Met up at the airport with another fellow from JAMSTEC, who does all the diplomatic stuff, and a cameraman that does TV coverage of deep-sea stuff, both diving and on boats. The flight to Beppu is about the same as from Nice to Paris. Except you get to see the sea on both ends. In order to be paid by JAMSTEC they had to take first call tickets, so had quite an enjoyable flight.
Beppu is a small-ish town, spread along the coasts and around several hills. Most of the mountains behind Beppu are bald, from intentional burnings, so it looks a bit strange. The town is all built on a huge hydrothermal zone, so there are pipes here and there, especially in the hills, that discharge steam. I guess people living here get used to the rotten egg smell.
We wandered around the town a bit looking for a nice restaurant, and finaly chose a japanese style beer garden. We had tons of different kinds of meat on brochettes, with different sauces. It was very good, and practical too, as I haven’t quite mastered eating meat with chopsticks yet.
Our hotel was very nice. There was a spa on the top floor, but I chose to wander around the town a bit in the morning instead. Unfortunately, there are so many power and telephone lines strung everywhere that it is almost impossible to take good photos of any landmarks. I suvived breakfast of chinese noodles and bacon, but passed on the runny omelette and salad. I also had a fake croissant and some fruit salad, just to make a smooth transition.
At 10 we all went off to visit the 8 hells of Beppu : a combination of all the different kinds of hot springs possible. First off was the Monk Head Hell, as the bubbles in the mud pots look like little bald heads comming up. With that are the snoring rocks, a place where the demons came to shelter from the cold north winds and fell asleep on the warm rocks, and you can hear them snoring. Next are the green and blue pools, with tropical water lillies in them. There is a small shrine near the ponds. They hang baskets of eggs into the 150° waters to hard boil them. We tasted some at noon and they are not bad at all, even if the white is a bit brownish... We also had a small sweet-potato cake steamed in the hot pool vapour that tasted very good. There was also a red pond of disloved clay, supposedly good for skin problems. The next site has all mud pots and springs and coloured ponds, but the most fun was the little trick they played. The attendant would come out, light a cigarette, smile at you, blow on his cigarette, and the mud pot would start to smoke. It was really cool. He was standing more than a meter away, too.
Then there was a mini-zoo, with a nice hippo who would stand with his mouth open waiting for treats. There is also a mini crocodile farm, which did not impress Dhugal as he’s used to big crocodiles, but was still fun. The pool with the crocodile farm has a statue of the god of hell in front of it, and it sure is the most impressive of all the ponds, roaring, smoking and making a huge show. You can hardly even catch a glimpse of the water. And then for last the cutest little geiser, in a context of magnificant gardens and palm trees, that goes every 30min about. A very nice last sight.
Back to the docks at 4pm, where we met up with James “Jamie” Reimer and then boarded the Natsushima. I have a cabin by myself, with bed, desk, table, couch, sink... It’s about the same size at the whole cabin area in the sailboat we took with the Limoges sailing class. The dinner was very good too, so won’t die of hunger, even if they do eat dinner at 5pm which is a bit early, even for me. I h
ad a quick toor of the boat, and should get a hang of it eventually. They even have a seperate bathroom and shower for me, as I’m the only girl on board.
We will be doing 2 days of sailing before we start with the Picasso system. We still have everything to insta
ll as the previous leg of the trip was using the MR-X1 submersible. They were tryi,g to see if it could make sediment cores. Seeing the amount of circuitry and wires around the lab, it probably was not a great success. They will be comming on again once we have gone so maybe it will work better the next time around.
Tonight there are about 7 people up on the top of the ship crouching around with computers and plexiglas sheeting trying to get satellite internet. It worked fine for a while, but didn’t like google mail. Then the ship turned slightely and the chimney got in the way of the satellite, and they were getting cold anyway, so everyone packed up for tonight.
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