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WHITE
WILDERNESS
Antarctica is best approached by sea. Only a slow, and sometimes
rough, rite of passage can prepare visitors for this immense, dramatic
and ever-changing continent of ice and its extraordinary wildlife.
PHOTO COURTESY POLAR LATITUDES
STORY KATE WHITEHEAD
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the same spot a dozen times and it would look different
each time, such are the vagaries of the weather.
The landings are done by Zodiac, an inflatable
rubber motorised craft that carries about 10 people.
The International Association of Antarctica Tour
Operators (IAATO) oversees tourism and regulates
where and when ships visit. Hannah Lawson, the
expedition leader, has reserved the landing sites well
ahead of the voyage. Chief among IAATO rules is that
only 100 passengers can go ashore at any one site. This
means that if you are on a ship that has 200 passengers,
landings have to be staggered. Sea Explorer is a
relatively small ship that takes about 100 guests, which
means everyone can go ashore each time.
Antarctica really is a land of ice – 98 per cent of
the continent is frozen water and 88 per cent of the
coastline is ice, either part of the ice sheet, ice shelves
or glacier. This makes landing a little tricky and the
expedition team must scout out a suitable ice-free
landing site for each shore visit. They aren’t the only
ones facing this dilemma – penguins do, too. At the
start of the breeding season in November, the penguins
come ashore to find a mate. No surprise then that the
Zodiac and penguins often share the same landing sites.
This doesn’t seem to bother the penguins; they’ve not
learned to be fearful of humans and treat people as just
another species.
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summer, the sun sets after 10pm, but it never gets
properly dark. It’s close to midnight, the inky sea
brushed with twilight when we spot the first iceberg
from the bridge. It shows up as a yellow blob on the
radar and it’s a good 10 minutes before we see it
silhouetted against the sky. There’s a thrill as we pass
it, like stalking a wild animal. This is why you want to
cross the Drake Passage. You want these little teasers so
you are better prepared to comprehend the vastness of
Antarctica.
In the morning, the radar shows dozens of icebergs
but you don’t need any technology to see them – they’re
all around us. Up on the bridge the Filipino crew charts
a course through the icebergs. No two icebergs are the
same – some are awe-inspiring in size, others small
and known as “growlers”. Some are flat-topped, or
“tabular”, and are freshly carved from a glacier, and
others have been bashed about and sculpted by the sea.
And just as we are becoming accustomed to seeing
the icebergs in the grey and gloomy afternoon light,
there is a break in the clouds and a shaft of sunlight
slides across the sea and widens until it’s a great gash in
the sky. We get out first sighting of land – a breathtaking
spotlight on the white desert.
Think of Antarctica as a giant stage set: the director
has only a few materials to play with – ice, water and
light – and yet from this simple palate he creates such
dramatic and ever-changing scenes. You could land at
PENGUIN PARADE
PHOTO COURTESY 01,03 POLAR LATITUDES 02 A2A SAFARI
N
o matter how much you prepare for
Antarctica, it still comes as a surprise.
The vast, white continent is so unlike
anywhere else on Earth that it’s the
closest most of us are likely to come to
leaving the planet.
It’s possible to take a commercial flight directly
to Antarctica – the plane lands on a glacier – but that
would spoil the experience. This is a journey that
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demands
to be savoured. Hotfooting it straight to
Antarctica would be like fast-forwarding to the climax
of a thriller: the tension and build-up are a large part of
the pleasure.
Sea Explorer is a luxury expedition ship operated by
Polar Latitudes. Like most cruise ships to Antarctica,
it departs from Ushuaia, on the southern tip of
Argentina, and makes its way through the picturesque
and protected Beagle Channel before charting a course
across the Drake Passage, a stretch of water that is
notoriously unpredictable. If you’re lucky you could
cruise through the two-day crossing – a “Drake Lake”
experience. If not, it could be a “Drake Shake”, where
the ship is tossed about by sometimes brutal weather.
But whatever the Drake throws at you, it’s all part of the
rite of passage to Antarctica.
A wandering albatross follows the ship in the
afternoon. Another joins him and for hours the pair
soar majestically, accompanying the ship south. In
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THINK OF ANTARCTICA AS
A GIANT STAGE SET: THE
DIRECTOR HAS ONLY A FEW
MATERIALS TO PLAY WITH –
ICE, WATER AND LIGHT
01 Antarctica is
a land of ice - 98
per cent of the
continent is frozen
water and 88
per cent of the
coastline is ice.
02 Sea Explorer
is a luxury
expedition
operated by
Polar Latitudes.
03 Humpback
whale
Penguins are ridiculously endearing. Even the toughest
cookie goes a little soft inside at the first close-up
encounter. They move through the sea like dolphins
and from the Zodiac you can marvel at the way one
flick of their fins propels them through the crystal clear
water. Another push and perhaps a little scramble and
they shoot out of the water onto the land. And this is
where they become so sweet and often amusing as they
waddle through the snow.
What people don’t tell you about penguins is that
they poop. A lot. What’s more, it’s pink poo. The pink
colour comes from their diet of krill, a tiny, shrimplike crustacean. The paths from the shoreline to their
nesting site are known as “penguin highways” and from
early on in the season they are clearly visible from some
distance as distinct pink lines etched into the snow.
From late October through November, you will
see the penguins coming to shore to find a mate. At
the Antarctic Peninsula – where the majority of ships
visit because there’s more to see in this area – the
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three types of penguin you’re most likely to see are
the Gentoo, the Chinstrap, and the Adélie. Each has
distinctive markings and it doesn’t take long to tell
them apart. The courtship ritual is an extended one.
Most keep their mate from one year to the next and as
soon as they get onshore, they go about trying to find
their partner by stretching their necks up to the sky and
calling out in donkey-like braying noises.
An established nesting colony is a noisy – and often
smelly – affair. Pick out one penguin from the group
and watch for 10 minutes and you’ll appreciate how
industrious they are, searching for pebbles and twigs
to line their nests and bonding with their partner.
Occasionally, there will be a noisy outburst when a
jealous or thieving penguin oversteps the mark and
is quickly put in its place. Penguins are very social
creatures and observing them is like watching dozens of
soap operas played out on the snow.
After the courtship period – and some fast and
furious mating – comes nesting time. Visit at the end
of December if you want to see the chicks hatching and
the white and grey balls of fluff demanding to be fed.
At this time, most of the snow has melted to reveal the
craggy rock faces that the penguins nest on. Later in the
season, the weather is also warmer, with more blue-sky
days and a better chance of spotting whales.
Although penguins tend to steal the limelight, there
is so much more to this place. We see a fin whale, minke
whale and humpback whales, Weddell seals with their
permanent grins, fur seals and a host of birdlife. Beyond
the animal life is the sheer spectacle of the imposing
icy panoramas. Without trees or anything else that
06 Cormorant and
chick
07 Landings are
done by Zodiac,
an inflatable
rubber motorised
craft that carries
about 10 people.
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07
PHOTO COURTESY 04,06 POLAR LATITUDES 05,07 KATE WHITEHEAD
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04 At the start
of the breeding
season in
November,
penguins come
ashore to find a
mate.
05 Neko Harbour
might give you a sense of scale, distances are difficult to
judge. Everything is bigger than you realise, lending the
landscape a surreal, Alice in Wonderland edge.
Lawson cuts the Zodiac’s engine and we drift
though an iceberg graveyard. The icebergs here have
run aground and are slowly melting. These majestic
slabs of ice, carved from a glacier and shaped and
moulded by the sea, wouldn’t look out of place in a
modern art museum.
Inherently unstable, the icebergs periodically lurch
forward and flip over, revealing intricately chiselled or
pocked undersides. Some are eroded to form archways
and columns and others have long, protruding blue
tongues of ice. Get up close and you can see the bulk of
its body ballooning out underneath like a mammoth
jellyfish.
And then there are the occasional pieces of black
ice – 50,000-year-old water that has been compressed
over time so that all the air and impurities have been
removed, leaving ice that looks like shards of glass.
Lawson leans over the side of the Zodiac and with bare
hands, for a better grip, she heaves a huge chunk of
black ice into the boat.
“We can take this bit back - it’s the best ice to have
in your G&T,” Lawson says.
After sipping a gin and tonic from the ship’s deck,
all other G&Ts will pale into insignificance. It’s the
ultimate cocktail on the trip of a lifetime.
The author’s trip was subsidised by A2A Journeys, Hong
Kong, which offers tailored luxury adventure trips to
Latin America and Antarctica. www.a2asafaris.com
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