Antarctica Itinerary - Location Tracker

I've written a few posts about the ice, penguins and some practical information about the trip, but you might ask, how do they all fit in? Here's my South Georgia / Antarctica itinerary:

February
8th - day trip to Volunteer Point, north eastern tip of the Falklands.

9th - 13th - Boarded the Golden Fleece. Sailing day and night from the Falklands to South Georgia. Spent Chinese New Year (10th) at sea - first time in my life I didn't celebrate it in the slightest as I was too busy trying not to be sea sick. 

14th - first landing of the trip at Elsehul, where some of the group saw a live penguin being taken and literally ripped apart from a group of petrels. It was also the only one time we saw an albatross colony. Our second landing in the afternoon was at Prion Island, where we were ironically chased by baby fur seals along the only man-made walkway we encountered on the whole trip. I also saw a penguin with a gaping wound on its side; I was pretty sure it wouldn't survive to the next day.

15th - landed at Salisbury Plain in the morning. It was breathtaking, metaphorically and literally - I could smell the pink poo when we were still at sea. The biggest King colony in South Georgia, there were an estimated over 200,000 of them. Later on we passed Prince Olav Harbour, which is a derelict whaling station, and landed at Posession Bay, where we saw a male fur seal trying his luck with a female. She wouldn't have any of it.

16th - we woke up to what was arguably the most spectacular sight on the whole trip: a towering iceberg over 100m tall in the morning mist. Apparently given its size it was likely to have been broken off from the Ross icesheet over 10 years ago. After that we started at Fortuna Bay and trekked part of Shackleton's trail to Stromness Bay, which is also a derelict whaling station. Sliding down ice slopes was pretty good fun!

17th - we spent the whole day at Gryvitken, resting and refilling the fresh water tank. Gryvitken is about 1km from South Georgia's capital, King Edward Point. We visited the museum, sent a few postcards from the post office, and did some trekking - where we saw Ernest Shackleton's grave, jumped over some pretty feisty elephant seals, and saw the remains of a crash helicopter from the Falklands War. Eric also taught me some night photography techniques here.

18th - this was our last day in South Georgia. We first landed at Ocean Harbour where we saw the Beyard derelict ship, followed by seeing another large King penguin colony and a lot of aggressive fur seals at Golden Harbour. It got cold too, and we were hit with snow showers in the afternoon.

19th - 23rd - five days of sailing through the Scotia Sea was gruelling; I spent the first two days lying down to avoid sea sickness, despite 3 different types of anti sea sickness remedies. Minimal eating (no appetite) and minimal drinking (to avoid getting up for the toilet) were not pleasant. Otherwise, the days were spent on scrabble, card games, films and processing photos.

24th - to take a break from sailing, we landed at Elephant Island, where we saw glaciers collapsing into the sea. It was also our first encounter of chinstrap penguins, who were very loud, and a leopard seal, which went on to successfully hunt a penguin (which I didn't see). This was also where I successfully caught fish using reindeer meat as bait.

25th - another day of sailing

26th - officially set foot on Antarctica. Seeing leopard seals, humpback and minke whales up close to the boat at Cierva Cove was pretty cool, and very different from the penguins and fur seals I had been used to. Second landing was Enterprise Island, where we trekked up a hill but ran into a brief snow shower which looked like a white-out. This turned out to a fun afternoon with snow ball fighting and ending in a beautiful sunset and moonrise.

27th - I missed what would eventually become the only opportunity of taking sunrise shots in Antarctica. Eric's "sleep when you're dead" motto still resonates. We sailed to Spigot Peak, which we climbed just so we could slide down the ice slope. Having a BBQ afterwards was pretty awesome, especially with a glacier in the background. In between the sailing we also crash landed on a iceberg with some dopey crabeater seals. Afternoon was spent at Curverville Island, where we saw a lot of Gentoo penguins, some with very recently hatched chicks.

28th - it was a cold miserable day. I got wet from the Paradise Harbour landing, and lost my beanie hat on the way up to the top of the hill. I really liked that hat. At Port Lockroy we sent the last batch of postcards from Antarctica before the post box closed for 6 months. The small museum and gift shop were also a nice change from penguins, seals and whales.

March
1st - landing was not a priority today, as we spotted a small pod of killer whales, or orcas, in the morning and spent an hour or two chasing them. We then saw an iceberg breaking apart and flipping in the afternoon, arguably the most spectacular sight on the whole trip. We did land on Ronge Island just to complete the day. 

2nd - last day in the Peninsula, we visited Hunt Island where we hiked to the top of a ridge with incredible views. More humpbacks got up close and started showing off, whilst two groups of Gentoos jumped for their lives as our boat approached their iceberg. Two more landings in the afternoon: one on an iceberg where we took jumping shots; the final one was full of blue eyed cormorants. 

3rd - away from Antarctica we landed on Deception Island, which had a very large colony of chinstrip penguins (allegedly 120,000 pairs). The famous Sewing Needles stuck out of the water tall and high. Then landing at Whalers Bay was like landing on Mars. The volcanic island also offered geothermally heated sand and water - perfect to bathe it!

4th - to allow the storm to by-pass us, we spent another day at one of the South Shetland Islands - Half Moon Island and Edinburgh Hill.

5th - 8th - we crossed the infamous Drake Passage, but by now I was used to sailing in the rough sea, so the 8m swells didn't bother me too much. I even managed to get a few shots of passing albatrosses and petrels.

9th - 12th - we were here right in the centre of a historic moment, witnessing the overwhelming 'Yes' majority in the Falklands referendum. The islanders celebrated, although without much style or alcohol. I even stood next to a group of chavs.

Czech-ed in!

There's still a lot of to write about Antarctica, but think we all need a quick break and some hot weather! May is a good time of the year to visit Czech - comfortably hot at around 25°C during the day and 12-14°C at night.

This was actually the second time I've visited Czech Republic and again with the main purpose being to attend a Kempo seminar, sightseeing was limited, but we did have plenty of time to sample the famous Czech beer and meats!

Like the UK, Czech is one of several countries in the EU that have not taken the Euro as its currency. I made the mistake of exchanging £200 worth of Euros last year but I wasn't going to fall for that again.

Ben and I landed at the Prague Ruzyně International Airport at 10.30pm and despite having a piece of oversized hold baggage that came through separately, we were out on a bus to the city centre within half an hour. The modestly sized airport was efficient and fully equipped with automatic biometric gates.

We took bus 119 from just outside the arrivals lounge to Dejvická which is the terminal station on the metro line A (green). A single ticket cost 40Kč (Czech koruna) from the bus driver but if you had 110Kč in coins you can buy a 24-hour ticket from the machines, which gets you on the metro, buses and trams.  

Note: your ticket is only valid if you stick it in the validating machine (on the bus/tram or at the metro entrance) which puts a time-stamp on it. You only need to do it once.

Day 1: Prague
The Wallenstein Garden and Palace (free entry) is situated right next to the Malostranská metro station, on the west side of Charles Bridge. As we were pressed for time, we only managed a 30 minute super tour of the grounds, capturing the fountain, peacocks, bronze statues and the artificial dripstone wall.

We wanted to see the castle as well but ran out of time as we had to travel to Karlovy Vary, but just to set the scene of the food you should expect, here's half a duck I had for lunch, which was almost twice the size of any ducks I've had in the UK!

Day 2 & 3: Karlovy Vary
We spent most of the 2nd and 3rd day at the training seminar, but managed to spend an hour or two walking around KV before we left. KV is a small town about 130km (2 hours) west of Prague, famous for its spa resort rich in iron and minerals. There is an abundance of hot spring taps in the town centre for you to taste (quite salty in my opinion), but if you want a proper spa you'll need to check in to a local hotel. 

As our friend and organiser of the training seminar is a police officer, we were put up in the police station, which has a training room covered with judo mats and had all the martial arts training equipment one would ever need. We slept on the mats and used kicking pads as pillows, which was a much cooler (if somewhat uncomfortable) option than spa hotels.

KV is overrun by Russians. I'm not sure whether they were just tourists, or whether they've permanently settled here, but there were loads of them, to the point where some of the billboards in town would put Russian first, then Czech, then English. Of course this is what my Czech friends told me - I myself didn't know any better whether the people/language were Czech or Russian! 

To my surprise KV is twinned with quite a few different places around the world (although none in the UK, I would expect Bath to be the top pick).

Apart from the beer and meat, if there's one thing you must try when you're in Czech, is a liqueur called Becherovka (38%) produced in KV, which is supposed to be good for your health (obviously only if drunk in moderation) due to its herbal ingredients:

For lunch on both Saturday and Sunday, we went to a local pub near the training venue, Ventura Pub Evropak - highly recommended and is where a lot of the locals hang out. The Pilsner Urquell was delicious and only cost £1.50, but the deal breaker was the meat dishes. After two days of training, I decided to go for the "roasted pork knee (about 1.5kg) with old Bohemian garnish", only for 214Kč which is about £7! You really have to see if for yourself:

It was epic, the most meat I've had in one sitting, and even a whole weekend of training couldn't justify it. 


Day 4: Prague
I spent Monday having another go at sightseeing with Ben, and the weather was perfect for it. We started at the National Museum and worked our way to the Astronomical Clock, Old Town Square, Charles Bridge and finally the castle and St Vitus Cathedral (sadly we didn't have enough time or korunas to go into the buildings). 

I did notice there were quite a few people whizzing around town on segways, which really annoyed me as they were too big and they generally didn't have any awareness of other pedestrians. I risk sounding old and grumpy but segways really isn't my idea of fun.

Wenceslas Square in front of the National Museum

 Local cinnamon rolls

 Praha ham

The Astronomical Clock, the 3rd oldest in the world and still going!

 Looking at Charles Bridge

 Entrance to the castle

 A gargoyle on the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral

Beautiful structure of St Vitus cathedral

Ben was flagging a bit after much walking around in the sun, so we decided to sit out the rest of the afternoon with Czech's finest. Ben ordered us a large beer each. Usually a large meant 0.5L but this place served 1L, not the worst mistake though. The location was great, down a quiet side street just outside the castle compound, although you do pay a premium at 350Kč for each beer (compared to an average of 50Kč for 0.5L we've been paying, this was quite a lot!) I was half way through munching the bowl of crisps until Ben noticed a sticker on the bowl saying 45Kč. I stopped eating and luckily either it was actually free or there was enough left in the bowl for them not to charge us, as we were down to our last pennies!
 

I think it would have been nice to have spent more time travelling around the country. There's so much in Prague that I haven't seen, and definitely lots more outside the capital around this former communist state. If I come back for the seminar again next year, I'm definitely going to take a whole week to explore. That said, this weekend was all about Kempo training, catchning up with old friends, drinking beer and eating meat, which were all very enjoyable.