After a two-and-a-half-hour walk through the jungle and clambering through the stone labyrinths of the Grutas do Madadá, we were treated to a tasty (even relatively lavish) lunch, lovely weather, and hammocks to lie in. Everything around us was whispering: “Relax, stick around, there’s nowhere you need to be.” But then a cloud of ominous size and coloring appeared on the horizon being blown straight our way, so we decided to evacuate at once. Too late though: soon enough we were caught up in a mega windy rainstorm – with whitecap crests racing down the river.

And did it pour!

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Chào, folks!

Here I am – back in Vietnam (I’m a poet – I just don’t know it). So – what am I here for, why, and why here of all places?

Actually, I’ve talked about the “why” plenty before. The thing is, when you manage to make a successful product/service/technology, an “ecosystem” of sales channels + services + end users inevitably forms around it, made up of resellers/distributors, and/or partners/customers/clients.

Naturally, that ecosystem needs to be supported! You need to come up with new products, improve services, warn everyone about what’s coming, and save and resuscitate those really struggling. And they come flooding into our ecosystem all by themselves! All in the name of fighting cyber-evil.

But should we improve, and make everything even better? Of course we should!

That’s why we develop our partner network all over the world – where we can; why we teach cybersecurity at all kinds of technical universities – where we’re welcome; and why we hold exhibitions and conferences in locations far and wide. In this vein, we’ve just wrapped things up in Ho Chi Minh City.

I should probably stick in a photo here – this one’ll do, I think:

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If you think we drove the alternative Kolyma route just out of curiosity… you’re absolutely right! Purely and solely out of curiosity. As it turned out though, some of our key partners have facilities there – we protect them from all sorts of cyber-nastiness, and they invite us to visit their operations. And the stars aligned so that one of Russia’s most golden enterprises – the Natalka gold-ore deposit – sits right by Route 44N-4 – the very alternative Kolyma route we were on. And here we are!

First up – a quick preview of coming attractions…

That’s the pit: one of the largest open-pit mines in the world.

And this is the finished product. About 75% gold, another 20-plus percent silver, plus assorted other stuff. These little bars weigh about 12 kilograms each, and from here they’re sent off for more thorough processing to produce practically pure gold – 999 fineness – and roughly the same purity of silver.

Between the pit and the finished product lies an incredibly complex technological cycle, which I’ll try to explain in a bit.

But first, a little history…

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If you ever need to dash from Yakutsk to Magadan (or Magadan to Yakutsk) by car – you need to take the only road that exists between the two cities. And that road is the Kolyma Highway: 2000+ kilometers with the route Yakutsk – Khandyga – Ust-Nera – Susuman – Magadan. And it’s an absolutely mind-blowingly beautiful road in January or February!…

I’ve already driven it along four (4!) times in the winter. And something tells me I’ll be back for more deep-frozen far-eastern road-trip tourism – and more than once.

Near Susuman, the highway splits into two branches: the main route, and an alternative route – 100km shorter, but trickier. This alternative road, marked 44N-4 (also known as the Tenkinskaya Highway), may be less comfortable for crossing the vast Kolyma region, but it’s far more scenic – at least in the dead of winter. So we hang a right off the main Kolyma road – and off we pop!…

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Oi folks!

Still in Brazil, we were not far from the city of Manaus, in the Amazon lowlands. We’d just finished exploring the anabranches of the Rio Negro, so now it was time for our next course of amazing Amazonia – the Amazon Jungle!…

There’s so much of it here that nobody really knows how much remains unexplored. Sure, they’re cutting it down mercilessly, but looking at a map, you get the sense the loggers will run out of steam before the jungle does. And out here in the middle of nowhere there are still tribes living without any contact with the outside world. Yep, really. They’re called uncontacted peoples. The internet says there are several such groups in the Amazon, but precisely how many is hard to work out. Maybe nobody really knows. Anyway, we were heading into perfectly civilized – even fairly touristy – parts of the Amazon jungle:

It’s hot and humid (who knew?!), but at least you’re almost always in the shade – with a few exceptions:

But first – a visit to a local tribe. Here’s the chief:

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Our tour of South America next took us to Brazil; specifically – to the city of Manaus (after a few adventures in São Paulo). But Manaus was just our base. The attraction was something a lot bigger and a lot more famous (just noticed – its Wikipedia page comes in a full 200 languages; rarely see that!). Have you guessed it yet? Yes, it’s the Amazon – the world’s largest (by both water volume and drainage basin) and arguably the longest river in the world!

Actually, we were more generally exploring Amazonia, aka the Amazon Basin, aka the Amazonian Plain, aka the Amazon Lowlands. And specifically – one of the Amazon’s main tributaries: the Rio Negro. Why? Because in these parts the Amazon is very silty and murky, and so there’s not much to see or do there. The Rio Negro on the other hand has much cleaner water and contains fish and dolphins and more, the surrounding ecosystem is richer, and indigenous people live along it in the jungle.

I say cleaner; here’s proof: the meeting of the muddy Amazon and the cleaner Rio Negro:

If you zoom in you can see it better:

And this mixing of clean and muddy water goes on for dozens of kilometers downstream from where the rivers meet. Here’s the confluence on Google Maps.

So where to begin? With the jungle, the indigenous people, and the rest of the locals? Local customs? Grottoes in the rain lit with shafts of sunlight?…

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Bye-bye, Atacama Desert!…

We pile into the cars, double-check we haven’t forgotten any suitcases or bags, and hit the road. Where to? The airport, of course!…

The nearest airport is in the small city of Calama, about 100km from our cozy digs in San Pedro de Atacama:

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I’d heard a lot about the thermal fields and geysers in Chile, and figured it was time to go see them for myself since the photos online were kind of underwhelming.

// Let me say this right away: Atacama does have thermal fields – but geysers? None. That’s why the “geyser” photos from there look so unimpressive. But whatever – onward to the El Tatio geothermal fields!…

All as per for thermal fields: much hissing, gurgling, bubbling, rumbling, and spraying of boiling water:

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We didn’t have much free time in St. Petersburg after the conference on the future of cybersecurity, so we only had room for one bit of sightseeing – a visit to the Krassin icebreaker museum…

The Krassin is a storied ship whose history is truly fascinating – but I’ll get to that in a bit. The first Arctic-class icebreaker in history was the Yermak, built at the end of the 19^th century based on the ideas of Vice Admiral Makarov – a remarkable man who did a great deal for Arctic exploration and development, and plenty besides. His dream was to reach the North Pole on an icebreaker. But calculations showed that doing so would require more power than the technology of the time could deliver…

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One morning – not too early, but still dark out – we piled into our vehicles and rolled out of Ust-Kut toward the ice road, heading for the town of Mirny (here)…

The weather was treating us well – a balmy -22°C for this time of year. We sure didn’t expect that!

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