March 28, 2008, Journey to Antarctica, Part II, By Judy Newell

Journey to Antarctica, Part II
By Judy Newell March 28, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

A group of intrepid sanmiguelenses traveled to Antarctica this past December with Judy Newell and Perfect Journey. The chronicle of the journey began in the last edition of Atención and continues below.

At about the latitude of 55°S the color of the ocean changed and the temperatures of the air and sea suddenly plummeted. This was the Atlantic Convergence.

The first icebergs begin to appear, along with mountainous snow-capped islands. We were surrounded by a world of crisp, glittering snowfields and crystalline glaciers.

We had arrived in the protected channels and waterways of the Antarctic Peninsula and its sheltering archipelagos. Dr. Carey told us that in the over 20 years that he had been coming to Antarctica, this was the most beautiful weather he had ever seen. We had near-glassy sea conditions for the rest of the trip through the Southern Ocean.

At Deception Island, one of the South Shetland Islands, ships usually enter the caldera of the collapsed volcanic cone. It was one of the safest natural harbors for early explorers, sealers and whalers. But the m/s Nordkapp ran aground there in Jan. 2007 and ripped an 80-foot hole in its side. The ship’s 294 passengers were safety evacuated, but our Captain decided not to go through the narrow entrance known as Neptune’s Bellows.

Instead we took our first zodiac cruise off Triangle Point on Greenwich Island with about a dozen passengers per group. We were assigned color-coded group tags and disembarked on a daily rotating schedule by colors. The “San Miguel 14” were all reds.

Our ship was in its fourth season of Antarctic sailing, with a dozen departures from November through February. During the brief Austral summer, penguins and nesting seabirds return in the thousands to nest on the few scraps of exposed ground. Antarctic seals return to breed and whales migrate to the ice from their breeding grounds in the equatorial latitudes. The scientists return too.
First landing

Our first landing seemed slightly surreal—we all experienced a sense of awe at stepping on this continent at the bottom of the world. We quickly realized that we weren’t on a vacation, but a journey.

We landed at the Arctowski Station on King George Island, a Polish research station that’s manned year-round. Walking past whale vertebrae and ribs (it was originally a whaling station) on the rocky shore, we stopped near an Adelie and Gentoo Penguin rookery at the far end of the crescent-shaped shoreline. We walked past snoozing elephant seals and the penguins ignored us—they took no notice of the frantic photographs being made of our first up-close penguin encounter.

This was a wet landing. As crewmen held the zodiac snug against the rocky beach, others helped you over the side and into the freezing water to wade ashore.

If you stepped out as the tide rushed out, you keep dry feet. A few didn’t listen well and stepped out at the wrong time. And one group decided they didn’t need rubber boots and wrapped their hiking shoes in laundry bags. I’m sure they learned about the water temperature very quickly.

The next day we cruised past Elephant Island, where the crew of Shackleton’s Endurance took refuge in 1916 after their ship was trapped and crushed by pack ice. They spent six months on an ice floe before the ship was crushed, then reached the South Shetlands by small boat.

For four more months they lived under two upturned boats on Elephant Island while Shackleton and five others made an epic voyage to South Georgia to rescue them.

Icebergs and glaciers

At Hope Bay in the Antarctic Sound, called “Iceberg Alley”, some spectacular bergs were viewed all day. We passed a flat-topped tabular iceberg near Elephant Island that was so large that I thought it was an island. We were told that it was at least 10 kilometers long. The icebergs vary from the size of a large piano, called a growler, to the dimensions of a 10-story building. The ones about the size of a house are called bergy bits.

Icebergs in Antarctica are far more abundant and enormous in size compared to those in Arctic waters. About 7/8ths of an iceberg is below the water. All icebergs are numbered when they are first sighted and then tracked by the NIC. In March 2000 the largest berg on record was sited, named B15, and it was 183 miles long by 83 miles wide—nearly the size of Connecticut. In March 2001, B17 calved at 80 miles by 12 miles, about the size of Rhode Island. Icebergs of this size calve from the ice sheets in Antarctica every other year.

We made another zodiac cruise among the glaciers, steep slopes and mountains of Paradise Harbour. It’s one of the most visited areas in Antarctica and home to birds, seals, penguins and whales. To watch the penguins “dolphining” as they fly through the water around your zodiac is an incredible sight.

The colors surrounding us were amazing combinations of blue and white that no camera could ever capture.

On the western edge of the Antarctic Peninsula, close to the 65th parallel, we made landfall on the Antarctic Continent. We landed at Duthiers Point on a tiny rock outcrop that hardly could hold the dozen or so passengers in the zodiac. We had less than 10 minutes onshore, but it was the Antarctic Continent, and that counts for those who track their journeys.

The most exciting part? Bea Wood was there in her two casts to claim her seventh continent that day!

We sailed up the Gerlache Strait on the way to Lemaire Channel. Passengers on deck were on the lookout for humpback and minke whales.

We were unable to enter the Lemaire Channel, nicknamed “Kodak Gap” by some for its scenic wonders. All the literature tells you that the itinerary is subject to weather and ice conditions, but that doesn’t change the disappointment when you peer into the narrow passage between steep cliffs of ice and mountain peaks rising up to 3,000 ft. Its protected waters are usually as still as a lake, but icebergs filled the channel this early in the season.

Two weeks before we sailed another expedition ship, the m/s Explorer, hit a submerged iceberg and sank. Passengers spent most of the night drifting in lifeboats before they were rescued. Another ship grazed an iceberg the week after we departed.

The following day at Half Moon Island we slipped-and-slided up a penguin-poop slick trail to a rocky point where a sizeable rookery of Chinstrap Penguins was nesting.

They took turns brooding the egg and going out to fish and each time one returns, it tosses back its head and trumpets, then presents a stone to its mate. This causes a great commotion and much squawking as the rock is usually stolen from some other penguin’s stony nest.

We had a brief snow squall here, the only break from our consistently sunny weather. As we returned back to the beach landing area, smiling cabin boys awaited our arrival with scrub brushes and water buckets. They didn’t want penguin poop on their clean carpets.

Another day at sea, crossing the Drake Channel, took us back to Ushuaia. It was a bit rougher than before and the dining rooms were not as busy. We arrived on Christmas Eve morning and caught a flight to Buenos Aires. We had sailed 2,271 nautical miles, or 4,207 kilometers, during our 10-day cruise.

In Buenos Aires we happily settled into our non-swaying hotels, which we left in search of grilled meat and Malbec. Jim and I walked to Puerto Madero, a trendy area of restaurants and apartments gentrified from the old rough-and-tumble docks. Since it was Christmas Eve, crowds of porteños with fat wallets, and large families celebrated in the festive restaurants and fireworks lit the sky.