By Angie Butler
We hear them before we see them. An almighty blow as a fountain of water catapults skywards, the sea opens up and the glistening body of a Minke whale breaks the surface. Thus I see my first whale from a kayak off the Antarctic Peninsula. It is a heart stopping moment, yet six months earlier my only knowledge of the Antarctic was limited to the historic feats of early explorers, Captain Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, and I certainly hadn’t sat in a kayak before.
Leaving the town of Ushuaia, we ‘throw the lines’ and head across the Drake Passage towards the glorious South Shetland Islands. Soon we are accompanied by swooping albatross and playful dolphins and the misgivings about travelling with a group of 80 passengers soon disappears. Ages vary from early twenties to late seventies (quite often the most intrepid) and close bonds are quickly formed as we are all like minded souls, adventurous in spirit, embarking on experiencing the coldest, highest, driest and most spectacular uninhabited continent on earth.
By choosing the 18 day voyage I am able to travel to the Antarctic Peninsula, our final destination, via the small sub Antarctic island of South Georgia where Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried. ‘Sea days’ are spent watching the kings of the ocean, the Wandering albatrosses, with 10 feet wing spans they dip and glide above our game little ship. We go back to school by attending at least four lectures a day by experts on glaciers, geology, exploration, Antarctic birds and mammals and much more besides.
Our first excursion on South Georgia is St Andrew’s Bay to visit the King penguin colony. Imagine a heaving, reeking, feathered cacophony of 100,000 penguins pairs, double it and you get some idea of the spectacle before you. Chicks in their fluffy brown overcoats stand hunched against a sharp wind, moulting adults huddle together, goggle eyed and shelled shocked at the state of their cast offs, the rest preen and screech and waddle about minding everyone else’s business. And then there is the blubber fest of elephant seals, that manage to be both doe-eyed and horribly belligerent, mock charging those who come too close. To add to the organised mayhem are skuas tearing at seal carcasses and terns dive bombing anyone who inadvertently steps too close to their nests.
The highlight for me is a 4 a.m. start by zodiac to Fortuna Bay where we trace on foot the last four hours of Shackleton’s heroic walk over the mountainous interior of South Georgia to Stromness Bay, today a deserted whaling station. Considered one of the greatest achievements in Polar history, he set out in 1914 to seek help for his men stranded on Elephant Island after their ship the Endurance was crushed in the ice. Further along the bay at Grytviken lies his simple grave marked by a rough hewn stone and as tradition demands we lift our glasses of Irish whiskey to the great leader who suddenly died at the age of 47.
Another two day crossing takes us just past 65 degrees south and onto the Antarctic Peninsula, a ‘finger’ of land jutting out from the main continent and made up of a myriad of islands, inlets and bays.
Slowly we make our way South, each day allows two excursions onto land. We hike up glaciers, explore the bays by zodiac, darting between glorious azure blue icebergs and snow covered mountains or quietly observe Gentoo and Adelie penguin colonies. Names like the Lemaire Channel, Peterman Island, Paradise Harbour and Danco Island come and go. Sluggish leopard seals, their mouths dyed red from the gluttonous consumption of krill, loll on the ice while penguins toboggan on their stomachs into the water.
As it is mid summer, the sun never sets and therefore neither does it rise. Each morning at 5 am sitting on the bow of the ship as it crunches its way through the pack ice, surrounded by mountains bathed in white gold light, a new day of unimaginable beauty dawns. Groups of Adelie penguins, comical on land yet mini dynamos in the water, spiral alongside us. I spot the tall wide dorsal fins of three orca whales, honed killing machines of seals and penguins, when suddenly they ‘spy hop,’ out of the water, standing on their tails like periscopes scanning the ice flows for prey.
Further up the continent Paradise Harbour lives up to its name. We clamber up glaciers and gaze in awe across the Bellingshausen Sea that stretches across the globe to meet the other side of the Antarctic continent. Minke whales somersault in the bay hundreds of feet below from where I stand. Soon we will have a much closer encounter.
At 65 degrees we turn north and push ourselves again through the glorious Lemaire Channel but this time prevailing winds have capped it in sea ice, giving the Russian crew a tense time as they cautiously steer through it. Once into clearer waters we decant into zodiacs and skirt around ice bergs the size of cathedrals. A climb up the glacier at Paradise Harbour is rewarded with spectacular views and a 200 meter slide down the mountain on our backsides.
Forty passengers opt for a night’s camping on the ice at Danco Bay. We sleep on an icy incline over looking the bay outlined by glaciers, yawning crevasses and mountain peaks that disappeared into the heavens. The only change in the constant daylight is the colour of the landscape, which turns from a pale yellow glow to candy pink before turning back to yellow again.
It is time to say goodbye to the Peninsula and head for the South Shetlands and the volcanic island named Deception where in 1911 the Norwegians established a whaling station. The giant iron cauldrons which stored the blubber now holed and brown with rust stand empty amongst a tangled jumble of winches and steel ropes near the water’s edge. Once the beach would have been a heaving mass of whale carcasses, the sea red with blood and the air filled with the stench of boiling blubber. It was not unusual for whaling stations in this part of the world to process 6,000 whales a year. An eerie calmness descends the island, broken by the yelps of some passengers as they strip off and wallow in the volcanic steam puddles.
The less adventurous walk amongst Gentoo penguins nesting on their day old chicks, which peep from under their mothers’ chests. We see Macaroni penguins for the first time, recognised by their ridiculous Rastafarian feathered heads. Elephant seals the size of mini submarines, the males can weigh up to three and a half tons each, lie in large groups, burping and belching and occasionally taking a slug at each other.
In the mirrored waters of the bay some of us take to our kayaks for the last time and follow our guides to the jagged shoreline. Except for the crackle of the occasional iceberg or the rumble of a far off glacier ‘calving’, the silence is deafening. We all spread out, drop our paddles and bob about, wholly insignificant in the surrounding landscape.
At first the sound is like air escaping from a punctured tyre then a jet of water erupts 25 metres away. Before the bubbles have settled, a glistening black and white body burst out of the water in a perfect arc only to disappear again. We have all seen it and we are left gaping in silence. The blow comes again and two more piebald bodies nine metres in length, break the surface in perfect synchronisation before diving back down. A pod of Minke whales has come to play. Spellbound we watch them for several minutes showing off their backspins and tail fluking, sending cascades of spray into the air. I could have sworn I saw the black shadow swim beneath my kayak!
It is the curtain call of a wonderful trip. Soon we are heading back across the Drake Passage to Ushuaia and we have all acquired our sea legs and much, much more.
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