When your ship comes in...

Antarctica
February 1st 2013

Published: February 4th 2013

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Richard Chamberlain

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The Sea Spirit (aka: Mega Star Sagitarius!)

Intro

What will you do when your ship comes in..? For me, I had been a bit lost the past few years so I decided to embrace the opportunity to travel as a means to let go of control and allow myself to enjoy the ride that is life again. Of course there are some amazingly breathtaking places to see along the way and now, after visiting Antarctica, I am sure that I have started with the ¨cream of the crop¨! Just reading this doesn´t do the experience justice and there are no words any writer or poet can write, nor photos or videos that can be taken to describe how the place makes you feel... It is like trying to describe a colour to someone that has been blind their entire life... it just doesn´t make sense until you see it for yourself. Sure the place is teeming with wildlife and the icy landscape is something else but it is the contrast between penetrating winds and still mornings, the wild ocean and the calm bays, the fog and the glare of a reflective blue sky, snow, rain, cracking glaciers and the exhale of a whale passing by that will

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Who is that bearded man?!

take your breath away and impregnate itself in your blood forever.

You will feel as big and alive as you ever have, so full of energy that you can almost see it radiating out of your skin and you will feel as small and peaceful that you could almost float away. I found in this place the ultimate paradigm; one of the harshest places in the world, supporting and nurturing so much life. In many ways it is the source of life for the whole planet. It is like visiting the heart and soul of mother earth and I felt all at once connected to all life. I don´t particularly like the connotations associated with the word but you could say ¨Enlightening¨!

So backtracking, many of you know that I took a trip down the East coast of Australia late last year, which was my tentative ¨toe in the water¨ experiment to see how I felt about the idea of unconstrained travel. Antarctica and South America is a bigger jump than I expected and to me feels more like a plunge into uncharted waters but in many ways is still the continuation of that original road trip. Perhaps

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Southern Giant Petrel

that is a bit of an exaggeration but it is at least a whole leg in the water rather than just the foot! So long story short, on a whim I booked flights to Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world (and their claim to fame as the ¨end of the world¨, ¨fin del mundo¨), on the island of Terra del Fuego, Argentina. It was here that most of the cruises leave for Antarctica and where I was told that, if I was prepared to wait, that I could get a standby rate. Although it was not as easy as I first thought I managed to secure a berth on the Sea Spirit (pictured) operated by Quark Expeditions, sailing for 13 days to cross the Antarctic circle (66·33 degrees south). This was THE cruise that I wanted to be on, with the outfit touted as the best in the business and they didn´t disappoint.

Methods- PART 1

Boarding and Crossing the Drake.

I had met a fellow Aussie, Nick from Adelaide, at the hostel I was staying at who had travelled extensively throughout South America and had the same ideas as me to visit Antarctica. Luckily

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Antarctic rainbow (Favourite #1)

he was able to get on the same cruise and so when I say we, it is Nick and I that I am referring to. Being the only backpackers on the standby rate we were fortuanate enough to share a twin cabin! So around 4pm Thursday the 17th Jan we boarded the ship ready to set sail! I couldn´t believe that I was actually about to leave for Antarctica! After we boarded the ship we were shown to our cabin which was super luxurious... It made me think of all the early explorers; Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton and Nordenskold and how hard it must have been for them compared to our situation. We had comfortable beds, warm clothes and as I was about to find out were to be incredibly well fed for the duration of our voyage, no penguin stew for us! Our voyage was also only going to take 2 days to get to the Antarctic Peninsula compared to 9 or so for a sailboat only 100 years ago... how times have changed! With that flowing through my mind we attended a lifeboat drill followed by dinner and then I was left to soak up the atmosphere as we

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Chinstrap Penguin colony

sailed down the Beagle Channel, named after the ship captained by Robert Fitzroy that Charles Darwin sailed on around the world. I felt that I was following in the footsteps of some great explorers and naturalists!

Here´s my first bird reference: within a few hours I had seen Megellanic Penguins and Black-browed Albatross! LIFERS!! By midnight we were starting to cross the Drake Passage and I had prepared myself for the worst, hoping to complete the expereince with rough seas. Unfortunately/fortunately it wasn´t too rough and over the next two days we had what was described as a relatively smooth crossing which meant not much wind and waves around 2-3m rather than 5-6! My time was spent during the crossing alternating between eating, bird watching and attending some of the lectures presented by the expedition staff, in that order. Speaking of which the crew was absolutely outstanding (one in particular, but I will get to that later!) and you could feel that they were a tight bunch and loved their work. Other bird highlights on day two included; Wandering Albatross (giant turkeys of the sea!), Cape Petrels, Wilson´s Storm-Petrels and Northern Giant-petrels. Amazing how they are all just happy

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Their chicks are cute

out at sea by themselves, doing their own thing and thriving in such a harsh environment. On the second morning we crossed the 60 degree south lattitude and soon after the Antarctic convergence where the water temp dropped drastically from about 6 or 7 degrees celcius to about 2! Day two also yielded; Southern Fulmars, Southern Giant-petrels, Antarctic and Thin-billed Prions, Skuas and Light-mantled Sooty Albatross, definitely a favourite! Later that day we had briefings for the safety and biosecurity measures to be taken for our first landings the following day.

Day one of landings: South Shetlands Islands- Half Moon and Deception Island.

On the third morning I woke up to a view of the snow covered peaks of Livingston Island in the South Shetland Island group. Simply breathtaking! The wind was up and after breakfast we motored around to Half Moon Island for our first landing. Zodiacs were launched around 8am and soon after we were splashing our way across to the island. Credit to the drivers for keeping us as dry as possible in what was probably the roughest conditions we had for a landing. Half Moon has a bunch of Chinstrap Penguin colonies of various

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Now you see them...

sizes on it. It is going to be to hard to describe the atmosphere so I will let the photos tell the story there and in fact I can guarantee you that if you look at all of the photos I post on this blog that you will be sick of looking at pictures of penguins by the end! The one common theme though between all of the penguin colonies that we visited was the incredible antics of each individual, they are truly the characters of the Antarctic! Watching them waddle to and from the water (dirty or clean), fighting each other if one got too close to a nest or chick, provisioning their young, moving rocks and building nests, preening, chasing skuas or just making noise for the sake of it was the best entertainment ever and so much fun to watch. At one point on the island there was a ¨penguin highway¨ up through a narrow gully and there was a constant procession of the clean, slightly plump looking Chinstraps that I assume were bulging from the krill they had been gorging on waddling up the hill. Coming back down were slightly slimmer but much dirtier penguins heading

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Now you don´t!

out to get their fill. Watching the bouncing bellies coming up the hill I could tell which was the easier journey! There were also a few Gentoo Penguins on Half Moon and I the other birds I saw included Antarctic Terns, Kelp Gulls and Snowy Sheathbills.

Next we landed at Whaler´s Bay on Deception Island, the site of the old Norwegian Whaling station called ¨Hector¨. Again I will let the photos do the talking but it was interesting to see the legacy left by the whaling operation and imagine what it must have been like working down there.

Day 2: Trinity Island and Cierva Cove.

Fortunately for you guys I am getting sick of writing so I think the rest of this is going to be mainly pictures but basically: Trinity is home to a bunch of Gentoo colonies and the concerning thing for me this day was that I was walking amongst these amazing creatures thinking oh yeah, another Gentoo Penguin! Easy to do but I got myself to snap out of it pretty quick!! Trinity was also home to the first big collections of whale bones that we were to see on the trip.

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They usually have two

Cierva Cove was a Zodiac cruise and we saw Humpbacks, Leopard Seals and lots of icebergs. Leave this one to the photos! Special note for this day though is that I was starting to get to know Karin, one of the Expedition staff, quite well and we were really hitting it off. There may even be a picture of her somewhere in there... but you will have to wait for the next installment for further developments!

Additional photos below

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