Happy New Year!

31 December

Dear family, friends and followers!
Happy 2017 to you from the middle of the Indian Ocean. Wishing you all the best in the upcoming year!

We are currently anchored near Possession island of the Crozet Archipelago. We were planning to have a full day of island work, but the winds picked up in the morning. We now have a ship full of land scientists unable to land and do any work. Ocean teams are supposed to have a break.
My colleague Jenny is using this downtown to make measurements with a MICROCAT to calibrate our underway and CTD instruments. I am using this break to finish programming all my snow instruments. So all in all it is not as much of a break for us, more like a change of pace. Jenny said that she saw many penguins and sea lions while doing measurements from the small inflatable boat Zodiac. I hope I will get to go on Zodiac too!
Of course it would have been nice to go on an island, but strong winds and no special visa makes this trip double impossible. Oh.

New year celebrations are coming up and I am very much looking forward to them. Especially celebrating with a Russian crew - New Years is the biggest holiday in Russia, so I am excited. I think I will wear my fancy red dress for the occasion :).

Oceanography work

30 December

13 декабря 1959
Начались океанографические станции: остановки на несколько часов во время которых проводится отбор проб грунта с одна, батолятрия, измерения направления и скорости течений вертушками и элитом, сбор планктона и фитопланктона. Я добровольно помогаю Лёне Клишторину ловить эту тварь в такую длинную и узкую сетку и с изумлением разглядываю потом рачков, креветок и моллюсков, которые в неё попадают, чтобы стать жертвой Лёниных анализов.
Все чаще появляются в разводьях китовые фонтаны, а на льдинах лежат ленивейшие из существ, каких я встречал – крупные тюлени крабоеды. Их много и глупые они до ужаса. Не знают, что людей надо бояться!
Первые пингвины! Сначала плавающие, а потом и стоящие на льдинах как китайские болванчики. До чего это потешная публика! Когда они ходят, то напоминают маленьких ребятишек. Любопытные смертельно: как завидят что-нибудь – так и мчатся изо всех сил. А до чего ловкие в воде, когда играют или охотятся!

It was interesting for me to read my grandfather's journal and realize how little has changed since 1959. We are also going full speed with oceanography work on Tryoshnikov. We have done another 400m CTD cast today followed by a trace metal rosette cast. We have finally lunched bongo nets that  like the phytoplankton and zooplankton. We are interested in taxonomy - identifying species that have not been identified yet.

First attempt at dredging for bentic species during ACE near Marion Island.

The picture depicts the process that my grandfather assisted with back in 1959. It is called dredging - collecting bottom-dwelling (benthic) creatures with nets. You can see a small creature picked up by Christof, that he is showing to one of the journalists we have on board with us. Unlike my grandfather I did not participate in this activity as you see there are already plenty of people with tweezers picking up specimens from the net. I went one deck up to take the picture.

I am, however, making myself useful during each CTD cast - I collect salinity and delO18 samples from the oceanographic profile. This data will help us identify the depth of the mixed layer and determine sources of mixed layer freshening. So every CTD cast is a success from our project's standpoint - we get much needed data.

Reminiscing about warm weather

The first few days after leaving Cape Town, when the temperatures outside were still above +20C, my favorite activity before bed was to go outside on a deck and watch the Southern stars. I have to admit I know absolutely nothing about stars and constellations. But it was such a calming thing to do - get away from the craziness of fixing things, breathe the fresh ocean air and gaze at the stars. Little did I know - this was my grandfather's favorite activity too.
***
26 Ноября 1959 года
Атлантика.

Среди удовольствий морского путешествия – едва ли не самое большое – сон на палубе под открытым небом. Воздух ночью много свежее дневного, когда душно, несмотря на обилие воды кругом. А звезды южного полушария великолепны. Как жаль, что я совершенно не разбираюсь во всех этих Орионах, Наядах, Кассиопеях и Альфах Центавра!
Здесь есть ребята, которые очень толково путешествуют по небу. Мы полу презрительно обзываем их астрологами, а про себя завидуем…
Здорово спать на палубе. Свежий ветерок (пожалуй, даже излишне свежий: мы вошли в пассатную зону, где беспрерывно дуют влажные тёплые, очень приятные днём ветры. Ночью они весьма прохладные.)
Только вот палуба жестковата, особенно когда спина обгорела и лежать неловко.
Снов здесь вижу всегда кучу. Каждую ночь – дома. Правда много всякой чепухи снится, но много… И это уже хорошо!

***
I tried to take a picture of the sky, but it was too much for my iPhone to handle. So here is a picture of Akademik Tryoshnikov rolling through the Indian Ocean. It was taken on December 22, 2016, when the swell was reaching 8-10 m at times.

Leaving Marion Island

28 December
I am happy to report we safely recovered our people from Marion island and are currently underway. It was a really pretty and unusual to see land while at sea and we will enjoy views of many more islands.
Here's a picture from yesterday overlooking the helicopters parked on the helo deck and some interesting cloud formation in the background. Too bad we could not launch a radiosonde to get data from the vertical profile. We usually launch from the helo deck and cannot operate while the helicopters are out of the hangar.

The weather was much nicer today so we did a lot of different things. We did a 200m CTD cast, deployed nets to collects zooplankton, deployed nets that scrape the sea floor to collect benthic species, launched a radiosonde. We were gonna end the day with a 1km CTD cast followed by a 1km trace metal rosette cast, but things got a little off track. We lost communication with the normal rosette half way, so spent the rest of the evening trouble shooting. Trace metal rosette was successful in principal, although we did not collect many water samples. But all in all it was an extremely busy day for many science teams and for the ship's crew.

***
Aside from science life on the icebreaker goes on. We have been sailing for a week now and the days are starting to look more and more routine. The meal schedule keeps us on track :). This never changing meal schedule that my grandfather described in great detail.
Actually today was the first day I managed to attend all four meals - I usually skip breakfast or tea if I am working or sleeping still.
I am yet to properly visit a gym and a sauna. I only played one game of table tennis so far, where I lost miserably. Need to up my game a lot ;))))

And I only located the sauna today. We have limited freshwater supply on the ship, so sauna is not open daily, there is only two days a week I can go - on Saturdays for the expedition day and on Sundays for the women's day. This week I did not have time on either day.
I have been trying to keep on track with my yoga, but I did not find time to do a proper cardio workout at the gym. The only thing that I hope helps me - I ran around up and down the stairs all day long. My cabin is on "-1" deck and my atmospheric office is on the "4.5" deck. We launch balloons from the helo deck on the "2nd" deck and the CTD lab and the mess (cafeteria) are both on the main "0" deck. But I am not sure it is enough and I keep promising myself to go running or rowing every day. Yet it is again closer to midnight and I got up at 7AM and I am exhausted. So all I will most likely do today - take my water sample at midnight and go  to bed.

Marion island

27 December
We arrived at Marion and Prince Edward islands around dinner time on the 25th of December. The weather has been bad and the swell quite high.

First order of business was to map the sea floor to prepare for collecting benthic samples (dredging). The ship working all night, but the swell did not allow us to do a good quality mapping.
Early morning on December 26 the helicopters started dropping people off to the island. There were several teams that went to collect water and air samples, core lakes and study bird colonies. I have to say I was jealous that they get to go and see something different. The weather wasn't particularly good, but anchored at the Lee of the island the ship rocked only slightly (about 1m swell). Feels like a stable ground for now, we don't even have to secure things!

While the ship is stopped I decided to reorganize my atmospheric cargo and finally connect my snow particle instruments to the data loggers. It wasn't as easy of a task as I hoped, but i succeeded to connect the SPC. Big  thanks to the systems engineer Carlos, who helped me configure the connection. I am working on wenglors and programming the Campbell 1000 today, but in case we do start moving - i need to repack and secure  all my cargo first.
The wind is really strong today, so the helicopters are not flying at the moment. We have a few people stuck on Marion island, which they probably enjoy - they are saying the base is quite nice and people working at Marion are quite keen to see new faces. If we don't recover our passengers tonight we might stay at Marion longer. This puts us even more behind schedule...

Merry Christmas from the middle of the Indian Ocean

25 December

Merry Christmas to all my readers from all over the world. We had a busy science day planned for today, but we got delayed by weather. We are basically rocking really hard trying to get closer to Marion Islands to do work on and around the islands.
We do have Christmas celebration planned, our admins put up a tree in the mess and told us to wear nice clothes for dinner. We will exchanging small gifts and hopefully relaxing a bit.


We are almost at Marion Island now.

Cheers and merry Christmas to all.

Masha

What a busy day I had

24 December

Today was a very busy day for me. I am happy to report I actually worked on a lot of science tasks for my own project, rather than helping everyone else. Actually  that is not true, I managed to help quite a lot of other people in the process, but I tried to focus on my own stuff.
***
We finally got our temporary inline water supply line ready and split up between all the science groups. Hooray to me explaining to the crew what we need and big thanks to the crew for making it happen. And finally we cleaned up the Aqualine Ferrybox instruments enough to connect it back to the inline water. It took us a few hours to put the instruments back together and figure out the sharing of the water between several instruments from other projects that are now connected to the system. I can't call it a complete success as we haven't read the data off it yet, but we did successfully logged into the system.
***
Huge thanks to Anastasia and Franzisca, two students who put enormous amount of work trying to figure out this instrument during Leg0 from Bremerhaven to Cape Town. Unfortunately the data this instrument collected before was awful - rusty pipes on the ship made it impossible to measure anything meaningful. Nastya and Franzi took the instrument apart to clean the parts and the ship's crew build a completely new temporary inline water system for us to use - a new stainless steel pump for water intake and a temporary PVC hose supplying water from the bottom of the ship to our instruments in the lab. The system looks pathetic, we basically have a hose running through a corridor, but it works. Also, the intake location is at 4.5 m under water during calm seas, so during the 6-8m (and higher) swell it gets air bubbles and the pump dries out. We figured out a system of scheduled "shifts" to look after the pump to make sure we don't dry it and break this delicate system altogether.
I want to give big thanks to the crew who helped us build this system. It is by far not ideal, but it was the best solution we could come up with given the circumstances. We have quite a few instruments hooked up to it now, the Aqualine Ferrybox, the one my project is the most concerned with was the last one to come live.
***
I am also happy to report that the atmospheric group (my Swiss colleagues) Iris and Pascal successfully launched a radiosonde without my help. This is a big relief for me, as they had some language/communication issues with the bridge during leg0. I basically took over their communication to the bridge for the first couple of days and ensured that the bridge is ok with us performing the launches periodically. As we are not planning to do a UTC-oriented launches, but rather event-driven launches we needed the bridge to be ok with us launching balloons without an advanced warning. We see interesting weather - we launch a radiosonde. I am happy to say they do not need me anymore, yahoo!
***
I have also spent quite a lot of time talking to the chief engineer coming up with a creative solution for the pump needed for another three projects on board.
I also spent quite a lot of time translating for another group, who ran out of the cooling fluid in their compressor. The crew hopefully will be able to fix that problem during the stop at Marion islands.
I have noticed that some of my colleagues are starting to take my volunteer help for granted. And I have to say I don't appreciate being taken for granted especially for all this extra work I have been doing for other people. Need to think about how to approach this yet. I am happy to help when I do have time, but I have to work on my own project. And it would be nice to get an acknowledgement for going out of my way and helping all this people. Maybe I should suggest they all make a coauthor on their publications :)
***
I wanted to write more about non-science things, but this post it getting too long as it is. Happy Christmas Eve to all my readers all over the world. I do hope I will get a little break tomorrw to celebrate and relax. But then again, I have been hoping for that since Cape Town :).
*****
UPDATE:
I wrote the original draft of this post last night and I am happy to report that my colleague Jenny made a lot of progress today reading the data off the Aqualine Ferrybox. It looks fairly reasonable, we are yet to do tests on how stable it is. Kudos to Jenny!

Yoga on the icebreaker

Finding time to practice yoga again is the best thing I could have done for myself during this cruise (and overall in life). This is probably one thing that kept me sane during last week, when there was a a lot of internal and external stress on my shoulders. Big thanks to my teacher, Volga, who designed a manageable program for me. I try to follow this program every morning - to start off my day, set a positive intonation, wake up all my muscles and go on.

I have been practicing over the last few days over the 6-8 m swell. I have to find the most comfortable position, usually perpendicular to the rocking motion. This means that I need to align myself along or across the cabin, depending on the direction of the swell in relation to the ship's course. It is not hard to figure out, just something one never things about on steady land surfaces. I wonder how many other people ever practiced yoga in such high swell.

Inside our cabin. The door to the right leads to our private toilet and shower. I was sitting on the couch (!) As I took this picture. There are two (!) windows behind me.

Luckily, I have a really nice cabin, I am sharing with my friend and colleague Jenny. We have a decent amount of closet space and a nice set up to make it feel home-y: a coffee machine, a kettle, water filter to make ship's water drinkable. We bought a decent amount of fresh fruits and vegetables in Cape Town - so oversleeping breakfast or staying up late at night is a risk we can afford to take :). Jenny also bought us both nice pillows as a Christmas present, so we have been enjoying luxury bedding as well. Actually a nice pillow sound about right at this time of the night. We have another rocky day ahead of us.

Till later,
Masha

December 22, 2016, second day at sea

Hello,

Happy birthday to my friend Leshka, who almost forgave me for missing his birthday this year. I did have to use my circumantarctic journey as an excuse. Leshka, I hope you celebrated your birthday in style, even though I am not making crepes (bliny) for the party this year. Coincidentally we had crepes with cottage cheese for tea tonight. I guess the kitchen wanted me to celebrate your birthday the usual way :).

It has been going great. We are still rocking quite heavily, the swell today reached up to 16 m according to the ship’s sensors. I am happy to report that I am feeling great and apart from occasionally having to catch flying objects I do not notice the leaning of the boat much. What a difference between how I felt yesterday and how I feel today.

Since the swell was that high we did not do a CTD cast today - the main deck is rather high from the freeboard and the swell makes it impossible to safely lower the rosette into the water and take it out. We did, however, launched a radiosonde at about 4pm ship time (1pm UTC). We used the newly loaned balloon launcher station from Academik Fedorov and we were still figuring it out. The wind was quite high too. But I am happy to report it was a successful launch. Amazing how many people gathered to watch us launching the radiosonde - I guess it is always exciting to watch other people work. Plus looking at a balloon disappearing in the sky is rather exciting as well.

Members of ACE expedition enjoying warm weather on the deck. The swell just makes it more fun.

Other than that I kept myself busy solving minor and major issues different science teams have. I met most of senior crew members already and my people’s skills come very handy. I decided I will not be shy about it either, so I am telling it like it is. 

***

Coming back to my grandfather’s journals I wanted to say how far we have come with technology. I am able to write this blog and although I do not get any feedback from it, I am happy to at least know that my friends and family can read about my adventures in near-real time. At the same time I noticed how similar my feelings are to my grandfather’s. Here’s a quote from his journal:

18 ноября

Спать не хочется, я и так ночью плохо сплю, отоспался в первые дни рейса. Все лежу, вспоминаю дом, ребят, Москву. Как-то сейчас там? Помнят ли меня, или заботы совсем заслонили…

Радиограммами решил не допекать, думаю, что пока будет достаточно раз в пять – шесть дней. А то радиоузлу слишком большая нагрузка, да и отвечать мне хлопотно и накладно. Почему-то уверен, что все будет благополучно и дома и, Бог даст, у меня. Главное, чтобы они там не волновались и не обращались бы в разные бесполезные органы. 

and another one:

3 декабря:

Сильно я был раздосадован тем, что из дома не было телеграммы. Я отлично знаю, что волнение неуместно и напрасно, но уж как-то настроился раз в неделю давать знать о себе домой и получать сведения оттуда. Ведь это теперь довольно далеко!

Четыре дня я не находил себе места на этом корабле, на третий (это было 2 декабря) дал телеграммы домой и Саше и лишь сегодня получил сразу два ответа. Конечно дома все в порядке.

I called several people yesterday from the Iridium phone our expedition has available. Iridium actually decided to sponsor this expedition (big thanks to them) and hence we have the phone available for us to call our loved ones. It is usually busy during the day, but at night one can use it easily. So I called a few people and nobody picked up. I ended up leaving a few rather disappointed messages. “I am calling from the middle of nowhere and you are not picking up!” kinda messages. Anyhow. I am so lucky to have internet, my “blog helpers” and everything come together. I shouldn’t complain ;)

Thanks for reading,

Masha

December 21, 2016

We finally left Cape Town just a little short of midnight today, so officially marked our 24 hour at sea point.
It has been rather rocky ever since we left, becoming worse throughout the day. I will not lie to you, I felt sick most of the day. I think it was mainly due to my general exhaustion of the last week of port call. I needed that break honestly.
Once again both the crew and my fellow colleagues have been wonderful, helping me out with the tasks I needed to complete today and were not physically able to do. What would I have done without them? Alas, I have been helping out everyone a lot too. What a great group of people and I am lucky to be a part of it.

Science wise we did manage to do a test CTD cast today at 2 PM ship time (12 PM UTC). We only went to 200m, it was rather dangerous and rocky. The swell was up to 8 m when we pulled the rosette up - the crew thought that all scientists are a little crazy :).

One thing that I absolutely needed to get up for today was a boat drill. Happy to inform all of you that I "survived", emergency gear is ok and aside from a terrible smell inside the rescue boats they are ok, equipped with water, dry rations, satellite emergency finders etc.

The boat drill and the CTD cast (where I have to admit I was mainly observing) wiped me out and I went back to bed. I did try to help out with translating different minor and not so minor issues on the way, but I decided that my own personal wellbeing should come first. So I had the best nap before dinner and woke up feeling much better.

The weather is predicted to get worse tomorrow, so we are not doing another cast. I am planning to sleep it off and get more adjusted to the rocky seas cause there is more to come. Just to give my observant readers a point of reference - my cabin is one deck below the main deck - the row of windows in the orange: section 

 This is a picture of Tryoshnikov docked in Cape Town for your reference of how high the swell is. 

So today we had water splashing into our cabin window pretty much throughout all day. I wonder what "tomorrow will be worse" mean for our veto out of the window. I mean it changes, sometimes it water,and sometimes it is all clouds. Cool stuff when you are not sick because of it :).

We are also changing clock during the night tomorrow - we will go one hour ahead. Oh, and internet is very limited, so I no pictures so far. It might get a little better or it might get worse, hard to predict...
Till later,
Masha

P.S. That’s how the storm looked before midnight: the snapshot from Global winds map :

Off to sea

After a rather long and much needed stop at customs we are off to sea. Local time is 23:45 and we started rocking about 15 minutes ago. Luckily just as I secured everything in my cabin after securing all my cargo. Actually the crew helped me with cargo so much! I can't even describe how grateful I am.
I am losing signal, so good bye South Africa, good bye online friends.
Oh, one more thing - CBS news called me on board for an interview today. So look for it on their website, it should come out in a few days.
Off to bed, the light rocking of the ship is so calming...

Good night and till later,
Masha

South African food

Hello!

I have been meaning to sit down and write up my impressions of Cape Town, but the ship had kept me super busy. I managed to get two travel days - a visit to the Table Mountain and Botanical Gardens during my first day here and a drive to Cape of Good Hope on the second. I covered those days already in terms of sights visited. Today I will talk a little about food.

The only touristy thing that I managed to do after the work on the ship started was visit a couple of very touristy restaurants at the Waterfront. I was mainly interested in local dishes.

This dish is called bobotie, it is from Cape Malay. There is minced beef in curry that is covered with egg-based topping and baked. Served with rice and a couple of sweet sauces to mellow the spicy beef taste. I really enjoyed it.

This is a carpaccio (raw meat) dish of exotic animals: ostrich, crocodile and springbok. I liked crocodile the best.

I am going to miss this variety of exotic food at hand, summer fruits and the craziness of people shopping for Christmas gifts at the mall...

***

We are scheduled to leave port tomorrow, our meal schedule and structure is identical to what my grandfather journaled about in 1959; I mean the timings of all meals are exactly the same:

1959

Судовые порядки строги и целесообразны. 

Подъем в 07:00 по-местному (судовому) времени. 

С 7:30 до 8:30 - завтрак (это обычно вволю свежего чудесного хлеба с маслом и чем-либо ещё вроде сыра или колбасы и сколько хочешь сладкого чая или кофе).

Обед с 11:30 до 12:30. Пища очень вкусная и сытная.  Первое - от пуза, второе – мясное или рыбное обязательно, третье – фрукты.

В 15:30 до 16 30 – чай, опять же с обилием хлеба с маслом.

А в 19:30 – 20:30 уже ужин. Это по существу второй обед из трёх блюд и опять сколько хочешь супа или щей.

2016-2017

This is the planned timing of meals for the ACE expedition:

Breakfast: 7:30 – 8:30; Lunch: 11:30 – 12:30; Tea: 15:30-16:30; Dinner 19:30 – 20:30 

Hot water, tea, instant coffee, sweets will be provided around the clock in the room outside the mess. 

Some things just never change I guess ;)

The food is plentiful, but not exotic and according to my grandfather's journal it gets too repetitive too soon. The quote above was made early on, Vitaly's later comments referred to being rather bored with food and wishing for something different...

I am going to miss that crocodile meat I tried at Cape Town Waterfront!

A short update while still in port

Hello, everyone.

I haven't updated for a while, cause I was super busy trying to get ready. It is not easy in so many ways. I am also spreading myself way too thin trying to organize my own program while helping out my colleagues.

The ship was never meant to have a large science group like ours and even the small amounts of space they have have not been properly maintained. Science instruments the ship nominally has are mostly in a very bad condition. Again, cause there is nobody to take care of it and somehow when people do use them they don't clean up after themselves, don't drain salty water off to prevent rusting and so on. 

The crew for the most part are extremely accommodating, I have a lot of THANK YOUs to give and need to seriously stock up on thank you bottles and thank you cigarette packs ;). But unfortunately sometimes there is a limit on what they can do... The ship will not magically become bigger and the hold is not going to magically get an inside door.

The best word to describe the whole expedition is "opportunistic". I have to say this word worries me. It might result in good science, but most likely it will result in a lot of lost opportunities. Something we could have done along the way, but did not have enough preparation/planning to make it happen. Normally such cruises have a few years to prepare, this one was put together under an extremely tight schedule. Oh well...

NOTE TO MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY: Please don't be worried about safety, I am talking about lost science opportunities. We will be keeping as safe as we can in the Southern Ocean and I do have trust in the crew/operations people.

Another point I wanted to make is a language/cultural barrier. I tried to be really helpful to many-many people, but I am just one and somehow a lot of times I'm getting ignored by some important people, who should have listened. One thing I'm trying to explain over and over again is a cultural difference. In Russian culture we all grew up to answer NO to a question we don't quite understand/know how to answer. So my fellow colleagues and upper management have been getting a lot of unreasonable NOs. I can see how frustrating it can be, I just wish some of them would have taken my advise earlier. Knowing how to ask "but why" is a skill, which I have been offering to share for a few months now. However, I am a single person running my own science project, I can not solve too many issues at once. I could have solved a lot more early on. Another oh well... 

What I am trying to say I guess is this. On a Russian ship sometimes NO does mean NO, but sometimes NO can be negotiated to a YES under specific conditions. We can not risk the safety of people, but we are willingly going to the Southern Ocean to do science, so might as well try to negotiate getting the largest return possible. I am working really hard to make it happen.

On that note, I have to stop, cause we are leaving tomorrow and there's too many things to do.

Thanks for reading!
Masha

Akademik Tryoshnikov in Cape Town

Meanwhile Akademik Tryoshnikov made it to South Africa. This photo was taken by someone on the ship as they were approaching Cape Town:

The ship arrived early morning on December 15, 2016 and by lunchtime they cleared customs and docked at the premium spot at the Waterfront. Just a short walking distance to the touristy bit of Victoria Wharf, cafes, restaurants and hotels.

Swiss Polar Institute put up an educational/promotional display at the Waterfront, where people can learn about our upcoming expedition. There is even ski-doo on display - a rather funny looking machine in the middle of sunny summer wharf filled with tourists.

 Swiss shipping containers and a ski-doo. 

I had to pose on a ski-doo wearing a dress!

I went back to the Swiss house again today and ended up talking to tourists about the crazy work that I do. It was actually quite nice to talk to people, to answer questions about my work and just random questions about Antarctica. And since I am being all philosophical here I want to make an observation. It is amazing how much listening one needs to do in order to answer a question. Random questions asked by people usually had some stories, (mis)conceptions, personal interests and agendas behind them - unraveling them is extremely important before answering a question that  was asked.

Posing near the SPI container after answering questions.

After that we walked to the ship and worked till the sun set. 

Cape of Good Hope

It is hard to find a more poetic name for a geographical location. I remember learning about it in high school geography classes and thinking that it would be so wonderful to go visit. Little did I know that it would be possible.

The tip of the peninsula is located about 65 km south of Cape Town, but it took me about 4 hours to drive. The road goes through many touristy towns with really pretty beaches. I took many recommendations from local friends on where to stop and ended up stopping way too many times.

African penguins

The eastern side of the Cape peninsula is washed by the Indian ocean and even though it is not "warm" by usual standards, it is a couple of degrees warmer than the Atlantic (western) side.  So I went for a swim in so-called tidal pools:

And then again with the penguins.

CO-EXIST: Simon's town penguin colony and public beach in one panorama shot.

Finally I got to the Table Mountain National Park. The drive up to the tip of the peninsula was really pretty. Like other national parks around the world it is now equipped with plagues outlining the significance of these particular points.

Obligatory picture with the geographical coordinates sign.

Once you get to the end of the road you can hike up to the highest point overlooking the tip of the peninsula.

But the most magnificent view is looking back at the Cape of Good hope. Not surprisingly - this is the view that impressed my grandfather the most as well:

Cape of Good Hope and Dias beach as seen from Cape Point. 

December 1959 and December 2016.

First impressions of Cape Town now and then

My grandfather's journal entry about Cape Town is anticlimactic. This was the first country he ever visited outside the USSR and one would imagine that he was overwhelmed. Plus, South Africa was in the midst of apartheid, it would have been a very different experience to visit it back then. Instead of listing his impressions or feelings, Vitaly admits being overwhelmed. I am not going to translate it word by word, but basically it sums up to my grandfather’s frustration with their ship’s “political leader (aka KGB officer)” who failed to send letters home. 

13 декабря 1959 года

Южный Ледовитый океан

Район 55 градусов южной широты

С большим опозданием и без всякого энтузиазма возвращаюсь я к этой тетради, в которую не заглядывал уже больше недели.

Посетили Кейптаун. Впечатлений масса… О них можно было бы писать десятки страниц, они многогранны и разнообразны, имеют и положительные и (ещё больше) отрицательные стороны словом первые впечатления от заграницы, да ещё такой кондовой капиталистической – оглушает. Другим словом я затрудняюсь определить этот комплекс впечатлений. Запомнилось масса деталей, куча интересных (по крайней мере на мой взгляд) подробностей как о городе и его окрестностях, которые мы видели при подъезде на мыс Доброй Надежды через весь полуостров, так и о населяющих город людях, их одежде, привычках, некоторых мыслях… Конечно все это (или часть хотя бы) надо было бы обязательно записать, потому что детали забудутся, а общее впечатление может исказиться. Первое впечатление всегда самое полное и интересное, что больше не повторится.

И все же не могу, не поднимается перо все это описать. Испорчено впечатление, отравлено настроение, подорвано доверие, испорченные сложившиеся хорошие отношения между людьми. А всё из-за одного мерзавца, испортившего настроение полутораста человекам из экспедиции и экипажа судна, доставившего беспокойство им и их близким.

A SIDE NOTE FROM  MASHA IN 2016:

Communicating with family and friends from outside of the USSR was extremely difficult. All letters were censored and nobody was allowed to send letters directly, only "official diplomatic channels" were used. The USSR had no diplomatic relationship with South Africa back in 1959, so my grandfather's letters had no embassy to go through. The "political leader/KGB officer" was supposed to talk to the Czechoslovakian embassy and have them mail the letters back to Moscow, but somehow this did not happen in December of 1959. Considering that Vitaly could only send letters home from ports (i.e. once in a few months if he was lucky), one can understand his frustration and lack of enthusiasm to continue writing in his journal, which he considered a "very long letter to family and friends".

***

This frustration got me thinking about the luxury of social media nowadays. The first thing I did in South Africa was obtain a sim-card with an extensive data plan (BIG THANK YOU TO MY FRIENDS! Sim-cards are not so easy to obtain for a foreigner in South Africa), which allows me to keep in touch with my family and friends all over the world. I send them pictures and notes about things I see, and it makes my experiences traveling around Cape Town so much more meaningful. And this is exactly what my grandfather was lacking. I feel so lucky! 

***
So not to leave this post similarly anticlimactic, I will write about some of my first impressions of Cape Town below. 

Flying into Cape Town I was completely smitten by Table Mountain: 

View of Cape Town and the gorgeous Table Mountain from my airplane window

Table mountain is everywhere:

My first trip to the beach with my new south african friends. 
Sunset beach provides great views of Table Mountain. The water was unexpectedly cold, reminded me of swimming in San Francisco bay without a wet suit. I basically ran in and ran out, just enough to mess up my hair ;).

So since Table Mountain was calling me from everywhere, naturally I had to go on top of it and look around:

This is the first view you see as you get off the cable car - featuring Lion's Head, Signal hill and parts of Cape Town city. The island you see off the bay is called Robben island the most infamous political prison in South Africa. This is where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. The prison is now a museum.

This picture is taken looking just the west of the previous view. There are multiple hiking paths coming to the top of Table Mountain, something to keep in mind for the time my knee completely heals up. Devil's peak is the name of the neighboring mountain currently in the clouds - hiking Devil's peak has been the top one hiking recommendation from many friends. Next time!

This is a view due west from the top of Table Mountain, featuring 

Camps Bay suburb and beach - a very nice place by the looks of it.

 Looking south on a cloud-free day one can see the tip of the peninsula - Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. It is somewhat obscured by clouds in my picture. That area is a national park, featuring magnificent views and many hiking trails of its own.

Table Mountain is dissected in the middle by a narrow canyon, this is where one the hiking trails, Patteklip Gorge comes up. 

I don't know the name of this flower, but it looked like a real trooper surviving high winds atop Table Mountain. 

There is a lot a lot more to describe and to see in Cape Town besides Table Mountain, but this post is getting too long as it is. I will write up a story about a drive to the Cape of Good Hope, but for now let me just show you a panoramic view from the top. Breathtaking:

Panoramic view from atop Table mountain overlooking Cape Town.

Thanks for reading!
Masha