I tried to update the blog while I was at sea, I promise, but for some reason the emails that I sent from the ship never linked correctly to the blog.
In any case, here is one of the entries that never made it:
I’m writing this email as our ship the Lyubov Orlova coasts quietly through
the Gerlache Strait, mist shrouding the mountains on either side of us. I
am in Antarctica. Jagged black peaks veined with white snow, sheer ice
walls that roar as they calve and collapse into the dark waters below,
fields of alien carved gray blue icebergs that stretch into the fog in all
directions. It is here, more than any other place I have ever visited, that
feels like a different planet.
This trip has been utterly amazing. I was still getting my sea legs during
our first two days crossing the rough waters of the Drake passage, and while
I did get sick once, I could tell the sea sickness medication was working
because I was not nearly as miserable as I usually am under those
conditions. Mostly I just slept for those two days which was fine because
there’s nothing to see in the Drake except an unending horizon of stormy
water and the occasional albatross.
Once we arrived into the sheltered bays of the continent itself, we started
our excursions. Kayaking close in amongst the bergs, hearing them groan and
crack, seeing them calve and roll, and coasting along with curious seals and
groups of penguins has been the highlight of the trip. There are a few
others who are also celebrating their seventh continent, so on Monday, our
small group of kayakers made landfall on a pathetic little spit of rocky
beach under a sheer 700 foot granite cliff and celebrated. I’ve officially
completed my goal!
Last night thirty of us went camping on a small island in a cove in Paradise
Bay surrounded on three sides by a massive black ridge. It was windy and
rainy and freezing from the moment we jumped ashore to set up our tents all
the way through to strike this morning and the gray gloom of twilight lasted
all night making the tents quite bright inside. All the new clothing I
bought has held up amazingly well; the outer layers work so well it’s like
walking around in a portable tent. I am incredibly thankful to have
experienced a night out on the ice. Any time I wanted to complain about the
weather conditions I just remembered Ernest Shackleton and his men who were
forced to spend nearly eighteen months on the ice during the Heroic Age of
Antarctic exploration, and shut my mouth.
Today we visited a Chilean research station which also had a huge colony of
penguins nesting with their eggs. One of my Australian friends slipped on a
rock and fell backwards into a huge pile of penguin guano. Uh Oh! Tomorrow
we’ll be kayaking at Deception Island and the South Shetland Islands before
heading back into the Drake passage Friday and Saturday. Then Sunday I start
the long journey home.
