Digital Postcard

Sarah and Leon in Antarctica

We had an absolutely nightmarish time just getting to Ushuaia.  The first leg of our flight was cancelled due to mechanical failures, and we had to fight our way onto most of our flights thereafter.  Every time we went to the counter there was another problem to resolve.  We had to fight with three separate airlines just to get there; for the domestic leg on Aerolineas Argentinas, we had to pay to upgrade our seats to business class to get down in time to catch our boat.  If we had arrived too late, we would've missed the entire cruise.

Finally we made it to Buenos Aires, with tickets in hand for our 5:25am flight to Ushuaia.  We had to overnight in Buenos Aires, so we checked into our hotel room and crashed out, exhausted.  Next morning we were up bright and early, flew down to Ushuaia, and were elated when we finally boarded the Polar Pioneer.

After a day and a half crossing a relatively calm Drake Passage (we experienced only 1-meter swells; 10-meter swells aren't uncommon), we arrived in the South Shetland Islands, northwest of the Antarctic Peninsula.  Our first landing was on the Aitcho Islands, where we visited a rookery of gentoos and chinstraps.

It was really exciting, after seeing penguins in documentaries etc., to actually be there and see them in person!  They do all those comical penguiny things you see on TV, and they were so cute.

Next we sailed toward the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and landed at Gourdin Island.  Gourdin has a huge adélie penguin colony.  Adélies are our favorite of the penguin species; they're the classic comical black-and-white tuxedo penguin (kings and emperors have other colors mixed in, and look more serious and stately).  Needless to say we were pretty excited to be seeing adélies. :-)

One thing we didn't know about penguins (but found out on this trip) is that when they're traveling fast, they jump out of the water so they can take a breath without having to stop for air.  One neat thing about visiting these colonies is that you're surrounded by penguins on land--and then when you look out to the water, you see more of them porpoising around, to and from the shore.

While on Gourdin, we saw something very unusual: a brown penguin!  This was not a chick--it was full-grown, shaped just like the other adélies around it, but the parts that are normally black were a sort of light brown.  Our tour guides told us this was an Isabelline penguin; it's a genetic oddity, similar to an albino.  About one in 50,000 penguins is born this way.

That same day we moved onto Brown Bluff, where we made our first landing on the Continent.  Sarah and I were ecstatic--most cruises this length only land on the Continent once (they spend most of their time island-hopping because the islands have more landing sites and more diverse wildlife), but here it was only our second day, and we were already landing on the Peninsula!  Setting foot on the Antarctic Continent had been one of my major goals on this trip.

Brown Bluff houses a very large adélie colony.  Adélies were the most skittish of the penguins we saw; oftentimes they would stop a certain distance from you, turn their heads and stare with an "Is that thing going to eat me?" expression on their face.  However, if you sat or squatted down, held still, and pretended to ignore them, their curiosity would get the better of them and they'd creep a little closer to try to figure out just what sort of creature you were.

After leaving Brown Bluff, we had a good portion of the afternoon left.  Since the weather was so good (we had amazingly calm weather on this trip!), they decided to take us a little into the Weddell Sea.  The Weddell Sea is just east of the Antarctic Peninsula, and it's usually full-fledged icebreakers that go in there, because it's mostly filled with pack ice and other ships can become trapped if they venture too far inside.  The Weddell is where Shackleton's ship was caught and crushed by ice.

We didn't go far inside, but there we were.  This was another added bonus; I hadn't expected to get into the Weddell.  As we steamed ahead at about 7˝ knots, we passed tabular icebergs the size of cities, probably from the Larsen Ice Shelf (parts of the Larsen are gone now; much of the shelf has warmed and broken off into the sea).

After a while, we started to approach a huge expanse of flat pack ice.  As we came closer, those of us on the bow started to speculate about how she ship would turn away from it.  Well, sure enough, we didn't turn away--the captain cut the engine and actually rammed the pack ice!  That was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen!!  As we hit the ice, I leaned out over the bow to get this shot.  Afterward, we backed out of the ice and headed north again.

During the night, we sailed around the tip of the Peninsula and down its western side, to an isolated island called Astrolabe.  There we went on a zodiac cruise; the island didn't have many accessible landing spots.  There was a pleasant fog that morning, and we headed out.  Since there were no large areas on the island for the penguins to nest on, they clung to whatever nooks they could find along the edges.

Also on this zodiac cruise, we saw a small iceberg with two seals on it--a weddell and a leopard.  Leopard seals are a bit uncommon to spot, and it seemed kind of strange to see a weddell hauled up sleeping next to a leopard, since leopards are known to eat other seals.  Apparently, though, they only hunt underwater because they're too awkward to hunt on land (or ice).  This was my best shot of the weddell.  It watched us for a while as we sidled up, got nervous, then got more nervous, and finally slipped into the water and swam away.  The leopard seal never woke up, and probably wouldn't have taken much notice of us if it had.

After leaving Astrolabe, we headed east, back to the South Shetlands.  Our destination was Deception Island, one of the natural wonders of Antarctica.  About 80,000 years ago, the island erupted, blowing out its center and a small hole in its side.  Water flowed in, creating a large natural bay which looks like a great place to anchor but actually isn't--hence the island's name.  The floor of the caldera is covered with soft volcanic ash, which doesn't hold an anchor securely, and strong winds whip over the sides of the island--so ships at anchor will drift a lot.

Deception is still active, and if conditions are right, it's possible to actually swim in the water there(!)  Basically, your tour guides have to find just the right spot, and if they do, you can immerse yourself in the water.  You can't really swim, per se, because the spots at the right temperature are very limited; too far one way or the other, and you either freeze or scald.  We didn't find the right conditions that day, but we had a couple of very memorable landings to make up for it.

First we landed outside the caldera, which was our roughest landing on the trip.  Several people, including Sarah, were thrown into the water (that's her zodiac above), and one of the passengers dislocated her shoulder.  This was Baily Head, which houses the world's largest chinstrap colony, and was featured in Life in the Freezer and Antarctica: The Last Wilderness.  There were penguins all along the beach, then up a canyon which formed a sort of penguin highway, then up a low hill...and beyond lay a valley filled with penguins.  (What you see on the left is the left-hand third of the valley.)  There were about 200,000 of them here.  Needless to say, this was Sarah's favorite landing, even though she was cold and wet.
 
Here we saw chinstraps roosting, greeting one another, and fighting one another--and we even saw a single macaroni penguin.  It's very unusual to see macaronis this far south; their normal haunts are the subantarctic islands like the Falklands and South Georgia.  The little guy looked kind of lost there.  We didn't have a chance to see him greet his mate, but we did have a chance to see him get aggressive; he picked a fight with a chinstrap and drove it some ways away (macaronis are notoriously bad-tempered).  Then he looked around, picked up a rock for his nest, wandered back to it, and sat down again.

Once back aboard ship, we sailed through the entrance to the caldera, which is called Neptune's Bellows.  We had dinner while the crew looked around for a place to swim.  They didn't find one, so instead we landed at a historic site. 

There had been three research stations inside the caldera: one British, one Argentinean, one Chilean.  In 1967 and 1969, the volcano erupted.  It destroyed the Chilean station, damaged the British one, and threatened the Argentinean one.  As a result, all but the latter are now abandoned.  (Click here to see how the building to the right looked before the eruptions.)  Since then, Spain has also built a base inside the caldera, not far from the Argentinean one.  Both stations are manned only in summer.

While we were there, one of the passengers nearly fell down a well!  Apparently as he approached this old well, some of the ground gave way just in front of it.  Yikes!

Also at this site there was an aircraft hangar!  The first powered flights over Antarctica left from here, flown by Sir Hubert Wilkins in 1928-29.  Years later, when the British occupied the site, they used Sir Hubert's airstrip for their base.  Outside the hangar is the fuselage of one of the base's survey planes, which I understand is a DeHavilland of Canada UH-1B single-engine Otter.  The wings are inside the hangar.  Those aren't neon lights you see through the hangar window--those are holes in the roof from when the area was bombarded by volcanic debris.

It seems that since we visited Deception, another cleanup has taken place, during which the airplane was removed from the site for safekeeping.  This link also gives some of the history of this aircraft.

We awoke the next morning as the ship sailed through the Gerlache Strait, a beautiful area lined on either side by dark mountains largely covered with snow.  It had a sort of black-and-white look that made me crave hot fudge sundaes for the rest of the trip.

Then we landed at Neko Harbor, our second (and last) landing on the Continent.  Here was a colony of gentoos, and an Argentinean emergency refuge hut built in 1949.  Argentina set up a lot of these on the Peninsula to bolster their territorial claims there.  Also here is a very active glacier.

Instead, I hiked off down to the left and sat near the edge of the glacier.  I and some others watched and listened to the glacier.  At first, a glacier sounds like dripping water in a cave; then every now and then you hear it crack or crunch as some part of it moves against another part, or against the ground.  Also every now and then you see a chunk come off and fall into the water.  We didn't see any really big impressive pieces fall off, but we did see an avalanche in the distance (see photo on left).  We also saw some moderately sized pieces come off and hit the water, which was neat even if it wasn't the huge show I had hoped for.

Then we moved on to Paradise Bay.  On the way, we passed Chile's González Videla Station, which identifies itself as "González Videla Port Control" and challenges passing ships about where they're from, where they're going, etc.  A few minutes later we passed Argentina's Almirante Brown Station, which was mostly destroyed in 1983 when the station doctor went stir crazy and burned down the buildings so they would have to be rescued.

Paradise Bay is a popular spot for visitors; it's a large protected cove surrounded by the type of hot-fudge-sundae mountains we saw in the Gerlache Strait.  Because of the beautiful scenery it really is aptly named.  We went on a zodiac cruise here, but didn't land.

Our tour guide was very particular that we should stay up and watch as we passed through the Lemaire Channel.  Sarah and I were beat, so we slept until he came over the intercom (at about 10pm) to let us know we were approaching.  Sarah went up to the bridge to watch it (that was her favorite spot, because it was inside and warm), while I went to the bow (my favorite spot, because it didn't smell like stale cigarettes).

While on the bow, I got mixed up with the Australians, Britons, and New Zealanders who were up there drinking to celebrate the occasion.  When I saw how much fun they were having, I went back to our cabin for my flask of cheap bourbon and a can of warm Guinness.  We didn't actually go through the Channel till around midnight, but it was quite beautiful: more hot-fudge-sundae mountains...yum!  After passing through it, we anchored around the corner, and I went with the party crowd back to the bar.  Things heated up from there; I left early around 1:15, but they kept going till around 4:00, which was their normal ending-the-evening time.  Those Aussies, Brits, and Kiwis sure know how to party!

The next morning we were going to visit a Ukrainian station, Akademik Vernadsky, which was originally Britain's Faraday Station, where the ozone hole was discovered.  Because Antarctic stations are fairly small and can't handle a large number of people at once, they usually ask the Polar Pioneer to land only half its passengers at a time.  Sarah and I were in the group that would go there second; instead, we would first go to Wordie House, the original British base in the area, which was situated on a nearby island.  Little did we know that our trip there would become an adventure of its own.

We were approaching an expanse of thin fast ice (fast ice is frozen seawater that's attached to land).  Sarah asked if we were going to be landing there; I replied no, it was too thin; we were just coming alongside to have a look.  Much to my surprise, a couple seconds later our zodiac driver revved the engine and rammed the zodiac up onto the ice.  He then walked out over the bow onto the ice.  He poked and stomped around a bit, then told us it was safe to get out of the zodiac--"But don't take off your life jackets."  This driver was Greg (the guy walking next to the zodiac in the picture on the left), who we started to realize was a touch on the wild side; when things got dangerous he would start to grin.  After this landing, we started trying to get on his zodiac on outings, because things were liable to get exciting when he was at the till.

From the zodiacs, we walked up what turned out to be a frozen creek.  Not far from the hut, we were stopped by a high snowbank we couldn't climb because of a break in the ice.  Greg started testing the trapped "bergy bits" (very small icebergs) to our left, and found a couple we could walk across to get to a not-as-high snowbank we could climb if we were feeling athletic.  We then walked through some deep snow to the hut.

We explored the hut, then waited for the zodiacs to come pick us up.  (It had turned out to be too dangerous for us to walk back to the zodiacs.)  The temperature rose here to a downright balmy 12°C (55°F), which made this our warmest landing.  We were actually taking clothes off (ok, just outer layers, but still...), and one of the passengers stripped down to a swimsuit and took a brief plunge in the water.  BRRR!

Finally, we crossed over to Vernadsky Station, where the scientists showed us around.  The Ukrainians were very hospitable and very polite.  They also had a small pub (with a pool table!), but the pub was just too smoky for Sarah and me to enjoy.  More's the pity, too; I would have loved that--but it was just too smoky for comfort.  But they also had a tiny souvenir shop and a post office, from which we mailed a couple of post cards before we left.  My parents finally got their post card almost a year later.

This was our southernmost landing, at 65°15'S.  Here was a large but scattered adélie colony.  Much of the island we landed on was covered with snow, but it had a number of rocky raised areas, which were covered with roosting penguins.  The penguins here got around mostly by tobogganing rather than walking.  I guess that makes sense--if it's hard for me to get around when my feet sink half a foot in the snow, what must it be like for a bird with 2-inch legs?

On the rocks here, I also saw several tiny insectlike critters, which were probably a species of collembola, possibly Cryptopygus antarcticus.  I took several photos so I could get them identified, but forgot to set the camera for short-range shooting, so they came out too blurry to make out what they were.  I was bummed.

That evening we went camping.  We found a good spot in the Pleneau Islands, and were still having impeccable weather, so we landed the zodiacs and set up camp for the night.  Most of the passengers camped, and most of them chose to forego the luxury of a tent.  Instead, they slathered on sunscreen, left their sunglasses on, and bedded down on the rocks.  Sarah and I joined the minority, which set up tents on the snow.  It was much warmer in the tents than outside (it blocks the wind and two people heat up a dome pretty quickly), but everything inside got damp.  I hate camping in the snow.

This photo is a shot of our campsite at midnight.  This far south, it doesn't get dark in the austral summer; you just get this sort of twilight you see here.  We woke up at what must have been three or four in the morning and it still looked like this.  Also, the sun does strange things at this latitude.  We watched it set over those hills you see there, then--to our surprise--saw it over those same hills the next morning, rather than over the opposite horizon.

We packed up and headed back to the ship, very glad to get back indoors and warm (I had stuck an ungloved hand in the snow and my fingers were very painful).  Next, we headed to Port Lockroy, another historic site.  The British built Port Lockroy during World War II to keep an eye on the Germans' activities in Argentina and Antarctica (countries were starting to toy with the idea of making territorial claims to Antarctica about that time).  It's been renovated as a historic site, and they maintain a staff there during the Antarctic summer.  There's also a British post office and souvenir shop here, so we sent a couple more post cards from there.  The site is very nicely preserved and very well done; unfortunately, however, there's something very...touristy...about the place, and I found it a little disappointing.

There's also a gentoo colony on the little island that Port Lockroy sits on.  When we'd finished looking around the station, we were taken by zodiac to a large section of fast ice (like that frozen creek we landed on near Vernadsky).  While waiting near the edge of the ice, this little fellow came out of the water, and hopped up onto the top of the ice to have a closer look at us.  His friend was more skittish and dove back into the sea without ever fully leaving the water.  Even this curious one didn't stay long.

We got back to the ship and had Christmas dinner at lunchtime, per European (and, apparently, Australian) tradition.  Considering the way our Aurora hosts were drinking at dinner, we figured we weren't going to have another landing before heading home.  This, indeed, proved to be the case.  In the meantime, we retired to the bar, where they held a Secret Santa thing for everyone.  There we were attended by the raciest (and probably the drunkenest) Santa I'd ever seen.

By the end of the Secret Santa presentation, the ship was rocking back and forth pretty severely, a sure sign we were back in the open sea.  Those who kept drinking (and there were plenty of them) got plenty seasick later on.  Sarah and I put on our scopolamine patches and took it easy.  We were rewarded by being able to handle dinner; half the passengers didn't attend that night.

Eventually, we returned to Ushuaia.  Along the way, it was really neat to see Cape Horn from the south.  When we reached Ushuaia, we spent the day cruising for souvenirs and running errands for Sarah's brother (who had been down two years before).  Then we got up early next morning and headed to the airport for our return trip.  After the difficulties we had getting down, we expected trouble at every leg--but amazingly enough, we had not a single complication on our way back.  As if to make up for it, though, we were followed on every flight by screaming children with inattentive parents.  Thirty-two sleepless hours later, we arrived safely in Sacramento.  We had both come down with a cold.