notes and images
We raced across the high desert in the morning sun. The salt flats were far behind but the scenery here was almost as bold and extreme: bright blue sky, dry desert, and high volcanos.
Apart from sand and rock and drug smugglers, there were plenty of llamas, vicunas and even flamingos…
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I don’t think we’ve ever been as wet as we were in Iceland. Or as cold. Or hungrier, more tired, or dirtier. I formed this judgement only two weeks in to a six week trip on a day it rained so hard for so long that I thought I would never be wetter than this. Late next night, as we moved our tent from a pool of water, beside a lagoon full of icebergs, I realised I was completely wrong in assuming that was the wettest as I’d ever be. No. With every new day, I was going to be wetter yet.
Even our Gore-tex wasn’t keeping the rain at bay. Would I ever be dry again?
Continue readingStanding alone at night on the rim of a giant crater in a desert beneath the Milky Way, I had two strong feelings. First, I viscerally understood why Neil Armstrong said the lunar surface “has a stark beauty all its own. It’s like much of the high desert of the United States”. True enough, that night in the high desert of the United States looked to me a lot like pictures of the moon. Second, and more powerfully, I suddenly felt like all that open space was somehow crushing me, this tiny creature on the side of a cliff beneath the vastness of that black, endless, infinite sky.
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Dolphin watching is really cool – when you’re looking for dolphins. But when you go whale watching, you’re really after something bigger. You know, like a whale. These guys had a great guarantee – see a whale or your money back*. Being (back then, in 2005) smart lawyers, we checked the small print under that asterisk. “Whales includes dolphins”. Hmmm. Well, we’re here now, we thought. It’s the last day of the season. Maybe we’ll get lucky.
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Seven years ago, the Space Shuttle was still flying, though not for much longer. China had yet to fly its multi-crew Shenzhou missions to the Tiangong orbital space laboratory, or land the Yutu “Jade Rabbit” rover on the moon, in each case becoming just the first nation after the US and USSR to achieve the feat. I wrote these impressions of the 14 May 2010 launch before I knew much about the Chinese program, and before I’d processed the black and white images included below.
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