Nota Bene

What with several business trips the world over since the spring, plus a few Kamchatka-2024 posts already sneaking onto these here blog pages of mine, you might think that my tales from the extreme-north side (our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk road expedition) could be over. How wrong you’d be!…

But even I admit that it’s been a while since my last Tiksi-post. Accordingly, quick rewind to where I left you months ago…

I left you with our having left Tiksi heading back in the direction of Yakutsk just before Tiksi was cut off completely for over a week due to a particularly intense arctic blizzard, and our realizing that we were waaaay ahead of schedule – as in: we’d be back in Yakutsk in half the time we’d planned; yes – a full 10 days earlier!

So what were we to do? Arrive back earlier and that was that? Of course not. No, instead, we decided to head back toward Ust-Nera and investigate much more closely Indigirskaya Truba – the Indigirka Tube. Well why not? After all, we’d plenty of time, and – more importantly – the naleds there were fully frozen, thus posing no danger…

// What’s the Indigirka Tube? Find out here.

So – back to Ust-Nera it was. Not that it felt much like our second time in as many weeks on this expedition, since the snowstorm had changed how the landscape looked so much. Here it is two weeks earlier ->

And here’s the exact (see the same road signs?!) same spot after the storm:

Onward – through the only-barely-cleared road – the Kolyma Highway…

Read on…

Now for a quick review of my recent business trip to Tianjin, China…

The first thing that came to mind when we reached downtown was: “Where are all the millions of Chinese folks that I’ve been told live here?” For the mentioned downtown sure seemed rather deserted empty for a city of 14 million – just as it did on my previous trips to the city (2012, 2019)…

The internet and my other senses tell me this city is far from an uninteresting place to live. People have called the banks of the river here home since ancient times, which makes sense given its climate. But then the Chinese emperors moved the capital north to Beijing (I still don’t understand why), which in Chinese literally means “Northern Capital” – 北 běi for north and 京 jīng for capital.

The migration of the imperial capital north and subsequent prospering of Tianjin happened (if we believe unverified sources) around 600 years ago (see here), and the city turned into a southern port for the capital, which I’ll show photos of a little later. This was the first time these river backwaters got lucky. Then for centuries Tianjin was a major transit point from the southern provinces to the capital, and from the capital and back.

Read on…

Unlike Colombia, the latest business trip to Chile turned out to be very rich in tourism: we climbed the Sollipulli volcano, got acquainted with some other sights of Araucania, and had a peek at Lake El Yeso. So far –  so good! But there’s also a “bonus track” – our visit to a ski resort near Santiago.

It’s real close, so off we popped. Not to ski; just to breathe in the mountain air and enjoy the views…

Read on…

There’s a good quantity of natural marvels of a high caliber dotted throughout Chile. Many I’ve already seen down the years and reported on on these here blog pages (for example, the Torres del Paine National Park and the Uspallata/Bermejo Pass/Cumbre Pass), but there are still some that I’ve yet to check out – including the Atacama Desert, and the marble caves at General Carrera Lake.

However, those two are quite far from Santiago – where we’d just finished the working portion of our trip. We needed something nearer. We asked the locals, and the answer came swiftly: the El Yeso reservoir and dam – but only in the summer when the water’s turquoise and the rocks are multicolored. Well that was no good to us here in August – the last month of winter in the southern hemisphere) ->

All the same – we went to have a look…

Now for some technical details…

Read on…

Sollipulli volcano – conquered. So what else is interesting around these parts (in the Araucanía Region)?

First, much of the local population is made up of indigenous South Americans – the Mapuche. And you can tell this simply by walking along the bank of a lake here. Different toponomies are also curiously interesting; for example, we passed a road sign with Das Dorf on it: clearly there are plenty of Germans here too…

But for me the main things here are the natural beauty and the meditative views. For example, there’s the Villarrica volcano (named the same as both the lake and town it towers over)…

Read on…

After Colombia, next up on our tour of Latin America – Chile. All as per: busy – meetings with partners we’ve been working with for many years and also large clients; new acquaintances, and a few university lectures – since educating specialists for careers in cybersecurity needs to be done as early as possible. University is a little too late; better to start at middle-school level (which we do, but that’s a whole other story). Still – better late than never…

Fortunately, between the working portion of the Colombia visit and that of the Chile visit – weekend! Time for some active tourism. So out came the map of Chile to work out what we could check out in two days. Not that it took long, for as soon as I saw them it was as good as decided: volcanoes!…

That photo is of the caldera (~crater) of the Sollipulli volcano (here). Impressive, eh?

Read on…

The time has finally come to lift the curtain on something I’ve only been mentioning in passing while writing these here Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition posts: the where-we-stayed situation up inside the Arctic Circle and in just-as-cold other areas of Yakutia…

In the smallest of nutshells, the situation is as follows:

• There are places to stay – but often they’re nothing like hotels or guesthouses
• A hot shower isn’t guaranteed
• A toilet is guaranteed – and it’s not always outside!
• The range of comfort levels couldn’t be broader – from dossing down on floors of town-halls or school sports halls, or sleeping in our vehicles (ugh), to the relative (for permafrosted locations) luxury of decent hotel in a city; like the Tygin Darkhan in Yakutsk ->

Tiny nutshell – done. The rest of this post: details…

Read on…

Today’s portion of Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition took us from Topolínoye on the winter road to the Kolyma Highway, and along the latter for a short stretch until our next overnight stay – in the village of Tyoply Klyuch (Warm Springs). The road was smooth and wide, the views – exceptional:

Read on…

It was farewell to Cartagena, then 700km south and hello to… Bogotá – Colombia’s capital!

The last time I was here was in 2010, and due to a full business schedule back then there was no time left for a spot of tourism in the city. This time the schedule was just as full, but for good reason: we’ve just opened our third Latin-American office (in addition to those in Mexico City and São Paulo – taking the number of our overseas representative offices to over 30 (I’ve actually lost count!). So I was here in the Colombian capital for the official opening…

Latin America hasn’t been too seriously affected by the ongoing geopolitical storm, meaning users here have freedom of choice – freedom to choose the very best cyber-protection there is (and not have to settle for inferior alternatives as recommended by governments based on anything but quality). Accordingly, our business in the region is coming along just nicely, and we’ve got some great plans for the future here.

At present we’ve 30 employees in Colombia (sales, support, marketing), so, for now, our office is rather modest:

Read on…

In my previous post, I left you with us in the middle of nowhere on the Yana Highway (on our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition)…

So why did we stop here? Because we wanted another look at a place we’d seen here back in 2021 – among the last few remains of what was once a Gulag forced-labor camp – a barrack surrounded by two barbed-wire fences, plus a watchtower. It’s a symbol of a dark chapter of history of the country – one that needs to be known and remembered. I think the place should be preserved and protected until one day it becomes a valuable artifact of history and a museum of the Gulag.

Read on…