By Mark Flager, Sales Manager | November 30, 2018 ( Comments)
We've now finished three days in and around the Antarctic Peninsula since that first landfall on Sunday, and we're headed back across the Drake Passage a day early. Had we left on Friday, the scheduled day, we could have hit 30-foot swells, the captain said, and that would not have been pleasant. For the Silver Cloud, no worries; for guests, serious queasiness and the chance of rolling out of bed or falling down a staircase.
No one seems upset at the change. We did get a bonus day at the beginning, and now will get a bonus day in Ushuaia, as we'll arrive a day early. So it's Thursday, and we're rolling north in moderate swells, with lectures to attend and naps to take. (It must have something to do with the motion.)
On Monday, the schedule called for navigating the picture-perfect Lemaire Channel, with landings at Petermann Island and Pleneau. The channel was blocked by ice, so the captain and the expedition team went to plan B – they called Port Lockroy and asked if we could stop by.
No other ship was scheduled that day, so we were able to visit the restored former secret British military outpost and (later) research site. It houses breeding gentoo penguins, a museum, gift shop and the southernmost operational post office in the world. There are four staff who work the summer season; one, Guillame, came aboard and gave a talk about the work being done and life at the most remote tourist hotspot anywhere.
The staff record penguin eggs in the breeding colonies on Port Lackroy in a study of the effects of tourism on penguins. The museum portion is the restored station itself, with sleeping quarters, a workshop, radio room and kitchen with a period cookbook. Recipes included seal brain omelet, casserole of shag and saute of penguin breast.
There is no running water or green grocer nearby, so the staff take advantage of the hospitality of expedition ships like Silver Cloud to come aboard for a shower and perhaps some fresh fruit and produce to take back with them. Port Lockroy receives about 18,000 visitors during the summer season, with several ships a week, so it's possibly a less harsh job than it appears. However, how they handle “bio-breaks” was unclear and no one was inclined to pursue that at the Q&A session with Guillame.
The harbor was like glass that day, so expedition leader Schalk announced that the Polar Plunge was on! The water was 2 degrees C, the air temperature 5 degrees C. I chickened out immediately but Maddie signed right up. She's going to let us know her thoughts on that leap of faith.
On Tuesday we woke up to tabular icebergs alongside the ship; later, we zodiac-cruised Brown Bluff and Hope Bay. Pictures cannot do justice to the beauty of the ice; the unreal sight of stoic penguins riding along on icebergs, or the view of tens of thousands of penguins standing along the shoreline. At Hope Bay, while we zodiac-cruised in a sheltered spot just off an Argentine research station, Schalk appeared in his own zodiac with some staff to deliver flutes of champagne. Ah, expedition cruising on Silversea!
Wednesday, our last day on the ice, began with a wet landing on Half Moon Island, to see our first chinstrap penguins, and one lone macaroni penguin that has been “hanging around,” said the expedition staff, for about ten years. There may be two, and the other is off feeding when sighted, they said, or he could be solo. Either way, it's assumed he's scouting the area as a possible rookery for his clan. Ten years he's been at it. That seemed to fit with something one of the staff mentioned – that the penguins we're seeing have been living like this for 18 million years. There is a different concept of time in Antarctica.
On the Hope Bay landing, we hiked a ways up a hill and down the other side, to a sloping plain on the edge of a bay where humpback whales breached. Weddell seals, sheathbills and three types of penguins dotted the snow. One pair of penguins copulated, which was definitely not in the pre-cruise literature. As we left, a leopard seal swam around the zodiac and popped up for quick photo ops.
Later that day we landed on Whaler's Bay at Deception Island, along a beach venting sulfurous steam – the island is the caldera of an active volcano that blew as recently as 1967 and 1969. Five minutes ago, in the Antarctic timeline. Crumbling remains of its whaling and research history lie along the beach, along with two graves.
By this time we'd been briefed on the looming nasty weather and the decision to leave a day early. So we had only one more shot at setting foot in Antarctica – a “strenuous hike” at Telefon Bay, just around the corner from Whaler's Bay. The ship motored to Telefon Bay in the late afternoon so the expedition staff could assess conditions and let us know if it was a go for the hike. It was. Eighty-eight guests signed up, including Maddie and me.
It was a two-hour, 3 km trek in snow and moraine, with an elevation of 300 meters. It might as well have been a climb up Mt. Everest as far as my legs were concerned, but it was a fun communal experience and a great end to our time on the continent.
