Many interesting and mysterious places exist on our planet. Scientists are in a hurry to explore them, and tourists - to travel far and wide for the purpose of outdoor activities. Both will be delighted with the Kerguelen archipelago and the island of Grand Ter. They will be discussed in this article.
Grand Ter - a look into history
Arawak tribes of the Indians lived on the large islands that make up Guadeloupe. This time refers to the three hundredth year BC. Much later, the Caribbean settled here. They expelled the Arawak forces by force and they went north, where they began to explore the Antilles.
Christopher Columbus discovered Guadeloupe in 1493. A group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, he initially took for one island. Further research helped put everything in its place. The Spaniards met in Guadeloupe an aggressive local population and the lack of any resources, so they did not colonize the islands. The French took advantage of the situation and in 1635 conquered it. The Indians who resisted destroyed and established a colony here.
To work on sugarcane plantations, slaves were imported from Africa. Only thirty-nine years later, France officially received the islands in the ocean as its property. She became the full owner of all the islands that are now part of Guateloupe. For two centuries - the seventeenth and eighteenth - the islands passed either to Great Britain or to Sweden, but always returned to their owner - France.
Grand Ter Island
This truly paradise is located in the Caribbean. To get to the coast of South America from the island of Grand Ter, you need to overcome 640 kilometers of the waterway. This is the overseas department of Guadeloupe France and the territory of the Lesser Antilles archipelago. Their shores are washed by the Atlantic Ocean. The Salt River Strait divides Guadeloupe into two equal parts: Western and Eastern, where Grand Ter Island is located.
Its height above sea level is only one hundred thirty meters. This is the lowest island of the entire department. It is composed of limestone and volcanic tuff. It has the shape of an indefinite geometric figure with a winding coastline. Surface of the island in the ocean covered with cliffs and hills, on which are huge green and silver sugar cane plantations. Grand Ter Island is known to tourists around the world. He was glorified by the picturesque coast and numerous resort towns. Their series is often called the Riviera.
The center of the economic territory and the main city is Pointe a Pitre. It is located on the coast from the southwestern side of the island. Around the city are tourist and resort complexes. People come here to relax on the magnificent beaches with white clean sand, surrounded by coral reefs.
Kerguelen Archipelago
It is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, which includes one large island with the same name and about three hundred small islands and rocks. Kerguelen belongs to France, being part of its territories, whose area is 7215 square kilometers. If we talk about geographical affiliation, then the islands belong to the Antarctic. The distance from Kerguelen to its shores is two thousand kilometers.
The discovery of the archipelago dates back to 1772, when the French made an expedition to the Antarctic. Its commander was Yves Joseph de Kerguelen. The archipelago was named after him. For one hundred and fifty years, whalers from Norway have come here from time to time. They brought wild deer here. Animals adapted and quickly bred.
For the first time, the French tried to populate the island in 1928. They built a factory for canning spiny lobster. But once the workers got drunk and put pistols in motion. No one was left alive. Kerguelen again became inhabited in the middle of the twentieth century, when the French founded a scientific station on the island.
Kerguelen Island
It is called the main island of the archipelago. It covers an area of โโ6675 square kilometers. The length in the west-east direction is one hundred and fifty kilometers, and the north-south is one hundred and twenty. The highest point of the island and the archipelago is Mount Ross - 1850 m above sea level. It is covered by the Cook Glacier. The coastline is uneven, as if rugged. This indicates that Kerguelen is an island that has a large number of peninsulas.
Permanently on the island no one lives. For the winter period, about a hundred people come there to work related to various studies. About twice as many stay for the summer for the same purpose. The main base of the island and the capital of the entire archipelago is Port-au-France. There was once a whaling base on Kerguelen, it has been operating since 1908. Now it is the port of Joan of Arc.
Climate
Kerguelen is an island characterized by a sub-Antarctic climate, severe and rainy with strong winds reaching one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. The coldest month is August with an air temperature of one degree below zero. The warmest is February. At this time, the temperature rises to plus nine degrees. The opposite of Kerguelen is Montana. At one latitude with Kerguelen, if you look at the map, you can find Poltava and Khabarovsk. Despite approximately the same average annual temperature on the island, which is washed by the southern part of the Indian Ocean, and its antipodes, it can be noted that neither large frosts nor intense heat are characteristic of Kerguelen.
Animal world
If you ask in which ocean the island of Kerguelen is located, no one will have difficulty in answering. After all, even the student knows the largest colonies of penguins, seabirds, seals. For these animals, an island in the ocean, where people practically do not live, - native home. Kerguelen boasts a large population of rabbits.
Here you can meet cats. They were once domestic, but eventually went wild and scattered all over the island. Rabbits and cats are not local residents of the island, they were brought here by people. People living by necessity are involved in seal hunting.
Vegetable world
Flora is not diverse. Kerguelen (island) is covered with sparse grassy vegetation. In some places you can find a creeping shrub. Strong winds bent him to the ground. Kerguelen cabbage is considered the most common plant.
It is interesting
- On Kerguelen, researchers found a ruined hut. For its construction, obviously, wreckage was used. A wooden board was found in the hut on which was written the name of the sailor from Feodosia. This plank crushed almost completely decayed pages of the diary. The sailor described the shipwreck that occurred off the coast of Kerguelen. The last record showed that a ship appeared on the horizon. Whether the Russian sailors managed to escape or not remains a mystery.
- Kerguelen is an island that has no roads. But people living there are actively using SUVs. They go hunting and fishing, which are the main types of their leisure. The Kerguelen coast is teeming with macrourids, nototenia, bivalves, krill.
- A reliable fact is that Kerguelen has the southernmost grave of a German soldier. The fact is that United States intelligence officer David Shore wrote a book about experiments conducted by Japanese soldiers to create zombies. Once, when assisting the injured crew of a sunken ship, two people were taken aboard, one of the saved was a zombie. He managed to bite a German sailor, who became the same monster. Both had their heads chopped off.