Approaching Las Palmas, the Canary Islands
It is a bit hard to accept the fact that this incredible voyage is nearing its conclusion, but the suitcases hauled out from beneath the bunks cannot be denied. We take away from this one voyage a diversity of impressions and experiences. We have followed in the wake of Magellan through the Straits that bear his name. We followed Captain James Cook, who charted and named South Georgia and stopped to reprovision at St Helena. Like Charles Darwin, we visited Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, St Helena, and Cape Verde, and marveled at their geology and wildlife. Napoleon preceded us (and Darwin) at St. Helena, where Edmund Halley had earlier charted the stars of the southern sky. We end our trip at Las Palmas, where Christopher Columbus began his. We have visited people living their lives in isolation on Tristan da Cunha, and in a volcanic crater on Fogo. We experienced the westerly winds of the Southern Ocean, the still air of the Horse Latitudes, and brisk Tropical Trade Winds. The ocean temperature was one degree C around South Georgia and 28 degrees C at the Equator, where we paused to swim in water that descended 4,000 meters beneath us. We have sailed through waters teeming with seabirds, and waters that challenged even Richard White for a single sighting, and thus the variation in ocean productivity presented to us in Jim Kelley’s explanatory presentations was clear to see. We have seen albatrosses and tropicbirds, pipits and wirebirds, penguins and petrels, and one remarkable flightless rail. We have seen birds that travel over thousands of miles of ocean on a single foraging trip, and birds that occur on only one tiny oceanic island. We smelled the breath of a whale. We saw volcanic islands a few years removed from violent eruptions, and islands of ice a few months removed from the Antarctic Continent. We have gone ashore in shorts and sandals, and in everything that we brought. We have learned to love our boots … well, maybe not. It was, indeed, a remarkable voyage.
It is a bit hard to accept the fact that this incredible voyage is nearing its conclusion, but the suitcases hauled out from beneath the bunks cannot be denied. We take away from this one voyage a diversity of impressions and experiences. We have followed in the wake of Magellan through the Straits that bear his name. We followed Captain James Cook, who charted and named South Georgia and stopped to reprovision at St Helena. Like Charles Darwin, we visited Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, St Helena, and Cape Verde, and marveled at their geology and wildlife. Napoleon preceded us (and Darwin) at St. Helena, where Edmund Halley had earlier charted the stars of the southern sky. We end our trip at Las Palmas, where Christopher Columbus began his. We have visited people living their lives in isolation on Tristan da Cunha, and in a volcanic crater on Fogo. We experienced the westerly winds of the Southern Ocean, the still air of the Horse Latitudes, and brisk Tropical Trade Winds. The ocean temperature was one degree C around South Georgia and 28 degrees C at the Equator, where we paused to swim in water that descended 4,000 meters beneath us. We have sailed through waters teeming with seabirds, and waters that challenged even Richard White for a single sighting, and thus the variation in ocean productivity presented to us in Jim Kelley’s explanatory presentations was clear to see. We have seen albatrosses and tropicbirds, pipits and wirebirds, penguins and petrels, and one remarkable flightless rail. We have seen birds that travel over thousands of miles of ocean on a single foraging trip, and birds that occur on only one tiny oceanic island. We smelled the breath of a whale. We saw volcanic islands a few years removed from violent eruptions, and islands of ice a few months removed from the Antarctic Continent. We have gone ashore in shorts and sandals, and in everything that we brought. We have learned to love our boots … well, maybe not. It was, indeed, a remarkable voyage.
