Expedition-style Travel

26 February 2009 10pm

Rarely does a visit to Antarctica commence with disappointment. Unhappily for us the bad weather we experienced on the Drake Passage remained with us for our first day in the South Shetlands. We anticipated that our first landing scheduled for Hannah Point on Livingstone Island would be adversely affected so we altered course for Half Moon Island which unfortunately did not provide shelter from the 40 plus knot gusts sweeping across the Southern Ocean. We dropped anchor and 7 minutes later we weighed anchor and made for Deception Island hoping that wind conditions in the caldera would be within the safe zodiac operating limits.

Captain Idar managed to edge the ship through Neptune’s Bellows into the caldera of Deception Island, however, a landing was out of the question as the hills surrounding the caldera did not provide a suitable lee. Nevertheless we did enjoy a ship cruise inside an active volcano in Antarctica and could see the historical sites from the safety of the ships decks. Deception Island is steeped in history. As a proud Aussie I always enjoy visiting the site of the first Antarctic flight made by Australian explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins and wonder if Nathaniel Palmer was in fact the first person to see the Antarctic continent from Neptune’s window.

Yesterday’s disappointments were cast aside from the moment I rolled out of bed. Every morning the first thing I do is peek out my porthole and this morning I spied huge bergs everywhere. I sprang out of bed… I am prone to exaggeration and hyperbole… actually I rolled out of bed onto the cabin floor, threw on some clothes, splashed my face and headed out on deck, camera in hand. The wind had dropped and the temperature had plummeted, so much so that the upper deck was coated in ice. We wound our way slowly through huge tabular bergs and myriad smaller icebergs into Hope Bay, home to Argentina’s Esperanza Base and a hut used over a hundred years ago by members of Otto Nordenskjold’s Swedish Antarctic Expedition.

The base is nestled on a rocky shore at the foot of some huge glaciers and mountains. A fresh coat of powder snow lent a surreal air to the landscape. The base itself has an intriguing history. It is the site of the first Antarctic birth, an Argentine of course. It has a school and a radio station and really is an interesting little community in its own right. It is also a continental base so a number of the passengers celebrated their seventh continent with gorgeous vistas of the ice filled bay.

After lunch we sailed a little further south to one of my favourite sites on the peninsula, Brown Bluff. It is home to nesting Snow Petrels, Cape Petrels, Gentoos, Adelies, Kelp Gulls and numerous fur seals, however, it is not the wild life that is the highlight, it is the black sand beach and the huge brown overhanging cliffs. The cliffs have discharged enormous brown rocks onto the beach and the water off the beach is unusually calm with tide pools that are perfect for the ultimate wildlife reflection shots. So we spent a lovely couple of hours strolling along the beach, watching full-grown Gentoo chicks learning the ropes for their first winter at sea and fur seals play-fighting. A number of passengers enjoyed a walk on the periphery of the glacier at the southern end of the Bluff.

As soon as we returned to the ship a few lunatics took to the ocean to ‘enjoy’ a polar plunge. Following the plunge we headed south once more through Fridtjof Sound. The Sound was chocked with ice and by the time we entered Yalour Sound we had to make a decision about where to spend the night. It had started to snow and with so much big ice around and fast flowing currents (up to 2 knots) it wasn’t an option to stay where we were. So after making a brief incursion into some first year sea ice we turned the ship and made out way north again to avoid the worst of the ice. I will never tire of watching seals and icebergs out the window while enjoying a glass of nice red and a hot meal! A snow petrel even fluttered past the dining room… and this is a job!

David Sinclair