Gallery, Antarctica

In February, 2008, I took a trip to Antarctica (stopping by Buenos Aires, Argentina on the way down, and stopping at Santiago, Chile on the way back.

Just over 100 of us traveled on the Sergei Vavilov, a scientific vessel, as far south as 66°51´ S latitude. For anyone wanting to travel there themselves, I can highly recommend Quark Expeditions (http://quarkexpeditions.com/), which I booked with Joy Martinello of Expedition Trips (http://www.expeditiontrips.com/).

Argentine “City of the Dead” – the state mausoleum in Buenos Aires (on the trip down)	The grave of Evita Perron (on the trip down)	The Patagonian mountains at Ushuaia (aka El Fin del Mundo, or  the End of the World, as it is the world’s southernmost city)	Rough waters on the Drake Passage	Icebergs	Seal tracks on sea ice
Berg	Weddel seal	Iceberg, and the foot (the part of it underwater)	Another iceberg foot	A humpback whale  playing with us and spyhopping (that’s me second from the right, close enough to reach out and touch the whale) (photo copyright 2008 by Barry Trewin)	More humpback (I’m in the boat on the right) (photo copyright 2008 by Barry Trewin)
Once more with the spyhopping whales (again, that’s me second from the right) (photo copyright 2008 by Blue Sky Helicopters)	Seal	Iceberg with gorgeous blue coloration from very old, compressed ice with low oxygen content	Mountains and glaciers	Mountains and glaciers 2	Mountains and glaciers 3
Great picture taken as the sun set on a cloudy day. The setting sun (at my back) lit up the ice in the picture, making it glow eerily.	More glowing ice at sunset	Still more glowing ice at sunset	And yet more glowing ice at sunset	Hordes of penguins …	Iceberg (that has shifted its waterline a couple times)
Reflection of an iceberg	A mischievous leopard seal	More seal	Quite the ham
The ice- and snow-covered ascent	Mists and mountains	The night we camped out on the ice	Coming back down from a hike on Deception Island	The coastline near Santiago, Chile (on the way back)	Casillero Del Diablo, the Devil’s Cellar, at a the Chilean winery Concho et Toro
Local huaso and huasa dancers near Santiago

A Trip Beyond the End of the World

(a short essay I wrote for the company newsletter)

A trip that BEGINS at the End of the World, and travels far beyond -- how cool is that?

My trip to Antarctica started by travelling through Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, Argentina a.k.a. El Fin del Mundo, The End of the World. It is the southernmost city in the world and shows off the Patagonian mountains. I got into Ushuaia late, had dinner at the hotel restaurant about 11:00 P.M., the sky still plenty light enough to study all the ships in the harbor until well past midnight.

The ship met us there, a scientific vessel with a special ballast-based stabilizer and a hull hardened enough to break through a meter of sea ice. It would be taking various soundings and measurements as it ferried us to below the Antarctica Circle. First, though, was the Drake Passage. Where the Atlantic meets the Pacific below South America, the swells and choppy waters are infamous, and our passage down was not an exception. Bolstered by a sea-sickness patch, though, I and many others treated it as a glorified carnival ride where we laughed at ourselves trying to walk as the floor beneath us rocked and rolled and lurched.

We saw whales and albatrosses (with wingspans twice the height of a man) and orcas and dolphins; the first iceberg sightings followed; finally after another day of travel, we crossed the Antarctic Circle at Detaille Island. We took expeditions out in zodiacs, large motorized rafts designed by Jacques Cousteau that seat twelve (warmly bundled!) people plus the driver. Seals yawned at us, bored. Penguins shuffled quickly down the ice toward the water, then became suddenly shy at the water's edge (since, if there is a leopard seal in the water below, the first penguin in gets "eht"). The lead penguin changed his mind about being first in the water, and turned around to head back up the ice, but a helpful comrade behind him insisted he go in with a friendly shove. The first penguin went in the drink (author's note: he was not eaten!), and moments later his fellow penguins dived in to join him.

Over the next few days, we stopped at a Ukrainian station (the British government built the station and, after being so impressed with the Ukrainian proposal for scientific experiments there, sold it to them for one British pound; that coin is now embedded in the wood of the bar at the station) and a Chilean station (where there are so many penguins that you practically need traffic lights to keep the people and penguins from stepping on each other).

At a place called Wilhelmina Bay, two humpback whales became curious about us and approached. Very closely. But, very gently and carefully as well. For two and a half hours, they swam beside us and between us and spyhopped (like a human dog-paddling, the whale brings its nose and chin and eyes up out of the water to have a look at what is on the water's surface -- i.e. us) close enough we could have literally reached out and grabbed a fin. This was so unusual and so magical that the expedition leader called back to her assistant on the ship to get the rest of the staff and the cooks and get them on a zodiac and out there to see this. When we finally headed back to the ship, the two whales followed us.

The two whales were still there by the ship, probably figuratively scratching their heads, as 40 of us then proceeded to take a "polar plunge" into the Antarctica water and swim a few seconds there. Hopefully they were impressed with our courage and not our insanity!

One night 40 or so of us camped out on the ice. All night long, we were serenaded by the thunderstorm sounds of calving icebergs. We visited Deception Island, a volcano with a "C" shape where one side of the caldera has collapsed. The ship sailed into the caldera, and we took the zodiacs to the shore, where two of the crew dug a pit in the black sand there. Water filled the pit, and it was much much too hot to get into. We waited for the 30 degree sea water of the tide to lap into the pit until the water was cool enough to get into. At Aitcho Island (named for the UK Hydrographic Office), the penguins were so gregarious that they came up to nip at our pants to see if they were edible, and laid down on the lap of anyone sitting down too long.

Too soon, it was time to return. Heading back toward South America, on the second day, the Drake Passage took on the unusual calmness that occasionally earns it the name Drake Lake. We rounded Cape Horn, for a moment standing with one half of our bodies in the Atlantic and one half in the Pacific. After that, it was acclimatizing again to the mundane world as we returned to our lives all around the world.