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By María Victoria Repetto
The approach to the city of Ushuaia--that magical
place where South America is about to finish--provokes in arriving air
passengers a profound sense of insignificance. Ushuaia has all the
characteristics of the far and lonely places, not in vain is it almost
falling off the map. Mountains, glaciers, lakes, fjords, islands, rocks
conspire to put human beings in our place, to know that we are just dots
in the universe.
Argentina's southernmost city received us cold and
windy, despite the fact that February marks the middle of summer at this
latitude.
We were tired after the busy days that surrounded
our wedding. The white dress still seemed unreal and also the nine-hour
party that passed in a mere second. Being of different nationalities,
having met while traveling and having continued to travel at every
opportunity, nobody was surprised about the destination we chose for our
honeymoon: the seventh continent, the white continent, Antarctica. In its frozen vastness, the most accessible area is
the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches close to the
southern coasts of Argentina and Chile.
Ushuaia is the embarkation port
used by companies offering Antarctic cruises. There is quite a diversity
of passage on offer. Huge cruise-ships with capacity for 600 passengers
compete with sailing boats fit to carry just a few crew. We chose to
travel in a small group but with certain facilities. After all, it was
our honeymoon…
The Professor Molchanov, which would be our home
for 12 days, was built in Finland in 1983 as a polar scientific research
boat. Ice-strengthened and 73 meters long, it had a Russian flag and
crew, European chefs, Canadian and Australian expedition leaders and
took a maximum of 50 passengers.
We were heartily welcomed by the Russian crew, who
carried aboard our bags and suitcases. After one and a half hours for
arranging our belongings in our cabin, we weighed anchor and headed west
through the Beagle Channel towards the Atlantic Ocean.
The sun was setting with no wind in the channel,
giving the landscape a touch of nostalgia. There were few human traces.
A boat, a buoy. Suddenly, one artifact aroused our curiosity: the half
sunken skeleton of what once-upon-a-time had been a ship.
"That was the other time I guided a vessel
through the Beagle," joked the Argentine harbor pilot, in charge of
leading us to the Atlantic.
After dinner many of us went up to the bridge to
watch the world go by. The harbor pilot, more devoted to conversation
than the Russian crew, explained to us the signals we were watching in
the sophisticated appliances until he transferred to the Nativa boat
that was waiting for him at channels-end, around 11.30 p.m.
Shane Evoy, our ever-affable Canadian expedition
leader, had warned us more than once that, during the night, we could
expect a rough transit of the Drake Passage, one of the roughest seas of
the world. Obediently, we took our pills to prevent seasickness; also
hoping they would help us sleep. But at 1.30 a.m. we were woken up by
the hangers fussing inside the closet. The constant rocking of the boat
made clear that the Drake would honor its reputation.
In 1578, the English navigator and pirate Sir
Francis Drake arrived at this latitude while sailing around the world.
He meant to cross to the Pacific through the Magellan Strait, but strong
winds pushed him much further south. With his transit of the 600 miles
of open water between Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego, Drake
demonstrated that "Terra Australis", if it existed, was not
linked with Tierra del Fuego, as indicated by the maps of his times.
"Good morning ladies and gentlemen!"
A wake-up call that we soon learned to hate provided an abrupt start to
every day through a loud speaker. After all, this was not a luxurious
cruise but an educational expedition, so breakfast, lunch and dinner
were served at fixed times.
That first morning the scenes were unforgettably
funny. People walked in grasping the handrails and we even saw someone
crawling. At the tables, glasses, dishes and knives were swinging to the
rhythm of our floating world, which obliged us to concentrate on much
more than eating. It was the start of our cruising life, which consisted
of sleeping, attending a lecture, sleeping, eating, and going back to
bed… and that was only if one was lucky enough to be able to get up.
In fact, not even half of us were able to. Despite our difficulties, we
had a normal crossing, neither tough nor relaxed, but the sensation was
that of losing every reference point.
Deep emotions were aroused when we finally saw land
after 48 hours! Not yet Antarctica, but the South Shetland Islands, a
rocky and rugged archipelago of overwhelming beauty. The islands were
named after their homonymous counterparts in the North because they are
located at the same latitude.
If color and shape are the two dimensions to sight,
Antarctica seems to sacrifice the former almost completely in order to
concentrate on the latter. Tones vary only between black and white,
helped by often-cloudy skies that do not let much light through. Shapes,
by contrast, are unique, unrepeatable. Each island has its own
peculiarities.
Our first landing was in Eitcho, an island
inhabited by penguins, petrels, fur seals and sea elephants.
Unexpectedly, we also found it quite green, covered with moss and almost
no ice. We saw Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins, mainly young ones and
adults molting their feathers. The amount of penguin skeletons and
whalebones reminded us that surviving is not easy here.
Some of the scenes at the Eitcho beach seem to be
taken out of a comedy. Jumping and unfolding his huge wings, a giant
petrel chases a group of Chinstraps. The penguins flee making a big
fuss. For a while the bird seems to enjoy fooling the clumsy penguins.
According to Nick, our ornithologist, the flier did not have hostile
intensions, as the birds do not prey on adult penguins but only on their
eggs. The big laugh came when things turned around and a fed up
Chinstrap started chasing the petrel, which receded, surprised at such
audacity.
Towards us, the creatures showed curiosity. They
had no fear and often they came quite close to us when we got down on
our knees and stayed still.
Our second day in the Shetlands had a tough start.
Half the passengers woke up due to the boats constant rocking in the
early hours. Big waves ruined our plans to land on Hannah Point. Half
Moon Island was Plan B, and it turned into one of the most memorable
landings of the trip! The morning was sunny, and the half moon shape of
the island, with the glaciers of Livingston Island as a backdrop, was
splendorous. An old Argentinean refuge painted in orange attracted us
immediately. Nearby, over a little hill, a monument to six marines dead
in a plane-crash when trying to rescue another group, showed that it is
not always easy to reach land.
Behind, at the beach, big black rocks mingled with
ice blocks stranded on the coast. We had never seen anything remotely
similar, not even on the most exotic postcards, so we took advantage of
the setting to snap honeymoon pictures on top of a big chunk of ice.
Unfortunately, as frequently happens in Antarctica,
the weather worsened and with gray rainy skies we entered the odd
Deception Island. Odd because of its shape and origin, not because of
its name, which actually seemed quite accurate.
Deception is a volcano with a huge caldera-it has a
diameter of 5 miles and it is nearly 600 feet deep-that was invaded by
the sea when one of its walls collapsed during an eruption. This narrow
opening, called Neptune's Bellows, is the access to its interior. Its
black sandy beaches are attractive only because of their rich human
history. Norwegian whalers settled there from the end of the last
century until 1931, leaving behind large amounts of junk that resemble
leftovers from the set of Mad Max. Later, during WWII, the English built
a base that operated until 1969 when the volcano roared to life,
provoking the personnel to flee and destroying part of their facilities.
During our landing, we wandered around rambling houses and rusty tanks.
The detritus littering Deception Island is
controversial. The Antarctic Treaty allows countries to install research
bases in the territory but it also stipulates that the landscape be
restored to its original appearance when these facilities are no longer
operative. This was not done in Deception because the English allege
that the materials left there are "historical trash". A
questionable argument considering that most of it is little more than 30
years old. There is even a dismantled airplane, with neither engine nor
wings. The place has been signposted like a museum by the Chilean Army.
That afternoon some of us had the opportunity to
test our courage. Some guidebooks refer to a hot water spring at
Pendulum Cove, inside Deception's caldera. People started asking for it,
so there we went and 15 intrepid swimmers verified that "hot"
is a relative term. The temperature of the water was about 1 or 2
degrees Celsius.
During the night we traveled through the 120 miles
that separated us from the Antarctic Peninsula, for an early landing at
Cuverville Island where we would see a big Gentoo colony.
I was fascinated. My camera would not stop
registering family scenes: A mother-or father-with twins, another one
with a hungry chick and an egg that would probably never hatch. Our
Tasmanian ornithologist Nick, a sort of South Polar Crocodile Dundee,
told us that penguins build their nests on the rocks and would not lay
eggs until the ice is completely gone. This had obviously happened late
this year, because the chicks were still very small. The young birds
needed to gain weight and molt their feathers in order to go back to sea
before the ice returned. Many this year would not make it and their
parents would be obliged to abandon them. Their instinct orders them to
survive.
We finally set foot on the continent that afternoon
at Neko Harbour, a beautiful bay with glacier included. There some of us
walked through knee-deep snow until we were exhausted. Others simply sat
down to hear the glacier's constant roaring. Another big Gentoo colony
made their own path in the snow towards their nests on the rocks up the
hill.
On the way to the Chilean Base González Videla-our
third landing that day-we were entertained by a breaching Humpback whale
that offered us a spectacular show. It was one of the highlights of the
trip. Shane, who had spent the past seven Antarctic summers plying these
waters, said it was only the second time he saw such a display.
At 9 p.m. (in this season it never gets dark before
11.30 p.m.) the sun still shines on the aptly named Paradise Bay.
Mountain peaks appear between the clouds, glaciers fall into the sea,
the light reflects on ice that has literally been there a million years,
and an orange refuge bears witness to human persistency to inhabit the
inhabitable. It is also incredibly still, as if nothing will ever change
there. Earlier, we had a barbecue outside, at the stern of the boat. The
Russian crew put on some music and many danced. Some even dared to
create a new dance-step by imitating the penguin's little jumps and
folding their arms back.
The weather had been ugly during the morning, but
when it stopped snowing in the afternoon, we went in the zodiacs to
explore the icebergs in Paradise Bay. They have every imaginable shape
and reflect different blue tones. We discovered caves, cathedrals and
what seemed to be gigantic teeth. We also went into a sea of ice, where
we loaded enough snowball ammunition to start a naval battle against
another zodiac. The adventure ended just before the BBQ, when the crew
of the zodiac we had ambushed paid us back by attacking while we climbed
up the pontoon.
The next day breakfast was postponed in order to
enjoy the navigation through the Lemaire Channel. It was gray and foggy,
which gave a touch of mystery to the impressive peaks falling directly
into the sea.
We continued South to Peterman island, our
ice-strengthened vessel crushing vigorously through thicker and thicker
blocks of young ice-just one or two years old. Surprisingly, there was
an incredible amount of Crab-eater seals lying over the ice blocks, as
if sunbathing. "There is probably a lot of food in the area. We
have never seen so many seals doing nothing but digesting,"
concluded our experts.
The ice surface did not allow us to land at
Peterman, so we went back to the zodiacs to take pictures of icebergs
and were lucky to find a group of lazy sea elephants. We also discovered
a rare species: a Leopard seal, one of the biggest predators in the
continent. They prey on penguins and young Crabeater and Weddel seals.
Through a sea of ice and seals, we returned towards
Port Lockroy, an old English base-turned museum, to land at Damoy Point.
After a tough walk uphill on the glacier, we took group pictures with
Port Lockroy down below as a background. I am a passionate sailor, and
for me one of the most touching moments of the whole journey was to see,
from up in the glacier, the arrival of a small German sailing boat to
Port Lockroy. Its six-member crew responded enthusiastically to my
greeting signs.
That was our farewell to the frozen lands. We had
planned a last landing the next morning but 35-knot winds made it
impossible, so we headed back north.
This time the Drake Passage took us three days and
two nights to cross, as we did not make the stopover on the South
Shetlands. Already more used to the sea, we got less seasick and
restarted our program of sleeping a lot and attending lectures.
Upon arrival once again in Argentine waters, we had
a farewell cocktail with our Russian captain dressed in his impeccable
uniform. The next morning we would arrive in Ushuaia and our honeymoon
between seasickness, icebergs and penguin smell would be history.
It was snowing in Ushuaia, despite the fact that
February is the middle of the summer. Many passengers stayed to explore
the most southernmost city in the world. Others, like us, went straight
to the airport, already remembering our days on the white continent and
those special moments when we got close to unique species such as
leopard seals or the grand whales, and had fun with clumsy penguins. We
would never forget those days floating among massive blue icebergs, the
days when we felt like mere dots in the universe.
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