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Published: December 9th 2007
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Mikkleson Harbour
Hannah, the snow lady December 9, 2007
We are now about one hour away from the port of Ushuaia at the end of my second voyage on the Polar Star. The day is overcast, with a few light showers, but some patches of blue sky suggest that the weather for our day in port may improve. This has been another wonderful cruise in all respects, with decent weather for most of it, excellent wildlife, good landings and a fun group of passengers. The last two days at sea were a bit of a strain, with a cross wind of 30+ knots raising a big swell from the west and making the ship roll most uncomfortably; by late afternoon, though, we were in the lee of Cape Horn and passengers that we hadn’t seen for a couple of days started to re-appear.
I have no idea when the last entry was made to this blog, so I’ll just enter a few highlights from the last few landings. From South Georgia, we made our way southwest backwards along the route that Shackleton and his men had sailed ninety years ago from Elephant Island. Our crossing to Elephant island took two and a half days, Shackleton’s had
taken sixteen. The weather at Cape Wild was poor, with high winds, a very lumpy sea and snow flurries driving horizontally across the sea, but we managed to find a bit of a lee and launched the zodiacs. We circumnavigated the bay between Cape Wild and Cape Belsham, getting in close to colonies of chinstraps waiting patiently on the snow covered slopes for the snow to melt and reveal the bare rock where they could lay their eggs, past Cape Wild where Frank Wild and the remaining members of the Shackleton party spent three months waiting for The Boss to return for them, past a calving glacier front, and eventually back to the warmth of the ship. From here, we had another full day at sea before reaching Halfmoon Island on the South Shetland chain. The island is crescent shaped, nestled between larger Livingston and Greenwich islands, and is home to more than 3000 pairs of chinstrap penguins and smaller numbers of blue-eyed shags and gentoo penguins. Most passengers set off through the chinstrap colony to the southwest end of the island, while I broke a path through the snow to the northeast end, where I found a group of
Mikkleson
Nesting gentoos five Weddell seals hauled up on the snow, and radioed to the other staff to send passengers down for a close encounter with these beautiful animals.
When we were all back on board we set off across the Bransfield Strait to Deception Island and Whalers Bay, just inside the mouth of the caldera. A whaling station had operated on shore in Whalers Bay between 1912 and 1931, while many floating factory ships also made the sheltered harbour a base for their operations. The British Antarctic Survey took over the old whaling station buildings between 1943 and 1969, when an eruption of the volcano destroyed much of the base. We went ashore and set off for hikes up to Neptune’s Window, a cut in the caldera wall from which Nathaniel Palmer is said to have been one of the first to see the continent proper - the chain of mountains which form the Antarctic Peninsula, 60 miles away to the east. Others set off up Ronald’s Hill, but the strong winds deterred many from completing the ascent. back down on the beach, the staff team dug a couple of long trenches in the steaming ash, just at the water line,
Mikkleson
waterboat and the holes soon filled up with bath-temperature water. About 30 hardy souls peeled off, plunged into the ice-strewn bay and then wallowed in the pool, with Danny snapping their photos. After re-filling the swimming holes, we returned to the ship for a most welcome cup of hot chocolate liberally laced with rum, courtesy of Bart the bartender, and then headed further south.
Early the next morning we steamed through Neumayer Channel, one of the most beautiful passages we experience, bordered by snow-covered mountain slopes, glaciers dipping their toes in the sea, icebergs, and everywhere the sharp contracts between the white, the blue sea and sky and the slashes of bare black rock. We turned out of the channel into the sheltered harbour off Port Lockroy on tiny Goudier island. The British operated a station here from 1943 until 1962, and the main building has been restored to the period and is now run as a museum, gift shop and Post Office for the thousands of tourists who call in on their cruise ships each year. Between Port Lockroy and neighbouring Jougla Point on Wienke Island we had the opportunity to walk through large colonies of gentoo penguins, blue-eyed
Port Lockroy
Nesting gentoo shags and piles of whale bones from the whaling era. Zodiacs zipped back and firth between the two destinations and the ship for the duration of the three-hour stop.
After lunch, we landed for the first time on the Antarctic Continent at an abandoned Argentinean base called Almirante Brown, named for a famous naval figure. Here we were able to hike to the top of a hill for a view of the surrounding ice-studded bays and take a zodiac cruise round into Skontorp Bay at the bottom of Paradise Bay. The bay was choked with icebergs and smaller ice pans, through which the drivers searched for the perfect photo opportunities of glaciers, mountains and ice sculptures and more elusive wildlife. Eventually we came across a couple if crabeater seals, our first encounter with these long slim animals, the most numerous of seals in the Antarctic.
Our day was not yet over; as we sailed back out the Newmayer and then into the narrow cut that is Lemaire Channel we held a barbecue on the back deck (well, the chefs and a few intrepid staff did) and then dropped anchor off Petermann Island for a late night landing and visit to three scientists camped on the island to carry out a census of the adelie penguin colony. We had an hour or so on shore and then returned to the ship, tired but exhilarated after such a busy day in some of the most spectacular scenery imaginable.
Our last day of sctivities in Antarctica included a morning zodiac cruise around Cierva Cove, finding amazing icebergs and sculptures, small groups of seals, a shy minke whale, and colonies of chinstrap and gentoo penguins. The bay is overlooked by another Argentinean research base, Primavera, not yet open for the season. From here we headed a little further out into the South Shetland chain of islands for our final landing at Mikkelsen Harbour, on a small rock islet surrounded by reefs, providing challenges for the drivers bringing their charges ashore. The name Mikkelsen is taken from one of the early whaling captains who used the harbour as a refuge during the early 20th century. Most of us walked around the island, viewing gentoos nesting on the rock, many with eggs, and photographing several friendly Weddell seals.
So our eighteen days on the ship ended with a return up the Beagle Channel to the burgeoning city of Ushuaia, the city at the end of the world. The 30+ knot winds during our crossing provided that last experience that some of us had been wishing for, a photo of waves breaking over the bow and spray cascading down the bridge windows. Today we, the staff, have a few hours in town to catch up on emails and to phone home, do a bit of shopping, and enjoy a cup of real coffee.
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