Antarctica: Terra Incognita

Interesting day, to say the least.

I slept in till the wake up call at 7am. In spite of this I was first through the door for breakfast. As such I decided to try the hot food for a change as it was still hot. Expedition leader Laurie announced that our
planned stop for the morning was impossible due to giant tabular icebergs in the bay so everyone lingered over coffee for a good while. I was have an interesting conversation with Lucy from Namibia who does AIDS work throughout Africa when it was announced that an Emperor penguin was spotted on an ice flow. The dining room was emptied in about 15 seconds.

This is a big deal. Emperors are rarely seen this time of year or even in this area at all and now we have seen all five of the Antarctic penguins. Everyone was up on deck hanging over the side, cameras clicking away. Our guides even convinced the captian to circle around to get closer view. No one actually saw the orange colour on his throat - similar to the Kings - but thanks to a handful of Adelie pengies sharing the ice flow you could get a sense of his size. I'm impressed that the guides spotted him.

The rest of the morning was spent on deck iceberg watching - these photos may end up out numbering the penguins. Now up until this point we hadn't actually stepped on the continent of Antarctica, just the islands. One could argue that that was good enough but the purists on the trip wanted their money's worth. Laurie and crew arranged for a very brief "continental" landing at Hope Bay (if you're English) or Esperanza (if you are Argentine.)

All morning it had been grey and overcast . By the time we arrived at the station the snow started, the temp dropped and the wind came up. I fell flat on by butt getting into the zodiac because it was so slippery. Thank goodness for all those layers. The ride was a bit bumpy but we made it and I set foot on Terra Incognita.

Thematically this site worked into the Nordenskjold story. A second group of explorers were dropped here at Hope Bay to attempt an overland journey to Snow Hill Island to meet up with the research base in tandem with the ship. If the attempt failed the ship would pick them up at at prearranged date.

The attempt did fail. The the men returned to Hope Bay and made a hut of stone and tarpaulin. When the pick-up date passed, they assumed the ship was lost and headed out again to Snow Hill Island. Around the same time the shipwrecked dudes on Paulet Island were making an excursion to explore nearby coasts. They eventually met up completely by chance on what became know as "Well-met" Point which was a stones throw from Devils's Island where we landed yesterday.

So we had time to head up the hill to the Larson Hut ruin, where the stranded group had sheltered, for a few pics and then it was back to the ship. Alex our zodiac driver made swung around for a photo op with some Adelie penguins enroute to the ship. We've had nicer landings but I'm not complaining.

The ice was so thick that another landing was just out of the question. It was decided that we would head to Deception Island in the South Shetland chain for a cruise through the caldera after dinner. We had plenty of ice to entertain us for a good portion of the afternoon.

Later as the ice thinned we passed one lonely iceberg and Laurie announced that it was the last iceberg that would we see here - someone remarked that that was what they said on the Titanic. He then invited us to the presentation room to hear all about the Russian-Canadian ski expedition from the Russian arctic to the Canadian arctic that he participated in. What a guy! And what a well planned expedition. Every effort was made to reduce weight so many things served a dual purpose. The skis were used to support
the tent canopy, the ski poles fitted end to end to hold up the radio antena. They faced incredible challenges of extreme weather, shifting ice, open water but completed the journey in about 100 days. I'm not sure when it was undertaken but Brian Mulroney was there to shake some hands when the group returned to Ottawa.

After dinner as promise we were called to the deck to watch as we passed through Neptune's Bellows into the caldera of the mostly extinct volcano known as Deception Island. The bellows is a very narrow channel about 250 meters wide with a nasty big rock on one side just 2 meters below the surface. We had calm weather so it was smooth sailing. The old volcano walls were very dramatic through the snow - like something out of Lord of the Rings. Inside the bay we could see the ruins of the old whaling station somewhat crumpled after the last eruption a number of years ago. We did a turn around the whole caldera and headed through the bellows again and out to sea on to our next adventure tomorrow.

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