Blue Horizons
Sea Kayaking Around the World, One Continent at a Time
by Jon Bowermaster
Many times in the past decade,
I’ve found myself far offshore, a mile or two
from the nearest coast, the tip of my kayak
pointed toward the horizon line. Most often
it has been a peaceful scene, the waters calm,
the sun setting (or rising), pelicans or albatross
or petrels soaring just overhead, a light breeze
helping me along. On occasion it’s been the
opposite, seas rough and challenging, a cold
rain falling, the conditions testing my ability
to stay upright.
But whatever the scenario, it’s the place
where blue meets blue that just might be my
most favored place on the planet, the one place
that keeps luring me back.
Granted, my seeking may occasionally have
taken things to a bit of an extreme. You hardly
have to put yourself in a small boat among
15-foot swells to be turned on by the same
scene. A cliché? Perhaps. But who among us
can deny finding ourselves blissful sitting at
ocean’s edge staring at the horizon, hypnotized
by that delicate line in the far distance? Who
among us doesn’t count those solitary, sunsetwashed moments—whether afloat on a boat
or feet dug deep into the sand—as among the
favorites of a lifetime?
Put me on the edge of a sea, ocean or big
lake and I’m at my most content, and during
the past decade I’ve managed to find myself in
that place countless times, in some of the most
beautiful and occasionally treacherous places
on earth. My recently completed, 10-year-long
OCEANS 8 project—sea kayaking around
the world, one continent at a time—has given
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me a unique perspective on both the health of
the world’s oceans and the lives of people who
depend on them. The meandering course has
led me and my teams from remote Alaskan
islands and down the coast of Vietnam, to
stand-alone atolls in the South Pacific, parallel sandy beaches in Gabon and Chile, along
rocky ones in Croatia and Tasmania and to
the glacier-rimmed Antarctic.
For all the differences each place has offered—
from browsing forest elephants on white-sand
beaches in Africa to 70-mile-an-hour winds
raking the Aleutian Islands—similarities tie
them all together. Specifically environmentally. Along our route, I’ve identified a trio
of environmental concerns that face all of the
three-plus billion around the world who live
on or near a coastline: climate change (often
resulting in more frequent and violent storms).
Overfishing. Plastic pollution. It is these growing threats that unite coastal dwellers around
the globe, making them more similar than
different.
Throughout my beach wanderings, the
people met en route and their examples have
affected me powerfully. An illustration: One
morning we were camped beyond a sand dune
near Danang on the central coast of Vietnam,
and I was woken before five by the hum of
human activity. Climbing out of my tent and
over the sandy rise, I discovered thousands of
Vietnamese already on the beach, swimming,
doing tai chi or standing knee deep in the
warm sea gossiping quietly among them before
going off to work. They began each day like
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this, gaining energy and refreshment from the
sea and the sky … and at day’s end they would
return, to finish their day the way it had begun.
At each stop during the past 10 years, I
have paused for long minutes, sometimes an
hour, occasionally more, often far off the coast,
to ponder the horizon line. I have found an
incredible renewing energy in each of these
scenes. And it is the memories of those horizon lines—and the people met along land’s
edge—that keep me going back out there.
THE ISLANDS OF FOUR MOUNTAINS
THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS,
NORTH AMERICA (1999)
Eighty percent of the 35 days we spent in the
Aleutians were gray and wet. On those days when
the sun did come out, we dragged everything
out of our tents to dry— sleeping bags, extra
clothes, boots, soggy paperbacks, cookware.
Everything was spread out and carefully weighted
down with big rocks just in case the famous
winds of the region, where the North Pacific
meets the Bering Sea, returned.
One such afternoon, the temperatures shot
into the 60s. We stripped down to T-shirts, and
our teammate Scott McGuire fired up both
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DANANG, VIETNAM (2001)
Coming to Vietnam was a direct response to
my experience in the Aleutian Islands. This
time out, I wanted to see lots of people and
paddle long days on warm water. Our 800mile, two-month-long adventure along the coast
of North Vietnam was far from the Bering
Sea in every way. We passed long stretches
of beautiful, unadulterated sand beach near
the central coast, as well as paddling into the
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ever seen. In three directions, big, snow-covered
peaks glistened pink in the dwindling light,
seemingly afloat on the unusually calm sea.
A full moon was climbing over the shoulder
of Mount Carlisle a dozen miles west.
“It takes so much to get out into a place this
wild, this remote,” said Barry, leaning back
in his camp chair, “that sometimes it doesn’t
seem worth it. I know you know what I mean.
It’s hard work. There’s not a ton of money in
it. And it makes family life tough. But now—
right now—with this all around us, there’s no
place on the planet I’d rather be. Don’t you
pity those guys back home in their offices?”
We shared a look of agreement we’d shared
before in countless other remote spots around
the world. In the end, we were the lucky ones.
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pancakes. We’d just spent three days stuck in
our tents, locked down by fierce winds and
rain, so everything took on an extra-sunny
hue. For the first time in what seemed like a
string of bleak days, we were smiling.
We weren’t surprised by all the bad weather.
I had chosen this remote group of volcanic
islands in the heart of the Aleutian chain—halfway between Russia and Alaska—specifically
because I wanted an extreme challenge. No
one had been out here with sea kayaks, 200
miles southwest of Dutch Harbor, since the
last Aleuts paddled here, probably 200 years
before. Our days had been spent paddling on
cold seas (34, 35 degrees Fahrenheit), hounded
by winds gusting to 60 and 70 miles an hour.
This was hardly anyone’s idea of a vacation
spot. The only sign of man we found on these
most remote islands was the detritus washed off
fishing boats—giant balls of fishing line, plastic
beer cases, bottles, shoes and more—pushed
deep inland by winter storms.
Yet … this June day at dusk, which fell around
10 p.m. in this region of nearly 24-hour light,
my best friend, photographer Barry Tessman,
and I found ourselves leaning against a big,
sea-smoothed driftwood log, hypnotized by one
of the most spectacular scenes either of us had
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63
heart of heavily populated—and heavily polluted—bays, sometimes home to as many as
5,000 fishermen living on boats.
Several weeks into our exploration, north of
Danang, we paddled into an on-the-water farm,
where an extended family grew crabs. The scene
was beautiful in its sparseness. Bamboo stakes
in the shallow mud defined the borders of the
farm. Red banners atop tall poles marked the
center of the farms—which they “rented” from
the government—and held altars laden with
joss sticks, candles, flowers, small plates of food
and offerings to the gods of small wads of cash.
A crabman stood waist-deep in the shallows
and waved us toward his home, a stilted shack
with a bamboo roof. When we paddled up, 20
members of an extended family emerged from
all corners of the weir to greet us.
I chose my paddling partner for this adventure, Ngan Nguyen, for her knowledge of the
local culture and the language. Born in the
Mekong River delta, she escaped to the U.S.
in 1975 at the end of the “American War” and
grew up in New Orleans. Each day traveling
the coast had been incredibly eye-opening for
me, but also for her.
“I am amazed every day by not just the
beauty of the coastline and the sea,” she says,
as we paddle up to the ladder leading to the
crabmen’s home, “but by the strength of these
people. It’s a tough life out here, and many
people would have given up long ago, moved
to the big cities.”
The patriarch is a war veteran. His wife,
their four sons and spouses, and a dozen small
children all live on this little plot of saltwater. He
remembers meeting American soldiers during
the fighting; the rest of his family had never
met an American. They are especially curious
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about our kayaks, touching them, cranking the
rudders up and down, most impressed by the
red-and-gray bilge pumps. They marvel that
we have hair on our legs.
We are invited into the shack-on-stilts for
lunch. Crabs, of course. While we eat, they
stare, laughing behind their hands at our
awkwardness with the shelled critters. The
eldest boy takes my crab from me, skillfully
picking the tender white meat from the tips
of the claws and handing it to me.
A mile away, we can make out shiny new
houses built on a barrier island, paid for by
money sent back by relatives who had successfully escaped to Australia, Europe, the
United States.
We paddle away as a golden sunset envelops the small bay. I ask Ngan if the family of
crabbers is jealous of their neighbors and their
modern houses.
“Not really,” she reports. “The old man just
said, ‘Life is all about luck. Ours will change
one day, I am sure. I am sure! In the meantime,
look at this beautiful place we call home. In
many ways, we consider ourselves lucky.’”
TOAU, FRENCH
POLYNESIA, 2002
I was paddling toward a seemingly vacant
beach on a walnut-shaped atoll in the Tuamotu
archipelago—200 miles northeast of Tahiti—
when a voice shouted loudly from deep in the
plantation palms, “Hello, my friends!”
Rotund, in a blue one-piece swimming suit
and gray shorts, Eliza Snow introduced herself
as one of the atoll’s 10 inhabitants. She’d lived
here all her 50 years, in a two-room plywood
and tin-roofed shack, with her whippet-thin,
62-year-old husband named Henry and a bulky
20-year-old son she calls “100 Kilos.”
For us, coming to French Polynesia was a
no-brainer. Adventurous women and men in
boats not much bigger than ours first explored
all of the South Pacific, including this remote
chain of coral reef atolls. Plus, in many people’s
imagination, the South Pacific is the very definition of paradise on earth—coconut palms
swaying in the breeze, white-sand beaches, azure
skies. Paradise today is not without concerns,
though. The planet’s warming climate is creating
warmer seas, which produce more frequent and
violent storms—a major concern when your
home is built as these are on sand spits rising
just six to 10 feet above sea level.
Sunglasses stuck into her thick black hair,
Eliza smiled a big, gap-toothed smile. Since
she was the first person we’d seen since we left
the last atoll, she got to hear the embarrassing
story of how we managed to leave behind all of
our freshwater. The only thing we truly need
out here, the only irreplaceable necessity, and
we had left it sitting on a cement dock. She
listened, nodded her head, seeming to understand our dilemma, but in seconds was waving
goodbye and zooming off into the sunset in
her white-plywood speedboat ...
... Only to return early the next morning
accompanied by her son, who, as the boat skidded to a stop in the sand, generously handed
a blue plastic jug of fresh water over the side
of the boat.
Eliza had brought us another gift: a coconut picker. As long as there are coconuts, she
reminded us, you always have fresh water. And
there were coconuts everywhere. The freshest
and juiciest are the green ones high in the trees,
which required a long pole with a metal hook
to snare. Eliza demonstrated and then handed
the tool over to us. Within minutes, our selfsufficiency quota had doubled.
I had one question for Eliza before she
took off. Most noticeably at night, we heard
falling coconuts thudding to the ground with
regularity. I asked how many times in her life
she’d been hit by falling coconuts. It seemed
like an inevitability, statistically speaking. She
looked at me as if I were crazy.
“Never, of course!” she laughed.
Why not?
“Because, silly, coconuts have eyes. Look
at them! They can see if you’re underneath,
and, if you are a good person, they will not
fall on you. I promise. In my family, it has
never happened!”
ANTOFAGASTA,
CHILE (2003)
Twenty-five-foot waves crash against La Portada,
the 250-foot limestone arch in the Pacific Ocean
set just off the coastal city. With each crash,
a flock of seabirds rises off the whitewashed
cliffs lining the near shore.
La Portada is probably Chile’s best-known
singular piece of geography. For us, bobbing
around in kayaks in rough seas under a gray
sky, it represents the gateway to the Altiplano.
Beyond the cliffs rise sandy hills straight up
into the desert. This is desolate country, dry and
dusty, despite being on the edge of the ocean.
Our mission this time out, admittedly a
bit Quixotic, is to paddle along the coast and
then drag our kayaks from sea level up to the
high desert plains of Chile, Argentina and
Bolivia. While these high plains are some of
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the driest places on earth (in some regions
it hasn’t rained in a hundred years or more),
much of the Altiplano was once covered by big
mineral lakes and the edge of the ocean. Our
expedition here allows us to ponder how the
planet changes and evolves. The driest place on
earth today hasn’t always been so, which makes
us wonder, Where’s next? My vote? Las Vegas!
For a few days before starting our two-monthlong trudge up into the desert, we base on Isla
St. Maria, just a mile offshore, and spend our
days paddling along the rugged shoreline. Early
one morning, we round the corner of a distant
island and paddle into the midst of what in
most countries would be a protected marine
sanctuary. Hundreds of seals, sea lions, pelicans,
otters, turtles and thousands of seabirds greet
us. As we snake through the rock outcroppings,
my longtime teammate and videographer, Alex
Nicks, is almost sunk by a 1,000-pound male
seal launching off a big rock.
The only people we see during our days
on the Pacific are marisco fishermen who live
year round in the small island town of Caleta
Constitucion. They surface in the midst of the
bay resembling big black hippos in their thick
wetsuits and helmets, armed with long barbed
forks and trailing plastic pails filled with sea
urchins and oysters. On our first meeting, I
pull soggy pesos out of my pocket and negotiate for dinner, which we cook over an open
fire in the sand, under a fiery apricot sunset.
The next day, we walk the sandy streets of
the small town, looking to buy a supply of
the one thing most difficult to find out here:
fresh water. Spying a rusty tank atop an adobe
house, we knock on the door and are invited in
to a cool garden. A red, white and blue plastic
tarp covers the open terrace, and we sit in bar
chairs in the open-air kitchen. Our hosts, a
husband and wife named Frederico and Ana,
who live on this remote island year round and
have for 20 years, offer to trade us clear rain
water for AA batteries. We ask when it might
rain again.
“It could be a month, could be four months,
who knows,” says Frederico, who manages the
town’s fishermen’s co-op. “Every year it is different … and lately it seems to rain less and
less frequently.” I ask why he stays in such a
dry, remote place.
“Have you seen the sunrise here?” he answers.
“What about the sunset? Those are enough
reasons for me to stay! As for my wife, you’ll
have to ask her! I’m never sure why she stays,
actually. Maybe because I’m such a nice guy!” I
turn to Ana for a response and she just smiles.
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GABON, AFRICA (2004)
Just two months after a successful, 2,400-mile
trip through the Altiplano, we loaded up our
gear and flew to Gabon. The climates couldn’t
have been any more different: The Altiplano
was high and dry, equatorial Gabon low and
wet. But the biggest differences were the animals. In the Altiplano, we’d seen a few ground
lizards; in Gabon it was as if we’d stumbled
upon Noah’s Ark, circa 2004.
There were five of us on this expedition—
photographer Pete McBride, wildlife biologist
Mike Fay, myself and two young Gabonese
eco-guides—and even though we spent long
days in the kayaks on the ocean, we often found
ourselves at day’s end happily sitting in the
surf zone, back-paddling against big rolling
waves attempting to push us toward the whitesand beach called Petit Loango. What kept
us at sea, when every body part was aching?
The big animals that emerged from the forest
onto the shore right in front of us. Big, brown
forest elephants. Families of buffalo. Dwarf
crocodiles. The only thing missing were the
surfing hippos, which Mike said usually only
came out early in the morning.
“I’ve never seen anything like this from the
seat of a kayak,” he whispers.
On the beach, as we unpack our kayaks, I
ask Mike—who’s lived and worked in Africa
the past 25 years—if this spot has a name.
“Well, sometimes we call it Hippo Camp, for
the big guys who surf here. Or Croc Camp. But
nothing formal. Do you have another idea?”
“Baobab Camp,” I suggest, given the 100-yearold tree we are camped under. It is one of just
two baobabs along this sandy stretch, most
likely planted by a slave merchant 200 to 300
years ago. Slaving was once the main industry
here, replaced today by oil drilling, tree cutting and—slowly—eco-tourism. Despite its
remoteness, a recent sweep by park employees
resulted in hundreds of garbage bags full of
plastic washed ashore from as far away as Japan.
“We’ll have to do that kind of pickup once a
month to keep these beaches looking clean,”
admits Mike.
The baobab unexpectedly provides our
evening’s entertainment. We are cooking dinner and Mike is explaining the job he’d most
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love to have (chasing down illegal fishermen
from a bazooka-rigged cigarette boat) when
a young male elephant—dark skin, yellowed
ivory—comes sniffing through the sea grass
just behind where we sit on a downed, oceansmoothed tree. He’s just 20 feet from us, intently
focused on his search, sniffing for the fruit he
is convinced is there … somewhere.
“Holy shit” is our collective, whispered
response.
We are upwind so he doesn’t catch our
scent, allowing us to watch him forage from
up close, though we do duck down on the far
side of the fallen tree just in case he might
get annoyed by our observing, our proximity.
After half an hour of fruitless searching,
he wanders off. Which makes us all wonder
out loud if during the night, camped on the
edge of the sea grass, a curious elephant or
buffalo—or hippo?—might nudge our tent.
“Sleep light,” says Mike.
KOMIZA, CROATIA (2005)
Paddling along the shoreline of the diminutive island of Vis 30 miles off the coast of the
mainland, we spot a small sunken boat lying
in 20 feet of water. Our assumption is that it
somehow got off its buoy and sank, probably
somehow related to the incessant winds that
rack the Adriatic during summer months.
On many days here on the Adriatic Sea, our
biggest challenge is hiding from the intense
sun and heat.
As we paddle above the sunken boat, a tall
man in jean shorts calls out to us from the shore.
“Can you help us?” Apparently it is his boat
and he is wondering if we will hook a rope to
it and help him drag it to shore.
Assembled on shore is a motley crew of fisher
guys, most of whom look like they spend their
days doing anything but fishing. In cut-off
shorts and tank tops, most armed with liters
of lukewarm beer, their organizational efforts
exist mostly of arguing with each other about
the best way to drag the heavy, soaked boat
onto the sand. (Our initial thought—that the
boat sank by accident—was mistaken. They
had sunk it on purpose, to allow the boards of
the leaking boat to expand and swell.)
The gang leader is a burly man with a Santa
Claus beard nicknamed “Fire.” As we work
together with ropes and winches and kayaks
and boards to drag the boat toward the sand
one inch at a time, it is Fire who barks out
the orders, runs to make sure the knots are
tight, commands the movement of four-by-fours
placed beneath the boat as rollers.
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quality
quality
in every
Throughout the afternoon, each man pulls
me aside to brag about Fire’s fishing expertise.
“He’s the best on the island,” they each say, “a
truly great fisherman!” Working out of a boat
not much bigger than he, his reputation is for
always—always—catching fish.
He is one of the lucky ones. We have met
many fishermen throughout the islands
of Croatia who tell us the fishing is awful,
blaming the Italians, Croatians, Japanese,
Americans. There are fish in the Adriatic,
they explain, but almost everything caught
is sold to Japanese processing boats that prowl
the Mediterranean, hungry to satisfy the huge
sushi market back home. Everyone agrees that
overfishing, an inadequate fishing fleet and a
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69
FLINDERS ISLAND,
TASMANIA (2006)
lack of infrastructure to transport and process
seafood have left Croatia unable to meet the
demand that a burgeoning tourist industry has
placed on a dwindling supply. As evidence, in
a restaurant on Saipan we pay $80—$80!—for
a white fish caught just offshore. During the
course of our 10 years exploring the world’s
coastlines, overfishing is a constant everywhere
we go, as are evidence of climate change and
plastic pollution.
After a couple hours, and many time-outs
for consultation, argument and more beer, the
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boat is successfully beached. As a reward, we
are invited into the cool shade of an ancient
stone alleyway for bread and cheese and even
more beer. I ask Fire how he got his nickname.
“Wouldn’t something like ‘King of the Sea’
be more appropriate?” I suggest.
He laughs. Fire, it turns out, is short for
Firewater. “I’ve caught millions of fish and
drank millions of pivos (beers), chased by who
knows how many millions of brandies and
whiskies. But I like ‘King of the Sea.’ I have
earned the title!”
Choosing just one stretch of coast on each
continent was always a struggle, since there
were always so many good options. Australia may have been the most difficult, simply
because of its 4,000-mile circumference. But
when my finger wandered down the map to
its island state of Tasmania, any other option
disappeared.
It took us four weeks to paddle halfway
around Tassie, and at trip’s end, on a perfect
summer day, we found ourselves camped on
a small island off Flinders Island in the heart
of the Bass Strait, halfway between Tasmania
and mainland Australia.
We’d made a couple friends on the island—
Charles Mason and Fiona Stewart—who’d
joined us for an afternoon of hunting abalone
and crayfish for a campfire feast. We welcomed
Charles’ assistance since he makes a living diving for abalone; Fiona looks after orphaned
wombats and other marsupials, a full-time job
on an island where they outnumber humans
400 to 1.
After successfully prying a half-dozen abalone off the shallow ocean floor, we pull-start
Charles’ Zodiac and motor up the west coast
to a cove where he suspects giant cray hide in
crevasses. “I found them there for last Christmas,” he shouts over the sound of the engine.
Along the way, we pass through a pack of 30
big dolphins swimming against the current,
feeding and rising out of the water in twos and
threes and—once—a dozen abreast. Tasmania
is the first place we’ve visited in 10 years that
appears to have a well-managed and tightly
regulated fishery. Both abalone and crayfish
licenses have actually been reduced in recent
years in an effort to try to preserve both species.
Too often, those kinds of restrictions are put
in place after a sea has already been overfished.
Here, at least on the sea, Tasmania is ahead
of the pack.
Thirty minutes after he slips overboard,
Charles returns to the surface with three
2.5-foot-long crayfish, each weighing about
six pounds. With enough cray and abalone to
feed a party of 20 (and we are just seven!), we
race back to camp against a backdrop of sea
spray brilliantly lit by the setting sun.
On shore, we slice the abs into thin strips
and search for a pot big enough to boil the giant lobsters in. The best we can do is a beat-up
red metal pail found half-buried in the sand,
which works perfectly. As dinner cooks, we
laugh at our good fortune; in any restaurant in
the world, this would be a $1,000-plus dinner.
The abalone is cooked first, pan fried with
garlic and onion, and we devour it in minutes.
Stuffed and awaiting the cray to boil, we slip
down to the beach in the dark, to watch silently
as a rookery of several dozen penguins comes
ashore. They swim up to the beach and waddle
uphill toward nests hidden in the brush, masked
by the dark but just feet from where we hide
in the scrub. A midnight wind clears away any
lingering clouds. The sky ablaze with stars,
this may be the most beautiful night of our
monthlong exploration of Tasmania.
We leave the beach with the sunrise the next
morning, under a stunning pink and pale blue
sky, a handful of lingering stars and a translucent sliver of moon still glowing opaquely. The
scene, like so many sunrises I’ve seen around
the globe, feels … magical. It also fills me with
a melancholy I’ve felt many times before: Go?
Stay? Go? Stay?
I’ve engaged in the same internal debate
on a variety of mornings and myriad different
beaches around the world. I am always—always—tempted to stay, thinking this may very
well be the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.
I’ve long been seeking my own definition of
paradise. Maybe this is it?
So far, I’ve chosen to keep moving. In part
because I’m insatiably curious and probably
because I know that a next beautiful peek over
the edge, another beautiful blue-meets-blue
horizon is around the next corner.
ANTARCTIC
PENINSULA, 2008
I long knew that going to Antarctica with
kayaks would be the final expedition of my
OCEANS 8 project. Far away, expensive to
reach and logistically complicated—requiring permits from the U.S. State Department,
the Environmental Protection Agency and
the National Science Foundation—a private
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expedition to Antarctica proffered challenges
far beyond the cold and ice.
Of course, it was the cold and ice that most
attracted us. Antarctica was a must in order
to provide a full report on the health of the
world’s oceans, since what is happening to the
seas that surround it impacts all of the world’s
oceans. Especially where we were headed, along
Antarctica’s skinny, 600-mile-long peninsula,
where warming temperatures influenced by
ocean waters are helping to reduce its ice faster
each year.
We sailed to Antarctica on a private sailboat from the southernmost yacht club in the
world, in Puerto Williams, Chile. We would
spend the following six weeks exploring both
sides of the peninsula, from the air, by sailboat
and ultimately by kayak. It dawned on me just
how lucky—and remote—we were when on a
mid-January morning we kayaked through the
Lemaire Channel. Known by the increasing
numbers of tourists now visiting the peninsula
each season as “Kodak Alley,” for the tall glaciers
running down to the sea on either side of the
narrow pass, it had never looked as impressive,
as inspiring as it did from sea level.
My Chilean partner-in-expeditions, Rodrigo
Jordan, paddled alongside as we paddled across
the 30.5-degree (Fahrenheit) waters. Known
for his climbing adventures—he’s been up K2
and Everest (twice)—he’s curious about what
I gain from traveling at sea level. Together we
pull up to an ice floe that is moving through
the pass at a slightly slower rate than we are.
On it sleeps a half-ton leopard seal, a big beast
near the top of the marine animal food chain
in Antarctica. Safe with the knowledge that we
are not predators, he raises his head, gives us a
look, then quickly goes back to sleep. “Now,
my friend,” Rodrigo says as we float through
the sun-blessed channel surrounded on both
sides by mountains and ice, snow and sea, “I
understand. There is no way to understand the
physicality of this place, both its toughness
and fragility, better than at sea level.”
During the course of our several weeks
in Antarctica, as we move down the western
edge of the peninsula, we stop in at a handful
of scientific bases. At each, veteran Antarctic
scientists point out where glaciers have receded
in the past decade (by 30, 40 and 50 feet),
exposing islands where none had been known
to exist before. But nothing we saw was a more
poignant sign of how warming air temperatures
are changing parts of Antarctica than the week
of solid rain that nearly drowned us. Rain may
be the worst thing for Antarctica, degrading
its glaciers even faster and impacting its most
populous wildlife—penguins—which are simply
not built for cold rain. Chicks are dying, their
down rain-soaked; other whole colonies are
simply moving south, where it is colder.
The most beautiful moment of our final
adventure? Around midnight near 67 degrees
south, we were on an open channel, the horizon line dotted with sculptured icebergs set
aglow by the almost-setting sun. We heard
the humpbacks before we saw them. A halfdozen surrounded us, playfully surfacing in
pairs, taunting us with their proximity. We
tried to keep up, but within an hour they had
outpaced us. Near the horizon line, we could
still barely make out the silver of their backs
as they surfaced under a now orange light. If
they never returned, it would be enough of a
memory to last a lifetime. w
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