Day1: The entrance to Ushuaia port is unassuming to say the least. There is little signage on the small building to indicate its purpose. We had walked down from our hotel and all that remained between us and the port entrance was the treacherous crossing of a heavily trafficked road. Despite the building being the major embarkation point for Antarctica cruises there wasn’t as much as a pedestrian crossing. We would have overlooked the structure altogether if it were not for a small sign reading “entranda passangeros”.
I couldn’t help but think our simple journey to the port entrance had parallels with our imminent Antarctica voyage. There are no sign posts to our destination and in order to get there we first need to make a trecherous crossing – this time the Drake Passage, the wildest stretch of sea anywhere in the world. In the early days of exploration mutinous crews regularly rebelled once informed that they would be sailing in the area. To the sailors the journey was so terrifying that they genuinely believed that they faced certain death. I tried to suppress memories of video footage I’d seen in the Drake Passage.
We somehow made it across the road and once we passed port security we wandered along the port to our ship, the Ushuaia. It’s a working port and around us shipping containers were being unloaded. We reached the ship where we were enthusiastically meet by some of the ship’s crew and shown aboard. Checking into our cabin was a relief – after three days of travel from Sydney I’d managed a cumulative six hours of sleep and feeling jet lagged I was tempted me to crash out immediately. Fortunately the excitement of the journey managed to override any feelings of tiredness and we spent the next few hours exploring the boat and meeting other passengers.
In the early evening the boat’s moorings were finally released and we were underway. Looking back off the stern as we started along the Beagle Channel, Ushuaia looked stunning surrounded by the snow-capped peaks of Teirra del Fuergo. It was slightly unnerving leaving this southern outpost of civilization – now we were on our own for the next eleven days.
But this was the easy part. We had a five hour journey down the relative tranquility of the Beagle Channel before we hit the Drake Passage, or possibly more accurately before the Drake Passage hit us. Knowing that a sleepless night may be ahead I went to bed early to get some sleep while I could.
Around 12:30 I woke to the boat rocking and rolling – it had begun! I’d taken a sea sickness tablet a few hours earlier and hoped this would save me. As I lay there in the darkness the motion seemed to increase. I could hear waves crashing on the deck outside my window and every now and then the bow would crash with an almighty bang as it descended into a gapping pit in the swell. My head lifted from the pillow every now which made returning to sleep a very difficult task.
After lasting an hour or so I finally succumbed, sprinting towards bathroom. As I got to my feet the boat rocked violently throwing me towards my travelling companion, Greg. Fortunately for him I steadied myself just in time and exploded into the bathroom so to speak (pardon the visuals). My biggest concern wasn’t that being sick itself but that I may have also brought out my sea sickness medication too, leaving me to continue the night without any medical assistance.
As it happened that was the worst of it. I’m not sure if the swell subsided as we travelled south from Cape Horn or if my body decided to adapt relatively quickly. Within half an hour I had managed to doze off and it was interrupted from time to time by the movement of the ship I did managed to sleep through the rest of the night.
Day 2: In the morning breakfast was called around 8:00 am. Making our way down to the dining room, we meet our travelling companions all of whom shared a similar paleness and blank expression. At that point I gained a true admiration for the ship’s crew – the kitchen staff in particular. Not only were they moving about looping reasonably fresh, they had also managed to make a full cooked breakfast including scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages. Now, I understand how they scrambled the eggs (I’m sure they managed to scramble themselves) but how they cook everything over an open stove I’ll never know.
We sat in silence and tried to eat a little. Most only managed to nibble on a bit of toast and once one poor lady made a sprint for the doors midway through her meal we all dropped our utensils in solidarity and fixed our sights on the horizon (this supposedly eases the symptoms of sea sickness).
During the morning the swell seemed to subside further. Most people were seeming to find their sea legs too and by midday everyone seemed to me moving around more or less normally. The naturalists held a few lectures and for the first time I thought we may just make it.
The afternoon was fantastic. We were almost 500 km from land at this point but to my amazement the boat was surrounded by birdlife. How they survived in the middle of the ocean I have no idea. Most impressive of all there were two or three albatrosses that glided around the boat. Their wingspan is obviously striking but their ability to glide just above the surface of the water with their wingtips seeming to clip the top of the swell. It was a sight to behold.
Later on we came across a pod of Fin Whales. I’d seen Humpback Whales a number of times and as impressive as they are the Fin Whales were certainly in another league – the only living thing that is bigger is a Blue Whale. The distinctive dorsal fins were popping up all around us. It was hard to know where they would pop up next. I climbed to the observation deck at the top of the ship where I could see their shadows shooting through the water – they were effortlessly outpacing us!
The evening passed uneventfully. After I had gone to sleep, around 1 am, an alarm sounded. There was a sensor on the bottom of the boat which detected changes in water temperature. The temperature had suddenly dropped from 6 degrees to 2 degrees meaning that we had crossed the Antarctic convergence – an invisible line to the naked eye but and important milestone as we were now within the biological limits of Antarctica. It would be another couple of hours before we passed into the Antarctica politically – the Antarctica treaty of 1956 defines the Antarctic region as everything under 65 degrees latitude.
Day 3: We woke to find ourselves surrounded in mist, which unfortunately hung around for the rest of the day. From the bridge visibility was pretty poor but the captain assured me the radar would pick up any oncoming icebergs. Breakfast was much easier than the day before and the mood in the dining room was much more upbeat. We passed the morning and afternoon with lectures, cards and a few beers.
Around 5:00 pm the captain announced that we were approaching the South Shetland Islands. I stood on the bow of the boat in the driving wind and sleet, keen to get my first glimpse of land in two days. The mist was making that difficult but as the clouds moved here and there we caught glimpses of icebergs, mountains and glaciers. Chinstrap penguins were now riding the bow waves underneath me. They would break the surface regularly, catapulting themselves through the air in order to get a breath of air (a very efficient way to breath without having to slow themselves down). I had my SLR primed to get some photos of their aerobatics but they are quick and I had limited success.
Eventually we came to Aitcho Island which is a small island that sits towards the centre of the South Shetland Archipelago. Excited about the possibility of our first landing we donned our rubber boots and made our way to the zodiacs. The island was bleak to say the least. Only moss and lichen grow below this latitude – green lichen covered large patchs of the island. There were about five rookeries (groups) of Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins on the island. My biggest surprise was the abundance of penguins – Having been on number of wildlife spotting tours I was used to being disappointed due to the scarcity of animals. Here in the coldest location on the planet there were penguins everywhere. There were hundreds if not thousands on this island alone and none of them seemed the least bit bothered by our presence.
Walking around the island a little further we had a fantastic surprise, coming across a solitary King Penguin, sitting amongst a rookery of Chinstraps. The King Penguin was twice the size of the other penguins and its distinctive yellow chest, head and beak made it look like royalty amongst his peers.
King Penguins are a sub-arctic species and as such shouldn’t be found this far south. He had presumably become lost and will end up spending the whole polar summer with his smaller friends, only rejoining his species in the northern migration once winter begins to set in.
The evening was noticeably different than the day before in the sense that for the first time darkness never came. I went to bed around 10:30 but the light gave the impression it was around 5pm – the same impression I had at 5pm. During the night the seas were reasonably rough and woke me a number of times. I looked out the window at around 2 am and it was still light – it would be a week before we would see complete darkness again.
Day 4: By the morning we have travelled further south and had arrived at Two Hammocks Island, in the Gerlache Straight. We had an early breakfast so that could get the first landing underway. We landed a rocky outcrop just off the Island. Two Hammocks Island was so densely covered in glacial ice it looked like a large white dome – the millennium dome but on an grander scale.
On the rocky outcrop were more of our friends the Chinstrap Penguins. There was also a large amount of other birdlife and a few Wilkee’s Seals. I spun off the zodiac, took a few steps up the beach and almost inadvertently stumbled over a seal that was lazing in the sun. The seals didn’t move too much. Every now and then they would kick their flippers , twisting their heads or open their eyes, blinking a couple of times and then turning away with a look of indifference – it wasn’t dissimilar to surveying Bondi Beach on New Year’s morning complete with inert, hungover backpackers littered along the sand.
As we returned to the ship the weather was already changing. The term “four seasons in one day” must have been coined in Antarctica. It can change from warm sunshine to wind and snow within a matter of minutes. Getting of the zodiacs and onto the ship’s pontoon became a more challenging task. The swell was rising and falling dramatically and if you didn’t time your step off the zodiac carefully you would find yourself falling a meter or two onto the gangway – as happened to the woman in front of me.
The weather got progressively worse and the captain decided to move us a little further south to the shelter of Cuverville Island – the bridge was packed for the journey down as it was too windy to venture outside but we passed within meters of massive icebergs all the way south. We couldn’t land for the rest of the afternoon because of the weather but around 6pm the storm lifted and we had a quick landing. The storm was obviously an inconvenience but as we were to find out later we were fortunate that we had already completed our Drake Passage crossing. Another ship, the Polar Explorer was caught in the same storm in the passage and was hit severely – all the chairs in the observation deck had crashed to one end of the room and passengers had been confined to their cabins.
Day 5: This morning we woke moored at Palmer Station, an American research station. The station only takes ten visits a year so to get ashore here was somewhat of a privilege. The station was pretty impressive, it housed a large laboratory where amongst other things they are researching cures for arthritis (a local bottom feeding fish manages to change it’s bone density in the depths of the local channels and if they can discover how this fish do this they can possible apply it to humans too).
The lab also acts as the world’s most sensitive nuclear detonation detection system – Palmer Island was the first place to detect the underground nucular explosion in Korea last year. Most importantly the base has a very impressive hot tub – It is a converted fish tank and although it sits amongst other fish tanks on an outer deck it has a very impressive view over the surrounding islands.
In the afternoon we made our way to the Le Maire Channel – for me the highlight of the trip so far. If this channel was anywhere a densely populated area I’m convinced it would be one of the world’s major tourist attractions. The channel is sandwiched between two mountain ranges, both steep and grand pillars. The channel is so narrow that you feel that you could throw a rock from the deck of the ship and hit water’s edge. It’s only when you see a bird circling someway up the spires that you appreciate how large they actually are. Unfortunately for us the channel was a little foggy and we didn’t get the classic photos that I had seen but it was still extremely impressive.
Following the passage of the Le Maire Channel we made our way down to Pettermann Island, the southernmost point on our journey at a latitude of 65 degrees, 10 seconds. Surprisingly it wasn’t that cold and we went ashore. To no one’s surprise there were yet more penguins – mostly Adelie Penguins. There was also a bright red refuge building on the island which created a fresh contrast for photographs which were starting to get a little monotonous. I must have rolled off about 50 combinations of the refuge hut, penguins and the Ushuaia in the background.
Just before we left the island I joined one of the expedition team for a walk over to old memorial and came across two elephant seals. They were both female’s so didn’t have the distinctive noses which gave the species their names – only the males have this trait.
Re-boarding the ship, we starting heading north for the first time. We would travel overnight and awake the next morning at Paradise bay where we were scheduled to have our first continental landing.
Day 6: We woke to more miserable weather, but before we had breakfast it wasn’t bad enough us to stop us going ashore. Immediately after breakfast and about 30 minutes before we were due to go ashore that all changed very quickly. The winds quickened, the snow thickened and the sky darkened. The baramoter was still dropping which indicated that the worst was still to come. The captain made the decision that it was too dangerous to stay where we were and we travelled for about an hour to nearby Necko Bay which was sheltered against the southerly winds. We were certainly bunkered down and as the weather worsened standing outside became suicidal. The wind gauge went off the scale but the officers on the bridge estimated that it was around 90 knots (160 km/hr). There wasn’t much else to do – I sorted through my photos, caught up on my blog and did some reading.
The bad weather persisted into the evening. As we were in a relatively calm area we stayed overnight in the same location, hoping to possibly have a quick continental landing in the morning.
Day 7: In the morning the weather was still terrible and as soon as we finished breakfast we left Neko Bay, re-entered the Galache Strait briefly before entering the bay immediately to the north. It was entering this bay that changed everything. The idea was to give us a cruise close to the continent go make up for the fact that we weren’t going to get ashore. From my understanding, it wasn’t the usual practice to enter this bay and we heard afterwards that much of the bay is unsurveyed.
I had been on the bridge watching us enter the new bay when I decided I would go for a quick shower. I had been in the shower for a few minutes when we hit. There were a series of very loud grating noises and the boat seemed moved up and down. I was almost thrown from the shower.
My first assumption was that we had hit an iceberg. Irrespective of what it was I knew it couldn’t be good and I quickly jumped out of the shower, put on some clothes and raced out onto the deck where everyone else was gathering. The ship was at a complete standstill but was quite obviously listing a little to the port side. Looking around there were no icebergs immediately around the ship so that didn’t seem to be the problem. Looking down next to the ship our problem became more apparent – we could clearly see the seabed below. It was a strange mix of white, blue and black like a patchwork quilt of ice, water and rock. We finally had our Peninsular landing, by driving straight into the continent!
By now more people had joined us on the deck. The captain had immediately requested that everyone leave the bridge and those people had come down to join us. By now crew members were running in every direction, dropping depth measurement devices off the side, transferring things between the bridge and the lower decks and numerous other tasks which no doubt needed to be completed with urgency.
Shortly afterwards the seriousness of the situation started to become obvious. A small film of oil appeared on the port side and driven by the wind was leaving a greasy trail out to sea (this didn’t last for too long and in the end very little fuel escaped). The bulge holes on the side of the boat were spitting water furiously too, bringing us quickly to the assumption that the boat was taking on water. Fortunately there was no panic and at the request of the expedition leader we made our way to the bar area for a briefing of the situation. We were told that two of the fuel tanks had been ruptured and that boat was taking on water. We were also told that the boat was safe as it was lodged on the reef although it would need to be tugged off the reef at some point and they considered the boat a 50% chance of sinking once it was refloated.
Considering the seriousness of the situation we were told that a distress signal had been sent out and we were soon to make an emergency evacuation to another ship. We were told that we could pack a small back of our personal belongings and that there was a strong possibility that the remainder of our items would sink with the ship. We were marshaled with our bags into the bar area and waited there for help to come.
A couple of hours later another boat, The Antarctic Dream, had arrived in our bay. Another briefing was called and the expedition leader explained to us that the Antarctic Dream could not take us onboard due to the lack of lifeboat space. They would obviously take us if we were in imminent danger but as the ship was lodged on the reef it was decided that we were to stay onboard. At the same time we were also told that we had already made the headlines on the BBC – something that we were hoping wouldn’t happen as we could imagine our worried friends and family at home. Shortly afterwards a recognizance plane from Argentina flew over, taking photos of the ship and checking for any oil spills.
As the day progressed our rescue plan took shape a little more. We were finally told that we were going to be collected by a Chilean Navy Vessel that was in the area. We would then be taken to a nearby Chile station where we would be airlifted back to Ushuaia. The only issue was that the ship would take 14 hours to get to us and as a result we would have to spend the night on the ship.
Day 8: We had a rocky night on the ship. As the tide went out and the water level lowered the ship listed further and further until we were sleeping on a noticeable incline. In the morning the Aquiles (Achilles in English) was waiting for us. We were told that the ship’s crew was to stay onboard and that only passengers were to be evacuated. There was a tearful goodbye on the gangway as we jumped in our zodiacs and waved to the crew as they watched on.
The Aquilies certainly was a different type of ship. The gangway was considerably more difficult to manage and a number of passengers almost fell into the icy water as they were transferred from the zodiacs. The ship’s crew were very welcoming and we were all ushered to a lower deck where we formally greeted in the dining room. We were assigned cabins and invited to use walk the ship freely including the bridge, helicopter decks and most importantly, the bar. Once all the formalities were out of the way the ship set sail and as we rounded the heads out of the bay the sunshine came out and for the first time we had some fantastic weather. We still had a considerable distance to travel and wouldn’t reach the research station until the late in the evening. Fortunately the bar was well stocked and we managed to pass the time while entertaining ourselves.
Day 9: We were woken at 5am and made our way up to a briefing on the observation deck where we looked out over the Chilean Station. We were told that a Hercules was on its way to us from Rio Grande, Argentina. As the Hercules could not take us all we were going to be split into two groups. The more elderly passengers we obviously in the first group leaving the younger of the second airlift. The plan was to transfer the passengers to the station at 7am just before the Hercules landed and make a quick transfer to the plane. The plane would the fly to Ushuaia and then return to collect the rest of us.
Unfortunately the winds lifted again just as the before the plane arrived, meaning the zodiacs could not transfer the first group to the airstrip.
The Hercules was forced to circle us while we waited for the weather to improve. Finally the winds lowered slightly and very quickly the first group were hearded onto the zodiaks and were soon on their way.
The rest of us continued to play cards and by mid afternoon it was time to go: we had a bumpy ride to the beach in front of the station. We were then taken to the station’s gymnasium where we were held until the Hercules arrived. Once it did arrive we all jumped into a series of Landcruises and made our way to the airstrip – a gravel airstrip with no bitumen seal. The Hurcules made a almighty amount of noise as we were loaded into the plane via the tailgate. This was certainly not an aircraft built for comfort, hydralic lines, ductwork and other services crossed this way and that and the seating was akind of hung mesh that ran along the sides of the fuelsage. During the trip we were suprisingly free to move around, most of us making our way to the cockpit to meet the pilots.
After a little more than two hours flying time we touched down in Ushuaia – the cruise and the resuce effort was finally over. It was definitely an experience to remember and we were left with an overwelming sense of gratitude for the ship’s crew, the Chilean Navy and the Argentinean airforce. The had all been extremely professional during the exaculation and there friendlness and generousity was truly humbling.
