Ice ice baby

I was having dinner with my traveling companions, Elsa and another little guy. We were discussing what we were going to do next day. There were three options: seabird watching on Ingolfshofdi, glacier walking on Skaftafell National Park, or snowmobiling on the Vatnajokull ice cap. The only option to which we all agreed was bird watching, but in order to do that we had to catch a ride from a tractor-pulled haywagon because Ingolfshofdi is a promontory rising in the middle of a shallow, tidal lagoon through which there is no car access. And we had to be in the correct spot at midday or else we would miss our ride. The people in Iceland, as it turns out, do respect schedules. We arrived two minutes after the hour, only to see the tractor moving away, taking other tourists to see and photograph the puffins, skuas, arctic terns, and other seabirds. We had no other option but to go to plan B: a walking tour in the ice of one of the glaciers in Skaftafell.

Skaftafell National Park is the biggest national park in Europe. It encompasses Vatnajokull Ice Cap, which is the third largest mass of ice in the surface of the Earth (right after Antarctica and Greenland). From this huge mass, several rivers of ice have made their move, forming the glaciers we can see from the road that leads to the park. It was in one of these tongues of ice that we would be spending the next three hours, taking a little stroll.

Ice: now there's a subject everyone's been talking about for the last months. Ever since Al Gore started his campaign against global warming, the melting of the ice in the polar regions of the Earth, and the receding of glaciers have been subjects for conversations all over the world. I have watched the movie "An Inconvenient Truth", and I have often wondered about the climate changes I've been feeling in my own country and whether it's all related. One thing seemed certain: if this all has to do with the earth getting warmer and ice melting, there probably would not be a better place to learn about it than Iceland.

Having learned our lesson from a couple of hours before, this time we arrived at the location on time (a few minutes earlier, actually). As our guide, Bob, was fitting the crampons to our boots, I thought I detected an australian accent. As it turned out, he was from New Zealand, and not too happy about having his accent mistaken for australian. He had worked for a long time as a guide in Fox Glacier in his home country and that was to be his first day on this season in Iceland (he'd been there already in the previous year). Apart from me and the other little guy (Elsa didn't want to go), our group was two austrian girls, their welsh friend, and an italian couple. Bob gave us a ride to the base of Svinafellsjokull glacier on his red land rover, and from there we walked a few minutes through rock until we finally got to the ice.

At first, walking with crampons seemed a bit awkward. Instead of walking normally, I had to stomp my feet, so I could get a good grip on the ice. After a while I got used to it, and was able to stop thinking about how to walk and start enjoying the experience. And what an experience! All I could see was ice. In front of me, behind, to the sides. In some places it was a dirty gray, in other places it was a beautiful sparkling white. We knew that there were dangerous crevasses nearby and occasionally Bob would tell us that in a certain spot we should not get too close to the left or the right side because it was a huge drop. Trying not to think about it too much, I just followed his instructions and enjoyed the landscape.

During the walk, Bob was giving us the normal talk about Glaciers, how they are formed, and the history about this particular one. Like many in the world (but not all), Svinafellsjokull is receding. Some centuries ago it joined with his neighbor Skaftafellsjokull ("Jokull" being the icelandic word for glacier) near what is now the road to the park. At that time, when farmers wanted to take their sheep to the pastures in the mountains that border the glacier, they had to carry the sheep one by one through the glacier in the beginning of summer and do the same thing to fetch them before winter came. Eventually he came to the bit about global warming. It seems that the next sign of global warming will be that Iceland will actually get colder. Now this was something I wasn't expecting to hear, but after the explanation, it made sense. What stops Iceland from getting colder right now is the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean. If the Earth is warming and the ice in the polar regions melts into the ocean, it will disrupt the Gulf Stream, thus causing the temperature in the island to drop.

After a few hours walking we had to come back. Conversation with Bob changed from the subject of climate change issues, to lighter subjects like the rugby world cup and how big would the score be in the game between the portuguese and the all-blacks. We took off our crampons, got back in the red land rover, and headed back to the National Park. After we left, I kept daydreaming about trekking in other glaciers like the Baltoro Glacier in the Himalayas or Perito Moreno in Patagonia. I don't know if I will ever be able to do something like that in my lifetime, but I could not help but think about what we are doing to the planet, and that maybe in the future there will be no more glaciers for our grandchildren to walk on.

Undefeated in Ireland

2004 was a special year in Portugal, particularly in the summer during the European football championship which was hosted in the country. June was a great month in most of the host cities. Lisbon looked like the capital of Europe. There were people from all over, enjoying the game, the good weather, having fun. Being crazy about football (or soccer), the population was celebrating each win of our national team like I'd never seen before. There wasn't a window without a national flag, even some iconic monuments in Lisbon like Christ the Redeemer, the Tower of Belem, or the Aqueduct were illuminated by red and green floodlights. We portuguese are like that. Most of the time we are so laid back and perhaps so worried and suspicious of each other that we lack the energy to make something good of our lives. But give us a common goal, and suddenly all the people come together in a burst of energy that I've seldom seen in any other country in the world.

I was no exception. I exploded with joy when Ricardo, our goalkeeper, scored the penalty that put us past the english team on the quarter-finals, and celebrated with my friends and lots of other people when we reached the final after beating Holland on the semis. Unfortunately, I would not be able to watch the final in Portugal, because I had already booked my flight to Ireland on that same day.

When I entered that flight, the portuguese scarf was tied to my backpack, and all I could think of was that I had to find a place to watch the game. As soon as I arrived, with another little guy, we left the airport to Wicklow, a small town a few kilometers south of Dublin, put our bags in the hotel, and started looking for a pub, which, let's face it, is not a very hard thing to find in Ireland. We found the place, grabbed some pints of Guinness, and settled for what I was expecting to be a memorable afternoon. Once the game started I got more and more nervous with each play. Every time our team picked the ball I hoped some magic would happen and we'd score. Most of the people in the pub were supporting Portugal, but there was a young guy in the table next to mine that was shouting "Go Greece ! Go Greece !". I had no idea if he was really supporting Greece or if he was doing it just to annoy me. In the end Greece scored and we didn't and we lost the opportunity to win a big soccer competition. I was annoyed and I turned to the guy next to me and asked him why he was supporting Greece. "After all we kicked out the english, you irish should be supporting us". The guy laughed. "You're right, you know. Normally I would be supporting you, but me dad placed a bet on the greeks and said I could have the money if we won the bet". That was the first lesson I learned about the irish: they're a joyful people, out to have fun, and they love betting. "Don't worry, mate. Two years from now, Ireland and Portugal will both be celebrating in the world cup !" he said, and we said farewell to each other.

After talking to this boy my mood suddenly changed. Suddenly I was not as angry for losing the game, I said to myself that it was just a game, and that it shouldn't ruin the trip. It was like the joyful spirit of the island started to take over me. We grabbed our backpacks, picked up our car, and started driving. Light was still good so maybe we could get a few shots somewhere. The ruins in Glendalough looked like the right place.

Glendalough Monastery was founded in the 10th century A.D. by St. Kevin, a descendant of the royal house of Leinster who abandoned his life of privilege, choosing to live as an hermit at Glendalough, and devoting his life to the tending of the sick, and to copying and illuminating sacred manuscripts. When we got there though, illumination was something we did not find, because the sun was already setting and the good light was over. The twilight, however, was right to experience such a place. There would be plenty of time for photography the next day.

That evening, the old graveyard with its round tower, the ruins, the high celtic crosses, had gained a special calm after all the tourists had left. We could hear nothing but some birds in the distance. After the excitement of the afternoon, walking around the ruins made me feel at peace, undefeated, and that was the spirit I had in the rest of the trip in Ireland. And not even the remarks that everyone we met made about the european championship when they found out we were portuguese ("Oh, you're portuguese ? Too bad about the euro..."), moved me from that state of mind.

Travel without moving

Some years ago, while working, I was listening to some music and I had a Chieftains CD on my desk. A colleague of mine noticed it and said something like "if you like this, you have to listen to some of the stuff I have". At the time I did not know he had his own band (At-tambur), nor did I know he was the webmaster of a world music site. I just listened to his stuff, which included some bands and artists of whom I later became a fan, and started my own voyage in the world of world music.

A few months later I became an active contributor to his website, writing articles and short stories on albums I had listened to, and concerts I had seen. Some of these concerts took place in Sendim, a small village in the northeastern corner of Portugal, near the Douro river gorges, which serve as a natural border with Spain. For two years in a row I covered the annual celtic music festival that takes place there, being able to watch artists like the swedish band Hedningarna, or even talk to members of the irish band Dervish, just to name a few. The festival is a wonderful mixture of cultures, both on the stage, where artists from several countries transport us to their homelands through the sounds of their unusual instruments, and off the stage, where people from all over Europe gather together to magically transform the small village of Sendim into a traveler's meeting place.

Such is the power of music. People from all over the world have used it from the very beginning of times to express emotions and pass on knowledge from generations to generations. Through music we can learn about distant cultures, either by listening to songs in different languages, learning about faraway stories, or listening to strange and uncommon instruments. Who cannot picture a scottish glen when listening to the wail of a bagpipe ? Or imagine a majestic indian temple when listening to the strings of a sitar ?

Some people often tell me that they wish they could travel as much as I do. I don't think I travel much physically (not as much as I'd like to, that's for sure), but I'm always traveling in spirit. Sometime ago, I attended a workshop on travel photography by my friend and brilliant photographer Antonio Sa. One thing he said keeps going through my mind: "traveling is not an action, it's a state of mind". Music can play a big part in helping us reach that state of mind. And what better music genre for a traveler than world music ?