Kerguelen: Come for the Cabbage. Stay for the... Urm.

January 28, 2003 8:49 PM

The Kerguelen Islands, you say? This guy wanted to go there. This guy went. Him too. And this poor fellow just wants to be a part of it all. What's the attraction? Though not much may have happened there, there are some stunning views. But I think it's the cabbage.
posted by ursus_comiter (10 comments total)

Wow, awesome post!
posted by bshort at 9:08 PM on January 28, 2003

Fantastic! Reminds me of Iceland, only far fewer people. I have to go there now. Thanks for giving me a purpose to my life, ursus.
posted by greasepig at 9:18 PM on January 28, 2003

That second photo looks like Poseidon is shaking his fist at that group of penguins.
posted by Hildago at 9:45 PM on January 28, 2003

Lovely post. I love reading about barren, faraway places like this, and (of course) dreaming about visiting them. I've heard about Kerguelen before, but hadn't turned up much information about it.
posted by Mars Saxman at 11:06 PM on January 28, 2003

British sketchwriter Matthew Parris spent several months on Kerguelen - his reports for the London Times are here. It was something of an epiphany for him, the 12 part journal is compelling reading.
posted by grahamwell at 2:36 AM on January 29, 2003

And I thought I was the only one interested in frigid desolate islands. There's something about these barren outcroppings of rock that just gets my blood rushing.

Kerguelen is cool, but the hope of setting foot on Bouvet Island sits close to the top of my canonical list of reasons to exist.

(stumbles off to spin a globe and dream)
posted by bunnytricks at 3:26 AM on January 29, 2003

What a great post. I've spent hours poring over my copy of Uninhabited Ocean Islands — I always dreamed of sailing down the Chilean coast, withs its dozens of islands and fjords. Too much Melville at an impressionable age, I expect.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 5:54 AM on January 29, 2003

Thank you, ursus! I have been to 41 countries, and I once thought to myself, 'what is the most remote place on earth I could travel to?' I've been to the South Pacific already, so I looked on my map in the Indian Ocean and found the Kerguelen Islands. I did some research and found out you can only get there by ship, so I kind of wrote them off, but I'm glad to see others have made it there. The photos look beautiful. Perhaps now I will try and make it there some day.
posted by PigAlien at 6:15 AM on January 29, 2003

Wow. Penguins, nice. Post, fine.
posted by Dick Paris at 7:53 AM on January 29, 2003

Neat place, reminds me of the Aleutian Islands.
posted by rotifer at 10:29 AM on January 29, 2003