so I’ll try to send another dis­patch in a day or 2. There’s so much more to describe so next time I’ll have every­thing in a note pad and then send it off.

The ship’s log hasn’t quite caught up with Pam’s account, but I sus­pect it will, soon.