Antarctica part 1................ the first landings - and landing harder than intended!!

From the frequency and increasing size of the passing icebergs we could see showed that we were nearing the continent itself....
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Our first indication that Antarctica was approaching was the frequency and size of icebergs and by the second afternoon, the crossing of the Drake Passage had been calm enough for us to arrive fairly early at the South Shetland Islands. The sea, which although calm for the Drake Passage was still pretty rough, calmed down as we passed through the English Straight between the islands and ‘Land ahoy!” everyone was on deck for the first sighting of Antarctic territory.

We did our first landing on one of the smaller island – I think it was H.O. island – We were able to walk across, and saw quite a few penguins, walking up and down from their rookeries to the sea, there were gentoos, and fewer chinstraps. Also we were able to practice getting in to the zodiacs and onto the shore.

My first sighting of Antarctic Territory (I think!!)..
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Then we went back to tea and cakes in the library and a briefing – the weather was possibly going to hold us back on the next morning, Cara told us the forecasts were not in our favour, so plans that were made this evening might have to change. Each night an itinerary (produced by the staff and published and distributed by Victoria the Expedition Assistant I think!) was placed in a folder outside our cabin, but, as we were to learn on the first day, this often was subject to change, for a variety of reasons, the main one being the weather!

Gentoo penguins on the beach of our first landing....
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That evening the Russian catering staff produced a fabulous international dinner! I can’t remember all that was on the menu, but I had John Dory with ginger sauce –an Australian dish? – and the dining room was decked in a variety of flags – I think the Irish one was missing!! Having a theme, and the decoration and the obvious trouble that was gone to made for good conversation round the tables.

The next morning – after WONDERFUL choice for breakfast! The weather was still dubious and people still a bit sick and Cara put out an announcement that we couldn’t land in the various places on our itinerary, as the wind was too high to make safe zodiac landings. We were to the east of the Antarctic peninsular now, having crossed over the sea from the South Shetland Islands while we were all asleep and had been supposed to go to an Adelie penguin breeding spot on Paulet Island and then onto Brown Bluff, which would actually have been ON the continent! WOW! We were nearly there! But there was too much broken ice floating around for the zodiac trip and landing to be safe enough and so Cara had been onto the nearby Argentinean base back towards the west at Hope Bay – Esperanzo – and they had invited us ashore. So we went through the soon to become familiar routine of boarding the zodiacs – donning life jackets which we had in our rooms, Wellington boots which we had selected on the first evening from the ships store and layers of thermals and tee shirts and fleeces, ending with a waterproof layer, which keeps the warmth in and the wet out! Margarita turned into the most jovial colourful alien with an amazing pink mask, which she wore to start off with!

Chinstrap penguins.
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We landed and were split into two groups to do a quick tour of the base – Nick Tozer (who was the leader for an American group on board, the OAT’s (Overseas Adventure Travel) came into his own being bilingual in Spanish and English so he translated everything the leader (captain?) at the base told us. There was quite some history here, as we saw a stone hut in which 12? Explorers had survived a winter, living on penguin and smothering themselves with seal blubber to keep warm. Amazing what humans can endure.

The fabulous international dinner (I think thats an Italian flag, not the Irish one!)
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Nowadays Esperanza is a scientific base, but staffed mainly by scientific military personnel it seemed. We were given a brief rundown of the kind of research they were doing I think, but the fact that stuck in my mind most was what we learnt about the weather. The week before we came they had had rain, it had rained for the first time EVER on that part of the Antarctic continent. And by EVER it means for thousands and thousands of years. Global warming or what?

The families of the scientists also accompany them to Esperanza, everyone comes for a year at a time, and there were 17 children, so there is a school and civilian teachers. Also there is a chapel, and a bar, where we were invited to partake of juice and biscuits that had been laid out for us. And to buy souvenirs, postcards and stamps. This also served as the social club and had a table football table! Well, being very English and in the nearest thing to a pub for several thousand miles, I guess it was inevitable that Mick and Mark and I decided to have a game and Jen joined in (picture) – it was so much fun! It was also an opportunity to socialise with some of the other passengers and with the staff – I had a good chat with Victoria, the English member of staff, who actually lives in Singapore I think and was from Leicester, so we had much to talk about as I did my second stint at college in my 30’s in Leicester.

Donned in our outdoor togs and waterproofs we line up - this becomes a familiar routine to board the zodiacs!........
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So much so that I was nearly the last to leave – there was a telephone there, but I thought as I only had 5 Argentinean pesos left I decided to ring home – it was lovely to hear Jessica’s voice and there were friends there having supper and I wasn’t on for very long but was able to say ‘I MADE it!! I’m on the Antarctic continent!’ For me that was a great moment!

We went back to the boat and Cara invited some of the people at the base to join us for a cup of tea - nearly all the children came and I think it was quite an adventure for them!  Then it was time for dinner and afterwards to the forward lounge for the first part of a BBC programme with Keith Branagh about Sir Ernest Shackleton's 3^rd trip to Antarctica. All the information we were given was made so relevant to the experiences we were having, I was so impressed.

A zodiac out to see if the landing conditions will be safe enough - the first two attempts this was not the case!
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Overnight we sailed back up to the South Shetland Islands or make a landing at Half Moon Island in the English Straight. It was still a bit windy and testing, and was called off at the last minute. We were also supposed to have an art workshop but that was also postponed because of the movement of the boat.

So we went on to the next scheduled stop to the south of the South Shetlands – Deception Island, so called because as an erupted volcano (& still active) it looked just like a circular island and what was not discovered for many years was that there was an entrance to the crater which had been filled with sea water – hence ‘Deception’. Very tricky to pass through, the entrance was called ‘Neptune’s bellows’ as the wind can be phenomenal through such a narrow entrance – and tricky because of rocks in the middle. But it was just about OK for us to pass through although it was foggy and near blizzarding.

The bar with the pool table - irresistible to some of us to have a game!!!
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Inside the waters were calm and although is was a blizzard, Cara took the decision for us to make a landing at what was called Whalers Bay – there had been a Norwegian whaling station there and also a British base at one time which had been served by plane. All the buildings were derelict and included an aircraft hangar with great acoustics!

I was on the top deck with some other passengers, watching these ghostly, snow covered ruins emerge through the falling snow, and as we drew to a halt we did so with a bit of a jolt, and all joked about running aground and being stranded here! It all seemed so isolated and eerie!

Stone hut at Hope Bay, Trinity Peninsula, built in January 1903 by a party of the Swedish South Polar Expedition and where they overwintered...
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Despite the near blizzard conditions we DID do a landing, and it was one of the best Antarctic experiences in a way, as we were getting some small taste of the kind of conditions that the first expeditions would have experienced. There were some penguins sheltering from the snow and the hangars and the derelict buildings and the huge pots where they would have rendered the whale blubber all seemed to have their tales to tell. It was spooky in a way, but not a threatening place.

Then, after this more 'extreme' experience of what Antarctica could be like, when we returned to the ship we learned that we HAD run aground! Which, with the isolation of the location, started to make it all seem a much more real experience! The up side of this was that there was no motion at all on the boat and so we had the art workshop that we had missed the previous day. It was well attended and it was fun, we did some basic drawing techniques with Robert Howe, our artist in residence and I really enjoyed it. I had already plucked up the courage to do some sketching on our first landing site, and was able to share these with Robert who was encouraging.

The Argentianean base, where there is a school and a chapel - and where the first person born in Antarctica started life in 1978.
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Then dinner, as exquisite as always, and after the second part of the Shackleton programme – the mood of which was far more real considering our own location and predicament! The Captain was making attempts to get us off the sand bank we had struck with the anchors and a winch and chains, but to no avail. We were reassured by Cara though, that help was around the corner in the form of a Spanish ex-tug that was used to bring supplies to the Spanish base on the other side of the crater, so if the captain couldn’t manage it himself, we were not stranded forever! Which was reassuring, and it was also good to be kept so much in the picture!……..