Penguin Overload

The morning after departing South Georgia we were indeed met by the tail end of the ominous storm that had been displayed on the weather map. I enjoyed spending a couple of hours that day sitting in the lounge on the 4th deck looking out at the view which was like this most of that time. If you look back at the first pics of the ship in Grytviken, South Georgia, you can see the height out of the water that these windows are (the lowest big windows on the ship). Comparatively speaking it wasn’t nearly as rough as it could have been. The wind/sea conditions were an 8 out of 12 on the Beaufort scale. Some people (maybe including me) were a bit disappointed that it wasn’t rougher.

A lot of people stayed in their rooms as the dining room and common areas were a lot less busy than previous days. And meclizine and other medications were in use. Myself, I decided to try going without any meds to see how it went. And it went just fine.

We had a few presentations that day – Antarctic Seals from our marine biologist; Penguins 101 from our ornithologist, and Mobile Phone Photography tips from the official photographer. After dinner, there was a games night that was a lot of fun!

The bar had a very fitting cocktail of the day.

The following day wasn’t much different, but the seas were calmer. A couple more presentations, plus another Biosecurity check mandated by the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) – basically the same thing as we’d done before landing at South Georgia. Now that we were in a different region, we had to do it again. It went much quicker this time since everyone knew the drill.

We had the opportunity to tour the bridge of the ship today. It felt very much like the control room of a stationary facility – everything is run by wire these days, lots of screens and of course wall to wall windows.

The third morning after departing South Georgia brought us to another one of the highlights of the trip for me and many others – Iceberg A23a. This is currently the largest iceberg in the world at about 4000 square kilometres as measured by satellite, and estimated to weigh one trillion tons. Down here, there’s no sort of map for these things as they do move and we’re in a part of the ocean much less travelled. But our bridge officers used the last known position, planning, and the onboard radar to seek out this monster iceberg during the night and successfully located it. I was interested in seeing this berg, given that it was a unique opportunity, but also expected it to be a bit anticlimactic since I assumed it would just be and endless generally featureless wall of ice like an ice shelf. I was wrong. We traversed two sides of the iceberg for several hours, doubling back on one of the sections to get a closer look as well. This is another time I really missed having a camera with a telephoto lens. Below are just a few pics of the huge bergs in their own right that had broken off from the mother ship, but what was really stunning were all of the features of the edge of the iceberg: massive blue caves and arches carved out by huge waves that were constantly battering the sides, and all of the sea and avian life surrounding the nutrient rich edges. Even after the trip finished I’d say that this morning’s experience was absolutely one of the highlights of the entire trip and once in a lifetime without question.

Ice cream was served in the observation lounge at 10 am to celebrate. Many people onboard stood outside for a very long time watching this natural spectacle, taking photos or just absorbing it all. This phrase applies to so many things down here, but in particular, there’s no way that photos could do it justice. However if you’re interested there’s some awesome drone footage from a recent research expedition that can be found from searching online and is certainly worth a watch.

After our time with A23a was up, we headed back out towards the original track to the Antarctic Peninsula, into the endless grey skies with nary a clue that such an enormous and unique feature was just behind us…

The next morning we woke up in Kinnes Cove, on Joinville Island, Antarctica. We’ve made it !!

After breakfast everyone was eager to get out and see the penguins – our first Adelie penguins, which are unique to Antarctica.

This was another place that it was really hard to NOT take too many penguin pics.

There were even some chicks visible on top of the rocks, barely close enough to capture with my iPhone camera.

The rocky area was a small island that harbored a ton of penguins, but around the corner was a penguin ski resort.

And a penguin plunge pool.

The bay was full of icebergs, ice in the distance, and an overcast sky. Very Antarctic feeling.

All of the dots going up these rocky slopes are penguins. But you didn’t even need to open your eyes to know that they were all there – the sound and the smell would let you know.

More penguins hanging out on icebergs.

A zodiac near one of the icebergs for scale.

These Adelies are just so expressive and cute!

I was on one of the first Zodiacs out in the morning, so unfortunately that means first back to the ship as well, which was just when some blue sky opened up and the subsequent groups had a terrific side trip over close to the ice face in behind.

The glaciers already look endless and we’re just on a relatively small island, not even the mainland!

We traversed to the other side of the Antarctic Sound while lunch was served, and we were treated to gorgeous sea, ice, and rock scenery along the way.

We arrived offshore Brown Bluff which is where we will spend several hours this afternoon.

Here we are – standing on the mainland of continental Antarctica amongst all of the local residents! 🙂

There were SO many penguins that it was really hard not to take photos of everything, and as much as I tried to just watch and enjoy the moment, I still had to delete at least 100 photos from this afternoon. Maybe more.

It started to snow, which along with the ambiance of the thousands of penguins, sea, and the ice made the afternoon feel extremely special.

My travel buddy has also tagged her seventh continent.

A few more penguin pics…

There’s the ship in the background. Note the size of the icebergs in not too distant proximity.

More penguins, and some protecting their chicks in their rocky nests.

Clouds shrouded the top of Brown Bluff. We never saw the top of it.

So we just looked at more penguins.

After spending about an hour and half on the land, groups switched and we went out in the Zodiac. No more than 100 people can be on one landing site on Antarctica at one time, so with our 150+ passenger ship that means that alternating was required. It all worked very smoothly and I don’t think that anyone felt like they didn’t have enough time on land. Some of the Zodiac cruising was actually super special, such as what we were about to do for the rest of the afternoon. There were constantly penguins porpoising around the Zodiac, like in this photo.

And then looking back to land, we could see a small extent of this substantial penguin colony.

Getting down towards the corner of the cove where the mountain came down into the sea, there were two parts to the glacier. One of them was very slow moving, dirty ice, which was mostly covered in rock. It almost didn’t look like ice unless you looked closely.

A leopard seal lolled on a bergy bit, with the dirty ice face behind.

Looking the other way, there was a very active glacier front – very clean and lots of fresh chunks broken off or in the process of doing such.

This lone Adelie penguin here wasn’t too far from the leopard seal, and he took turns jumping off the iceberg and swimming, or jumping up close to the Zodiacs. At the one in front of us, he jumped right in, pooped on the floor, and then jumped out again!

In here, like with the penguins previously, it was hard to NOT take too many photos of the ice.

Going out through these ice chunks in the Zodiac is just as cool as it looks. Super fun.

Here was a particularly dirty berg – maybe one of the pieces from the rocky ice front?

We got back for a closer look at the leopard seal, who, thankfully for the solitary penguins around the corner, didn’t seem too interested in a snack.

After all that, the weather is calm, the sea is calm, and we’re in Antarctic waters – so it’s time for the polar plunge! I have no photos of the event, but what happened is that you’d come down to the end of this gangway in your swimsuit, put on a harness so that you could be assisted back up if needed, smile at the camera in a nearby Zodiac, and jump in! Just over half of the guests took part. A few people actually swam out to the support Zodiac and back, which means they were probably in the water for about a minute. I heard from someone else who timed the event said the average was 18 seconds. I think my duration was close to the average. It was actually very refreshing but my feet were frozen afterwards and I had to take a longish hot shower to warm them up. Remember those icebergs from the shore shot before? Well, apparently the bridge had been keeping a watchful eye on the situation and determined that at least one of them was on the move towards us and we’d need to halt the event and get safely moving before some of the staff and crew got to do their plunge. Some of these folks were disappointed, some relieved 😉

We have 10,000 year old glacier ice in our drinks this evening !! Everyone on the ship was in great spirits after simply an awesome day in Antarctica. We had it all!

The weather forecast for the infamous Drake Passage and Antarctic Peninsula for the following days had been looking quite grim indeed, so that evening we started to head slowly north to the South Shetland Islands chain to give us a head start on our crossing after our last day’s excursions. We arrived at the Aitcho Islands very early in the morning in atmospheric conditions – very calm, overcast and misty.

These islands were particularly interesting because they had greenery – well, enough to look at, but when you got up close it was a really tiny amount and very delicate.

Of course, more penguins. On this island, there were chinstraps and gentoos.

You know, the reddish stuff surrounding the nests is all penguin poop. Penguins love to dine on krill, a tiny crustacean, and they eat so much of it that their output is a reddish colour.

I know, there’s a lot of penguin pics here – but this trip is entitled “Penguin Safari” and for a good reason!

The chicks were pretty adorable. Sadly, some of the other guests, saw one of the chicks scooped away by a hungry skua and taken away for a late breakfast. They do have to eat too….

Again, we switched to the Zodiac after our time on land and headed around the islands to get some views of the more rugged sections.

These rocky islands poking up from the sea looked very mysterious and forboding.

Then, back on to the ship for lunch and a traverse to Yankee Harbor. Passing more awesome scenery, including these rock pinnacles.

And of course more ice.

From the Aitcho Islands we’d seen the 100 year old ship Europa far in the distance (too far for me to take a pic of any quality), but the first ship we’d come close enough to for 2 weeks was in Yankee Harbor when we arrived. This was a very small ~20 person sailing ship which was planning to hunker down and wait out the upcoming storm.

On the beach was a relic of a huge pot used to boil penguins for their oil. Poor little guys.

There were a few seals resting amongst the penguins.

I’ll make an excuse for all the penguin pics – this was our last stop in Antarctica before heading out.

But before too long, we were all back on board and heading north to South America. We passed the cool pinnacles again.

And more ice.

This rocky island was the last Antarctic land we’d see. We would enter the Drake Passage that evening.

The next day was more presentations and a relaxed, fun atmosphere for those who could handle the moderately heavy seas. Our captain had planned to get out in front of a significant approaching storm and it worked, as the seas were rougher than what we’d already experienced but not overly so. We would be in protected waters by the time the brunt of the storm came through, evidenced by this map of where we’d made it at the end of the day.

The next morning myself and 2 other guests were fortunate enough to get a tour of the ship’s mechanical infrastructure including the control room, engine room, and the water and wastewater processing areas.

It was really cool to experience that and see all of the behind the scenes stuff making the journey physically happen – not the least of which are the demands on the engineering staff. There were three of them focused on getting the lobby hot chocolate machine working again, trying to salvage parts from other faulty machines, squeezing this in to all of the other important duties of just keeping the ship running!

Before dinner, there was an auction for some memorabilia from the trip to support Penguin Watch, a research project run by a penguinologist from Oxford University, who was onboard this trip. The prizes were all super cool and unique, such as freshly distilled Antarctic sea salt; or the Antarctica flag that was on the bow of the ship signed by the captain and expedition leader.

We had another great meal the last night of the cruise, so I took a few pics of the food once again.

After dinner, there was the final recap of the trip. We’d travelled 2876 nautical miles since departing Ushuaia 13 days prior. Tomorrow morning we’re scheduled to pull in at 0600.

After the last breakfast on the ship, many of us headed directly to the Ushuaia airport to catch our onwards flights, mostly to Buenos Aires and beyond. No one liked it. The Ushuaia airport is small and not very interesting.

We departed out in very strong winds over the Beagle Channel en route to Buenos Aires. It was hard to believe that just over two weeks ago, we’d been inbound to Ushuaia and had the trip of a lifetime in front of us. It truly was an incredible experience.

I’ll end the report here, as I already posted earlier some pics of my last night in BA – but it was kind of surreal being back in a big city. When I was being driven from the airport to my hotel, I felt like a little kid – gawking and gazing at all of the people, cars, and buildings. After being surrounded by the sea, the sky, rock, ice, and wildlife for 2 weeks, I guess that’s what Antarctica does to you.

Happy trails.