Antarctica

Saturday January 31

Standing on the bridge in the evening as we sailed through a field oficebergs, I looked through my binocs and saw what appeared to be land… along ridge that spanned most of the horizon. I knew we were still a coupledays away from the Peninsula, so I wondered what I was seeing. I turned toDr. John who was talking with one of the crew and pointing at the horizon,and he said it was an 11-mile-long iceberg. It was hard to grasp the scaleof this thing, drifting along through the ocean. We navigated around it,just a few hundred feet off our port side, and it turned out the berg was asequally wide as it was long. It occurred to me that this berg probablycovered a larger area than the City of Seattle!

Sunday February 1

Most of today was on open water. We stopped briefly at Point Wild onElephant Island, where Shackleton's crew waited four months for him toreturn with rescue. From the ship, we could see the place where the menstayed, but seas were too rough to make a landing.

Monday February 2

Our first landing today was at Half-Moon Island. It was another beautifulday… mostly sunny, with occasional clouds and fog blowing through. CamaraBase, a small Argentine base is located here, and the handful of ArgentineNaval staff walked over right away… they seemed glad to have some outsidecompany. I spent a few minutes checking out the small chinstrap penguincolony, and then we did our first kayaking paddle around the bay. Therewasn't much different to see from the kayak, and it was a little rolly, butit was nice to be on the water. Memie, a petite city gal from Hong Kong,was my paddle partner, and she was new to kayaking, but very enthusiastic(and fearless). We seemed to work pretty well together.

Back out on the Bransfield Strait, we watched our approach to DeceptionIsland. At noon, I looked over toward the other side of the Strait and sawland, mostly obscured by clouds… my first sight of the Antarctic continent.

We made our second landing at Whaler's Bay at Deception Island. The islandis an old volcano, with the bay inside the caldera; it's like a doughnutwith a bite missing. The approach into the harbor is made through a narrowbreak in the side of the caldera, with colorful rocky walls and spiresrising up on each side of the entrance. The ship anchored in the calmwaters inside the harbor, and from here, we kayaked again, back out throughthe opening and on the open sea swells, among the cliffs on the outside ofthe island. At one point we looked up and saw several of our shipmates afew hundred feet above us in a low point on the cliff, called Neptune'sWindow. It was fun and a little challenging paddling in the swell againstthe rocks. We then paddled back to the beach and had enough time to hike upto Neptune's Window, which offers a great view of the Antarctic Peninsula onthe rare clear days like this one. I then walked down the beach among theremnants of the whaling operations from decades ago. Toward the end of thebeach, the sand is steaming and the water is warm, from the geothermalactivity underneath.

Tuesday February 3

Today was the most action-packed day of the trip. Our first landing was atEnterprise Island, where we kayaked among icebergs and bergy bits (that isthe actual technical term for pieces that break off icebergs). There werealso some striking ice features in the channel… some arches and interestingshapes. We saw a whale and tried to follow at a distance… although we got acouple closer looks at the whale, it wasn't too interested in hangingaround. We would see it surface nearby, and in a seeming matter of seconds,it was a mile away.

Our next landing was Danco Island. More kayaking… this time it was a looparound the island. The island is mostly covered by a massive glacier, whichrises several hundred feet sheer up from the water. The island issurrounded by glacier-covered mountains. At this point, it was starting tosnow, and it was just about dead calm. Halfway through the paddle, Dansuggested that we stop for a few minutes of silence on the water… when westopped moving, the only sounds were the brash ice tinkling, an occasionalrumble from one of the glaciers, and penguins porpoising through the water. Snow was falling gently. Another one of the best moments I'll rememberabout this trip. We detoured in the kayaks to see a few Weddell Seals hauled out anothersmall island. Following Dan's example, Memie and I also played a little,attempting to run our kayak up on top of the flatter growlers (floating icechunks smaller than bergy bits). I was happily surprised at Memie'senthusiasm for the kayak horseplay.

Back to the ship again, sailing down a channel to our next stop, we sawseveral whales. The captain stopped the ship so we could watch a couplehumpback whales that were surfacing and rolling. At one point, the whalesswam right under the bow of the ship, and I was perched in the perfect spotto look straight down to see them just a few feet under the surface.

Our third landing for the day was Neko Harbor. We went ashore in Zodiacs,and I took my first steps on the Antarctic Continent (that's number 5 forme). The snowfall was starting to pick up again. Wayne and I quickly setup our tent – on a snowy slope above the beach, surrounded by noisy gentoopenguins. Then Cathy and I headed back to the landing beach for a lateevening kayak paddle; it was after 10 p.m. by this time. The light and theice were surreal… the new snow on the drifting ice chunks made them standout in the twilight. I was resigned that this would just be a nice paddlealong the edge of the glacier to see some interesting ice features in thewater, until we heard a spout. We turned and saw the humpback not too faraway and carefully paddled in that direction. This whale did a pretty goodbreach before swimming away. At this point we heard and saw a minke whale,which headed toward Jamie sitting in the Zodiac following us (he had theengine off at this point). Then we heard more spouting further away… abouta mile away we could see another humpback, so we started paddling in thatdirection. This humpback was apparently running into some good food,because it was rolling and circling repeatedly, and didn't seem to takenotice of our approach. We got closer and closer, and the whale put on agood show… rolling and breaching, giving us repeated views of its tailfluke, dorsal fins, and pectoral fins. We crept closer, and eventually wesituated ourselves at about the safest allowable distance. We had a perfectvantage point to watch the whale as it passed by in front of us… I wascompletely enthralled. Until the whale suddenly decided to circle back –straight at our kayak. It went under for a couple seconds, but I could seethe wave on the surface heading directly toward us, and then it surfaced. Holy sh*t! A massive hump rose out of the water, pushing a wave ahead ofit, coming right at us broadside. At this point Cathy and I were paddlinglike mad, except she was paddling forward and I was paddling backward. Inthe split second all of this was occurring, I'm thinking "does the whaleknow we're here, does it care, or is it *aiming* for us?" In alllikelihood, it just didn't care... it was probably focused on getting a bigmouthful from the swarm of krill in the water around us. Certainly if itwanted to flip us, it could have; I learned that whales are surprisinglyfast and nimble. In any case, I joined Kathy in paddling forward – as hardas I could – and somehow we got out of the way. I turned to look behind usjust in time to see the whale plow through the spot we had just beensitting. I was shaking from the adrenaline overdose for the next hour.

We sat for a few minutes recovering and watching the whale continue tobreach and circle around, then decided to load the kayaks into the Zodiacand ride back with Jamie. As we paddled over to Jamie, two more whales wereblowing and breaching a little further away. It was probably 11:30 p.m. bythis point. We went back to the ship, I took a quick hot shower and changedinto dry clothes and then we got in Zodiac to head back to our snow camp onthe shore. I sat up for awhile in the twilight watching the gentoos aroundour tent, then eventually headed to the tent.

We had been warned not to go on the beach because the massive glacier nearbyoften calves large chunks which create a "mini-tsunami." The lines fromthese waves were clearly visible at the edge of the snowline on the beach. As I went to bed, I realized the wave line represented the more frequent"routine" calving events, but it occurred to me that the glacier lookedcapable of producing a larger icefall that could generate a wave to reach mytent. This paranoia is what kept me awake… every time I heard a rumble orcrack from the glacier, I reached for the door zipper on the tent. Eventually I was able to relax and fell asleep. Thanks to the good gear, Istayed warm enough all night.

Wednesday February 4

I was dead asleep when Jamie roused us from our tents at 5 a.m. It wasstill snowing, and the wind had picked up overnight. The worst part wasputting on my cold boots. We quickly broke camp, loaded everything into theZodiacs, and headed back to the ship.

Before loading into the Zodiac, I paused to honor my mom's brother Glenn,who died unexpectedly last year, just a few months after my grandma passedaway. My mom was surprised to learn from Glenn's wife just before my tripthat Glenn had a great interest in Antarctica, had an extensive collectionof books on Antarctica, and dreamed of visiting. I imagined Glenn seeingthe place as I was seeing it and inscribed Glenn's initials in the sandamong the gentoo penguin tracks.

Our next goal was to move down the Gerlache Strait to Useful Island, wherewe were supposed to make our last landing to see chinstrap and gentoopenguins. It was still windy, cold, and snowy. As we approached thelanding site, I got geared up, but just as I went upstairs to line up forthe Zodiac, Shane made an announcement that the landing would be scrubbeddue to the wind and waves. I was sorely disappointed to miss our lastlanding, but was still very thankful and happy that we had such greatweather over the course of the whole trip, especially when it mattered –this last landing was the only one we would miss.

I sat and enjoyed the scenery from the bridge as we sailed on down thechannel, then we had breakfast at 9:00. After breakfast, I went up to thebridge a little more, and then decided to go take a nap. When I woke up 45minutes later, I went back up to the bridge and couldn't believe my eyes. The skies were bluer than I had seen on the whole trip and the wind hadsubsided. The blue skies made the scenery along the channel even morestunning. After awhile, we went to lunch. Just as I was climbing thestairs back to the bridge after lunch, Shane came on and announced that wewould make a landing! And not just any landing… this one would includePalmer Station and an adelie penguin colony! Shane was just finishing thisannouncement as I walked onto the bridge, and everyone broke into applause.

I appreciated Shane's efforts to get us another landing. We'd only missedtwo landings on the whole trip. Shane didn't have to find alternatelandings on these occasions, but both times he went out of his way toarrange replacement stops… not only that, but these alternate sites turnedout to be better than the originally-planned stops.

Before reaching Palmer, we sailed a little way into the Lemarie Channel. Wehad a big crowd on the front deck to enjoy the sunshine and the mountainsand glaciers.

We anchored at Palmer Station and went to shore in Zodiacs. I'm not usuallystirred by patriotism, but I felt proud as we approached the station and sawthe American flag flying … here were fellow Americans in Antarctica for thesole purpose of advancing the cause of science and knowledge. We broke upinto a few small groups and got tours from the station staff. We were leadaround the station by an IT guy named Paul, from San Diego. Most of theresearch happens in the field, so there wasn't a whole lot to see at thestation… there are two main buildings with living quarters, a few labs, therecreation space and gym. The most interesting part was listening to Pauldescribe life at the station. About 45 people are there in the summer, and16 in the winter. There are lots of measures taken to keep everyone safeand sane. I went away thinking I would enjoy a year or two there.

After the tour, we took the Zodiacs across the cove to land at an adeliepenguin colony… a few thousand here. The chicks were mostly molted, butmany of them had funny little tufts on top of their heads, like littleafros. The penguins were not very curious or interactive. I think myfavorite penguins of the trip were the rockhoppers, which we only saw on theFalklands. Among the 5 penguin species we saw on the trip (rockhoppers,gentoos, kings, macaronis, and adelies), the rockhoppers were the mostinteractive and inquisitive with us human visitors.

Done with our landings, we went back to the ship for our last Antarcticactivity… a polar plunge. I dove off the gangway into the water (just acouple degrees above freezing), and then swam straight back to the gangwayand ran up to a dry towel and a congratulatory shot of vodka administered byDr. John. 15 of us did the plunge; again I was happily surprised at some ofmy shipmates who decided to jump in.

At this point we weighed anchor and headed into the Drake Passage on the wayhome. There was a colorful sunset, which lit up the mountains… our lastview of Antarctica.

Thursday February 5, and Friday February 6

Open water days. The Drake Passage is notorious as some of the roughest seain the world. This is known as the Drake Shake. Having been seasickearlier in the trip, I was prepared for the worst. However, all dayThursday, we were lucky to experience a much less common phenomenon known asDrake Lake… relatively calm seas. Seriously, the weather was amazinglycooperative on the whole trip. As the trip progressed, Shane keptcommenting on our good fortune with the weather – at several landings, hesaid he'd never seen it this good. Someone on this ship has some goodkarma.

Today, Friday, the Drake is slightly more rolly, but nothing compared to thedescriptions I've heard from those who have experienced its true fury.

We'll reach the Beagle Channel tonight (ahead of schedule thanks to the calmseas), and disembark in Ushuaia tomorrow morning; from there it's straightto the airport and off to Buenos Aires.