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HISTORY OF BIG SUR COAST

  A new dawn:              Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities.  Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete.               The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic.  The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades.  Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell.  By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops.              ...
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LAKE BAIKAL

 

Lake Baikal:

Lake Baikal


          The oldest and deepest lake on Earth is a place of outstanding natural beauty, often cloaked in fogs and violent storms.  It holds a fifth of the planet’s unfrozen fresh water and is home to some unique wildlife.

           Set in the remote mountains and dense forests of southern Siberia in Russian Federation, this vast, crescent-shaped stretch of water extends for nearly 400 miles (640 Km), its slate-blue surface regularly churned up by the wind. 

            What it lacks in surface area – it is smaller than North America’s Lake Superior and Africa’s Lake Victoria – Lake Baikal more than makes up in depth, plunging to 1,642m (5,387ft) at its deepest point.  The creatures living in its lower regions, such as sponges and shrimp-like amphipods, are more reminiscent of those found in the deeper parts of the open ocean than in a freshwater lake.

              Above the water line, the scenery is dramatic and stunningly beautiful.  Rugged mountains surround the lake: the high Baikal Mountains lie to the west and the lower Zabaikalsky Mountains to the east. Their lower slopes and the northern lakeshore form part of the great northern forest, the taiga, which stretches across the high northern latitudes of North America, northern Europe and Asia and is home to a third of all the trees in the world.  Ancient larches and 500-year-old cedars, as well as younger birch and pine, grow down to the water’s edge.  The pines growing on sandy ground appear to stand on stilts, their roots exposed by the wind.  In autumn, the larches colour the whole region orange.

Location: Lake Baikal, Russia

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