Falkland Islands

Sunday January 26. At sea towards Puerto Madryn

We spent Saturday in the Falkland Islands. It has some of the most dreary landscape I’ve ever seen. Rock mountains. No trees – there’s too much wind. But when the sun shines, the mountains glow with the scrub vegetation – grasses and mosses. On the beaches it’s tussock grass which can grow to three feet high.

I’ve a tour out to one of the Gentoo Penguin rookeries. It’s an hour and a half from Stanley – about half paved and half gravel. I’ve snagged a front seat in the minibus so I can shoot out the windshield. The land is very flat – except of course for the mountains. Sheep are an important product as are tourists and fish.  At Bertha’s Beach – so named for a ship, The Bertha, which ran aground and broke up on a little island offshore – we find Upland Geese, the males in bright white and the females in a reddish brown plumage.

And then there’s the penguins. All the Gentoos nested in the same spot well away from the ocean. When the chicks were born and grown a bit, the colony broke into four  or five groups. You can tell the adults; their plumage is pure black whereas the chicks are grey. Some of the adults are starting their moult; they will be ashore until their new plumage which is waterproof comes in. Some of the chicks are starting to fledge, that is grow their adult feathers. Meanwhile they run around looking for Mom or Dad to feed them. And they mostly ignore us. We’ve been told to keep our distance and not block any of the routes between the sea and the birds. Down on the beach there is a lone King Penguin in black and grey and gold. And two Magellenic penguins smaller again but distinctive with their white eye and neck rings. We’ve an hour here and then it’s another hour and half back to Stanley.

There’s a CaraCara – one of the predators – on a fence post by the armed forces base (there are 3500 civilians on the island and 1500 Army-Navy-Air Force).

Stanley is a nice little town. You’d swear you were in England. A supply ship comes in regularly from England bringing needed supplies. The Argentines are still in a tiff over losing the war 38 years ago!

Hope all is well.

Best

Bob and Elizabeth

12 Stanley - Falkland Islands

Days 3 and 4

Friday January 24. Sailing to the Falkland Islands

Day 3 Wilhelmina Bay and Charlotte Bay

A nice calm day with spotty sunlight. Glassy seas. As always mountains of cooled lava (that’s the black mountains) and snow and ice. When the ice builds into sheets then they become glaciers. There’s lots of glaciers down here. Some even have names.  A few birds. Icebergs. And whales. And more whales. Breaching whales. Feeding whales. Diving whales. It’s estimated we saw over 100 humpback whales while we were here.

It started calmly enough. There’s a  few humpbacks floating and showing their dorsal fin and then diving. And then over to starboard, more than a kilometer away (thus the small images) one starts to breach or jump out of the water. And he does it again. And again. And then several groups (pods) start getting closer to the ship and bubble or bubble net feeding. The whales will dive as a group and exhale a stream of bubbles. They position themselves so that the bubbles form a cylinder coming up through the water and trapping all the krill they can inside. And then the whales come swimming up through that same ring of bubbles and eat as many krill as they can. A large humpback can eat up to 4000 lbs a day. And the krill around the ship are so densely packed that the ship’s depth sounders cannot determine where the bottom is located. And we’re stopped dead in the water until all the whales have moved past us.

Then we continue on through the bay. The golden colour in the lighting/sky is true to what the day was like: bluish-white where we were but golden behind the ship.

Charlotte Bay was another pretty little bay. We’re becoming inured to the scenery I think. There’s a nice iceberg with a sea arch – a hole through the bottom side so a bridge is formed on the top. More whales but nothing like earlier.

Day 4 Hope Bay

I feel cheated. Holland America Lines advertises a four-day Antarctic Experience. Well here we are on day four and we get about two hours and we’re off towards the Falklands. Now to be fair, fog was moving in and we were in fog most of the remainder of the day, but from the location of Hope Bay it was obvious we were not going to do a lot today; he sailed all the way to the top of the peninsula during the

night.

Hope Bay has a massive snow field (a glacier topped with more snow than I want to shovel – ever!) And the entrance is choked with ice so we aren’t going too far in. There is a large Argentine research base here but the difference is that there are families here, not just researchers. And a school. And two teachers.  The first child born in Antarctica was born here. Lots of little red houses and other buildings. And Adele penguins. As many as 100,000 nesting pairs. And I get my first really decent photos including the iconic penguin on an ice floe. As we sail away we encounter a large tabular ice berg estimated at 45m above the water level, another 100m below (because it seems to be grounded on a ridge 100m down) and about 550m long. This is one huge ice cube.

Enjoy the photos.

Best

Bob and Elizabeth

08 Lemaire Channel and Paradise Harbour

09 Neumayer Channel, Cuverville Island, Dallman Bay

10 Wilhelmina Bay, Charlotte Bay

11 Hope Bay

Cuverville Island and the Neumayer Channel

Thursday January 23. On our way out of Antarctica

Day 2 in Antarctica

It is quite a cloudy day. Not really that cold; we’ve been at 1°C or so most of the time. It doesn’t get a lot colder at night because the sun is still up most of the time. But when you are outside and it’s windy and the ship’s speed adds to the wind, it gets cold.

We had a terrible night; the smoke alarm went off at 3 a.m. and shocked both of us awake. A call to the front desk (remember that this ship is really a great big floating hotel) and a crew member arrived within three or four minutes to take the battery out and then replace it. It’s hard getting back to sleep.

About 8 a.m. and we are into the Neumayer Channel with more spectacular scenery. Even when it’s ordinary, it is spectacular. There are some humpback whales here. Generally all you see is the short dorsal fin and the tail fluke when they dive. We got a flipper flap and a roll out of one beside the ship today. There are a couple of research stations along this route and a Quark Expedition ship moored off of one. Quark Expeditions are cruise ships for a lot fewer passengers with a lot more money. There’s also a British ship here researching glacial movement; there is an active glacier here. The ice is so blue; in places it looks green particularly under water. A penguin on an ice floe. Great reflections in the water.

And then we move on to Cuverville Island which is covered in penguins. But we don’t get very close. The commentators on the bridge (who tell us what we’re looking at and should be looking for) say the waters here are uncharted and the captain won’t get too close. So the penguin photos leave a lot to be desired. But we do see some in the water just lazing about. And some “porpoising” which is the way they jump out of the water is described. (And you could say they do it on porpoise!)

Our last stop for the day is Dallman Bay. A huge ice berg here passes us by (or we pass it is probably more realistic). And there are orcas here. Half a dozen groups of two or three or four orcas. Mostly females or young from the size of the dorsal fin. Males have a very long spiky dorsal fin.

Enjoy the photos.

Best

Bob and Elizabeth

08 Lemaire Channel and Paradise Harbour

09 Neumayer Channel, Cuverville Island, Dallman Bay

Antarctica: Lemaire Channel and Paradise Harbour

Wednesday January 22. Antarctica

I certainly hope you like photos of ice and mountains and snow. I’ve included photos of other ships and our bow at times to give you some idea of perspective and distances. The colours are sometimes hard to adjust – there is a lot of blue in the photos and it is hard to compensate. The penguin photos in particular may be grainy. I’m using a long telephoto lens but they are just too far away!

Day 1 in Antarctica - Monday

We’re visiting various places while we are sailing here. First thing this morning – about 6:30 am we picked up eight of the Americans working at the Palmer Ice Station on the Antarctic peninsula. They will do a presentation on the research done down here at the three American stations. There are stations from several countries here including Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. At the same time we picked up an ill woman from the ketch “Golden Fleece” out of Stanley in the Falklands. We’ll transport her to a hospital on the mainland.

It’s a lovely sunny day and we’re visiting the Lemaire Channel (which is blocked with ice so we are not going through). Off to the left are the 3 crags of Una’s Peaks (we were told a less nice name when we were here before) named for the last woman many of the men saw when they sailed from Stanley in the Falklands.

Then off to Paradise Harbour. There’s a massive tabular ice berg here – that’s a flat-topped berg. It is gigantic – higher than our ship. And remember 80% is under water. There’s a Chilean research station here – right in the middle of a penguin rookery or colony. The landscapes here are just awesome in the patchy sunlight. You’ll notice some of the rock is black, other is brownish. The black is volcanic rock and where it has worn off you see the underlying brown granite. The tabular iceberg here is just massive. And we don’t really want to be the next Titanic so we’re well off to the side.

We are back towards the Lemaire Channel because we still have to drop off the research personnel before the captain sort of steers the ship in a big circle of calm water overnight.

More sights tomorrow!!

Best

Bob and Elizabeth

08 Lemaire and Paradise

We're HERE!

Sunday January 19. Antarctica

We’re here!! We crossed 60° south latitude this morning and are officially in Antarctic treaty waters. And already we are seeing snow and ice and islands covered with same. I wasn’t going to worry about photos for a few days but we’re at Deception Island and it is just beautiful so you’re going to get some more photos today. And I still have a satellite connection. Please enjoy. And if you are curious take minute and google Deception Island, Antarctica.

Best

Bob and Elizabeth

07 Deception Island photos

Cape Horn

Saturday January 18. Sailing to Antarctica

As I’m writing this, the ship is rolling side to side in fairly heavy seas. We’ve had so-so weather as we’ve been travelling south towards Antarctica. We sailed out of Punta Arenas down the Straits of Magellan towards the Beagle Channel and Ushuaia (oo-shy-ah). We’ve have a lot of very cloudy days. Off and off rain and fog. And periodically we see the sun. Our first real sight is the Témpanos Glacier. The blue ice is caused by the weight of the ice literally pushing the oxygen out of the ice and the ice turns blue.

Friday we cruised down the Beagle Channel which separates Chile from Argentina. The channel is named for the ship, The Beagle, on which Charles Darwin sailed as a supernumerary (a paying volunteer crew member). There are five big glaciers along here. And we’ve rain periodically. And fog. You’ll see some of the photos look out of focus. That’s the fog and rain. The glaciers are quite imposing and the sun kept appearing behind us as we sailed the channel. But they are still imposing. Hopefully I don’t have too many duplicates in there. I’m doing this now because I’ve got a good solid internet connection. When we hit the Antarctic we’ll lose the satellite connection.

Once past the glaciers we went for breakfast and I couldn’t wait to get out again because the sun came out behind us. And so there are a lot of photos in the sun and wind. And I’ve got my first bird photo. It’s not great but it’s just the first this trip. Our trip ends at Ushuaia the southernmost city in the world. Just don’t talk to someone from Chile because they have a town further south, but it’s not big enough to be a city. In Ushuaia we took a tour down to the “end of the world” or the end of the Pan American highway. It is possible to drive from the northernmost point in Alaska right down here. It’s about 17,000 km. We stopped at Encinada which, even with the weather, has a nice appeal to the landscape photographer in me. And once we hit the end of the road, it was a walk on the boardwalk out to the end of the bay.

This morning it was cold. It was windy. It was raining. (Sounds like a bad mystery novel?) But we had left the Beagle Channel and had sailed to Cape Horn which was defending its reputation as one of the most dangerous sailing channels in the world. There is a family which lives on the cape for a year and is paid by the Chilean government. The current family has two children there. The seas were so bad we didn’t get very close, unlike the other ship here.

We’ll be out of touch for a few days as the satellite will be out of range. Hope everyone is well.

Bob and Elizabeth

Photo links:

01 Puerto Montt 

02 Chacabuco 

03 Chilean Fjords 

04 Beagle Channel 

05 Ushuaia 

06 Cape Horn 

On the road again...S America and Antarctica

Wednesday January 15, 2020.
It’s 6:30 am and I’m sitting in the virtually empty buffet restaurant with a cup of tea, typing this email and watching the Andes Mountains slip by in the morning fog and rain. The sun’s up but we can’t see it. The mornings have all started like this – cloudy, rainy, windy, cold (10-12°C) but then it becomes sunny and warm – up to 25°C.

It was a long, long day getting here starting out at 5:30 pm for our ride to the airport. Checking in for a 9:20 boarding which happened. But the 10:15 takeoff became 11:15 pm and we didn’t get into Santiago Chile until 11:30 am the next morning. An hour or so through baggage, immigration and customs and then another hour and a half to the port. We needed a vacation from the travelling!
The ship was delayed in leaving. It’s fueling by bunker barge didn’t happen and the ship had to be refueled by truck from around the area. So instead of leaving at 5 pm we left at 2pm the next day. And that upset the itinerary. Leave it to say that by now it’s worked out okay.

The seas have been a little rocky at times and at times very calm and last night we were getting thrown around pretty severely.

Our first stop was Puerto Montt (Puerto being port). And we took a local tour off to see the Petrohue Rapids; they call them falls but they are rapids cut by the fast moving waters in the lava deposits. There are three volcanoes here: Orsorno is the ideal image of a volcano, much like Mt. Fuji with its perfect snow topped cone, Calbuco which looks like an ordinary mountain but it blew in 2015 depositing tons of ash on the western side and lava on the eastern side. Don’t worry about the third one...it’s way off in the distance. After the rapids we visited the little tourist town of Puerto Varas which was settled by Germans in the late 1800s. Chile was looking for settlers and made a deal with the German government. So there’s a heavy German influence here.

Our second stop was Puerto Chacabuco further south down the coast. Remember we’re heading to Antarctica. A really long gravel road led to a spectacular waterfall; I don’t know if it has a name. And then the same road back out. Into a little town for a break and then out across the local “Golden Gate” bridge to yet another long gravel road running through typical Chilean Patagonia to a lake (which wasn’t that interesting or photogenic). And back again. A car ferry across the river. And then a quick lunch of BBQ lamb, cold boiled potatoes, salad and a local fried bread with a salsa type mix. Oh…and a Pisco Sour, the local cocktail that’ll knock your socks off if you aren’t careful.

We have two days of sailing the fjords of Chile; it was glaciated and we’re starting to see the glaciers as we sail along.

Hope all is well at home.
Take care.
Bob and Elizabeth

p.s. Here are the links to the first photos
01 Puerto Montt
02 Chacabuco