21. Beastly ice
They have collected new stones, found in the far west, called flints, to light the fire. Gaméla, Sisoi and their parents navigate in their canoe along several glaciers. The ice creaks and cracks terrifyingly. They see impressive icebergs. And suddenly…
…a thunderous noise. A huge piece of ice breaks from the glacier. It tumbles in the water. Going down. Shoots up again. Bounces a couple of times back and forth. And keeps floating in the water.
The light blue iceberg causes a huge wave that reaches their canoe. Gaméla’s mother hardly stays in control of the canoe. She will be happy once they have reached their central, more sheltered area. But that won’t be within sight for some time.
The children stare tensely at the mysterious ice masses on the steep slopes of the Andes Mountains. The ice is sliding almost imperceptibly slowly to the water. The mountains are quite old. For that you have to go back millions of years, to the period of the Cretaceous and Tertiary. The southern part of the Andes is still covered by two enormous ice caps. The permanent snow dates from the glaciations of the Pleistocene (Ice Age).
The cold winter weather has arrived sooner than expected. Day by day the water is becoming thicker. The wind is blowing icy cold. At the end of the summer many animals migrate towards warmer waters on the coast of Argentina and Brazil. By the Gulfstream, the penguins let themselves being carried all the way to the beach where they birth their young ones. The southern right whales go north towards the Bay of Peninsula Valdés. There they give birth and raise their calves. The young whales can learn to swim and search for food in this sheltered part of the ocean. Only after the winter, will Gaméla and Sisoi see them again.
The wind roars from the cold south and lashes into the face of Gaméla’s mum. While paddling, mother already sits as low as possible in the canoe. After every four strokes with the paddle, she crouches for a while. The greasy layer of animal fat that they apply on their skin in thick layers, serves as a winter coat in times of snow and ice. But that wind … you feel it through everything. Gaméla and Sisoi sometimes chatter their teeth. They are too cold to get bored. Even their father is shivering with cold.
He distracts his children from the cold, the noise of the breaking glacier and the floating icebergs. The lumps of ice sometimes look like a playing sea lion, a diving whale or a flying albatross. Their father starts to play with them: I see, I see, what you don’t see. Gaméla had guessed right already three times, Sisoi is losing by one point. Meanwhile their mother continues paddling, worried about their situation. The family is looking for a camping site for the night. Mother manoeuvers the canoe among hundreds of ice floes and pieces of ice. Where can they go? Which beach is suitable?
- Would you like to know more? Click on the links in the text and you will find background information.
- The winter period in Tierra del Fuego runs roughly from April to September.
- What animals or other forms do you recognize in mountain shapes or in clouds?
- What animals live on or near the ice? On the south pole or the north pole?
- When was the last time you saw snow or ice? Was it near the place where you live? What did you do?
- Would you like to continue writing on this story? Would you like to make a drawing or create a photo about this story? Send it to my e-mail and I will post it on your behalf on the website.
- Or continue reading. Next story: 22. Grandma and the mysterious killer whale
Photo: Children creating the landscape after listening to this story.