PARAD-ICE

WEATHER: Broken sunshine and 1C

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Having some Snowy Sheathbills jump on our Zodiac

BUYS OF THE DAY: My 105USD I spent in Port Lockroy gift shop

WORD OF THE DAY: Where are the seals?

Below 40 degrees South, there is no law.

Below 50 degrees South, there is no God.

Whalers maxim

Follow our journey at http://www.gadventures.com/marine/triplog-login/  where you can find our Daily Expedition Reports and other documents from our voyage.  It also maps our itinerary and stops along the way, so you may find this of interest.  You will need the following to get in:

Username: antarctica111107

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I would love to get a sunrise photo down here in Antarctica, but the sun is normally rising around 4.54am and the last few days have been overcast and snowy.  I would hate to get up that early and be disappointed that the sun was behind cloud cover.  Yeah, may be if some-one else is braver than I to get up I can steal one of their photos.  Cheating I hear you say. Tough…..

With the bing bing bong of the call to breakfast at 7am, we have noticed the breakfast numbers dwindle since the first day.  Maybe people have noticed that they can rock up at any time before 8am and are using the extra time for some sleep. 

We are still waiting to hear how the ice is and if we will be able to access Paradise Harbour, which the call came just after 8.20am that the ice was too compact and the ship would not be able to get through for a landing.  BUT they were going to launch the Zodiacs and let us go for a cruise around the Harbour.  It’s the next best thing and it keeps people happy.  Paradise Harbour lies between the Antarctic mainland and Bryde and Lemaire Islands.  With a name like Paradise, you go in with some pretty big expectations and I am happy to say the area lived up to its name.  It is basically a natural Harbour that is sheltered from the winds, with high mountains that line the bay it is prone for the calving of ice off them which is found floating in the Harbour with the Bergy bits (pieces of ice that stand 1-5m above the water), icebergs and brash ice.  We cruised right into the Harbour for 45 minutes before coming to s atop.  It was great to get out on deck and get some photos of it before going down to water level and getting a different perspective of the place.  We were lucky the sun was trying to peak through some of the cloud cover and we got some rays on some of the snow covered mountains.  It was great to see some sun as it has been hiding the last few days. 

Our group Weddell was one of the first off the ship this morning.  Once the call comes over that they are ready for us in the mud room we pretty much have a system going now that starts in the cabin and then finishes in the mud room.  We have seen how quickly the weather changes when we are out in the elements, so we do dress the same each time we go out, whether for a cruise or a landing.  So we start with the long johns, my long black cargo pants, my wind proof pants, 2 pairs of socks then comes the top.  I put on my thermal, my turtle neck, my Colombia hoodie and then my wind proof jacket.  Finish that off with a neck gator, my beanie and a my gloves we are ready to hit the mud room with the addition of a pair of boots to the knees and a life jacket, we are now all dressed for a day in Antarctica.  Phew what an effort, but it is certainly worth it once you get out there.  And it is enough to keep me warm – which is great news for me! 

Our driver today was birdman Kevin. So with 10 of us safely loaded into the Zodiac it was time to hit the Harbour and see what type of animals we could find.  Wildlife is not a major attraction here, although there are some Gentoo penguins and also some birds including the Snowy Sheathbill.  I do have to say that the cliffs and mountains were just stunning and everywhere you looked was just an amazing scene.  The main beauty was the snow closer to the water was a glorious shade of blue and it was great to be able to get up to a reasonable distance to these glaciers and get some photos.  We also stopped by a Gentoo colony that was busy doing what penguins do.  As we had nosed up on the small iceberg that they were nesting on, some Snowy Sheathbills started walking over to the Zodiac.  As I was at the head of the boat, Kevin told me to start tapping the Zodiac and see if we could get one of the birds on the boat.  Yeah as if they will do that.  Well I started tapping and low and behold there were 3 of them that started to make their way towards us.  Before we knew it there were 8 of them and we managed to get 2 different birds actually jump on the boat to say hello.  They seriously would have been only ½ a meter away.  It is amazing that they have no fear of us.  They were a little uncertain but they took that leap of faith onto the boat right!?  Everyone got some great shots of them, but to have 2 jump on the boat!  Bloody brilliant!  The penguins were cute as usual, so we watched them for a few minutes before continuing on to see some more of the beautiful cliffs, icebergs and bergy bits.  We did get to glimpse a Weddell seal on the ice, but they seem so lazy and just lay there doing nothing.  Not the most exciting animals to observe that is for sure.  They have been keeping a low profile with only a handful seen so far on the cruise, of any variety. 

The blue hues were amazing.  So why are glaciers and icebergs blue?  Well they are blue because it absorbs the red part of the light, allowing a brilliant blue to radiate out.  If you think of light as really made up of all the colours of the rainbow, the red part is moving slower(longer wavelength) and the blue end of the light is moving faster (shorter wavelength).  You still with me?  So while I’m at it why is snow white?  It is white because there is a lot of air between the snow grains, so all the light is scattered back to you.  With glacier ice, there is very little air between the ice grains, so only the blue light can get through the slower wavelengths of light having been absorbed by the ice grains.  The deeper the blue, the less air there is trapped in the ice to allow the light to pass through.  So now you know.

So after cruising around the Harbour for just over an hour it was time to head back to the warmth of the ship.  The last 10 minutes the weather started to turn a little cooler, so it was a perfect time to head back.  So just after 11am we were firmly back in the ship with a cup of chicken broth in the hand as we watched everyone else arrive back.  That chicken broth was delicious and just what we needed to instantly warm us up.  We stopped for a second cup on our way back to the cabin.  It was so good.      

We had free time for an hour before lunch was served in the dining room.  We are continually still meeting new people each day which is great.  We were discussing what the ratio of nationalities was on this cruise and there are quite a few Americans, there seems to be a few from Toronto with a splattering of Australians and Brits in the throw.  There are also a few Scandinavians as well, but to me I would say 60% of Americans on board and contrary to belief they are all really nice and not the ‘brash’ Americans that people are used to travelling with.  We got word over lunch that we would be expected to arrive into Port Lockroy sometime after 3pm and as it is a small place half of us would visit the base first, while the other half went to Jougla Point just a 5 minute zodiac ride to look at Gentoo rookeries and then we would swap over so as not to overload Port Lockroy all at the same time.  As they have a post office word had spread about taking our passports ashore with us to get an Antarctic stamp inked into them.  Susan made it quite clear that we were NOT to take our passports with us and that they would get the stamp from Port Lockroy, stamp our passports and then drop the stamp back to base.  AWESOME!!!

So our group Weddell was first off the ship again this afternoon, so when we got the call over at 3.40pm, the ritual of getting dressed to Michelin Men status, to the mud room, checking out, disinfecting the boots and into the Zodiac’s we arrived onto land at 4.10pm.  We have got this landing business down pat now!!!!  Port Lockroy lies on the western side of Weincke Island in the Palmer Archipelago.  It was discovered by Charcot during his French Antarctic Expedition of 1903-05 and named after Edouard Lockroy a French politician and sponsor.  The Harbour is relatively small, 800m long by 800m wide and compromises of 2 sites.  Goudier Island and Jougla Point. 

Goudier Island is home to the restored British Antarctic Survey (BAS) hut and museum.  The BAS hut was Station A, referred to as Bransfield House and occupied between 1944 and 1962.  Also known as Base A, it was built in 1944 as part of the secret Operation Tabarin, which saw British forces occupying strategic locations on the Antarctic Peninsula in order to detect any use of these areas by German naval forces.  The Germans never showed up.   Scientific staff took over the base in 1948 and the research carried out of this site focused on surveying the region, geology, meteorology and botany but after 1950 the emphasis switched to ionospheric research.  The hut was restored in 1996 and is now open to visitors during the austral summers.  The historic site features an extraordinary museum and a post office and gift shop where stamps, postcards and souvenirs may be purchased.  We arrived on to Goudier Island just after 4pm and were given 50 minutes to walk around the small base that consisted of 3 buildings and a lot of penguin rookeries, some of which were butted right up against the main hut.

The main building was the museum/post office/gift shop and was a hive of activity.  I had pre written up my post cards, so I just needed to buy stamps and then they went into an official Royal Mail post box (being a British Station) where eventually they will make it out of Antarctica on to their destinations.  Not many people will be able to claim that they have received a postcard from Antarctica.  Mail sent from Port Lockroy, however, can take from three weeks to three months to get to its final destination.   But it’s the thought that counts right!  So keep checking your mail boxes people!  Around 70,000 cards are posted each year from here to over 100 countries.

The gift shop was also busy.  The proceeds of the gift shop goes back into the conservation of the building and the museum operation.  Any surplus of money goes to support other historic site in Antarctica.  So this really was a guilt free shopping extravaganza and they had a lot of stuff in the shop for sale.  So 105USD later, I left with a few gifts and a lot of souvenirs for myself.  Well I am only going to be here once in my life and I haven’t seen a shop in like a whole week so I went nuts and the good thing is they took USD cash or good old visa card.  Charge away …….. 

The museum was pretty cool.  They still had original food stuffs in bottles and tins from the early 1960’s in the kitchen; the radio room still has an operational 1944 B-28 radio receiver which can still receive and tune into the BBC World Service.  The bathroom was located off the hall, and as water was rationed, only the person whose turn it was to gather and melt the ice or snow was allowed to bathe.  This could mean up to 5 weeks between baths…… It was just like stepping back in time and was fascinating to go through.  Could I live here for a job for 5 months?  Ummm not sure.  I think the guys at this base do it on a volunteer basis, I know I definitely couldn’t do it for that at brash as that sounds.

A major experiment on Goudier Island is to test the effect of tourism on penguins.  Half the island is open to tourists, while the other half is reserved for penguins.  So far, the results show that tourism has a slight positive effect on penguins, possibly due to the presence of people being a deterrent to skua’s which are Antarctic birds that prey on penguins and chicks.  I really have a lot of photos of the Gentoo penguins, but they are all in different backgrounds and different places, and they are so cute.  We all have the pictures now, so when we get an opportunity to picture the penguins we are now looking for the ‘money shot’.  Something that is a little different that we haven’t already taken before.  With only 3 more days of ‘possible’ landings my theory is you can never have too many photos of penguins and I am still snapping to my heart’s content.  Jules can’t believe I have taken 944 photos to her 115 photos.  These guys were everywhere on Goudier, under the flag pole, under the main hut, next to the communications tower, you name it these guys have set up house.    

We had to be back at the zodiacs at 5pm, for our 5 minute transfer from there to Jougla Point.  Here there were approximately 20 Gentoo penguin rookeries all preparing their nests for the coming summer and breeding.  With the Fief Mountains as a back drop of the point, it made for some amazing photo opportunities with the penguins and this was the closest we have been to the rookeries, with some of them only 2m away.  Once again they are oblivious to us and just carry on doing ‘penguin’ things the whole time we were there.  I am not sure if I have mentioned the smell, but they are one of few animals that live and breed in its own poo.  It is really quite smelly and I would hate to be here in summer, add the current smell with a little sun hitting it, it must really stink during summer.  Smelly buggers.  It is surprising how they keep so clean.  I guess their hygiene expectations are high.  We also saw a partial whale skeleton at Jougla (most of the skeleton was under snow) but you could see the rib cage bones protruding from the snow and then some of the tail bones like 15m down the slope.  It was amazing just to see the size of this thing, and we couldn’t even see the whole skeleton.  There was also a Weddell seal on the ice, but I have to say they are pretty boring creatures, well the 4 that we have seen to date.  They just lie there and pretty much look like one of the rocks in the area.

There was no time limit here on Jougla.  Once we had seen enough they were just running zodiacs back to the ship.  So after a good 2 hours out and about we were back home again at 6pm.  What another amazing day had in the Antarctic Peninsula.  This is a once in a lifetime trip, really it is.  We were lucky to get in here today at all as apparently there was a ship in the Harbour this morning and it was blown / forced out due to the 100km winds that were blowing there this morning.  It is hard to believe as it is now so calm with not a breath of wind in the air.  TIA (This is Antarctica)

Dinner was an outdoor BBQ out on the back deck of the ship at 6.30pm.  They had set up tables with table cloths, napkins and glasses and with the stunning back drop of Port Lockroy and the Fief Mountains it made for a beautiful setting for dinner.  The sun had also poled its head through the clouds for a small time, but once that went behind some clouds the weather really dropped and after we had finished eating, we retreated indoors as it really was getting chilly out there.  Bit well done G Adventures for going to the effort and putting on the BBQ it was delicious.  There were all kinds of meat with the BBQ sizzling away, corn cobs, salads and dessert it was a pretty fancy spread.  Thanks goes to Jules for supplying the white wine for us to drink, from her now reduced 7L wine rack and to MJ for joining us for dinner.  It was a nice way to finish a great day.

The three of us went to the lounge to finish off the last glasses of the white wine, had a chin wag, with Billy joining us a little later.  My thanks also goes to Billy for the title of today’s blog.  I was starting to get a little stuck for titles and with Billy in the newspaper industry I asked for his help to which he came through on his first suggestion.  Thanks buddy.  This is your credit in writing from me!

The campers have finally got off the ship for their night of camping tonight somewhere on Goudier Island.  I was so upset that I couldn’t get a spot on that, but I was certainly not in the mood to camp in minus 0 conditions tonight, but then I am sure if I was booked I would have had a different mind-set.  Good-luck to the 30+ of them out there tonight.  They left the ship just after 8pm – suckers……

We also got our passports stamped at reception before the stamp had to head back to Port Lockroy.  I also was able to get my Globetrotters book stamped; there is a section in there for Antarctica, so that is pretty awesome to get that stamp in there.  I would die if I lost that book.  I really would.

So back to the cabins, yes I know it is only 9pm, but as the days are so long here, activities wise as well as the sun in the sky long, we kick back, read a little, I completed the days blog, which is awesome that I can write about each day the day it happens.  I have missed that as I did that for most of Europe and Africa.  It really makes a difference to be writing it fresh.  The sun is due to set tonight at 10.53pm and will be up at 4.50am tomorrow morning, and to think it isn’t even summer yet!