It turns out that Narsaq is a mecca for geology buffs (pick me! pick me! I was actually very tempted to study Geology rather than Astronomy at University) so I was super-excited about hiking to Kvanefjeld to search for Tugtupit (also known as “Reindeer stone”) – a rare mineral only found in a few places in the…
I slept incredibly well at the Hotel Narsaq, and awoke to a wonderful breakfast of bread, cheese, meat, eggs (with extras packed away for lunch), cereal, tea and coffee at the hotel. Blue Ice Explorer had described 4 hikes from Narsaq and so I decided to set out early to see if I could fit 3…
One of the days we had in Bishkek we decided to head out to the nearby Ala-Archa National Park for some hiking. Archa means “many groups of Juniper trees” of which there are 4 types within the park. It is only 40km away and it was absolutely perfect weather to enjoy the scenery and get…
Breakfast this morning was porridge made with Manka (semolina). Sooooo much better than regular porridge, though this could be due to the unknown amount of sugar that was put in it before it was served to me 😉 We said goodbye to our hosts and left the village of Saty with greatly improved weather, calling…
After an early breakfast of fried eggs, bread, Baursak, jam, Hvorost (fried dough squares covered in honey and poppy seeds – very similar to the typical Kazakh sweet Chak Chak), and tea of course, we set off in the car to the first Kolsai Lake – altitude 1,818m. A half hour up a bad road…
I’m meeting up with the Madventures Silk Road tour in Almaty, Kazakhstan – but decided to arrive a few days early to explore the surroundings. A quick internet search revealed a wealth of hiking/nature opportunities around Kazakhstan’s old capital (the capital was moved to Astana in 1998), but the one that really caught my eye…
Continuing the journey… Day 6: Viconga (4,407m) – Punta Cuyoc (5,000m) – Huanacpatay (4,300m) Awoke to yet another gorgeous day, and after our usual awesome breakfast (everything tastes so good when you are camping, and Eliceo is genuinely a master with a 2-burner gas stove!) we started our climb to Punta Cuyoc – one…
A detailed first half of the Huayhuash Circuit trek, covering altitude, pacing, group size, logistics, and real conditions on one of Peru’s most demanding routes.
Much closer than Cerro Vizcachas, in fact just below the road where it passes below the 3.6m telescope, are the rock engravings, or petroglyphs, of La Silla. I visited these a couple of times when I first arrived at La Silla about 15 years ago, but haven’t been back since. Given I was wandering…
If you walk around the La Silla Observatory site at all, it’s hard to miss the road that starts just below the 2.2m telescope and heads out to Cerro Vizcachas. It was constructed back in the 1990s when the European Southern Observatory was conducting site testing at various locations to determine where they would ultimately build the Very…