Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Greetings from Antarctica!

by Jon Bowermaster on

Hello … from … Antarctica! More specifically, it’s Peninsula, which juts like a 600-mile-long finger from the seventh continent, stretching towards the southern tip of the Americas. Surrounded on either side by frozen sea ice and open ocean, this is the most dynamic, the most changing region of Antarctica and a place I have been coming to for nearly twenty years. My first experience? With dog sleds, in 1989, the last of the great sledding expeditions to explore the continent. More recently, last year I brought a small team and sea kayaks and we traveled from the tip of the Peninsula to 120 miles south of the Antarctic Circle.

What keeps me coming back are a variety of things, but particularly that the place is changing so fast. While Antarctica seems remote, an icy, impenetrable fortress – and admittedly, much of the continent, especially its high, dry, cold interior lives up to that reputation – the Peninsula is where many of the impacts of global climate change are most evidenced. Average temperatures here have climbed more than anywhere else on the planet during the past fifty years.

Ironically, the Peninsula is simultaneously witnessing another boom: Tourism! It’s hard to fathom until you’re down here and see, on occasion, several big tourists boats in one day, but Antarctica has become one of the hottest tourist destinations on the planet. Each year sets new records for visitors; last season, more than 46,000. The upside is that such visits create new ambassadors for one of the few places on the planet successfully governed by international treaty.
The downside is something we witnessed just last month, when a tourist boat, the “M/V Ushuaia,” ran aground about fifty miles from where I write. While all the passengers and crew were safely transported by Chilean Naval ship to nearby King George Island, then flown back to South America, the ship was still on the rocks for days. With a hole in it, which has leaked fuel oil into what are otherwise pristine waters. The concern was that even if the ship is pulled off the rocks, given the damage, it may not have been able to navigate or even be towed back to Argentina. Luckily, the ship made it back safely.

I also come for the sheer beauty of the place. Nowhere on the planet can match Antarctica for grandeur. It’s like Alaska piled on top of another Alaska piled on top of another Alaska and then dropped at the edge of the Himalaya. This morning I hiked 1,500 feet up a hill on Cuverville Island. Out of the wind, it was warm, just about the freezing mark. Gusting winds dropped the temps to 17, 18 degrees. The higher I got, the more the expanse grew. In the bay below a dozen icebergs bigger than small apartment buildings – blue and white, shining under a bright blue sky – were stuck in the shallows. Across a narrow channel, tongues of ancient glaciers fall to the sea. Along the way I passed a half-dozen colonies of Gentoo penguins nesting; they will have chicks to take care of within a matter of days. It was a brilliantly clear day and as far as I could see – a dozen miles — everything was deep blue and bright white, marred by the occasional exposed rocky cliff.

I like to think of Antarctica as the beating heart of Planet Earth and this morning, despite any and all concerns, it seemed to be very, very healthy.

I’m here for two months and will be reporting in every week or so, so please stay tuned.

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!

Travel Read: 100 Places Every Woman Should Go

by Brenda Yun on

I never knew there could be a book so thoughtful and inspiring for women as this one. Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s second travel book, which lists far more than just 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, is truly an encyclopedia for women travelers. It’s the kind of book that could never have existed fifty years ago, but is so refreshing that free-spirited, female travelers should feel grateful that it exists now, and fully prepared for that next trip into the wide, wonderful world.

Griest’s great book is packed with helpful historical information, inspiring stories, and travel tips. It’s broken up into nine sections — my favorite being the first: “Powerful Women and Their Places in History.” There’s so much worth digesting in each locale described. For instance, I had no idea that the word “lesbian” came from the birthplace of Sappho (Lesbos, Greece). Griest fills each description with great travel tips that often include specific street addresses for particularly noteworthy sights.What I like most about the 100 places she chooses is that she shies away from identifying places that every woman obviously dreams of traveling to, like Venice, Rome, and Paris. Instead, she paves a new path for women, encouraging us to visit Japan’s 88 sacred temples or stroll through the public squares of Samarkand, one of the world’s oldest cities in Uzbekistan.

Griest does not limit her list to concrete or singular places. Sometimes, she finds a way to take us to virtual spots like the Museum of Menstruation or creates lists like “Best Bungee Jumping Locales,” “Sexiest Lingerie Shops,” or “Places to Pet Fuzzy Animals.” These 100 “places” are really all-encompassing, and Griest manages to take us on an imaginative journey around the world, packing all her feminine know-how into each description.

I did find, occasionally, that there were some places missing from some of the identified places in her list. For instance, I was baffled as to why two Russian writers were on Griest’s list of “Famous Women Writers and Their Creative Nooks,” but Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen were absent. I was additionally confused that cooking classes in India and Thailand were not on the list of “Culinary Class Destinations.”

Griest’s opinions of places are somewhat biased, too. While she does a fairly good job covering the globe, a single locale in French Polynesia or the South Pacific is missing, and some places like Oaxaca, Angkor Wat, and New York are mentioned several times. Her college town of Austin landed on the list, but places like Budapest and Cairo are never acknowledged.

With every list, however, there is bound to be some bias and some personal flair and choice involved, and Griest’s original and creative sensibilities are still well-worth reading about. The great thing about this book is that you can flip to a place description, be perfectly entertained and inspired, and then tuck the book away until the next time you feel compelled to read about the places you can go. Or, you can read it in one sitting like I did and be completely blown away by the amazing places in this one world that it’s hard to imagine why we live in one city for so long and not just pack our bags and get out there and see some if not all of it.

Click here to read my review of Griest’s first travel book, “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.” My review of Griest’s third travel book, “Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines” is forthcoming, along with my interview with the author in early January. Feel free to jot me an email (Brenda DOT Yun AT weblogsinc DOT com) if you have a question for Stephanie.

Click the images to learn about the most unusual museums in the world — featuring everything from funeral customs, to penises, to velvet paintings, to stripping.


How do you poop on Mt. Everest?

by Jerry Guo on

The days of poop-behind-a-rock be gone – a Nepali climber has recently started promoting the use of a packable toilet for hikers up the world’s tallest mountain. Tired of the 965 kilos of waste he picked up during an expedition in May (including a corpse dating back to 1972! wtf!), Dawa Steven Sherpa is determined to make Mt. Everest a cleaner place.

His solution is the Luggable Loo – a portable bucket-cum-toilet that stores waste in a gas-impervious bag. This way, hikers will have a potty to sit on (plus!) but poop to haul out (not so much plus). The bags do their job to keep unwanted aromas from reaching expeditionists while they hike.

Still, if hauling your own waste out seems like too much trouble, what the hell are you doing climbing Mt. Everest anyway? Any good hiker knows that the first rule of messing with Mother Nature is to leave her exactly as you found her. That includes poop, too.

The loo retails from Cabela’s Outfitters for $15 – not too shabby – and 6 of the “Doodie Bags” (as they are so named) will cost you $12.99. If I were Mr. Sherpa, I’d be handing these things out at the base camp. Who wants to clean up someone else’s 20-year-old, iced-over poo anyway?

Echoes from across the world

by Annie Scott on

Know what’s weird? Woices.com.

Woices.com is a website where you can upload echoes you’ve recorded anywhere in the world. That includes the parking ramp.

Echoes have been recorded in cathedrals, canyons, and everywhere you can imagine. These 48 echoes were all recorded at Cerdanyola del Vallès in Spain alone!

What’s the point? We’re not sure. But the idea is pretty neat. It’s certainly a new kind of information you’re not used to getting without visiting a place!

Woices is still small now and needs your help. What a good excuse to call out the names of your loved ones or curse your ex-girlfriend over a cliff! Shout something somewhere and record it. Why not?

Zipline canopy tour from the comfort of home

by Jamie Rhein on

It wasn’t until I saw this video that I remembered the whirring sound that the pulleys of a zipline make as they zip along the cables, whizzing people from tree to tree.

Although the quality is a bit grainy, the essence of the Hocking Hills Canopy Tour are captured here in just a few minutes. I posted about my personal experience a couple of days ago, but the video is a way to bring you along for the ride.

The people who filmed this, and posted it on YouTube, held a camera at such an angle that it feels as if the viewer is on the trip as well. There’s also footage of one of the rope bridges you walk across during the tour. After the last zipline, there’s a rappel down from the last platform to the ground. That part is also included. Plus, there’s a mix of music and conversation. Nice touch.