A’s Travel Musings

As I mentioned previously the two things that really stood out about Antarctica were landscapes and wildlife. The animals are all water based, or at least water feeders as there isn’t any real food source on land. On land there are birds and the occasional seal, but they all mainly feed on aquatic food sources with the exceptions of some of the skua birds that eat other birds and eggs. The draw for most people are of course the penguins.

These cute, rotund, waddlers tug at your heart like uncoordinated comedy players. Incredibly svelte in the water, they can be hilariously clumsy on land as they stumble and often fall even on relatively flat terrain. They move pretty quickly though using their spread-footed waddle and the occasional belly slide. The latter isn’t just going downhill either as we witnessed a few penguins push themselves up slight grades on their stomachs using their wings as propulsion as shown in this photo.

We visited during the nesting season, so the penguin females spent almost all their time sitting on the nests usually with a single egg. The males would tend to their mates and spent a lot time “improving” the nests by finding pebbles and rocks and depositing them next to their partners for incorporation into the nest. Of course there is only a finite supply of such rocks and so most of the rocks end up just being stolen from one nest and put onto another. This routine seemed to be endless and luckily the penguin males appeared to never tire of the activity.

Some of our favorite penguin photos are posted here. Click on any photo to see it in a larger size and feel free to leave comments. I hope you enjoy them.

There were two things that really stood out about Antarctica - landscapes and wildlife. Of course there really isn’t anything else there as there are no land plants of which to speak. What’s impressive about the landscapes is the stark beauty, the sheer vastness and the utter lack of noticeable human impact. I’ve posted about 40 of my favorite Antarctic landscape photos in this album. They give you a sense of what I experienced, but you can only perceive a portion through them.

The cold temperatures and complete lack of sound other than an occasional penguin or the conversation of other tourists add a tremendous amount to the overall experience. Words and photos can’t sufficiently convey those feelings, but as you look through the photo album hopefully try and imagine them and you might just get some small sense of what it is really like to be there. As with my other albums please rate the photos or add comments (select “Add Comment” in the drop down box near the bottom).

Today while cruising in the Antarctica we had the chance to see an incredible “class” play out in the animal kingdom. A pod of 5 orcas (killer whales) had come across a crabeater seal lying on a small iceberg and the whales decided to make a training class to teach the 2 juveniles in the pod a specific method of seal hunting. In this method, 3 of the whales would swim in parallel formation toward the iceberg just under the surface of the water, causing a wave to form in front of them. Then just before hitting the iceberg the whales would dive under it and the wave would crash into and over the iceberg, hitting the seal with tremendous force. This would often wash the seal off the iceberg and into the water where presumably it could be caught and eaten.

For an hour we watched the orcas practice swimming in formation and slamming the seal with their wave.  The “wave group” always consisted of 3 whales, likely 2 adults and the older juvenile, but it wasn’t clear. The young baby never participated in the charges and seemed to just wander around as all this was happening.

It was an amazing display of nature at its best and something that I’ll never forget. I took well over a hundred photos and even the few best don’t convey the drama and excitement of the real experience. You can see a few selected highlight pictures here. Feel free to rate the photos or add comments (select “Add Comment” in the drop down box near the bottom).

The BBC is reporting in this story that foreign tourists are being targeted for a scam in the Bangkok airport. In short, tourists are accused of shoplifting and then taken away by security to meet with police. An interpreter is eventually provided who tells the tourist that to be released there are fees and bail money. Once the cash is paid over (they even help take you to an ATM or wire office) the tourist is released.

I’ve got to imagine that with the publicity the Thai government or even the duty free shop owner will step in to try and curb this. Although corruption occurs in many countries and Thailand is no stranger to it, the authorities also recognize the importance of foreign tourism. Letting shopkeepers or the infamous Thai sex workers fleece some money from tourists in unfair transactions is caveat emptor, but developing a reputation for allowing organized extortion is completely different. King Power, the duty free owner, likely will also step in to stop this since this will severely impact their business and their business is well into the hundreds of millions of dollars per year. In the meantime, be forewarned and remember that if you get arrested in a foreign country for any reason, you should always try and contact your embassy for advice.

American Airlines AAdvantage program has announced new flex awards which allow you to redeem one-way and open-jaw awards as well as awards that use a different class of service in each direction. This is a significant change should make redeeming awards a bit easier. It isn’t clear of American did this to increase paid traffic on their flights with people seeking to earn miles for rewards that are easier to claim, or as a means to reduce the huge overhang they have of unredeemed miles. With many flights flying with low load factors, it might be a big benefit at nearly no cost for American to remove some of those outstanding miles. Either way this should be a benefit to AAdvantage members.

In a related change, American also updated their online booking tool with many new features. In addition to supporting the new flexible awards, you can use the at-a-glance calendar to select different award types (MileSAAver or AAnytime) or classes of service for each portion of your trip. You can see a demo of the new tool here.