Auckland and Rotorua

I knew it! As soon as lambs are born and bulbs start flowering we get another cold spell. And here it is. Snow on the hills, a cold southerly and less than 10 degrees C most of the day. Particularly hard to get used to since I have just spent almost a fortnight in Auckland, with a weekend in Rotorua thrown in. I only wore my jacket once in Auckland, when there was a cold evening wind. Yet, for those who live there and who are used to the warmer temperatures this August weather still appeared cold. See Karen in hat and jacket on the wonderful beach near their house.

A weekend in Rotorua, a town famous for its lake, its geothermal features and its Maori history. I first visited Rotorua when I had only been in New Zealand for a year and really enjoyed learning more about the Maori history and visiting not only the thermal pools but also a Maori village. That village is still there. Here is a link.

But that's not what we did this time around. Instead we took a gondola ride up Mount Ngongotaha, which has a great view of Rotorua, the lake and the surroundings. With our ticket we also bought a ride on the Sky Swing and five rides on the luge. It was a nice day with good views. We went on the Sky Swing first, which was just as well, because I don't know whether I would have wanted to go on it after my five luge rides. It looked OK and exciting, but it was actually extremely scary. At least going up was frightening. You sit on a three-seater roundish sort of ski lift type contraption, with bucket seats into which one is very securely and tightly strapped. That feels really safe. But then they slowly hoist that swing back and up and up and up and up. And like any swing where you pull a person back and up, you end up sort of hanging forward. I had forgotten that I have a tendency towards vertigo in my late middle age, and I felt very anxious and ended up having to close my eyes. When they indicate from below that all is ready, you have to pull a short rope to release the swing and away you go at tremendous speed. That's quite exhilirating. Most people scream their head off. There are some U-Tube movies of people on this swing. Here is a link to a good one. So that's not us on the swing, but our experience was very similar. The luge was easier and fun, but I have no pictures of that because we were on it :-) After the ride you travel back up with a chair lift and with the luge vehicles hooked underneath.

The next day was MTB day and I went along for a walk in the forest. Karen did really well and came third in her group, but Mark's bike conked out and he had to walk part of the way. This was their start and Mark's finish:

I had intended to work on my book while in Auckland, but was too lazy and just read, with my wonderful e-reader. There are very few e-readers in New Zealand, but funnily on my return flight from Auckland to Christchurch there were three people, all women, who owned one: myself, a stewardess and a young American woman. We could have compared notes, because mine is a BE-book, the stewardess had a Sony reader and the American the latest Kindle. My e-reader comes from Holland and I chose it after comparing the various readers available. If you want to do the same, here is a good page of comparisons to start with. I am absolutely delighted with my e-reader. Light to hold and it has stacks of free ebooks on it from various websites. I have not had to buy a book yet. But that's only true if you like reading classics which are out of copyright. The only disadvantage when you travel several short flights is that every time you take off and land you have to turn the thing off because it is considered an electronic device. Then you need to find something else to read.

Spring??

We are having wonderful warm sunny weather, tempting one to think it's spring, although the start of that season is still more than a month away. The bulbs are all poking their green little shoots above the ground and one daffodil is actually flowering! I have seen a few lambs already but, as happens every year, we can bet on it that once more lambs are born there will be a cold snap or even snow.

We are also enjoying the most amazingly beautiful blood red sunrises. And the sun is rising earlier every day. Amazing how much difference that can make to one's mood. I find myself waking at 6.30 instead of 7.30, which is also nice. To make the most of the nice weather Paki pup and I go for many afternoon walks.

To get back to my passion for Antarctica, I recently saw another movie about that place, very different from any documentary I've seen so far. This film, Encounters at the End of the World, is made by Werner Herzog, well-known German film maker who wrote, directed and narrates the film. He talks about explorers and travellers and what brought them to this far out place. He interviews scientists and other workers in the research stations, such a philosopy professors who drive forklifts, just because they wanted to experience Antarctica. Herzog is very critical of the environmental devastation caused by the many research stations and compares McMurdo Station with a mining town. But he is clearly also awestruck and enchanted with the place. Here is a section of the film in which two scientists talk about the strange sounds seals make under the ice on which humans walk and work. And here is the trailer of the movie, which is worth watching (not even two minutes long, but gives a good impression of the whole movie). The sound track, even Herzog's narration in heavily accented English, is also really wonderful. Recommended!!

More Antarctica

I was listening to one of my podcasts from Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National The Bookshow (abc.net.au/rn/bookshow) and heard a really interesting interview with Jason Anthony who has spent 8 seasons at McMurdo station and while there at increasingly remote places to work on airstrips, for example.

Here is a link to his website with beautiful pictures and interesting stories.

And here is an article by Jason Anthony about Antarctica, global warming, and what it will mean for Antarctica, with many interesting thoughts about Antarctica. You cannot read the whole article without subscribing to the Virginia Quarterly review, but what's there is interesting enough.

winter

How time flies! I'd wanted to put up a post around mid-winter, which we celebrate in Dunedin with a wonderful pagan procession. Actually, when this winter carnaval first started it was strenuously opposed by the religious community because it was considered too pagan. Dunedin can be dourly Presbyterian. As for all major Dunedin town festivities the activities take place on or around the Octagon, presided over by the Robert Burns statue and surrounded by the Cathedral and Town Hall. This is a picture of all three:


The winter carnival highlight is a lantern procession, followed by fireworks. In past years we have walked in the procession, with lanterns made by the grandchildren, but this year we watched. I did take photos last year, but can't find them, so I will use photos from the carnival website.
You can see more here. The 2009 photos are not up yet. The procession is always in white, at least most of it (the winter spirits) and is accompanied by drummers and dancers.

Meanwhile we have had our once a year big dump of snow, when the whole of Dunedin comes to a standstill, because a) we put grit on the roads once snow and ice cover it (rather than salt before the snow and ice settle, as they do in Europe) and b) because Dunedin is a hill town and most people need to come down some sort of steep slope to get to town. It's wonderful: the schools are closed, most buses do not run, and many people cannot get to work. If they do try, they slither down the slopes and crash into other cars parked on the side of the road. The children come out and play in the streets, make snowmen and throw snowballs. The men who cannot get to work watch over the children and stand talking to each other. Everyone is cheerful and talks to their neighbours. Here are some pictures taken from my house. You can see that the snow goes right down to town level.



Further to my Antarctica stories, I saw a wonderful National Geographic documentary the other day called Expedition Antarctica, about the census of Antarctic marine life (CAML) (the official website). Not only did the images of the journey remind me of my own 'cruise' to Antarctica, but the images of the creates found in the southern seas are really amazing. Here are a couple:


I recommend you do a search on Google Images for 'antarctic marine life' to see more of images from the documentary.

The last leg

Before we left McMurdo Sound about a dozen of the passengers jumped into the ice cold water for a Polar Plunge. Not me. Most of them were young(ish) except one very admirable woman in her fifties. She did first have to ask the ship's doctor if it was OK for her to take the plunge.

On our way out of the Ross Sea we found ourselves completely surrounded by sea ice, which was an eerie view in the misty morning. Then it started to snow. The temperature rose to a balmy minus 9 degrees. The ice in the sea went from 'pancake ice' to bergy bits, to quite large pancakes and large ice floes, with occasionally a small group of penguins or seals on a piece of ice.


On Sunday 1 March we finally left the Ross Sea after our visit to the Borchgrevink hut at Cape Adare (see previous post). We now faced six whole days at sea before we reached Campbell Island. Although we went towards the Balleny Islands, there was too much mist and sea ice to get in for a landing or even a view of the Islands. The tour leader asked the captain whether he thought we could go in, and the captain said "NYET!"

So, on we went, through rough seas, and calm, with amazing rosy sunrises and sunsets, pods of whales, which was very very cool, and lots of birds: petrels, skua, fulmars, shearwaters, and albatross. The sea was never the same: if it was calm, birds would perch of the gently bobbing waves; if it was rough, the seas would splash over the bridge and withdraw with spectacular foaming;
or suddenly we would be surrounded again by heavy ice, or icebergs. When not watching waves or birds, we were entertained with really good documentaries or lectures about polar exploration or antarctic wildlife. I also delved into the library on board and read Admiral Byrd's autobiography about his wintering adventure, called Alone. An amazing book and a very frank telling of the loneliness and eventual near madness that Byrd battled during the dark winter months of 1934 on the ice by himself. He was living in a small and comfortable hut, but nevertheless had to fight against immense cold nights/days of sometimes minus 70 degrees. I love the cover of the book (the book I read had none). Byrd looks a bit like a caveman with a cudgel in his hand.

Finally, in the early evening of Friday 6 March we arrived at Campbell Island.
In the afternoon we had a lecture on recognising albatross, but this only confused me. After 4 or 5 I gave up and felt my head spin. However, I had no problems seeing that the dozen or so albatrosses that flew around the ship were royals, because they are so huge and we have a royal albatross colony near Dunedin, which I have visited often. Campbell Island has a huge colony of royal albatross and in the high season there may be thousands there. Unfortunately we were there in the off season and there were only a hundred or so birds. But we were able to get really up close and personal.


At the Dunedin colony you can only watch from behind the windows of the observation building, but here we found several nesting quite close to the boardwalk. I spent at least twenty minutes just sitting in the tussock, watching a pair of albatross change guards of their nest. One had been looking after the nest with a chick, the other came back from her foraging trip. She wobbled to the nest — albatross are graceful in the air, but very clumsy when they try to walk — and then the two birds engaged in the typical albatross greeting and loving ceremony, of preening each other, clicking their beaks together etc. Finally the one who had been sitting on the nest (for some reason I decided that was the father) stepped away and let the other take over. He moved away, was about to depart, but then came back for another quick kiss, walked in the other direction and finally flew away, while the mother happily settled down to sit on the nest and guard the nest. Strangely enough, I did not see her feeding the chick, which is what one would expect after a trip away.

The New Zealand Department of Conservation has held a huge and very successful pest eradication program (look at this Campbell Island website for information). The timber from the crates of poison have been used to complete the boardwalk, so that tourists can now walk right to the top and have enjoy the splendid views.




After our visit to Campbell Island it was another two days motoring to get us to Bluff and from there by bus to Invercargill, where most of us immediately rushed to do two things: first have a decent cup of espresso to compensate for the month of instant coffee and secondly to go shopping after a month's deprivation. Invercargill is a remarkably great place for shopping. Although it is, in the eyes of many New Zealanders, a bit of a backwater and a small town, it has a hinterland of rich farmers. By the way, the official Invercargill website is not to be missed. Look here and enjoy the welcoming words from the mayor Tim Shadbolt, one of New Zealand's most colourful personalities. In the New Zealand movie The World's Fastest Indian (about a motorbike speed record, not about American indigenous people) Shadbolt played himself as mayor of Invercargill.

After our shopping spree, we had a pleasant drive back to Dunedin. For once I was the person living closest to the point of departure, while everyone else had to travel across the world to get to Invercargill and back home. It has been really nice, writing this story about the trip. It helped to keep it all alive. I don't think I would ever want to spend so many days in a fairly small boat travelling that far to have another look at Antarctica. But I wouldn't mind seeing the sub-antarctic islands again. They were truly amazing and it would be exciting to see them earlier in the season when the megaherbs are in bloom and the wildlife is even more abundant.

Although my Antarctica story is finished, I hope you keep reading my blog. More soon.

The Historic Huts

Last night (Saturday 6 June) I went to a charity film screening of 90 Degrees South, a 1933 remaking and reconfiguration of Herbert Ponting's film footage of Scott's Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica. The proceeds of the evening, held at Otago Museum, went to the Antarctic Heritage Trust's international conservation project to restore and maintain the historic expedition huts of the Ross Sea area. Nigel Watson, the executive director of the Trust introduced the evening and showed us slides of the restoration process so far, of the before and after of the two Scott expedition huts, the Discovery hut at Hut Point, and the Terra Nova hut at Cape Evans, as well as the Shackleton hut at Cape Royds of the Nimrod expedition. Having just seen most of the huts in their mostly restored condition it was really interesting to see what it was like before. The Trust has a magnificent website outlining their work, the restoration and conservation project with photos of all the huts, both historical and current. The work consisted not only of repairing the structure of the huts, but also ensuring the future conservation by removing tons of snow, installing snow break equipment, and drying out the huts. This included lifting the linoleum (very carefully rolling it onto a giant roll) and lifting every floorboard. After draining and drying the underfloor area every board (carefully labelled) was put back where it belonged. They also lifted every object, cleaned and restored it before putting it back exactly where it had been found. Having just been there, I can vouch for the success of the operation. It was very dry and clean and an amazing living museum.

Because there are so many books and websites with photos of the historic huts (see here for example, Freezeframe, the site of the Scott Polar Research Institute) I don't really want to bore my blog readers with mine. On the other hand, I do want to tell you "I was there!". So here are some photos of the three huts we saw. We visited them in reverse historical order: first Scott's Cape Evans hut (1920-1913), then Shackleton's Cape Royd's hut (1907-1909) and finally the hut of the British Southern Cross Expedition 1898-1900), led by Carsten Borchgrevink from Norway. We did not get to see the hut of Scott's first expedition on the Discovery (1901-1904), which stands at Hut Point and could not be reached because the sea was frozen. Here are the pictures in historical order. First Borchgrevink's wonderful lockwood Norwegian hut at Cape Adare put up in 1899, which still stands strong (although it was restored, mainly by putting on a new roof). This is the smallest hut. Borchgrevink's group was the very first to winter over in Antarctica.It must have been pretty awful! Not only the cold and the wind, but also the stench and noise of the hundreds of thousands of adelie penguins. When we were there there were only a few hundred, but it was clear to see where the penguins would normally be: on the miles and miles of brown guana. What a smell!

The expedition consisted almost totally of Norwegians, but was funded by an Englishman and is therefore known as a British expedition.
Note remnants of the English flag. Also the name of the expedition and of the sponsor as well as the expedition leader on the case behind the table.

To get to Shackleton's hut we had to walk about 40 minutes across the scoria along the coast of Ross Island. This was informative, because Shackleton also had trouble finding a good landing place and after the initial off-loading of supplies the Nimrod moved away and could only get to a bay further along. I could imagine the ponies having to struggle on those stones, although it may have been covered in snow then. This is taken from the top of the final descent into the little valley where the hut stands, among adelie colonies. Click to enlarge the picture for a better view. The other picture shows the famous 'Mrs Sam's Stove', which burned anthracite coal and could operate 24 hours a day. It radiated enough heat to keep the temperature of the hut to a steady 16 to 21 degrees C. Of course they had to offload and transport tons of coal for the purpose.


Finally, Scott's Cape Evans hut. As you can see, the hut was now snow free, after the removal of tons and tons of snow by the Antarctic Heritage Trust's work.If you click on the picture to enlarge, you can just make out the snow barriers. Large triangles on poles on the left, one just behind the person in orange (that's actually my cabin mate). Don't ask me how this snow barrier system works. They are 'vortex generators' and there are five of them. If you are particularly interested I'm sure the Heritage Trust site will tell you more, or you can look on Wikipedia.

Of course I took some photos of the famous table in Scott's hut. The first is taken from the entrance, the same direction as Ponting's famous birthday photo, which is the fourth in the series this links takes you to. At the very back of my first picture you can see the doorway into Herbert Ponting's darkroom. The second picture is taken from that position, looking back at the entrance. On the left at the back is the kitchen. That part was (famously) shielded off from the backroom, to separate men from officers.

Notice in particular the brand names on boxes, for example Fry's Cocoa. This cocoa was provided by Cadbury's Chocolates in Dunedin who merged with Fry. Scott was a pioneer in the development of sponsorship deals with food manufacturers of the day. The shelves in the hut are still filled with packaged food, all provided free to the expedition in exchange for advertising rights and publicity photographs, showing the growing power of food brands in the Edwardian era (according to a BBC 4 program on the Edwardian larder). In fact, this brand promotion is still going on. Cadbury had provided packets of Jaffa's for last night's film showing. (Jaffa's are orange coated chocolte balls and a traditional film viewing snack in New Zealand.) In the interval they also served dairy products from Anchor, who provided butter for Scott. And there was Typhoo tea, extra strength. This special blend was apparently originally a waste product, but became a best-seller because it was drunk by Scott's men at Cape Evans, a freebie from Typhoo. Apparently Tesco and Typhoo have issued this blend anew, in commemorative boxes with Scott's name on it. Part of the proceeds of the sale of this tea will go to the Antarctic Heritage Trust.

When Herbert Ponting came home from the Scott expedition he was horrified to discover that Scott had sold all the rights to his photos to help pay for the expedition. Later Ponting bought back the rights to the film footage and created the film we saw last night. The original silent footage had been augmented with an introduction by Captain Evans and Ponting himself. The film images were accompanied by music and Ponting's very amusing and informative commentary. To make a full story, a number of stills from his photo collection were edited in. I found the film extremely moving and it beautifully completed for me the experience of my own expedition to Antarctica. First I had read some of the books, such as Apsley Cherry-Gerrard's amazing book The Worst Journey in the World and a book about the Nimrod expedition. Then actually being there put it all into perspective. For example how, after depot laying expeditions, they sometimes found it difficult to find the way back to the hut in a blizzard and might get onto Tent Island or Inaccessible Island instead. I took a picture of these islands from the beach at the Terra Nova hut. This was now a beach with water between it and the islands, but during the depot laying journeys this was all frozen and indistinguishable from land.


Seeing Ponting's film last night gave me excited pangs of recognition. So very little has changed in the hundred years since the expedition and I kept thinking: yes, that's how it looks, yes, I've seen that, stood there. There are very few historic sites in the world where so little has changed. Normally a monument ends up swamped in other buildings, roads, traffic, people and rarely do you get the chance to stand there, soak in the moment in silence and imagine the past. Really wonderful.

McMurdo Sound and Erebus Bay

On Monday 23 February we were called at 6am. We had arrived at McMurdo Sound (the enlarged map here) and it was a gloriously sunny morning. We motored south along Cape Royds, past Inaccessible Island and Tent Island towards Cape Evans, through what is called 'pancake ice', which reminded me of Monet's lily pond for some reason. The top of Mount Erebus was shrouded in clouds, although later we saw it puffing away in all its volcanic glory.
We drove on through the channel cut into the fast ice (fast as in 'attached' not 'speedy') by an icebreaker earlier in the summer. We saw the occasional emperor penguin, skua, seal and brief glimpses of a pod of orca, feeding at the edge of the ice. We moved steadily ahead aiming at a solid edge of ice. And yes, we just drove into it...and stopped. The channel to Hut Point which is cut every year by a Norwegian icebreaker was frozen over. We could see a rubbly ice road ahead, but the rest of the way was blocked. Nothing unusual, apparently, because this route has been frozen every year for the past ten. One of our fellow passengers had taken this same tour ten years ago and 1999 was the last time they had been able to boat along to Hut Point. They backed the boat and then tied it sideways to the ice with big metal stakes, hammered into the ice by the crew.


Then they lowered the gangplank and we could walk on the ice. Breathtaking views, strange blue sky. This landscape is so very very wide. And I would say silent, because it looks silent, but the wind roars past you and you're so wrapped in warm woollies that you can't hear much except your own breathing. The temperature was -17° plus windchill, but the sun was shining!
It is impossible to capture this wide landscape on camera, with mountains in the far distance, stunning clouds and sky colour, which change over the course of the day. The only thing is to walk there, on your own, awestruck.



There were little groups of emperor penguins standing on the ice edge and plunging in, climbing out again and jumping in again, generally having a good time. Watching from the bridge, we felt that this idyllic scene could not last and was bound to attract the attention of predators. And sure enough [scary horror movie music], there came a pod of orca. There seemed to be a lot of them, maybe twenty or so (the biologist had never seen such a large pod of orca in McMurdo Sound). I felt like shouting a warning to the penguins, who seemed oblivious at first. But then a certain panic started to set in. The penguin diving and plunging stopped, but to my surprise there was no mass exodus from the water. The ice is probably a foot or so high, and we had already seen that it was not that easy for the penguins to get out of the water. Sometimes they would slide back and try again. This was not a risk they were willing to take now. They had a better plan. By diving under and around the little ice pieces our boat had loosened, the group of penguins managed to position itself behind the orca pod. Penguins are faster and can maneuver more easily than orca and therefore can stay behind the more sluggish whale. However, the orca are canny hunters and fairly quickly split into two groups and were able to herd and corner a few penguins against the edge of the ice at the end of the channel. I am sure I saw one penguin flying through the air as it was thrown up. I could not see everything, because (just as when I watch a scary movie) I closed my eyes at the critical moment. Strangely enough, the orca gave up after a short while and swam back out to sea, closely followed by the group of penguins, who did not dare go their own way until they were quite sure the orca were gone. We spotted one or two young orca (little fins beside the big one) and it is possible that this whole episode was more a hunting lesson for the young than an intended feeding frenzy. I have read somewhere that orca do teach their young in such a manner.