Between the Poles, what do you do??

I have just arrived home to Tromsø, Norway and the darkness of January here at 70° north. Travelling from Ushuaia to Europe took me through Buenos Aires where Annelill and I spent a day at Estancia Dos Talas on the Pampas.

It is a treat for body and soul to enjoy the tranquility and atmosphere of such a place, think of the times when the cattle-barons spent four months of the year at their estancia, then some time in the city, usually in the season for operas and concerts at Teatro Colon and parts of the year in a European metropol, often Paris.

Well for me it is Paris of the North - Tromsø...












Estancia Dos Talas web site is http://www.dostalas.com.ar/ and if you want to go horseback riding or other adventures in Argentina, contact my friends Andres and José at http://www.horsesadventures.com.ar/

Infamous Southern Ocean

Myth or true?? My experience is that the weather in the Souther Ocean has a myth attached that is worse than it really is down there. Having crossed the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica some 60 times I have certainly seen some bad weather, but a large percentage of the time it is just gentle rolling and long swells coming from the Pacific due to the prevailing westerlies.
The worst conditions at sea I have ever had was off north-west Newfoundland (not far from the Flemish Cap), an area with a similar somewhat dubious reputation. There we had 18 meter waves and force 11, and I can assure you that it rocks!

Having said that I feel the waves and weather is better that the myth I have never been sailing in the Southern Ocean in the wintertime, and I don´t know if I´d want to try either... I always hope for fair weather anyway!


Here are two pictures that tells you somethind about the waveheight today and a weather system we dodged in November 2005 on our way beetween the Falkland Islands and South Georgia.