Solo to Antarctica: Bottom of the World! (Part 3)

Days 6-8

Wake up at 7 am, open my curtains and in front of me is a mile-long, 100- foot-tall rectangle of floating ice -- smooth and massively white in the sunshine. I feel its coldness from my verandah. Thousands (millions?) of years old, this enormous slab broken from Antarctica's western ice shelf floats ever-so-slowly northward toward warmer seas. It is our introduction to the wonders to come.

(Wicked thought: Bush and Cheney and scientists with political agendas sitting on the top, insisting there's no global warming as the ice melts below them.)

The water is kind today, small waves, and the sky reflects the glacial blue edges of the berg. I don my layers, speed to the open deck and gaze 360 degrees around. Snow suddenly falls for a few minutes, as petrels and albatrosses fly by. Now hundreds of small bergs pass close to the ship, sea-and wind-sculpted beyond the talents of Gaudi or Gehry or Calatrava: sliced, curved, swooping, hollowed -- magnificent.

We reach Elephant Island, where Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 28 rowed three small boats after pack ice crushed their ship, the Endurance. From here, he and five men sailed 800 miles in an open lifeboat to icy South Georgia island, which they trekked across to reach help for the men left behind. All did endure.

In the afternoon we enter Antarctica Sound. Foggy. Scary. Can't see much for hours. We glide through gray mist and water as if on a ghost ship. When the fog lifts, two huge rectangular bergs glow nearby like incandescent sentinels. Thousands of penguins aboard one of them appear like specks of dirt as they leap into the sea, putting the iceberg's mass in perspective.

Next day the weather holds and we venture into the Gerlach Strait --mountains, glaciers and ice cliffs, and Paradise Bay --which sounds like a Caribbean destination, but was once a favorite anchorage for whalers. Raw, jagged peaks, maybe 10-15 thousand feet loom over us on both sides of the channel throughout the day. These mountains are the end of the Andes, which submerge at the tip of South America to startlingly arise again here. A surprise to all.

We are cruising on the western side, along the Antarctic peninsula, and enter the narrow, fjordlike Lemair channel past 65 degrees south latitude, joining maybe .0003 per cent of people who Captain Leif tells us have ventured this far. He congratulates us: Azamara Journey is the largest vessel ever to reach this point so close to the South Pole.

All through the day Humpback whales spout near the ship, as if to claim their territory, and penguins jump through the narrow passage like tiny dolphins. The scene: chocolate-colored mountains, iced in white, tinged with blue. Unexpectedly, the only other color on this gray day is an occasional watermelon blush on ice fields, from algae. And a couple of red buildings, base camps of international scientists, long deserted.

I stay outside for almost two hours in my thankfully warm gear, my face covered, watching the silent flotilla of small bergs and ice chunks. (Ule, our ice pilot, are you watching too?) One Englishman next to me on the rail of the top deck says that last night six whales played tag below his verandah. A whale story, I figure.

Antarctica, an ice desert one and a half times the size of the states, was once part of a super continent including Africa, Australia, India and South America. The ice here is not melting as fast as in the Arctic -- I heard the crack of calving only once. But huge waterfalls thunder, and scientists report the temperature is steadily rising.

Twice a day lecturers have been explaining the history, flora and fauna, but if the captain announces a whale sighting the room empties as if someone screamed "fire!" Activities, games, entertainment and meetings are just breaks for warmth from the outside panorama.

One interesting meeting abruptly brings me back to reality, a conversation about current events. The topic: sexism versus racism. A bearded guy insists there's no such thing as sexism, all the while not letting me speak. Unfortunately he reminds me a bit, in the midst of this glorious journey, of Chris Matthews. (Ha! and Ick!) So nice to be away from all of that. In fact, I hereby recommend that the loser of both the primaries and the presidency, and their staffs, and pundits and pollsters and snarky media and know it-all extremists go to Antarctica to get their priorities straight and get beyond themselves.

I retire to my cabin (the staff calls it a stateroom, but I forget to) for tea every day to watch the scene in quiet and warmth. I read, write, sleep, smile. This small space has become my refuge.

Next morning we enter into perhaps the largest active volcanic caldera in the world, at Deception Island. The last eruption was in 1970, and through the sleet I can still see plumes of steam among the cinder cones around us. The snow is dirty looking -black, white, gray everywhere except for ghost hamlets of small red cabins: deserted Argentine and Spanish expedition camps.

Here whalers kept their captured carcasses, and the water is supposedly warm enough to swim in -- some staff and passengers take the "Penguin plunge" to earn a certificate. I hand them a towel.

Chinstrap penguin and seal colonies reside near Neptune's Bellows, the narrow entrance to the caldera where our captain claims many ships have sunk. We see remains of rusty vessels, and a sea plane. Just a year ago a Norwegian ship hit the rocks here, so we maneuver gingerly northward, back into open sea.

Captain Leif announces in a choking voice that this voyage to Antarctica has been the highlight of his lifework. Now, he reminds us, we must head toward the world's windiest, roughest waters - the open sea where the Atlantic and Pacific collide, and especially The Drake Passage around Cape Horn. Conqueror of ships. Subject of countless captain's logs and sailor's lore. Since the Panama Canal was built few vessels venture in these southern waters, and I do not want to spend two days seasick, or fearful in a cyclonic storm. Maybe we'll get lucky. More to come....

Photo by Matthew Wakeham

Lea Lane is founder/editor of www.sololady.com and author of Solo Traveler: Tales and Tips for Great Trips (Fodor's)

Comments

[WilliePilgrim]

I thought this was about being solo. I've been to antarctica several times and to other icy places, including Erie PA. If you are confusing the small scale phenomenon that your see from your tour boat with worldwide climate phenomenon, you are doing the same thing that so-called "deniers" are doing when they mistake a cold day in July for a reason not to believe that humans are having a deleterious effect on the environment.
I identify myself, as doesn Freeman Dyson (whose writing on the subject of climate modelling you'd be advised to read) as a heretic which means "i believe" but not as the orthodox do. I'll bet you probably don't think of yourself as "orthodox" but unless you seek out alternate views and give them fair weight, but instead simply parrot "all the really good scientists" as they like to call themselves, you are doing just that.
Worried about polar bears and penquins loosing their current habitat? Well, consider that the major habitat of the world, the mangrove coastal regions are going even more quickly due, not to climate change, but overpopulation and "aquaculture" so you're tourboat will have shrimp cocktail tonight and I think you'll see that it's not so much the CO2 as it is the entire overall devastation that is going on. Climate change is real, but honestly if it thwarted our coastal developement and causes a decrease in human developement, it'd be worth a few species of charismatic megafauna. Enjoy the shrimp.