May 30, 2018
Lesser Antilles No. 1: Saint Lucia.
North Pole with Ocean’s Arctic’s 11, Panama. But that was just for starters. Next up… a place, perhaps, you’ve never heard of – or maybe didn’t realize was a sovereign state:
May 29, 2018
Panama: ooh la la.
Since the construction of the Panama Canal was deemed: “One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken” (– Wikipedia), I decided it just had to be included in my Top-100 Must-See Places in the World. It was one of those Top-100s I hadn’t visited, but my recent few days in Panama gave me a +1 to my actually-visited Top-100s, and, boy, am I glad: it’s a unique feat of human thought, design and construction, and still the monopolist for marine-bisecting the Americas. And it’s so in-demand that they don’t sell ‘tickets’ for a ship to get through the canal as per some kinda price list; no, they auction them instead – with prices paid sometimes reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars!
It’s also got plenty of fascinating tales to tell regarding its construction. The first attempt to build it – in the 19th century by the French – was eventually called off as money ran out after it overran its completion targets, but not before thousands of workers died during the doomed construction project from yellow fever, malaria and other tropical diseases. The death rate was at one time higher than 200 per month! Oh my ghoulish. (And if my memory serves me well, I do believe it was here that it was first realized that such diseases were in fact spread by mosquitoes.) After work was abandoned (after 22,000 had died) corruption scandals – regarded to be the largest of the 19th century! – ensued. Then the Americans took things over. Later, the Panamanians wanted to seize it over for themselves, and on and on a checkered history of revolutions and other political upheavals.
But let me get away from the politics and back to the hydro-technical engineering…
You can sit and watch the canal’s locks opening and closing, the raising or lowering of the tankers, and their slow movement along the canal forever. Mind-blowing and hypnotic. But if you want more on the history of the place there’s a nice museum too (plus a restaurant with the perfect birds-eye view of the canal’s comings and goings).
May 26, 2018
Back to civilization.
May 25, 2018
To the Pole – to meet 11 heroic souls!
Why do folks go to the North or South Pole?
One reason is… actually – no specific reason at all; just to go because… why not? To stand at the top or bottom of the world is just kinda cool.
Another reason: just the extremeness of it all. Some folks prefer a total lack of extremity: comfort, sun, beach, nice home/hotel, all the mod cons. Others are bored by comfort, but they like extreme contrasts between extremity and comfort ).
Another: some folks just follow their instinctual urge to ski and then walk to a pole over several days – only it won’t be ‘several days’, as a polar day can last five months!
Another: surely, some kinda crazy polar magnetism that attracts certain folks!
In the past, there was another reason: to get to a Pole first.
Regarding the South Pole, around 1910-11, two expeditions – Amundsen‘s and Scott‘s – made it to the South Pole, the former pipping the latter to the post pole! The Norwegians made it back too. The Brits, tragically, did not; a sad, yet heroic, tale. Macabrely, to this day, the Terra Nova Expeditioners still lie there, in their tents, long since gobbled up by the Antarctic ice (specifically – and even more gruesomely – under more than 20 meters of snow, and shifted by the glacier ~50 kilometers over 100+ years).
But regarding the North Pole, hmmm… I couldn’t recall who made it there first, so I had to look it up. Well, there are many claims to reaching it first, but the first undisputed one is that of a Soviet expedition in April 1948, i.e., 36 years after the South Pole! Btw, other expeditions soon after followed the Soviets’ lead, while the South Pole waited a full 44 years until it was to be visited by another expedition.
So, it turns out getting to the North Pole is harder than getting to the South Pole. Interesting. The Antarctic climate is much fiercer than the Arctic one, but crossing the firmly compacted snow underfoot in Antarctica is a lot simpler than crossing the loose, fluffy snow of the Arctic. Then there are the fissures in the Arctic ice you have to somehow navigate. There’s also the shorter window in the Arctic for getting to it – before the ice starts melting. In Antarctica there’s no danger of ice melting and merging with the ocean below it – there’s a whole terra-firma continent underfootice ).
May 24, 2018
Nǐ Hǎo, cyber-chief!
Ni Hao folks!
Last Friday we had the pleasure of receiving none other than Xu Lin, China’s chief of cybersecurity and internet policy. Naturally, it was time to roll out the red carpet.
We’ve been working in China now for more than 15 years. In that time we’ve come a long way: from literally nothing (zero market presence) to a well-recognized brand (Ka-Ba-Si-G; the whole naming thing in China is a whole other story – on for another day) and good contacts in high places. We meet with Chinese regulators regularly (funny, but I’m sure those two words are unrelated:), more often than not in Beijing, but sometimes also in Wuzhen. Well it was Moscow’s turn this time to host one of our meets.
May 23, 2018
Weightlessness, ver. 2018.
From time to time I find some planned OMG moments in my diary in among the unscheduled ones. This short post is about my most recent one…
May 22, 2018
In the snow, via Barneo, to the North Pole we go!
Having strolled about Longyearbyen, it was time for the next leg on our mission to the North Pole – to get to Barneo ice camp. Here, much like in Longyearbyen, things weren’t quite so extreme and harsh as might be expected. The only issue for first-timers could be a queasy feeling in one’s lower abdomen – perhaps caused by butterflies.
May 17, 2018
The northernmost town in the world.
Hi folks!
Ok, you’ve had your fun and games, now for some detail on my recent North Pole trip…
Now, unlike some, I wasn’t skiing to the North Pole. I consider myself sporty and adventurous… but I know my limits ). No, I was going the lazy man’s route:
Oslo > Longyearbyen, Svalbard > Barneo (on an An-74) > North Pole (in a chopper).
Ok, so where shall I start? Since we didn’t have much time at all in Oslo, I’ll start in Longyearbyen (the ‘Longyear Town’!).
We arrived there on a scheduled commercial flight from the Norwegian capital. There are several of these per week (there are also charter flights sometimes), but the exact number can change due to cancelations, in turn due to the extreme weather conditions. We were lucky – our flight was on schedule.
May 17, 2018
Arctic or Antarctic?… The answers.
Hi folks!
As promised, herewith, my answers to Thursday’s polar quiz questions:
Ok, first – my answers to those four non-visual questions:
Question 1: How do you get to the North Pole?
Answer A: The simplest and cheapest method:
Buy a plane ticket from Dubai to Seattle or San Francisco. These routes fly real close to the Geographic North Pole. I believe the route Anchorage-Frankfurt (on Condor) also still does too (I flew it back in 2013, but I was sleeping around the time of the near-polar-flyover). While back in the mid-nineties there was a direct Aeroflot flight between Moscow and San Francisco, and they even gave out ‘flown over the North Pole’ certificates!
Answer B: Another, more expensive, way of getting to the North Pole – this time actually right to it, up close and personal freezing – is on one of the regular expeditions organized by the Russian company VICAAR.
Those two gents in the above pic are Victor Boyarskiy and Leonid Plenkin, who escort you up to the North Pole if you decide to go with VICAAR. Btw, that photo was taken in an Antonov An-74, en route from Svalbard to Barneo; from Barneo to the North Pole you take a helicopter.
May 10, 2018
Photo-quiz: where were these pics taken – the Arctic or Antarctica?
Hi Folks!
As promised, herewith, a rewind back to all things polar… – but with a twist. It’s not a full-on description of what I was doing recently up at the North Pole, or why; that, I’m sure (if I do ever get some free time, finally!), will come later.
No, this post is a bit of fun. Why fun? Because I’ve been on the road for three weeks now, visited 10 counties/territories in the process, and think I – and by extension you – need a little fun. (And I need to get home fast too to recharge my batteries, catch up on sleep, and lower the levels of adrenaline in the bloodstream.)
So, fun?…
Yes: for this here post is a quiz. Just that in itself is a twist (since when has a whole post of mine been nothing but a quiz?). But there’s more twistiness: it’s a purely visual quiz – as in, all questions relate to photographs (taken be me). No wordy brainteasers.
Ok, now, the word in bold above gives the game away to some extent as to what these pics are of (and, thus – what this quiz is about), but, and here’s even more twistiness: it just so happens that this quiz, based on these pics, isn’t just about the North Pole. It’s also about the South Pole, since, handily, I’ve been to both. And since I don’t know many folks who have been to both the top and the bottom of the world – and in fact none who are also photography freaks like me – well, I thought I’d capitalize on this rare lucky combination and have a bit of fun with it. Crikey, that’s a long intro to explain just what this post is about!
Ok, long explanation over, let me put it another, laconic, way: this is a visual quiz where you have to work out where all the following pics are taken: near the North Pole in the Arctic, or near the South Pole in Antarctica. That’s it! (What could be simpler?:)
Oops, nearly forgot: there are four non-visual questions in this quiz too. They are:
- How do you get to the North Pole?
- How do you get to the South Pole?
- Why would you want to get to the North Pole?
- Why would you want to get to the South Pole?
I’ve quite a few different answers to those four (they’ll come in a later post), but I’m just curious as to what you might come up with. Maybe your answers would be way cooler than mine?
Anyway, without much more of ado, let’s get this polar quiz started:
- To start with, two of my fave polar pics. No guessing needed for these two; they’re just a warm-up:
Btw: you won’t believe how far those mountains in the background on both pics are. Ok, you can guess those distances too ).
