Modern day Antarctic cruise
The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration is a term used to describe a 25-year period from late 1900’s to the mid 1920’s. Antarctica was the focus of virtually every expedition launched in this period. A bit like the Space Race in the 1950s and 60s.
The label ‘Heroic’ was bestowed on these explorers many years later as an acknowledgement of their achievements without any modern-day equipment or technology.
Without wanting to sound flippant or dismissive, modern-day explorers have the benefit of high-tech clothing and equipment such as satellite phones, GPS navigation and a back-up team following their progress usually ready to launch a rescue if things do not go as planned.
In the days of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton there was none of this. They had boots and coats made of seal skin and sleeping bags made of reindeer skin. They relied on seals and other animals for food, a hand-held compass for direction, and each other for morale. There was no contact with the world once they left port in their wooden ships.
For me the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition is probably the most amazing story of human endurance I have ever heard. It simply defies all logic that every single member of the crew survived. While in Antarctica I learnt more about the expedition from the books in the library on board and also the documentaries on the ship. I was left even more amazed at Shackleton’s ability to lead, make decisions and carry on and on and on in the most hostile environment on earth.
There have been quite a few expeditions which set out to follow in the footsteps of Shackleton but, personally, I think it should be left for us to read about and marvel as it is not something that can ever be relived by us today.
For those of you who are not familiar with the expedition here is a brief summary.
Aug 1914: After the Norwegian team led by Amundsen had won the race to the South Pole in 1911, Shackleton turned his attention to a new challenge. He and his team of 28 men set sail from Plymouth in Endurance with the intention of crossing the entire continent of Antarctica on foot from the Weddell to the Ross Sea. Most of this was unexplored territory.
Jan 1915: The team encounter an unusual amount of pack ice and Endurance becomes trapped in the Weddell Sea. They drift, trapped in the ice, for nine long months through the 24-hour darkness of the Austral winter in temperatures of minus 20 F.
Oct 1915: Shackleton orders the crew to abandon Endurance as she was getting crushed in the ice. They set up camp on the ice floe.
Nov 1915: Endurance sinks. The crew hope their ‘camp’ will drift towards Paulet Island about 250 miles away. They drift for 2 months before Shackleton decides to switch to a different ice floe.
Apr 1915: They are now about 60 miles from Elephant Island. Shackleton orders the men into the three 22 ft open lifeboats and they all row for five days in the roughest conditions imaginable.
On April 17th they reach Elephant Island and step foot on land for the first time in nearly 18 months.
Shackleton decides there is no hope of rescue from Elephant Island from passing ships and decides to head to South Georgia where he knows there is a whaling station. South Georgia is over 800 miles away. It’s the middle of May, the Polar winter, and the ocean just south of Cape Horn is known as the most ferocious in the world. Shackleton wants to attempt this journey in a small open 22ft boat.
He chooses five of his strongest men to accompany him and sets off on April 24th. They average around 60 or 70 miles a day in the most unimaginable conditions. Their sleeping bags, made from reindeer skin, become soaking wet in the storms and simply freeze. They row on and on. On May 8, just 14 days after leaving Elephant Island they catch glimpse of South Georgia. After 2 days of trying to land in treacherous conditions they finally make it. It was however the wrong side of the island. The whaling station is on the other side of the island across mountains and glaciers.
Two of Shackleton’s men were too weak to make the trek. So he set off with two others climbing over glaciers and crevasses. They had no sleeping bags or tents and they had to endure nearly 24-hour darkness and were guided by the full moon. They knew sleep would lead to death so they carried on. They reached the whaling station to the disbelief of the Norwegian whalers there. This is the conversation Mr Sorlie, the Norwegian whaler, recalls as they arrived:
Shackleton: Do you know me? My name is Ernest Shackleton. We have lost our ship, and come over the island.
Sorlie: Ernest Shackleton! My friend!
Shackleton:I am afraid that we smell a little.
Sorlie: This is a whaling station. We all smell a little.
Shackleton:We have been away so long. Tell us about the war. When did it end?
Sorlie: The war? The war, my friend, is not over. They’ve gone mad, Europe has gone mad. They’ve killed millions and millions of people. It’s a war like… no other war.
Frank Worsley: Who is winning?
Sorlie: Well, whoever is left alive at the end. Won’t you sit down, please? Please.
Shackleton: Mmm, thank you. .. I need to borrow a ship.
Now safe at the whaling station, Shackleton’s attention immediately turned to the rest of his crew back on Elephant Island. On his fourth attempt he finally rescues the rest of his crew in August 1916 in a boat loaned from the Chilean government.
Shackleton sums up his journey in his book ‘South’
‘We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole. We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man’
He died in January 1922 on his fourth expedition to the Antarctic and is buried on South Georgia Island.
Read more in our guide to Antarctica or have a look at our holidays to Antarctica.
Walking through rural Andalucia
This is a photo taken in May 2009 on our Andalucia Inn to Inn walking holiday.
This scene looks almost exactly like a print of Sancho Panza I have in an early edition Don Quixote. I just love the fact that you can still see this stuff in 21st Century Europe.
The old boy on his mule checking in on his ‘dehesa’ or woodland. Most probably looking after his pigs which roam freely through the hillsides, feeding on a diet of acorns, grass and wild flowers. Ever wonder why the ham from this area tastes so good? Now you know. This area produces some of the most highly prized hams in Spain.
This was taken up in the Aracena hills/Picos de Aroche which is to the west/north west of Seville. Basically half way between Seville and the Portuguese border, the place where Extremadura meets Andalucia.
It is a hilly to mountainous landscape, largely wooded, punctuated by the occasional whitewashed, cobbled village. Not touristy, Costa del Sol whitewashed villages but places where some people still wash clothes in the village spring. Villages where people sit out in the evening to watch everyone else watching the world go by. It’s a world away from the bustle of everyday.
If you go in spring, anytime from March through June really, the chances are that you’ll be treated to meadows full of flowers or orange trees covered in blossom making every village smell spectacular.
This is where I’d like to be today…walking along a shaded path with the smell of wild flowers in the air, heading towards a cold beer in the village square with a plate of thinly sliced bellota ham.
Read more about this walking holiday to Andalucia
Galapagos cruise boats in calm waters
Radical changes to Galapagos cruises have today been proposed by the Galapagos National Park authority.
The headline is that all boats move from the current 7 night cycle to 14 night itineraries from 1st February 2011. The actual notification which came through to us is as follows:
“The Galapagos National Park has issued a notice to all Galapagos operators informing that, as of February 1st, 2011 all Galapagos vessels must operate with 15-day/14-night itineraries, which can be cut into two 7-night itineraries or as two 6-day/5 night and one 5-day/4-night itinerary.
The purpose of this measure is to re-arrange all itineraries in an orderly way, to control the number of persons visiting a determined visitor site at a given time. Each vessel has to present its proposed itinerary for approval by the GNP, who will then assign the visitor sites according to each individual site’s acceptable load of visitors.”
Currently almost all boats operate on a 7 night cycle with the exception of Beagle and, more recently, Angelito. Moving to 14 nights would mean a more even spread of traffic to visitor sites. What I don’t know is if that’s a good thing or not.
Currently you have some busy sites around the central islands and then some far less busy sites out around the western side of Isabela Island or up at Genovesa. Presumably this move means all Galapagos cruises move towards a common denominator.
Is that a highest or lowest common denominator though?
The US National Parks system is, in my opinion, rightly lauded for its front country/back country approach. Since you can’t stop people visiting, and visiting in numbers, you basically set aside 5% or so of a National Park and sacrifice it to the masses – the ‘front country’. You then protect the 95% ‘back country’ with a strict system of permits and controls. It’s a high pragmatic mix of conservation and damage limitation.
It seems to me that this latest move by the Galapagos National Park authority starts to move away from this model towards a more general ’spread ‘em thin’ approach.
However, saying that, landing sites in the Galapagos Islands are very tightly controlled with markers showing you the path you are allowed to tread and guides who know about minimising impact. That is to say that each individual visitor site within the Galapagos Islands actually works on the basis of front and back country.
So whereas this latest move appears to go against the received wisdom when you look at the Galapagos Islands as a single entity, zoom in a little and there is perhaps no contradiction at all.
What I can confidently say is that it means that you can expect a much greater variety of choice for Galapagos cruises in the near future. Boats will not be able to visit any indivual site more than once every two weeks so they will be creating much more nuanced and interesting itineraries for consumers who can take a full 14 nights to explore.
The downside of this is complexity. Consumers currently have a fairly straightforward and wide choice of Galapagos cruises. Itineraries vary but they are all based on 7 nights. You can currently enjoy a comprehensive Galapagos experience in just 7 nights.
Come February 2011, a 7 night cruise will no longer be comprehensive. Presumably no boat operator is going to go off and do all the amazing stuff on week 1, leaving week 2 as a bit of a filler. They are going to try to ensure that both weeks are equally highlight packed.
That means that to get a comprehensive overview of the range of islands, you are likely to have to commit to at least a 10 or 11 night cruise, more likely 14 nights.
This is really quite clever.
One of the objectives of the National Park Authority is to reduce the number of flight arrivals without reducing the number of visitors i.e. income. With this plan, they could potentially slash the number of individuals arriving in the islands without reducing the number of people in the islands at any one time. You will notice that the new plan effectively bans 3 night itineraries. Any plan which moves people towards longer stays in the islands has to be a good thing.
To illustrate the numbers: boat A currently offers 3 and 4 night cruises. Over the course of 2 weeks a cabin could be home to 4 different couples – 8 individuals arriving on 4 flights, departing on 4 flights. If you can instead sell that cabin to just 1 couple for the full fortnight then you’ve got 2 individuals i.e. 25% of the arrivals into the Galapagos islands without impacting the number of visitors present in the islands at any given moment. 1 flight in, 1 flight out.
As specialist tour operators to the Galapagos Islands, we are really going to earn our salt by walking people through the options. That’s an opportunity for us, we can really add value to consumers in helping them choose the right Galapagos cruise. I think that is already the case now, it’s just going to get a lot more true should this rule come into force.
Consumers are going to have to take time to be more educated and selective. That can’t be a bad thing. They are going to have to commit to longer trips in order to get full value from a vist to the Islands. That is no bad thing. The great bulk of cost associated with a holiday to the Galapagos islands is in getting there anyway. I am always trying to persuade people to avoid short stays on the islands.
Environmentally, as long as each site remains well managed then there should be minimal impact. Reducing the number of flight arrivals in the Galapagos is an important move both in carbon reduction but also in reducing the risks of introducing invasive species.
Whilst I would be hating life right now if I worked in the logistics/planning department of any of the Galapagos cruise ships, on balance I think this move has our stamp of approval. (What a relief for the Galapagos National Park. They’ll sleep easier tonight!)
It does prove that the new leadership of the National Park is both pragmatic and brave. That’s not a bad combination.
Find out more about our Galapagos Cruise holidays or read our guide to the Galapagos Islands.