Back from antarctica

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Well made it back from Antarctica, what a great trip. I highly recommend quark exonerations to anyone interested in such a trip.

It’s a very personal experience as there are under a hundred passengers on the boat, and a lot of time is spent at sea, as such theres lots of time to get to know each other.

We left from Ushuaia, Argentina (the “end of the world”) on the 31st of January and returned on the 15th of feb. It took a little over 3 full days at sea to cross the drake and make it to the arctic circle which we crossed on the morning of the 5th day of the trip.

We were on an old Russian research boat left over from the soviet era. The ships crew were Russian and did an excellent job with everything.

I’ll post some photos and such in the near future, I’ve fallen way behind for a multitude of reasons including that im out of hard drive space on this machine at the moment and am only connected to the Internet via 3G, which. Ames uploading gigs of photos at once implausible

Monte Video, Uruguay

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I took the BoquBus ferry from Buenos Ares to Monte Video yesterday to check out this city.  Its a very small city, and this time of year many of the people who reside here aren’t present this time of year (i guess like half of them are on vacation). The beach is beautiful, but has zero night life, and is kinda sketchy in general.

 

Today i’m going to head to colonia.

 

Christmas in Madrid

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So the family has finally finished moving to Madrid, just in the nick of time for christmas.

Spain is a very catholic country and as such seriously celebrates christmas, but in a very different way than austria.

From: http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/spanish-festivals/christmas-in-spain.htm

24th December - Christmas Eve is called Nochebuena in Spanish (Goodnight) and it is the most important family gathering of the year. In the evening people often meet early for a few drinks with friends then return home to enjoy a meal with the family. Most bars and restaurants close in the evening. Prawn starters followed by roast lamb would be a typical meal rounded off with a typically Christmas sweet called turrón which is a nougat made of toasted sweet almonds. Another typical festive sweet is called Polvorones which is made from almonds, flour and sugar. Cava, Catalan champagne, would be the chosen drink for the Christmas toast though plenty fine Spanish wines will also be consumed with the meal.

 

In Plaza Colon they setup 20′ tall speakers and blasted a Choir for hours. One could hear the music from around a kilometer away.

 

 

 

iPhone4S Trial

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So i’ve been trying out the iPhone4S from sprint for the past couple of weeks. Within the USA it was extremely slow on Sprint’s network, though since i’ve gotten back to Europe this hasn’t been an issue (even though I’m still using a Sprint SIM Card).

The phone itself is almost identical in performance, look, and feel, to the iPhone4. The Camera is a little better, but so far as it being dual processor, I don’t know that its any faster nor uses any less power than the prior model.

iCloud on the other hand is a mess. The email doesn’t push through imediately (which is strange seeing as my Microsoft Exchange Servers have no problem pushing instantly to the Apple device). So hopefully they will work on that some.

I haven’t yet found any use for Siri, but once I have played around with it a bit more, i’ll report back on that.

Using personal hotpot is very finicky and doesn’t work well at all. I can’t seem to get it to stay connected nor go very fast. After a little research it looks like I may have to completely reformat and re-setup my phone to prevent any OS Upgrade fragments. However I don’t want to do this while i’m abroad incase it is not possible to re-activate while overseas (i don’t know if it will work when i’m not on sprint’s towers).

I also managed to lose the micro-sim card that came with the iphone, the one that’s needed when i’m in the USA (i’m not sure if it will function with no sim card in it at all).

 

 

 

Canary Islands

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Just arrived at LPA, the main airport of the Canary Islands, on Gran Canary.

Though it is currently winter time here, it is still nice and warm, in the 60′s-80′s during the day.

Evidently due to a volcano errupting nearby, there may soon be an 8th island joining with the 7 other islands that make up the Canary Islands.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112434010/volcanic-activity-could-spawn-new-canary-island

Tomorrow or the next day I plan to take the ferry from Gran Canary (the island i’m currently on) over to Tenerife (the island everyone says I should stay on).

 

Ashanti Lodge – Green Point

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I’ve been staying in the Ashanti Lodge in green point for a few days now, and find it quiet but very nice. The entire place is very clean, staff extremely friendly and helpful, and there are a few other guests around as well.

Do note that this is a very small lodge, it is not nearly as large as the Ashanti Gardens, which much bigger.

The location is good though, very close to the beach as well as the “Waterfront” shopping area.

 

There is no bar nor smoking room at this hostel.