available material to build the St. Ivan Rilski Chapel. Inside we placed some earth brought all the way from the burial mound of Khan Kubrat of Bulgaria (632-651 AD), and following the custom lit candles in that first Christian Orthodox chapel in Antarctica.
Accompanied by my father I also visited some other remarkable places on my way back from Antarctica. We paid a visit to the remote islands of Diego Ramirez that are the southernmost land outside Antarctica, rounded the legendary Cape Horn, sailed by yacht down the Beagle Channel to the world’s reputedly southernmost town, the picturesque Puerto Williams on Navarino Island, travelled by bus across the entire main island of Tierra del Fuego from the Argentine town of Ushuaia to the Chilean city of Punta Arenas, skirting beech forests and sheep farms, and crossing the Strait of Magellan by ferry.
From the Land of Fire I brought home some Paraguayan tea maté but did not progress much in its consumption. My father was more successful in his experiment of growing Antarctic grass in our Sofia flat, with several seed crops harvested already.
In the second part of our journey we spent a week with a family of Falklands friends in Stanley, later visiting Rio Gallegos in Patagonia and one of the most glamorous world cities, Buenos Aires. However, nothing compares to the feeling of walking on a glacier in Antarctica, or watching sleepy seals, flying squas and gulls, diving blue-eyed shags, hearing the occasional thundering sound of falling giant ice blocs as they split from the glacier snout.
On our last night at the Bulgarian base we were lucky enough to see the moon – a rare chance indeed, taking into account the almost permanently cloudy weather of the island. As I was standing in the Livingston night many thousand kilometres away from home, viewing that Antarctic moon, I thought how happy I was to have the opportunity to be in Antarctica. I really hope that people will do everything possible in order to keep the Ice Continent pristine. Let us preserve for the future this cleanest and most beautiful place on earth.
Land of People, Penguins and Sheep
The Falkland Islands are situated 13,000 kilometres from Bulgaria and 4,000 kilometres from the South Pole, their southernmost point being Beauchêne Island. The two main islands, West Falkland and East Falkland are separated by Falkland Sound, whose name was given more than three centuries ago by Captain John Strong who made the first ever landing on the islands in 1690.
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