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Good morning, everyone! Good morning!
That’s how Michael, the hotel manager wakes up everyone on the Ortelius, not that anyone could really sleep, because today is the first day on Antarctica! We have pulled into a place called Paradise Harbor, which was named by whalers back in 1920. The sky is a little gray with a dusting of snow, but we are all lined up and ready to go!
The goal of the Basecamp Expedition is to spend as much time ashore as possible. Before the trip, I had to submit a request for the activities I wanted to do, and got grouped accordingly on the ship. None of my pre-scheduled activities were going to happen today, so I had the choice between a Zodiac cruise and a shore excursion. I started with the Zodiac cruise in the morning in the hope that the light would be better in the afternoon!
A Zodiac is a motorized raft that can seat about ten people (or twenty beavers). It’s the most popular way to get around if you’re on an Antarctic cruise, and for good reason. We careened around beautifully carved icebergs, some a bright blue and others like smokey glass! It was pretty cold in the wind but not as cold as I expected. It was also fairly early in the season for wildlife, so we only saw a couple of penguins swimming in the distance. It was a good first taste of the continent!
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After lunch, it was time to suit up again and head ashore! This excited me much more! We took a Zodiac to Waterboat Point, an Antarctic Treaty official historical site! This is where Thomas Bagshawe and M. C. Lester of the British Imperial Expedition spent a year from 1921 to 1922, sheltered in an old whaling boat with their dog team!
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Standing here at Waterboat Point is the González Videla research base, named for Chilean president Gabriel González Videla, who, in 1948, became the first head of state ever to visit Antarctica, part of the global rush for territory that led to the signing of the Antarctic Treaty!
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Nowadays, this base conducts research during the summer months, but since our cruise came during the spring, the base was still closed. That left nothing to do but… frolic with the penguins!
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Thousands of gentoo penguins nest here at Waterboat Point! You can hear their donkey-like calls for miles and smell their fishy poop at the same distance! You can tell a gentoo penguin from the others by their red beaks and the white splotch behind their eyes. Cruise rules emphasized that we had to stay 15 feet away from the penguins, but there were no rules saying the penguins couldn’t walk right up to us! Some of them did! They were very confused to see non-Antarctica creatures at their nesting site, but they were quick to shrug it off and keep doing what they were doing, some of which I can’t politely relate in this blog!
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There were a few crabeater seals nearby but no sign of the famous leopard seal, devourer of penguins. They only really show up when the penguin chicks first start to go into the water and spend the rest of their time eating krill! I was glad that the penguins were safe, for now!
A few hours passed in seconds, and soon it was time to return to the Ortelius to share stories and photos. Short though this excursion may have been, I am still super excited for what tomorrow has in store! We are motoring down the coast for a change of scenery!
‘Til then!
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Stop 6: Paradise Harbor, Antarctica |
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