In a few hours we will board the Akademik Sergey Vavilov to start a 12 day cruise around the Antarctic Peninsula, hopefully as far south as Marguerite Bay. Back in my day it was full of ice, but I guess it’s warmed up a bit.

In the meantime, here are a few non-Antarctic penguins from the Valdes Peninsula, Punto Tomba, and Tiera del Fuego. It almost seems worth carrying this ridiculous amount of gear around with me, although I’m still fully intending a complete rethink when we get home. Small is beautiful.

I’m sitting in the upstairs lounge of a very pleasant hosteria in El Calafate, Argentina (Cauquenes de Nimez, very highly recommended), looking out over Lago Argentina, on a sunny windswept day. The view could easily be exchanged with West Iceland, without anybody noticing, although it might confuse the sheep. Yesterday we visited the world famous Perito Moreno glacier, and while it is very much touristified, it is done in a very tasteful and enjoyable way, with kilometers of walkways along the glacier front, and through the adjacent woods. So far from what I’ve seen of Argentina’s national parks, they are curated to a level on a par with Costa Rica’s, which is to say absolutely world class. Argentina is a fabulous, surprising, immense and welcoming country, and there’s enough to see and experience for a lifetime.

So why is experiencing it not enough? Why do I persist in weighing myself down with crazy amounts of camera gear (even when it’s cut down to fit in a cabin-baggage friendly bag, it’s too much), and with the psychological stress of needing to “get the shot”? Yesterday I was briefy chatting with a fellw traveller who turned out to come from Ticino, about 5km from where we live, who was also described by his travelling partners as being a passionate photographer. Actually I’d noticed him before, as he was one of the few other people I could see carrying a tripod. Anyway, I flippantly remarked that it was more like an addiction than a passion. Later, and after an argument with my own travelling companion where the topic of being obsessed with photograhy again casme up, I thought maybe that this was a clear case of a true word spoken in jest. What, really, is the benefit of taking literally thousands of photograhs, of average quality at best, and more generally mundane to dull, and which nobody will ever see? Surely it is better to get away from this addiction on capturing views and getting back to experecing them. In the past, although I would take memento shots, and perhaps sometimes try something a little more ambitious, when I visited places, I would look for a quality book published by a local, where the photogaphy woukd far exceed what I can accomplish. Now, I have so much f**king gear that I can’t even fit a book into my 30kg baggage allowance. This has all gone very wrong. I think as soon as I get back most of my gear is going on eBay, and perhaps going on an extended, if not permanent, break from “serious” photography. After all, it’s really just a thinly veiled excuse for shopping.

Because not so many people read my non-photography blog, The Evenings Out Here (so, less than 2, that would be), I’ve decided to post a link here to the hardest bit of writing I’ve ever had to do, remembering my good friend Seymour Laxon, who tragically died as a result of an accident on New Year’s Day.

And perhaps to point out one other thing about Seymour that few people (any?) have commented on: he was a damned good photographer too.

I’m off for a beer now Seymour - cheer.

I got a unwelcome blast from the past this evening when preparing my XPan gear for it’s trip Southwards. I decided to give the lenses a quick clean, and while doing so, I saw this inside the 30mm…

The white specks are fungi growing inside the lens. This is bad news, and has happened to me before: see my rant from 2003, The IKEA of camera manufacturers.

So is this a chronic fault of this lens ? Whatever, this time it’s going to have to live with it at least until February. In any case my local dealer has long since closed shop, and it would probably have to go to Leica Switzerland (no bad thing from a customer service point of view, but not cheap either). If any XPan owners reading this have any similar experience, and in particular, short term damage limitation advice (stick in the oven?), please, please get in touch.

A bit late, but better than never.

I’d like to wish all readers and visitors to snowhenge a belated happy Christmas, and a wonderful 2013. I’ve been rushing around a wet and windswept Belgium for the last few days, so there’s been little activity in these parts.

Bruges, a few days ago.

It’s been an interesting year, for me, with quite a few changes, and maybe some more to come. And in a couple of days we’ll leaving for Argentina, then a few weeks later Antarctica by way of Ushuaia. And I still haven’t finished packing yet.

I’ve managed to get quite a lot of photography done this year, and I feel I’ve made some progress too. After a few bad-tempered isolationist rants against the web in general earlier this year, I’m feeling considerably more positive and open now. What I haven’t really managed to do is to find a way to get more of my stuff out into the world, but I’ve got a few ideas on how to improve that.

Thanks to you, for reading this - according to my statistics about 99% of visitors here leave no comment, but that’s fine. Et je ne comprends pas pourquoi, mais le pays duquel vient ici le plus grand hombre d’internautes est la France. Go figure.

So, Bonne Année, bonne santé, and hope to see you around.