The NatGeo Explorer is equipped with inflatable kayaks which is always a highlight with the guests… ourselves included. Kayaking in the Arctic in the shadow of the Holmiabukta glacier is what adventure travel is all about. We travelled along the coast line looking for wildlife hoping to see a Polar Bear. The crew scans the area for Polar Bears to make sure there are none around before letting the kayaks out because a Polar Bear could easily take out a kayaker in the water.
Kayaking in the arctic
Our Polar Bear hunt by kayak wasn’t successful but we did find out later that one was spotted by the crew in an area we had just been. At first we were bummed because we wanted to get one last look at a Polar Bear but its probably for the best because Polar Bears can swim much faster than we can kayak.
Also played around again with some time lapse photography. I put the camera up on our balcony as we went out for the day. You can see the kayaks zipping in and out from the ship. I just wish I could have caught a polar bear chasing a kayaking on video…
After our kayaking we got a chance to go for a quick polar plunge. Miki and I did it in the Antarctic so we figured it best to round out by taking a swim near both poles.
Arctic swim
This was our last stop of the trip. We now had to head all the way back to Longyearbyen to disembark the ship and fly back to Oslo. But Svalbard had one more surprise in stock for us. A sighting of the biggest animal on earth. The BLUE WHALE.
Blue Whale
Blue Whales are rare to spot around here so it was an amazing sighting and we had two of them that spent a long time playing in front of our ship. Some interesting blue whale facts.
Can eat 4-8 tons of krill per day
Up to 30 meters long
Tongue can weigh as much as an elephant
Babies can weigh up to 4 tons at birth
Babies gain 250 lbs per day
Penis can be 8 feet long
Blue Whale up close
It’s hard to comprehend the size of these animal in pictures but try to comprehend seeing an animal gracefully swimming along that is the size of a basketball court. Check out a interactive comparison to other objects at National Geographic.
Blue Whale passing in front of the ship
These whales were very curious coming very close to our ship and in one very interesting pass, rolled over on its side to get a better look at us. One of the Lindblad staff on the NatGeo Explorer has the nickname the “whale lady”. She has spent her entire career studying whales. She was on the ship wide intercom as this encounter was happening explaining what the whale was doing, giving us neat facts (see above), but when the whale rolled over on her side she was stumped. She had never seen this behavior before. You could hear the excitement in its voice as this was the first time she has seen this behaviour. It’s always exciting when even the experts who study an animal every day of their life get excited about something they see.
Blue Whale rolling over
After this amazing encounter (a definite highlight of the trip) the whales said goodbye and we continued back to port.
Two bue whales at dusk
Lot’s of amazing animal encounters topped off by a visit from the earth’s biggest creature. Not a bad way to end the trip at all…
One of the top animals on our list to photograph has been the “Ice Bear” or Polar Bear. These elusive creatures are getting harder and harder to spot in the wild but we knew we could count on Lindblad Expedition’s National Geographic Explorer and their crew to find them for us. We travelled on the National Geographic Explorer to Antarctica last year and had an amazing time. The ship, crew, staff, Nat Geo photo instructors and Antarcitca itself was one of the most amazing places we’ve been to. Many of the passengers on the ship with us in the Antarctic raved about the trip to the Arctic. Since seeing Polar Bears was on our wish list we booked the trip immediately after returning home.
Polar Bear in field of arctic flowers
Lindblad calls the trip to the arctic the Land of the Ice Bears. They market the trip as an 11 day tour of the Svalbard archipelago. In actuality, you only have 5 days on the ship searching for the elusive Ice Bear. All of the other days are travel days or embarking/disembarking from the ship. The trip was still amazing even though it was shorter than we expected. An extra 2 days at sea exploring the archipelago would have been perfect. It would have allowed extra time to search for Polar Bears, Walruses, Whales and most importantly not feel rushed when trying to get that perfect shot. Overall, the photography experience in Antarctica was far superior and I came away from that trip with much better pictures than this one. Even though it was only a 5 day trip they packed as much into every moment as they could and I did end up with a few good photos.
Over the next week or so I’ll do a few posts that describes what we did and what we saw each day we were on the ship. Similar to what I did for our expedition to Antarctica.
The photo instructors onboard the ship put together a video slideshow of the passengers best photos from the trip. Miki and I submitted some of our favorites. We tried to submit pictures that other people wouldn’t have posted so we tried to get a little creative and kept the wildlife pictures to a minimum since everyone else had lots of them.
Some of my favorites.
- Polar Bears above.
Arctic Landscape
The Ice of the Arctic
Waterfall flowing off the Austfonna ice cap. Largest ice cap by area in Europe.
Kayaking in the Arcitc. (Gopro camera attached to end of kayak paddle)
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.
Doing the Polar Plunge in front of the National Geographic Explorer
We liked our trip to Antarctica on the National Geographic Explorer so much we booked another trip on the same ship to the Arctic this summer. In preparation of the trip to Arctic, they had National Geographic photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins give a webinar on the Top 10 Essentials For Making Better Travel Photos. These tips don’t just apply to trips to the arctic. They are very useful tips that will help you take better travel photos wherever you go. Click on the link here to watch the webinar.
Here are the top 10 tips that Ralph covers in his presentation.
Early in the morning we arrived at Deception Island. This island has a lot of history for the early explorers and also served as a whaling station for several of the early whaling operations. All of that has stopped now and after some recent volcanic eruptions only 2 research stations are still left on the island.
It was a very flat and grey overcast day when we arrived. There was no wildlife on the island. Just a lot of grey volcanic ash and little bit of snow. Obviously this doesn’t make for great photos but Miki was able to stop some interesting texture in the ash which I think makes an interesting photo. This is a color photo. It hasn’t been processed as a black and white photo. Just shows how flat the light was that day.
Color landscape photo of Deception Island
There is still a lot of thermal activity from the volcano which does produce some “hot springs”. Hot Springs is a bit of misnomer. The first 3 cm of water very close to shore is very hot but beyond that its as cold as you would imagine the water in Antarctica would be. None the less… we join some of our hearty travelers and went for a dip.
Taking the Polar Plunge
Miki enjoying the Antarctic "Hot Springs"
After we enjoyed the polar plunge we continued onto Lindblad Cove where we would spend Christmas eve. On the way there we spotted a pod of humpback whales feeding on Krill. This whale also got an frightened bird for desert.
Humpback Whale almost eating a bird
Humpback whales catching krill with bubbles
The whales use bubbles to gather the Krill together and the swim up through the ball of krill with their mouths open to scoop up as much krill is they can in one big gulp.
Humpback whale feeding on Krill
Dennis, our undersea specialist wanted to catch some Krill for us to show what they looked like. He hopped into one of the Zodiacs to get some for us and had a close encounter with the humpbacks. Dennis is a great guy and is always one of the highlights during the daily recap of the days events. However, we were all secretly hoping the whales would have gotten even a little closer to cause some real action for him
Catching Krill
He did catch some Krill for us and its surprising how small these things are. Amazing to think that these tiny things are what massive humpback whales and a lot of other species live off of.
Krill
and as soon as the whales showed up… they were off to feed elsewhere.
Humpback Whale Tail
Next up was Lindblad Cove and this was one of the highlights of the trip. The cove was full of us but that didn’t stop the captain. We made our way through slowly and the views were spectacular.
Panoramic of Lindblad Cove
Having this kind of view from the balcony of our room on Christmas eve was reasons this was one of the highlights of the trip.
View from the NatGeo Explorer on Christmas Eve 2010
I never got tired of taking pictures of the ice. Here are a few more of the cool ice picks from the day.
Lindblad Cove - Ice
Lindblad Cove - Ice
Lindblad Cove - Ice that looks like a whale tail
Lindblad Cove - Ice
Lindblad Cove - Ice
Daily Expedition Report and a few 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.
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.
After our 4 hour charter flight from Santiago we arrived in Ushuaia. They had a short city tour and harbor cruise planned for us which was a nice little side trip while the National Geographic Explorer was being cleaned up from its previous trip.
Clelia 2
We saw the Clelia 2 at the pier. This was the ship that was disabled in high seas a few weeks earlier. Check out the video in my previous blog post. Supposedly they are only a few weeks away from putting it back into service but I would never be a passenger on that ship. There is just no comparison on the sea worthiness of the Clelia 2 vs the National Geographic Explorer.
219-foot yacht, Archimedes
I also saw another amazing yacht docked next to our ship. It was the 219 foot Archimedes. After a quick google search I found out it is owned by James Simons, the founder of Renaissance, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. It was also there when we came back from Antarctica but there was a lot of activity getting it stocked up with food and other supplies. Maybe Simons was on his way down…
Here is the boat we boarded for the harbor cruise.
Ushuaia harbor cruise
and some of the pics we got from the harbor cruise around Ushuaia.
B&W lighthouse landscape
A whole lot of birds that have a name I can't remember
After one of the longest door to door flights we’ve ever taken (14 hours Hong Kong to Toronto + 4 hour layover + 11 hours Toronto to Santiago) we finally arrived at the Grand Hyatt Santiago to meet up with the rest of the group. I don’t normally stay in Grand Hyatt hotels because I’m pretty loyal to Starwood group. However, I didn’t have much choice this time because this hotel was part of the tour and was the meeting point for everyone to gather before took a charter flight to Ushuaia, Argentina to board the National Geographic Explorer for our expedition to Antarctica.
The pool was one of the best parts of the hotel… too bad it was freezing cold. The polar plunge we took in Antarctica was warmer
Overall, it was a good hotel for a one night stopover. Here are some of the pics of the hotel.
Antarctica is an amazing, breathtaking, majestic, extraordinary place. It’s hard to describe it words and hard to truly capture the scale of this place with pictures or videos. I’ll be posting more picture pictures and videos over the next couple weeks. I’ve got several hundred gigs of photos/videos to go through so it might take some time.
While I’m getting to that you can take a look at the 30 minute video the National Geographic Explorer’s video chronicler put together specifically for our trip.
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