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Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir

I decided in early 2006 that I'd had enough of the London rat-race and the career thing - at least, for the time being - and that I'd like to take some time out: "me time", as it were; time to do at least some of the things that I'd been thinking about doing over the last few years but hadn't been able to fit in around work and client demands.

So here I am: backpack to the ready (to be honest, it had never really been put away after my '93-'94 round-the-world trip), and a gazillion ideas about how to fill the next xx months..... (And, no, I've no idea when I'll go back to the "real" world, nor what I'd do if/when I get back there. Time enough to figure that one out, I reckon.)

Being an about-to-be-former technology lawyer, I thought I'd better join the 21st century and save you all the trouble of deciphering my handwriting (not to mention saving myself the hassle of writing postcards and negotiating the purchase of stamps). So, if you're interested in what I get up to (edited highlights only, you'll be relieved to hear), do read on....

[Frequency of updates unpredictable, but I'll try and capture the highlights from time to time.]
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Joined on: February 3rd 2006
Last Login: May 13th 2008

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Blogs & Travel Journals

by Weir-travels, order by Date newest first.

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Travel isn’t just about places: about exploring every last inch of a new country, a new area, a new city; about scheduling a dawn-to-dusk (and beyond) itinerary of things to do and places to see to check off The List; about comparing dining/sleeping/shopping/entertainment experiences with the reviews in the guidebooks. It’s about sitting on Cindy’s veranda in the late afternoon light of a Hobart summer as if the thirteen years since we last met had evaporated, our conversation constantly spinning off at tangents until we can’t remember - and it doesn’t matter - where we started; being yanked into consciousness on [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 28 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 1348 words | [diary=257868] | 2008-03-20 05:34:07

Hobart bridge
cheeky face
Majuba Hill, South Africa

There is something reassuring in the effort still required, even today, to visit Antarctica. Yes, day-long scenic flights from New Zealand and Australia have been an option for the well-endowed of pocket for a while, and now equally well-heeled tourists will be able to fly in to Australia’s Casey Station. But this does not get you to the incredible sights, sounds and silences that we had been lucky enough to experience. Only days and days on board a well-provisioned and expertly-navigated ship could do that. But it’s a long schlep even to the Antarctic Circle, and we were delighted to be [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 1 Comment(s) | 25 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 993 words | [diary=265693] | 2008-04-12 17:35:56

rata reflections
"You lookin
Zodiac driver and escorts

When I started writing up this trip, I envisaged three blogs, one on the trip south, one on the Ross Sea, and one on the trip north. If you’ve followed the last month’s scribblings in any detail (or simply kept an eye on the blogs’ titles), you’ll know this was a somewhat optimistic initial assessment. Everyone who has been before says it takes a surprisingly long time to absorb and to digest fully a trip to Antarctica. The intensity of experience in a short space of time in the context of the long, tough journeys there and back, however mild the [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 27 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 1592 words | [diary=265680] | 2008-04-12 16:15:33

Scott
priority provisions in the Discovery hut
Shackleton

If stepping ashore at Cape Adare was magical, walking down the gangway and straight onto a vast plain of snow-covered sea ice which stretched away to the distant foot of the Campbell Glacier was breathtaking. We’d spent the first few hours of the morning on the bridge or out on deck watching incredible scenery unfold around us. As we breakfasted, the ship rounded Cape Washington and the simple magnificence of Mount Melbourne, and entered Terra Nova Bay. In the distance were the ice cliffs of the Campbell Glacier’s tongue, and beyond that the peaks of the northern end of the Prince [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 34 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 1514 words | [diary=257858] | 2008-03-20 05:03:09

icicle patterns
ploughing into the pack
the scene of the earlier ice floe break-up

“Exploration is the physical expression of the intellectual passion. And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore…” (Apsley Cherry-Garrard) I celebrated the second anniversary of my leaving the rat-race of a City legal career by setting foot on the Antarctic continent for the first time. I woke that morning to see land outside the porthole for the first time in six days. The cliffs of Cape Adare drifted in and out of sight through the mist and falling snow. On ice floes between the ship and [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 1 Comment(s) | 34 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 1846 words | [diary=257210] | 2008-03-18 04:05:25

desolate habitation
inside Borchgrevink
furry hat and bib

Breaking through the pack ice into the Ross Sea was far from a foregone conclusion. Aurora’s previous trip in January had not managed to do so, and we spent an extra couple of days battling this ice ourselves, venturing as far east as the dateline and using helicopters for recce flights before we found a path through. Once through and into the Ross Sea’s polynya, a recurring area of open water, our battles were far from over. Fast ice around the coast would challenge our attempts to approach some of our desired destinations sufficiently close for either Zodiac or helicopter landings. [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 29 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 1591 words | [diary=257194] | 2008-03-18 03:28:14

Lego blocks
the Marina Svetaeva in the icebreaker-bashed channel in McMurdo Sound
the tongue of the Drygalski Glacier

To set the scene… Our trusty vessel, the Marina Svetaeva, was an ice-strengthened 1989 Polish-built, Russian-registered 90-metre passenger ship, recently acquired (previously leased) by Aurora Expeditions. While not an icebreaker, she was, effectively, only half a grade away, and we can certainly now vouch for her ice-bashing capabilities in the careful hands of her skipper, Kapitan Gena, and his Russian crew. In addition to the forty-odd crew, there were about twenty mainly-Australian staff and lecturers to look after our gastronomic, intellectual and logistical needs, from cooking and running the bar, to manning the inflatable landing craft, Zodiacs, and co-ordinating helicopter flights, [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 29 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 2088 words | [diary=251199] | 2008-03-06 07:27:39

the Marina Svetaeva
iced-up bow
effortless...

nosy
nosy
king penguins on Macquarie Island
Antarctica. The windiest, coldest, highest, driest continent on this planet. The amorphous and largely-ignored white bit at the bottom of the map. The last place on Earth to be conquered by man. The obsession of near-legendary explorers such as Scott, Shackleton, Mawson, Byrd and Amundsen, and the death of many who sought to push the boundaries of man’s survival. A land of 24-hour daylight in summer and incomprehensible endless night in winter. Penguins, seals, whales. And all a very, very long way away. This was always going to be totally different to any other travelling I’ve ever done: long periods at [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 2 Comment(s) | 29 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 822 words | [diary=251185] | 2008-02-29 02:59:45

landing at Cape Adare
a smoking Mount Erebus
edge of the glacier

Photos of the slow boat trip from Luang Prabang to Houay Xai. For various reasons, these didn't make it into the main Laos blog, but I didn't want you to miss out... [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 12 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 32 words | [diary=241900] | 2008-04-25 20:11:02

village on the Mekong between Luang Prabang and Pak Beng
the somewhat cramped boat on day 1
fishing boats on the Mekong

Laos: the most bombed country in the world. The forgotten victim of a war misleadingly known in the West as the Vietnam War, but more accurately described as the Indochinese War. Bombed to hell and left there by US forces intent on cutting off Ho Chi Minh and his North Vietnamese communist forces from their supply lines, despite the country being internationally recognised as neutral in the neighbouring conflict. A legacy from which the country has yet to escape, unexploded ordinance still contaminating more than half its land and killing hundreds annually. Yet whose people who could not be more gentle [View Full Entry]

Weir travels - Elizabeth Weir | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 41 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | 2930 words | [diary=240915] | 2008-04-25 20:09:55

Wat Xieng Thong
mirror-work detail at Wat Xieng Thong
naga detail at Wat That Luang



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