Antarctica: Finally There!

Even though the trip I booked advertises itself as a 12-day expedition, that includes the arrival and departure days in Ushuaia, the day touring Tierra del Fuego, and the four days crossing the Drake Passage in both directions. So, in reality, you actually end up spending only five days doing what you went all the way there to do! (And knowing this, you don't want to do the math on what the cost of the trip was on a per-day basis. Trust me. :)

But I'll tell you one thing—they really pack those five days full! I've decided I'm going to attempt to write one post each day this week to represent one day's worth of activities. I say “attempt,” because it's taken me a couple of hours today already simply to prepare the photos I want to use for the first days' post. But I'll give it my best shot.

One of the themes you'll read over the next few posts is that there were a lot of things on this trip that were quite unusual. Even Brandon, our expedition leader, said “This is the first time I've ever seen XYZ” on several occasions. Maybe that's because he set a different itinerary than he'd ever done before. Usually the first stop on this trip would be in the South Shetland Islands, north of the Antarctic peninsula, and each day we'd travel south until it was time to head back to Ushuaia. But Brandon decided to shake things up a bit this time, so we were going to start our explorations further south and work our way north during the week.

Our first landing was planned for Petermann Island, and the wake-up call was scheduled for 5:00 a.m.! Of course, no one minded at all, because we were all so excited to finally be leaving the ship, and a lot of people had trouble sleeping anyway, because it was so light out all night (wasn't a problem for me).

We travelled from the ship to the island via a Zodiac, a large inflatable boat with an outboard motor. We had received very precise instructions the day before as to how to get in and out of them, both from the ship, and on land. It was a bit awkward the first couple of times, but by the end of the week, we were all pretty expert at the whole procedure.

When we arrived on the island, we ran into one of our first “firsts”—a major snowstorm! Antarctica gets very little precipitation in general (the continent itself is actually a desert). The wind was pretty strong, but fortunately I had packed very well for the trip, and my Canadian blood seemed to kick in as well, because I didn't find it particularly cold at all.

Petermann Island is home to a colony of Adelie penguins, which live in the southern, colder areas of the region. If I'm remembering correctly, this is actually the furthest north you're likely to find the Adelies. (NOTE: The name of the penguin is actually Adélie, but it's a nuisance to keep coding the accented e, so I'm going to leave it off for other references. They're named after the wife of the man who first discovered them.)

WARNING: If you don't like penguins, you might want to scroll down several screens right about now...

You can identify Adelies because their faces are completely black.

They nest on piles of pebbles (which other penguins steal from them!)

Here's one where you can see the chick in the opening at the bottom of its body (you can't tell if it's a male or female from this distance, and they alternate caring for their young with going out to sea to gather food for feeding it).

Even the penguins struggled with the snow!

The bird nesting behind the penguins is an Antarctic shag. I guess the penguins don't mind having them there because, unlike some birds (like the dreaded skuas), shags don't prey on penguin eggs. Here's a closer look at the shag.

There were also nesting gentoo penguins on the island, and we would be seeing a lot more of them over the course of the week. You can tell them apart from the Adelies because the gentoos have white patches around their eyes and a bright orange beak. Here's one with his/her chick.

Here are a few more general shots of the penguins. (Hey, I warned you!)

And here's a little gentoo who seemed to be mimicking Brandon at first, and then went over to say hi to him.

And that takes us up to about 8:00 a.m.! We headed back to the ship for breakfast and then we split into two groups. The main group headed out for a zodiac cruise around the icebergs, while us kayakers first went and got fitted into our kayaks. Once we had done that, though, we went out cruising as well.

By the end of the trip, I'm not sure whether I ended up with more pictures of penguins or of icebergs. Here are some of the latter. (The ice is blue because it's so dense, it absorbs all the other colours of the spectrum.)

We also had our first seal sighting of the trip. In fact, there were two crabeater seals on the same iceberg.

When the zodiacs were idling, we were allowed to stand in them to get better pictures.

And, of course, a few more penguins...

After the cruise, we returned to the ship for lunch, while it lifted anchor and set sail through the Lemaire Channel. We were assured that this would have been one of the most scenic parts of the trip—if it wasn't for all the, you know, clouds and snow and stuff!

The staff had some fun with the snow on the ship, though.

After lunch was going to be our first kayak trip. The rest of the passengers were going to land at Port Lockroy, a historic British outpost—now a museum—and we were going to kayak there to meet up with them.

Even though I have kayaked a half a dozen times before, and I took a safety skills class to prepare for the trip, I was really nervous about going out the first time. Part of it was, of course, that the water would be mighty chilly if we happened to take a dip in it (although Louise had told us that capsizes were not allowed! :). But the other reason was because we were going to be getting into our kayaks from a zodiac, which isn't exactly the easiest—or most graceful—way to do it. (Below, you can see Louise and Jamie splayed across the zodiac as they held onto the kayaks with all their might as we loaded ourselves into them.)

Lisa, who was going to be my partner for the first trip, told me as we were sitting in the zodiac that I had absolutely no colour in my face. But once we actually did get in them (and it wasn't that difficult), and got our spray skirts attached, I was fine.The kayaks were extremely stable and, in fact, you'd really have to make a concerted effort to tip one over.

Once we started going, I was so happy that I had chosen this option. (I felt a little guilty though, after I discovered that several passengers had had their names on wait lists for kayaking months before I even signed up for the trip, but somehow I got a spot. Oh well...) This was absolutely the best way to see Antarctica! Gliding quietly among the icebergs, searching for wildlife, and listening to glaciers calving all around us, was an experience I'll never forget.

Because this was our first outing, it was supposed to be an easy paddle. But about halfway through, we hit heavy headwinds and really had to fight our way through. At one point, when we could see where we were headed, but it was still a ways off, we were all getting really tired, when suddenly about 30 or 40 penguins began porpoising (leaping through the water like dolphins) all around our kayaks. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any pictures of the pengies, but my fellow kayaker Chelsea did and kindly shared it with us. She's also the one who took the pic of me kayaking that's the header for all these posts. (You can click the smaller version below to see a larger one and get a better sense of what it was like.)

After that amazing encounter (and, again, Louise said this was the first time she'd ever seen penguins coming so close to the kayaks), our energy zoomed right back up and we landed at Port Lockroy with huge smiles on our faces.

Port Lockroy had a little souvenir shop, so I bought a few little things. It was also the one place we could send postcards with Antarctic stamps on them, so a few of you lucky readers may get one eventually. They have to go from Port Lockroy, to the Falkland Islands, and then to ENGLAND, before heading to their final destination. So it could be another few weeks yet before they arrive...

This was where we were going to be anchoring for the night as well, and another ship actually showed up in the same area.

Apparently, this was actually a big no-no. The expedition leaders of all the ships plan out their itineraries to deliberately avoid each other, so each group of passengers can really feel they have a particular area to themselves for that time period. That's how it was for the rest of the trip and, I have to say, it did really add to the experience, in that we never felt like we part of the tourist hordes like in so many other destinations.

Afterwards, we took Zodiacs to a spot called Jougla Point, where we were able to see some more gentoos, as well as the giant remains of whales that had been killed by whalers in the early 1900s.

That was our final outing of the day, so we headed back to the ship where the catering staff had prepared a special Christmas Eve barbecue for us on the bow of the ship. They'd been worried earlier in the day that they would have to change the plans because of the snowstorm, but by then the sun was beaming down on us and it was a glorious evening!

And that was our first day in Antarctica. Whew!

Next installment: Brrr...

Comments

[Regina]

Love reading about your trip. Its definitely inspiring me to push the envelope on my next adventure!

Regina

[Elizabeth]

Push away Regina!

And any time you feel like sharing some of your adventures--past or future--we'd love to hear about them!

Happy Monday!

[Anne Murphy]

WOW!!! That is just amazing. I love all the photos and can't believe that this is just day one!

[Charmian Christie]

Amazing photos. No wonder it took you ages to select. Quite the adventure you had. It seems like you packed more into one day than many people fit in an entire vacation.

Can't wait for the next installment.