Antarctic Vistas ~ January 14-25, 2009

"Imagine a place as big as the United States and Europe combined.   Sunnier than California, yet colder than the freezing compartment of your refrigerator.  Drier than Arabia and higher than mountainous Switzerland.  Emptier than the Sahara.   Only one place fits this description.  It's Antarctica.  The strange but beautiful continent at the bottom of the Earth."  ~  Joseph M. Durant,   This is Antarctica

There are few places in the world where there has never been war, where the environment is fully protected, and where scientific research as priority.   But there is a whole continent like this - it is the land the Antarctic Treaty Parties call "... a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science."


The World’s Best Beaches: Deception Island, Antarctica

Just north of the Antarctic peninsula, in the South Shetland Islands, lies the ring-shaped Deception Island.   This frigid island - the former home to a Norwegian-Chilean whaling station - can be quite misleading: it is actually a 5-mile-wide caldera atop an active volcano.   Ships gain access to the caldera via a narrow channel called Neptune’s Bellows.

Once inside, there are a number of beaches coming down from the inner walls of the volcano where you can dig holes in the sand to create small pools of water- heated from the volcano’s geothermal energy - to create your own natural hot tub.

Deception Island beach is memorable for all the ways it’s different from traditional beaches.


Katabatic Winds

Katabatic wind, (from the Greek: "katabaino" - to go down or descending) is the generic term for a downsloping (drainage) wind flowing from high elevations of mountains, plateaus, and hills down their slopes to the valleys or planes below.   Katabatic winds carry high density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity.  Katabatic winds can rush down elevated slopes at hurricane speeds, but most are not as intense as that, and many are of the order of 18 km/h or less.

The entire near-surface wind field over Antarctica is largely determined by the katabatic winds ...... particularly outside the summer season.