The continent Antarctica, screened by a barricade of extremes…starkness, uninhabited, days of total darkness or never-setting sun, winds over 200 mph, ice and snow more than 1.2 miles thick, yet considered a desert, creates an aura that continues to drive me to learn and experience more of this strange place on our planet. So exciting!
We visited Antarctica 14 years ago as one segment of a month-long journey around South America. It was fascinating and served up a drive-by view of this unique place, piquing my interest to experience more. It had remained on my A list of places to visit again. The current journey would be much more in-depth, allowing us to go ashore on land and ice at various landings. We will spend more than a week traveling around the accessible areas.
We started our adventure in Ponte Arena, Chili, the largest city (about 160,000 people) in the southernmost part of South America. Before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, it was an essential harbor for refueling ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Without the shipping economy, if transformed into one driven by oil, coal, and other natural resources. Today it is a critical launching point for expeditions and tourist voyages to the Antarctic.
Our ship, MS Roald Amundsen, is named after the Norwegian explorer who led the first party to reach the South Pole in 1911. It was built in Norway and launched this past July with leading-edge hybrid technology (the Chief Engineer described it as the Toyota Prius of ships). The ship is classified as an Ice Class PC-6 vessel, outfitted to visit harsh environment areas worldwide. While not officially an Ice Breaker, it can navigate through thin areas of the ice.
Leaving the port, we travel through the fjords of Patagonia, mainly following the route of Charles Darwin’s ship, the HMS Beagle, in the early 1830s. We navigated the spectacular, narrow channel called the Avenue of the Glaciers. The five glaciers are named after countries, with the Italy glacier being the most formidable. We had taken this route on our 2006 trip. I was interested to see how much the glaciers had receded. At that time, only one reached the channel waters, which they predicted would recede above the waterline within a few years. Not so. It is almost the same. As the saying goes, it moves at glacier speed – very SLOW.
Turning south-east, we traveled the Beagle Channel on our way to leaving the protection of the fjords into the infamous Drake’s Passage. As a side note, our expedition's actual routes and stops would be chosen as we move along, depending on the weather, sea, and ice conditions. Weather permitting, we will stop at Cape Horn, the southernmost point in South America, overlooking Drake’s Passage. Our ship would anchor in a cove less than a quarter of a mile offshore. After securing our anchorage, we planned to launch our zodiac boats and make for shore, setting foot on land. Today the weather and seas were kind as we began the first expedition group at 7:00 AM.
Several launches had to be delayed, waiting for the white caps to subside to ensure a safe landing.
The expedition was an exhilarating experience, with an awkward landing and then walking up 175 rickety steps to reach the monument to fallen sailors, a small chapel, a lighthouse, and the living quarters for a light-keeper and his family (wife plus two young children). Winds higher than 120 mph are not uncommon. Areas of the walk were treacherous, with one guest suffering a broken leg. Chilean immigration officials came on board and stamped our passports with a Cape Horn stamp. The whole experience was unique and one that I’ll remember forever.
Today’s landing at Cape Horn was special. Our 2006 trip could not get closer than 10 kilometers to the Horn because of heavy seas and wind. The monument on the point was visible as a dot using my telescopic camera lens. As I recall, we experienced 30-meter seas and 60 mph winds. They emptied the ship’s pool and hot tub and closed off all outside decks. Spray from the bow plowing through the waves reached as high as the ship’s bridge. Drake’s Passage lived up to its reputation. Since MS Amsterdam is a passenger ship, and it was January (the early part of the Antarctica summer), ice conditions prevented us from reaching the Antarctic Circle. They directed us to head northeast into the Amundsen Sea along the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, with limited protection from sea conditions by several islands and the South Shetland chain of islands.
Setting sail shortly after lunch, we headed straight south on our two-day crossing of the 600-mile Drake Passage, which connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Keeping a straight line, we would eventually reach New Zealand or Hobart off the coast of Australia. The seas and weather were so mild that our captain renamed it Drake Lake. Sea swells were a mild three meters.
After heading south-east, we entered the Gullet channel separating the Antarctic continent and Adelaide Island. Weather permitting, it should be very scenic. An hour into the Gullet, the captain announced that he was slowing the ship down to ensure we could continue without incident. Ice was building up, and we could hear the thunder of icebergs calving off our port side. The Gullet opens into Marguerito Bay where we will anchor near our first landing site at Stonington Island. We have presently come to a complete stop. We are waiting for the captain for an update. We needed to back up a quarter of a mile and proceed along a different line. All plans may change at any moment.
It feels like we are living in a Shackleton moment.
Amazingly, I can send out a post from inside the Antarctic Circle. The wonders of technology.
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