Falklands and Antarctica

As I sit here writing this note, Antarctica is slowly fading away. I say slowly because the dark volcanic mountains covered with bright white ice and snow are so huge, and so brightly lit by sunshine that we’ll be able to see them for quite some time still. The view is stupendous, and perhaps even more so from a distance, for now you can see the peaks of the tall mountains above the low clouds, and see how tall these mountains really are – even though you can no longer see the blue streaks of glacier ice, or the pink stains of the penguin poop.

The past few days have been truly unique.

Highlights:

There’s not much to see in Port Stanley in the Falklands. It’s a desolate place, all rock and scrub, 44 degrees high in summer. It rains there a lot (or snows in winter) but we were lucky and the weather was dry, though overcast. All the vehicles here are Land Rovers, and outside town the roads are all gravel, so I can only guess at what winter driving is like. 2000 people live here, which almost doubles when a cruise ship comes in. Other than tourist business, The Falklands serves as a respite for ships either about to go round Cape Horn, or returning from Cape Horn. 3 flights a week arrive here – 2 from London, 1 from Chile.

Imagine the land near San Diego’s Wild Animal Park, but much colder and put it on the ocean with lots of little pennisulas and inlets, then add clusters of little birds sitting on the water, larger birds flying low above the water, and dolphins. There are penguins too, but I didn’t go see them. It was a 4 mile walk each way, so Jim went without me. It’s desolate, cloudy and grey, but beautiful in its own way. There’s a double bay. The cruise ship docks in the outer one, and the tenders pass into the inner one to the town. Port Stanley is a narrow strip of buildings up a hillside, perhaps 4 blocks up the hill, and half a mile along the coast. The buildings are mostly painted white, and have brightly colored tin roofs, and many houses have English gardens. No trees. A cute place to visit, for a day, but hard to imagine living here. But apparently people do. Inside the restaurant where we had fish and chips for lunch was a sign for a Government House Garden and Tea Party. Ticket included entry to the tea hut, with prizes for the Most Wonderful Hat(adult) and Most Fun Hat (kids) - baskets of Government House vegetables. So, if you are free Sunday Feb 21, get those tickets now!

Antarctica Elephant Island, Gerlache Strait and Paradise Bay

Going around Elephant Island, we saw penguins in groups swimming in the water, bobbing up and down – chinstraps we think, though we’re not totally sure. In Gerlache Strait there were other penguins, but too far away to indentify. Some were in the water, some on the hillsides. Usually near their nesting places the hills are quite pink, from their waste. They eat krill, sort of a shrimp animal, and so their poop is pink. When you do see the penguins up close you would not call them the cleanest animals, and I’ve been told their homes smell rather bad as well. We saw a few birds, black and white ones – skua – but not as many species as we hoped. The big birds like the wind so they can sail without much effort, but today was not windy, so no albatross. Birds in general like the back of the boat, I suppose the fish get churned up by the boat itself, so there’s good eating when we pass. If there had been more birds I think we would have seen them. There were elephant seals floating on small icebergs or glacier bits. And we saw LOTS of whales – definitely the high point of the day around Elephant Island, where we saw humpbacks. They are huge. We saw a few groups of 7 – 12 whales, plus others in smaller groups. One or two will spout, then another, then 2 over to the side. After they spout, you see their long bodies come just over the surface, and the head goes down, eventually the tail follows. Takes about 3 seconds for each to go down. Beautiful. No whales jumping in the air, sorry folks. Best whale watching I’ve ever had. Binoculars, 8 X power, made it possible to see them for a long way. After leaving Paradise Bay we saw orcas too, which aren’t as impressive in comparison, because they are so much smaller, but they come closer to the ship.

This part of Antartica, the islands and the end of the pennisula, look simllar to Alaska. There are rocky mountains with bright blue glaciers spilling out of them. There’s ice in the water. But there are 2 significant differences (not counting penguins) – it is much colder here – 39 degrees and snowing one morning, 25 degrees further south. So, there is really nothing growing on the rocks. All the food for these animals is in the ocean. And the other difference is the shear size of every thing. The icebergs are mammoth, seriously big. It was hard to gauge the size of the mountains, because fog obscured the tops most of the time, but I’m sure they are huge. The sea seems larger too, and empty. So, think of a marriage between the upper Alps and the Alaskan glaciers.

You feel like you are far away from everywhere, despite the fact that we have had pretty regular satellite internet access, which really amazes me still. We saw one ship 2 days ago, in the distance it was impossible to tell what kind of ship it was. Today we saw a small cruise ship, an expedition type, for perhaps 200 people. They had no more than 3 lifeboats (a way to measure how many people the ship can carry from a distance, there was 1 facing us, but space for 2 total on that side, so the other side either had 1 or 2 also) It was docked at an abandoned science station in Paradise Bay. There was another science station with its own ship nearby, sort of a fishing type vessel. And there was a sailing ship in the bay as well. I bet they had a rough ride over the Drake passage! I’ll stick to larger ships. But other than that, we haven’t seen any ships since we left Buenos Aires. That’s very different from Alaska!

I’m watching my Antarctic mountain still, an hour after starting this blog entry. Ever fly out of Seattle and see Mt Rainier in the distance above the clouds? That’s what this mountain here looks like, like a huge iceberg, now floating above the clouds.

Low lights:

Cold. Snow yesterday morning, ice on the decks this morning. Wind blowing. Unpleasantly cold. Cold enough that people hang out inside in the cafeteria and forward bar at the windows, instead of outisde on the top decks, and make it hard for anyone else to get up close, or to find a table when they want to eat. This has probably affected us less than most people though, because of our wonderful large and sheltered deck. It has side walls, so you don’t feel the wind. And when travelling south, with the sun shining from the north, it was almost toasty. Overall we can’t complain though. The last sailing of this ship to the same destinations 2 weeks ago had terrible weather and hardly saw anything. We only had cold.

Another serious low light - I’m sick. It’s just a cold, but it has really made me feel miserable at times. It started about 4 days ago with a sore throat that I wasn’t even sure was a cold. The air is so dry on the ship, that I thought maybe that was the problem. But yesterday and today, ugh, scratchy throat, can’t swallow, can’t sleep – we all know the drill. It’s moved into a runny nose, and sinus cold now, so it’s less painful except for around my nostrils. I didn’t want to miss anything! But I also didn’t want to be cold. If I’d been home I’d have spent 2 days in bed. But again, this room helped out. I could stay warm till an announcement enticed me or Jim beckoned me, and then out I’d go all bundled up – skull cap, with ear muffs on top, and a hat with a visor on top of that because the sun was blinding. Sitting on a blanket wrapped all around me, with another on top of my lap. Shirt, sweater, fleece winter jacket from Maryland, scarf. I was warm enough. I think Jim was actually colder, he forgot to pack a hat.

We didn’t see as many penguins are we all hoped. The speakers have said how penguins will often hang out on floating icebergs, but none did today. They were on the shores or in the water. But we have 2 more penguin stops – Ishuaia and Puerto Madryn – coming up, where we will go to known rookeries.