Antarctica
The perfect day! You always have dreams and expectations how the perfect day in Antarctica should be. It is very rare that anyone gets to encounter this but still once in a while you happen to be in the right spot at the right moment. The first day of 2007 did become to be one of these days!
Ice, ice, and ice! As the clock got closer to the magic time 00.00, our local time, we were all gathered in the lounge ready for celebrating. We were sailing through the Antarctic Sound, cluttered with huge tabular ice-bergs ("Ice-berg Alley"). Now far south and with almost 24 hours daylight, the sun is just barely disappearing for a very short time below the horizon; two words really stand out to express the setting, ice and light! We departed the year 2006 with great fun celebrations and moved into a new year.
It was like a saga, the colors hard to describe: red, blue and purple light, and as the sun slowly rose again, and we cruised between large grounded ice-bergs standing in the Fritjof Sound, both our cameras and brain had reached the point of overflow. Water as glass, minke whales escaping away, penguins perched on ice-flows all add to the scenery.
We now headed further south in the Weddell Sea, to the area near Seymour and Snow Hill Islands. A dream coming this far South is always to encounter the largest living penguin: the Emperor.
This bird is the extreme of the extreme, as it can live its whole life with out ever touching solid land. It feeds in water and breeds on frozen water, sea ice, and all this through the cold and dark Antarctic winter. This time of the year the birds have left the colonies, as the ice has broken up and are scattered along the edge of the sea ice.
After breakfast in perfect weather we gathered on the bridge or on the deck up front, everyone looking eagerly over the huge icy landscape. After about 3 hours we had counted at least 10 different birds, standing on ice-flows, both adult and juvenile birds from the last breeding season. It is great to encounter one at a time, as the emperor penguin lives solitary outside the breeding season. Now on one ice-flow, we had as many as 7 birds!
Slowly we now made our heading to Paulett Island. A place renowned for its large colony of breeding Adelie penguins. Of course we had to reach the site, and this was almost 5 hours of cruising between huge tabular ice-bergs. Our hotel manager and the galley crew arranged a great surprise for us and set a deck lunch for those not wanting to miss out on a single second of this remarkable day, with glittering and sparkling sunshine. To have the lunch outside on deck with ice-bergs mirroring in the glassy water is something everybody should experience!
Now many of us had been up for way too many hours, as the short night was spectacular. Well, with sun shine, no wind is was just perfect to catch a short nap at the pool deck before we in the late afternoon reached Paulett Island.
As we arrived and had everyone ashore, those who wanted could join a longer hike. Others preferred to stay by the small hut and hear the fabulous story about one of many Antarctic expeditions, which made it to this part of the world during the period of 1901-05. Here in this small hut, built by rocks, 21 men had to over winter as their ship Antarctica got crushed in the ice. This was Otto Nordenskjöld’s expedition, and strangely enough everyone survived. Of course they, as we, were surrounded by abut 100,000 Adelie penguins.
Happy New Year!
The perfect day! You always have dreams and expectations how the perfect day in Antarctica should be. It is very rare that anyone gets to encounter this but still once in a while you happen to be in the right spot at the right moment. The first day of 2007 did become to be one of these days!
Ice, ice, and ice! As the clock got closer to the magic time 00.00, our local time, we were all gathered in the lounge ready for celebrating. We were sailing through the Antarctic Sound, cluttered with huge tabular ice-bergs ("Ice-berg Alley"). Now far south and with almost 24 hours daylight, the sun is just barely disappearing for a very short time below the horizon; two words really stand out to express the setting, ice and light! We departed the year 2006 with great fun celebrations and moved into a new year.
It was like a saga, the colors hard to describe: red, blue and purple light, and as the sun slowly rose again, and we cruised between large grounded ice-bergs standing in the Fritjof Sound, both our cameras and brain had reached the point of overflow. Water as glass, minke whales escaping away, penguins perched on ice-flows all add to the scenery.
We now headed further south in the Weddell Sea, to the area near Seymour and Snow Hill Islands. A dream coming this far South is always to encounter the largest living penguin: the Emperor.
This bird is the extreme of the extreme, as it can live its whole life with out ever touching solid land. It feeds in water and breeds on frozen water, sea ice, and all this through the cold and dark Antarctic winter. This time of the year the birds have left the colonies, as the ice has broken up and are scattered along the edge of the sea ice.
After breakfast in perfect weather we gathered on the bridge or on the deck up front, everyone looking eagerly over the huge icy landscape. After about 3 hours we had counted at least 10 different birds, standing on ice-flows, both adult and juvenile birds from the last breeding season. It is great to encounter one at a time, as the emperor penguin lives solitary outside the breeding season. Now on one ice-flow, we had as many as 7 birds!
Slowly we now made our heading to Paulett Island. A place renowned for its large colony of breeding Adelie penguins. Of course we had to reach the site, and this was almost 5 hours of cruising between huge tabular ice-bergs. Our hotel manager and the galley crew arranged a great surprise for us and set a deck lunch for those not wanting to miss out on a single second of this remarkable day, with glittering and sparkling sunshine. To have the lunch outside on deck with ice-bergs mirroring in the glassy water is something everybody should experience!
Now many of us had been up for way too many hours, as the short night was spectacular. Well, with sun shine, no wind is was just perfect to catch a short nap at the pool deck before we in the late afternoon reached Paulett Island.
As we arrived and had everyone ashore, those who wanted could join a longer hike. Others preferred to stay by the small hut and hear the fabulous story about one of many Antarctic expeditions, which made it to this part of the world during the period of 1901-05. Here in this small hut, built by rocks, 21 men had to over winter as their ship Antarctica got crushed in the ice. This was Otto Nordenskjöld’s expedition, and strangely enough everyone survived. Of course they, as we, were surrounded by abut 100,000 Adelie penguins.
Happy New Year!
