... gawking like touristers. Which we are. At one point I asked the driver if we would be returning to our rental home on the same road we were traveling, hoping I could observe the scenery on the opposite side of the byway as we came back. Motoring along a highway that traces the southern edge of the island. Often times within sight of the coast, other times a bit more inland, but always seeing cattle and sheep grazing in wide open pastures. This part of the country was more open, wide level fields, often cut for hay as we saw many bales in covered in plastic to protect them from the weather. Those pastures were fenced to keep livestock from being hit vehicles, should they venture on the road, but drivers were warned by signs to be wary, that they could be held responsible for the value of that animal if damages occurred.
The landscape is so unusual to these south Georgia born-and-raised eyes. Wide almost perfectly flat smooth plains will suddenly become mountains. Often huge rocky faces appear to just bolt upright straight out of the level pastures. In some places the rocky surface has eroded, and there is evidence of slides as the area at the bottom of the mountain looks more inclined plane-like rather than going from horizontal to vertical. And the sloping cascade of rocks will have grass that attracts the nimble hoofs of sheep by the hundreds. The livestock can be so far away, high up on the hillside, from the distance it is difficult to decipher if the animals are sheep or cattle.
All the land we saw yesterday was below and affected by a huge glacier up in the mountains off in the distance. Numerous waterfalls pouring thousands of gallons of glacier-melt over the precipice down rock walls to land crashing on nearly horizontal surfaces and burble along alluvial plains to the ocean. Rocks everywhere: in stream bottoms where they wear away into smooth flat objects, gravel for paved areas, huge boulders left by receding glaciers in the middle of pastures. It is a very rocky land. No shortage of gravel or rocks to quarry as a building material, as well as numerous stacked stone fences delineating property lines, made from rocks that were obviously picked up as the land was plowed for planting.Trying to remember that word for the debris left behind as the wall of ice recedes: moraine.
Our tour guide had plans for her little ducklings to take a hike on one of three glaciers in this cold mountainous place. After making pbj sandwiches for our lunch, we drove a couple of hours from our Airbnb to the spot where the guides would equip customers with gear for walking on ice. Waterproof clothing, hiking boots, crampons for stability to wear on bottoms of boots, harness for rescue (?), helmets, ice ax and off they go! I concluded I could not keep up and did not want to hold the guide/ group back, so I became an observer rather than participant. I did hike up the trail, and looked over the edge. A good sized lake, filled with huge chunks of glacier (icebergs if floating out in the open sea!), but they were black? From volcanic ash as the snow/ice has melted over years to get down to the layers where active eruptions covered the land with ash that compacted over time.
I understand that the water flowing down the mountains, through rocky stream beds across alluvial plains towards the sea is so clean and pollutant free you can stop anywhere and drink from open sources. I did not. After a memorable experience in Mexico, I am hyper-wary of unfiltered water: that in the streams is cloudy, with micro-bits suspended in the flow. Never convenient, away from home and comfort, to feel the effects of a small microbe that can spoil a day or a week.
After the glacier, we went to find the Black Beach: fine-grained volcanic sand that made the beach completely black - not at all like what you expect after seeing tourist magazine photos of south sea islands. Really unusual. Plus large monoliths out in the ocean, huge rocks called 'haystacks' sticking up out of the crashing waves. Several small caves near the place where those basalt columns left by volcanic action stand guarding the beach.
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