It took me almost 6 months but I finally got through all the pictures and video from our trip to Antarctica. We did take over 10,000 photos and several hours of video. It takes a while to parse that down into a 9 minute video slideshow. Enjoy…
Don’t forget to check out the previous posts from our Antarctica Expedition.
Hope you enjoyed the brief break about Antarctica with a couple posts about our long weekend in Tibet. Now back to finishing up the trip report to Antarctica…
NatGeo Explorer crashes through waves
The journey back through the Drake passage was A LOT more exciting this time. We had some pretty large swells as you can see from the pictures above. There weren’t nearly as many people walking around the ship for the 2 day trip back to Ushuaia, Argentina. I guessing a lot of them were in the cabin hugging the toilet
I was doing fine so I spent some more time photographing the sea birds following the ship.
Albatross following the NatGeo explorer
Sea birds following the NatGeo explorer
We then had the pleasure of hearing another talk by Peter Hillary. This time he talked about the krisis on K2. I’m surprised he is able to talk about this event because of the tragic nature of the trip. He was the sole survivor of the group of 8 climbers that tried to summit K2 in 1995. I’m glad he has the courage to tell this gripping and painful story.
Peter Hillary slide show about the K2 krisis in 1995
We also had some time to chat with Peter and get him to sign a copy of his new book. In the Ghost Country: A Lifetime Spent on the Edge. I haven’t read it yet (sorry Peter) but I will get to it soon. I read most books on my Ipad now but one of the problems with that is you can’t really get authors to sign a digital version.
Picture with Peter Hillary
There was also a talk by Ira Block on his assignment to photograph Naomi Uemuera’s solo expedition by dog sled to the North Pole. Ira is a great speaker and teacher. I will definitely try to meet up with him again for one of his workshops or maybe even another Lindblad Expedition he is on.
Photo with Ira Block. (all good photographers are bald
and then before you know it the port captain from Ushuaia borded our ship to take her into port…
We visited Port Lockroy in the morning. Port Lockroy was a British base in Antarctica from 1944 to the mid 60s. It was then abandoned and fell into disrepair until the British Antarctic Heritage Trust stepped in to restore the base. It is restored very well and shows how some of the early scientists lived in Antarctica. It’s only staffed during the summer months. It’s pretty isolated but the 4 girls on the island get plenty of ships coming in to visit. They also have a couple thousand penguins and beautiful landscapes to keep them occupied.
Port Lockroy Landscape
It also serves as a post office and has a nice little gift shop. Yep, there is a even a gift shop in Antarctica where you can buy crappy souvenirs that your wife will save for years.
After Miki mailed her postcard we were off to Cuverville Island. This island had some amazing landscapes and I went a little crazy with the panoramic shots.
Cuverville Island Panoramic
Cuverville Island Panoramic
We spent most of the time on Cuverville just sitting on the beach watching the penguins coming in and out of the water. We’ve spent so much of the trip running from one side of an island to the other but just sitting there on the beach was one of the best experiences. It also provided some of the best chances to photograph even more penguins.
Gentoo Penguin - water beads
Gentoo Penguin
Gentoo Penguin running out of the water
There was also a large group of male Skuas about that were making a lot of noise. Lots of fighting, flapping of wings and just general chaos. The penguins didn’t seem so bothered by this group probably because they focused on showing off to the other skuas rather that eating penguins.
Skua
Miki bought these penguin socks and for the whole trip she kept telling me she wanted to get a photo of her socks next to the penguins. After realizing she wasn’t joking I got a couple shots for her.
Penguin Socks
This was our last day on the Antarctic continent so we wanted to squeeze every last second we could out of our time on the island. I was able to get a few last landscapes in before the final Zodiac left.
B&W Cuverville Island Landscape
B&W Cuverville Island Landscape
iceberg landscape
The final panoramic shot was taken with my infrared converted 30D.
Infrared Cuverville Panoramic
Daily Expedition Report and more pics after the break
Our first day in Antarctica and for Miki and I it was the 6th continent we’ve been to (we still haven’t been to Europe). The first island we went to was Aitcho which had a large colony of Gentoo penguins. To our surprise, Aitcho island was very green. This was the last piece of green land we would see for the rest of the trip.
Gentoo penguin going for a run
We then travelled from Aitcho Island to Half Moon island we had our first humpback whale sightings.
With winds pushing us from behind all night and a calm sea state to boot, the National Geographic Explorer made fantastic time crossing the Drake Passage. As we rubbed the sleep from our eyes this morning, the ship’s crew brought us within sight of land for the first time since leaving South America. Rising like a dragon’s back from a tempestuous sea, the South Shetland Islands were our first landfall on this Antarctic voyage.
Named after the British Admiralty Hydrographic Office, Aitcho Island is the phonetic interpretation of ‘H.O.’ Aitcho Island was virtually snow-free this morning, making for easy passage as we walked amongst chinstrap and gentoo penguin breeding colonies. Having the freedom to stop and sit amongst these wild animals, we being to appreciate their daily struggles. We watched the chinstrap penguins work themselves up into a musical frenzy, heads held high and rolling from side to side, wings rhythmically flapping at a slow pace, their display a high-pitched chirp/scream. The gentoos with their chests puffed up to capacity, pulsing with exuberant exhalations, followed by quick, wheezy inhalations, all of it resonating with a nasally timbre. Whether it was clean penguins returning from sea with crops full of food or the dirty penguins defending their eggs and chicks from marauding brown skuas, all the animals here had a job to do: Ensure the survival of my genes by raising a chick. Good luck pied friends.
To be denied a glimpse of the sun on the summer solstice sounds like a cruel joke. Luckily for us, the weather around the South Shetland Islands broke open and cast beautiful light onto several rather relaxed humpback whales. The combination of clear skies and stark white pectoral flippers meant that we could watch the whales beneath the surface. Steadily moving along and traveling just beneath the surface, our first whale encounter was a beautiful one. Eventually we left our sea-bound brethren and were greeted with fantastic light upon the glaciers surrounding Half Moon Island, the sight of our afternoon’s activities. We watched Weddell seals lazily rolling in freezing cold water or dozing right on the snow itself. Chinstrap penguins slid by like self-propelled toboggans on their downhill commute to the sea. As the clouds once again began to fall into rank and the sun was shut out into a global diffuse light, we steadily, yet reluctantly returned to our ship. By now our bodies are telling us to seek out rest, our heads are buzzing with enthusiasm and our stomachs are demanding satisfaction. Tonight we head north, then east for the Weddell Sea, what we will encounter no one knows for sure. I do know this: there will be penguins and they will be working hard.
We woke up after our first night on the NatGeo Explorer in the notorious Drake Passage. Luckily, the weather cooperated with us on our way down to Antarctica and it was pretty smooth sailing.
One of the many nice touches the staff does is publish daily expedition reports online. I’m pretty bad at taking notes during a trip to document what we saw and where we went unless it pertains to a particular photograph. Having the staff create daily expedition reports helps with this. Just one of the many small things they do to create a wonderful trip. Here is what one of the naturalist, Peter Puleston wrote for 12/20.
At Sea in the Drake Passage
In the failing light of day last evening as we sailed easily southeastward down the calm waters of the Beagle Channel the large hazy moon rose over Tierra del Fuego. Many days will pass before we return to the verdant valleys between the snow-capped peaks of the southern Andes Mountains.
It was almost midnight before we began to feel the gentle rise and fall of the great Southern Ocean beneath the hull of our stout ship. By breakfast time we were over a hundred and fifty miles south of fabled Cape Horn and well into our adventure of a lifetime. A light breeze and bright sun drew us out on deck and up to the bridge to admire the grace and beauty of our many avian escorts. Magnificent wandering albatross sailed effortlessly around our ship gliding on fixed wings that often measure over ten feet from tip-to-tip. Many of the wanderer’s smaller pelagic relatives including petrels, prions and other albatrosses completed our windborne entourage.
By mid-afternoon one only had to venture out on deck for a moment to realize we had passed into another ecological zone. We had reached the cold Antarctic surface water and the air temperature dropped down to just a degree or two above freezing. We began preparations for tomorrow’s arrival in the South Shetland Islands. Any gear we were planning to wear or carry ashore such as boots and backpacks were put through a decontamination process that removed hitchhiking seeds and any traces of foreign soil attached to our footwear. Later from our photography experts we learned how best to take advantage of our cameras. And from our Oceanites researchers we learned about the important work of the Antarctic Site Inventory.
Finally we were introduced to the ship’s officers and invited to our Captain’s welcome cocktail and dinner party. Then we were off to our beds filled with anticipation of our first trip ashore tomorrow to stand among the penguins. by Peter Puleston
Karen Copeland talking about seabirds
We also had a talk by Karen Copeland about seabirds. I spent a lot of time on the Bridge watching for wildlife, taking with the staff, taking photos, and she was almost always up there watching for wildlife as well. She has a very interesting background and is extremely knowledgable naturalist that has an obvious passion for what she does. The best thing was… this passion was not out of the ordinary for the staff of the NatGeo explorer… they all had the same passion for nature.
There wasn’t much else to do today except watch for sea birds and excersise.
National Geographic Explorer (it''s a pretty big ship but the scenery in Antarctica makes it look insignificant)
The ship we took down to Antarctica was the National Geographic Explorer. It’s a purpose built ship to handle travelling in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It only carries about 130 guests which is very important in Antartica because the Antarctic treaty only allows 100 people per ship on the continent at one time.
National Geographic Explorer crashing into waves in the the Drake passage
It has ice reinforced hulls (that the Captain loves to use to break through ice) and stabilizers (which we were very grateful for in the Drake passage).
Kayaks and Zodiacs on the National Geographic Explorer
It has kayaks and zodiacs to use for landings and an ROV they use to take under water video. They have great common areas which we really only used during the Drake passage… except for the Lounge which was used daily for briefings. When we were on the antarctic peninsula there was really only time to eat, sleep, go on excursions and listen to the talks by the guest speakers. The two key speakers were the adventurer and mountaineer Peter Hillary and National Geographic Photographer Ira Block but there were also many naturalists on board there were experts in their own right. I’ll do a post more about them later.
Here are a few more pictures from around the ship.
The Clelia 2, a cruise ship on the way back from Antartica had a 45 foot wave crash over the bow knocking out communications and radar. The National Geographic Explorer came to it’s rescue and sent it a working satellite phone so it could communicate in order to coordinate a rescue… which turns out wasn’t needed in the end.
I normally wouldn’t blog about something like this but we will be on the National Geographic Explorer next week going through the very same Drake passage that crippled the Clelia 2 I can’t wait!!! (No one was injured and the ship made it back to Argentina safely.)
Footage taken by a guest on the National Geographic Explorer.
CBS news did a brief report and a video on the incident (you have to wait through an annoying 15 second commercial).
Twitter
Facebook
Youtube
RSS
Picasa
Flickr