March – The Travels of Eric and Eva

South Atlantic Islands

March 5 – March 26

We sadly had to leave Antarctica for the remaining 120 days of the cruise and return to Puerto Williams in Chile, the southernmost city in the world.

The evening in Puerto Williams brought clear skies and a beautiful full moon.

Our first stop in the segment was the Falkland Islands which featured history of the 1982 war between Argentina and the United Kingdom. We found the islands to be quite barren with little wildlife apart from penguins, seals and birds. We hiked to the top of Mount Tumbledown. We did not in fact tumble down.

The top of Mount Tumbledown in memoriam.

Falkland is one of many islands considered part of the British Territories but Argentina has long felt it belongs to them due to their proximity, along with the neighboring island of South Georgia. In 1982 Argentina took control of the islands but the UK sent warships 8000 miles to take them back. Nearly 1,000 people died needlessly and it remains inhabited by Brits to this day.

Not sure what type of bird this is, but the coloring was a contrast to the barren and brown/grey landscapes of the island.

This tussock grass is common on the island.

These birds are petrels. Along with albatross, they are the most common birds. We have many birders on the cruise who keep a checklist of every kind that they see.

A few interesting facts for you: the islands get 40% of their electricity from a handful of wind turbines; there are no native mammals on the island; they are facing a severe water shortage due to lack of rain and snow due to climate change; surprisingly, 70% of young adults return to the island to live after going off to college.

The jaws bones of two blue whales in the capital city, Port Stanley.

The next island was South Georgia. I had never heard of this island until we booked the cruise but it proved to be quite remarkable.

A group of penguins swimming. They do look like ducks when in the water.

Amazingly, it turns out that South Georgia is home to over 400,000 pairs of penguins and their young chicks! The experience of walking around and mingling with all of them was just incredible. The noise of their trumpeting sound is overwhelming. You hear them all the way from the ship before you can get close enough to see them.

Penguins, as far as the eye can see. All of the penguins have to travel to the water to feed.

A penguin gingerly passing sleeping elephant seals. Generally, these seals prefer other food.

The male and female penguins take turns keeping the eggs warm.

After South Georgia, we moved on the several islands that are truly in the middle of nowhere, well over a thousand miles from any land. One of the islands is called Tristan da Cunha, which is the only one inhabited by permanent residents, 235 people, all of whom share only 9 surnames.

This island is incredibly difficult to land on due to weather and high swells. One person I talked to on the voyage had tried 12 times and never made it. We made it on the second day we tried. A day after we left a storm system moved in that will apparently make it inaccessible again for weeks.

It is known as the most remote human settlement in the world. There is no airport and the nearest continent is South Africa, 1700 miles away. Getting off the island typically requires booking a freighter that visits the island every 2 months with supplies. The island, as with the others nearby, is volcanic and they had an eruption in 1961 that nearly wiped out the homes there but stopped just a few hundred meters short.

One of the original thatched roof homes. Other homes have more traditional construction.

Eva walked back here a second time for gifts.

This is called a Rockhopper Penguin. It is adding a winter fur layer and is miserable.

There are several nearby islands, including one with a perfect name – Inaccessible Island. Here are a few more of my favorite pics from the islands.

On our way to Capetown. 4-5 days at sea.

There are two main historical themes in these islands as well as Antarctica.

One is the incredible exploration voyages of Ernest Shackleton in the South Atlantic and Antarctica in the early 1900s. The book Endurance makes for an excellent read about him.

The second is that you can’t escape the impact that whaling had on these islands. By any conservative estimate, the number of whales killed during the height of whaling was in the hundreds of thousands and likely over a million. In the 1800s before the advent of electricity, whale oil extracted from their blubber was in heavy demand as a major fuel source and globally was one of the major industries at that time. Think about having to kill thousands of whales in order to supply fuel to the host countries. Most other parts of the whale found uses as well for cosmetics, clothing and other non-essential needs. While most countries have long abandoned whaling, it unfortunately continues to this day in Iceland, Norway and Japan.

I end this segment with this public service message.

Antarctica

Our destinations are shown here and covered 1640 nautical miles from the tip of South America (Puerto Williams, Chile).

What does one say when the place they have wanted to visit their entire life turns out to be so much more spectacular than they dreamed! This is Antarctica! We were extremely blessed with incredible weather, close encounters with wildlife and smooth seas. The guides all said that this was genuinely one of the best visits they had ever been a part of as most have one or more destinations cancelled due to ice or weather or other issues.

What struck me immediately was how monochromatic it is everywhere, particularly when there is cloud cover. The mountains are a deep black and form a stark contrast to the pure white snow.

*This picture is the actual scenery, not converted to black and white.*

With no vegetation, the scenery lacks any variety of colors except for the grayness of the water and the occasional blue patches in the sky when the weather clears. When it snows, the depth perception becomes impossible as everything turns into one completely whitewashed canvas. Thinking back on the early explorers, many of whom had to survive winters here, it is incredible to imagine just how difficult it must have been to navigate the land and keep on course.

I was surprised by just how mountainous the continent is on the Peninsula where we visited.

Everywhere you go there are enormous pure white snow-covered glaciers, hundreds of feet high at the water’s edge where they are transformed into layers of ice hundreds of feet high, filled with crevasses and ridges exposing the clear blue ice beneath the snow. The occasional crackling sound of a glacier calfing or simply moving down the mountain is impossible to miss as it interrupts the fierce silence of the surroundings here.

*Many icebergs were hundreds of feet high*

One of the special characteristics of this area is the number of whales that roam the waters here unafraid of our boats. We have video of whales coming right up to our Zodiac and even swimming directly under. The humpbacks are a very curious species. The other type we saw frequently were Minke whales that are typically less social but still came up to and went under another group’s Zodiac.

The only wildlife present on the land here are seals and penguins. When on land, they seem to coexist peacefully most of the time, but a penguin under water is at great risk from a hungry seal.

*A Gentoo Penguin, one of three types that we saw here. The others are the Adelie and the Chinstrap.*

*Leopard Seal: We watched him for 15 minutes from maybe 20 feet away. They are the major threat to penguins here with their powerful jaws.*

*Crabeater seal. The pink on the hill in the background is snow algae.* *This is a species of green algae* *that contains a secondary red pigment in addition to chlorophyll.*

*The last penguin picture, but if you want we have many more, including a few videos! They are so fun to watch!*

This is a krill, a shrimp-like animal that forms the food source for most whales, many seals
as well as some sea birds. Without krill, the entire ecosystem would not exist. Man harvests
krill for use in omega supplements, aquarium food and other uses that are completely
non-essential and threaten the ocean regions that depend on it.

One of the many whalers buried in Whalers Bay, a natural harbor on Deception Island, in the South Shetland Islands. It was named Deception Island because unless you approached it from
the proper distance to find the entrance, it was completely hidden. This bay is in a huge volcanic crater and was used heavily to transport the whales here and process them. There is thought to be tens or even hundreds of thousands of whale bones at the bottom of the sea crater.

In the background are large containers from the early 1900s used to boil the blubber to extract the whale oil. The large containers in the foreground held all the whale oil. This gives an indication of
the magnitude of the whaling that occurred here starting in the early 1800s, primarily by Norway.

Saint Helena

March 20 – March 22

South Georgia

March 12 – March 16