WEATHER: Cold and snowy all day 0C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Visiting a Polish Base
BUYS OF THE DAY: My Polish Arctowski badge for 10USD
WORD OF THE DAY: Champagne Day
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin
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Password: expedition
Well good morning. Today is our last possible day for landings in the Antarctica Peninsular / South Shetland Islands before running the gauntlet for the next two days also known as the Drake Passage back to the mainland. Based on last night’s conditions I am thinking we may be in for a rough ride home. The rocking and rolling of the ship last night, I have to say, has been the roughest we have had to date. Thank goodness we were in bed and trying to sleep, as I think it may have been impossible to even walk around the ship that’s how rolly it was last night. All our toiletry bags were strewn in the bathroom and a few things on the desk had slid as well. AND we are still in the Bransfield Strait. Wait till we get into the Drake Passage. Uh Oh is all I have to say!!!!!
We were anchored in Half Moon Bay till around midnight, when we pulled anchor and started making our way to King George Island and our second last landing. It was going to be a treat to be able to get into one of the bases located on the Island that belongs to the Brazilians. But TIA. This is Antarctica and we know not to get too excited about these things till we are actually loaded in zodiacs and heading to our destination. Mother Nature really is that temperamental down here and living up to her fickleness we arrived into Admiralty Bay just before breakfast at 7am to find it extremely windy, snowing and pack ice at the main landing site for the Base. They do have a secondary landing site where there is ice, but it is manageable ice that we could get through, but the wind is now not in our favor so we dropped anchor and patiently waited to see what Mother Nature did in the next few hours and then re-evaluate what the next step was to be.
Well we learnt our fate at 10.00am that we would not be able to facilitate a landing land thus not being able to visit the base. So we had to pack in the towel on visiting the Brazil base called Ferraz, the wind was our enemy today, it hadn’t died down or changed direction as we had hoped and it was expected to stay like that for the next 24 hours. I bet they are probably just as disappointed as us, but we have to roll with the punches, the wind and the ice. So as a consolation, the zodiacs were launched and we got a zodiac cruise in of Admiralty Bay instead. It was really cold out, but I had on enough clothes to keep me warm for the hour we were out. We saw a Weddell seal and a few birds, but the Glacier was probably the highlight today as we cruised past it seeing the different hues of blue and the black cliffs covered in snow. It was nice to get out, even if the water was a little rough and it really was cold. But it is the last day, so come hell or high water we were going if something was going to be organized. This afternoons landing may also look doubtful, but Susan keeps those cards close to her chest and only tells us things when she had some definite positive news. She is smart like that and focuses on the good and do-able things and anything prior to that discussed is quickly forgotten and we are concentrating on the positive without procrastinating on the impossible. Smart smart lady indeed.
It was funny looking around at people at lunch today. There are so many red, sunburned faces and some tan looking ones now as well. The first few days of the cruise it was wind burn as we had some pretty gusty winds and somewhere there in the middle we had a full day of sunshine and then the rest of the time we are back to wind burned faces. But as most of us are starting to tan it looks like we have been on a tropical island somewhere and not in Antarctica. The Americans are going home to winter and people will probably say wow your brown, where have you been vacationing and to hear Antarctica as an answer would be a pretty hilarious response. It’s the last place you would think of a tan, but with the hole in the ozone layer directly above Antarctica it makes us more prone to sun exposure and we have been told on numerous occasions to be applying sunscreen to our faces before heading out in the zodiacs. Tropical holiday this has not been!!!
After lunch today as we headed out of Admiralty Bay, we passes a glacier that had been named after Susan’s Great Grandfather in his whaling efforts in the early 1900’s, Lange Glacier. It is a shame the weather wasn’t the greatest as it was a beautiful glacier, but the snow was making visibility pretty poor. So we sailed back into the Bransfield Strait and towards our next destination. We were told to be prepared for some rough weather and we were aiming and hoping to get a landing this afternoon at a Polish Base called Arctowski. We headed west of King George Island to Maxwell Bay to an inlet that faces west in the hope to facilitate a landing there for the landing. They were still in I talks with the Commander of the Polish Base, but they were confident, and were our current plans we had to run with at this point. They organized Alex, the Geologist, to give a talk on ice. I decided to pass on this and get in an afternoon kip before our next landing.
Two hours later we got the thumbs up as we anchored in Maxwell Bay, which we were allowed to visit the base and surrounds. The weather was still a little dicey, but as long as it was safe, Susan and the crew really wanted to get us off the ship for one more landing in Antarctica before heading back tonight. I had a last minute thought and grabbed my credit card and some USD cash on my way out the door. I remember Susan saying when we were at Port Lockroy that all bases generally will be selling something, so I thought I better take some cash in case. I also finally remembered to take my Globetrotters Book with me in case they had some ink stamp I could add in there as well. I am impressed myself!
The station is named in honor of Henryk Arctowski, the geologist on Adrien de Gerlache’s Belgica expedition of 1897-1899, the first Antarctic expedition to focus on scientific research. The base is staffed year round and is still scientifically active.
We did have to land further down the beach due to the current and getting onto the zodiacs we had to take special care as there was a massive swell. It was quite fitting that Captain Ned aka Jeff was my second last zodiac driver, so I knew I was in safe hands. Well safe enough, he nearly lost a zodiac yesterday and a passenger fell ‘in’ the boat (it could have gone either way) but besides that I just knew I was in safe hands. So we all got in with no problems and 5 minutes later we were on our last landing of the trip. After Susan’s brief, we walked on a pebble road for 1.6km to get us to the main base buildings. We were then directed further south to the point of the island where they had a small souvenir hut on the way to the beach. They didn’t have USD change, so I lent some money to Allison and I got 5 postcards and a patch for exactly what I had in my jacket, $50USD. We then headed along the black sand beach to come across an Adelie penguin finally. It was just the one, and he seemed in a hurry, but there was another one just standing on the beach a little further down, we managed to get some photos of him and I have to say they have the most amazing blue eyes I have ever seen. He was also on his own. We have seen about only 3 the whole trip so far and they have all been individuals, but they do exist like their fellow brothers in the thousands, we just haven’t seen any of their rookeries o the trip. Further on we saw an Elephant seal high on the beach close to the rocks. She was very nervous about us being there and we had to back off 5-10m to give her some room and try and not let her stress out. You could see when she was upset as she would lift her head, look wildly around and be opening her mouth. It was then we saw the young calf peak his head over the rocky outcrop. She wasn’t being a bitch; she was just protecting her baby! At this point she was still high on the beach, so Kevin let us pass on the water’s edge to get past as there were some massive male Elephant seals further along. They were really quite hard to see to start with as they just look like another big rock, which is funny as the two we saw we massive and you would have to be blind not to see then, but only when you were like 5m away. They are certainly camouflaged quite well. They were both sleeping about 10m from each other and the light and weather were really starting to close with heavy snow blowing in off the bay and clouds low on the cliff faces. So Jules and I decided to head back to the main base where they had some refreshments put on for us. That was nice of them as they only knew we were coming a few hours ago. They were probably running around like blue arse flies getting the place all tidied up for our arrival.
Getting to the main set of buildings, we enter what was the recreation hall, where we took off our boots and entered a beautiful warm room. The Poles certainly know how to entertain and besides having the tea and coffee they had a table around 4m long laden with all sorts of biscuits, baskets of chocolates, stick pretzels, block chocolates, apples and other yummy stuff. I felt bad having a pretzel, these were their supplies and he we are returning to civilization in 3 days’ time and we are eating their provisions. Well I did the courteous thing and had a few pretzel sticks (I didn’t want to seem rude) and one chocolate and washed that down with some hot tea. The room looked like any clubhouse you would find in the USA or Australia and really you could have forgotten where we were just sitting in there, which is probably the whole point for them, to remind them of home and forget the conditions outside for a little while during the bleak winters.
Last zodiac was at 5.30pm. They will have buckley’s of getting us all back on the ship by that time. There were a group of people coming into the clubhouse as we were leaving. They had got stuck on the beach as the female Elephant seal got really stroppy and called in the male for reinforcements and they had to wait for the situation to die down. Jules and I left at just the right time. So we thought we would help out and be some of the first back to help facilitate the mass exodus when they all realize what the time is. The snow was coming down harder now, so the weather had really closed in, which we were lucky it held off for so long. You could imagine my delight when Captain Ned aka Jeff was back at the helm for my very last zodiac! He is too sweet and I am going to miss our banter.
Back to the ship, and we are getting off the zodiac for the last time, with the help of Jeff, for the last time, via the mudroom for the last time. It’s the last time we swipe our card with Ben to let them know we are back on board. The last time we take off the lifejacket. The last time we take off those god awful boots (this I will not miss). There was hot chicken broth again waiting for us, so with this in hand to warm us up on the inside it was the last time that left the mudroom. Ah the memories of a place called the mudroom. Back to the cabin, it was the last time I will wear the wet pants and my Antarctic jacket. They were the best 50GBP I have spent on this trip, and both pairs of gloves were also very practical. I will be sending it all home in Quito in a few days’ time, but I will keep one pair of gloves with me and I will also keep my neck gator, merino scarf and my beanie. I think I may need these when I hit the altitudes of South America.
It was 5.30pm by the time we got back to our cabins. We had free time till 6.30pm where we had a recap in the Discovery Lounge of the day’s events. We had John the Seal guy tell us what a rare opportunity we had seen with the mummy whale, her pup and one of the massive male Elephant seals on the beach at Arctowski. That sort of behavior happens in South Georgia and The Falkland’s. He has never seemed that type of display from Elephant seals this far south. He called it a ‘champagne’ day and I like that phrase, so I am going to start using that on really awesome days. Sometimes we need this pointed out to us or we just think that it is normal. Just like the Drake Crossing, it wasn’t that bad coming down and I think this has made us a little blasé with the return northbound starting at around midnight tonight.
Dinner was of a French themed buffet. We don’t mind the buffets every few days, as it means we don’t have to sit through 90 minutes of table service and waiters when all you want to do is eat and go back to the cabin to read and relax. We have a core group of dinner buddies now, so it certainly isn’t the company, and it’s not the waiters in particular, it is just the time it takes to get through an a ’la carte meal. Tonight we were done and dusted in 35 minutes! No messing around for us. We have probably done the wrong and over ate tonight, so if the weather does get rough, we will have something to bring up. Versus we should have not eaten as much and see how we went tomorrow. Yeah right! We ate up big and let’s just see what happens and if we see dinner for the second time. Ughhhhhhhhh.
There was an Auction on after dinner to raise money for the Albatross. All the proceeds raised were going towards saving these massive birds. 100,000 albatrosses die needlessly each year on long line fishing hooks due to drowning as accidental by-catch in the nets. Hence they are a threatened species in the vulnerable category. This means there are approximately fewer than 10,000 birds in the wild and their population is due to decline a further 30% over the next 10 years, making the birds to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild. Jules and I were stuffed so we skipped the auction, but I bought a ‘save the albatross’ stick pin at Port Lockroy when I was there, so I helped in some small way. It all counts right!
So this is the last goodnight from the Antarctic waters. It has been a magic trip. It has been an amazing experience and one that I will not forget. Antarctica has left an impression with me of nature, wildlife, wilderness, explorers and of heroic men who conquered this vast continent over a hundred years ago.
If it has even been on your ‘Bucket list’ save the pennies and DO IT! You will not regret it.
Goodbye penguins, seals and Antarctica.
