Highlights

I said in an earlier posting that both while we were travelling, and since we have been back, we frequently have been asked which was our favourite country or place.  I also said that I find it impossible to give a single answer to that question as I don't feel I can reduce such a fabulous year down to just one 'best' thing.

So instead, we have come up with a short-list of our highlights from this first year.  In no particular order, it would have to include:
* laid back and gastronomically fabulous Palermo area of Buenos Aires, not least for its cafes, cakes, steak and wine.
* amazing scenery on the Bolivian Altiplano between the Atacama Desert and the Uyuni Salt Flats;
* satisfaction at managing a proper conversation in Spanish with our home stay host in Raqchi, even if our teacher would have been horrified at all of the mistakes;
* exhilaration of adventure activities, such as ziplining, white water rafting and sand boarding;
* relief that we all made it safely out of the fire at Shangri-la
* unconditional friendliness from Colombians who were so pleased to welcome us as tourists to their country;
* seeing the moai left as they were abandoned in the quarry on Easter Island;
* watching - and more particularly hearing - chunks of ice cleaving off the vast and beautiful Perito Moreno glacier;
* grandeur of the fjords, lakes, mountains and volcanoes of southern Chile;
* experiencing the strange feeling of being in a village in England despite being 8000 miles away in the Falkland Islands and having the chance to talk to the islanders first hand about how they feel about the question of their nationality;
* being pecked by penguins and watching their comical antics in the Falklands and Antarctica;
* simply being in Antarctica, the coldest, windiest, driest, and highest place on earth;
* getting wet at the spectacular Iguassu Falls;
* meeting some fabulous people, some fleetingly, some who have become friends and we will hopefully be seeing again sometime, somewhere in the world!

Over the coming weeks I may add a few posts about some of these highlights and what made each of them so special.

Antarctica - good, bad or indifferent?

So having spent a lot of money, and four days there and back through the Drake Passage, is The White Continent worth it?

Well it is a lot of money, and if you have to choose between going to Antarctica and paying your mortgage or rent, servicing your car, or feeding yourself anything other that bread and water for the next year, then clearly of course not. And the seasickness has certainly put off a few people that we met from considering returning - though not one of them regretted having come this time.

It is probably not the best place for someone who absolutely can't stand being cold, although we found that if you wrapped up really well, it wasn't so bad most of the time. And the ship was always nice and warm to come back to.

But if you can make it past those hurdles, then Antarctica is fantastic. I have already said that we were disappointed not to have gone where we expected to, and that thought was with us all the while we were there, but even that rather large cloud couldn't stop us appreciating what an amazing place it is. And now that we know we will be going back to the part we most wanted, we can appreciate what we did see all the more.

Antarctica is officially the coldest, windiest, highest, driest - and certainly the whitest - continent. It didn't always feel like the driest to us, but we couldn't argue with the rest.

It is hard to imagine how something so devoid of colour can be beautiful, and at times when the day was so grey and cloudy that you couldn't see where the snow covered land finished and the snow filled sky began, some of the panoramic views weren't that great. But when the clouds lifted, or even just when some sunlight broke through, you could see the immensity of even just this very tip of the continent, and it is unbelievable.

And even on the dullest of days, if you let your eye forget the big picture and focus instead on what was close to you, all of the subtle variations and remarkable details jumped out at you. For a start, the monochrome black of the land and white of the snow breaks out into a variety of colours. Much of the ice is a pale blue, with deeper veins of blue running through it. Every so often you get a deep blue, transparent iceberg that is truly stunning to see. In the glaciers there are lines of colour running through that show how the snow has built up year on year, like the rings of a tree. And in both glaciers and icebergs the textures and shapes are constantly different and fascinating to look at.

Then you get the other colours in the snow and rocks, caused by lichens or minerals. Reds, greens, and oranges contrast fabulously against the blocks and whites, and those hits of colour give both a beautiful contrast. Add to this the human elements of science stations and old whaling posts, and you have some amazing features that are incredible just for being there and alo help to give you some perspective about the size of this vast white wilderness.

And it is a wilderness. Our expedition leader reminded us that nature is in control here, not us, and it proved her right. Even at this edge of the continent, in the relatively mild conditions, it was clear that this was not an easy place to exist. We saw reminders of how harsh the environment can be and how easy it could be to die out here as so many experienced and capable people have done in the past. Of course our little expedition was tame and as safe as it could be made, but the captain still has to navigate the icebergs and if you get stuck onshore after a landing because it is too dangerous to use the zodiacs, then you could have a cold night ahead of you. Thankfully we only had to imagine what it would be like to be stranded in the coldest place on earth.

Of course if the sheer beauty of the landscapes aren't enough for you the there is always the wildlife. Many of us have been lucky enough at some time or other to be close to a dolphin swimming alongside a boat in the sea, or to have had some other relatively common, buy nonetheless wonderful encounter with an animal in the wild. It is even more amazing when that animal is a humpback whale, close to the ship, and you get to see firsthand that iconic image of the tail fin rising up out of the water.

Equally the feeling of have the predatory leopard seal circling your zodiac, or letting you get within a few metres while it rests of the ice is awesome. And even for a non bird watcher like me, it was fascinating to see some of the birds here, so someone who can recognize more than just an albatross and a skua would be in their own kind of heaven.

But really, the true icons of Antarctica are the penguins. When you think about a penguin they seem like a strange creature, and it is right, they are. But I defy you not to love them! Even the most indifferent of people we have met have been captivated by the penguins. In the water they are agile, fast and fairly impressive when they porpoise through the water like mini torpedoes, but they aren't quite so interesting.

When you get them on land it is a different matter. It is endlessly fascinating to watch them. They are proud, curious, determined and comical all at once. They aren't exactly built to walk on land, with their tiny legs, but they waddle around and can move pretty fast when they want to. They are frequently faced with obstacles like rocks that are enormous to these little guys, but they are not deterred. Whether going up or down, you can see them concentrating very hard on the jump that have to make, they put their flippers out behind them and arch their bodies in preparation, and then they make their huge two footed leap through the air.

Most of the time they make it. Every so often though, one comes a cropper and falls over. When it does it hurries to right itself in a flurry of flapping wings and scrambling feet, looking around to see if anyone noticed its little mishap. Sometimes, especially when they are trying to get out of a deeper rock pool, it can take them a few goes to clamber over the edge, and it is all you can do not to run over and try to help them.

They are also such curious things. Invariably as I walked around the sites I would get some little visitors. Some would just watch me from a few metres away, but others would have a little peck to check me out. And they are fascinated about any objects around them, from the station buildings or equipment to the whale skeletons that have been there for years, through to the items we had with us like backpacks, or snowshoes. If you don't want to find a penguin standing on it or pecking at it, don't leave anything unattended within their reach. Luckily they don't do much damage so the worst that is likely to happen is that it gets covered in their projectile penguin poo.

So I guess if you don't like snow and ice, have no interest in whales, birds or seals, and are truly convinced that you hate penguins then you shouldn't consider coming here. But otherwise I think Antarctica is an amazing place visit. To experience for yourself what an extreme place it is, to see the beautiful ice, to imagine living in a tiny science station for months on end, and to have close encounters with the penguins and other creatures. I don't know anyone who has been to Antarctica and regretted it, and I am thrilled to be going back in November.

Our last zodiac cruise in Antarctica

On our last day, we had planned to make a stop at another bay, but it was too windy to launch the zodiacs there, so we sailed on further.  En route, we passed through yet more great scenery, spotted a few more humpbacks, and got another tail fin shot.

Of course with my little camera it is little more than a speck in the distance, but it is still a tail.

The area that we stopped at is completely protected.  Noone other than scientists is permitted to make any landings on any part of the shore, so we just did another zodiac cruise around the bay.

The ice was fabulous.  We passed some huge bergs on the way here and there were some reasonably big ones floating in the bay.  I have included one picture that shows our ship (the smaller looking one because it is further away) and another ship near to one of the medium sized icebergs to give you some idea of the scale.

With the wind up as it was, even in the relatively calm waters here there were a couple of the smaller icebergs that were rocking in the waves and close to flipping over.

It would have been good to see one actually turn, but none did while we were there.  Probably best not to be too close anyway, as I guess they make quite a wave of their own when they do go over.

Some of the bergs had some amazing shapes and colours.  There was one that looked almost completely smooth, while another looked like someone had taken a huge knife and sliced through it repeatedly, but just leaving enough to hold it all together.  Most were a pristine looking pale powdery blue, perhaps with some veins of deep sapphire running through them, but a few were different.

One in particular was a deeper, more transparent blue with brown areas that looked like it had rolled in the dirt.  It also had a totally clear section that pointed out like a finger from one end.  Another small berg was like a curled leaf, complete with an etched pattern of veins.

One of my favourites here were a set of three, or possibly a single one with gaps, where one piece stood quite tall and looked very moody against the cloudy sky.  It had a small round hole in it which we found fascinating too.

Another was one with a really deep blue base but got lighter at the top, that seemed to have hollow funnels all through it.  It just looked stunning.

As fascinating as the ice was though, we were all pleased to spot a few more leopard seals.  The first was swimming around the ice and took little notice of us watching it.

The second was a young one, laid out on a piece of ice and was quite relaxed as we approached.

He looked at us occasionally, just to check that we weren't going to give him a problem, but appeared totally at ease with us there.

He was certainly relaxed enough to relieve himself while we watched.  And a very, very long wee it was too; we were quite surprised he didn't sink his bit of ice.

He did let us get very close indeed and it was great to be able to see his beautiful spotty markings so clearly.  He appears to have a different coloured underside, but that is just from where he had been lying on the ice.

When we moved around to the back of him, we saw that he had been fitted with a transmitter and a little blue toe tag, so he is being monitored by some scientist somewhere.  The transmitter didn't seem to bother him at all and it will fall off naturally when he moults.

Arriving back on the ship, we were greeted with a hot chocolate with rum in.  Just what we needed to round off our Antarctic cruising and warm up again for the evening sail back to the Drake Passage.

Zodiac cruise in Paradise Harbour

Over lunch we sailed back to Paradise Harbour and this time as we sailed into it we got a better opportunity to enjoy the scenery.  Large swathes of brash ice covered the surface of the water with bergy bits providing convenient platforms for the odd seal or penguin.


We were also lucky enough to spot couple of humpback whales, mother and calf.  Even to a novice whale spotter like me, you could tell the distinctive arched motion as they move, and we all waited in hope of seeing the tail coming up.

Humpback whale tailfin

We weren't disappointed as they both dived a couple of times giving us a great view of the black and white underside of their tail fins.  I was pleased that  I just about managed to get a shot of it.
In the afternoon, Nic and I took the zodiac cruise. The general plan for the zodiac cruise is to have a chance to get up closer to the ice, and have a hunt around for any wildlife that might be nearby.
Because the captain keeps a reasonable distance between the ship and any icebergs, not surprising given the reminder of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that they are smaller than they really are.

It is so hard to appreciate the sheer scale of the ocean and islands, let alone the continent itself, and if you can't grasp just how enormous they are, then you can't possibly realise how big the icebergs are.  Getting up close to even the little ones, and seeing that they are not little at all, helps you to get a better perspective.

And it is fascinating to look at the different forms that the ice takes. In particular you can see the ones where the ice has turned over, so that the section that was below the water is now on top.

This is when you get to see the fabulous dimpled effect on the ice, or can see the steppes that the water creates.  There is more that I could say about the different types, colours and textures of the ice, but as we are now going to the Weddell Sea at the end of the year I'll save it until then.

Much of the water surface in Paradise Harbour is covered in brash ice. The ship ploughs through this easily, but it is a different story in a zodiac.  The drivers are all practiced at getting through, but you can see they need to pick the path of least resistance, and even then they get stuck every so often.

Blue eyed shag

Generally this is because the motor has got blocked by the ice, and they have to work it free, but sometimes they just reach thicker ice that they can't pass through, so have to back up and go around it.  But despite a few problems we got about pretty well.
We passed the Argentine Brown station, where the original buildings were destroyed in April 1984 when the station leader started a fire because he didn't want to stay here for another winter.  The people were rescued by a US ship. I assume he had timed the fire for when he knew a shop was scheduled to be nearby, as being left out and exposed once the fire had burned out would almost certainly be deadly.

Crabeater Seal

Our first wildlife was the small nesting site of blue eyed shags (keep the smutty comments to yourselves please, we've already done them all!). Their home is a steep multi coloured rock face.

Like the snow, the rock can be turned different colours by various natural elements.  They can be blue-green from copper deposits, emerald green from mosses, or orange and yellow from lichens.

Leopard Seal

As we were watching the birds, we spotted a couple of crabeater seals.  Crabeaters are apparently the most abundant type of seal, but despite their name they don't eat crabs at all, they eat krill.  They weren't overly keen on hanging out with us so we watched them for a short while but then left them alone and carried on around the bay.

We soon spotted a leopard seal on some ice and got up fairly close to it.  It kept an eye on us but didn't seem bothered by us at all.  In fact it was so unimpressed that it proceeded to do an incredibly long and very bright red poo.  The bright red was from the krill that it eats.  I can only assume that the huge amount of poo meant that a lot of krill had died to satisfy his appetite.

Hearing from another zodiac that a second leopard seal was lounging about on a different bit of ice, we went to check that out.  This one didn't stay on the ice for long and for a moment we thought we'd driven it away, but we needn't have worried.  It was taking an interest in us, and was swimming nearby to the zodiac, circling around us and popping up regularly.
After  a while, a second zodiac turned up, but that didn't bother it either. It just kept on swimming even closer around us, between the zodiacs and underneath them.  We had already been told that it is not unknown for the leopard seals to take a bit at a zodiac, so our drivers were keeping a watchful eye to see if the seal turned aggressive and we needed to leave.  Happily though, the seal showed no sign of attacking, and just kept swimming around right next to us.

We watched him for a while, and then figured it was time for us to head back.  The idea was to leave the second zodiac alone with it.  However the leopard seal had other ideas and followed us.  It carried on swimming after us for a while, but eventually gave up and went elsewhere.  One theory about it following is that it likes the bubbles in the water created by the motor, but we preferred to think that it just taken a liking to us.

Neko Harbour and a polar plunge

In the morning we sailed a short distance into Andvord Bay for a landing at Neko Harbour.  Up until now, all of our landings have been on antarctic islands, but this one was a  continental landing.

There are relatively few places that the zodiacs can reasonably land on this part of the continent, but this is ideal.  Not only is it accessible in a relatively sheltered bay, but it actually has a sandy beach.

So when we landed, the sun was out and we were on a sandy beach.  OK so it was still cold, and there were ice and penguins everywhere, but still, this was the closest we were going to get to a beach holiday here.  So of course, some people decided to go swimming.  But we'll come back to that later.


We were slightly restricted walking around here as to one side is a huge glacier that calves into the sea.  When it does, you don't want to be on the beach nearby, as you are likely to get washed away by the waves it generates.


 It was nice to have the sun out for a change as it brought out the colours in the views.  With all of the snow, ice and penguins, the majority of the scenery here can look very monochrome, so is very noticeable when you suddenly get a splash of colour. 


Sometimes it is our clothing, or one of the remaining red refuge huts, sometimes it is a bit of bright blue ice, but today what caught my eye was the string of kayaks being towed along behind the zodiac.

It was the first time that the kayakers had got to go out again for a few days because they weren't able to go out in the strong winds, so I think they were pleased to see them too.

As usual there was a lot of penguin watching to be done and many photos taken.  There were some nice big lumps of ice on the beach, which also provided some good photo opportunities.


I was actually quite pleased that one of my fellow photography workshop attendees and the professional photographer himself both saw me taking a phot through the gap in a piece of ice and then did the same thing themselves.  They both had proper cameras, unlike my little point-and-shoot, and are probably both better at taking photos than I am, but I was pleased that I spotted the shot first at least!

The penguins here were quite interested in what was happening around them and gave me the opportunity for a few silly caption shots.  I have added a couple of the photos for fun, but in a separate posting.  I also quite enjoyed watching the ones that were drinking the drops of water coming from a bit of overhanging ice.

But back to the swimming.  For some strange reason, a bunch of people thought it would be a good idea to take a polar plunge.  This is obviously a regular activity here as the expedition leader had selected this spot as the best place and came prepared with lots of towels.

A dozen or so people stripped down to their swimwear, did a quick dip and ran out again fast.

A few were persuaded to pose for a quick photo op - I took a few of our new friends who were mad enough to do this, but I won't include any of the close up pictures here in case they'd rather not have them made public!  The swimmers were quickly given a zodiac trio back to the ship so that they could get warmed up again before lunch.

Petermann Island and pink snow

In the morning we were on the move again, this time just a little way back north to Petermann Island.  It was very windy and to start with it was doubtful whether we would be able to take the zodiacs out to make a shore landing.  But the captain and expedition leader pulled out the stops for us and sent extra crew out so that the zodiacs could be launched and we could get on to the island.
As the group I was with was waiting to board a zodiacs, we could could see the sea being whipped up by the wind and sprayed distances across the surface.  We watched the people  in the zodiac ahead of us getting very wet as they left, and we prepared for the worst.  However we were lucky, because as we set off, the wind dropped slightly.  It was still a bumpy ride, and we still got wet, but not as much as we'd expected.


Petermann  island has been used by whalers and scientists in the past, but there is no base here.  The only building is an old Argentine red refuge hut from 1955.  There are a few other signs of human life though.

There is a cairn on the hill, and a cross that commemorates three men from BAS who died in 1982 attempting to cross the sea ice back over to Faraday Station where we we we're yesterday.  It just goes to show that even with relatively modern technology, Antarctica can be a very dangerous place.


Nic did the hike up the hill, he is the one in the green jacket in the phots, and spotted a few Adelie penguins, while I did another photography workshop.  The Adelies are recognisable by ompletely black head with just distinctive white rings around the eyes.

Adelie Penguin

The majority of the penguins here were gentoos again, but this is as far south as they go. They are not the hardiest of the species, so they don't get as far into the depths of Antarctica as the Adelies.



We both managed to spend some time watching the fur seals on land.  When I was watching them, they had a little spat, but it seemed to be resolved quickly without any real trouble.

Unlike the leopard seals, the fur seals are not predators of the penguins, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are completely at ease together. I was watching while a penguin started to approach a fur seal, but as soon as it got close, the fur seal got up. The penguin turned and fled, with the fur seal giving a half hearted chase.

It isn't just the seals that bother the penguins though. The skuas will go after the penguin chicks and sometimes even an older penguin. They are often flying over and around the colony, and the penguins understandably get quite het up when they fly overhead. The penguin doesn't have much to defend itself with, but they have a good go with running about, sqwarking and flapping their wings wildly. Of course sometimes the skua wins and we saw a few eating their prize.


I quite liked watching the penguins here as the little bit of sun that we got had obviously woken them up nicely. They were playing in the rockpools and jumping around on the rocks.


I managed to get myself into a good position to watch a few make their way over a pile of rocks that clearly took some effort.

It amused me the way that they prepare themselves to jump, getting they body all arched, and then launch themselves. Most of the time they made it, but I did see a few desperate scrabbles to right themselves when it went wrong.


 The snow on Petermann is amazing. I know that we all know about that rather dubious phenomenon of yellow snow, but here they have pink and green snow.

This is caused by snow algae which are single cell organisms that live on the snow at high altitudes or latitudes.  It can also make the snow red, orange, yellow or grey.

Of course sometimes the pink or orange snow is because of the guano. But here it was the algae, and it looked fantastic.


The plan for the afternoon was to visit to Charcot Island and Pleneau Bay but the wind hat got up even stronger after lunch, so it was too windy to disembark.  We had to wait a while for the mountaineers to make it back, and take the ship as close as it could get to shore to make it possible to collect them, but after that we sailed back up through the Lemaire Channel.

In an earlier posting I mentioned the winds of around 20km per hour at the South Pole, but that is nothing here.  Antarctica is considered to be the windiest place on earth, with katabatic winds creating force 8 gales for over one hundred days of the year.  For those of us less familiar with the ranking of gales, the katabatic winds reach speeds of  320 km per hour.  And there is very little warning when they approach.

Fortunately the winds we were experiencing weren't at that level, but they were pretty strong.  I went out onto the lounge deck at one stage and quickly had to come back in because it was so cold, but I couldn't close the door on my own.  It took all the strength of both Nic and me to pull it shut.


Our anchoring place for the night was Paradise Harbour.  This was a very sheltered location, and we weren't the only ship hiding out here tonight.