Gender Name Confusion in Hong Kong?

Either the actors now have new names, or someone creating the Chinese version of this movie poster hasn’t a clue about the gender of names like Robert and Kristen.

I shot a few other confused/amusing signs that I will try and dig up and post in the coming week or two.

The rationale was that more hair on my head and face would keep me warmer. That part was certainly true. I think my face and head were warmer during the few cold spells we encountered. What I hadn’t figured on was that having a huge mass of fur on my chin would get to be really annoying after a while, but for no tangible reason – it just was annoying.

While in Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, I decided I needed a barbershop to get rid of the facial growth, and bumped into Andrew Evans, fellow blogger and passenger, who was looking for exactly the same thing. His beard was bugging him too.

Andrew and I showing off our manly face fuzz in Stanley

Andrew and I were unsuccessful in our barbershop quest – all we could find was a beauty parlor in a supermarket and just seemed like the wrong place for a beard-cut, so the beards stayed until the end of our trip.

At the end of our journey, nearly a week after the above photo, I looked like this – almost a member of ZZ Top:

This is Jake after two and a half months of no haircuts or beard trims (at the airport in Ushuaia)

As soon as we got to Miami, I bought a cheap beard trimmer and whacked that beard right down to size, and a week later, after we got back home to Bonaire, our friend Barbel came over and gave all the Richters nice, short, haircuts. I took care of my own beard trimming, though.

A freshly shorn Jake back home on Bonaire

So maybe not quite the Brad Pitt look, but at least life is now back to normal (more or less). And I feel well groomed once again.

Andrew ended up getting his trim too – check the photos in his Tweet.

We’re able to report that we are east of the Falklands at the present, which also puts us east of Argentina and the other side of South America from Chile, so the earthquake and tsunami are not affecting our ship in any way.

Whether the earthquake and tsunami will impact our travels at the end of next week remains to be seen, however, as we were to return to Santiago next Thursday, and then go on to Easter Island on Friday (and Easter Island is due west of the Chilean coast).

More importantly, our hearts and hopes are with those in Chile affected by this horrible natural disaster. We especially hope that all the new friends and acquaintances we made in Chile a couple of weeks ago are okay.

Fortunately, governmental decree and agreement has helped define that for us in the form of the Antarctic Treaty, which was put in force in 1961 by a coalition of countries.

It defines Antarctica as being all lands and ice shelves south of 60° South Latitude, which includes places as far north as the South Orkney Islands, where we’ll be tomorrow; Elephant Island, where we were today; and of course, the Antarctic Peninsula, where we were the three days prior.

The Antarctic circle, which is at 66° 33′ 39”, defines the region below (south of) which the sun will not set on the day of the winter solstice in December (summer in Antarctica), and will not rise on the day of the summer solstice in June (winter in Antarctica).

And finally, there’s the Subantarctic. This is the area north of 60° south latitude, north some degrees to include nearby islands, such as South Georgia Island (where we will be on Saturday for a week or so). There is no hard and fast definition of where the sub-Antarctic ends, with islands as far north as the Falkland Islands (where we will be in about 10 days) being included in the Subantarctic (or sub-Antarctic if you prefer).

Hope that clears it up! It certainly did for us.

After a morning exploration of a derelict whaling station which is now a historical landmark, a dozen or so hardy souls (yours truly definitely not among them), braved a polar plunge into waters right around freezing temperature.

Brave (and insane) fellow passengers plunge into frigid waters in Deception Island

I have compiled 14 photos into a short 30 second slide show video with suitable music. The guy leaping into the water during the middle of the slide show is our fellow blogger Andrew Evans (@bus2antarctica on Twitter). The slide show is below:

Update – February 18, 2010: I have been informed by Abby, one of the participants in the plunge, that the bearded fellow is actually Justin, another passenger on the ship who looks a lot like Andrew (@bus2antarctica). Sorry about the confusion!

You can see their post here.

And our fellow blogger/traveler, Andrew Evans, also just tweeted about us on Twitter.