Day 9: Last landing at Telefon Bay

April 27, 2015

In the afternoon, we landed at Telefon Bay, named for a salvage vessel that moored in the bay in 1909 awaiting repairs. This is the site of the crater of the most recent volcanic eruption in 1969. It was more ash-covered ice. You could kick through the ash and see the ice, but it was amazing how much ash there was.

There were some muddy streams to contend with.

Looking ahead to where we were going.

Looking back to where we’d come from.

Allen talking to Yvonne, the geologist. I have a separate post on the Quark team coming soon.

Looks like a shark’s tooth.

Hugo the video guy again.

Still pretty foggy.

So this was our last landing. Our last time to step foot on Antarctica. Once we went back on the zodiac to the ship, we would be heading back across the Drake for South America, with this amazing experience behind us. I wasn’t ready for it to be over; I don’t think anyone was.

But as we approached the spot on the beach where the zodiacs had landed…TWO CHINSTRAP PENGUINS SWAM UP AND HOPPED ONTO THE BEACH!

And these were two of the most curious penguins we’d encountered yet. The guides asked us to keep to one side, not to circle around (within the allowed 15 feet) on all sides, but to leave one side completely open. The penguins kept moving closer to us, walking in amongst us. They were watching us as much as we were watching them.

The last zodiac was ready for us, but it was so hard to decide to say goodbye to these curious guys. These were probably the two most photographed penguins on our trip. I was thrilled to get to see chinstraps after all.

This was the most perfect ending to our last landing. And as we finally loaded up into the zodiac and started to pull away from the beach, the penguins watched us leave, and then hopped into the water and swam off.

That night after dinner there was a charity auction. I’ll say a little about that in a separate post, and then it’s back across the Drake.

Day 9: Deception Island

April 26, 2015

Morning of day 9—our last day of landings. SO BITTERSWEET.

We had two landings scheduled at Deception Island—one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Deception Island is the caldera of an active volcano. It erupted in 1967 and 1969. It looks all black, but it’s still ice, it’s just covered in volcanic ash. You can kick through the ash an inch or two and see the ice.

There’s an Argentinian research station here, and that was the site of our morning landing. We had the option to hike up to the top of the ridge of the caldera, where we would be able to look down to the other side to see a colony of 50,000 pairs of chinstrap penguins. ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND CHINSTRAP PENGUINS.

But first, we had to sail into the caldera, through a narrow channel (only 850 feet wide) called Neptune’s Bellows. The ship had an open bridge policy, which meant you could go in and visit it at any time, watching the captain and his team sail the ship. Even when navigating such a tricky channel, the captain kept the bridge open, they just asked that visitors please not talk while the captain got us through here.

It was a very foggy morning–the clouds hung really low in the sky. Most of us were out on deck to watch us sail through Neptune’s Bellows.

What the flight map looks like when you’re anchored in a caldera

Sailing very close to these cliffs.

And then we anchored and headed to shore in the zodiacs. This fur seal was waiting there to greet us.

The kayakers can be seen in the distance. During lunch, the ship would be repositioning to the other side of the caldera for our afternoon landing. The kayakers, instead of taking the ship, kayaked from this landing site to the other one. I think the idea of it was better than the reality of it—it sounded like it turned out to be a very difficult kayaking trip, cold and wet and challenging. But they can say they did it, right guys?

You can also see the steam rising from the ground.

We hiked up. And up. And up. And here Laurie, our guide, grabbed a quick photo.

The Quark penguins again.

The higher we hiked, the worse the visibility became. We were hoping that as the morning went on, the fog would lift, but it seemed to be getting worse, if anything. We hiked until we had almost zero visibility. It was hard to see people more than a few feet away. At that point, we decided it was pointless to go on—the goal was to see the penguin colony, and there was no way we were going to be able to see it in these conditions. No penguins!!! So sad.

We stopped and took a few photos of each other before turning around to go back down.

At this point, I was super disappointed. There had been a chinstrap or two at a couple of our other landings, but I had not seen them. I’d only heard other people talking about them or seen their photos of them. I really wanted to see one for myself. Even though I’d seen tons of other penguins, the chinstrap was the one type I could identify prior to this trip, so I really had been hoping to see one. Our afternoon landing, they’d already told us, was just more caldera, no wildlife. Bittersweet.

The research base. The Argentinians invited us in and had drinks and cookies set out for us. I tried to take a some photos inside but it was so warm compared to outside my lens completely fogged up, so I got nothing. It also got hot in there pretty fast in all my clothes, so I didn’t stay inside much longer than it took me to eat a couple of cookies.

Alex told us about a time a few years ago when they’d been anchored across the caldera, and someone called to them on their radio, asking, “Who is in that blue ship?” They identified themselves, and the Argentinians identified themselves and asked, “Do you have any cigarettes?” And they did, so they went over and visited them at the research station and have been visiting them ever since.

Time to go back to the ship.

Back on the ship, I realized that I hadn’t done my favorite trick of taking a photo of a scene through my phone, so I did that real quick. Since I had no internet on the ship, I didn’t use my phone at all, basically, for two weeks. I had thought I might use it as an alarm clock, but Alex’s wake-up calls over the PA system were all I needed, so my phone mostly just sat next to my bed, unused.

So then we ate lunch while the ship repositioned across the caldera for our afternoon landing. Next up: Telefon Bay.

Our Antarctic itinerary

March 8, 2015

I want to start with an overview that hits the highlights of the trip, so here is where we went and a little bit about each place.

DAYS 1-3: GETTING THERE

We set sail on a Monday night, sailing out of Ushuaia at the southern tip of South America. It takes two full days to cross the Drake, so we weren’t expected to reach Antarctica until Thursday morning.

We spent the time on the Drake going to lectures–on history, wildlife, the ice–and preparing for our landings by learning zodiac loading procedures, doing bio-security checks (vacuuming off all outerwear and backpacks that we would be taking onto land), and getting our parkas and waterproof boots.

We also had our first sightings of icebergs and wildlife. In fact we sailed right into a feeding frenzy, with whales and seals and penguins everywhere around us, chasing each other.

The first iceberg!

six orcas next to our boat in antarctica

I count at least six orcas in this image.

And then sometime overnight after the second full day at sea, we reached the Antarctic peninsula and anchored in spot to await our first landing.

DAY 4, MORNING: CUVERVILLE ISLAND

First landing! I walked out onto deck before breakfast to this:

This was the first time I cried. I don’t want to be dramatic about this, but, you guys, I was seriously overwhelmed with how amazing it all was.

There was a large gentoo penguin rookery here, with lots of chicks and lots of molting penguins. (They lose all their feathers and grow new ones, and during this time they cannot go into water to get food, so they sit in one spot to conserve energy. It takes about two weeks to complete the molting process.)

DAY 4, AFTERNOON: DAMOY POINT and PORT LOCKROY

These two sites are right next to each other, so we were ferried between them on zodiac without having to return to the ship in between. On Damoy Point we hiked up a glacier. Just as we reached the top, the clouds parted and the sun came out and we had blue skies!

A penguin joined us on our hike.

This is Port Lockroy as seen from Damoy Point. This is where there’s a gift shop, museum, and post office. I mailed some postcards from here that may get here in a month or two.

At Port Lockroy, penguins were everywhere, and the chicks were especially curious about us.

DAY 4, EVENING: LEMAIRE CHANNEL

After dinner, we sailed through this ridiculously scenic narrow channel. The ice was right there!

And as if the scenery weren’t enough, a minke whale came out to play!

Seriously, what a first day.

DAY 5, MORNING: ANTARCTIC CIRCLE

At about 8:45am this morning, we crossed the circle. We were all out on deck to celebrate as they counted down the approach. “Fifteen minutes to crossing!” “Five minutes!” “One minute!” And then they counted down 10…9…8…. And, you guys, I cried again.

The moment that we crossed the circle, the captain blew the ship’s horn and everyone cheered.

Then there was a circle crossing ceremony that involved the staff in costume, all except for Alex, the expedition leader, who is seen here kneeling before them. He had sea water poured over his head, he had to kiss a (stuffed animal) krill, and then he had penguin poop (face paint) smeared on his forehead. After this, they invited all of us to participate, too.

DAY 5, LATE MORNING: CRYSTAL SOUND

We were unable to do the landing they had hoped to do this day, because we couldn’t reach it through all the ice. So instead we did some scenic cruising in zodiacs. The ice was incredible, the skies were blue, and the zodiacs allowed us to get up pretty close to wildlife.

A bunch of crabeater seals on iceberg in Antarctica

Crabeater seals, which don’t actually eat crabs. They eat krill, just like everything else in Antarctica.

Our ship, the Sea Adventurer, in the distance

DAY 6, MORNING: HORSESHOE ISLAND

The site of an old British research station, the ice was incredible here. We were far enough south (still south of the circle at this point) that there weren’t many penguins (only two that we spotted this morning) but there were lots of seals. I mostly couldn’t get over the blue of the ice.

DAY 6, AFTERNOON: CARVAJAL

This was, we believed, an abandoned base, but when the Quark team pulled up in their zodiac to scout out the landing site, they discovered a group of Chileans living there. No one had occupied this base in 14 years. The Chileans were surprised to see us but were very welcoming. They were there to do repairs to the base and get it ready to be used as a research station again. They had been there since November and we were the first people to stop there. Quark gave them a couple crates full of fresh produce, which they hadn’t had since November.

Here we saw dozens (maybe hundreds) of fur seals, as well as some elephant seals.

You can see how elephant seals got their name. These weren’t even full-grown adult seals. They will still probably double in size. What.

That night after dinner we sailed right into an Antarctic hurricane, which turned out to be way rougher than our Drake crossings.

I didn’t even get photos of the biggest waves, because I was trying to protect my camera when those hit.

DAY 7, EVENING: PETERMANN ISLAND

We spent most of this day repositioning further north. Ice slowed us down so we weren’t able to make the afternoon landing they’d been hoping for, but after dinner we landed at Petermann Island.

Mostly we saw gentoo penguins (the ones with the white earmuffs and orange beaks, on the right) but there were a few Adelies here (on the left, with the solid black heads). The Adelie penguin might be my favorite, because they look so striking with their bright blue eyes against the black.

Penguins feed their young by eating krill and then regurgitating it into their chicks’ mouths. Mmmm.

Sea Adventurer anchored at Petermann Island

The Sea Adventurer

It was mostly cloudy while we were at Petermann Island, and just in the last few minutes before it was time to go back to the ship the light took on this beautiful glowing quality.

DAY 8, MORNING: PORT CHARCOT

This was a split landing–half time on land, half time on a zodiac cruise.

I had no idea that penguins leap in and out of the water as they swim. We saw this many times on this trip.

These penguins are headed into the water. They like to enter the water in groups, in case there are predators waiting.

The zodiac cruise took us through a maze of icebergs. Do you see the waterfall coming off this one?

Double arch! What does it mean??

DAY 8, AFTERNOON: USEFUL ISLAND

As we headed here this afternoon, we came across a few humpback whales that swam around the bow of our ship for a while.

They were right there.

Then we dropped anchor at Useful Island, the site the team had chosen for our polar plunge.

This was our view from the ship as we leaped from the ship into the icy Antarctic waters.

DAY 8, EVENING: NEKO HARBOUR

Our one and only continental landing! (As opposed to islands.) We had tried for two other landings on the actual continent but those had fallen through because of ice/weather. Third and final attempt was a success! It was mostly cloudy but we still had some amazing light as the sun dropped lower in the sky.

DAY 9, MORNING: DECEPTION ISLAND, ARGENTINIAN BASE

Sailing into the caldera of an active volcano! The two sites we visited at Deception Island were completely different than anywhere else we went. They are still ice, but covered in volcanic ash.

First we sailed through the narrow entrance to the caldera, called Neptune’s Bellows, which is only 750 feet wide and tricky to navigate.

Our first landing here was at the site of an Argentinian base.

We did a hike up to the top of a glacier, where we hoped to be able to look down to a rookery of over 50,000 pairs of chinstrap penguins. However, it was very foggy, and our visibility was eventually reduced to near zero, so we were unable to see the penguins.

DAY 9, AFTERNOON: DECEPTION ISLAND, TELEFON BAY

During lunch, we repositioned to the other side of the caldera, and then had our last landing of the trip. Here we were able to hike to the rim of some craters, which were pretty impressive.

And then as we were headed back to the beach to board the zodiacs and go back to the ship, two chinstrap penguins swam up out of the water and hopped onto the beach.

They were very curious about us, and even when we would move away, they would waddle closer and walk among us. It was a very exciting end to the last landing.

DAYS 10-11: DRAKE PASSAGE

And then we were sailing back toward South America. Two more days at sea, filled with more lectures and lots of chances to talk and share photos with each other. We had a very smooth crossing and made such good time we had time to detour past Cape Horn.

DAY 12: BACK IN USHUAIA

And then we were back, and our incredible adventure to the bottom of the world came to an end. A truly amazing trip.