Antarctic Peninsula
Islands are tantalizing, titillating even with their rounded snow capped mounds or jagged peaks. But the time had come for them to stand aside, to take a back seat for a moment and let another take the stage. Today, finally, we put the Antarctic continent beneath our feet! It’s not that islands and islets did not play a role in our day for they did this morning and will still do so long into the night, placing margins on these seas, inviting us to explore around and in between.
We started with a grey on grey day which gradually gave way to morning. Here in the south the world illuminates from beneath. Ice and snow blanket the land casting brightness to the clouds and the radiance stretches into improbable arches. The Enterprise Islands embrace a protected harbor echoing with evidence of a consumptive past. Mooring bits rust on rocky prominences. Waterboats, shaped like pumpkin seeds idle, high and dry above the shore. The decaying hulk of the whaler Gouvernøren slowly slips into the deep but for now it provides a platform for boisterous Antarctic terns. It was easy to ignore this evidence of man and become lost in the pleasures of ice. Years of snowy accumulations compressed to glacial ice slid from the sides of the islands slumping threateningly in some places and in others showing glass-like conchoidal fractures. The fragments, the massive bergs, once set afloat continue to mold and erode, sculpted by air and water.
Islands with sky scratching mountain peaks formed the canyon-like passage of Errera Channel. Valley glaciers dipped their toes at the water’s edge where bites were nibbled away forming scalloped edges. Andvord Bay finally welcomed us, a broad fjord on the Antarctic Peninsula. Here a cobbled granite beach provided the gateway for the seventh continent for many. One step and great entertainment could be found. Gentoo penguins vigorously scrubbed their glistening bellies in shallow pools. A Weddell seal yawned and snored. And inland our spirits soared as one behind the other, like prospectors on the Chilkoot Pass, we climbed higher and ever higher until we felt as free as the flying birds looking down into the deep cerulean crevasses of a glacier. Blue fragments of sky flitted behind wispy clouds and we drank of the crisp fresh air marveling at where we were and where we have been.
Islands are tantalizing, titillating even with their rounded snow capped mounds or jagged peaks. But the time had come for them to stand aside, to take a back seat for a moment and let another take the stage. Today, finally, we put the Antarctic continent beneath our feet! It’s not that islands and islets did not play a role in our day for they did this morning and will still do so long into the night, placing margins on these seas, inviting us to explore around and in between.
We started with a grey on grey day which gradually gave way to morning. Here in the south the world illuminates from beneath. Ice and snow blanket the land casting brightness to the clouds and the radiance stretches into improbable arches. The Enterprise Islands embrace a protected harbor echoing with evidence of a consumptive past. Mooring bits rust on rocky prominences. Waterboats, shaped like pumpkin seeds idle, high and dry above the shore. The decaying hulk of the whaler Gouvernøren slowly slips into the deep but for now it provides a platform for boisterous Antarctic terns. It was easy to ignore this evidence of man and become lost in the pleasures of ice. Years of snowy accumulations compressed to glacial ice slid from the sides of the islands slumping threateningly in some places and in others showing glass-like conchoidal fractures. The fragments, the massive bergs, once set afloat continue to mold and erode, sculpted by air and water.
Islands with sky scratching mountain peaks formed the canyon-like passage of Errera Channel. Valley glaciers dipped their toes at the water’s edge where bites were nibbled away forming scalloped edges. Andvord Bay finally welcomed us, a broad fjord on the Antarctic Peninsula. Here a cobbled granite beach provided the gateway for the seventh continent for many. One step and great entertainment could be found. Gentoo penguins vigorously scrubbed their glistening bellies in shallow pools. A Weddell seal yawned and snored. And inland our spirits soared as one behind the other, like prospectors on the Chilkoot Pass, we climbed higher and ever higher until we felt as free as the flying birds looking down into the deep cerulean crevasses of a glacier. Blue fragments of sky flitted behind wispy clouds and we drank of the crisp fresh air marveling at where we were and where we have been.
