Today we looked at ice. So lovely. The feeling of being here is so … incredible. How to remember all of this? I’d love to make a room with all these mountains and fogs and
Today we looked at ice. So lovely.
The feeling of being here is so … incredible. How to remember all of this? I’d love to make a room with all these mountains and fogs and ice inside, that you can go to the inside off when you feel like. But at least I have photos.
We had no translator on the zodiac, so the people pretended to not understand what the guide said when he asked everyone to sit down so that he could continue racing us. They were all standing up, walking around, taking pictures, delaying everything. Eventually I had to talk to them and ask them to please sit down in Chinese and then it got too hard to not understand what I said, and we could move on to the mountain walk.
The penguins are nice. Very soft and friendly animals. There are no land predators on Antarctica, so they simply are not afraid of people. They keep walking right among us all the time. And there are penguins everywhere.
On my stomach it says that ”Trump drowns you”. What I mean is that his leaving USA from the Paris agreement, is threatening all of the climate talks in this world. The Madrid meeting this December was a disaster, precisely because smaller countries didn’t feel the pressure to be all ”good” when the USA is not. So our CO2 pollution is currently increasing, despite all that we know of the disasters it will cause for our children and grandchildren. I’ve known about global warming since 1990, but no one still doesn’t care for shit. And Trump is the leader of the humans that simply just want to kill themselves. Is this why we haven’t found any other civilizations? That the prerequisites needed in order to develop also makes for short-term suicidal tendencies once the environment kicks in, like on Easter Island? I don’t know, but the world needs to know, and do something about it.
And yes, it was very bad of me to take this boat to Antarctica. I should have waited one month and paid 3000 USD more for a sailing boat. But we all have our weaknesses, so just accept it and – hopefully – change. I’ll from here use transport ships for the rest of my trip. Because that’s the best you can do, except for sailing of course. And when it comes to moving passengers – the more luxury, the worse it is. So just get the cheapest ticket and you save the world. There was no cheaper ticket to Antarctica than this one. And what we need to do to always make the cheapest the best (coughairplanecough) is a huge CO2 tax, and to make this huge tax acceptable, it needs to be divided among the people. So please, let’s vote Andrew Yang for US president rather than Trump.
And speaking of Trump – today we found the Trumpest guy on Antarctica, the brown skua. The brown skua is a bird that is an expert on getting penguin eggs. They attack, often in pairs, and scares the penguins until one of them grabs an egg and they both fly away. As we walked down the mountain, I saw one brown skua attack a group of penguins right next to us. They had a horrible fight, and suddenly the skua grabs an egg and flies right at me. I didn’t think so well back then, so I thought the skua was attacking me, and I protected my face. But of course it wasn’t attacking, I was just in its way while it flew to freedom with an egg in its claws nomnom. The penguins were so sad and kept crying. OMG, imagine getting rid of a child just like that, from one second to the next. I hope the penguins went on to kidnap another baby, someone whose parents were gone!
As we came back home, it was time for the epic polar plunge, meaning that you jump from the ship straight into the water. I only tried it once before, in a frozen lake in Stockholm, but I loved it. As long as there is sauna. And we have sauna. So I went down there in my shorts, and was selected as the first jumper. I jumped in the water, and swam around for some seconds, but then got up as I was afraid of how my body would take it. I saw that I got 4, 4 and 2 as points for my jump.
Went to the sauna, and soon got company of more people. As I heard that ”if anyone wants to do the polar plunge, please show up now”, I went down again, and was one of the two to jump a second time, so we got to do it last. This time I made a huge bomb into the water, spent some time below it, came up, and then swam on my back for as long as possible until the rope got me. Yeah, they put a rope on you first, so that they can drag you up if they feel like, like if all your limbs stopped working. After a minute or so I got up. I’ve heard that you freeze after four minutes. The points I got were 10, 10 and 10!
The next sauna was even better. I was ”fighting” it with another guy. He sat in the corner, and now and then gave the heater extreme amounts of water, frying your face again and again. We fought each other for half an hour. After I almost passed out at a Japanese onsen, I’ve promised myself to never sauna fight again in my life, but this time it felt different, as if I was sitting teaming a triad Chinese at the very end of the world, in the most epic sauna fight ever. And he eventually gave up.
I had to go back to my room and rest for 10-15 minutes. My body doesn’t love saunas. And then I dressed, and entered the lunch, which was an outside barbecue. So cold! And, eh, lovely. During the lunch I got to lend a pair of gloves from Paula, the Irish. She brought two with her. So now I finally have the gloves required! I promised her a complete night of drinking as a present back. I don’t think she’ll drink for 140 USD, not even on this boat.
During dinner, the epic triad sauna loser – that I btw don’t think belongs to a triad at all, he just looks very cool – came and gave our table some traditional Chinese spirits. I was the only one who loved it. So he gave me more than a decilitre. I tried to thanks after half of it, but no no, a complete glass, to the brim. Someone claimed that he paid 1000 USD for that bottle on the boat, meaning that my drink here is worth a 100 USD. I’ve never in my life had such an expensive drink.
Does it feel like my life is much cooler than yours now? Then I can comfort you with that another person claims that he bought the bottle in China for ”just” 80 dollars, so that this drink is about 8 dollars, which is what you pay in Sweden for just thinking the word ”whisky”.
I invited them all to a party in my room, where we shared a 4 euro bottle of Fernet Branca. I then passed out. Maybe this was a revenge drinking competition that I lost?