Beyond Day Ten

Well that´s it for the Antarctic leg of our honeymoon. Thanks for staying in touch with us by reading this blog. Now we´ll spend four days in Ushuaia and four days in Buenos Aires before flying home.

We look forward to seeing you back in Sydney or wherever you may be reading this blog.

-Richard and Janice

Day Ten: Au Revoir Le Boreal

Today is our last evening on board the ship. Earlier this evening, we sailed through the Beagle Channel towards the setting sun and silhouettes of snow capped mountains.

During the last two days, we attended a series of lectures presented by our team of naturalists on board the ship. We learned about:

·         great Antarctic explorers;

·         Antarctic Treaty;

·         whale biology; and

·         birds of the Antarctic.

We also had a guided tour of the engine room from the ship´s chief engineer. The ship has four diesel engines (five including the emergency engine) and is one of the quietest and most fuel efficient ships on the open seas. We saw the propeller shafts rotating, used water being converted into potable water and the control room with four independent computers monitoring everything on board.  

Can you believe that our ship uses 80 tonnes of water per day? 20 tonnes of water is recycled and used for cleaning the decks and cooling the engines. The remaining water is biologically treated, filtered and released into the ocean. We also found out that the ship´s consumption of water dramatically increases when there are Americans on board.

We will spend tonight docked at the pier in Ushuaia so no more sea sickness tablets are required. We could get off the ship if we wanted to, but we quite like it here!

-Richard and Janice

Day Nine: Stormy passage

We are still making our way through the Drake passage. The sea is rough and everyone is tumbling about the ship, clutching handrails as they walk. The chairs that aren´t bolted down are sliding across the floor. From our room, which is slightly above sea level, we can see the ocean tilt at crazy angles as the ship teeters from side to side. I had a new experience today - projectile vomiting.

We still have another day of sailing in the Drake before landing in Ushuaia.

 -Janice

Day Eight: A surprise from the crew

We were given a mysterious message from the crew today  - we were asked to turn up at 8:00 at the reception desk for a honeymoon surprise.

Enora, our glamorous blonde guest relations manager met us later that evening.

¨ I have someone very special I´d like you to meet,¨ she says with a twinkle in her eye.  

An impeccably groomed gentleman in a black tuxedo with tails makes his way down the staircase.

¨This is Pascual. He will attend to you this evening.¨

Enora and Pascual take us to the owner´s suite at the top floor of the ship for a romantic dinner with a view of the ocean. There is a chilled bottle of champagne waiting for us when we arrive.

Pascual, we discover, is a butler from Brittany, France. He was trained in London by the same academy that trains butlers for the Queen. When he isn´t working on board Le Boreal, he sometimes works in a private French chateau that is hired by European millionaires and Saudi princesses.

We had truffle mushroom risottoo for dinner accompanied by champagne and excellent French malbec. There was one more suprise at the end of dinner - a macaroon in the shape of a heart.

- Janice

Day 8: Walking on floating ice.

We sailed through the Antarctic Sound towards the Weddell Sea today.

Our passage was blocked by  ¨pack ice¨, as far as the eye can see. ¨Pack ice¨ means large pieces of ice floating in the ocean that are at least 20 metres across.

Our adventure this afternoon was to take a zodiac to a floating piece of ice and stand on it. 18,000 feet of water was under our feet.  It was amazing! We couldn´t stay long though because the ice was drifting away from the ship!

Alas, this is our last day in Antarctica. We will start making our way to the Drake Passage tonight. 

Day 8: Scaredy penguins

Our first stop this morning was on another piece of the Antarctic continent, where adele penguins roamed the shore. Some of them entered the water, but not many. We observed the curious “after you – no, I insist, after you” phenomenon at work in nature (that´s a scientific term, by the way J. Dozens of penguins ran up and down the beach, waiting for someone else to lead the charge into the water. Come on guys, it´s not that cold!

-Richard

Day Seven: Inside the volcano

We sailed into the caldera of the most active volcano in the Western Antarctic. A caldera is the former magma chamber of a volcano. Part of the outer rim had collapsed, allowing the ocean to fill it.

The entrance into the volcano was a narrow passage, which required skillful navigation for our ship to sails through. It was huge! The diameter of the caldera on the sea floor was 30 km. After we landed, the naturalists had pushed aside a layer of volcanic ash soil to form a small pool on the water´s edge. They invited us to put our hands in the pool, which we did: the water was almost too hot to bear. Maybe that´s why the local gintoo penguins enjoyed warming their backsides in the sand!

Curiously, the inside of volcano contained the remains of an old whaling station. There were gigantic vats for storing whale oil that were about 40 feet high. Whale bones littered the beach accompanied by the forlorn remains of the whalers´ huts, which were partially buried the last time the volcano erupted.

- Richard and Janice

Day Seven: Killer whales

We woke up at 6:30 in the morning to an announcement by the captain.

¨Wake up! Wake up! There are killer whales near the ship!¨

Five minutes later came a second announcement.

¨If you haven´t gotten out of bed yet, WAKE UP!¨

I jumped out of bed, threw on some warm clothes and ran to the bridge of the ship.

There were about 30 orcas swimming alongside the ship. Two adults faced the ship and watched us. Apparently, orcas have excellent eyesight and sometimes watch us too! Later, two baby orcas watched us too.

Then, two humpback whales appeared near the orcas. Humpbacks are slow, which is why they are often hunted by whalers. We were a bit worried that the orcas would attack the humbacks, but they left them alone this time. One of our guides said that the humpbacks may have been too big to attack as orcas often attack the young and vulnerable.

We also saw a group of birds clustering above a spot in the ocean. They were eating a dead penguin.

- Janice

Day Six: Postcard from Antarctica

After a smooth journey through the night to our next destination, we awoke to find the skies cloudy but the weather warm (i.e. above freezing). We boarded our zodiac and stepped foot on the island of Port Lockroy, where a colony of gintoo penguins surrounded a research station for the British Antarctic Trust.

The research station has been in operation for several decades and now houses a museum, gift shop and post office. 1950s-era scientific equipment fills the museum, while the décor illustrates the spartan conditions under which the early researchers laboured. A recipe book lay open to a page with instructions how to make scrambled seal brains on toast – British cuisine at its finest.

A zodiac tour of the bay led us back to the ship, where we had a few hours to kill before our next outing. So we took a nap and went to the gym. Ah, so much like home.

Our second disembarkation was on another island populated by thousands of penguins, several predatory skuas and several tufts of green grass. Yes, grass does grow in Antarctica. Just not much of it.

Now we are making our way north again through the Gerlache strait to Half Moon Bay and Deception Island. Penguins nap lazily on icebergs as we pass, and the occasional humpback whale greets us with its spray as we digest our dinner (hopefully more effectively than the penguins digest the krill we see in their guano).

-Richard

Day Five: Barred by icebergs!

We were scheduled to visit Peterman Island in the Gerlache Strait earlier today, but our way was barred by giant icebergs. We went to a nearby penguin colony instead. Rivers of guano (penguin poo) greeted us as we stepped on shore.

That was only our first of four outings for the day. Our second expedition was a Zodiac cruise through a sea of brash ice to the south of the Gerlache Strait. We saw humpback whales dipping and diving, penguins porpoising and birds of prey swooping about. We also saw a leopard seal taking an afternoon siesta on its own iceberg –conveniently shaped like a sunbed! To top it off, our guide surprised us with a bottle of Champagne on the way back!

Our third outing was supposed to be to another island of penguin but there was a surprise in store for us. We were given a private private Zodiac craft and guide and spent an afternoon exploring icebergs. Some icebergs were taller than a fifteen story building! Others looked like giant blue archways protruding from turbulent seas below. We also spotted two Minke whales!

On our final expedition for the day, we clambered up icy penguin highways to see an ¨iceberg graveyard¨ and adele penguin colonies. And when we returned to our cabin, we had yet another surprise– the bottle of champagne we had won for spotting the first icerberg!

Tomorrow, we are off to explore Port Lockroy, a historic site populated by pretty British conservation scientists, Gintu penguins and a tourist shop that takes any form of payment except Amex and Argentinian pesos.

- Richard and Janice

 

Day Four: Into the wild

We saw a pod of six orcas gracefully leaping in front of our ship today, glistening in the morning sunlight. There were penguins all around too, zipping about beneath the surface, jumping in the air and disappearing from sight.

Our first expedition was to a penguin colony with over five thousand penguins. The penguins bustled about so efficiently – they looked like they would fit in on a busy New York City street!  We saw a really fat penguin walking down a hill and it tripped and fell on its tummy! It picked itself up and kept on going!

There were lots of baby penguins too stumbling about and learning how to walk.  They will eventually need to figure out how to survive in the wild on their own. Only half of them will survive their first season.

We saw a sleek crabeater seal glide gracefully near our Zodiac. It almost caught a penguin, which leapt into the air just in time to escape! (Hurray little penguin!)

Tomorrow will be a busy day with three landings. We are off to the Lemaire Channel, Pleneu and Petermann Islands and hopefully will see a colony of chinstrap penguins!

Day Four – Arriving at the White Continent

We woke up at four am this morning to see dawn breaking across the Antarctic. We were surrounded by gigantic white cliffs of ice and snow in all directions. There are great craggy cliffs and big big mounds of ice everywhere. There are also lots of icebergs floating near our ship.

We saw two humpback whales playing in front of our ship and there are penguins propoising out of the water beside the ship. We are part of the second expedition team and will leave the ship at 9:15 this morning.

The captain of our ship has just announced that there are killer whales to be seen near the ship. Got to go!