Photo Friday: Antarctica #5

Zodiac cruise with icebergs--and some wildlife

I'm working my way through the Antarctica photos, and I'm kind of amazed to realize from the post numbering that we've been home for 5 weeks. Still have about 5 more posts to do from Antarctica, and then I can get moving on all the hikes in Patagonia. 

Today I'm featuring our Day 3 (along the Antarctic Peninsula--it was day 6 of the cruise) afternoon zodiac cruise in Andvord Bay. This was the after-lunch outing following my amazing penguin encounters.  

We sailed from Neko Harbor to Andvord Bay while we lunched, and the rain stopped, to everyone's relief.

We sailed past lots of these

And parked about here

 Pile into zodiacs and head out with Rustyn Mesdag at the helm. I snagged the seat by the bows, which can be damp but also allows for some good views.

For obvious reasons, I'm not really sure who was on the boat with me!

 There's not a lot of narration needed for the next 2 1/2 hours, though that doesn't mean I won't add any.

Just like a cartoon!

Some of the ice hunks that come off the glaciers are pretty dirty, while others are sparkling white.

Many of the bergs were amazing shades of blue, above and below the water

It took a little cruising around, but eventually we found the wildlife.

A crabeater seal taking a rest.

Penguin naps

And whales! These are all humpback whales, which was most of what we saw.

And to finish off--a little whale video. It's a bit shaky, because I was in the zodiac and that's not a very stable platform (and maybe because I was excited). If you listen to the sound, you'll hear the whale breathe (and me getting excited).

 

All images and text ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2020, unless otherwise indicated.
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Photo Friday: Penguins all the way

Before I get started on today's penguin extravaganza, I want to report that we got word today that the Plancius has reached her home port (in the Netherlands), and all aboard are healthy (of course, now they have to enter the real world, where it's harder to stay that way). So glad for our staff and crew!

Our 3rd day along the Antarctic Peninsula, the weather was pretty icky--rain at just above freezing is never a favorite of anyone. But we boldly headed ashore, and the gentoo penguins welcomed us with open arms.

In fact, the greeting party was fairly large.

Of course, they are not without their suspicions. The secret service was hard at work, watching in all directions.

Or it might have been Larry, Curly, and Moe

Gentoos are notoriously curious birds, and while we were not to approach them, they were not prevented from approaching us.

One of our shipmates, demonstrating that you only had to hold still and they would come.

I decided to try the "hold still and see if they come" approach, and got the most amazing up close and very personal encounter with a pair of curious birds.

First I looked down and realized I had company.

Squatting made me less intimidating, and Bird One was soon joined by Bird Two.

Shipmate Jen Devries got some good shots of my close encounter as well.

The penguins nabbed whatever they could in their beaks, just testing them. Maybe the way a human would handle stuff? After all, they have no hands to pick up an interesting object.

At this point I handed my phone over to a shipmate to shoot a bit. I was busy wondering just how to react to a rather personal inspection!

I've never posted video before, so I hope this works: just a short clip of the penguins checking me out, shot by the same helpful shipmate.

After all that, back to the ship, with no complaints though I was soggy wet and cold!

All images and text ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2020, unless otherwise indicated.
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Photo Friday: Antarctica #3

Glacier Walking and More Penguins!

Gratuitous penguin to start the post

Our second day in Antarctica, and we are finally going to set foot on it! Many of our shipmates had done so the previous day, while we were kayaking, but Dave and I hadn't yet been off the water. And we were going to start right off with a glacier walk, the longest shore excursion on offer (which mostly filled me with regret that I'd had coffee with breakfast, as one is to leave nothing, and they mean nothing, on shore. Nor is a pee bottle much help when you are in the middle of a rope team).

It didn't seem completely certain the night before that we'd be able to do this. While we cruised through the night (more or less in circles, as it turned out), the weather had been... imperfect.

Yep. That's snow in the beam of the bridge searchlight.

Despite the snowy night, the morning was beautiful. Since we needed the most time for our outing we were the first to leave the ship. Looking back from across the bay it appeared very small!

We disembarked on a little rock ledge below the glacier, where we could leave our life vests and pick up our snowshoes.

Okay, this was actually us waiting to get picked up. Same idea, though.

Eventually we were all ready: snowshoes (the spiked variety) on, a little practice walking in them, and roped up and ready to go.

I was next to last in the second rope of 6.

We started up a fairly steep snow/ice slope, with little idea what was beyond. I was pretty impressed when we topped out!

Our rope leader, giving instructions for crossing crevasses.

The snow looked innocuous, which is why we had expert leaders--because they knew there were crevasses around, and knew how to spot them, even when covered, or mostly covered, with snow. With their guidance we moved safely over the ice and out until we really did have a feel for being in the wilds of Antarctica!

Big land, little people.

 We had the pleasure of just poking around and taking in the scene some.

Looking across Port Lockroy (a research station, closed for the season) and Damoy Point (our afternoon landing is on the other side of that), to some really big peaks that I'm sure have names.

We enjoyed the fantastic weather, but the memory of the snow in the night kept me looking around. In the Antarctic, a change in the weather is always lurking about.

Back to the ship for lunch, then we were out again for a landing among the penguins, and an historic station. You can see why we all wore our ship-provided tall muck-boots every time!

Coming ashore. Note the greeter, far left :)

The first thing I did was to check out the buildings. Since even the summers there (the only time such a station would have been manned) are pretty cold, it didn't seem terribly adequate, but way better than the earliest explorers had! This was used from 1974 until about 1994, as a stop for supply flights to research stations farther south. Note the huge urn atop the barrel stove--that would be for melting snow to make drinking water.

I think it is actually stocked so it can be used in case of emergency.

 Then I went and enjoyed the penguins :)

Not mange, just the molting season! You can see the smooth adult feathers starting to show.

This one was pretty far through the molt, but still not ready for the water.

Note the fluffy bits on the head and neck.

"Whatchu lookin' at? Like you never had a bad hair day?"

I managed to be at the farthest possible spot when word came through to our leaders: the captain was ordering everyone back aboard, as the wind was picking up with dangerous gusts expected. I was in a good position to watch everyone stream back to the shore. The two buildings in the distance on the right are the old station, and the planes landed up on the ice on top of the ridge.

The pink snow is algae, not penguin poo, though the latter may help the former to grow.

I think he was racing to catch the last zodiac.

That's enough photos for today! Hope you enjoyed them, and see you next Friday for the next installment. My apologies to anyone who visited and found broken photo links. I have no idea what went wrong.

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All images and text ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2020, unless otherwise indicated.
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Photo Friday: Antarctica #1

I promised y'all penguins, so I'm jumping over whatever land-based trips I still need to share, and going right to the world's most amazing swimming birds. Okay, and also a landscape that is a bit mind-boggling. And whales....

A bit of background:
In the late afternoon of March 9, we boarded the Oceanwide Expeditions vessel Plancius in Ushuaia, Argentina. On the 12th, we woke up in Antarctica (okay, not a total surprise, and we'd seen the South Shetland Islands the day before as we steamed past). Our ship, a refitted research vessel 89 meters long, carried 114 passengers and 46 crew (including 8 guides for our adventures, and an amazing chef). That makes it a pretty small ship for a cruise, and allows for the kind of special trip this was: one where everyone could participate in all the activities and landings (all covered in the base price, BTW). Those activities included kayaking, zodiac cruises, landings, and various mountaineering activities (participation in some restricted by the need for crampon-compatible boots). It would also have included camping on shore, but weather and snow conditions, alas, sank that plan.

Bear in mind that March is decidedly late summer in the south polar regions, as we approached the fall equinox. However, we were exploring the Antarctic Peninsula, which actually extends pretty far north, so that we were at latitudes comparable to that of Denali in Alaska. The weather when we started was truly perfect.

Here's a bit of map to get you oriented:

This shows Ushuaia and the southern tip of Argentina/Chile, and the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, extending farther south than what we got.

More perspective:

What we visited was the tip of that bit that extends way out from the main continent.
 
Okay, now for the trip.

As we approached the dock for boarding, we got a nice perspective on the different sorts of ships you can take to the polar regions (I presume all were going there; I don't think there are many other places to sail to from Ushuaia). Our Plancius looked pretty small at the dock next to a somewhat larger cruise ship--and wholly overshadowed by one of the giant ones, whose passengers generally can't land anywhere.

Plancius didn't look quite so hopelessly tiny up close.

Note the line of passengers approaching the table on the dock. We did go through a cursory health screening before boarding. It seemed to work; no one had so much as a cold virus.

We set sail just before 6 p.m., heading down the Beagle Channel.

Ushuaia perches on the narrow bit of land between the mountains and the sea, and is actually quite a bit more hilly than it looks here.

We heard a lot of talk about the "Drake Lake" of our crossing. This, believe it or not, is the water we had for most of the way across the roughest bit of ocean in the world. No one aboard had ever seen it anything like so calm. I was grateful not to be testing the ability of my seasickness patch to keep me functional (spoiler alert: I was right to be grateful for the calm).

Late on the second day we were excited to spot land--the South Shetland Islands, the first outliers of the Antarctic Peninsula.

  On the 3rd morning we woke up in Antarctica, at Orne Harbour.

The first adventure was a zodiac cruise (zodiacs are those black rubber inflatable boats) around the Harbour and out into the Gerlache Straight a bit in pursuit of whales.

Okay, the ship looks pretty big from this perspective. The zodiacs held a dozen passengers and one guide to run the engine and talk about what we were experiencing. They were highly professional and in most cases passionate about the animals and landscapes we saw.

I promised you penguins--they were the first thing they took us to see. These are called chinstrap penguins, for reasons you can probably figure out.

We then cruised out into the channel a bit where a humpback whale was more than cooperative, coming up very close to our boats. Unfortunately, we eventually realized that the whale was distressed because we'd gotten (unknowingly) between her and her calf. We moved off and left them in peace, but not before we'd all gotten a thrill.

This isn't really a photo of the whale. It shows you how close it was--almost too close to see from across the zodiac, even standing up.

Photography in the zodiacs was always a little challenging. I lost a lot of my first-day photos because I hadn't set my ISO right. You need really fast shutter speeds to get good photos from a tiny rubber boat bouncing around in the water, even if the subject is holding still (which is wasn't). It is also often hard to get a good shot with 12 other people maneuvering to get photos.

Sometimes, even when you have to peer between your fellow passengers, you get a great view.

By the time we'd seen the penguins and the whales, we all could have gone home happy. But we continued with a swing deeper into Orne Harbour, with some nice icebergs (small ones; later we saw the massive ones).

The glassy seas reflected the grey skies and it all made me feel very far from California!

One little zodiac and 8 even smaller kayaks, exploring among the ice.

This is already unmercifully long--and we haven't even gotten to the afternoon, when we got our turn in the kayaks. That--and lots more whales and penguins--will just have to wait :)

I hope this has been a nice distraction from the constant blast of scary news we're all getting right now. I'll keep posting up about our trip and sharing pictures, in hopes of making someone's day a little better.

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All images and text ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2020, unless otherwise indicated.
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!