Antarctica is one of those place
names, like Timbuktu or Jerusalem or Lhasa, that resonate in your mind long
before you ever set foot there. There
are so many stories and images that percolate through our culture: Scott’s doomed expedition, Amundsen’s successful
dash to the Pole, Shackleton’s epic survival tale, emperor penguins and their
unimaginably frigid months-long vigil in the dark with their eggs. I had wanted to visit Antarctica for many
years, but had always thought that it was far beyond my financial means; it was
only when Terri and I began to plan our post-Switzerland travels that we
decided that since we had both long harboured dreams of visiting Antarctica, it
was time to break open the piggy bank and pay for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to
the coldest, driest, highest and most unpopulated continent.
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| MV Ushuaia, our home for 20 days |
We began looking in earnest
almost two years ago, thinking of a trip over Christmas, but quickly decided
that it would make more sense to make it part of a longer trip when we weren’t
working. I subscribed to newsletters
from various tour operators, watching prices in the hope that we could get a
last-minute special. As we did our
research, though, it seemed to us that it made more sense to pay a bit extra and
get a much longer trip, including the Falkland Islands and South Georgia as
well as the Antarctic Peninsula. We
watched the website of Ushuaia Turismo (which details all available departures
from Ushuaia) and finally settled on a 20-day trip to all three destinations on
the MV Ushuaia, operated by Antarpply Expeditions, leaving on October 26th. Unfortunately, we couldn’t commit to it until
we knew when Terri’s Swiss citizenship would be granted, so we waited anxiously
throughout the northern summer as we rode bicycles down the Danube, as I sailed
and rode through Scandinavia, as Terri worked her last term in Leysin, as we
went trekking in the Pyrenees. Finally
the date was confirmed and we knew that Terri would be free to go to Antarctica
at the end of October. We wrote to
Daniela, the owner of Ushuaia Turismo, hoping that there were still tickets
left at the cheapest price of US$ 9200.
She said that there were still tickets available, and after an endless
series of e-mails, problems in paying by bank transfer, reams of paperwork and
the like, we were finally confirmed in early October.
After our Pyrenees and Corsica
trips, Terri and I made our separate ways to Ushuaia from Switzerland. Terri flew to New Zealand to visit her family
and stopped off in Bali along the way, while I flew to Ottawa to visit my
mother. We rendezvoused at the Ushuaia
Turismo office on October 25th and collected our Antarctic gear
(very warm waterproof trousers and massive overjacket, included in our package
price) and settled in for our night in a very comfortable room in the building
behind the office (also included in our package price).
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| A little bit of Argentinian nationalist delusion on the waterfront |
After an afternoon walking around
Ushuaia and a long night’s sleep, we spent the next day getting ready for our
afternoon embarkation, buying bottles of Argentinian wine (much cheaper than
buying wine on board the ship), moving much of our cycling-specific and camping
gear to the Hotel Antartida Argentina, where we were going to stay after the
cruise). It was only a few blocks’ walk
down to the pier, where we went through various bureaucratic steps, admired the
Argentinian obsession with the Falkland Islands (“Ushuaia is the capital of the
Malvinas” is painted in big letters on the harbour wall; “We do not allow
English pirate vessels to dock here” is the sign right at the tourist pier) and
milled around waiting for the all-clear to go aboard. Precisely at 4 pm we filed on board, put our
luggage in our surprisingly comfortable cabin and went upstairs to the lounge
for our welcome toast on board. The
Ushuaia has a capacity of 87 passengers, and we were only 77, so a few people
got an upgrade in cabin class, to their delight. In the lounge, the pastry chef (who became
our favourite person on board) had created a gingerbread model of the ship, and
another gingerbread company logo. We met
the people who would run our lives for the next 20 days: Monika, our German expedition leader, and
Agustin, her Argentinian sidekick; Kata and Ale, the two biologists, and
Mariela, understudy to Monika and Agustin.
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| Our gingerbread expedition ship |
We also met some of the characters
among our fellow passengers whom we would get to know over the following
weeks: Tom, the young chicken farmer
from Australia with his biblical patriarch beard; Andrew and Emma, keen birders
from England; Stefan and Claudia, birders from Houston; Yvonne and (another)
Tom, who had won the trip in a contest run by a radio station in Holland; Oz,
an 86-year-old Australian, born and raised in Turkey, who had been to
Antarctica five times, including two overwinterings, for work, and whose last
item on his “bucket list” was to see the grave of his hero Ernest Shackleton on
South Georgia. We sipped our welcome
champagne, listened to the first of many, many briefings outlining rules on the
boat, and had our mandatory lifeboat drill.
We filed into dinner in the dining room and had the first of a series of
really good meals that would pace our days, and then Terri and I went out onto
the upper deck with our Singleton’s single malt to toast the start of the
trip. It was a full moon, and the sea
and wind were calm as we steamed east along the Beagle Channel, our wake
glimmering in the moonlight. It was a
perfect start to our long-awaited adventure.
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| Beautiful water on the Beagle Channel |
The next morning, after sleeping
very well, I was awoken (as would become the norm) by Monika’s voice over the
loudspeaker telling us that we were back in Ushuaia due to a “serious
situation” and we would have a pre-breakfast briefing to explain the
situation. As Terri and I headed out of
our cabin, it became clear that the problem related to a fire, as a giant pile
of smouldering cardboard was on the deck just outside our cabin door. A strong smell of smoke permeated the
boat. As we assembled in the lounge,
rumours and stories circulated about what might have happened. When we had all appeared, Monika told us that
there had been a fire in the walk-in freezer compartment of the ship that had
been found the night before as we were heading to bed. It had been burning very slowly for a while,
probably since the morning, and was only smouldering because of the lack of oxygen
in the sealed freezer. The crew had
sprayed water on the outside of the freezer to reduce the temperature, and then
carefully aimed fire extinguishers inside the freezer without opening the door
more than the minimum, to avoid feeding oxygen to the flames. They had turned the boat around and headed
back to Ushuaia while the crew continued to extinguish the fire, and the
smouldering wreckage outside our cabin was the start of a long process of
removing months-worth of frozen food boxes from the freezer before the entire
freezer could be examined for further damage and the cause of the fire. Then the Argentinian Coast Guard would have
to certify the ship as sea-worthy, the freezer would have to be re-stocked and we
could head out again, probably in two days.
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| Cormorants near Ushuaia |
We were disappointed; Monika told
us that the recertification as sea-worthy was not a guaranteed deal, and that
the underlying cause of the fire had to be identified and the electrical system
on board comprehensively checked. We had
visions of the entire expedition being cancelled, and our dream trip going up
(literally) in smoke. Even if we did
sail, if the delay were long enough, would they have to cut one of our three
destinations from the itinerary? Terri
and I mused about this that morning as we spent that morning soaking up
unseasonably warm sun and warmth on the upper deck, reading and juggling and
sketching. We gathered for lunch and
another briefing: the ship’s electrical
system was apparently not at fault and it seemed a cigarette end or something
similar had ended up in one cardboard box in the process of loading. Monika was modestly optimistic that we would
be able to get underway the next day.
Some passengers were less hopeful, and Stefan and Claudia, having read
the fine print of our contract of passage, told us that Antarpply, the company
running the trip, was under no legal obligation to refund us anything for days
lost on the trip or even for complete cancellation.
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| Upland goose in flight |
That afternoon, to give the
passengers something to do while the crew continued to empty the smoky wreckage
into a giant garbage container on the dock, we embarked on a couple of buses
for a tour into the mountains behind Ushuaia.
The intentions were good, but a bus tour on an overheated vehicle put
half of us to sleep, and the views that we should have had were swallowed by
low clouds, rain and snow flurries. We
drove past the local ski resort, and past cross-country ski areas where snow
still lingered with ski tracks still visible.
We went over the Marconi Pass and down to Lago Escondido, a small lake
full of birds that woke me up enough to spend a happy half hour with my
binoculars looking at unfamiliar species.
We snoozed our way back to the ship for dinner and another briefing. Monika told us that now everything hinged on
the Coast Guard’s approval of the ship’s seaworthiness, and the speed with
which provisions could be bought and delivered.
She was hopeful that the OK would be given in the morning, and that we
would be able to sail the following afternoon. She also said that the company was arranging a
boat trip around the Ushuaia area to look at wildlife the next day. We went to bed more hopeful that the day
before.
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| Sea lions lolling around near Ushuaia |
The boat trip, on a catamaran run
by Rumbo Sur, was excellent. It was one
of those outings flogged by outfits all over the Ushuaia waterfront at greatly
inflated prices that we would probably never have paid for ourselves, but now
that it was a freebie, we could enjoy ourselves. We headed out to several of the tiny rock
outcrops that dot the Beagle Channel to view cormorants and sea lions. Everyone’s cameras snapped into action, and I
realized that the big group of 14 Argentinians who hung around together were a
group of professional, semi-professional and serious amateur photographers
under the guidance of one of Argentina’s most renowned photographers, Marcelo
Gurruchaga. Some of our other passengers
also had huge, impressive cameras with lenses the size of a small bazooka, and
the air was thick with the sound of clicking shutters. We then headed over to a small island where
we could go ashore and check out some of the bird life. The weather was sunny and warm, and the light
on the kelp geese and upland geese was perfect.
We returned to the boat re-animated, and another excellent lunch with a
baked apple dessert (the pastry chef would quickly become one of our favourite
people on board) we had a lecture on sea birds and then set off by 4 pm,
larders restocked and optimism rekindled.
Monika also told us that Antarpply had agreed to give us all a 10
percent discount on the price of our trip (having lost 2 days out of 20, that
seemed fair enough), so Stefan and Claudia’s worst fears weren’t coming
true.
We steamed along the Beagle
Channel again, this time earlier in the day, and by the time we were tucking
into a delicious salmon dinner, the ship was just beginning to leave its
sheltered passage and head into the open South Atlantic. I started to feel queasy just after dessert,
and suddenly had to run upstairs to be seasick over the side. It was my body’s signal to me to go to bed
immediately, and I did so.
I slept well, woke up and headed
to breakfast the next morning feeling refreshed. Breakfast was always a big buffet,
well-stocked with fruit, toast, cereal, yoghurt, bacon, eggs and croissants,
and I was devouring my morning quota of bacon and eggs when another wave of
nausea drove me outside again. I took
some seasickness medication, went back to the cabin, read, napped through lunch
and awoke feeling completely better.
This time going upstairs in the rolling sea had no effect on my
well-being and I spent the afternoon on deck with most of my fellow passengers,
watching the seabirds that tirelessly followed in our ship’s wake.
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| The Falklands flag flying over the MV Ushuaia |
Black-browed albatrosses and southern giant
petrels were among the most numerous and prominent of the ship-followers, but
smaller birds such as prions and Cape petrels and storm petrels were mixed in,
while occasionally a huge, slower-moving wandering albatross or royal albatross
would show up behind. It was a wonderful
spectacle, under clear skies and brilliant sunshine. By mid-afternoon we were coming into sight of
land, the furthermost western outliers of the Falklands Archipelago.
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| On the beach at New Island, West Falklands |
Our destination was New Island, a penguin,
cormorant and albatross nesting ground, and by 5 o’clock we were dressed up for
our shore expedition and queuing up to board our Zodiacs to be shuttled to the
island. The late-afternoon light made
for dramatic colours, and we put ashore on the beach amidst oystercatchers,
kelp geese and upland geese. The island
was once a sheep station, but is now run as a nature conservancy, providing
shelter for many thousands of black-browed albatrosses, rockhopper penguins and
king cormorants, not to mention almost a million fairy prions (of which we saw
precisely none). We said hello to the
couple running the island, took some photos on the beach and along the path
through the tussock grass, and then, atop a cliff looking out to the open South
Atlantic, we came to the nesting site.
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| Terri amidst the penguins, albatrosses and cormorants |
It was an unforgettable hour and
a half that we spent there taking photos, looking through binoculars or just
gazing in wonder. In incredibly close
quarters to each other, completely mixed together, the three nesting species
jostled for space, squawked cacophonously and posed for our cameras. My favourites were the rockhopper penguins,
small birds with bright yellow “hair” on their heads a bit like bleached punk
Mohawks. They made their way
painstakingly uphill from the ocean beach far below, hopping their way up one
rock at a time.
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| Punk rockhoppers |
The cormorants too were
visually striking, with bright blue eyes and weird orange patches of crumpled
skin, like balls of felt, at the top of their beaks. From time to time they would make their way
to a convenient launching point and hurl themselves into the air to go fishing
offshore. Meanwhile the albatrosses,
looking out of place because of their much larger size, perched atop small
earthen nests or else soared effortlessly overhead.
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| Cormorants |
We sat in the tussock grass, less than a
metre away from the melee, and soaked in the sights and sounds. I felt as though I were in a BBC nature
documentary narrated by David Attenborough, and I could hear his unmistakeable
voice giving a running commentary in my ear.
Eventually we climbed down to the ocean to watch the rockhoppers coming
and going, and to get a view from underneath of the albatrosses.
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| Rockhopper making his way slowly uphill from the sea |
A few striated caracaras (aka Johnny rooks),
a species almost endemic to the Falklands (a few are found on outlying islands
of Chile down towards Cape Horn) flew by from time to time, almost lost in the
maelstrom of cormorants and albatrosses.
And then, all too soon, it was time to trudge back to the beach, already
in shadow as the sun sank towards the horizon, and catch a Zodiac ride back to
the MV Ushuaia. Conversation over a supper of Manchurian beef was an excited
babble as we relived our experiences, and we lingered in the lounge after
supper to talk more with fellow passengers before heading upstairs for a
celebratory taste of Ardbeg whisky.
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| Black-browed albatross soaring |
We spent the night steaming
around the outside of the Falkland Archipelago, and by 10 am the next morning
(Friday, October 30th) we were making our way through The Narrows to
dock in Port Stanley. The idyllic warm
calm weather we had had on New Island was a distant memory, and we docked in a
biting wind that sucked the warmth from our bodies. Landing formalities seemed to take forever as
HM Customs inspected the boat and our passports were stamped. Finally we were released and Terri and I led
the charge into the wind on the half-hour hike into town from the ferry
dock.
The town of Port Stanley has a
population of only 2100 people (out of the 3000 who inhabit the islands), and
it’s a tidy, neatly-kept town of low-rise houses, each with a Land Rover parked
outside (there are essentially no paved roads outside the capital). Terri and I were headed in search of fish and
chips, and after we couldn’t find our first choice, we ended up at Shorty’s
Diner, run by a Chinese family, where we had great fish and chips and beer. The clientele were all local residents
(always a good sign) except for a couple of soldiers from the UK military base
which is there to dissuade the Argentinian government from launching a repeat
of the 1982 invasion. The local accent
was very English, and the money we got back in change from our meal was the
local version of British notes and coins, with Falklands wildlife on the
coins.
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| Just in case the Argentinians were in any doubt.... |
As we walked through the streets,
bundled up against the ferocious winds, signs of the islanders’ British
identity were everywhere, from the local flag (a Union Jack in the corner and a
coat of arms bearing a sheep in the middle) to the popular bumper stickers
stating “The Falkland Islands—British to the Core!”.
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| Falklands War Memorial |
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| Terri and the Iron Lady, Port Stanley |
We bypassed the local museum but walked out
to the monuments to the 1982 Falklands War, featuring a bust of Margaret
Thatcher (a local hero for her resolute response to the invasion; she is far
more universally admired in Port Stanley than in any city in the UK, I would
imagine) and a memorial wall for the 200 or so soldiers, sailors and Marines
who died retaking the islands. A bit
further along the sea wall is an older memorial to a naval battle fought in the
first year of World War One just off the Falklands between the UK and German
fleets in which the British managed to defeat the Germans. We walked past the neatly kept grounds of
Government House, then headed to the Victory Bar for a pint. This local watering hole was buzzing late on
a Friday afternoon, partly with locals and partly with about half the passengers
and crew of the Ushuaia. The ceiling was
decorated with hundreds of tiny Union Jacks, and military-themed displays
covered the walls. I wondered what the
Argentinian crew of our ship made of it, and how it squared with the
nationalist obsession with recovering the islands that makes up so much of
their schooling and upbringing.
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| The Victory Bar, Port Stanley |
We struck up a conversation with
a local guy who works in the fishing industry, and after a couple of pints we
had learned more about Falklands history and current affairs than we would have
gained from an afternoon in the museum.
The Falklands have become very wealthy over the past 30 years thanks to
selling fishing rights to Spanish, Japanese, Taiwanese and other fishing
fleets. Very few Falklanders work
directly in the industry, except, as in the case of our conversational partner,
in the organization of fishing permits and arranging of local business
partnerships. The fishery, for the
lucrative Patagonian toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass) is said to be one of the
best managed fisheries in the world, with fish populations and sizes healthy
and thriving. The revenue from these
fisheries pays for most of the Falklands government budget, allowing for low
income taxes and government schemes to pay for any Falklander graduating from
high school to go to the UK to pursue higher education free of charge. I couldn’t imagine the current Argentinian
government, with its chronic economic mismanagement, being able to run the
islands nearly as efficiently.
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| WW2 war dead from the Falklands |
Our interlocutor was a small boy
when the Argentines invaded, and he remembers the young Argentinian conscript
soldiers being baffled by why they were being greeted with sullen indifference
and active hostility, instead of being welcomed as liberators as they had
anticipated. He seemed up to date on
Argentine politics, and was modestly hopeful that if Macri won the presidential
election (as he did a few weeks later in a run-off against the Kirchnerist
candidate Scioli), Macri would tone down the angry nationalist rhetoric that has
been a feature of Argentine pronouncements on the Falklands (Malvinas) for the
past decade. Just before we had to head
back to the ship, the third-place game in the Rugby World Cup came on, pitting
the surprising Argentinian team against the South Africans. The locals were cheering the South Africans,
but were pretty tolerant of the excited pro-Argentina cheers of our ship’s
crew. It was a hopeful sign that on an
individual level Argentines and Falklanders could at least tolerate each other.
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| Albatrosses following our ship |
Safely back on board, and having
added three passengers to our roster (a Norwegian couple working on oil
exploration off the Falklands—recent results were not very encouraging—and
Aussie Tom’s mother Sally, a wonderful firebrand of energy who had been
visiting friends in the Falklands for a week), we set off towards South Georgia
and the next leg of our triangle of exploration, fully satisfied with the
nature, history and present-day culture that we had seen in the Falklands.
