Today’s adventures centered around Paradise Harbor and Andvord Bay in the morning and Andvord Fjord and Neko Harbor in the afternoon, which indents the mainland of the Antarctic Peninsula. As the passage into Paradise Cove is extremely scenic, we were woken up via PA at 7am, so that we could have time to get up and head to the bridge by 7.45am, our estimated time of arrival at the entrance to the passage. I ran out of superlatives a couple blog posts ago to describe the beauty of the ice and mountains – this vista did not disappoint, especially as the mirror-like calm of the water amplified the beauty and made for some stunning pictures. It was simply glorious. I can totally understand the saying “come for the penguins, stay for the ice”. These huge structures are just mesmerizing. After breakfast, we all headed down to Base Camp for a zodiac cruise, so that we could enjoy the glorious ice up close (but not too close!). After a few days seeing no man-made structures, it was a bit jarring to see a collection of bright red buildings – but this was the Almirante Brown research station.
Here’s a short description from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Station Brown Station (Estación Científica Almirante Brown, or more often Base Brown or Estación Brown) is an Argentine Antarctic base and scientific research station named after Admiral William Brown, the father of the Argentine Navy. It is located on Sanavirón Peninsula along Paradise Harbor, Danco Coast, in Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula. As of 2014 Brown is one of 13 research bases in Antarctica operated by Argentina. From 1951 to 1984 it served as a permanent base; since then it is open during the summer season only.
As we sailed past the station, it was hard not to imagine how isolated the scientists must feel when they come for 5-6 months during the Antarctic summer to do their research. According to some of the first great explorers of Antarctica, sometimes the greatest threat to life and limb wasn’t the harsh conditions or limited food – but boredom. Of course, there were a shit ton of penguins booping around the station to provide some form of amusement, but other than that – it was you, your research compatriots and whatever you had brought along to stave off total mind-numbing monotony. You could see the giant oil tanks next to the station that provided warmth over the winter months – interestingly, these were actually installed after Brown Station’s original facilities were burned down by the station’s doctor on 12 April 1984 after he was ordered to stay for the winter! He got his wish to go home – but then was promptly locked up for his criminal acts!
We spent a wonderful 2hr pootling around the Cove in the zodiacs, looking at various iceberg formations and always on the lookout for wildlife. As mentioned, there were a lot of gentoo penguins nesting around the research center, but we also saw a lot more seabird wildlife, including some Antarctic shags nesting up on the cliff walls (also known as imperial cormorants – but shags is clearly funnier). We could even see little chicks in the shag nests, so that was a nice bonus element. Our zodiac guide, Carlos, was excellent and as we were just starting to think about making our way back to the boat, he got a call on his radio that one of the other zodiacs had spotted a Weddell seal. Whoo-hoo!! Off we went, as quickly as was safe, and caught up to where the other boats were – and there he was!! A super cute, fluffy seal just stretched out on the ice watching us watching him (or her). We stayed taking pictures for a good 20 mins or so, until we were starting to all freeze in place – so we reluctantly started to make our way back round the Cove in the direction of the Endurance.
But wait! What wildlife is this that is fast approaching our Zodiac? Why, its the Santa Hot Chocolate boat! Yey!!! Yet again, Patrik and a couple of elves were on hand to supply steaming cups of hot chocolate, laced with mint or coffee liquers (or straight up if that was your jam)! All the way throughout this trip, you really do get the sense of it being beautifully planned and conceived to maximize your entire experience – down to the little details like this that surprise and delight.
We got back to the boat just after 11am so were just chilling in our cabin before lunch, when a wildlife alert call went out over the PA – a humpback whale had been spotted off the port side of the boat!! In a spot of luck, that happened to be our side of the boat, so we rushed out to our balcony – and there it was! I didn’t manage to get any really good pictures of it as it was off in the distance and I didn’t have my big zoom lens to hand – but I could hear it as it went “POUUFFF” and expelled air through its blow hole just before it dived. So that was yet another amazing experience!
While we were enjoying lunch, the ship made its way to our second stop of the day – Neko Harbor. Neko Harbour is an inlet of the Antarctic Peninsula on Andvord Bay, situated on the west coast of Graham Land. It was discovered by Belgian explorer Adrien de Gerlache during the early 20th century. It was named for a Scottish whaling boat, the Neko, which operated in the area between 1911 and 1924. This fjord is yet another pleasure show for the eyeballs as it is lined with dramatic rugged mountain peaks and with lots of very active glaciers that flow into the fjord between the peaks and the exposed cliffs. The fjord is wide with glaciers at the end and along the north coast is a relatively small exposed beach area. Neko Harbor is the name of this piece of land where gentoo penguins occupy the bare ground for nesting.
The plan was to land here and do a short hike up the hill so that we could get the best panoramic views across the harbor. This was to be our last opportunity to set foot on the Antarctic continent. As we stepped off the zodiac onto the beach, the naturalist team instructed us to quickly move from the beach up to higher land, just in case one of the highly active glaciers calved. This could create a significant tidal wave, up to 6ft high, so they wanted to make sure we were out of potential harms way ASAP. While the risk may sound a bit far-fetched, Carlos explained that it had actually happened in the past where there was exactly this event and a tidal wave washed over the beach that was being used for the landing (I can’t remember if this was with NatGeo or a different operator). While all the people were safely gathered up and out of harms way, unfortunately, the bins full of the lifejackets were not – they were swept out into the cove where they then started “popping” like popcorn kernels, due to their water-activation sensor! Not only did they have to then spend time retrieving the lifejackets, but they had to then be discarded, as they are only good for a single use.
Anyway, we duly landed and quickly scrambled about 500m up the hill – unfortunately, we were getting a taste of the more foggy flavor of Antarctic weather, as the sky was grey and overcast, so we really couldn’t see much at all from the top. Though we couldn’t really see much of the glaciers from over vantage point, we absolutely could hear them and while we were up there, there was a deep loud rumbling and crashing noise coming from its direction. As we couldn’t see any chunks falling off the terminal face, we concluded that it must be coming from somewhere deep inside the glacier. It was such a powerful sound, and reminded you (if you needed it) of how small and insignificant we as individuals are in the face of such vast natural forces (and yet, somehow, we are managing to fuck them all up due to climate change).
In addition to the glaciers, the gentoo penguin colonies were the other draw of this location – gentoos get a bit of a bad rap as they’ve been referred to as the cockroaches of the penguin world, due to their populations increasing when most of the other penguin species in Antarctica are in decline. I personally am an Equal Opportunity Penguin Enthusiast (although the googly-eyed Adelies are possibly the cutest) so it was still fun to observe them in all their klutziness, slipping and sliding on the ice and snow, and pretty much falling over at every opportunity! I think I’ve mentioned the smell in a previous blog – holy cow. I don’t know if it was the wind direction or something else, but the stink seemed even worse than the previous colonies we’d visited!! As a kid, I grew up in the country and we lived near a pig far. We could always tell when they were cleaning out the pig pens as this horribly sweet, acrid stench would waft down and permeate everything – penguin colonies smell equally as bad!!
After our visit on land, we then took another zodiac cruise to explore the bay and hopefully see more humpback whales. While we saw lots of beautiful icebergs – including seeing a small one flip over and then break up right next to our zodiac, we were SOL for whales. After 90mins of fruitless searching, we decided to call it and started to return to the boat (we were all pretty cold by this point – especially poor Lee Ann who’d frozen into a human popsicle). And that’s when we saw one! It was only a brief sighting and we only got to see it one time before it dived and swam away, but everyone was happy we could say we’d seen one from our zodiac, so that was another one checked off the Antartica Bingo Card!!
Once we got back to the boat, we hustled up to catch the end of Afternoon Tea, then retired to our cabin to relax and rest up before our nightly recap and briefing in the Ice Lounge. It was then, after dinner, that Stuff Happened and we were treated to an absolutely INCREDIBLE sighting of multiple humpback whales lunge feeding. During this, humpbacks will plow through concentrated areas of food with their huge mouths open, collecting large quantities of food and water. As baleen whales, humpbacks expand their 14 to 35 throat pleats to take in water. This water is then strained by their baleen as small fish such as krill or herring, as well as plankton remain in their mouth. Their 270 to 400 baleen plates are dark, and each is about two and a half feet long. We could clearly see a baby whale with its mom, and as they were so active, there were lots of tail flukes and sightings of the whale’s plates. Emily, one of our naturalist guides, said it was the most impressive display that she had even seen. The whole experience lasted a solid 30-40mins, during which time our Captain skillfully maneouvered the ship to give us the best chance of seeing the whales = but obviously without disrupting their behaviour. By the time we finally moved on (or maybe they moved on from us), the bridge was absolutely PACKED with guests, crew and naturalists watching the spectacle and letting out loud cheers every time we saw a whale tail. It felt really special to be sharing such an amazing collective experience. One of the guests, Emily, registered one of the whales with happywhale.com -you submit your pictures of the whale (usually its fluke) and if it hasn’t been spotted or “claimed” before, you can get the right to name that whale for $500. Emily then put the naming of the whale up to a group vote from the rest of us – after a few suggestions, the clear favorite (which got the loudest cheer by far!) was to name the whale… “Good Morning…..Good Morning” in honor of our expedition leader, Jamie, and his iconic morning PA announcements. We did joke that this whale would go from having zero previous sighting to having been sighted 1400 times by 100 people, given the number of photos that were being taken! (my tally was over 900!). So, yet again, another incredibly memorable set of experiences during our time here- its hard to believe its starting to draw to a close already. We only have 1 more day left in Antarctica before we set sail for our return crossing on the Drakes Passage. Fingers crossed the trip back to Ushuaia is as smooth sailing as it was getting out here!!
