Nota Bene

Volcanism. It’s one of my hobbies. I just love getting up volcanoes all over the planet. Something about their beauty, power, hooliganism, infamy, aliveness, hotness, lava, craters, calderas, lakes… you get the picture.

But there’s one thing about volcanism that can be a bit of a pain: you normally need a good few days – if not weeks – to engage in any properly. This is because volcanoes of course tend to be massive, inaccessible, and often there are several in one spot that demand conquering. But then I heard about Mount Aragats: the quintessential ‘weekend volcano’.

Here she is. As you can see, she’s not far from the Armenian capital – so there’s the ‘inaccessible’ point crossed off as a volcanism-hindrance. She’s big and has more than one peak, but there is just one of her. All that is to explain its ‘weekendness’ :). But enough words; check out the pics:

Read on: Ruined over the millennia; but that’s half its charm…

Oakie-doakie. On we march front-crawl, to the next stop on the worldwide swimming bus – Europe.

6. Hot Sea, Santorini.

Santorini is a volcano-island, or island-volcano. It’s actually a ring of islands, which are the remains of the caldera of a huge volcano of yester-millennia, with a fresh volcano growing up inside the ring in the middle, which every now and then erupts and grows bigger. I was on Santorini not long ago, and wrote plenty of words about it here on this blog.

The only hot springs in the world that are situated in the sea reside here. At least, the only ones in the world known to me. The hot water spurts up from the seabed through the sea, making said sea the warmest sea you’ll ever know :).

There are quite a few spots around the islands where you can partake in hot-spring-sea-bathing. The one in the above pic isn’t the best; others are deeper and hotter, I’m told…

Read on: summer holidays on the White Sea islands…

Recent extreme water-sports up in (surprisingly) sunny Greenland got me thinking. Maybe I could try and reach into the recesses of my memory to come up with accounts of my most unusual, interesting and enjoyable swims I’ve had around the world – a ‘Top World-Swims’, if you like. For swimming – or mere bathing, or just plain getting into bodies of water besides those in a hotel room bathtub – I’ve done rather a lot of, in all sorts of far-flung weird-and-wonderful locations…

Taking dips: it’s an interesting topic – especially now during the summer season of R&R, beaching & resorting, and the attendant water-based activities is upon us. For maybe some of you are near pools, lakes, seas or oceans right now and may be in danger of missing the very best spots – as attested to by Yours Truly. So, without more of a do, let’s get these aquatics started.

All righty. The plan here is as follows: I’ll be telling you only about swimming/bathing in natural water bodies. Mega swimming pools, aqua parks, spas and so on won’t be included. Here it’s all about the most unusual organic bathing experiences. I’ll work across the globe from left to right, top to bottom: Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia. I’ll be missing out Antarctica as I didn’t manage to get any bathing in down there, if you can believe it :).

Oh, and btw: If anyone can see any glaring gaps to my global natural-aqua-must-swims, please don’t be shy; let us all know about them in the comments. I for one would be most grateful…

Ok. Let’s go. North America…

I’ve been to Alaska, but much like on Antarctica, I had things other than bathing on my mind. Therefore, I’ll jump straight over to Greenland, which is still technically North America…

1. Bobbing up and down among chunks of Greenlandic ice.

To swim bathe float in a Michelin-Man costume in among big chunks of floating ice and icebergs, to touch them, or even clamber up onto them, is an unforgettable experience. There’s nothing to fear: those brightly colored costumes are dry and comfortable. Only your hands get to feel the water – but even then only a bit: just a little water gets inside the mitts.

Read on: glaciers, caves and dolphins …

Hi all!

Ahhh – July: always tons getting done in the KL camp before the August lull when lots of us are on vacation – myself included! We’ve had our birthday bash already; there’s all sorts going on corporate-wise, which I’ll not go into here; and here’s the latest July event: the opening – finally! – of our corporate eatery @ our HQ! It’s called BarKas. Yes – the ‘Bar’ of ‘Kaspersky’. We decided on ‘bar‘ as, though it’s more of a restaurant than a bar, it is, in true KL spirit, informal and relaxed just like a bar, only nicer, if you follow me. Also, ‘Restaurant-Kas’ hardly has a ring to it. Plus, there’s the curiosity value in the fact that, in Russian, a ‘barkas’ is… a paddle boat! ‘Perfect’, we thought :).

The ‘beta testing’ of the paddle boat was back in March of this year. And just the other day it finally opened its doors to all and sundry (it’s not a KL-only canteen kinda thing), which I guess includes us – so we decided to give it some ‘alpha testing’…

Read on: First impressions? Nice.

Friday, July 15 in Moscow was one of the best days weather-wise of 2016 so far – all day sunny, a light breeze, and zero rain. But of course; the gods knew: it was the day of KL’s all-day 19th birthday celebrations, where 2000+ KLers from all over the planet congregated to party!

It’s a bit weird when you celebrate a company’s ‘birthday’. You find yourself hearing the following refrain repeatedly throughout the day when colleagues meet one another:

“Hey. Happy Birthday!”

“And Happy Birthday to you too!”

To be honest, I never thought we’d one day become so… grown up!

I really didn’t! Back in the late 90s we registered the company (KL, for those dozing at the back) to be able to better realize our super special expertise! We weren’t thinking too far ahead; you tend not to when you’re starting out: you’re doing all you can just to survive. So if a fortune teller back in 1997 would have told me that in 2016 we’d be going stronger than ever and having our 19th b-day bash attended by more than 2000 KLers, I’d simply not have believed her!

Read on: meanwhile, the people …

While flying across the Atlantic recently, our special correspondent, N.Sh., sent me a bulletin in real time detailing an entirely positive item of news about transatlantic in-flight service.

I quote:

Delta – these guys are just amazing. For a mere $20 or so you can get unlimited Internet – for the whole nine hour flight!

Whoah! I’ll have to try Delta next time. Hmmm. Now where’s that post of mine about terrible transatlantic service? Ah yes – here. But that was about United. Still, they’re all the same those US airlines. However, unlimited Internet for next to nothing – that sure makes up for a lot. For if you’ve got Internet – plus an electrical socket to plug your Laptop into – there’s not much else a business traveler needs now is there?

Anyway. Back to our special correspondent…

So, like I say, he was crossing the North Atlantic. But at one point he was up above Greenland. And what did he see out the window? A green land? A white land? Actually – neither. Just white. Period…

…Nothing but thick white cloud. And he attached photographic evidence:

This proves one thing. We were sooooo lucky with the weather just recently during our Greenland trip. So here’s raising a glass in the hope that next time we (and you, why not?!) are just as lucky. Not necessarily in Greenland – but wherever we may be :).

So what’s the habitation situation like for visitors in Greenland? Actually not bad at all. Decent basic hotels, cozy rooms, most of the creature comforts as you normally find in good hotels, and nice food. The only drawback I came across: Internet connection speed, and also low traffic limits.

Here’s the hotel in Nuuk we stayed at – from both outside and in…

Read on: how the Inuit live…

As promised yesterday, here come a LOT of photos…

So get the popcorn in plus your beverage of choice, and we’re off…

Read on: 500 thousand tons of ice per hour …

You don’t have to go out to sea far from Ilulissat before you come across mini-bergs – quite a few reside even inside the port’s walls. From time to time they crack, break up, and/or roll over. Just as we were heading out one ‘berg did just that: it made a crackling sound, sank down under the sea, briefly paused to come to its senses, and then slowly re-emerged upside-down to give its belly a go in the sun :).

But those were mere babies. A little further out to sea were the parents – and grandparents…

Read on: Here they are, the beauts!…

Next up on our tour of Greenland – the town of Ilulissat, 550km north of Nuuk, and 200km inside the Arctic Circle. Yes, that means that in July the sun never sets, which we tested – positively – for ourselves.

There are no roads between Nuuk and Ilulissat (!), so it was back onto one of those small red planes to get up to the town. This is only a good thing as the views out the windows are spectacular – that is, if you manage to get a window seat: air tickets don’t come with an assigned seat as usual, so you have to be up front in the line. But that can be tricky, since they announce the gate number only in Danish, then English Greenlandic (again an example of Greenlandic laidbackness – but this time I wasn’t too happy about it).

We flew with a quick connection in Kangerlussuaq. And that’s where I got lucky: I was allowed to sit in the cockpit all the way to Ilulissat – sat in the third seat behind the other two :).

Read on: the rare cockpit views…