Antartica

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Well where to I start to describe where I have been and what I have seen for the past 12 days ?

"Imagine a place as big as the US & Europe combined, sunnier than California, yet colder than your freezer, drier than Arabia, higher than mountainous Switzerland & emptier than the Sahara" (the quote was stolen from a book i read) . A land bigger that Austraila with no roads, no cars, no banks, no permanent citizins, no currency, no culture. A place run by wildlife and goverernt by mother nature - welcome to Antartica !



Left Ushuaia on the 12th of Jan 2008 at 3pm, got on the bus to drive a whole 100m, a procedure we had to do to go through through customs. I was pleasintley suprised to see that there were some young people on the bus. I had expected to be the youngest by at least 20 years, while in actual fact the youngest was 13 and the oldest on the trip was 83, i think the average age was 48 or so, with a few young ones my age, which was good. There were 100 people all together on the boat from all walks of life and from all English speaking counties. There were familes, couples and singles on board. I was sharing my twin berth with a lovely lady from Scotland. Our room was nicely located next to the dining room and on the same floor as the bar and lounge. The ship had an ´open´ bridge policy, allowing you to see how the captain was guiding us to our destination at all times of the day and night.


The Drake Passage

This 1,000km passage of sea from Ushuaia to Antartica is either known as the "Drake lake" or the "drake shake." It took two days to cross the drake passage. The first day it was nice and calm and we got a few lectures and presentaions of what to expect and what we would see. The second day I spent all of it in bed. The water got so choppy that it was coming over the bow of the ship and spashing the windows of the bridge (on the 5th floor). I think the wind was up to 45knots. We were lucky to be on a big ice breaker of a ship, but it made me think of the Exploreres 100 years ago that made the crossing in their small saililng boat wit hthe winds and the gales throwing them almost over board.


Icebergs

On the 3rd day the temperatures dipped and we saw our 1st iceberg ! ok it was only a small one, but after a while the sea was littered with icebergs. The icebergs we saw were absolutely amazing. I never got sick of saying the quote from Titanic - Íceberg ahead!!´ The icebergs came in all different shapes and sizes, from ones as small as footballs to ones bigger than a football staduim. I think Dulex the paint brand should come to Antartica to do their next line of the colour white, as I´ve never seen so many shades of white in my life, from the cast of the clouds to the reflection of the blue sea, the icebergs came in every shade of white, grey and blue imaginable. It was also amazing to learn that the icebeg that we actually saw floating on the sea only represented 20% of it as the other 80% was under the sea !

Before I left for the white continent I thought Antartica would be flat and full of white snow and ice, but after a short time, among all the icebergs, I could see I was wrong as i saw what looked like a white version of Manathan island on the horizon, but it was in fact peaks of snowy Mountains, it was land, it was the Antarctic Continent ! It was not at all flat and it wasn´t covered enitely by ice and snow.


Zodiacs

THe boat is great, it´s warm, dry and comfortable, but it dosen´t get you up close and personal with the wildlife and the icebergs, so there is zodiacs. These are rubber boats, with a aluminuim floor, hold 12 passengers and the driver/expedition staff, and tyou get on them from walking down the gangway of the boat. They are used to cruise around the ice and to brings us to landing sites. Although they have no cover, so sometimes they got a little wet and a bit cold when the ´cruise´to sea the surrounding area was over an hour and your face was pounded by sleaty snow and rain and wind and salty sea waves. But most of the time they were fun to ride in and we got real close to the wildlife, life with the oenguoins, whales and seals. After breakfast and lunch most days, we hopped into the zodiac to either go for a cruise, a landing or both.


Penguins

We saw our first Penguin on the 4th day, it was a single on all on it´s own. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be, only the same size as a 2L bottle or so. I took about 20 photos of this penguin standing alone on a rock. Although over the next few days we saw 1000s of penguins. One penguin was cute, but when you saw more than one you began also to smell them before you saw them, oh the smell of penguins all tucked up on their rockiers is quiet overpowering, but the also very cute. January was a great time to see these birds as their chicks were still small and under their mum´s wing for protection. We also got to see Penguins fighting off Skua birds and others were just collecting rocks for their lady.

It was really fasinating seeing a penguin walking from the sea to their rockery as they really are quiet akward on land with their little waddle and they keep fallling over, but in the sea they porpous like dolphins diving in and out of the water so gracefully.


Whales

All along we had humpback wahles following our ship along. We even saw a minke whale and her calf following our boat at one stage. As thay come to antartica to feed, they we´ren´t doing any trips like the jumping they do in New Zeland, but they did wave their fin to us a couple of times and they also showed us their tail.


Dolphins

On out way back to Ushuaia, we saw lots of dolphins riding the waves in front of the bow of the ship. On the side of the ship they were showing off big time jumping and srtanding and back flipping. Although they were a little too fast for the shutter of my camera.



Seals

One think I learnt is that there is more that one type of seal. We saw Fur seals, Weddel seals and the nasty one Leopard sea - this was a seal bigger than our Zodaic, and rumour has it burst a zodiac the year before ! so when it slithered off the ice like a snake into the water and dove under our zodiac, i was a little bit scared.


Circle crossing

WE crossed the Antarcic cirlce on the 16th and celebrated this with chamapage on the bow. Now I have crossed the Artica and the Antartic cirlces. THe circle lies on 66.33.39, not all boats cross this ´line´but we were luckily enough to go as south as 68´degrees.


Swimming

I have swam in the Irish sea on Christmas day when it was snowing outside, which is cool to say. But now I can saw i stripped of 2 hats, 5 layers on top ( Thermal long vest, polo neck, fleece top, cardigan, down jacket, waterproof jacket), 2 layers on bottom ( thermals and ski pants), took of my 3 pairs of ski socks to be left in nothing but my swim suit to swim in the Antartic waters in a place called Deception Island. I went in 4 times in total ! the first time I only dipped my body in and I was intsantiously numb all over, then by the last time I had aclimatised to the icey waters and I actually swam for over a minute, although swimming back to the beach was a little hard as brain and body weren´t commumicating very well cos I was actually frozen, but once i felt the ground under my feet i was just about able to walk out. Deception island is a volcanic area and therefore has natural hot springs just underneath the surface, so just up from the beach while 10 crazy passengers ´swam´ the staff were busy digging up the ground to make us a big hot spring pool. It was soo divine going from the almost freezing waters to the 28degrees of the hot spring pool.


Fun in the snow

Our fisrt landing on the actual Continent, as opposed to one of the many islands, was celebrated by hiking up a small hill and rolling all the way down it. A big bang of us forgot what age we were, but in snow years we were all 6 years old again having fun in the snow having snow fights, making snow angles and getting very wet in the process. We even managed to through a snow ball or two at Haley our expetion leader, although so did retaliate !


Research stations

About half of the landings we did were to research stations, some dating back half a century. One of the staions we went to was the Ukraine Vernadsky Research Base lying at 65°14′S, 64°15′W. This was home to 12 researchers looking at the effect of global warming. It was a really civilised base, that even had a pool table, big screen tv and of course a bar where they made their own vodka. This bar is the southern most bar on Earth ! so for 2 Us $ i had to try some of their home brew, which nearly burned my insides !


No-mans land

I had my mobile phone on to use as an alarm on the last morning. Every other moring we were awakon by Haley at 7 or 7.30am over the PA, telling us the weather outside and what time Breakfast was. But on the last morining I had to wake myself up because I was the top bitter in an auction to do the wake up call on the last morning. It was a bright and early 6.30am wake up and boy did I get my monies worth, it went something on the lines of ´cock a doddle doo.... top of the morning to you.....´ But I was awoken before my alarm went off, cos we were near land, I got my phone signal back after 12 days and I got a text message, I had arrived back to civilization and all that goes with it - Phones, internet, people, roads, trees, greenery etc. I made me realise that I really had ventured of the planet for a while. Actually half way throught he trip we saw a sea-plane fly really low by our boat, this may not sound strange, but when your in the middle of nowhere, it was such a strange sight, almost like seeing a cow fly. cos before the week before we saw no-one but the people on out boat, no other boats, no other peopke, no planes nothing and no-one, we where in no-mans land !

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