Driving from Australia to Norway without stopping for gas

by Kraig Becker on

Four Aussie men are preparing to make an epic road trip that will see them drive from their home in Australia all the way to Norway. That, in and of itself, should make for quite an adventure, but they’ll also make the journey without stopping at a single gas station along the way. Instead, they’ll use biodiesel to power their vehicle and they’ll gas up by collecting cooking oil and animal fat from restaurants and pubs, which they’ll convert into fuel instead.

The journey has been labeled The Green Way Up and it will get underway in March. The drive will start in Hobart, Australia, the southernmost point on that continent and will end more than 28,000 miles later in the northernmost part of Norway. Along the way, the team will pass through 30 different countries, spotlighting the use of alternative fuels on a local level along the way.

In fact, the focus of the entire trip is to bring the use of alternative fuels to the attention of the general public, placing an emphasis on their importance to the environment and the future of energy for the planet. The team is so committed to using biodiesel for instance, that they’ve built their own special processor to create the fuel they’ll use along the way, and their putting the final touches on a biodiesel-powered boat that will carry them from Darwin, Australia to Singapore, with stops on the islands in East Timor, Indonesia and Malaysia along as well.

To find out more about this expedition, visit the official website and check out the video below. Anyone else feel inspired to go on a big road trip now?

[Photo credit: The Green Way Up]


Green Way Up from Jo Melling on Vimeo.

American explorer to cross Africa on foot

by Kraig Becker on

Anthropologist, explorer, and member of the Royal Geographical Society Julian Monroe Fisher is preparing for an epic expedition that will see him cross Africa completely on foot. The journey, which is set to begin this spring, will cover more than 4000 miles, crossing the continent east to west, in an effort to raise awareness of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), an organization dedicated to removing land mines and other small arms from countries that were formerly plagued with conflict.

Julian’s adventure will get underway on April 26th of this year, when he sets out from the town of Pemba, located on the coast of Mozambique. From there, he’ll begin traveling west, crossing through miles of difficult and varying African terrain, before eventually ending in Lobito, Angola, which falls along that country’s Atlantic coast. Along the way, he’ll pass through the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Malawi as well.

No stranger to long distance travel, Monroe spent much of his time on the road between 1996 and 2003, crossing through more than 90 countries on five different continents. He has written two books about his travels and was an early adopter when it came to writing about his adventures on the web as well. Last year, he even opened an anthropological research station in the Bunkeye Cultural Village, located in the DRC, which this expedition will help raise funds for too.

This 4000 mile journey is sure to be an amazing adventure to follow, and Julian will be posting updates to his Facebook page along the way. But what he really hopes to do is draw attention to the amazing work that MAG is doing in countries across the planet in helping them to remove old land mines, un-exploded missiles, mortars, grenades, and other small arms that have been left behind following a major conflict. The organization operates throughout Africa and South East Asia, where it saves lives and limbs simply by doing away with old weapons that still litter the landscape.

For me personally, Africa remains my favorite destination, and traveling on foot is truly a unique way to see the continent and interact with its people. I’m sure that this will be quite the adventure when Julian and his team get underway in a few months time.

United Kingdom government does U-turn on forest sell-off

by Sean McLachlan on

Back on January 27 we reported that the government of the United Kingdom was planning on selling all of England’s publicly owned forests. Well, the English love their heritage (at least those English outside the government) and there was a huge public outcry. Half a million people signed a petition in opposition to the plan. Now the Guardian reports the government has backed down.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman stood up before Parliament and apologized for her “wrong” decision. The forests will not be sold and new laws allowing them to be will be struck from the books. The previous law allowed for 15 percent of forests to be sold, and Ms. Spelman wasn’t clear what would happen to the forests recently put on the auction block. Apparently this isn’t a complete victory for sanity.

The sale would have affected all forests owned by the Forestry Commission in England but not the rest of the UK. The Commission owns 18 percent of all forests in England. Now the Environment Secretary will have to find another way to slash her department spending by a third, the goal she set for herself.

[Photo courtesy user tomhab via Wikimedia Commons]

Another tourist season ends in Antarctica

by Jon Bowermaster on

Hopefully this will be my last update on the 2010-2011 Antarctic tourist season, which is winding down.

Upwards of 35,000 visitors have visited the Peninsula aboard more than 35 different ships. The majority left from Ushuaia, Argentina, and returned there without incident … with a couple notable exceptions … not bad statistics considering they were venturing into one of the more wild corners on the planet.

But each season those couple exceptions remind us just how treacherous the region can be, and just how remote. While tour operators don’t like to see press coverage of Antarctic accidents – tends to scare away potential business – I’m convinced that each accident is both wake-up call and educator for both the public and the industry.

A week ago a competently staffed, veteran icebreaker, “The Polar Star,” hit a rock off Detaille Island, several hundred miles down the Peninsula. Initial reports from the ship were that the incident was minor and a written report from the scene by expedition leader Kris Madden said that although there was a hole in the ship’s hull it was in “no immediate danger.”

But she went on: “It was pretty scary there for a few hours and looked like we would have to abandon ship. In all likelihood we will be transferred to a rescue ship in the area tonight.”Ultimately there was no midnight rescue and the “Polar Star” was able to motor to the South Shetland’s King George Island where – after completion of an underwater inspection — it was decided to offload its 80 passengers onto a trio of other tourist ships in the area. The ship, with crew and staff aboard, then motored across the Drake Passage back to Ushuaia. The rest of its Antarctic season has been canceled, suggesting the repairs will take some time.

Reporting-from-the-scene of these Antarctic incidents is always a bit sketchy. It’s far away, information passes through multi-channels, and the ship companies are not keen for the attention. What the “Polar Star” initially labeled a “breach” in the hull – a tear, a gash, a hole — caused by hitting an “uncharted” rock ultimately turned into something concerning enough that they felt safer offloading its passengers.

(It’s understandably hard to divine the extent of damage while at sea. I was on the scene when the “Explorer” sank off the tip of the Peninsula in November 2007 and the report from its crew was that ice had punched a “fist-sized” hole in the hull. A year later an exhaustive report stated it was more like a 10-foot long gash.)

One very good thing about the continued popularity of Antarctic tourism is that so far whenever one of these incidents has happened there have been other tourist ships within easy reach willing and happy to help.

When the “Clelia II” got in trouble in the Drake Passage in early December, for example – washed over by 35-40 foot waves — the “National Geographic Explorer” was able to change course, locate the disabled ship which had lost its communication system, “launch” it a satellite phone and standby while it recovered.

The aftermath of the “Clelia II”s experience – a railing broken off by the big seas was tossed through the bridge window and the subsequent flooding disabled its communications and forced it to slow its engines – hopefully gave pause to the entire industry.

While early reports from the South American press said the ship had lost an engine, the captain insisted he’d never lost control of the ship. Reports from the docks in Ushuaia after-the-fact suggest there was more damage to the boat than admitted at the time.

The “Clelia II” was not built for Antarctica. It is owned by one company (Helios Shipping, Paraeus, Greece) and its passengers booked by various travel companies (Travel Dynamics International, Overseas Adventure Travel, Wilderness Travel and others). As recently as a month before it went to Antarctica this past season it was doing “fall foliage” trips through the locks of the northern Great Lakes.

Prior to the December it had previous close calls. In September 2010 it lost power in one engine on its way to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and was grounded in calm waters; a year before, on December 26, 2009, it engine power and ran aground off Petermann Island on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The most disconcerting note about the “Clelia II” incident was sent me by “National Geographic Explorer” passenger Amy Gitnick who relayed what passengers were told by her expedition leader: “Apparently the ‘Clelia II’ has Iridium phones on a pre-paid plan and the plan ran out of minutes and so they needed another phone line to reactivate their account.”

Let’s be straight about this: The reason the “Explorer” risked its own 150 passengers and 100 crew in heavy seas mid-Drake Passage was because an Antarctic tourist ship loaded with its own passengers and crew had run out of minutes on its sat phone?

(I have three sat phones, which we use on expedition, and have been charging them and successfully subscribing to them for nearly 15 years.)

The experience of the “Clelia II” – which thankfully resulted only in some bruises for passengers, one injured crewman and some bad press – was, I believe, a wake-up call for Antarctic tourist operators.

For example, a new, 264-passenger luxury ship “Le Boreal,” which was to serve as Abercrombie & Kent’s Antarctic ship this season, canceled at least one planned trip to the Peninsula and spent weeks at the dock in Ushuaia fixing “wear and tear” (a little concerning given that the ship was only put in the water in June). Company spokesman said it had decided to cancel its trip to avoid the potential for problems arising in Antarctica.

If the company hadn’t seen those pictures of a disabled “Clelia II” getting hammered in the Drake I wonder if it might have been so reluctant, given that they were forced to refund a few hundred passengers.

Lindblad Expeditions, the most-veteran Antarctic tourist company, has been taking passengers to the Peninsula for more than 40 years. It provides cautionary words relevant to the “Clelia II’s” experience in its own sales tools.

In a 34-page downloadable brochure titled “6 Questions to Ask Before Choosing your Antarctic Travel Company” it recommends choosing an experienced captain and crew, a ship qualified ship for the conditions and a company that doesn’t just charter a ship but owns it.

(Regarding safety, as well as forward-scanning sonar, double-weather forecasting, an ice light and ice radar, the “National Geographic Explorer” carries, according to the literature, five satellite phones …which the masters of the “Clelia II” might note.)

The brochure is quietly critical of some of the company’s competitors: “More and more cruise lines have added Antarctica to their itineraries. And many tour operators, accustomed to voyaging in ‘tamer’ waters are leasing adventure ships to offer Antarctic voyages, too. Given the increasing numbers of reported ship mishaps in Antarctic waters, it is not hard to conclude too many guests and operators alike may be undertaking this too lightly.”

“We believe that having a ship you control, and a completely coordinated staff and crew is vital for safety reasons … A Cruise Director employed by a leasing travel company coordinating with a Captain and crew who work for a different owner simply cannot produce the teamwork that is the hallmark of our expeditions.”

Each season brings changes to the way tourist operations work along the Peninsula. There are new efforts underway to expand tourism onto the continent, by ship companies offering camping, climbing and diving options as part of their itineraries. To-date those have been considered off-limits for environmental and safety reasons. But demand is growing for the next new thing. Hopefully if those plans proceed there won’t be any operators who view the undertaking “too lightly.”

As of August 2011 new rules adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) will prohibit boats carrying “heavy fuel” from visiting the Peninsula, which means the giant cruise boat traffic – the Princess Cruises, Regents Seven Seas and Crystal Cruises and others – will no longer be able to venture there.

The IMO is also putting pressure on for a mandatory polar code by 2012 that would regulate all ships operating in Arctic and Antarctic waters. The measure is aimed at preventing both tourist ship accidents and sinkings like that of the South Korean fishing trawler that went down in the Ross Sea last December. That crew was not as lucky as those aboard the “Polar Star” or the “Clelia II”; 23 fishermen drowned in the icy Southern Ocean.

Read more from Jon Bowermaster’s Adventures here.

Japanese call off whale hunting season — end of Whale Wars?

by Jon Bowermaster on

Despite the seemingly good news from the Southern Ocean – that Japanese whalers have stopped hunting – activists and governments alike are waiting on formal word that they have truly stopped for the season.

There is concern the “suspension” could be some kind of stalling tactic or publicity stunt.

From Australia, Environment Minister Tony Burke, admits to hearing conflicting reports. “At this point, we do not have any statement from the Japanese government to us confirming that this season of whaling is at an end.”

The Japanese Fisheries Agency is only saying that whaling operations have been “suspended” since February 10 “to ensure the safety of the crew.”

For the moment the Sea Shepherd‘s “Bob Barker” is still trailing the Japanese processing ship, the “Nisshin Maru,” on a meandering route that has led both ships away from whaling grounds.

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that this season the Japanese have taken very few whales, thanks largely to the constant harassment of the Shepherd’s. Traditionally the Fisheries Agency holds off until season’s end to announce exactly how many whales were taken in the name of science; this year’s goal was between 800 and 900. The best guess right now is that they’ve taken fewer than 100.Sea Shepherd spokesman Peter Hammarstedt, aboard the “Bob Barker,” explained the success the group has had this season: “Every day we prevent them from whaling we’re costing them millions of dollars in lost profit. And we speak the only language that these poachers understand, the language of profit and loss.”

Hammarstedt also reported that the Japanese ship had made a U-turn just before entering the Drake Passage, slowed and headed back to the west.

“The turnabout could mean one of two things,” said Hammarstedt. “First, they may be on a great circle route back to Japan, or second, they may be returning to the whaling grounds in the Ross Sea where the three Japanese harpoon vessels may be waiting to continue their illegal slaughter.”

From the Shepherd’s mother ship, the “Steve Irwin,” Captain Paul Watson was his typical bold self in reaction to the suspension of hunting: “The Japanese Fisheries Agency had no choice but to suspend whaling operations. Sea Shepherd had already enforced a suspension of operations by blocking all whaling operations since February 9th and blocking 75% of all whaling operations for the month of January. We will not allow the Japanese whalers to kill another whale down here in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.”

To celebrate its successes this season, Sea Shepherd’s website today announced a “10 percent off” sale on all its merchandise (beanies, hoodies, baby bibs, tank tops, tote bags and more) – a so-called “No Compromise Sale” – in gratitude to its loyal and growing list of supporters around the world.

[Flickr image via gsz]