Posts From Antarctica

Mid morning our vessel anchored in Cierva Cove within sight of the Argentine Antarctic Base called Primavera (the last photo in the first group below). The cove is surrounded by glaciated mountains and the cove itself was crowded with floating ice of various sizes. We spent a couple of hours touring around the bay in Zodiacs getting a firsthand look at all that ice.

The first excursion of the day was a landing on the strangley named Useful Island. Our guides speculated that the name was derived from the fact that the summit of this island provided whalers of a previous era a good vantage point from which to watch for whales. On shore we saw a number of nesting colonies of Gentoo Penguins, though we could smell them long before we could see them. As you will notice from the photos, the penguins nest on rock outcroppings. Their nests are made of small stones which they collect one by one. All of this to keep the eggs dry. The pink coloration on those rock outcroppings is penguin dung or guano.

Today was a big day as the last excursion of the day was to be at the expeditions Farthest Point South. It was also a big day because it started earlier than usual with a ship wide wakeup call at 6:00 am that encouraged us all to "get outside and watch our passage through the Lemaire Channel".

This morning we made a landing at Neko Harbor a small beach in Andvord Bay on the west side of the Antarctic Continent. The harbor is named after a Scottish Whaling ship which operated in the area between 1911 and 1924. We landed on the small beach south of a huge glacier, observed the Gentoo penguin colonies that occupy the small number of rock out croppings, and walked up a large snow slope on the southern side of the harbor. For the more adventurous of the guests this snow slope offered the opportinty to do a bit of bum-sliding down the steep face of the snow ridge. Nina, my guardian angle reminded me that this activity was probably not for me as I am still only 6 weeks into recovery from neck surgery.

Christmas day offered no rest from the excitement of cruising amongst the ice and animals in our trusty little Zodiacs. This time the location was Foyn Harbor, Enterprise Island which in addition to providing a great display of ice and animals is the last home of the Norwegian Whale Factory ship the Governoren which caught fire after spending an entire summer harvesting whale oil. In response to the fire the Captain ran the burning ship aground thereby saving all of the 85 crew but loosing the entire summers harvest.

This morning we made a landing on Elephant Point, which is a small outcropping on Livingston Island, which in turn is part of the South Shetland group of Islands. The point was once a camping and hunting location back in the days of the seal oil trade. Today there is only some remains of an old sealers hut. There is almost no snow on this piece of land so that animals are more prevelant. In the photos below you will see a number of groups of male Elephant Seals which from time to time get involved in pushing matches to test their strength, an interesting demonstration of the way these guys fight. There are also some large colonies of Gentoo penguins many of them nursing young.