Each day just gets better than the last. Today we woke up to the sun trying to peek
through the haze and an estimated 39-40 degrees. At least that is what I think. Everything here is in Celsius. We had a quick breakfast and got called up for
our first outing of the day – a zodiac cruise around Lion Island. Apparently at some point in time someone who
discovered it thought it looked like a lion lying down. I didn’t see it. In any case, the island was surrounded by
narrow(ish) passages and the scenery was breathtaking.
We had snow covered mountains/glaciers towering up on both
sides of us. I asked Damon to describe them and he said “rugged and
foreboding”. To me, they were
majestic. These mountains were covered
in glacial snow and cracks and crevasses cause large chunks to “calve”
off. Those chunks become massive
floating icebergs. We were surrounded by
these monster icebergs everywhere. We
always tried to get another zodiac in the pictures for scale – they were that
big. Also, they were often blue – so blue that you didn’t know if
you could accurately portray the vibrant turquoise coloring in a photo. I think we got a few good ones.
Looking at these massive icebergs and the
stripes and lines carved in by water and time, you think that they are
fake - they almost look like Styrofoam. I am in awe.
Our zodiac cruise lasted about 2 hours and then we got back
on the ship in time for lunch. For the
afternoon, they split us up into two groups – one group stayed on the ship
while the other went on an excursion.
Then they split our group in half again and half of us went to a penguin
colony and the other half went to a British Research Center called Port Lockroy.
Dotted along the coast of the peninsula, there are international scientific research posts - some are staffed for the summer, others seem to be vacant. We've seen maybe 2-3 so far. Most
of them seem to be a country’s attempt to stake a claim to Antarctica. We passed one from afar and I never caught
who it belonged to, but we did stop at the British outpost, which also housed a museum, a post-office, and a colony of Gentoo penguins.
The tiny green dot lower right is a research center.
Port Lockroy from far away and zoomed in:
Before we got to the outpost, our group stopped at the penguin island across from the
research station where hundreds or maybe thousands of penguins were hanging out
– many with their fluff ball newborn chicks. Watching
penguins is something you can do all day long – they are goofy and
uncoordinated and everything they do is entertaining. They waddle around with their "arms" backwards for balance, they hop from rock to rock, they fall, they slide, and they are just generally entertaining. I could have stayed there all day but for the
smell.
Penguins, while cute, are the
smelliest things I’ve ever encountered.
And they poop everywhere.
Basically, if you are not on white snow, you are walking in some sort of
poop sludge that covers the entire area.
Also, there are “penguin highways” – penguins carve out intricate routes that they
take from the water to the rocks or from rocks to rocks, etc. We were instructed to always let penguins
have the right of way as they waddled or hopped from one place to another on their stinky poop-filled walkways. National Geographic does not accurately portray what a penguin colony looks or smells like...
Back on the poop thing (sorry, I'm obsessed), not only could you smell it, but if
you stopped to listen for a minute, you would hear a non-stop chorus of
squirty noises. They have no shame as
the poop on each other, on the chicks, in each other's faces, or, if they are lucky, on the rocks or snow. They
can shoot poop a solid 3-5 feet so no one is safe.
After a healthy 45-minute dose of penguin watching, we took a zodiac
shuttle to the research center.
I was unaware that there are manned research stations on/in
Antarctica, but there are a few - we've heard maybe 30 or so, but would need to confirm. This
one was a research center up until about 1959 and then it fell into disrepair before
the British decided to rehab it. The
original building now houses an amazing museum where they put most of the rooms
(kitchen, bunks, dark room, workshop, outhouse, etc. back to how it looked in
the 50’s with all original furnishings.
I’ve never seen a 1950’s kitchen, but they had 100’s of canned food
items and other authentic stuff from years ago.
They also added a gift shop, and yes, a post office. We could mail postcards from Antarctica – we
hear it takes 3 weeks to 3 months for a postcard to reach its destination as
the mail goes from Antarctica, to the Falkland Islands, then to England, then
through the British postal service, but it is a legit active post office. There are a few lucky recipients out there who will be getting a postcard by April!
The research station is staffed 5 months out of the year
(summer) by 4-5 people and they feel privileged to be able to stay there despite
the somewhat primitive conditions. They have a new "pod" structure that looks nice, but we weren’t able to go inside. This station is visited by an average of 2 cruise ships per day, so I assume they don’t get
bored with hundreds of people visiting daily. The penguins have migrated from the island and have invaded the outpost
area as well, so we could get up close and personal with them. After about 45 minutes at the
outpost, we were shuttled back to the ship to chill for a few hours while the
other groups repeated our journey.
Even though our days are primarily eating and sleeping with
2 excursions a day, we are often tired – I think the cold can zap you (plus
Damon is battling a wicked cold), so it is nice to go back to the cabin and
relax (and warm up). For our 2-hour
break, we started with a movie in the lounge about the history of the research station before
retreating to our cabin for movies and nap time.
Dinner tonight was surreal.
5 days ago we were saying “I can’t believe we are going to Antarctica”
followed by “OMG, we are in Antarctica” followed by “Wow – look at those glaciers
in Antarctica” and then “Can you believe the sun is shining and the weather is perfect in Antarctica?”. Dinner trumped everything to date as we sat on the
outer deck in full blue sky and total sunlight for a BBQ with reggae music playing in
the background.
The latest slogan “I
can’t believe we are drinking wine and eating BBQ outside in perfect weather
with a blue sky on the deck of an awesome ship while we are cruising through
icebergs surrounded by amazing glaciers and mountain formations while in
Antarctica, oh and look, there is another whale.” I’d call this one a good
day.
One note I forgot to mention from earlier – with the sky so
blue all day, the water took on a completely different color – much more of a
royal blue as compared to the grays we’ve seen so far. The water is so clear that it just reflects
whatever the sky is doing that day.
This picture is completely untouched!
With no evening activities, we headed back to our cabin for
an early bedtime because we were told there would be a 6am wake-up call as we
entered the LeMaire Channel and would want to spend the early morning outside.
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