Antarctica

The end of November saw me departing Heathrow for a 13 hour flight to Buenos Aires, where I was met by my guide Laura and taken to the Hotel Panamericano on the Avienda 9 De Julio, which is claimed to be the widest avenue in the world with 14 lanes of traffic !!!! mostly gridlocked.

Avienda 9 De Julio

The following morning Laura took me to the local city airport for my 3 hour LAN flight to the city at the end of the world, Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. I was spending one night here in the Hotel Albatross before joining The Quark Expeditions cruise ship the Sea Adventurer. Ushuaia is set against a backdrop of snow covered mountains and is located on the Beagle Channel at the southern tip of South America.

Sea Adventurer in Ushuaia

Next day my luggage was collected at about 10.00am and I had the rest of the day to explore Ushuaia, however the weather did not cooperate and it rained most of the day, so after having a short walk round the city centre I returned to the coffee shop in the hotel. 

At 3.30 we were duly collected and taken by coach the very short distance to the harbour where we embarked the Sea Adventurer. The ship had 114 passengers from 17 different countries onboard, and for size comparison, if you are familiar with the Ullapool - Stornoway ferry, the Sea Adventurer is about 2000 tons smaller but she does have an ice strengthened hull.

I was quickly shown to my cabin which turned out to be on Deck 1 which is effectively on the waterline and this proved to be an advantage when the sea conditions worsened, as there is less movement closer to the waterline. I found I was sharing the cabin with a young guy from London who worked for a private bank. At 6.00pm we set sail from Ushuaia and after leaving the Beagle Channel we headed north east towards our first stop in the Falkland Islands.

Having in the past spent a couple of years working for P&O on the Canberra and Sea Princess as a guest lecturer and cabaret artist I know how good cruise food can be and I wasn't disappointed on the Sea Adventurer, she may have been a small ship but the food was excellent.

During our first day at sea we were issued with our expedition parkas and waterproof boots and given a thorough briefing on the use of the Zodiacs which were to be used for all our landings. 

The next day we dropped anchor off West Point Island in the Falklands and we negotiated our first Zodiac landing and then hiked across the island to visit a colony of Black Browed Albatross and Rockhopper penguins. We were told to try and stay 5 meters from all the wildlife we encountered but here on West Point Island they were all under our feet and we could have touched the birds, they simply had no fear of us at all. On our way back to the landing site we were invited to visit the owners of the island and they had laid on a spread of home baking and drinks for us all.

After returning to the ship for lunch we sailed onto Saunders Island which is home to about 11,000 pairs of Albatross and four different penguin species, Rockhoppers, Gentoos, Magellanic and King penguins, we also saw Turkey Vultures and Striatted Caracaras. Saunders Island also has the distinction of being the site of the first British settlement in 1765.

The Falklands consist of some 740 islands and covers an area of approximately 4,700 square miles and is about 400 miles from the south eastern tip of South America. The population stands at 2,563 of which 2,121 live in Stanley the capital. The landscape is a mixture of low mountains and rolling plains and reminded me vey much of the Orkneys.

Overnight the ship sailed round to East Falkland and we dropped anchor in Stanley Harbour. At this point I have to say that most of the British passengers onboard the ship were disappointed as there were no trips laid on to any of the sites of the 1982 conflict. Spending nearly all day in Stanley I visited all the usual tourist attractions, the museum, cathedral, Falkland Island Company shop, where I was surprised to find that most of their produce was supplied by Waitrose. If Waitrose can extend their supply chain to the South Atlantic why can't they supply Inverness I ask.

The next two days were spent at sea heading for South Georgia, the seas had worsened and quite a lot of crockery got broken, I'm not a good sailor in these conditions but I had obtained a prescription from my doctor for some patches that you wear behind your ear, each patch lasts 3 days and these worked brilliantly. On our second days at sea we encountered the Shag Rocks. Lying about 145 miles west-north-west of South Georgia they are a group of jagged pinnacles that rise about 230 feet above the sea, and are home to a breeding colony of Blue-eyed Shags.

Shag Rocks

The 30th November at 8.00am we dropped anchor off the historic whaling station of Grytviken on South Georgia. It was cold, it was windy, it was snowing hard, it was amazing. South Georgia had been on my bucket list since I first read Shackleton's story of his Endurance Expedition as a teenager. Our first landing was at the cemetery where Shackleton is buried and we all gathered round the grave and drank a toast to the 'Boss'

Following this we were given a guided tour of the old whaling station by the staff from the South Georgia Heritage Trust who spend the summer months down on South Georgia running the little museum, shop and post office. The Trust are also involved with eradicating the Norwegian Brown Rats which have been decimating the bird population on the island and also the reindeer that the whalers had introduced. The reindeer are shot and then transported back to the Falklands where the meat is processed and then sold. My donation to the Trust will clear a hectare of the Brown Rats this summer.
The old whaling station has now been cleared of all the asbestos and chemicals and we were free to wander at will. There were Fur seals, Elephant seals, King and Gentoo penguins everywhere, also old rusting whaling ships and all the old machinery used for processing the whales. The little museum was fascinating and they had a replica of the James Caird, which was the tiny boat that Shackleton and 5 of his crew had sailed the 800 miles from Elephant Island in.

Grytviken is a totally unique place set in a stunning and awesome landscape. You cannot begin to image the hardship the whalers must have endured working here all year round at the beginning of the 20th century.

We spent the next two days sailing up and down the coast of South Georgia and made landings at Stromness, Godthul, Gold Harbour and St Andrews Bay.
I cannot find words to describe South Georgia, it's majestic, stunning, awesome and the wild life simply phenomenal, I feel very privileged to have been able to visit this wonderful place.

To be continued....

In the meantime I have uploaded about 600 of my photographs to Flickr and they can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brian_webster/sets/72157639264483135/