Having gone to bed last night in a snowstorm, I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened the curtains this morning, so imagine my delight when I discovered these scenes:
I threw some clothes on and ran up to the observation lounge to soak in the scene and take a few more photos. Breakfast followed, and then the Red Group was called to the lounge for a 9:40 embarkation for our first landing on mainland Antarctica, in Neko Harbor. After wading through a decontamination trough we were quickly loaded into the Zodiacs (8 or 10 passengers per boat) for about a 10-minute shuttle to the beach across the bay. The water was pretty calm, but we had to slow down quite a bit as we went through some ice fields. We pushed right up on a rocky beach; I stepped into calf-high water, and found myelf standing on the Antarctic Continent! Several of the Expedition Guides were on hand to explain the layout. There was a Gentoo Penguin colony just above the beach to the left, then a path through the snow began to our right and wound around uphill past another colony higher up (much larger too), and then continued up through an icy snowfield to a lookout vista about 100 meters above the water, giving a spectacular view of the bay, the penguins below, a blue and white glacier to the right, mountains all around, and our tiny ship off in the distance.
We were on the first Zodiac of the second shift, so while Jim stayed on the beach to photograph penguins (Neil Ann stayed aboard the ship), I hiked up to the highest point we were allowed to in order to beat the "crowd" (of about 8 other hardy souls who made the trek later) and get the whole view for myself. One of the guides was posted at the top, so he answered a few questions and took the photo of me with the ship in the background.
The hike back down was actually harder than the hike up due to the very icy conditions, but I picked my way down (with the help of my parents' hiking sticks) without slipping more than once. I stopped at the higher penguin colony, and while looking at that, there was a loud crack from the glacier off to the right, and I saw a small piece of ice (hard to tell if it was really small because the scale of everything is so grand) snap off into the water. The guide told us to wait and watch because another piece was likely to follow, and was proved right about a minute later when there was another loud crack, and and even larger piece fell in, creating a whole series of waves that headed towards the beach.
On the final part of the descent, I had to stop where the human path crossed a series of "penguin highways" which are paths created by the penguins from the colony higher up, right down to the beach, because penguins were coming down and of course they had the right of way. These little guys, not much more than knee-high, just couldn't have been cuter, or more unconcerned about all these strange humans that had invaded their little corner of the world.
This is the end of the breeding season, to although there were a lot of penguins here (as well as other birds, including one that we spotted alongside the path eating a baby penguin), most of the young are fairly large, and the adults were in the middle of their "catastrophic moult" which occurs when they replace all their feathers at once, and during which they can't go in the water to feed.
The guides explained that this had been a poor breeding season for the Gentoos at this location because there had been so much snow at the beginning of the season that it was hard for them to set up their nests. There was also one lone Adelie Penguin on the beach among the others; apparantly this was exceptional because the Adelies had all left for the winter some time ago.
Anyway, I finally made it back to the Zodiac landing spot and returned to the ship in time for lunch, immediately after which it was time to get ready for the afternoon kayaking session. It took about 20 minutes to change clothes, wriggle into the "dry suit" which is a full-body suit with integrated feet, like a baby's onesie, so you just put on two pairs of socks, put your legs into the suit and then put your feet into Crocs tha Ponant provided with the suit. Around your wrists are thick rubber cuffs, and around your neck a thick rubber turtle-neck, to seal the whole thing from water in case you fall out of the boat. Then a waterproof zip around your torso, and you're in.
During lunch the ship had repositioned itself to Paradise Bay, so we had a whole new area to photograph and explore! Down to the lounge for 2:30 departure, via Zodiac to a landing spot on another rocky beach about a 10 minute cruise away, within sight of an Argentinian Scientific Station. There, we loaded into two-man kayaks (while we were loading a seal cruised by about 6 feet in front of us and eyed us with suspician), and set off across the bay for what turned out to be almost three hours of sightseeing (it was advertised as a trip of an hour or maybe and hour and a quarter). Being right at water level, seeing penguins leaping through the water, taking in the magnificent scenery, paddling through ice fields and past small icebergs, was just incredible.
Then as we were about to turn back, a whale was sighted a couple of hundred yards ahead of us. We stopped paddling, and waited. The whale (and another) started surfacing over and over again; each time we could hear the rush of air as it exhaled. Sometimes we just saw their back and dorsal fin arcing over the water, sometimes we got a view of the rear fin raised up before going under.
At this point, we drifted past a large brown seal that was lazing on a largish piece of ice, and everybody was photographing that until we heard the whales again and turned to see them passing by no more than 50 feet from our boats! The sounds of the exhalations each time they came to the surface was like a deep, gushing, primordial moan. It's what I imagine dinosaurs would have sounded like, yet we were seeing and hearing these magnificent animals practically right next to us. Finally, they vanished behind some ice, but we continued to hear their thunderous exhalations as they swam away. I was just awestruck by the whole experience.
The ship seemed an impossibly long way off by now, so we had a looooong paddle back there, but finally arrived and were offloaded from the kayaks onto basically a large, rectangular piece of foam, about 8 inches thick, that functioned as a floating dock about 100 yards off the stern of the ship. On the other side of the foam were two Zodiacs tied up side by side, so we had to get out of the kayaks, flop onto the floating dock (which was not entirely rigid), and then manage to scramble back into the Zodiac all without landing in the frigid water (this whole afternoon I tried very hard not to think about how cold and deep the water was, or what creatures were swimming around beneath us). Everybody managed to get it right, some not as gracefully as others, but we all made it. Then back to the rear platform of the ship, and the second adventure of the day was over.
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| The long paddle back to the ship. I'm in the kayak directly under the ship's bow |
Shortly after we stepped back onto the ship, the "Captain's Gala" was to begin, so I had to race back to the cabin, get out of the kayaking outfit, shower and change, and get back downstairs in time to be photographed with the Captain (or Commandant as he's called in French), be introduced to all the senior officers, and hear a little more from the captain. One interesting thing we learned is that there are 197 passengers on this cruise and something like 156 crew members. It's obvious, because the service on this ship is just fantastic in every respect. This was followed by a "dressy" 6-course dinner in the fancy restaurant. There was some other event in the theater at 9:30 but I don't know if anyone on the whole ship had enough energy left for that.
I can hardly believe that all of this happened in just one day; it was an incredible introduction to Antarctica, so hands-on, so up-close-and-personal, so otherworldly, so active, so NOT sitting on a bus and sightseeing through a window. I loved it!!
The ship set sail during dinner, headed for tomorrow's location, where we have a landing in the morning, and a Zodiac cruise in the afternoon. The disembarkation times for the groups are rearranged from today; tomorrow the Red Group is #2, and we are to head off at 8:40 am, so it'll be an early wakeup and breakfast for me first. It's hard to imagine anything topping today, but this cruise continues to surprise me each and every day.
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