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May 18th 2013
Did someone say gorilla trekking? Well, if I must… We drove to our campsite on the shore of Lake Bunyoni in Uganda, set up our tents and went for a swim in the lake. Next to the platform where you can dive from is a tree with a rickety platform at the top, maybe four metres high. Clemens, the only German on the trip, somehow managed to convince me that climbing and jumping from said platform would be a sensible idea. I put my bravado down to there being girls in swimwear present, or perhaps the general excitement of being in Africa, but it was the one and only time that I jumped from it. Looking back at the platform after my jump, as someone else climbed it, I was witness to the tree shaking like ... read more
May 18th 2013
Africa is big. Very big. Too big for one man to see all of it at once, so I settled instead for just seeing nine countries, which I thought was a fair start. Overland tours are fairly straight forward. You travel on a big truck with a bunch of like-minded people, camping in tents, helping cook, and sampling a wide range of local beers as you go. Most nights are spent camping with a few dorm rooms thrown in for good measure. My trip was for fifty-six days, taking in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. I’ll be blogging each country in turn, and as I am now nearly three months behind, we’d best get started. From South America, I took a flight to Johannesburg. I had booked a room for ... read more
April 27th 2013
What the heck?! I don't think my second part of Torres del Paine ever published itself, so here it is, in all its late glory. Africa really is coming up - promise! The journey in Torres del Paine continues… Day Five Today we awoke safe in the knowledge that the hard pass was over, though we were still aiming for 21km in total. Our cereal was now gone; we began the process of eating as much porridge as humanly possible, and achieved our aim over the next few days with great aplomb. Our hike today took us alongside the ice sheet up to Glaciar Grey and beyond, through forest and dirt paths, to viewpoints and a campsite complete with sofas and a log fire in their social room. Sadly, though, we only had time to stop ... read more
April 7th 2013
Torres del Paine complete, I took a couple of days out to relax at the hostel. I did nothing other than slowly waiting for my feet to lose the stench of the hike and for my mosquito bites to stop me from looking like Freddy Krueger on a bad day. I booked a bus up to El Calafate and ended up sitting next to a lady with her baby on her lap. Never have I been so glad of an iPod and decent headphones... After settling in to my hostel I met my friend Richard and his friend Philip for dinner, which consisted of tapas and pizza. El Calafate is a strange town, mainly due to it existing pretty much just to serve tourists as it is near the Perito Moreno glacier, which (I think) is ... read more
March 19th 2013
A while ago I saw some pictures of a place in Patagonia called Torres del Paine. They completely captivated me and I thought that it looked like one of the most spectacular places that you could go and trek around, and finally, probably three or more years after first seeing them, I arrived in Puerto Natales, the gateway to the park. There are basically two hikes that you can do; these are the ‘W’, which takes around four or five days, or the circuit or ‘O’ that takes around eight days. I had met Ilia on the boat in Antarctica and Erik on a bus up to Puerto Natales and we decided to do the circuit together. Not being an experienced hiker, I was quite glad to have the guys along with me, and after some ... read more
February 20th 2013
Like a crocodile with dwarfism, I shall attempt to make this fairly short and snappy. I am writing this on the 19th of February. By now I have completed not only my Antarctic cruise but also my hike around Torres del Paine, and I am keen to get you all up to date before I head off for the next big adventure: Africa! In my previous posts I really concentrated on the various landings that we made in the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and Antarctica itself, so it’s about time I gave you a bit more of the people perspective, as I met some great people and some great characters on the boat. First though, one more wildlife experience, which happened in Antarctica after we had landed at Petermann Island. When we got back into the ... read more
February 15th 2013
The White Continent. On The Ice. Antarctica. Whatever you refer to it as, there is no denying the pull that Antarctica can have on a person, way more when you are counting down the days to actually getting there. We left South Georgia as bad weather set in, and had heard stories of boats recently not being able to reach some areas around the peninsula due to the amount of ice. In fact, one ship had become stuck several days before hand and an ice breaker had to be sent to break them free. Hopefully this was not a fate that awaited us. Our first stop was Elephant Island, the location where Shackleton’s men had waited for his return for several months under two overturned lifeboats. Ironically, the spot is in fact marked by a statue, ... read more
A Pinchbeck Runs Through It
Published: February 13th 2013South America » South Georgia » South Georgia
February 13th 2013
South Georgia. I will be the first to admit that I had no idea what to expect of the place, and knew next to nothing about it. This was rectified pretty quickly thanks to some talks on the place and the sheer excitement that all of the staff felt for the place – and you know it’s a pretty great sign when even the staff can’t wait to get there. South Georgia was first used for sealing and then whaling. It is quite staggering how many whales were killed there, largely for oil – in the 1929 to 1930 whaling season alone, 30,000 blue whales were killed. Thankfully all of this has now stopped and all native wildlife is protected. We saw some of the old whaling stations, notably Grytviken, that are now falling into disrepair. ... read more
February 1st 2013
It turns out that the Falkland Islands are not shaped like a fork. I discovered this as they appeared out of the fairly grey sea that we had been sailing on for a couple of days since leaving Ushuaia, but managed to counteract my disappointment with the knowledge that they would be awesome. We were there for almost two days in total, with two landings on the first day and one on the second. The first day we landed in the morning to see a Rockhopper (penguin) and Albatross colony that were located on the back of the island. A very brief walk led up to them and it was our first wildlife on the trip. It didn’t disappoint, even now looking back at the myriad of wildlife we have seen across the whole trip. Birds ... read more
January 30th 2013
Hello friends, subscribers, and anyone else who may stumble across this page. I am writing a couple of entries while on the ship as my memory is poorer than Oliver Twist before he learnt to steal and more full of holes than chicken wire. Therefore I will have finished the trip after this has been posted. I spent the morning before the ship’s departure in Ushuaia, heading to the Maritime Museum housed in the old prison wings in the morning. Not only did it hold more information than the internet itself, it also contained a couple of art galleries, information on other prisons around the world, and took around five hours to walk around. That done, I met some others that were also headed to the trip, including my hotel roommate, Brian, and we lunched like ... read more
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