Arriving in Santiago my second time, this time on the way to Antarctica, I had two nights included in the package at the Grand Hyatt Santiago, with its 20-story atrium with glass elevators. We had the promised bus tour, and, as I had expected, this drive-through was superficial and not of the quality of my personal walking tour.

In retrospect, the statement that Antarctica’s going to have to be pretty good to beat Rapa Nui, while valid, doesn’t make sense, since it’s comparing apples to oranges. Rapa Nui involves interesting geography and human cultural history, while the Antarctic area involves interesting geography and natural history. I am nevertheless very pleased that I’ve included both destinations on this trip.

Here endeth the somewhat more conventional part of this trip and beginneth the more exotic part. For that reason, I’m going to try something new. Instead of summarizing events as usual, after preliminary comments I’m going to attempt to relate the voyage on the Explorer II more in journal form and try to show more the day-by-day experiences, in the hope that you will be able to experience the voyage somewhat more in the manner in which it really happened, if not in real time, then in a form of condensed, or telescoped, real time. For that you need to know that this voyage lasted 15 nights, from November 15 to 29, followed by the night of the 30th on the plane for arrival back in New York on December 1. Keeping in mind my definition of sea (and river, and canal) voyages as including a trip of even one overnight, this is my seventh voyage this year and my 41st ever. It occurs to me now that those seven voyages in this one year are apparently a personal record.

Ushuaia   This being my second time at the southern end of South America, I am becoming more familiar with the area, and it’s beginning to feel “normal” to me, not like some exotic far-away place, and I’d like one to be sure to get an understanding of the geography. As always, I recommend consulting a map of this area, plus the waters to the south, including the Antarctic peninsula. Lacking a globe or atlas, you can get help from Google. In any case I will describe the area as a guide to comprehension.

Chile, on the west, and Argentina, on the east, merge here. You may not, however, realize the extent to which Chile came out the winner in this area in the period when borders were being set. Most of the area, and most of the points of interest, are in Chile.

There are two waterways of note. Notice how the Strait of Magellan is V-shaped, sort of like a bird flying, with the western wing straight, and the eastern one somewhat bent. Also note how the entire Strait is in Chile, all the way to the Atlantic side, where Chile totally cuts off Argentina to the north, and where Chile does actually reach the Atlantic Ocean, barely, but nevertheless. In 2004 we sailed on the Caronia down the western arm of the Strait and up the eastern side about 1/3 of the way to Punta Arenas on the north shore, arriving on February 13 (Tierra del Fuego at this point forms the southern shore). From Punta Arenas we did our Antarctic Flightseeing that day.

On the Caronia we then backtracked to the Pacific, came down the coast, and, much closer now to the tip of South America, we entered the second of the two waterways, the Beagle Channel, on February 14. (You might recall that Charles Darwin famously sailed on the Beagle when he rounded South America on his expedition.) We saw beautiful fjords with glaciers in the Beagle, just as we had all along the southern Chilean coast. Note on your map that the two main islands forming the south side of the Beagle are all in Chile, with Tierra del Fuego forming the north side, this island running all the way from the Beagle back up to the Magellan. However, the eastern end of Tierra del Fuego does belong to Argentina, and lies separated, just slightly, from the rest of the country. I remember seeing from the Caronia, on the north side of the Beagle, the border marker showing where Argentina began. Very shortly after the marker was Ushuaia, which we passed, turning afterwards between islands to go south to circle Cape Horn Island. Two days later, on February 16, we stopped at Stanley in the Falklands.

Although I never wrote it down in the diary, in my mind’s eye (that liar) I’m sure I remember seeing the Explorer II docked at Ushuaia as we passed by. Knowing what it was and where it went, I never thought I’d be taking it, and certainly not just 2 ½ years later.

Day 1 involved getting from Santiago to Ushuaia, boarding the Explorer II, and sailing. Just as I had had to get up at 5 AM four days earlier to catch a 9 AM flight to Easter Island, we had to do the very same thing this day, except more regimented, having to leave luggage for collection the night before, for example, boarding buses, and so on. Furthermore, we had been warned of a problem. There were to be two charter flights, one going, one coming, between Santiago and Ushuaia. About six weeks earlier we had been told that the return flight would remain a direct charter, but going, we would be put on a regular flight. Quick checking of the LAN website showed that the reason it would take six hours is that there were two intermediate stops.

The commercial LAN flight was not only exclusively Cattle Class, it was three rows across on either side, and I was near the window. When we made our first stop at Puerto Montt, halfway down from Santiago (we had stopped there, too, on the Caronia), they were refueling, and we couldn’t use the toilets (???). When we stopped at Punta Arenas, since we’d be leaving Chile then, we had to go through immigration, since Chile requires that, rather uniquely, even to LEAVE the country. Then we got back on the plane for the final 35-minute segment to Ushuaia. I hope the return charter works out better.

The view down to the Andes was good early on, but then there were occasional clouds and some turbulence by Punta Arenas (“Sandy Point”). Turbulence continued to Ushuaia, where, upon landing, we had the typical four seasons in one day. We had bright sun, heavy wind, rain, sleet, snow, and whatever else, just getting from the airport to the ship. You could see the snow-covered mountains in the bright sun around the town, then right afterwards they were socked in and you had snow flurries. The temperature was 5°C, which comes to 41°F.

At least on landing, I actually set foot on Tierra del Fuego for the first time. It is curious that that Spanish name is the one used in English. German calls it Feuerland, but English does not call it Fireland, the logical translation from Spanish; it just leaves the name as is in Spanish.

To my mind, the cities down here are similar to an extent. Punta Arenas was a simple, outpost city, as is Ushuaia as well. Picture corrugated steel roofs, and basic, functional construction. The outpost life here may appeal to some, but just as I used the term tropical-tacky earlier, I’d call it here (ant)arctic-tacky. I personally see it as a jumping-off point rather than a destination.

It’s an Indian name, spelled in the Spanish way. Ushuaia is pronounced oos.WAI.a (AI as in AIsle). Although that bunch of vowels might confuse a bit at first, there’s something else that causes almost every English speaker to mispronounce the word.

The first syllable rhymes with GOOSE. It’s how it’s pronounced, and how all Spanish speakers pronounce it. It most definitely does not rhyme with PUSH, yet that’s how most English speakers pronounce it. Take a look at this quirk of Spanish spelling.

The dog (or city, or province) Chihuahua is pronounced chi.WA.wa. In Spanish, WA is basicly spelled UA, but with a mandatory silent H before it: HUA. That’s how you get the standard spelling for Chihuahua. The end of the name of the city here, pronounced WAI.a is therefore spelled –huaia; add OOS, spelled Us-, to get Ushuaia. Yet most English speakers look at that Spanish spelling and rhyme the beginning with PUSH. I just keep my mouth shut.

Ushuaia bills itself as the southernmost city in the world, which is true, as long as you’re careful of that wording. Across the Beagle Channel, on the Chilean side, is the town and naval base of Puerto Williams. This is the southernmost SETTLEMENT in the world, but it’s not a city.

There’s been no time change. Argentina is on Greenland time, one time zone later than Chile’s Atlantic time, but is not on daylight time. Since Chile IS on daylight time putting it one hour ahead, it’s all a wash.

The Explorer II dates from 1996, when it was built as the Minerva. It has a reinforced hull, but is not an icebreaker. I had been upgraded, for reasons I still do not know, from Deck B to Deck A, which means having a picture window instead of a porthole. Above us on the Main Deck is a beautiful dining room, shops, bar, and lounge. Above that on the Bridge Deck is the Verandah Restaurant (buffet), and the pecan-paneled, rather well stocked, library; also some cabins. The Promenade Deck, also with cabins, has a promenade all round the ship. On top is the Funnel Deck. There is an all-inclusive policy, including an open bar. The cabin is comfortable, with a king-size bed, desk area, TV, and bathroom with shower, but it should be noted that the bed has sideboards halfway down, I suppose “just in case”, and the bathroom door and medicine chest both have magnets on them to stop them from swinging in rough seas.

The ship holds 398, but is listed as “sold out” with 199, and I finally found out why. Having up to 199 passengers makes us a Category 1 ship, allowing us to make all landings anywhere in Antarctica. Ships in higher categories have restrictions. I was also amazed to find out how many ships stop in Antarctica. A very few years ago, it was just one or two. This year, 54 will stop here with some 35,000 people, some on a regular basis in season like Explorer II, some private yachts, some ships just stopping once as part of a longer cruise. Schedules have to be coordinated so that ships to not see each other so that you have the feeling of solitude, and also, there’s just not enough room in some places for two ships to visit at the same time. We are not called a cruise, but an expedition, on the basis that we don’t have that precise an itinerary and will stop only where and when weather conditions permit. The Captain told me that they were hoping that this trip would be the first of the season, but another ship went out a week ago, so we’re the second.

In addition to the 38 I knew about in our group of North Americans (including two Canadians), the largest group is 75 Brits, also seven Australians, and a couple of New Zealanders. I’m happy to see that there’s also a German group (with a few Austrians and Swiss) of 41. Separate nature lectures are given for them.

In the evening we pulled out of Ushuaia, heading east toward the Falklands. While I had sailed the western Beagle on the Caronia in smooth-as-glass conditions up to where it had gone south to Cape Horn, the Explorer II now continued along the eastern part of the Beagle in dark and foreboding weather conditions. Picture looking out of a dark house at falling snow that is being illuminated by the porch light. Here, as I looked out that evening into the darkness through the large window in my cabin, a light outside on the side of the ship illuminated millions of snowflakes that, because of the forward movement of the ship, made the snowflakes appear to be zooming toward the rear of the ship. That fairy-light image closed Day 1 for me.

Day 2 saw a heavy wind behind us pushing us on our way, under overcast, to the Falklands. I should make it clear what our general route is, since it is not southbound (yet). It’s east, southwest, then north.

From Ushuaia at 68°W we go one day EAST to Stanley in the Falkland Islands at about 58°W, then we go two more days EAST to South Georgia Island, way over at 36°30’W. Do realize how far east that is; it’s very close to being the same as the easternmost point of Brazil, meaning we’re sailing almost the width of South America. Extend that line further north into the North Atlantic, and we’d be easily 2/3 the way from New York to Europe. Don’t be misled by distances, however, down where we are the lines of longitude are much closer together (and merge at the South Pole), while across the North Atlantic, they are spread much further apart. Two lines of longitude that are only a few hundred miles apart here may be many hundreds of miles apart there.

This eastern route is relatively straight. Ushuaia is at about 55°S, we go a bit up to Stanley at 52°S, then back down to South Georgia at 54°S.

Since the Antarctic peninsula is roughly below the tip of South America, it’s obvious that from South Georgia we have to go quite a bit SOUTHWEST to reach it, sailing for two days over the Scotia Sea. After that it’s sailing roughly NORTH for two days across the Drake Passage back to Ushuaia.

I see one way already how this trip will be different from the trip last summer. The purpose in Spitsbergen was to see the land, mountains, ice, including drift ice, and to reach 80°N. That we also saw some wildlife was a nice extra, the walrus up on Moffen Island. It would have been nice to have seen a polar bear, since they are only in the Arctic, not in the Antarctic, but we didn’t.

As it turns out, the present trip is also to see the land, mountains, and ice, but I didn’t realize how much an emphasis on wildlife there would be. I thought it would be nice to see the occasional penguin, maybe a seal or two. I now learn that we will be walking among thousands of penguins, see plenty of seals, possibly whales, and much more. I am also surprised that the far better place for wildlife viewing is South Georgia and not Antarctica. The Captain told me at dinner one night that, in his opinion, there is no other place on earth where wildlife viewing is better than on South Georgia.

This morning was the time to go down to B Deck to borrow a pair of boots for the voyage. They’re referring to them by the British term of Wellingtons, shortened to wellies. Our complimetary parkas were in our cabin closet. They’re very warm, even though quite thin, and have a hood hidden in the collar. It was hidden so well, that I didn’t think I had one, until an English lady found it for me. The parkas are a bright red, which is great when trying to spot people on an expedition, but which will make it difficult to find a good use for back home. Maybe, walking down the street, one might end up being asked to direct traffic.

On a trip like this, it will be no surprise that a good part of the crowd on board will be well-traveled. This sort of thing gives rise to what I call High-Stakes Travel Poker. This is not done if the conversation flow shows little travel experience. But if place names start coming up, the game starts. There are no specific rules, but it tends to run this way.

We both ante up 1 Antarctica. You bet 1 India. I see your 1 India with 1 Siberia, and raise you 1 Stockholm. You see that with 1 Bangkok, and further raise me 1 planned-for cruise up the Amazon. I see that by bidding 1 planned-for rail trip from Capetown to Dar... It’s a type of one-upmanship that’s all in fun, as soon as you’ve determined that the “players” are essentially equal in travel experience.

Conversations in other than English do pop up. This first evening I met a man from Bremen during the boat drill, and we ended having dinner together, mostly in German, but also in English, which he spoke very well. Most of his travel was to Asia and to the Middle East. The next morning I was at a table with naturalist M.F., who is from Argentina, and Spanish “broke out”. It’s a lot of fun.

On days at sea like this there are naturalist lectures during the day. We were first informed about seabirds by naturalist P.S. What one sees are many petrels, and the occasional albatross, and we were told about a number of varieties of each. The albatross, along with the Andes Condor, is the largest FLYING bird on earth, with wingspans of 3 to 3.5 meters/yards. P.S. had two people stand on either side of her with arms spread. If her head represents the albatross’s, those combined arms represent the albatross’s wingspan.

Every afternoon when we’re in the open sea the naturalists gather at the back of the ship for wildlife spotting. This day being windy because of that tailwind we had out of Ushuaia, it was particularly difficult to stand upright. (Picture a lot of people in red leaning into the wind, with binoculars.) There were plenty of petrels, and I saw an albatross, one in the distance, than a Royal Albatross rather close (white body, black wings), which is the largest kind of albatross. Once I saw my albatross, I’d had it for the day and went inside. Click for albatross pictures on Fotosearch: Albatross

There are some thirteen naturalists and lecturers on the ship, making the experience on the Explorer II of the highest quality for this type of voyage. These are people who come back here for years and years on expeditions. They are biologists, ornithologists, geologists, zoologists, geographers, and more. Some have worked for the British Antarctic Survey. One geologist had been President of the University of Texas at Dallas.

Later, lecturer B.R. talked about the geology of the area. I brought up the fact that I’d heard that Antarctica was actually several islands. It was then conceded that indeed it was an archipelago and not a continent, with islands including East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and more. This had been proven with views from space. However, it was also pointed out that, given the icecap connecting these islands and the fact that they consisted of continental rock, it was commonly considered to be a continent.

At one lecture covering various aspects of the upcoming Falklands, I asked geology lecturer B.R. just why the Falklands were there. Had they once been connected to South America? He referred me to an upcoming lecture on continental drift and plate tectonics, where it turned out that they had once been part of Africa.

It seems to me I was just asking questions that interested me, a couple of questions among many that people were asking, but on several occasions later on, people commented that they liked the interesting questions I was asking. I have always felt that I blended into the wallpaper with everyone else, but perhaps not. But after all, if you like the kind of travel I do, you will enjoy geography, and that’s the kind of questions I ask. Geological questions do get mixed in as well, in the service of understanding geography.

The evening of this Day 2 was the Captain’s Reception, and we all joined for cocktails in the lounge, where, toward the end, the Captain introduced the Officers. He is British, and the Officers come from everywhere, including Eastern Europe. The Captain has a good sense of humour. He was saying he’d like to stretch the rules, and, even in these times of heightened caution, would like to let people visit the bridge. He started asking a few “security questions”, including whether a person born in Lybia should be allowed on the bridge, and most people said yes. He said that’s good, since he was born in Lybia, and now he can go on with his duties.

I found out at this party that some people I’d gotten to know had received special invitations under their doors, being invited to dine at the Hotel Director’s table, or at the Staff Captain’s table. I said that I missed out, although on Cunard I do get various invitations to events.

It should be realized the extent to which others follow American politics. For instance, I’ve been asked about Nancy Pelosi; most people would be hard pressed to name the Speaker in other countries. It was a good thing, for that and other reasons, that I was up on the recent elections, held two days before I left. [Exception: some time back I would watch Prime Minister’s Question Time on cable and, enjoyed seeing Betty Boothroyd in action, the former Speaker of the House in the British Parliament, and the first woman to hold that job. It was a wonder how, in a motherly, cajoling way, she kept order (AWdah! AWdah!). But I digress.]

One of the reasons for travel is to meet people. I’ve met, and frequently have had some great conversations with, lots of Americans, many Brits, the Bremen man, a number of Irish, New Zealanders (I got to discuss their rail system), and others. But at dinner (there is always open seating in the dining rooms) after the Captain’s reception, the Maitre d’ seated me with five Australians, two couples and another man on his own, and we had a most delightful time. They were surprised to have learned that Steve Irwin was as well-known and as well-liked in the US as he was. They pooh-poohed Paul Hogan’s shrimp on the barbie, since shrimp aren’t barbecued. I put both that and Steve Irwin’s popularity up to show biz. I thought I might be pleasantly provoking to ask opinions on Australia becoming a republic, voted down a few years ago. One person was for the status quo; all the others would vote for a republic when it comes up again. One remembered waiting up to see the visiting Queen go by, but wouldn’t do it now. Someone else thought that British-Australian relations have changed enough since the last vote that he would now change his vote to republican. All agreed that, once the present queen was gone, there would be even less interest in the monarchy. Interesting, heady stuff.

A lot went on in Day 2, and the most interesting for me I haven’t even described yet. Because the charter flight had had to be replaced by a pokey commercial flight, the provider had left a note in our cabins that they were giving us a $50 shipboard credit. Wearing the black QM2 sweatshirt I had acquired this summer (by a Cunard frequent-traveler shipboard credit), I checked out the (overpriced) tiny shop. Any sweatshirts there cost double the credit I had, but I found a nice navy shirt with “Explorer II” on the sleeve, and, on the breast, a very nice embroidered logo of a penguin on a blue blackground with “Antarctica” written underneath.

The conversation shifted to German when I found out that the two sales clerks were from Hamburg and Berlin. I joked about now having met people onboard from three cities I had visited this July, including Bremen (small world), and I told them about the sailaway in Hamburg. Then, seeing my QM2 shirt, one woman said with undisguised glee “Wir waren vor Ihnen (We were in front of you)”, a point I didn’t understand, but she explained. This story was confirmed when I spoke to the Cruise Director, and the Captain.

The ship I’m on has an alter ego. Actually, it’s the other way around: I’m on the alter ego at the moment. Only in the four winter months in the north is she the Explorer II. For the remaining eight months of the year she changes back, à la Superman changing back into Clark Kent, to the Alexander von Humboldt sailing out of Germany. They reregister the ship, repaint the name, and usually repaint the funnel, although I’m told the funnel wasn’t changed this time. It is ironic that, in those eight months, the Alexander von Humboldt sails north, including to Spitsbergen. The reason for this transformation is apparently that the Humboldt caters to a very down-market German clientele, offering cheapie tours north, and management wants to keep the two personas of the ship apart. This also explains why all the signs on the ship are in both English and German. There is another irony here. I mentioned on the Caronia that the ocean current off Chile that sweeps cold water up from Antarctica to alongside South America and allows penguins to live all along that coast, even up to the equator and Galapagos Islands, is named the Humboldt Current, after the scientist, after whom the Alexander-von-Humboldt Universität in Berlin on Unter den Linden is named. That would be a great name for a ship down here, but—that’s economics for you.

Now the reason for the saleswoman’s comment. During the QM2 sailaway in Hamburg, there were lots of ships of all sizes on the Elbe. Apparently the Alexander von Humboldt was one of them, sailing off in front of the QM2. And the current captain confirmed that he was also in command then.

This means that, without knowing it, I would have been looking down on this ship in Hamburg in July, unaware that by November, it would become the Explorer II I’d be sailing on. That’s just four months later. This is what is meant by a small world.

Falklands   Day 3 saw us arrive in Stanley, aka Port Stanley. To my way of thinking, the Falklands are less than impressive, although they may have a certain charm to people who like empty open spaces. There are two major islands, West Falkland and East Falkland, where Stanley is. The people in outlying areas raise sheep, and the terrain is often compared to northern Scotland. There are no tall mountains. Stanley is not the same as Punta Arenas and Ushuaia, yet it does remain an outpost town of, shall we say, simple charms.

The Falklands are named after a certain Lord Falkland, who was the patron of the expedition that first found the islands. As I explained the last time, the first settlers came later from the port of Saint-Malo in France, and they gave the islands the name Îles Malouines, which is essentially Saint-Malo Islands. The Spanish version is Islas Malvinas. Argentina still claims the islands, based on original Spanish land grants. I’ve read that next year will bring the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War.

When we were here last, the Caronia was large enough that it couldn’t dock, and one had to land by tender. Seeing Stanley and the island from the ship, I decided it wasn’t interesting enough trying to maneuver a wheelchair onto a tender, off a tender, onto a bus.... So we stayed on board and did our sightseeing from the ship.

This time I was in a quandry. We had to choose between some half-dozen included tours. I had originally considered the penguin tour, but fortunately, the cruise director pointed out that we’d be seeing hundreds of penguins later, and this extended trip involved a long trek over a bleak landscape in a Land Rover. I also didn’t want the trip to a sheep farm, nor the one trekking over the countryside, nor the audio wand tour of Stanley. None of this was of interest. I just wanted to see a bit of Stanley and the area around it in comfort. That’s why I signed up for—don’t laugh—the VIP Limo Tour—with champagne.

This ship was small enough to dock, and the limo awaited us on the pier. A stretch limo looks as out of place in Stanley, and in the Falklands, as—well, you supply the simile. It held six plus the guide, and the earlier group had just come back. The limo had just been delivered in July, and as Marilyn the guide explained, has been very popular for weddings, birthdays, and the like. We drove around nearby areas to see shipwrecks that had been left over the years. Before the Panama Canal, when ships sailed around Cape Horn and put into Stanley, some were not able to go on, and were abandoned here, hence the number of wrecks. We passed areas that still had minefields from 25 years ago. Apparently these mines are plastic and have shifted in the soil, so are hard to find. Still, something will have to be done eventually. After driving a bit out of town, we went into Stanley. We had our Chilean champagne (out of plastic glasses) and visited the museum. Marilyn pointed out that land values had gone up in town for a very unusual reason: the mine fields reduced the available land for building. We passed Government House, and the memorial to the recent war. Notably, the street along it was Thatcher Drive. It was a short, two-hour tour, and did just what I wanted to do. I was happy with my decision.

In the afternoon I stopped in the library where I met N.F. working at his laptop. His field is oceanography and geology. He recalled one of my questions about Antarctica, and wanted to comment. We exchanged business cards, and talked for about an hour. He explained that there are two kinds of rock involved, and the Antarctic Archipelago is indeed made of continental rock, so it should be considered a continent. He had lots of graphs and maps on his laptop, and he agreed that the Baltic had been two rivers. He agreed about the Mediterranean being filled by the Atlantic, but it is too dramatic to consider it having been a waterfall, as is often reported. I suggested it be referred to instead as an inflow. Since many ice ages have come and gone, he doesn’t agree with the North Sea just breaking through once into the English Channel. However, the Thames and the Rhine did converge, but to my surprise, they didn’t flow north (as the Rhine does today), but flowed together down what is now the English Channel.

Although my language field falls among the humanities, I do find it interesting to delve into these particular scientific fields, which, to my mind, are geography-related and therefore travel-related. Similarly, I often refer to monuments of civil engineering, which to me are valid travel destinations.

As N.F. was working in the library on his laptop, I brought up my own laptop from the cabin, since I felt it was time to have an “outcropping of the humanities” here on the ship to counter all the science we’d been involved in. It took this form.

From the moment I saw “my” albatross, I remembered where I, and probably many people, had first heard that there was such a thing as an albatross, and that was when we read the Ancient Mariner in school. I was immediately curious about the story again, and set to work to research it in the library. I couldn’t find a copy of the entire text, but that wasn’t necessary, and was more than I needed, anyway. What I did find was two books. The Oxford Companion to English Literature had a summary paragraph of the story, and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations had many quotes from it. I rewrote and reworked the summary to fit my needs, selected only those quotes that were most famous and appropriate, and edited all this data together. Although my initial plan was to use it just in this article, several people I spoke to expressed interest, and the next morning I showed it to Jannie Cloete, the Cruise Director, who suggested he could copy it from my laptop, have it printed out, and distribute it that night to everyone along with the next day’s daily schedule. One Day 5 I had lots of people comment on it and express their appreciation for reminding them how appropriate the Ancient Mariner is to the waters we’re sailing through. I was also taken aback when some people I hadn’t met knew who I was (maybe I don’t blend into the wallpaper, after all). The poem’s theme of reverence for nature is more à propos than ever, given all the information we’re being presented now on board about how to respect our surroundings when we make our landings. Except for the black-and-white border that was added to this page when distributed, below is what I put together.

An elderly sailor detains one of three gentlemen on the way to a wedding feast.

The sailor needs to tell his story.

It seems that the mariner’s ship had once been drawn toward the South Pole by a storm, and became surrounded by ice.

At that point, an albatross flies through the fog, to the joy of the crew. The ice splits, the albatross moves on with the ship, but then inexplicably, the mariner shoots it.

A curse falls on the ship, it’s driven north to the equator and is becalmed under a burning sun.

And they are...

The dead albatross is hung around the neck of the mariner, and eventually, all but the mariner die.

Then suddenly, while watching mere watersnakes in the moonlight...

...he blesses them—and the albatross falls from his neck.

The ship sails home and the mariner is saved, but he is condemned to travel the world with his story...

...and to teach, by his example, reverence for nature.

Day 4 was the first of two sailing days from the Falklands to South Georgia. Before leaving the Falklands late that night, we sidled up to a fuel ship for several hours to take on fuel for the remainder of the trip. Such fuel is apparently called “bunker”, and this was a “bunkering” operation.

The Captain had invited all to visit the bridge, which I finally did, and chatted a bit with him. Most ships have wall displays of plaques that cities and towns have given the ship upon the ship’s first visit to that town. In the corridor just before the bridge were the many plaques for this ship—all made out to the Alexander von Humboldt.

There was no time change in the Falklands, which meant that we’d been on the same time since Chile, and I assumed we wouldn’t be making any further changes in uninhabited areas. I was wrong. It was announced that we’d loose an hour tonight, to be made up again before Antarctica. I asked the Captain at dinner about that, and he said it was to keep the short nights we’d been having just where they should be.

There were two interesting lectures today. The first was on penguins. There are 17 species, all in the southern hemisphere. They are in the Southern Ocean all around Antarctica, including South Georgia, along the south coast of Australia and all around New Zealand, around all the southern coast of Africa, along Argentina, and, because of the Humboldt current, up to the equator on the west side of South America and in the Galapagos Islands. [Note that the southern parts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indiean Oceans are referred to as the Southern Ocean, a term I hadn’t heard before, but will start using. The Southern Ocean forms a doughnut around Antarctica and covers all the area south of Australia and New Zealand, South America, and Africa, down to Antarctica. It’s a valid and very sensible term.]

The Emperor and Adélie penguins are the only ones exclusive to Antarctica, while others have ranges there as well as around the Southern Ocean. I always wondered about the name Adélie, and it seems that a French naturalist named that kind of penguin after his wife. Click for Adélie penguin pictures on Fotosearch, noting the white ring around the eye of this small penguin: Adélie Penguin

I was surprised to find out that penguins developed from petrels and albatrosses, to which they are related. Although they cannot fly, they swim under the surface so well and so fast that they have been described as being able to “fly under water”.

The other lecture covered seals. I was amazed to find that seals developed from dogs. The fur seal is very common here, and is particulary nasty and vicious. It is no longer endangered. The leopard seal is the one that is a major preditor of penguins. But the most curious seal is the elephant seal. The face of the male becomes curiously disfigured, so that it looks like it could be a stubby trunk of an elephant. It is a formidable diver, and can dive down 5,000 feet. The absolutely huge males have harems, and the male is seven times larger than the female in size. Animals showing this difference are said to exhibit sexual dimorphism, and this difference in elephant seals is one of the most extreme in nature, if not the most extreme. Click here for fur seal pictures on Fotosearch: Fur Seal Click here for elephant seal pictures: Elephant Seal

When we overflew the Antarctic peninsula in 2004, the west side was socked in, but on the east side there was an opening in the clouds so we could go down and take a closer look at Seymour Island. The trips that go just to Antarctica and not South Georgia do spend a couple of extra days in Antarctica, and could possibly include the east coast as well, but we wouldn’t. That’s fine with me.

In addition to making references to speaking to the Captain on the bridge, I also mentioned speaking to him at dinner, which was the surprise of Day 4. During the afternoon there was an invitation under my door to dine at the Captain’s Table that evening, regrets only. With the Captain, there were ten of us at a long table. If it had been round, we could all have spoken better, but it was a great evening. There were place cards with our names. None of us had any idea how we had been chosen. There were four couples, all seated apart, and I couldn’t tell that they were spouses until well into the meal. Captain John Moulds was the singleton on one side, and I was the singleton on the other. There was lively, pleasant conversation, which carried over to the bar afterward. One particular delight was how dessert was served. There were two strips of beige marzipan on the dessert plates, one along the top edge, and one along the bottom. The bottom strip had written on it in chocolate “Explorer II”, and the top strip had your name in chocolate along the marzipan strip. This presentation was well received.

Day 5 was a movie day for me. I went to the cinema to see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. A Viennese Strudel buffet was served at tea time. Aside from apple strudel, they had cheese, cherry, or poppy-seed. I opted for the latter two. There were choices of vanilla or nougat sauce, and I had one of each.

In the early evening there was a mandatory briefing, and your name was checked off on entering the lounge. IAATO is the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators, and this is about the only situation where tour operators police themselves to keep the Antarctic area safe and clean, without disturbing wildlife. If you don’t attend this briefing, you can’t go ashore. To summarize behavior, you should “be good”; stay five meters away from wildlife, not take anything, and so on. It was also pointed out that Antarctica is the largest remaining wilderness in the world, and we want to leave it as we found it.

Day 6 is the day the first iceberg was spotted, in the late morning. Although we were assured we’d see many more later on, since the first one is an exciting event, the Captain said he’d award a bottle of champagne to whoever spotted the first iceberg as big as the ship or larger. The weather was sunny and cool, and we slowed down and sailed within maybe 100 feet of the ice on our port side.

South Georgia   Shortly afterward we approached South Georgia on our starboard side. Captain Cook made the first landing here in 1775, and he named it the Isle of Georgia, after King George III. It’s a long island, 170 kilometers by 40 wide at its broadest. The northeast shore is the side of interest, so we swung around the northern point for our first landing, in an area called Salisbury Plain.

The Travelers Century Club has nine political divisions that it counts in Antarctica. My personal TCC destination # 107 will then be the “Falkland Islands Dependencies (British Antarctica, Graham Land, S. Shetland, S. Sandwich, S. Georgia, S. Orkney)”, since all these regions are administred from the Falklands. Since this includes not only South Georgia but also a good bit of the Antarctic Peninsula, it will be the only new destination this trip.

I just returned a few minutes ago from our first landing, and want to debrief myself fully and describe it as completely as possible while still fresh in my memory (that ol’ mind’s eye), in order to form a word picture of the event. Air temperature was 7° and water temperature 2°, which in Fahrenheit would be about 45° and 35°. (Throughout the entire trip there was great consistency of temperature, both air and water staying at or above freezing, 0-2°, although the air occasionally would go up to 5-7°, but not higher. Not once did we see any temperatures below freezing.)

The ship pulled into the Bay of Isles, named by Captain Cook, in mid-afternoon in overcast weather. The important thing is that there was almost no wind. Out on deck we watched us pull rather close to the beach and then drop anchor. Even from the ship you could see all the penguins on shore. In the water you could see the penguins swimming. They apparently swim in what seems to be groups of 5-8, and leap in and out of the water, like seals or dolphins. I asked one of the naturalists later about this and he said penguins tend to be categorized with seals when their swimming habits are being studied. Yet it was funny to watch the group going leap-swim-leap-swim over the surface of the water at such a rapid pace.

As is usual on all ships, you are issued an ID card on boarding, which is used as a charge card when necessary. However, the cards here either come with a red or green dot on them to identify which landing group you’ll be included in. I’m red. They will alternate which group goes first, and I seem to have lucked out. Red goes first today, so I’ll have time to write afterwards, and green will go first tomorrow morning, when I won’t have to rush getting ready.

We were all watching in parkas and hats when the fifteen-minute get-dressed warning was given to red dots. I had on heavy socks from home, and changed to my wellies. On top of my slacks I put the black, rubberized waterproof pants, which go OVER the boots to keep water out. They have a velcro flap at the bottom for tightening. It wasn’t cold enough to wear my Norwegian sweater under the parka, so I kept on my black QM2 sweatshirt instead. I did wear my Norwegian hat, plus gloves. On top of the parka goes a special, very narrow special life jacket, which you keep on at all times during landings. Those that wanted to carry stuff then put on the backpack they supply, but the point is made that in the Zodiacs, both hands should be free at all times.

You then lumber down to B Deck and get on line. Ten at a time are sent out to the next Zodiac. You present your card to be swiped, showing you are no longer on board, then step into a bucket of disinfectant, so as not to contaminate the on-shore environment. On return you step into it again, this time so as not to contaminate the ship, especialy with any penguin guano. Another polite word for guano is poop.

Stepping outside the ship, you go down the stairs to the floating dock, where workers help you to step onto the side of the Zodiac, then down on a stepstool, and you’re in. You have been told in advance that you do not grab a person’s hands, but rather each person grab’s the other’s wrist, for a better grip. This is the same technique used by trapeze artists.

A Zodiac is a black rubber boat. It’s a two-foot-thick sausage in oval form with a rubber floor and outboard motor. You sit facing inward on the round sides and hold on to whatever you can for dear life. I suppose it’s the fear of the unknown behind you. If you walk up to an unprotected cliff and look over, that’s usually not a problem for most people, but if you back up to that cliff and only get to look over your shoulder at the drop down below, that’s something else. The ride took no more than 3-4 minutes to the beach, but I was glad when it was over, since you have no back support with the ocean right behind you, and I don’t like getting wet, even with waterproof pants. I didn’t, although coming back, a small wave splashed some.

This type of Zodiac landing is called a surf landing, or wet landing. At the beach, ship workers and some naturalists are in wet suits to help you get out. They pull the Zodiac as close as possible, and the passengers on either side of the Zodiac closest to the beach swing their legs over and step into the shallow water one at a time, waiting until after a small wave has gone by. It wasn’t a problem getting off, and was fun to walk up the last distance in water, wearing your wellies.

You get a quick briefing on the beach of what’s going on. There are naturalists, who have posted red flags along the cleared route to be taken, just a few minutes inland.

But this is what you see. The beach is half gray sand and half fist-sized rocks. From the moment you step out of the water, you have hundreds of king penguins to your left, and hundreds more to your right. Kings are maybe just under two feet tall, and have a large yellow-orange comma-shaped patch behind each eye. You aren’t allowed to walk up to any animals closer than 5 meters/yards, but if they walk up to you, it’s OK. Some got rather close. When they walk, they seem to hold out their flippers for balance as they waddle. As you walk up the rocky beach, there are fur seals (the nasty ones you want to keep away from) sitting or sleeping around. I looked at one of their faces and really saw how dog-like the face looked. Actually, having one nearby is like having a good-sized menacing dog near you that you want to stay back from. At one point, a naturalist pointed out some elephant seals, mostly females with some young. There was an (ugly) male nearby, but he was apparently an interloper, since all of the huge males in charge of the harems, called beachmasters, had already left.

After walking on this staked path between penguins and seals first up, then a bit along the beach, the path turned inland again a very short way to the center of the breeding grounds. There were no more seals here, but the beach had only been the preview as to penguins.

Standing where we were, there were thousands of penguins to the left. There were thousands of penguins to the right. And there were easily tens of thousands of penguins in front of you, along the flat area, then up the green slope of the hill ahead of you, and finally visible on the snowy patches at the top of those hills. I asked naturalist C.H. to take a wild guess. He guessed 50,000. I knew what he meant, but I confirmed it: he meant 50,000 breeding PAIRS, not individuals. Click here for king penguin pictures on Fotosearch, including the "thousands": King Penguin

At first all the birds are wearing the expected tuxedos, but then you begin to see what you hadn’t seen back on the beach, the big, fat chicks. They look fatter than the parents, and most seemed to look taller as well. They weren’t as noticable because of the brown fuzz that covers them, which I’m sure is nature’s way of avoiding predators. Then, as you look the second time up the green slope, you suddenly realize that all those black-and-white dots are actually far outnumbered by the brown blobs, which are harder to spot on the green grass up there.

The chicks whistle, and the adults whoop. What a racket! All of us are smiling, pacing back and forth, not knowing where to look next. We have 1 ¾ hours allotted for our stay, then we return to let the green dots have their turn. Back on the ship, hot chocolate awaits right after we get on.

Day 7 involves two landings. In the morning we pulled into Stromness Bay. The sun was shining brightly in a blue sky, then it went partly cloudy. Fortunately it was the green dots who went ashore first, at 8 AM, we red dots being scheduled for 10. Stromness had been a whaling station established in 1912, but was then converted in 1931 to a ship repair yard, which had the biggest dry-dock facility in the southern hemisphere. That is now also closed. Looking at the scene from the promenade deck in the morning, the small bay and cove seemed so very quiet. You only year the occasional bird call from the snow-covered mountains surrounding the cove. The 60-50-odd buildings of the whaling station are all rusting and decrepit, and you are forbidden to approach them closer than 200 meters, both because they are falling apart and because of asbestos. It appears as a ghost town. There are fur seals on the beach in front of the whaling station, as well as along the beach to the right where we will land.

Once again I’m just back off the Zodiac. The boat trips were easier now; maybe you just have to get used to it. They said that when a group of Japanese tourists were in a Zodiac once, they all sat on the floor. The problem with that I would say is that the floor can have water sloshing around sometimes. I would suggest squatting. But sitting worked fine.

The naturalists had worked out a landing area between the many seals, who weren’t happy about it, especially the few that were displaced from their spots, being very territorial. There was about a 20-foot strip cleared on the rocky beach, with naturalists keeping watch with their long bamboo sticks. You were invited to either take the muddy hike a bit inland, at least partially, or stay on the beach. I did the latter, and chatted up the naturalists. C.H. showed me a tooth taken from a fur seal. It was the size, shape, and color of a largish clove of garlic, and very sharp on the inside surface. He explained that the upper canines come down behind these lower teeth and keep on sharpening them. Although the wind picked up after a while, it was nice to see the ship at anchor nearby in the bay, and the snowy mountains coming down to the bay and beach where we were. In winter (July) all this would be snow-covered. There were hundreds of seals on the beach, mostly the agressive fur seals, which would occasionally threaten, but it was mostly show. They would also make a show of arguing among themselves, also for show, then turn away. We watched a group of three do this, then all turn away in three different directions to avoid making eye contact with the other two seals. In many ways, much of this behavior is very human. There were a few elephant seals, the males with their smashed-looking faces. There were no penguins. The naturalists pointed out about ten reindeer on a distant slope; they are not native, but a species introduced from the north that seem to do well here. While this stop was not as unique as yesterday’s, it was just a matter of being out in nature on a chilly beach with seals, with the snowy mountains and the cool, but pleasant weather. Coming back we were greeted by a cup of Glühwein, a German cold-weather drink made of hot, spiced red wine.

In the afternoon it got somewhat overcast, but here the sun keeps on coming out periodically, anyway. We pulled into Cumberland East Bay, which has the large Nordenskjöld Glacier at the end of it, which we pulled up towards. There are many Norwegian names in South Georgia because of their early activity in whaling and sealing. The reason we pulled that far into the bay instead of to our destination near the beginning of the bay was because the Captain had spotted a humpback whale and calf and wanted to pull up to them to see them up close. Whales nowadays are not common here, and it is particularly unusual to see humpbacks here. The naturalists are planning on having the sighting recorded in scientific records. Everyone was up on deck to watch. Every few minutes the pair, while swimming forwards, would rise up with their backs and dorsal fin showing, and often you could see the spray coming out of their blowholes as they breathed. This is not breaching, which involves leaping out of the water, and which is rare, according to the naturalist I asked. Then we returned back nearer to the entrance to this bay into a side bay where Grytviken is located.

Grytviken serves today as the administrative capital of South Georgia and other dependencies, but actual administration comes out of Stanley, in the Falklands, hence the name Falkland Islands Dependencies. There are a couple of local administrators, some people working for the fisheries board, and a few scientists from the British Antarctic Survey. The total “population”, all from these groups, is about 10, in other words, everyone here is a scientist or administrator. Grytviken was founded by Norwegian Captain Carl Larsen in 1904 as the first whaling station in Antarctic waters. It closed down in 1964 after whales had become so rare. All the considerable number of buildings are now rotting, rusted hulks, as in Stromness Bay. The name breaks down to gryt-vik-en and means pot-cove-the, in other words “The Cove of Pots”, apparently referring to some pots that were discovered that sealers use. As indicated before, the Norwegian influence remains strong in South Georgia, although mostly now just in place names. In any case, my Norwegian cap, which has a small Norwegian flag on it, should feel quite at home here.

The Zodiacs left us off on the west side of the cove near the cemetery, so we could walk along the beach and then through the area, and picked us up later on the east side near the museum. As always, close behind the town were tall, snow-covered mountains (zebra-stripe style, at this time of the year). In the cemetery we saw the grave of the explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton. Nearby was a group of ten king penguins, just standing around in a group, looking like waiters waiting to serve dinner. Near them was a single gentoo penguin, the first I’ve seen. It was good to be wearing wellies to walk through—literally--the several tiny streams there.

While you had to stay away from the station in Stromness, here you could walk through the ruins, as long as you kept your distance. Where deteriorating building walls had been removed, you could see rusted boilers and huge cooking pots. They are trying to slowly clean up the mess; as a matter of fact, because winds were dangerously blowing away walls, the government in the last couple of years has not only removed the outer shells of many buildings, they’ve also removed asbestos, but in any case, opening the view to the machinery.

Today’s sensitivity as opposed to attitudes then stands out. Today, you have to carry out all waste back to the ship in South Georgia because of our environmentalist feelings, yet those years ago, not only could industry be brought to the island, but afterward it could all also be abandoned to rust. It is pointed out that few people would support whaling today as it was carried out over the 60 years of Grytviken’s history, but attitudes were very different then.

The museum told about Shackleton, and also had above your head a stuffed albatross, with a six-foot wingspan, which showed close-up how large the bird can be. But the most interesting individual site to visit was the recently restored Norwegian church, the only remaining tangible Norwegian influence I saw on South Georgia other than place names.

It was absolutely charming. It had a steeple and was quite compact, and all of wood. It is the only building in Grytviken that still has its original function, and is still used for the occasional rare service. It was prefabricated in Norway and consecrated on Christmas Day 1913. There are simple, wooden pews, and the inside walls have sort of an intentionally unfinished look.

In the front was a small organ, powered by foot-treadles. Someone tried to play something, rather poorly, from the sheet music lying around, then, a few minutes later, a more talented English lady sat down, started pumping away, and the entire tiny church reverberated with “Amazing Grace”, from memory. It was a very memorable moment here, so many miles from civilization.

Before coming into the church, you kept on hearing the two church bells ringing, and one’s thought was that people shouldn’t be playing around like that. Then, before leaving, I went upstairs in the back of the church to the loft, looking down into the church. There were the two bell ropes, reaching through the ceiling to where you could see the bells, and there was this sign: Please pull the ropes and ring the bells. I’m never one not to follow instructions, so I rang away, the first time ever.

There was a sign showing several inscriptions that are on the bells. I copied down this one:

First a language note: in 1913, Norwegian apparently still used the silent D at the end of “in”, which Danish still does.

A more substantial comment on what struck me: this bell ringing in peace was dedicated along with this church on Christmas Day 1913, and eight months later, halfway around this very small globe, World War One broke out in August 1914.

Outside the church, there was a good-sized patch of snow low down on the hill, and four red-jacketed people were cavorting in it, lying in it, throwing it; then someone pointed out that they were some of the crew members, probably from the Philippines, who may just possibly have seen snow for the first time. In this spirit, I found a patch of snow close to the Zodiac beachhead and made a snowball, “threatening” some of the naturalists for a laugh, but the snowball just got dropped into the surf.

Day 8 was our last day on South Georgia, and began very, very, very early, as we had been warned well in advance. We were to have a landing at Gold Harbour, and were told it was best at sunrise. There was a call on the PA at 3:30 AM to start getting ready. The red dots were to go first, from 4-6 AM, and the others from 6-8, which was fine with me, since everyone would be waking up anyway with this first announcement. At home, there’s the rare occasion where I wake up earlier than intended, so I go read the paper or work online for a bit and then go back to sleep. I treated this the same way, as an interruption of a good night’s sleep, and afterward went right back to bed again to get up at a more civilized hour.

I’m surprised that after these first few landings, putting on the gear, riding in the boats, and the surf landings have become second nature, so right out of bed and into the gear went I. Even at the point of the announcement there was already pre-dawn light, and sunrise was at 4:03, as we got onto the Zodiacs.

The dawn light was illuminating the cove under a clear, blue sky. It was a long, rather narrow, black-sand beach in front of the ever-present tall snow-covered mountains. Running just a bit behind the beach and along it lengthwise was a wide shallow stream, behind which was a large area of tussock grass. We landed at the east end of the beach and had occasion to walk about half its length. Fortunately, there were no fur seals here today, but plenty of elephant seals and penguins. We had to be careful landing, since there were two bull elephant seals show-fighting with each other in the surf about 3-4 meters away. There was a staked path across the stream and into the tussock grass, and after that you could wander along the beach.

I saw a couple of gentoo penguins walking along the beach, seemingly leading a large group of king penguins. Gentoos are smaller, maybe just over one foot tall, and have pink feet as opposed to the kings’ black feet. They have a white patch above each eye. Click here for gentoo penguin pictures on Fotosearch: Gentoo Penguin

The stream was very shallow, and walking through with your wellies was no problem. Tussock grass looks like long blades of grass bunched together into a large bouquet maybe two feet across and two feet high. You simply make your way between the “bouquets”. The purpose of going up into the tussock grass was because this was the breeding area for the gentoos. Kings usually stand, and rarely lie flat on their stomachs. Gentoos build nests, and lie flat on them. Usually, a nest was on the top of a tussock. It’s amazing how one quickly becomes a “semi-expert” after seeing enough of these penguins and seals.

Back on the beach, there were plenty of elephant seals. The adults seem to be sleeping most of the time, usually on their sides, which meant you had a back or a belly facing you. The cows were docile; my usual memory is of seeing them yawn, showing a large pink mouth. The huge bulls with their mashed faces looking like a trunk would shift around every once in a while, and you had to keep an eye out for them. They wouldn’t go very far, though, and you could usually walk in a wide circle around them. Cutest of course were the young ones, the “weaners”. they were maybe a meter long and had that irrisistable baby face, with HUGE round eyes, which seemed to be nothing but black pupils. Naturalist S.M. reminded that the elephant seals do dive down to an incredible 5,000 feet, and need more eyesight than otherwise, hence the large eyes. I made the comparison that a human baby has a large head, which then doesn’t grow much, and she agreed; the eyes in these weaners were close to adult-size. If you stood there, they would often come up and nuzzle your boots. The one nuzzling S.M.’s boots must have just been in the fresh water in the stream, and when it pushed its whiskers forward you could see 4-5 frozen bits of ice on each whisker, like pearls on a string.

The reason people went over to the middle of the beach was because that was the beginning of the king penguin breeding ground, which then stretched to the far end of the beach. The fuzzy brown chicks were like what we saw two days ago. Sometimes you’d see one that was a bit older and had lost most of the brown fuzz. They looked particularly funny, since they were largely black and white, but would have a lot of brown facial fuzz, and often a patch of fuzz would remain on the breast, looking like “chest hair”. Walking around an area like this was akin to walking around a chicken yard, where the chickens just go about their business while you are there. It’s just that these “chickens” were two-foot penguins, whose turf you were sharing. On my return to the ship, to quote Pepys again in a very different context: And so to bed.

The second stop of the day was not a landing, but a drive-by. In the late morning, the ship pulled into Drygalski Fjord, on the south end of the island, to sail its length. By now the sun was gone and it was overcast. As we went up the fjord, you could see drift ice, and at one point, there were two gentoo penguins riding on an ice floe. In the materials we’re provided with, are the names of the various birds in English, German, French, and Spanish. Only of real use here were the German names you’d hear. A king penguin is a Königspinguin, which is the same name as in English, but a gentoo penguin is an Eselspinguin, which is literally a jackass penguin, so the German speakers were referring to having seen two “Eselspinguine” sitting on a “Scholle”.

At the end of the fjord were three glaciers, one left, one ahead, one right. This was impressive, although more impressive was the announcement that until recently, these had all come together as one single glacier, which has been retreating due to global warming.

After three days of heavy activity, it was nice to calm down again. After having read the Da Vinci Code in Scandinavia this summer, I went to the movie version of it on ship today. Afterwards, at tea time they served Crêpes Suzette. There was a reception before dinner for all those traveling with the provider of note. Leaving South Georgia waters, we are now going diagonally across the Scotia Sea to the Antarctic Peninsula, and the ride is a little rougher.

People have been asking about the website, and I’ve run out of business cards, so Reception printed up come copies of it for me. At the party I got to speak to Jannie Cloete, the Cruise Director, who is from South Africa, and I once again saw how small the world is. I mentioned my plans to ride Rovos Rail in South Africa in 2008. As it turns out, for quite some time as Rovos was getting established, Jannie was marketing director for them, and helped them expand their client base. He knows Rohan Vos, the owner, and I will greet Rohan from Jannie when I meet him.

At dinner I made an observation, which was promptly corroborated by naturalist BB at the table. I noticed that the king penguins frequently seemed to be looking up at the sky, pointing their long beaks upward. I guessed that that was an illusion; that in reality, they were just getting those long beaks out of the way so that their eyes could look at YOU around the beak. I pointed out that chickens do something similar, looking to the side so that ONE of their eyes can peer at you. BB said that was indeed the case. So that’s the reason why so many king penguins appear so aloof, staring skyward as though they didn’t care you were there.

After dinner, but still relatively early in the evening, it was nice to retire to your cozy cabin to finish up whatever business, then to curl up with a book from the library, to the rocking of the ship.

Day 9 is Thanksgiving in the Scotia Sea, with holiday greetings announced on the PA to all American guests (we are in the minority). It’s the first of two travel days on the Scotia Sea, on the diagonal from South Georgia to the Antarctic peninsula. The in-house TV channel which shows the view from the bridge also includes many details as to latitude, longitude, temperature, and other facts.

Again, Ushuaia is at 68°W, and we went east to South Georgia at 36°30’W. We are now back up to about 44°W with much of what we’ll see in the Antarctic peninsula being at 60-64°W, so we have a ways to go. Once we’re back in the 60’sW, we’ll be more closely aligned with the tip of South America.

We had been running between Ushuaia and South Georgia in the 54-55°S range, and, going on the diagonal, are now down to 57°S. My hope is that we’ll end up reaching 65°S, but we’ll see.

Day 10 was quiet with a few lectures, but at 10:30, when a number of us were sitting reading quietly in the library, there was an announcement that fin whales had been spotted. Books snapped shut and people hurried for parkas. By the time I got on deck those first ones were gone, but naturalist C.H. said the best chance would be to go up on the bridge to look in a forward direction to see them up ahead. Anyway, it’s warmer there. The Captain said he wouldn’t be stopping to look at the whales, since they were numerous here and since we’d lose time, and anyway, they were faster than we were. Fin whales are twice the size of the humpbacks we saw, and I did manage to see them spouting several times, including once when I saw three whales at the same time spouting next to each other, but we couldn’t really see the actual backs of the whales. They spout about 15-20 feet into the air.

There were maybe up to ten interlopers at the bridge like me, and I wonder how those working there can feel they can get work done with so many people around. I was also concerned I’d press some button or lever by accident. The instruments are great to see, including the computer maps that generate the proposed route and actual route.

On our TV screens it uses the term “sea state”. When we were at South Georgia, the sea state was 1. Last night it was 5, and we were rocking, but not too badly. Frankly, I slept well, since the gentle rocking has a cradle effect. OK, you do have to balance yourself in the shower, and maybe grab a railing in the corridor, but I’m fine with it. There are many passangers with patches behind their ears or cloth bracelets with pressure points on the wrist to help against sea sickness. I asked some if they were prone to seasickness, and they said they didn’t know, but didn’t want to find out, either. Anyway, I asked the Captain on the bridge about sea state, and he showed me the list of definitions. 0 is smooth as glass, and 9 is a hurricane, and everything in between is precisely defined. Ask enough, and you learn a lot. I note now on the TV that the sea state is up to 6.

Antarctica   We are approaching Antarctica. Less than 100 years ago, no one had set foot on it. 200 years ago, no human had seen it. Since it has very little annual percipitation, maybe a few millimeters of rain, it is officially a desert. Snow that does fall does not melt, but accumulates, hence the Antarctic ice sheet in the interior, where any snow one sees flying is just old snow being blown around by the wind.

Again, it’s not the interior but just the Antarctic peninsula we’ll be visiting. The first modern-day travelers (and tourists) came here in January 1958, with the number picking up considerably in the late 1980’s.

The area we’ve been in up to now is considered sub-Antarctic. This afternoon we passed 60°S, the official border. We are now in Antarctic waters.

I spent a lot of time today on the bridge, with the occasional iceberg passing by. Then a crewman spotted a particularly large one, and we veered slightly to go see it, and the Captain announced on the PA that we were passing this huge tabular (flat, like a table) iceberg. Fortunately, the sun had come out so we saw this huge specemin in the best of conditions, with parts of it appearing blue, and with horizontal stratification very clear along its side, reminding one of the rings in a tree trunk also indicating years of growth. It was estimated that it was a mile square, and 90 meters high. Allowing three meters per story, that’s the equivalent of a 30-story building, one mile square. It was estimated as weighing 142 billion tons. Also, consider that 8/9 of it was not visible, but under water.

One usually pictures an iceberg as looking like a mountain, hence the name (German Eisberg=ice mountain). Tabular icebergs, however, don’t calve from glaciers, which would give them a jagged appearance, but instead are pieces of ice shelves, the frozen top of a body of water, attached to land. Naturalist B.R. thought this could be a part of the Larsen ice shelf, which has disintegrated recently, which he discussed in a lecture later on. If you look at a map of the Antarctic peninsula, the northern end looks as wide as the southern end, but only because the Larsen ice shelf was attached to the east side of it. Starting in 1986, the shelf started to disintegrate, and by 2002, particularly large ice masses were leaving it. It’s mostly gone now. If your map still shows an Antarctic peninsula of equal width all the way down, do realize that without the Larsen ice shelf, the upper part of the peninsula now looks a lot more slender.

A lecture on whales, dolphins, and porpoises later on explained that the major difference between the three is largely one of size. Sperm whales (think of Moby Dick) are the deep divers of the whale group and can equal the 5,000 feet that elephant seals can do.

After dinner, we reached Elephant Island lying at the beginning of the islands going down along the Antarctic Peninsula. It was still light at 9 PM, and the temperature was just freezing as usual, but we went out on deck to look at the snow-covered mountains plunging down into the sea. Elephant Island is connected with the story of the explorer Shackleton.

Day 11 involved two landings, and I lucked out again. The previous 8 AM landing had the green dots going first, with reds at 10. Then the reds were first at that 4 AM landing, but that being the middle of the night anyway, there was no problem with going back to bed afterward. Therefore, once again the green dots go first today at 8, and I go at 10. Then in the afternoon, we do go first, which is just fine.

The stop this morning is Penguin Island, just about one mile across. If you are following this on a map, and I do hope you have at least Google helping you with one, you’ll find that Elephant Island is the first of the string of islands going down the west of the peninsula. This first group is called the South Shetland Islands, with King George Island being one of the larger ones, with a number of international research stations on it. Penguin Island is a flyspeck just of its south coast.

The depths here are not that great for the Explorer II to pull close, so the Zodiac ride is just a bit longer, but by now, it’s a piece o’ cake. We have another surf landing on the eastern edge of the beach, then walk across the length of it at our own pace, and back. Although the beach has some black sand, most of it is rocky, and not small rocks, but 6-8 inch rocks, which makes the stepdown from the Zodiac onto these rocks in the water just a bit trickier, but there are plenty of hands to help. However, clambering along the rocks as you go down the beach is a bother.

Death is part of life, and for some reason, on this beach there is a lot more of it than on others. The occasional seal carcass, penguin carcass, old whale bones from the whaling days--the whole walk along the center of the beach had more of these than one would like to see. But approaching the other end, there was a group of elephant seals, and also a single Weddel seal, which we had not seen before. This type looks more “seal-like” than many of the others.

The main attraction here is the chinstrap penguins. There are a few hundred here, and then, up the rocky hill a bit further along, is an entire chinstrap rookery, with hundreds more birds sitting on eggs. It was fun watching the odd chinstrap working his way up the hill, leaping from rock to rock.

The chinstrap is, like the gentoo, about a foot tall, and is the most easily recognized of penguins because of its name. Picture the black top to his head, white throat, and then a narrow strip of black running along his throat going from black to black. When he looks at you face-on, it looks like he’s wearing a WWI helmet, chinstrap and all. Click here for chinstrap penguin pictures on Fotosearch: Chinstrap Penguin

Mixed with the chinstraps was the odd Adélie penguin. I saw only two. They are the same size as the chinstraps, but with a black head and the distinctive white ring around the eye. I also saw one single gentoo.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve needed to check the German names for the penguins from the lists they’ve given us for conversations with the German speakers. An Adélie penguin is the same, Adeliepinguin. (It’s the wrong season for us to see the meter/yard-tall emperor penguin, Kaiserpinguin.) The chinstrap penguin is a Zügelpinguin, which is a slightly different image, a Zügel being a bridle for a horse.

Getting back on the ship, Jannie, the Cruise Director was telling about the lady who had gotten so enthused about finally seeing chinstrap penguins, that she blurted out that she had seen ... had seen ... jockstrap penguins! Hot chocolate greeted us again.

In the afternoon we stopped at King George Island. To the left there was another long haul along a very rocky beach to see Adélie penguins at the end of the beach, and we did see a few dozen, but the rookery, where there were apparently hundreds, was up on a ridge, and we weren’t allowed up there. The name Adélie, which corresponds to the very rare English name Adelia, is pronounced a.de.LI (E as in cafE; I as in skI) in French. However, I find that in English it is mangled, as is often the case, to sound as though you’re going to buy something at “a deli”.

I’ve been wearing my Norwegian hat from Tromsø regularly. I started wearing my very warm Norwegian sweater from Bergen (and China) on the ship, but lately I’ve been wearing it under the parka. To some extent, that’s overkill, since both are very warm, and after walking a lot, I have to unzip the parka to cool off for a while. Still, I like wearing it, partly to help commemorate my North-South Year.

The unusual thing about this stop was that one of the research stations was there, the Polish one established in 1977, which we visited. It was the Arctowski Antarctic Research Station of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Outside it was a number of yellow metal prefab buildings raised on cinder blocks. We had to take our boots off in the boot room to step inside (a bothersome process), but we saw no research, just the cozy lounge area used by the 20-odd scientists. Back on the ship, Glühwein greeted us again.

Day 12 saw us move further south in the South Shetland Islands to Deception Island. On the way we would have passed in the night the small group of islands known as the Aitcho Islands, which I think is the most unique name in the area. Aitcho is actually the letters H and O, standing for the (British) Hydrographic Office. Considering the Hydro- part of it, it’s a shame they couldn’t work a “2” in between the H and O.

Deception Island, horseshoe-shaped, was formed volcanically, and still shows evidence of that through its thermal activity. It is the most-visited location in Antarctica. The island is the flooded caldera of the volcano, and has a hard-to-find entrance, similar to a bite out of a doughnut, through the caldera ridge to the central bay, hence the name. We made two early stops. At Whalers Bay, green dots went from 5:30 to 7:00 (!!); at which point we went. There was really little to see here. There was the remains of a whaling station (1911-1931), but if you walked quite a ways along the black-pebble beach, you could then go up the hill (the top of the path was difficult!) to a very low point in the caldera wall called Neptune’s Window, through which you could see the open ocean on the other side.

The second stop was very shortly afterwards within the caldera of Deception Island, at the Pendulum Cove Geothermal Springs. Red dots were first here at 9:45, for an opportunity to “go swimming in Antarctica”. A number of people stayed on the ship for this nonsense, saying they could see the steam from there, but I went to observe geothermal activity in Antarctica.

Apparently there are natural suplhur hot springs under the beach. What I understand is that it’s more accurate to stay there’s a geothermal area there, but not exactly a spring. At high tide, seawater in the bay seeps underground at the beach and gets heated. At low tide, this is the warm water that bubbles up and seeps out again and joins the cold seawater. A good number of passengers, who had worn swimsuits under their gear, lolled in the water off the edge of the beach at the point where the waters mixed and it wasn’t too hot or too cold. I felt the water, and it was bathtub comfortable. I was then advised to stand in the water, and you could feel the warmth through your boots, which was quite pleasant. That was enough for me.

Naturalist C.H. had picked up some krill from the beach for us to see. I had heard that there are billions of tons of krill in the ocean, which are at the bottom of the feeding chain for whales, fish, birds, and others. I had always pictured krill as being microscopic, but maybe I was thinking of plankton. It turns out they look like smallish shrimp about an inch-and-a-half long. Back on board, a hot drink called a Cranberry Kiss awaited us.

Sailing out of the bay inside the caldera we saw three other ships, one an American research vessel, and two others that were expedition cruisers like us. One of them was at anchor at what had been our morning stop. We had been informed that at some if not all stops, ships sign up in advance for slots as to when they visit; that shows the frequency of ships coming to Antarctica nowadays.

Leaving Deception Island, some of us went on deck, and others, including me, went up to the bridge to watch us go out the narrow entrance to the caldera, called Neptune’s Bellows. We spent the rest of the day heading south.

After the South Shetland Islands, separated from the Antarctic Peninsula by the Bransfield Strait, the next islands off the Peninsula form the Palmer Archipelago, including the quite large Brabant Island and Anvers Island. These are separated from the Peninsula by the Gerlache Strait, which we spent the evening sailing through, with snow-covered mountains on either side. When we get fully into this area tomorrow, it will be the furthest south we’ll be going. Obviously, we won’t be going to Seymour Island, that we saw from the air 2 ½ years ago, on the other side of the Peninsula, but that’s fine. It was at 64°30’S, and as I write this in the evening, the in-house TV says we’ve already reached 64°46’S, so already I’m the furthest south I’ve ever been. We seem to have an excellent chance of making it an even 65°S, or a bit more. I went out on deck a little while ago after dinner. There is the occasional iceberg passing by, also some growlers (small icebergs). We will not reach the Antarctic Circle at 66°33’S, but we are close enough to it so that the nights are now only about 4 ½ hours long, and it’s not really dark, but there is rather a strong twilight pretty much straight through. Since there is pretty much an overcast, even below the Antarctic Circle we wouldn’t really see the Antarctic midnight sun, but the present conditions are close enough.

Day 13 is our last day in Antarctica before taking two days to cross the Drake Passage from Antarctica to South America, and back to Ushuaia. This day started in the middle of the night. We were to go through the beautiful Lemaire Channel, and were warned in advance that, although no announcement would be made at night, if we wanted to see it, we should be on deck as of 3:00 AM, so the alarm got set early. The Lemaire Channel would be at the southernmost point of our trip, then we would back up slightly for activities to finish the day just a little further north. The Channel is between a longish offshore island and the Peninsula, is about seven miles long, and averages a mile in width.

At least getting up at this time didn’t involve full gear for a landing, just your parka, hat, and gloves. Up on deck, though, there was some slush from a light snowfall earlier, and the usual growlers were floating by. It was the usual twilight, and on both sides of the channel were the snowy mountains plunging straight down, with glaciers between them. Because of the low overcast, the tops of the mountains were cut off. We went along for a while, then it struck me that the bridge might be open, which it was, so that’s where I spent the rest of the time (my whole time awake was maybe an hour, then back to bed). Just as I got to the bridge, you could see we were slowing down in a wide spot, and straight ahead the growlers and other ice floes were much thicker, essentially blocking the way, so we stopped, and prepared to turn around. Staff Captain Giovanni Biasutti showed me on the screen the map of the whole Channel, and we were just about exactly halfway through. I commented to him and the Captain that that’s just fine; surely the second half would be a repeat of the first, and they essentially agreed. The Giovanni knew that some of us (some others had been to Spitsbergen) were concerned about reaching 65°, and happily told me we made it. As we turned, he wrote down the figures off the screen of our southernmost point, for his own notes and also to inform Reception for those who wanted to know, and I copied them down as well (how’s that for getting info right from the horse’s mouth). Counting only whole minutes, we reached 65°04’S, and we did that at 63°56’W.

So the final figures come out thusly: comparing the distance from the equator to each pole, 80°00’N means I’ve been 88.9% of the distance to the North Pole (June 19), and 65°04’S means I’ve been 72.3% of the distance to the South Pole (November 27), all in the year 2006, 161 days apart.

A few passengers came to me while still on the bridge to tell them what I found out from the Staff Captain about what was going on. I’ve found this happening a number of times during the trip. They seem to appreciate both the previous online research I’ve done, as well as the fact that I ask questions.

Our first landing of the day was then at 7:00 AM, and even though the red dots had been first on our last landing yesterday, we were first again. Perhaps the green dots had grumbled about rising early, but it wasn’t bad getting up today, since I’d been up already. We had wiggled north from the Lemaire channel to Port Lockroy on a smallish island on the inside passage end of Anvers Island. It was a British base between 1944 and 1962, and they’re preserving the main building as a historic site and museum of life and conditions at an Antarctic station. There were nesting gentoo penguins all around this building, and the whole area was covered in snow. Thank goodness for the wellies.

The bay we were docked in was gorgeous, in spite of the low ceiling cutting off the tops of the mountains. Just about everything around the bay was snow-covered, and the first part of the visit was our first tour in a Zodiac. We buzzed around the bay for about fifteen minutes, seeing the sights, including a nesting site of blue-eyed shags (mixed with penguins; bare rock is at a premium). This is the first time I stumbled across a Britishism. I was the one in our Zodiac to ask, and apparently shag is a British term. Americans would call these birds blue-eyed cormorants.

But the adventure in this landing was not the Zodiac tour, cormorants, penguins, or even Port Lockroy. It was the drift ice. There was a lot in the bay near the ship, and the Zodiac tour went around it. But when it was time for us to actually land, we had to enter it, with floes of up to four feet across, and more. The rubber Zodiacs went slowly, bumping into the ice, and avoiding rocks below. The water was so clear, that you could see both the rocks, and also how much of each ice floe was actually under water. There was a backup of Zodiacs trying to land, and one leaving was moving along very slowly. After the land visit, the Zodiac I was in also plodded its way along, with the driver sometimes using an oar to move ice aside. We could see as we left that they closed the landing site we had used, and were going to land the green-dot group some distance to the left. As I told people, this sort of thing is the spice that adds to the adventure Something called Hot Piña Colada awaited us.

Leaving Port Lockroy we turned right, into the Neumayer Channel. It separates the larger Anvers Island from Wiencke Island, again on the inside passage side of Anvers. It’s 16 miles long and 1 ½ miles wide, and is as attractive as the Lemaire, especially since the sun started shining through the clouds. Some of the tops of mountains were hidden, but the sun shone on the rest of the mountains, the glaciers, and the water. Again, after observing the Channel from the Promenade Deck, I went down one to the Bridge Deck to watch the passage both in reality and on the maps and computer screens. I’ve always wondered what the two projections from the side of the ship were called that are used for its navigation when need warrants, and Giovanni said they were called bridge wings. What a beautiful metaphorical name; wings emanating from the bridge. We also stepped out on one or both for a colder view of the Neumeyer. Knowing I like maps, Giovanni also showed me some special maps of a few given areas that they had recently made on the ship with additional, updated, and therefore more accurate data, as to soundings, mountain heights, and such.

We then crossed the Gerlache Strait over to its peninsular side and entered Paradise Bay, for our final landing of the day and of the trip, at the abandoned Argentine Station, Almirante (Admiral) Brown. The sun had come out, and there was blue sky, with some fluffy, low clouds, but the view around the bay of mountains and glaciers was magnificent. We waited for the green dots to go first, then we went. I was eager this time to get going, so after putting on the parka to stroll around the deck, I put on full gear and got on line early. I would be in the first outgoing boat of our group, but would have to wait maybe 45 minutes. As luck would have it, the first group was done 15 minutes early, so off we went in the first Zodiac.

You may have guessed an additional reason why this stop was special. Every landing we’ve made so far has been on an island, either South Georgia or the Antarctic islands along the coast. The landing in Paradise Bay, however, our last, was the “continental landing”. We would finally set foot on the Antarctic Peninsula, and thus the Antarctic Continent.

I was glad to see that it would, in effect, be a “dry” wet landing. There was a rock slope that the Zodiac pushed up on to, so, for the first time, you’d end up stepping onto dry land. The proper “dismount” of a Zodiac is to slide up the side where others have been sitting, face away from land, and swing your legs over into the water. However, I was happy that I swung over both legs right onto dry land, stood up, and said “Made it.” That leaves Australia as the only continent I haven’t been to.

One clambered the short distance up the snowy slope past the abandoned station buildings, saw some gentoo penguins nearby, and that was it for sensible people. However, as an option, there was a very snowy, very steep, very high slope up the side of a mountain several hundred feet high, and I couldn’t believe how many people started up to the top, although a good number must have turned back. Yet you could see the red jackets slowly moving upward on the white snow. Bad enough, but then there was also the option to sit down and slide back down. When I saw people doing it, my comment was that I’ve heard of the Ship of Fools, but I didn’t know that I was on it.

The sensible ones hung around a bit until all the incoming Zodiacs were unloaded, then we went into the first Zodiac giving the planned tour. We spent about 25 minutes going around the sunny bay (sunscreen had been advised for this and many other landings), past some sparse drift ice, and up reasonably close to a glacier. The driver then turned off the motor so we could listen, but then a lot of people started taking pictures. When that flurry of clicks was over, I spoke up and asked if we couldn’t listen to the silence, which someone thanked me for later. You could hear the crackling of the ice and otherwise, total silence. As the driver had pointed out, since we were the first Zodiac doing the tour, we wouldn’t be interrupted by others, and there was no building, no tree, no plant, no ship in sight. All you saw was literally, water with ice, snowy mountains with glaciers, and sky with the occasional cloud. There was nothing else. And especially on this sunny day, there were shades of light blue in the glacier that weren’t to be believed.

Since it had been the last landing, on checking back in you were asked to drop that special thin lifevest you’d been wearing on every landing into a bin, and were asked to leave your borrowed boots outside your cabin door for later pickup. I also found it interesting that, if you had brought your own boots with you but didn’t want to bring them home, you could also leave them to contribute to the ship’s collection. A warm orange-cranberry drink greeted us back on the ship.

On several occasions, tables and chairs had been set up on deck at the back of the ship around the (filled, but unused) swimming pool to serve coffee on deck. However, for this evening it was announced that there would be a barbecue there, with seating outside and also inside, in the buffet restaurant, with windows looking out to the pool area. The air temperature was up to about 7° (maybe 45°), but it was rather nippy, so I joined some Irish people I know inside. Toward the end, the four-piece Filipino band started to play, and everybody ended up outside, with our red parkas. They played all sorts of things: Rock Around the Clock, Blue Suede Shoes, YMCA, Achy-Breaky Heart, and it was interesting to see so many of us red jackets dancing to the music, while in the background, icebergs passed by as the ship proceeded ahead. The staff said that this sort of party doesn’t usually develop, but the international blend of guests, and staff, was particularly good this trip.

Afterwards, there was one more passage. We were to pass through the Errera Channel, which lies between the Peninsula and an offshore island. We slowed down, and I went up to the bridge to see how we progressed. By now it was rather overcast, and it was much more interesting to watch how we maneuvered very slowly around a good number of icebergs, plus two islands, in the Channel, than it was to look at the scenery, which we had essentially been seeing all day.

To make a comparison between Spitsbergen and South Georgia/Antarctica: there was more wildlife here; the dry landings on little portable docks in Spitsbergen were much more comfortable, but less adventuresome; there was more work involved here in getting into the gear alone, let alone getting in and out of Zodiacs and all the beach walking involved; the ships were equally comfortable; the air temperature was similar, more often in the low 40’s in Spitsbergen, and low 40’s to 30’s here. Each had its pluses and minuses; both were worthwhile.

Tonight, when I finished my book from the library and turned out the light, I once again saw large fluffy snowflakes blowing past my window. This is Antarctica.

Day 14 found us in the Drake Passage. We had gone back up the Gerlache Strait almost to Deception Island, then turned north via the Boyd Strait. Giovanni had told me last night that this route was much more ice-free than cutting north earlier. There is blue sky and sun. The sea state is 4, and it’s gotten a bit rough. You have to hold on as you walk; a pencil will roll back and forth on the desk if not stowed. In the afternoon there was a lecture on the Antarctic Treaty. In the evening there was the Captain’s Farewell Reception and Dinner. At the reception he again commented on what an unusually congenial group this was, especially citing last night’s party, and the mix of nationalities. At the dinner I was with a larger group of Australians, Brits, and Americans, after which we retired for a drink at Shackleton’s, the lounge. During the day, the movement had increased. The sea state was now 5, and at the reception, glasses were falling off tables, and people were duck-walking across the room. I sensed little front-to-back pitching; it was mostly side-to-side rolling. A number of people apparently stayed in their cabins, since they didn’t feel well, but the rest of us did enjoy ourselves. At dinner you had to grab your stemmed glasses to keep them from falling over. Eventually they resorted to the old trick of watering down the tablecloths to reduce slippage. When we really moved, it was amazing to look at the angle of water or wine in the glasses. At drinks afterward, we had noticed that the grand piano had three HUGE chains holding it to the floor, and now we knew why. Most chairs had chains underneath bolted to the floor, but that didn’t prevent mine from falling to the side. I was at the end of the coffee table facing the front of the ship, then the chair just tilted to the floor in spite of its chain, and I ended up with one knee on the floor and one elbow on the endtable. No harm done. In my room, the alarm clock was on the floor, so I opened the top drawer, put it in there, and left the drawer open. One has to improvise. I noticed on the TV screen that we had just passed 60°S going north, so we were now in the subantarctic region.

Day 15 is our last full day on the Explorer II (aka Alexander von Humboldt), and we continue to cross the Drake Passage to South America. The sea state remains 5. The balancing skills learned to read the Times on the New York subway while standing (Reflections 2004 Series 18) come in handy while trying to shave before a mirror here, or to carry on a conversation with someone in an open area. We had a briefing on disembarcation tomorrow morning. It was shown that the bulky parka can be folded into itself, and wrapped compactly into its own hood, ending up the size of a fat (red) loaf of bread. It’s true. It works.

In the afternoon the sea state rose for the first time this trip to a 7 (out of 9), and there are whitecaps visible (the British call whitecaps white horses). It’s been announced that the buffet restaurant will be closed the rest of the day, and only the sit-down restaurant will be available, apparently for safety reasons. I’m looking forward to a special tea time today that’s to include Kaiserschmarren, an Austrian bread pudding. An empty drawer in my cabin keeps sliding open, knocking over the wastepaper basket. I’m using the time in the cabin this afternoon to edit all this text for posting on the website as soon as I get back to New York. It’s sunny out, but the waves are quite high. The wastepaper basket has shot across the room twice and dumped paper on the floor. I’ve now stood the basket inside the open drawer.

Tea time was bumpy. At our table, a pitcher of milk fell over. I had the Kaiserschmarren, although they also had scones with clotted cream and jam. I checked what I heard in the dictionary, and “scone” rhymes with “tone” only as a secondary pronunciation. The first pronunciation, which I heard regularly, was like taking “con” and putting an S in front: scon.

By evening we were close enough to land that the seas calmed down. The sea state was down to 2. I stepped out on deck for a moment and could see some land in the distance. Although we aren’t that far from Cape Horn, we won’t be seeing it, for a reason one might not realize. Giovanni, the Staff Captain, told me that since Cape Horn island is in Chile, there is no problem for ships coming from a Chilean port, so the Caronia went to the Cape and circled the island with no trouble. However, for ships coming from any other port (read: Argentina), if they want to come any closer to Cape Horn island than 12 sea miles, they have to pay stiff fees, and also take a Chilean pilot on board, so, although the land I can see is certainly near the Cape, we will not be going there.

There was a crew show in the evening, and, since the crew is Filipino, all but one act was done by them. They did both contemporary music, from rap to Tom Jones, but also traditional Filipino folk dances. It was pretty good.

We arrived back in Ushuaia overnight. The entire sea voyage was approximately 3800 miles or 6100 kilometers. Docked with us was the larger Rotterdam of the Holland-America line, and the much smaller Академик Шокальский/Akademik Shokal’skiy out of Vladivostok, both apparently planning to bring visitors to the Antarctic.

At 6:30 came the wake-up call on the PA in preparation to disembark at 8:00. Some groups dispersed on flights right away, but since our group had some time before the charter flight, we were taken to the Tierra del Fuego National Park, and then had time to walk through Ushuaia. The guide on the bus tried to get the group to pronounce Ushuaia correctly, even saying to repeat it after him, but I’m sure it didn’t register.

Falkland/Malvinas politics was rife in the area. There was a public square called Plaza Islas Malvinas with a cut-out map in stone of the islands. The name of the rather new airport in Ushuaia was Aeropuerto Malvinas Argentinas (Argentine Malvinas Airport). Ushuaia is the capital of the province it’s in, which had this rather long name: Provincia Tierra del Fuego, Antártida, e Islas del Atlántico Sur. In other words, they consider that Tierra del Fuego Province includes the Argentine claim to a wedge of the Antarctic; we were also told in Chile that Chile’s wedge of Antarctica was also an integral part of the country, both these claims flying in the face of the Argentine Treaty stating that all national claims are lifted; both Chile and Argentina have ratified this treaty. But the last part of the name of the province says “and the Islands of the South Atlantic”, which would include the Falklands, South Georgia, and a few others. I saw two Argentinian maps that included the Falklands, showing that West Falkland is named Gran Malvina, East Falkland is named Isla Soledad (Soletude Island), and Stanley is Puerto Argentino (Argentinian Port). Written on the outside of the map I saw in the bookstore in Ushuaia in large writing was “Conocer el país es hacer soberanía”; the best way I can translate this is “To know the land is to establish sovereignty”. I will remind that early next summer is the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War.

The 3.5-hour charter flight took us to Santiago, where other people we had gotten to know started dispersing, some home, some into Santiago. Those of us remaining were given vouchers for dinner at a buffet restaurant, after which there was more dispersal. Only one couple and I were on the New York flight this night. After long waiting, it was 3.5 hours to Lima, an hour’s stopover, and then the endless 7.25 hours overnight to New York jammed into a seat in steerage. We arrived at 7:15, went quickly through formalities, and I caught the driverless AirTrain to Jamaica Station for the LIRR, then the 8:33 to Penn Station, to catch the subway to Rector Street and home. Sitting on the train with all the morning commuters going to work, I was thinking of how different my route to this train had been than theirs. Although none of the three flying segments broke any length record for me, I had been on the go since the wake-up call yesterday morning on the ship. Even subtracting the two hours I had gained back with the time change, it was still over 24 hours. Of course, you could also add the two days on the Drake Passage to say it took three days to come back from Antarctica itself.

Antarctic Humour   The bulletin board on the ship was changed regularly, and I was happy to see that towards the end they posted a collection of cartoons that they must post on every trip, since some have obviously been around for a while. Some are from the New Yorker. All are Antarctica-oriented. A number have to be seen to be enjoyed, but of the others, these were my favourites, and I’ll use them to close this report.

Two penguins are on an ice floe; the older-looking one grumbles: “Call this an iceberg? When I was a kid, we wouldn’t have called this an iceberg.” (New Yorker)

A whale is on stage, standing at a mike: “ ‘Fifty bucks!’ I said. ‘Hey, do I look like I’ve got a hole in my head?’ But seriously, folks....”

A visual: a penguin is standing next to a globe almost as tall as he is, and he’s looking down at the top of it. The globe shows the Americas—but they’re “upside down”.

Two whales in the foreground are in a house. Between them is a large window, through which you can see two Peeping Toms with binoculars. One whale says: “Uh-oh, Norm. Across the street are whale-watchers.”

Six seabirds are on an ice floe. One says: “You imbecile! We flew 12,000 miles for THIS?”

On land, a seabird in charge is talking to the group: “OK, everyone, we’ll be departing for Antarctica in about 15 minutes. If anyone thinks he may be in the wrong migration, let us know now.” In the center of the flock is one seabird wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt.

In a vast crowd of penguins, one in the middle is singing: “I gotta be me, oh I just gotta be me!”

Two penguins are facing each other. One says: “Say...you’re not Bob. You look like him, but you’re certainly not him!”

A penguin lies face down on the ground; hundreds more surround him. One says: “He’s dead all right—beaked in the back...and you know, this won’t be easy to solve.”

Two penguins are facing each other. One says: “I just don’t get casual Friday.”

A penguin, leaning back against a wall and wearing a flashy sports jacket and slacks, tells another: “I just got damn well fed up with being formal all the time.” (New Yorker)