Deep South: Small-Ship Antarctica Expedition

This was probably the most common response I got from family and (non-travel industry) friends when I first announced I was going to Antarctica. Working in the adventure travel industry, where most of my colleagues have already been to Antarctica - some more than once - I forget that it’s not a place that most people realize that can be visited. It’s easy to forget about Antarctica: this big, empty continent at the bottom of the globe, so far away from everything we know and think about on a daily basis - it’s not like the penguins are causing newsworthy political trouble. So I understood the surprise when sharing my next vacation destination. 
 
The second most common response was “But, why?”

This one was harder for me to understand and to explain. Ever since I found out that I didn’t have to have an advanced science degree to visit Antarctica, I desperately wanted to go. I wanted to experience this untouched continent that I’d heard colleagues speak of with reverence. As an artist, I was thrilled to have the chance to see what this continent had to show me, to try to translate the awe and wonder I was sure to feel into images that might capture just a fraction of it to share with the folks back home. As a lover of nature, I was excited to visit a place with so little human impact. Living in Montana, it’s pretty easy to find wilderness, but there was something about the remoteness of Antarctica that called to me in a totally new way. And as a curious person with an urge to explore, I was looking forward to getting the chance to do just that.
 

The thing about traveling to Antarctica is, it’s a long way away. It took two days of flights from Montana just to get to the port city of Ushuaia, at the southernmost tip of Argentina. From there, it was another two days of sailing across the Drake Passage, a notorious body of water between South America and the Antarctic peninsula. At the convergence of the Pacific, Atlantic and Southern Oceans, strong currents cause famously rough seas - sailors even had a typical tattoo design to commemorate a crossing, of a fully-rigged ship. Since this was my very first solo trip, I was a little nervous about all of this travel, but thankfully everything went perfectly - in fact, better even than I had expected.
  My colleagues recommended that I take some time to enjoy Buenos Aires on my long layover. My plan initially had been to just stay in the hotel to shower and sleep since I had been flying for over 20 hours and had another early flight the next morning, but the glimpses I got of the city from the airport taxi had me changing my mind: I’m not sure exactly what I had expected of Buenos Aires, but it had an energy and charm that was surprisingly infectious. I decided I could catch up on sleep later, and took the afternoon to explore. 
  My hotel was in the Recoleta neighborhood, directly across from the famous cemetery of the same name. It’s a beautiful, walkable area with the cemetery, sprawling parks, shops and cafes, and museums all close by. I wandered through the cemetery to admire the works of art that are the mausoleums, with their stained glass, sculptures and carefully tended plants: everything in the cemetery was so well cared for, it was obvious that it was a special place to many. I also made a stop in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, since I can never resist a good art museum. It was the perfect size to spend an afternoon, with a great mix of traditional European and contemporary Argentinian and Latin American art. Finally, I sought a bookstore I had seen photos of floating around online: El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a beautiful 1919 theater that had been renovated in 2000 to become the largest bookstore in South America. I wandered around and soaked in the beautiful architecture and live piano music played on the stage-turned-cafe before returning to the hotel for dinner and a relaxing night in. 

After two days at sea, we were all restless and eager to get off the Ocean Nova. We didn’t know until that morning exactly where we were, or where we were going: in lieu of a strict itinerary, our expedition leader worked with the captain to chart our course hour by hour, looking for the best landing sites with ideal weather windows as they came up. This is why flexibility and trust in the expedition team is so vital to enjoy a trip to Antarctica - if you get too attached to specific islands or have too-rigid expectations of what Antarctica should be like, you can easily lose sight of the true spirit of exploration, which takes the fun out of the trip. This is a region best left to surrendering control and relishing what comes!

Our first landing site was determined to be Eden Rocks, a pair of tiny, rocky islands just off the coast of Dundee Island at the northeastern end of the Antarctic peninsula. We all suited up in waterproof pants and jackets and donned the provided lifejackets and insulated, waterproof boots, then made our way to the lower deck to access the gangway to board zodiacs. Then we were off! Our guide, Zibo, drove us around some floating ice before heading to the landing site, giving us a chance to look for wildlife while we waited our turn to disembark on shore. We found a colony of Antarctic Shags, and cruised around looking at incredible ice formations before coming across a leopard seal stretched out on an ice floe. I was so excited to see one - they’re the second largest species of seal in the Antarctic (after elephant seals) and are striking animals, with their large mouths and spotted coats. It checked us out before returning to its nap - and then word came over Zibo’s radio that they were ready for us at shore.
  Onshore, the guides helped us out of the zodiacs and pointed out the hiking route, which they had set and marked with flags to ensure that we didn’t wander into any nesting sites or unstable land. The route involved a steep climb, but they anchored ropes for us to use for balance. At the top, we had a stunning view of the rest of the island, surrounded by glassy blue water dotted with ice. 

This afternoon, we cruised over to the Danger Islands to make a landing for a sunset hike. I don’t recall the name of the island - I’m not sure if it even had a name - but it was home to a small colony of Adelie penguins. Like others we had seen so far, these ones were also moulting - losing all of their feathers to grow new ones - and sat around looking quite grumpy. 
  The landscape itself was striking, totally barren with odd hills and canyons carved into the island. In the bay around us were other sculptural islands, as well as the ever-present ice. We took a nice long hike here across rocks and snow, and saw the beginning of the long, drawn-out sunset from the shore. By the time we boarded zodiacs to return to the ship, the sky was brilliant with pinks, oranges and purples - our driver took us on a leisurely route back to the ship to give us the opportunity to take photos of the stunning sunset from various vantage points around the bay before we returned to the ship for dinner. What an amazing first day of excursions!
  I really appreciated that attitude from the guides: everything was flexible, and decisions were made in the moment to try to give us the best experience possible based on the present circumstances. It made the entire experience feel so customized and special - because, well, it was! No other itinerary would be exactly like ours, no other experience would be the same. A fitting way to experience such a unique place. 

This morning we were awakened far earlier than usual by the expedition leader announcing over the PA system that a pod of orcas had been spotted off the bow. Though it was barely 6am and the sun was just beginning to rise, most of us headed out onto the decks - some had thrown on the first clothes they touched, others had simply pulled boots and parkas on over their pajamas - and looked for orcas. Sure enough, we spotted several fins and blows, and we followed them south as the rising sun turned the glassy water gold. What a start to the day!
  After breakfast, we all got dressed for our next adventure, a hike at Devil island. It did indeed look quite intimidating from the water, small but mountainous with a spear of stone at the summit. On the rocky beach, we were greeted by a handful of adelie penguins, as well as a fur seal. This was the first encounter with a seal on land - it was much larger than I expected! As I made my way up the beach from the landing site to the trail, I spotted a crabeater seal in the shallows, floating under an arching chunk of ice. 
  The hike up the mountain was short, but very steep and on loose, fine scree over mud - not the most stable terrain. But the view was spectacular: the trail went up the spine of the island, and on the other side was another island, separated from this one by a narrow, glassy channel of water filled with ice. At the top of Devil Island, crossed flags marked the end of the trail, not that there was anywhere else to go: the trail went right along the highest ridge of the mountain, and ended at the highest point, with sheer drops on three sides. It was a warm, clear sunny day and the view was absolutely amazing in every direction.
 

This afternoon, the weather steadily worsened until we were under the impression that we would be unable to make a second landing. Our expedition leader and captain set us on a course to try to get out from the weather system, and in the meantime, hosted a lecture on Scandinavian polar exploration history. We learned about the critical role that Devil Island, where we had been that morning, and its surrounds played in helping early explorers survive their expeditions. 

Late in the afternoon, it was announced that we would have a small weather window to make a landing at Gourdin Island. It was still gray and misty, but the wind had lessened, so they loaded us onto Zodiacs and we made our way to the rocky island. And we were immediately surrounded by hundreds of penguins!
 
Until this landing, I had been...not disappointed, exactly, because it’s Antarctica and everything was amazing, but perhaps a little underwhelmed by the scattered, grouchy adelie penguins we had seen so far - a sentiment I heard whispers of from other travelers as well. 

That was remedied here. 

Everywhere you looked, penguins. This island was home to a huge colony of gentoo penguins - I didn’t get a number, but the hills of the island that rose up and disappeared into the incoming fog were full of them, as far as you could see. Since they hadn’t begun to moult yet, the gentoos were active, too: chasing each other over the trails they’d made in the dirt and snow, hopping up and down the rock piles in their clumsy waddles, diving into and leaping out of the sea. 
  I could have sat and watched them play for hours, but the storm was catching up to us, and we couldn’t even see the ship’s lights through the fog. The guides navigated us back expertly, though, and we sat down to dinner just as the sleet started to fall. While no one can see the future, I was continually impressed by the crew’s extensive knowledge and experience that allows them to make just the right decisions to give us the best experience!
 

Because of the building storms, we took a rather ridiculous route on our cruise. Our expedition leader occasionally commented how worried he was about keeping his job since the course he set us on was so inefficient and fuel wasn’t cheap; as he was a gruff British fellow with a sense of humor drier than the McMurdo valleys, I’m truly not sure how much he was joking. But we did indeed go initially to the Weddell Sea on the east side of the peninsula, then north to the South Shetland islands, then south again along the west side of the peninsula, before returning north to Ushuaia. 
  This morning, we stopped in the South Shetlands, at Elephant Point on Livingston Island. The reason for the site’s name was immediately clear as soon as we landed: scattered along the beach were several enormous elephant seals. Now, intellectually, I knew these were large animals. I’d seen photos of them next to people. I’d been surprised by the large size of the fur seal on the beach the day before, and naturally expected these to be larger. But I was still taken aback by how massive these animals are! Even the minimum safe distance of 25 meters did not feel like enough space between me and the elephant seals, so I stayed well back, having seen them move surprisingly quickly across the beach to the sea. 
  I joined a hiking group led by one of the guides to take a guided walk over the glacial moraine to get a closer look at the edge of the glacier that covers most of Livingston Island. We climbed up and over the moraine, a hill of rock and gravel and mud that shifted worryingly under our feet, to reach the very edge of the glacier. And then we carefully crossed a stream and field of mud to set foot on the glacier: one by one, our little group climbed up until all twelve of us were standing on a patch of ancient ice, crystal clear under the layer of mud. Then our guide revealed that it was the birthday of one of the ladies in our group, and we all sang her “Happy Birthday” right then and there on the glacier. We were all a little teary-eyed by the end of it, and so grateful to be able to give her an incredibly special day. 
 

Deception Island was one of the places in Antarctica that I had heard of before, and though I didn’t necessarily have expectations of making a landing there, when it was announced that this was our next stop, I was excited to see it. 

Deception Island is so named because it looks like an ordinary island from most of its perimeter, but there is a very narrow opening, called Neptune’s Bellows, through which a ship can sail and one will realize that it is in fact not an ordinary island, but a sunken volcanic caldera. 
  We landed at a point called Baily Head, on the eastern side of the island. It was a difficult landing, with our zodiac getting flooded as we washed up on the steep black beach. The beach was not sand, but tiny black volcanic pebbles: a close look revealed them to be porous, like scoria. Considering we were essentially on the rim of the crater of an underwater volcano, I supposed it made sense! 

On the beach were more elephant and fur seals, thankfully giving us as wide a berth as we gave them. But, the real stars of the show on Deception Island were the penguins. 
  Oh, the penguins! When I think of Antarctica and penguin colonies, I think of nature documentary footage of thousands and thousands of penguins, as far as the eye can see. We hadn’t really seen that yet, even at Gourdin Island, and the naturalists warned us it might be too late in the season to see many penguins. But there at Baily Head was a colony of chinstrap penguins that one of the naturalist guides said likely consisted of over 100,000 breeding pairs, plus their chicks, plus an unknown number of single penguins: anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 penguins, they claimed. And I’d believe it! They had marked out a hiking route for us from the beach, up a ravine, up the side of a hill, to a clifftop overlook to another beach below. It was not a particularly long or difficult hike, but took a while because we had to keep a certain distance from the penguins - you’re not allowed to approach them, but they sure like to approach you. Constant penguin crossings meant constant pauses to yield, since Antarctica’s residents, of course, get right of way. And since there were so many, and they were so entertaining to watch, it was slow going.  The noise and smell were incredible, and not in a good way. The squawking and calling made quite a cacophony - penguins aren’t known as songbirds - and the smell of penguin guano is a distinctive one, a uniquely awful cross between an overfull litter box and rotting fish. On an island with such an enormous colony, the stench was eye-watering. But the island was so beautiful, the penguins so charming, and the entire experience so unique that one could put it out of mind and simply marvel.
  Back aboard the ship, our expedition leader and captain took us through Neptune’s Bellows, which were indeed very narrow, the jagged rock walls unsettlingly close in the building fog. Inside was Whaler’s Bay and we could see the ruins of whaling stations. We also passed another ship inside: the Magellan Explorer, a brand new small expedition ship built by Antarctica21 specifically for exploring the region. I had seen photos of it, but it was interesting to see it out and about. 

So far, all of our landings had been on islands around the Antarctic peninsula. And though we had seen plenty of ice, penguins, whales and seals, we could have easily called everything so far an “Antarctic experience,” many of us still wanted a true continental landing, to set foot on the peninsula itself. Today was our last day in the region before returning to Ushuaia, so the “purists” among us (myself included) were getting a little anxious, though of course still appreciative of everything we had seen and done so far. 
  I’m so grateful to the expedition team for being so flexible and listening to what passengers wanted: they knew that many of us really wanted to make a continental landing, and they really pushed to make that happen. We were still outrunning storms, so we went the farthest south yet, to Orne Harbor on the peninsula proper. At 64.6 degrees south, it was two degrees short of the Antarctic circle, but already had a different feel than the islands we’d visited thus far. It was colder here, and the beaches narrower and rockier, ending in walls of ice at the ends of glaciers. 

The harbor was small, with glaciers and mountains on all sides. It was a dim, misty day, but the ice still glowed that unearthly blue. We all loaded into the zodiacs and landed, our boots planted on the rocks of Antarctica! This was my 4th continent, and while everything so far had been amazing and I had been telling myself that even if we didn’t make that landing, it was fine, I had still “been to Antarctica,” I was surprised at how emotional I was about it in the moment. I will confess that I cried a bit - though of course I was not the only one! - and walked around with the biggest, giddiest grin on my face the entire time we were there. 
  We all lined up for a big group photo, and one of the guides had even brought his guitar ashore and led a sing-along of, of all things, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have you ever seen the rain,” which was fun, if a little out of left field. Our applause was joined by the thundering of a calving glacier, and we got to watch a great chunk of ice tumble off the end of the glacier at the opposite side of the bay and into the water. Of course, that set off quite a ripple, and we all scrambled up the narrow beach to get away from the icy waves that washed up. 
  Once the waters had calmed, we loaded back into the zodiacs for a little cruise around the bay, getting as close as the guides dared to the end of the glacier to see the fresh ice revealed underneath, and to cruise in the slushy waters full of small bergy bits before returning to the ship. 

After lunch, we set out for a final excursion, this time by sea: seeking cetaceans, the ship took us to Fournier Bay, where a high concentration of krill attracts large populations of whales. The ship dropped anchor and we boarded the zodiacs for the last time, bundled up against the cold since we wouldn’t be hiking to generate heat. 
  Our driver took us out into the harbor, cut the zodiac’s engine, and let us drift, everyone looking for the tell-tale blows of whales. Soon we realized we had an excellent dilemma: there were just so many whales, we struggled to agree in which direction to go! Our guide took us to an area that had had several blows and no other zodiacs, hoping the whales wouldn’t have been scared off. Sure enough, a few moments after the engine was cut, the silence was broken by the sudden blow of a humpback, very close. We could see the bumpy tubercles on the tops of their heads and their blowholes, then the line of their dorsal fins, and finally their flukes as they dove. 
  Like with the elephant seals, I was shocked by the size of the whales. It’s so difficult to truly conceive of how enormous these mammals are until there’s one right next to your tiny boat, and you see its dorsal fin and think that’s huge, but it’s just a small part of the animal under the surface. And then you see one breach across the bay and it just takes your breath away, not least because you realize that if the one next to you decides to do that, your entire zodiac is probably getting taken out in the process. 
  It was an amazing, humbling experience. I’ve never felt so small or insignificant, or so deeply grateful to be exactly where I was in that moment. 

Back at the ship from whale watching, about half of us lined up to do the polar plunge. I was surprised at how many passengers wanted to, and at the ages of some of those in line. One of the older ladies confessed she didn’t know how to swim - she had never jumped into water in her whole life - but she was willing to try this because “I’m not getting any younger!” I admired her spirit, and the part of me that considered backing out was quickly quieted by the part of me who knew that I wouldn’t regret doing it - cold only lasts so long - but I would regret not doing it. 
In my cabin I threw on a robe over my swimsuit, then got in line. The crew helped build the mood, blasting dance music to which those of us in line sang along. It created a party atmosphere for us, so that it didn’t feel so much like walking the plank! We all chatted nervously and cheered and high-fived each person who jumped. The power of the party atmosphere is real: by the time it was my turn, I was utterly unconcerned about the cold, and mostly just nervous about a bunch of near-strangers seeing me in my swimsuit. 

Suddenly everything happened so fast, I almost forgot to really enjoy it: they strapped a belt and rope to my waist, to pull me out if I panicked and froze, and then I was walking to the end of the gangplank, and then I was jumping, and then I was colder than I have ever been in my life, and then they were hauling me out and everyone else in line was cheering as they handed me my robe and a shot of vodka. The cold was sharp, but over in seconds, and you get dried off and bundled up so quickly you really don’t have time for the chill to set in. I absolutely do not regret it, and would do it again in a heartbeat! It was a great way to wrap up an amazing trip, full of memories and stories to tell for the rest of my life. Antarctica is such a unique part of our planet, and so vital to its future, that I do firmly believe that anyone who can go should go. There are not adequate words to convey just how special it is: you’ll have to see for yourself.