January 1, 2015 - Water Boat Point

This morning we arrived very close to where we had started yesterday at 5 AM! The Chilean base at Water Boat point!  It was a lovely day of communing with penguins.  Then the afternoon/evening was spent in a stunning cruise up the Gerlach in glorious sunshine!

Gentoo Penguins - eggs, but no chicks yet.

Our guests from the cupola window.

Quest from the cupola.

Me and the gentoos!

December 31 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Maria and I send all of you our very best for 2015 - Health, happiness and well being!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Even the ship's mascot penguin got into the act!

Some of the great food!

Crab cake with caviar.

Grand Piano dessert.

December 31 - New Year's Eve - Base Brown

This morning we were treated to a VERY early landing! Zodiac drivers were up at 3:15 AM and the rest of us at 4:00 AM!  The timing was important because of overlapping usage of the site and the booking of another ship for the afternoon. We had to have our 450 passengers onshore and the visit completed, and the ship gone by 1 PM. Everything went very smoothly, with the first passengers off the ship for an hour zodiac tour at 5 AM. These early birds had the advantage of seeing some humpback whales in close proximity!

The site is very pretty with lots of great views of glaciers all around as well as a nice hill to climb and a sliding slope! No sprained ankles this time around!

This is the Argentinian base "Brown". The top of the hill is 100 m above the base. 

I was on the high point with a great view of the surrounding glaciers. There was one that kept having small failures through the morning. It then had a bit larger avalanche, I raised my camera for a closer look when it failed! Spectacular.

In the afternoon we headed south to the Lemaire Channel. It still had a lot of ice, but we made it through to the other end - 65 degrees 7 minutes would be our farthest point south. The channel is 200 m wide with cliffs close to 900 m on either side, glaciers and we saw several minke whales close to the ship.

View along the channel.

Stranded icebergs in a side channel.

Cape Renard towers over 800 m tall.

We sailed out of the channel through the Neumayer in the evening as everyone began the New Year's Eve festivity.  See the next blog for what Maria and I did!

December 30 - King George Island, Bransfield and Gerlache Strait

We arrived off Frei base about 4:30 AM and Iggy, Robin and Chris took care of the medivac, with the plan arriving as scheduled at 6:30 AM. We were soon on our way back south.  It was extremely lucky that the weather was so good, there were no visibility problems for the plane and everything went very smoothly.  

Chilean base Frei on King George Island.

Scheduled lectures went ahead and the recap from last night was given at 11. Passengers were told the plan for today was to head straight down the Bransfield Strait, through the Gerlache with the expectation of being off Paradise Bay early tomorrow morning for zodiac operations starting at 5 AM!  (for us that means a wake-up time of 4:30, but the zodiac drivers will be up around 3 AM).

Rory Martin (one of the zodiac drivers) in the zodiac storage area.

In the meantime... we headed south to spectacular views, including views of the 2000 m peaks of the peninsula.  We passed a few hump back whales, then more, then more....   then we went dead slow near a group of about 6 - 8 humpbacks that were bubble netting.   We watched them for about 30 minutes, then headed on-ward.  

 

Two of the numerous hump backs around the ship.

 Those of us on deck headed back to our rooms only to be called back to the deck half and hour later as a large iceberg with penguins was spotted and the captain brought us very close.  We watched the penguins shoot out of the water, as they clawed their way to the upper surface of the iceberg.

Chin Strap Penguins on an iceberg that had rolled - not mountains of the peninsula in the sunshine.

We then headed back to our cabins.  Maria now has enough paintings completed and formatted for sale that they were put on display in the shop and she will have a little "opening" tomorrow afternoon. We headed up to take a picture or two. 

Maria with her paintings.

We then headed out on deck and we were surrounded by whales.  I counted at least 14 at the surface around the rear of the ship.  It was very surreal. The ship is going fairly slowly, there is virtually no wind, the peaks rise precipitously out of the sea blanketed in massive amounts of ice - and there are all these whales, breaching, blowing, and swimming through the landscape. Amazing!!

Although not very visible in the photo, the foreground has more than a dozen whales surfacing.

December 29 - Half Moon Island

Early this morning we entered the South Shetland Islands via Nelson strait and headed for Half Moon Island on the east side of Livingston Island. We got up to an amazing site of the island in sunshine and the peaks of Livingston Island visible behind.  The chinstraps now had very small chicks, hatched in the last few days. There was one lone macaroni penguin among them.  There were also a lot of very sleep Weddell seals along the beach.  Unfortunately there was a medical emergency among the last group of passengers to shore. The serious was not known immediately, but soon we were told that we would be setting sail for King George Island and a medivac sometime later in the day. It was a beautiful evening, warm and very calm, so everyone took in stride the change of plans as we all whale watched on the decks.

Livingston Island in the background - the temperature got up to 10 C during the day!

View of the gabbroic rocks that make up much of Half Moon Island.

Chin strap rookery sliced by basalt dykes.

Marie painting near the rookery.

Chin strap heading home.

Quest anchored in Half Moon bay.

There were hump back whales and lots of penguins around the ship as we headed to King George.  Due to the change of plans we were all asked to be out on deck and in the observation lounge to talk to passengers, explain the situation and watch for wildlife. The Captain came on later in the evening explaining that the medivac had been arranged to take place from the Chilean base called Frei which has an airstrip. The plane comes from Punta Arenas and takes just over two hours. The plane was due to leave at 4 AM, arriving around 6:30 AM.

Ice berg on our way to King George Island.

Since we were all dressed to be out on deck, Maria and I chose to eat in the grill - but it was COLD!! 

December 28 - Monster ice berg

As we have been steadily heading south, we passed the polar convergence around lunch time with the commensurate decrease in temperature and parallel increase in fog! It is really very dramatic!  We are going to make the Drake in under 36 hours, so tomorrow morning we will have our first landing at Half Moon Island. The day was filled with activity getting everything organized - bio-hazard checks, boot exchanges, briefings, etc.  Just after we completed our evening briefing, the captain announced that a large iceberg had been spotted about 20 minutes distance away.

It turned out to be a monster tabular iceberg about 3 X 2 km in size! Truly amazing!  We circumnavigated the berg while being followed by a large flock of the beautiful black and white storm petrels.

sighting of the ice berg emptied the Grand Salon!

People got their first taste of what it is like to be really cold! With wind chill it was a lot below zero!

The ice berg had interesting arches.

Truly massive in scale - it was like a bit of Antarctica coming out to meet us!

Those of us prepared had dinner al fresco - note Matt's gloves!

December 27 Glacier Alley and Ushaia

Leaving Punto Arenas we headed farther south through the fiords. In the early AM we reached the first of the glaciers - Spain and Garibaldi, but I didn't start broadcasting to the ship until we reached Glacier Romancha at 7 AM. These glacier flow from a series of glaciers and ice caps that stretch fo 150 km along this part of the coast - most don't make it to tidewater and in fact the main ice is not easily visible from the water. We saw a large whale, but couldn't ID it and lots of shearwaters were on the water as well as giant petrels and black-browed albatross.

Glacier Alamana (German) flowing out the Cordillera Darwin.

 
We ended up in Ushuaia beside the Celebrity Infinity - it was like being beside an apartment building.  Ushuaia was unusually clear, but very windy. Maria and I walked through the town, then headed back to the ship - me to work on presentations and she to paint.

Around 9 PM we were off for out the Beagle Channel and the Drake! Captain Fitzroy named the waterway the "Beagle Channel" after the ship's row boats were nearly lost when on January 29, 1833, a glacier caved creating a large wave. Darwin's quick action to pull the boats up the beach saved them. The small boats were used to check the depth and navigability of the waterways, before the Beagle sailed through them.

The National Geographic Ship Orion, docked shortly after we did.

Rare view of the mountains that surround Ushuaia.

Our "neighbour" the infinity!

Lupines in bloom around Ushuaia.

A walk around the lagoon, gave great views of the town and mountains - it cleared up later in the afternoon.

We are not sure what this building is as it was closed and didn't seem to have any signs, but it is very photogenic.