The man from Del Monte, he say...... (30 Jan 2008)

…. that’s a hell of a big pineapple you’ve got there! After the prawn theme park in NZ, I now discover a pineapple one in Oz – this food theme theme park is becoming a habit! But one I couldn’t resist. After seeing the sign to the Big Pineapple, I needed to discover more. This is a small pineapple plantation that they have turned into an attraction – as well as the “nutmobile”, a little roadtrain with capsules shaped like nuts that takes you through the macadamia nut plantation, there is also a small train reminiscent of Thomas The Tank Engine that takes you around the plantation to learn all about growing pineapples. My education is now complete, but I just can’t get to grips with the economics – it takes 2 years for a pineapple to grow, and each plant only gives one pineapple in that time. After 2 pineapples have grown on it (4 years) it’s not much good and has to be replaced. So how come you can get ‘em in Tesco’s for 99p? But the train, even though it looks like a kiddie’s ride is actually a train that is used as transport on the plantations. And you get to go inside the big pineapple at the gate (all 18 metres of it) and learn even more – a strange experience! But I also saw joeys and koalas at close range which was a treat. I did resist buying the pineapple shaped ice bucket in the shop on the way out, however stylishly retro it seemed…. Before discovering this huge pineapple I had started the day in my trusty bluemobile driving north through a tropical rainstorm, up the Bruce Highway towards Noosa, and stopping at an old orignal country village, Eumundi, that has a famous twice weekly craft market. It was huge and full of stalls selling all kinds of weird and wonderful objects. I think a lot were manned by people who had in past lives travelled to India and Asia, and now flog their stuff to unsuspecting tourists like me (but I didn’t buy anything at least this time…). There were also local crafts, painted bottles, embroidered nighties are big, Indian caftans (I could sell them a few if I’d thought), 3 D pictures, caricaturists, palm readers and camel rides. But my favourite was meeting the Dyl’s Oz cousin – Scooby Doo (see pic). I can report that in Australia golden cocker spaniels are as into everything and find food wherever they can as they do at home in Clapham! And as it had been raining, he had of course been in every muddy puddle he could find and his coat was soaking and brown with the mud – now where have I met a dog like that? By lunchtime, I reach Noosa – a beautiful area of fabulous houses on the waterfronts of all the little inlets – all individual and different in design and seemingly with a boat moored at each one - like something from the Architectural Digest. The very small, perfectly formed and neat centre is full of trendy restaurants and bars and expensive clothes shops as well as the usual real estate agents with windows full of extremely expensive properties. But it’s a low key place – no big tower blocks, nothing seems higher than 2 storeys and when you hit the beach it is yet another sweep of golden sands and blues seas with white surf. I was thinking that if that puja to Laxmi does work and I win the lottery, perhaps this is the place for my Australian holiday home. But as I drove out, I saw clear evidence of recent bushfires with the barks of the gum trees scorched and black over quite a wide area, and suddenly changed my mind!

The Australian Dream and places beginning with "M" (29 Jan 2008)

Today, the hotel has suddenly become the Marie Celeste. When I arrived on Saturday it was heaving and there were cars and “utes” in every parking space. Today, it seems Australia has gone back to work after their long Australia Day weekend, and there is no one about. In the town, all the shops are now open, but there are far fewer holiday makers milling around and most people seem to be just going about their normal day to day business. The pool at the hotel, which over the weekend was full of shrieking children is now strangely deserted. I start with a simple breakfast of coffee and doorstops. To explain, in a very smart café in town, I order coffee and toast. The toast, like everything in Australia is larger than life – on this occasion it was 2 pieces of toast, each more than an inch thick of proper white bread - so much for healthy eating, but it was very good. I collected my hire car – a bluemobile this time – a small “Getz” , a peculiar name for a car, but it is small and perfectly formed and “getz” me to where I want to go…. It has the requisite aircon which is so needed here as the humidity and heat are really high – lovely! It was after lunch by the time I was ready to start driving about – sorting the car and then sorting some Malarone (the anti malarials I need for Cambodia) took longer than expected. I was heading for Mooloolah, a village in the hinterland, but took the wrong turn off the Bruce Highway and found myself heading unwittingly into the Australian Dream at Mooloolaba - well they both began with “M”.... As I drove along the Sunshine Motorway (how much nicer are these names than the M1 or the M25), I realised I was heading in completely the opposite direction from the one which I had intended. But so what, that’s the beauty of what I’m doing – you get waylaid by a wrong turn, but it doesn’t matter – you will still discover something new and interesting, and can try and get the right place tomorrow. So I carried on back towards the coast and arrived in Mooloolaba, a coastal town north of where I am staying. I thought I had arrived in a film set for the Australian Dream. The houses on the way in were perched at the edge of the inlets with boat moorings at the bottom of their green lawned gardens. The seafront was like a picture postcard – a wide, sweeping beach with blue sky and sea, golden sand and the white surf of the rolling waves, populated by young, bronzed people playing in the surf and skilfully surfing and body boarding in. The shops were all small boutiques, trendy restaurants and posh real estate agents flogging beautiful “absolute waterfront” properties and penthouses. It’s all so clean, wholesome and even the parking right on the front is free. There are bbq’s to use, showers all over the place to get the saltwater and sand off, and no graffiti anywhere. There’s even a very posh (free) loo right on the front called “a loo with a view”! Southend, Brighton and Blackpool you have a long way to go… it really was the Australian Dream here on the aptly named Sunshine Coast. But smart shops are all very well, but where do you buy your food? As I drove out I came upon my answer, a huge “edge of town” shopping centre with Woolworths, Coles, and lots of other shops all inside airconditioned comfort. I had to stop and check it out - why do such simple things like grocery stores in other countries seem so much more interesting than Tesco or Sainsbury’s? By this time the Sunshine Coast was looking to become the rain coast as large black clouds started to roll in, so I head back to Caloundra. Sitting on my balcony as dusk was about to settle there was the most amazing cacophony I have ever heard – so loud. I guess it was the dusk equivalent of the dawn chorus, but it felt more like something from the Alfred Hitchcock film, “The Birds” – either that or the end of the world was nigh, but if you are reading this, you will know it wasn’t…..

20 – 24 Jan 08 - Sun, sea, sand, sushi and sellulite (sic – just had to be done)

Punta Del Este has it all. It is Latin America’s answer to St Tropez and it attracts all sorts - apparently Clooney and Estefan have houses here. It is situated in South eastern Uruguay where the River Plate meets the sea.

It was a lovely way to end the trip as I spent three days lying by the pool or at the beach, in typical Punta style – i.e. late starts, lots of posing ( them not me ), late restaurants, they don’t get busy until 23.30 ish (adults, kids and grandparents all eating together) and the shops close at 2am. Suspect the club scene starts at about that time – but I am well past that. I am also well past thongs which seem to be the order of the day accompanied by huge beach jewellery and dark tans – regardless of gender, age or size. There are clearly no mirrors in this town, either that or no taste. There is however, loads of money – it is very expensive here and the harbour is full of yachts, there is a Tiffany store, Rolex, and even a Victoria’s Crown boutique dedicated to Posh’s clothes label!! You get the idea.

The beach is lovely, but crowded in a Spanish Costa sort of way, except here it is so noisy, with everyone chatting, milling around, huge extended family groups all buying from the bewildering parade of hawkers – selling helados, cerverza, agua, sunglasses, pareos, toys, footballs, bags, sweetcorn, mate, café, bocadillos, bikinis, jewellery, beach dresses, etc etc etc. It made for great people watching and the general buzz and movement reminded me of the squawky chinstrap penguin colonies.
Must say that I am so fed up of steak and Malbec that I have resorted to sushi and sauvignon blanc – feels like home already. Don’t want to go home after such an amazing trip. Kev was there too. This is my last blog of this trip – so Gill back over to you……

12 – 20 Jan 08 - Trekking in Torres Del Paine (Chile)

I have never done any serious trekking before, apart from Kilimanjaro, so this was an experiment. As a result I have learnt that I do not want to go trekking for 21 days in the Himalayas but that 5 days treks would be fine. Also, lodges would have been better than tents – but I had to learn that the hard way.

We were to walk about 20 km a day for 5 days in the Torres del Paine National Park in the very south of Chile, which is amazing, and as walking is the only way to see it - I had no choice anyway. It is am igneous massif, which has been eroded by the ice to form magnificent landforms and so as a geographer and geologist (v. rusty) I was in heaven

I was to hike the W – basically that is the shape of the hike on a map – with camping sites (I use the word very loosely) at the angles in the W. 20 km sounds like nothing, but we were carrying all our stuff – the porters only carried the tent, sleeping bag and food. In addition the terrain was poor and undulating, with lots of uphills and boulder fields, – so progress was slow and each day we were walking for up to 10 hours covering 2km an hour!!!!

Day 1 was tough as I battled with the ‘what the fuck am I doing here‘ question? However, as the scenery impressed me more and more, and we started to have fun scrambling up glacial boulder fields and stumbling across hidden glaciers and glacial lakes, I was soon converted.

There were 4 of us in the group – and I was the youngest – so I had no excuse but to keep up – the eldest was 72 – and he was like a gazelle and put me to shame. You get to know people very well when walking for so long and all my companions were great company. My tent partner was Ken – he was a British Columbian MP, the other two were a married couple from Oz – although Bill was originally from UK and at 72 was retired from the MOD, his wife June younger at only 57 was Burmese Chinese and was a GP in Sydney - we had a lot of fun. Our guide was Eduardo – a Chilean – who loved this park. We had three porters / cook – but to be honest their cooking was poor and I certainly did not spend the time walking thinking of dinner!!

What I did think about was my past and the future and I enjoyed having this time just to think.

We did not wash, shave or have showers for 5 days – as even where there were such things – the water was straight from the glaciers, and so super chilled! I would soak my feet in nearby rivers of glacial meltwater for up to 12 seconds each evening – and that was torture enough but really refreshing.

The scenery was amazing, as the photos show I hope, daylight was very long (20 hours at least), the weather sunny, mountain air was lovely, and all the water we collected and drank from the rivers was by far the best water that I have ever tasted and so it was all well worth it – I will definitely trek again.

The very basic wilderness camping was the worst bit. If I had done my research better – I would have discovered that there are Refugios en route – basic huts with dorms and cooking facilities that I could have booked into – but they fill up 6 months in advance, so we trekked past looking longingly.

I also went glacial trekking on the Grey Glacier in Chile and Perito Moreno in Argentina, both of which form part of the Southern Patagonian ice field which is the third largest ice field in the world after Antarctica and Greenland (so with two done – Greenland has to be done soon)

You would not believe how good the first shower and hotel bed felt – it was in a 2 start in Southern Argentina but felt better than the Burj!!

6 Jan 08 - The Whale Show

OMG – they were amazing, a pair of enormous humpbacks came close to the boat and spent at least two hours playing right next to it and in front, crossing from side to side, some people took over 400 photos !!! They were breaching, diving, displaying flukes (tails), flipper flapping and just playing, they were often so close that I couldn’t get them all in my zoom lens!!! They would spout and we would feel the whales breath spray. Really privileged to see this. That afternoon – we saw over 40 individuals, but none could match the show that these two had put on for us. Hope the video does it justice,

We had seen all that this trip had promised and more, we were satiated and 'suficiento' so 2 more days back across the Drake – more sleep and it was a sad disembarkation. Not sure if the sense of uniqueness and remoteness will be experienced ever again.


Some dulche de leche ire cream cheered me up!!

Derek flew home and I took a few days rest in 5 star hotels in Ushuaia and El Calafate before the next expedition, facials . massage, no dock rock, more steak and Malbec and prepared for the next adventure.

3 – 6 Jan 08 - Continental Landing and other adventures

Next morning we pressed on south and reached our southernmost point on Andersen Island at 66 52 2 - at this point had anything gone wrong, the nearest ship was 2 days sailing away !! – a sobering thought – but I loved its remoteness.

We spent the morning in zodiacs watching the wildlife and exploring the coastline in order to find somewhere to land on the continent. Due to sheer size of the ice sheet it is very difficult to set your foot on the actual Antarctic continent itself and until this point we had always landed on offshore islands, but on 2nd Jan at 66 01 7 S and 65 20 6 w, we set foot on the continent of Antarctica at an unnamed point. So I could now bag all 7 continents, need to do the moon next.

This was interrupted by our first sighting of a leopard seal; these eat penguins and hang around colonies on ice floes. We had to use the zodiacs to push through small bergs and dense brash ice to get close to this one. He was not bothered by us at all. We were wary of him, only a few metres away, but they have only ever killed one person, but Martin says they intimidate divers, as they are 4m in length, weigh a tonne and move so quickly. To me he looked serpent like and menacing, but he rolled over and basked in the sunshine. Like buses, when one comes along … for the next few days we couldn’t turn without seeing yet another one.

The fun continued when the ship crashed into a football pitch sized piece of floating sea ice (deliberately) trying to break it as it was blocking our channel, and if we could break it it would save about 10 hours sailing time. We tried three times, and failed. So having tested its strength we decided to get of and walk on it. It had a small colony of seals who were unperturbed by our presence and our snowball fight, we built a snowman. Eva the bar person brought a bottle of scotch along, and so we had it over very fresh polar ice!!! This trip is a non stop series of highs and excitement. Even the expedition team are saying that we have some amazing things, as none of them had walked on floating ice sheet since 1999. We have been so lucky (again and again).

Next excitement was a landing at the Vernadsky Station – a Ukrainian polar research base. It used to be British but we sold it for £1 10 years ago – obviously yet another labour party triumph !!! It used to be called Faraday and was where the Brits alerted the world to the presence of a hole in the ozone layer. We had a tour of the very modern base and had our passports stamped which was unnecessary but fun. However, then came a real memorable moment – a new way of drinking vodka!

Recipe

Take a shot glass of ice cold vodka (freezer will do, no need for an iceberg, also they had distilled their own – this is not necessary!)
Take a half slice of fresh orange (where they got this from who knows?), dip one side in sugar, the other in cheap instant coffee granules / powder.
Down vodka in one, suck on orange.

Sounds disgusting – it was amazing – I had two!

Heading north again through the Leamiare channel we had fantastic weather and perfect zodiac weather and so we spent 4 hours or so, in our small rubber zodiacs, inches above the water, playing about in boats – watching seals, penguins, icebergs, birds and the scenery. The perfect afternoon was completed when all five zodiacs met up to enjoy some Sauvignon Blanc in the middle of the channel – perfect.

One night we had a barbecue on the bow of the boat – which was fun and freezing!!!! – The argentine chefs doing their best to re-create an Asado.

Further stops at Neko harbour, Useful Island and Portal Point and the trip was drawing to a close. However. our sightings of whales was pretty poor, we had even pursued a few in the zodiacs but they had got away – but that was about to change.

1 January 2008 - Camping it up beyond the Circle

Crossing the Antarctic Circle was a big deal for me and I was on the bridge when the satnav ( SURELY IT WAS A BIT MORE TECHNICAL THAN THAT) read 66° 33’ South!!! On the morning of 1 January 2008 - we had made it. A huge grin on all of our faces. and a little relived as we would have felt cheated had we not been able to come this far south. That was always a distinct possibility as the sea ice around Antarctica was greater this last winter than since records began. So much for global warming.

We landed at Detaille island, which was san abandoned British Antarctic Survey base. They had left in the mid 50s when Gill and Deryn were mere girls, over 50 years ago!! None of our team had ever been there before and they estimated that only about 200 people would get there in any one year, and we were the first 50 in 2008. The island was populated with crabeater and weddel seals and skuas However, the main attractions were a small number of wooden huts, untouched since the 50s. As Antarctica is technically a desert and gets less than 10cm of rain equivalent snow per year, the air is very dry and so nothing rots, and the huts were in an amazing condition. They looked as if the previous inhabitants had left in hurry, mail was scattered about, pots in the sink, coats and skis hanging up, beds unmade and the stores of food – HP sauce,, tins of porridge oats, pickle, biscuits, salad cream, were all stacked neatly in the cupboards, it was fascinating and we felt privileged to see all this stuff.

However, the main excitement of the day was to come. After dinner, Martin informed us that those of us who had elected a nights camping ( seemed like a good idea last March in London) would spend the night under polypropylene (modern day canvas?) on Detaille Island that night – buggers and we were just getting comfortable. So back into our multilayered cold weather gear, back onto the zodiacs and at 9pm we were flattening the snow (in a blizzard) and pitching flimsy, dome tents designed for somewhere else. Derek and I were to share a tent (and he had complained about my snoring keeping him awake in the cabin )– this was going to be a nightmare for him – but not for me as I would be asleep !!

Tents pitched, we had taken a chemical loo ashore and it needed to have some nice snow walls built around if for privacy and so this was the next task. I managed to avoid the tough job of building the walls of snow, but did manage to get a spade into my hands for the photo!!

By now it was 10pm, broad daylight – so what to do now as sleeping was going to be tough. We climbed to the top of the island, and were rewarded with great views, but also got dive bombed by large skuas protecting their nest. We saw where the dogs would have lived for the Brits sledging exhibitions to the interior, and we watched the seals, you do have to make your own entertainment as there is not much Antarctica night life!!!! However, I had a secret stash, although we had been told not to take any foreign materials ashore – I had a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and a Cohiba which 5 of us shared sitting in the snow outside the tent (like kids behind the bike shed!) and a memorable bottle and cigar is was too.

I slept like a log – Derek didn’t.