Graham Passage, Cuverville Island & Neko Harbor, Antarctica

Our second day in Antarctica, 10 February, was a tiring but exhilarating 13 hours of eye-popping scenery. It began immediately after an early breakfast with a zodiac cruise through stunning Graham Passage. In all directions there were fantastic glaciers, icebergs and floating ice, and on the animal front, whales, orcas, seals and many birds were sighted. Some were up close and personal, like the two crab eater seals we snuck up on as they lolled about on a fantastic small blue-hued iceberg. ‘Crab eater’ seal is a misnomer though as they never touch crabs, preferring krill and fish.

This was also the first day of the kayaking program. About 15 of the passengers, including Dylan, had signed up for this, and for the remainder of the cruise they spent most of their time not on zodiacs powered by outboard motors, but on kayaks powered by their own arms. They became an exclusive close-knitted group on the ship, dining together, and answering frequent calls to the library for briefings before their next adventure.

The return to the ship for lunch was short, before we went through the now familiar ritual of donning our layers, waterproofs, beanies and muck boots, then going down the stairs to the disembarkation platform, “signing out” of the ship, washing our boots, and then one-by-one stepping into a zodiac in a strictly regimented manner to prevent any falls or injuries.

The afternoon zodiac cruise was to Cuverville Island, home to several large Gentoo Penguin rookeries. When the penguin viewing was over we hiked gingerly to the top of a very icy hill to survey the fantastic scene below of a bright blue bay littered with large chunks of ice (micro icebergs?) before inching our way back down to the zodiacs and returning to Sea Adventurer anchored a couple of kilometres offshore.

Once back at the ship there followed the above ritual, in reverse order, and then a great dinner. But that wasn’t the end of it. A third zodiac cruise was announced! This was to be to Neko Harbor deep in Andvord Bay, also a significant Gentoo Penguin breeding site. With twilight lasting until nearly midnight there was plenty of time for this after dinner. We may have been sagging but there was no way we’d risk not going and then hear from returning passengers how great the place was. And of course it was spectacular, like all the other places we’d already seen.

But a special event took place on the shore of Neko Harbor as the light of day began to fade. A young couple from China had chosen this place to be married. The bride bravely removed her coat and was bare-armed for a few minutes during the ceremony officiated at by a crew member marriage celebrant and the ship’s captain. The quiet was disturbed only by the crunching of ice under the feet of the thickly and warmly dressed passengers gathered around, and the unstoppable squeaking of a few thousand nearby penguins. Cheers rang out as rings were exchanged.

Meanwhile, the kayakers had spent the day at the same places, paddling around all this fantastic scenery. We were very tired at the end of it all, and we’d been in zodiacs. Spare a thought for the kayakers.

Half Moon Island & Deception Bay, Antarctica

In the morning of Day 4, on 9 February, following an afternoon’s steaming through the Beagle Channel off Ushuaia, then two days crossing Drake Passage, Sea Adventurer dropped anchor off Half Moon Island in the South Shetlands chain.  We transferred to zodiacs and it felt great a few minutes later to set foot on solid ground.  The light drizzle turned to snow as we alighted, dusting the rocks white and giving the scene a fairy-land character.  The black and white views, and atmosphere, were spectacular, even otherwordly.        

After an hour or so on Half Moon we returned to Sea Adventurer and steamed further south in the Shetlands while enjoying another excellent lunch on board.  We’re not easy to impress in the food department but the meals on Sea Adventurer were already beginning to impress us a lot.  Outside, the grand eye-popping ocean scenery drifted by, generating ‘wows’ from the passengers.  A zodiac transfer in the afternoon landed us on Deception Island, a collapsed volcanic cone flooded by the sea and navigable only through a very narrow channel.  Inside, Whalers’ Bay was the site of a large whaling industry from 1906 to 1931. The abandoned buildings and tanks now lay on volcanic gravel and mud, sagging and slowly decaying. There’s still some geothermal activity going on here; surprisingly the water is quite warm just a few cm below the gravel at the beach.  The air isn’t though.

Passage to Antarctica

The sun shone brightly on our last day in Ushuaia and there was even some warmth in the air befitting its summer status.  We returned our house key to the owner then took a taxi to the docks where we boarded Sea Adventurer.  We had tickets for Antarctica! 

Ushuaia is the closest city in the world to the frozen continent though it’s still a respectable two to three day ocean journey of 1,000 km across infamous Drake Passage to get there.  You take your chances with Drake; it may be a smooth pond or it may be a raging watery inferno.  We got neither.  The weather wasn’t bad but there was quite a big steep-sided swell running which kept the ship rolling and the staff busy replacing the vomit bags hanging along the corridors.  This is the price often to be paid for crossing the passage, a price referred to in nautical parlance as the ‘Drake Tax’.  I paid a bit of Drake tax myself and would be a liar if I said I had a great time during the crossing.  The curtains in our cabin swished in and out pendulum-like, marking out the ship’s roll. To move around the ship it was necessary to hang on to railings. You didn’t simply walk, you zigzagged. The catering manager joked that when it gets really rough he dispenses a litre of whisky to each passenger; everyone is then soon seen walking in a straight line.

In summer, many small ice strengthened ships make a 10 to 15 day journey to Antarctica and back.  A few of the huge super cruise ships do too. Two of the latter were docked in Ushuaia when we were there – Costa Luminosa and Norwegian Sun. The enormous size and sophisticated stabilizers of ships like these make for a luxurious, smooth cruise with little movement. But they have one big disadvantage for travel to Antarctica; no-one is permitted to get off the ship as there are simply too many people on board, possibly 2,500 or more. In contrast, the small ships that make the journey carry only 80 to 200 passengers and are loaded with rubber zodiacs powered by outboard motors. These can be lowered into the water and launched, allowing the passengers to get much more ‘up close and personal’ with icebergs, whales etc, while of course still keeping a safe, appropriate distance. They even make it possible for passengers to set foot on Antarctic land. So the experience is quite different between the two types of ship.

We were keen to have the more intimate experience provided by the smaller ships and were prepared to pay the Drake tax to get it. And so it was that we found ourselves on Saturday 6 February with a drink in hand pulling away from the Ushuaia docks on the 117 passenger Sea Adventurer, a small vessel even amongst the smaller ships, but stylish and beautiful, built in Yugoslavia in an era when ships really were ships, in the days of timber and brass fittings, before computers and plastics.

Crossing the Drake there wasn’t much to do except to sleep, eat (the food on board was excellent and we aren’t easy to impress in that department), and to attend presentations given by the enthusiastic staff.  After listening to the bird expert, we went with him to the stern where he pointed out the names and habits of the various birds approaching the ship. He told us some surprising facts. Albatrosses and petrels have a very keen sense of smell and can pick up the scent of potential food from as far as 20 km away! It’s the ship’s kitchen they smell, and they fly in to investigate! Albatrosses have a wing span of up to 3.6 metres, twice my height, and with a tail wind they can cruise at up to 150 km per hour. But with nothing released from the ship, there’s no food here for them and they don’t stay long before flying off. When they do locate food, they need to eat a lot, and quickly. At one feeding an albatross can eat food weighing 25% of its own body weight.  To match that ratio we’d each need to eat 15-18 kg of food for dinner!

The bird watching brought out the hardcore photography enthusiasts amongst the passengers, the ones with the metre long bazooka lenses that must be a pain to pack and carry around on a long trip.  But I have to admit they take fantastic photos; one guy showed me the image he’d taken of an albatross 150 metres behind the ship.  It filled the frame and the detail was crystal clear.  All I could do with my shirt pocket digital was to take aim in the general direction of a bird, then later crop the photo to enlarge the image of the bird, if indeed I’d even managed to get the bird in the photo at all.  This is how I managed to produce the image below of a fast-moving wandering albatross 100 metres or so off the ship.  We spotted the first floating iceberg exactly 48 hours after leaving Ushuaia, not long after entering the Antarctic Convergence, a zone where the Antarctic ocean meets and mixes with the warmer waters to the north.  The mist-shrouded berg signalled that Antarctica wasn’t far away now. Excitement was rising on the ship.     

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

Oh for some heat and humidity!  We’ve been cursing it for two months, but it wasn’t long after a 3,000 km flight south from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia at the very bottom of Argentina (and South America) that we began to long for a little bit of that warmth. The bulge at the bottom of our backpacks that until now has been just a dead weight has gone; our cold weather gear is out – waterproof coats, beanies, thermals and gloves.  Being so far south, and in mid-summer, the days are long; the sun’s up at 5 am and twilight continues until nearly midnight.

In fact Ushuaia is the most southerly city on earth, perched on a bit of flat land and slopes between the Andes mountains to the north, and the Beagle Channel to the south.  With a population of around 70,000, it appears on the surface to be primarily a tourist town, brimming with international visitors and cafes, and outdoor clothing, hiking, tour and skiing shops. In summer a constant stream of small ice-strengthened Antarctic tourist ships come and go from the docks.  In winter, attention turns to the mountains with their cross-country ski fields and steep downhill runs.

Ushuaia has a couple of other big industries not so immediately visible.  The stacks of freight containers at the docks contain electronic parts made in China, to be turned into cell phones and laptop computers in factories on the outskirts of the city, and out at sea there is a big gas industry tapping the huge offshore discoveries of recent years.  

The day after our arrival the sun came out and we hiked up to Martial Glacier perched 3,000 feet above sea level in the mountains overlooking Ushuaia. It was hot work in the cold wind, but a good bracing walk with great views around and back down over Ushuaia.  It’s mid-summer here now, and the glacier is currently in its most piddling manifestation for the year, little more than a large frozen pond.  But come winter, it’s a massive ice block creaking down the U-shaped valley.  It was actually the glacier that gouged out the whole valley, in ice ages eons ago.  We had a picnic lunch and rest at the top before retracing our steps back down along the creek, then riverside track.   

Last Friday we took a bus tour north east from Ushuaia towards Rio Grande, through mountains, forests of beech and peat bog country.  Our route took us along a pass through the Andes and on to 100 km-long Lake Fagnano, ending in the small sawmilling town of Tolhuin, home to one of the largest bakeries we’ve ever seen.  A bagful of beef and vegetable empanadas and sweet pastries came back onto the bus with us.  Lupins seem to grow well in these parts – they were everywhere.

On another day we visited the nearby Tierra del Fuego national park, but the weather was so bad we could barely see outside the bus windows, let alone any of the scenery.  A much more rewarding afternoon was spent in the excellent large Ushuaia Maritime Museum, housed in an old jail (in its early days Ushuaia, like several Australian cities, was a penal colony).  The museum has extensive displays and exhibits relating to the local history and fauna, early whaling industry and Antarctic expeditions, and the more recent gas industry.  It has many beautiful, finely-crafted model ships from bygone eras on display.  Well worth visiting.

And yesterday, our final activity in Ushuaia was a day-long boat journey 50 km down the Beagle Channel, named after the boat used by early explorer in these parts, Fitz Roy.  On board Beagle with Fitz was scientist Charles Darwin whose observations and thoughts during the voyage helped to fashion his theory of evolution.  Our own boat trip down the channel was great; it was superbly photogenic with a lot of interesting wildlife.  The highlight came at the farthest point from Ushuaia; a beach teeming with Magellanic penguins.  Then we spotted two King Penguins, a much larger penguin species, emerge from the bushes and join the throng.  A fantastic end to the trip.  It’s easy to spend a week in Ushuaia – and we did.