Month: December 2019

Today was breathtaking. Spectacular. In the word(words?) of Dan, unbefuckingleivable!!!

We started the morning before everyone else with a panicked visit to the gift shop, our waterproof pants were decidedly not. After, sigh of relief, getting a pair each we went out on our first zodiac excursion to Kinne’s Cove. We motored around lots of floating sea ice. Depending on what I’m not sure, but some pieces would glow softly blue, it was surreal. Then we went to a small rocky island and saw our first up close penguins. There were many Adelie penguins and a singular Gentoo penguin. The Adelie are adorable with a black beak and a white ring around their eyes. The Gentoos have an orange beak with white splotches on their head, they also are a little bigger. We enjoyed penguin antics for awhile, amazing! They have such personality! It was fun watching them get into groups anxiously trying to get up the nerve to go in the ocean, where the leopard seals lurk. Once the first one went, it became an avalanche of penguins. We returned to the ship for a lunch and a warm up, then it was off to the continent. Brown Bluff was where we landed next by zodiac, on the Antarctica continent. The cliffs we’re formed by underwater volcanos giving it it’s brown color as well as continental plate dynamics. From there we could walk to the South Pole if we wanted to and had the dumb luck of the early pioneers, well at least until Darwin won. There were giant cliffs and a small Gentoo breeding colony. A few had chicks just days old and they would sit on them, completely covering them and protecting them from the cold. Walking down the beach, we then saw the Adelie colony, it was huge. Or so we thought, then we looked farther, and farther, and farther, it just kept going! Tens of thousands of penguins, so so many! We started by sitting on the beach by some penguins. We stayed very still and got rewarded with a walk by! We did this a few times and got quite a few curious penguins wondering why there were giant neon yellow blobs on their beach. We then explored the edge of the colony and the Adelie had hatched their young earlier so we saw many a dark gray youngster. They lay two eggs and if lucky, both make it to fledgling without being eating by a Skua, a predator bird. The little ones were adorable, fluffy and needy, mom or dad feeding them when they finally got loud enough. After that we went on a zodiac excursion, morning around icebergs and watching penguin antics on them. They are so funny when walking on ice, slipping and sliding. It was just so fun to watch, we really loved it. That night we came back and found out because of heavy ice, we would not be making it below the Antarctica circle but instead would be going to the east side of the Antarctica peninsula for a few days, a rare treat. We then hung out with our new best friends and watched the most glorious sunset of my life, it lasted 3 hours, the landscape painted in oranges and pinks with the ever present glowing blue ice bergs. Words cannot describe

We started our journey from Santiago down to Antarctica yesterday. We didn’t really have time for anything in the morning other than to go to the airport. It turns out the reason for the previous day’s flight schedule drama was that they needed a bigger plane for all of the passengers, so wound up on a 787 which was only about 2/3rds full. That was a nice surprise, we hadn’t flown on one before. I enjoyed the electronic dimming windows instead of the usual sliding shades. It was somewhat incongruous landing such a big plane in the small airport serving Punta Arenas.

The town, and unsurprisingly the region of Patagonia was beautiful. It was chilly and rainy, which was a nice change from Santiago. There were wild flowers everywhere and lush hills right against the ocean. Honestly the town wouldn’t have looked out of place on the northern California coast. Unfortunately we didn’t get a lot of time there. After we got to the hotel we had enough time to make some calls before we dropped out of connectivity for a week. Then we had equipment distribution, weigh ins, briefings and a group dinner for the cruise.

The next morning it was finally time to get to Antarctica. After lots of time on group logistics we made it to the airport for more group logistics. Oh and our plane was painted like a penguin! The plane was a strange narrow body jet with 4 engines and only about 100 seats, but they only fly with 70 people or so since they need to be light weight to land on the airstrip on King George island. We had to get all of our gear on in the plane because as soon as we stepped off we would be outside in Antarctica. This meant trying to get everyone dressed in a bunch of bulky gear in a cramped plane and then standing around in a hot plane with a bunch of cold weather gear while we waited to get out. Once we were out though… It was shocking, an immediate blast of frigid, clear air and spectacular views of glaciers. The airstrip is in a Chilean military base which we weren’t allowed to take pictures of. We had to walk across the base, and next to a Russian base it turns out, to get to the zodiacs waiting to take us to the ship.

We had a very “sporty” ride on the zodiac where we all got pretty soaked from splashes. During the ride, Jack and I discovered that our water proof pants, weren’t. So we are going to have to do something about that.

The rest of the day was a nice dinner and more briefings. It was also our best shot at seeing an Aurora Australialus but after staying up until 11:30pm, it’s clear it doesn’t get anything like dark enough to see it because it was barely dusk then, so we gave up and went to bed.