Next up for us – in fact, our last Kuril Island of this year’s expedition – was Kunashir, which, luckily, happens to be covered in outstanding volcanisms. To the north there’s Tyatya; to the south of it there are Cape Stolbchaty and its crazy columns; and further south there are the multicolored fumarole fields of Mendeleyeva Volcano and the hot mud baths in the Golovina Caldera. Each instance of volcanism – spectacularly beautiful in its own right; but all together they make sure the island of Kunashir would – if it were in China – geyt a full KKKKK rating!
We were here five years ago, and I wrote plenty about this phenomenal island then and showed you a ton of pics. Here, I’ll just be complementing that earlier narrative and photography with some extra-special new impressions.
Alas Tyatya wasn’t ‘open for visitors’ when we were there – the weather was too bad and the huge waves didn’t permit us a safe landing. But we did get a rerun of Mendeleyeva’s fumaroles and the stone pillars of Stolbchaty.
If you had to describe Kunashir with just one word, what would it be? ‘Ура!’, of course (in Russian), which means ‘hurray’ in English. Accordingly – basalt graffiti thereof:
Onward we sail further and further south, with it getting warmer and warmer as we get nearer to the equator. We keep wondering if, sooner or later, the waters around these parts might become warm enough to take a pleasant dip in… a quick check – alas: not yet. So we continue on our merry way southward – toward our next Kuril: Urup, which comes from the Ainu word for salmon trout. Probably named that way as the island is long and thin like a salmon. But wait – so… does that mean the Ainu people drew maps? How else would they know the shape? Maybe by climbing up a neighboring volcano and seeing it that way?
Or could it be named after the salmon that perhaps inhabit the small island’s… streams (no rivers; no lakes)? Maybe there are salmon trout here. To the north, as far as Paramushir, all the islands are too small for salmon trout to reside on them. And to the south, perhaps, the climate’s too warm for a northerner-fish such as the salmon trout? But just here in between (also on neighboring Simushir), there well could be salmon (there was on Simushir – I saw them myself). Not that we found out – we passed Urup by. We’d landed there last time and there’s not a great deal to see onshore that can’t be seen from the sea (see the below pics), so we just missed it out this time…
Severe Kurilian landscapes…
Woah – killer whales! Maybe they’re after the salmon? What else would they be doing next to an island called Salmon?!
But why take pics from the Athens? Let’s get a drone up! So our American friends did just that…
Evening approaches; in rolls the fog; time for us to move on!…
Next up – Iturup; that rhymes! Surely this will mean something fish-related in Ainu? But of course: it means jellyfish! That’s funny; the island neither resembles a jellyfish, nor did I see a single jellyfish swimming about in the sea around the island. Stop. Perhaps those long capes the jut out quite far into the sea were deemed jellyfish’s tentacles?! But I digress…
One of those tentacles is in fact a volcano of considerable stature: Atsonupuri. We climbed to the top of it last time (what a nightmare it was: real tough conditions), and bathed in its hot springs. It was also here where we found the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything; that is – 42 ). I won’t go over Iturup again here; just a few highlights…
In the next pic: hot stream coming down from Baransky Volcano! In the steeper places: hot waterfalls!
Up here the water’s literally boiling! It cools down enough to be able to bath in it some 400 meters further down…
Woah – here’s something new since last time: neat concrete steps. Just what the doctor ordered (to go with the prescribed recuperative natural spring water:).
Down we go…
Oh no – repair work going on!
Not to worry: two of the upper pools had had their repairs completed:
And anyway, the best bit of all – the full-on hot-spring waterfall – was further down, ahead of the repairs…
Aaaaaaah. What a place! 42 – no two ways about it. And it gets even better for you, dear readers…: drone footage! Could this possibly be the first ever drone footage of these waterfalls in the history of the Universe? Again: 42!!
Must get back here one day. Simply mandatory… That goes for all you readers as well!
The rest of the pics of our Kurils-2019 expedition are here.
Yesterday you’ll recall we were on Sumishir being bowled over by its Zavaritsky Caldera. Today, sailing southwest along the string of Kurils, we first took in the rather plain Broutona and its bay of the same name (named after the British naval officer and explorer William Broughton). And after that – two small islands together referred to as Chyornye Bratya – the Black Brothers, with one called Chirpoy, and the other – Brat Chirpoyev (Chirpoy’s brother!), here.
Now, if ever you’re in Lebanon, whatever you do don’t miss out Jeita Grotto, which is just 15 minutes outside Beirut in a car. It’s title is in the singular, but the grotto actually refers to a ‘system’ of two separate (though interconnected) karstic limestone caves. The upper one is mostly dry and gigantic; the lower one features a river, is generally smaller in size, but it’s length is a full seven kilometers (!), which is five kilometers longer than the upper cave.
For many of you, what you associate with the brand ‘Beirut’ will probably be nothing too positive. Unfortunately, there are many objective reasons for that. The main one – there was a very long civil war here; there’ve been assorted other armed conflicts since then too. Details of the civil war made the headlines throughout the 1980s all over the world, with its awfulness even trickling down into pop songs – both in the East and the West. I won’t go into the reasons behind the civil war… because I can’t, for there is practically nothing but lies about them if you try to research them (.
Beirut was partially destroyed, but when peace finally came about this blessed land took on a new lease of life. From my hotel room and the hotel’s roof – the city today looks like this today:
Herewith, I continue my historical-archeological dispatches from what is today known as Lebanon. Specifically – from Byblos, one of the oldest cities in the world.
Quite how old no one can really say for sure, but the internet rumors it to be around 9000 years! The guides who were showing us round – plus the info on the walls here – give the more modest figure of approximately 6000 years. Others say ~7000; still others – ~8000. Whatever – give or take a few thousand years (!), this city is still for sure one of the world’s very oldest.
I’ve already shown you the oddly shaped rock formations up on the surface here at Cappadocia. Turns out the unusual shape theme continues underneath the surface too: man-made caves – ‘upside-down skyscrapers’. Well, why not? After all, pumice is very soft for a rock, so it’s not crazy difficult to carve out (as it no doubt was in Baalbek); also – it doesn’t need strengthening; also – due to the dry climate there’s no water needs pumping out from the underground depths.
Then it seems that everything was forgotten about and abandoned (as often happened), and the caves were taken over by dust, decay and depression. Then, centuries – or millennia – later, Homo sapiens rediscovered them, and archeologists, historians and researchers got down to revealing them though their archeological digs. Today, many of the underground ‘neighborhoods’ have been dug out, cleaned, tidied, fitted with staircases and electricity (!), and probably will have free Wi-Fi fitted very soon too – all to cater for the many tourists who visit.
If you’ve heard of Cappadocia, you’ll probably know it for one of two things – or maybe both: its strange-shaped pyramid-columns, or (and) the many hot-air balloons that often fill the sky there. Well I’d heard of the place, but had never been, but wanted to for a very long time. The place even has a spot in my Top-100 Must-See Most-Beautiful Places in the World, so it was high time I made a visit seeing as though I was in the region recently…
Straight after our Top-100 tourism in Lebanon, I suddenly found myself in… China! Specifically, on the Heihe River (the upper part of the Rui Shui River) in the city of Tianjin!
It was my second time in the city, having been here precisely seven years ago. I remember that trip very well – mostly: that I was bowled over by its spaciousness, cleanliness and neatness. Since then, I can report that the city has grown in population – clearly visible by the increased numbers of vehicles on the roads and folks on the sidewalks along the riverbank – on a Sunday evening. Come the following evening – the city was a lot less crowded, with some places practically deserted.
This time we were having a boat trip along the river through the city at night, and it turned out to be wonderful! The Chinese sure do know how to light up their cities at night:
I’ve already mentioned a few times that we had a few American friends along for the rideadventure in the Far East, and that I’d be ‘getting to them’ later on. Well that later on has arrived!…
So who were these folks from the U. S. of A. (and a few other countries), who traveled with me and my regular expeditioners?
First up – Mr. Chris Burkard, the very famous and very successful photographer of all things extreme, distant, fantastic – often and preferably all three at the same time. He’d heard lots about the Kurils, and had long dreamed of exploring and snapping them. So one day, while researching the islands on the internet, he couldn’t help but come across my blog and e–photo-albums, since there probably is no other blogger/amateur photographer who’s written and snapped the islands more than moi. I mean – really, you can’t avoid Me & D.Z. and Co. on the net if you search for anything Kuril-related: if you simply put in the name of a Kuril volcano into Google Images – a ton of our holiday snaps come up toward the top of the list!
