City of Okhotsk
Wednesday, September 3, 2014 Today Okhotsk is a village of fewer than 5000 residents, but for 200 years it was Russia’s most important settlement on the Pacific. Founded in the mid-1600’s, it was never a major seaport but rather a…
Category Adventures
Mal’Minskiy Islands and Fyodora Bay
Tuesday, September 2, 2014 This small group of islets is part of the Dzygdzyrskiy Nature Preserve and we went zodiac cruising amongst them in the morning; we also hovered off mainland Russia to admire a couple of Steller’s eagles. The…
Shantar Islands
Monday, September 1, 2014 At the western most edge of the Sea of Okhotsk lie the Shantar Islands. The surrounding water is cold and shallow and 300km / 186mi from the mouth of the Amur River. They were a center…
Iony Island
Sunday, August 31, 2014 The tiny rocky outcropping that is Iony Island, about 124mi / 200km north of Sakhalin Island, has a reputation for being a magnet for wildlife. The plankton rich waters provide food for a variety of seabirds…
Grey Whales and Piltun Lagoon
Saturday, August 30, 2014 This day we anchored off Piltun Lagoon, about midway up the east coast of Sakhalin Island. Immediately after dropping anchor the zodiacs were lowered into the water and the expedition team went looking for, and found,…
Tyuleniy Island
Friday, August 29, 2014 The World anchored off Tyuleniy Island and we got our first chance to get out in the zodiacs to go a spot some seals. And seals we spotted… thousands of them: Northern fur seals and Northern,…
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Thursday, August 28, 2014 Upon debarking that morning we were entertained by a Military Brass Band on the pier. We also got a traditional Russian ‘bread and salt greeting’ to welcome us all to Korsakov. We got on board buses…
Sea of Okhotsk Expedition Kick-off
Tuesday, August 26, 2014 In the morning we walked over to Hilde and Tricia’s hotel. After a little last minute shopping, mainly for shoes, and some sushi lunch, we took our friends to board The World. We all attended the…
Japan and Friends
Saturday, August 23, 2014 After just under 24 hours traveling by car, train, plane, bus and taxi, we arrived in Hakodate, Japan, where we boarded the good ship The World for 4 weeks of pampering :). It was good to…
Brussel
Thursday, August 21, 2014 We said goodbye to Eeklo for now and took a train to Brussel. We’d never visited Brussel together before so we decided that after seeing lots of new and exotic places a visit to Belgium’s capital…
Arrived in Eeklo
Saturday, August 16, 2014 And then it had arrived, kind of faster than we’d expected, and bitter-sweet: the last driving day of our ‘Overland Adventure’. Sure, we’d still planned to go places before going home to San Francisco, but, as…
Heleen and Mark in Groningen
Thursday and Friday, August 14-15, 2014 It’s always good to take every opportunity to catch up with go0d friends so onto Groningen we went to see our Heleen and Mark.
Ilse and Nils in Hamburg
Monday to Wednesday, August 11-13, 2014 The main reason for stopping in Hamburg was to catching up with Ilse and Nils, and, to give Stephen an extra ‘tick’ in the ‘200 Best Cities Book – Lonely Planet’. We had the…
Arrival in Eeklo / Aankomst in Eeklo!!!!!
Save the Date – August 16 We set out on an Around the World Trip in May/June 2013. The Overland Adventure started for real on September 1, 2013, in Sydney, and will finish in Eeklo on August 16, 2014. In…
Berlin
Saturday, August 9, 2014 It was a 600km drive from Krakow to Berlin and we were back on the good old E40, which was in ‘slightly’ better nick than in some of the other countries we’d been on it, so…