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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
the magnitude of the whaling that occurred here starting in the early 1800s, primarily by Norway.
