Rocks, ice, and snow of Antarctica.
Exploring the Antarctic Peninsula
Rocks, ice, and snow of Antarctica.
“It’s time to Drake proof your cabins,” cautions Brook, the ship’s expedition leader. “Take everything that you don’t want to break and put it on the floor, because that’s where it will end up anyway.”
We’re aboard the P/V Mariya Yermolova, a small Russian ship specially fitted for ice conditions, bound for Antarctica. Leaving the port of Ushuaia, Argentina’s most southerly town, we cruise the protected waters of the Beagle Channel in late evening, and round Cape Horn at the tip of South America.
Now we’re about to experience the “Drake Shake,” two days of wave-induced roller coaster rides across the infamous Drake Passage, until we enter the quieter waters of the South Shetland Islands. The thousand-kilometre-wide passage is named for Sir Francis Drake, who was accidentally caught in these turbulent waters when storms pushed his ship far south of the Cape and left him floundering in fierce gales. The seas here are considered the stormiest and roughest in the world, due primarily to the Antarctic Convergence where warm waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet cold surface waters that encircle Antarctica.
For the next 48 hours or so, Mariya Yermolova rocks and rolls while our stomachs do much the same. We manage to make it to all the meals, but many do not. After the first couple sittings we remember not to put our elbows on the table. Not that we have impeccable manners; it’s to avoid getting wet. In rough seas, tablecloths are put on wet to keep plates and food from sliding around, a simple technique that works incredibly well. If only we could keep ourselves from sliding around. Most passengers walk like drunks on a long weekend bender, leaning left, leaning right, grabbing handrails, and trying to avoid – not always successfully – running into walls or other people.
Out on the back deck where there's some protection from the wind, we grasp onto railings extra tightly. Raging seas aren’t enough to deter Marco, the ship’s bird expert, from leading us outside to see what’s flying around. Even these remote stormy seas have signs of life, including birds such as storm petrels, giant petrels, and royal albatross. The most awesome sight is the big daddy of them all, the wandering albatross, with the widest wingspan of any bird in the world – over three metres on average, with some stretching even more. Flying low, they effortlessly cruise the wind currents just above the waves, rarely flapping their wings. As the name suggests, they wander far and wide, covering thousands of kilometres and staying at sea practically non-stop. They head for land every two years to breed in nesting colonies on isolated islands.
The second day into the crossing, we’re feeling reasonably proud of the way we’re handling the Drake Shake. After all, we haven’t thrown up or broken any bones yet, although that queasy feeling is almost always there. But when we ask one of the crew how this compares with other crossings, he bursts our bubble by saying, “This isn’t too bad at all. I've seen a lot worse.”
Many of the other 100 or so passengers are well-travelled. But while they may have “been there, done that” in a big chunk of the world, everyone agrees that Antarctica stands in a class by itself. Although travel to the white continent has increased in recent years, it is still looked upon as a once-in-a-lifetime journey to a mostly unknown land at the bottom of the world that is both foreboding and wildly alluring. We laugh when we hear that most of us have much the same story. Tell people that we’re going to Antarctica, and the response tends to be one of two extremes – “Wow, is that ever cool,” or “Why in the world would you want to go there?”
We settle into the ship’s casual atmosphere. The bridge is almost always open to visitors, where Captain Sviridov and his crew patiently explain routings, map readings, and the dazzling array of instruments and gizmos with blinking lights. While the ship is sailing, we can choose from among a series of presentations on everything to do with Antarctica: geography, wildlife, politics, the Antarctic Treaty, and famous explorers such as Scott and Amundsen who raced to be the first to the South Pole.
To say that the expedition leaders know their stuff would be an understatement. Brian, from the United States, spent much of his career in Antarctica, including running the U.S. McMurdo Antarctic Research Station. Adam, from Sweden, is a marine mammal expert. Marco is an Argentine biologist who spent two years at an Antarctic research station studying for his Ph.D. in Antarctic birds. Want to know some intricate detail about penguin behaviour? Marco can tell you. He debunks the commonly held belief that penguins mate for life.
“Penguins mate for a long time, but it can get complicated,” he explains. “It’s like people who also supposedly mate for life. But as we know, that gets complicated too.”
Just as we’re starting to become accustomed to the Drake Shake, we enter the protected waters of the South Shetland Islands, about 120 kilometres off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Near Aitcho Island, we board rubber Zodiacs for our first landing at our first of many penguin colonies. Thousands of gentoo penguins occupy nests spreading across the gently sloping land between the high hills and the stony beach, their incessant braying-like calls interrupted by occasional snorts and grunts of elephant seals. The penguins ignore us, and if we stand still in one spot, some even approach out of curiosity. Averaging around .75 metres or about 2.5 feet tall, with a distinctive orange bill and white head patch, gentoos look rather awkward as they waddle around. All that changes when they hit the water, where they are considered the fastest swimmers of any birds in the world, capable of bursts of speed over 25 km/hour.
Over the ridge we find a colony of chinstrap penguins. These black and white birds have a thin black line across the lower part of their white faces, as if a chinstrap is holding on their black “caps”. A giant petrel wanders through the colony in hopes of snatching an unguarded chick, but it finally gives up and flies away. Elephant seals lazily lounging on the shore almost look like beached whales. The biggest of all seals, a male could be 4.5 metres or 15 feet long, and could weigh close to four tons.
We see seals practically everywhere we go. Most are crabeater seals, not surprising since they are the most abundant seal in the world, and among the world’s most plentiful large mammals. Despite its name, the crabeater feeds mostly on krill and other small fish, which it sifts through its teeth. The Weddell seal is the most southerly mammal in the world. These spotted seals live on ice that is attached to shore, and in winter spend a good deal of their time under the ice, coming up through holes to breathe.
While it’s best to keep your distance from any seal, most at least appear benign or even pleasant. Except for leopard seals, which look just plain nasty. Our Zodiac passes beside an ice floe where a resting leopard seal stares menacingly at us at eye level. These giants can be up to three metres long – sleek and slender and built for speed, with an elongated reptilian-like head, powerful jaws, and an enormous mouth. Vicious predators, they are the penguin’s worst nightmare, often lurking under icebergs or along shore ready to ambush any unsuspecting penguin and flail it to death.
Whale remains dot the landscape. At Mikkelsen Island we explore a vast bone yard of hundreds of whales, along with the crumbling remains of a whaling boat and various pieces of rusting equipment. For over half a century, most of the world’s whaling took place in the southern oceans, where tens of thousands were killed many years. Whales hunted in this region were brought here to be processed primarily for their oil to feed the growing European market. Walking along this now isolated beach, we're dwarfed by the mostly intact skeleton of a monstrous whale. Seeing so many scattered bones is a sobering reminder of just how extensive the slaughter was.
The Antarctic Peninsula juts farther into the sea than any other part of the continent. Jagged mountains rise as high as 2,800 metres or over 9,000 feet. Technically, they are a continuation of the Andes Mountains of South America, something that both Argentina and Chile have used as a basis for claiming this part of Antarctica. To complicate things further, these areas also overlap with a claim by Britain. While various countries have made claims on Antarctica, none are internationally recognized. So far at least, the Antarctic Treaty has designated the white continent as an international zone that no one owns, and provides that Antarctica will be used for peaceful purposes only, and that no claims will be acted upon.
In many bays and inlets, gigantic glaciers line the shore. The ice sheet covering Antarctica averages about two kilometres thick, holding about 70 percent of all the fresh water in the world. The tremendous weight and pressure of the ice coupled with the forces of gravity cause glaciers to move. Their journey ends at the water's edge where monstrous chunks of ice occasionally come crashing into the sea with a thunderous roar. Icebergs of all sizes dot the bays; some melt slowly where they stand, some break into “bergy bits” or icebergs of smaller size, while others travel long distances on ocean currents. One evening at happy hour, we even have a chance to sample iceberg ice in our drinks. The irregular-shaped chunks practically explode as they contact liquid, at last releasing pressure that has accumulated for thousands of years.
Usually our trips by Zodiac take us between ship and shore, but one beautiful, almost warm afternoon, we just cruise around a maze of icebergs the size of houses, their tops a brilliant white, turning to almost unreal azure blue just below the surface. Seals bask on the lower floes while skuas and snow petrels patrol overhead. The water is dead calm. Our driver, Pablo, stops the engine and asks everyone to remain perfectly quiet. It's as if this normally cold and blustery landscape has been magically transformed, as we float in a surreal world of white and blue, surrounded by profound silence.
The next day brings a celebration. After several stops at off-shore islands, the Zodiacs take us ashore for our first steps on mainland Antarctica. It's a special moment for us – we’ve now been to all seven continents. We watch penguins labour up the slopes taking food to their chicks, and seals lounging on shore or on ice floes. We climb to the top of a snowy ridge and gaze over spectacular ice-choked Neko Harbour, with the ship anchored in the distance.
Back on board, the chefs have decided to celebrate with a barbecue on the ship’s back deck. Sitting outside in our winter jackets, we dine on barbecued steaks and chicken while looking over a breathtaking scene of icebergs, snow-capped peaks, and glaciers dripping into the sea. To top off the perfect day, we watch a colossal humpback whale breach close to the ship.
We're amazed at how different Antarctica is from the Arctic, despite the superficial similarities of ice and snow. Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean, while the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land. The land mass of Antarctica is mostly covered in an ice sheet, while land ice in the Arctic is limited to certain areas, Greenland being the most obvious. There are no polar bears in Antarctica, or any land mammals for that matter, and no penguins in the Arctic. At the same latitude in the Arctic (near the Arctic Circle), plant life would be profuse. Antarctica, on the other hand, has few plants – mostly mosses, lichens, and liverworts, with some grasses, and even these are not very common. It's colder in Antarctica than the Arctic. The coldest temperature ever recorded on the planet was -89.2 degrees Celsius at the Russian Antarctic station of Vostok in 1983. For the traveller, Antarctica has one major advantage over the Arctic – no bugs.
The following day brings a visit to a raucous and smelly Adélie penguin rookery on Yalours Island. A stark black and white, with a tail a little longer than most penguins, Adélies best fit the stereotypical description of penguins as birds wearing tuxedos. Adults busily feed their mostly grown chicks by regurgitating semi-digested food. Stragglers tend tiny chicks or rest on their nests incubating eggs. One latecomer still works at building a nest which is nothing more than a shallow depression lined with pebbles. The penguin busily carries marble-sized stones, one at a time, from about 10 metres away to carefully arrange on its nest. As far as we can tell, the stones beside the nest look identical, but for whatever reason, it decides that the ones over there are much better.
Our guide takes us near a snowbank and points out an unusual phenomenon. A species of red algae has taken hold on the snow surface, turning it an almost raspberry colour. In places an entire slope carries the pinkish tinge, while in others, the red is so bright that it looks as if someone spilled a pail of paint. This type of algae often occurs in springtime when the snow melts, and takes advantage of extra nutrients in the meltwater.
Early the next morning we hear loud grinding noises and the occasional strong thunk, sure signs that we're making our way through pack ice. The ship crawls slowly along, pushing or cutting a path through heavy chunks of sea ice. It's a dramatic entrance to the famous Lemaire Channel, a narrow 11-kilometre-long passageway sandwiched between the west coast of the peninsula and islands. Said to be the most photographed part of Antarctica, we now see why. Jet-black mountains with soaring peaks rise on both sides, their cliffs either sheer vertical rock or draped with snow and glacial ice. As we nudge ice floes out of the way, penguins standing on some dive into the water, but leopard seals barely even raise their heads as we pass by.
Glimpses of research stations reveal the relatively limited human presence on the great white continent. At Mikkelsen Island, an Argentine research hut that is not currently in use sits atop a rocky ridge, looking bleak, forlorn, and forgotten even in the height of summer. What must it be like in winter? We stop at Port Lockroy, the first British scientific base in Antarctica. Closed in 1962, it has been restored and is now an historic site and museum, complete with much of the equipment used in the early days of Antarctic research. It also boasts the world’s most southerly post office, mailing as many as 70,000 postcards each year to more than 100 countries. You could get home before your postcards; delivery times are usually anywhere from two to six weeks.
At Vernadsky Station, we're taken on a tour through a modern operating research station. Around a dozen or so scientists spend the winter in surprisingly comfortable digs. Originally set up by the British, the station is now run by Ukraine to study climatology, glaciology, meteorology, plus a handful of other “oligies”. It was here that the hole in the ozone layer was first confirmed.
The station’s other claim to fame is having the most southerly public bar in the world. It’s still called the Faraday Bar, after the name of the original British station. The story goes that British carpenters at the station received a shipment of lumber intended for various repairs, but instead used most of it to build a bar, resulting in a reprimand from their superiors but a toast from their colleagues. Now it’s a British pub with a Ukrainian ambiance, where vodka is the drink of choice. After the tour we retire to the lively bar to sip spicy chili pepper flavoured vodka.
Weather changes can come fast and furious. In late January, the height of the southern hemisphere summer, we can go from a pleasant 10 degrees Celsius to a full-on blizzard in a few hours. Near the end of the trip, we stay late on deck as Mariya Yermolova takes us through the magnificent ice world. Snow-capped peaks rising above low scattered clouds reflect in dead calm water sparkling with icebergs and floes. The slowly setting sun dips below the horizon, bathing the sky, snow, ice, and water in soft lavender.
Next morning we wake up to a blinding snow storm. We’re supposed to make one last stop before returning to Ushuaia, but when we approach Deception Island the weather goes from bad to worse, with winds too strong to negotiate the narrow passage ominously named Neptune’s Bellows. The captain tries to find alternate approaches, but in each case, the storm and fierce winds make it too dangerous. Reluctantly, he turns us north to the Drake Passage and back to South America.
Leaving the islands, we catch a glimpse of another ship far in the distance. The only reason we see it at all is because we've changed our route to look for alternate landings. Cruise ships operating in these waters have coordinated their itineraries so that visits don't overlap. Though other ships may be out there, it feels like we’ve had this magical land at the bottom of the world all to ourselves.
It would be a toss-up to say what impresses us most – the wildlife or the stunning and austere beauty of this land of rock, ice, and water. The Antarctic experience combines these and much more, not the least of which is the uniqueness of travelling to a truly international part of the world. Even the “Drake Shake” is an essential part of the journey – a rite of passage to one of the most extraordinary places on Earth.
P/V Mariya Yermolova in Neko Harbour, Antarctica.
Gentoo penguin and chick.
Storm clouds near the Lemaire Channel.