For ages I’ve been fascinated by Polar exploration and I’ve read dozens of books about explorers such as Rae, Franklin, Nansen, Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton. In all those years, though, I never thought I’d have the chance to visit any of the places they’d explored, but I have been very lucky in the last year: in July 2019 I travelled to Greenland and, in February 2020, I visited Antarctica. Antarctica, especially, had been a dream of mine. Every year that I looked at trips they just got more expensive, but since all the clichés apply - you only live once, you can’t take it with you, trip of a lifetime, etc. – I decided it was now or never (to use another cliché!): Antarctica, February 2020 was going to happen!!
I was determined to visit as much of the Antarctic Peninsula (where almost all non-scientific visitors go) as I could and to focus on photography. To that end, I chose a photo workshop with Seth Resnick and John Paul Caponigro - a trip that was heading as far south as the Antarctic Circle if weather and ice permitted. This was Seth and JP's 11th trip to Antarctica, so I felt in very good hands. We would be travelling on a small-ish ship, carrying 65 passengers in total: a vessel called the Ocean Nova. She was built in 1992 in Denmark, with an ice-strengthened hull so that she could sail in the ice-clogged waters of Greenland. To me, this ship was the sweet spot: big enough to make the trip south of the Antarctic Circle, get through sea ice if we encountered it and be comfortable, but small enough that we could get all passengers off easily (there are rules that you can only land a maximum of 100 people at a time in Antarctica) and get into smaller channels. With an expedition staff and crew of 45, I thought that we would be amazingly well taken care of, and we were! Seth and JP had been travelling for years with the company who ran the trip, Antarctica XXI (now known as Antarctica21). It was a fly/sail trip, meaning that we would be flying across the Drake Passage to King George Island, just off the Antarctic Peninsula, and sailing south from there. I would have liked to have tried crossing the Drake Passage – some of the most notoriously rough seas in the world – to, in a sense, ‘earn’ my trip to Antarctica, but it takes two days to cross, and I wanted to spend as much time on the continent as possible.
The trip started with a bit of a bump when I missed my connection in Santiago (my flights were: Toronto to Santiago, Chile then Santiago to Punta Arenas). My plane left Toronto over an hour late and despite some very un-Canadian pushing to the front of the line at Chilean Immigration (I did, however, beg and apologize profusely as I made my way up) and a lot of running, I missed the cutoff for my flight to Punta Arenas. More waiting, more begging and I managed to get on the next flight, then more waiting at security and finally onto the plane only a few hours later than anticipated. We had been told that we needed to be ready to leave for Antarctica up to a day early, in case of bad weather, so the potential of arriving after that cut-off was what made this whole thing stressful. In the end, everything was fine. After over 20 hours of travel, I arrived in Punta Arenas and when I finally got into my hotel room, I promptly fell asleep for 13 1/2 hours.
The next day (the extra day I’d built into the schedule we didn’t end up needing) I wandered through the quiet Sunday morning streets of Punta Arenas, around the amazing municipal cemetery and along the waterfront of the Straits of Magellan. Magellan, of course, attempted the first circumnavigation of the world (though he died en route) and passed through these Straits in 1520. I scouted some spots for photography, knowing that I’d be back for two nights at end of the trip and in the afternoon I repacked my bags. I switched from a suitcase to a duffle bag and left some stuff in Punta Arenas as our bags needed to be under 25kgs (including camera gear) for the flight over. In the evening I met up with the photo workshop group – 18 of us along with Seth and JP – and we had an orientation and dinner hosted by Antarctica XXI. In the orientation we learned how to get in and out of the zodiacs, about the flights over to Antarctica and generally how things would work once we got onto the ship. We all hoped that the weather would be good and we could fly across on our scheduled day. Winds in the Drake can be fearsome and, often, visibility is bad at Frei Station (the Chilean research base) on King George Island where we would be landing. The last two Antarctica XXI trips before us had missed the first day of their voyage because they couldn’t fly across. At the dinner in Punta Arenas, though, we got the go ahead to fly to Antarctica on our scheduled day: February 17.
February 17, 2020 – Day 1
Though I didn’t sleep very well (excitement, I’m sure), I was up at 4am on the day of our scheduled departure. Our wake-up call was at 5:30am and we headed to the airport at 7:00am. The flight went off without a hitch. We flew over Cape Horn in our BAE 146-200, a high wing aircraft with minimal runaway requirements, making it well-suited to landing and taking off from short runways like the one at Frei Station.
On the ship, I shared a room with Lauren, a photographer from California. There are very few single cabins on the ship, and as the trip was already very expensive, I decided to share. Our cabin was pretty big – 12’ x 12’ – with two bunks. We used the top bunks for storage and found the space plenty big enough for our needs.
After boarding, we did the required safety briefing and emergency/abandon ship drill and then we were under way. The first two days of the trip we made a dash south to try and get as far as we could while the weather was calm.
I used to get seasick as a child, so I was a bit worried about this trip. Flying across the Drake Passage meant that we’d probably miss the worst seas, but the trip across the Bransfield Strait between the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula had the potential to be rough. That first day/night we did nearly 8 knots crossing the Strait, the ship swung from side to side and there were moments when I thought I might have a tough time (for example, during our first lecture on the history of Antarctica or during Seth and JPs first presentation), but I was actually fine. In fact, though the seas got much rougher at the end of the trip, I never had a problem. I guess I just grew out of that seasickness. Phew!
February 18, 2020 – Day 2
On the first full day of the trip, I was up at 6am even though the light was not great and we were still cruising. I went out onto the deck and shot a bit, then saw some orcas in the water. I came in to wake up Lauren, but then felt bad when the orcas were gone by the time we got back outside. The light had gotten a bit better, though, and we shot for a while until, over the PA, there came an announcement that orcas and seals had been sighted off the bow of the ship. We watched them for about an hour - chasing seals and the seals leaping out of the water to see/avoid them. Then a few humpbacks arrived and swam alongside the ship. It was quite amazing for a first morning!
We had our first zodiac excursion that morning in Fournier Bay, Anvers Island. For the photo workshop, we had two zodiacs dedicated to our group, each of which held ten people. We saw some amazing icebergs - the ice is so much bluer than what I’ve seen in Newfoundland or Greenland. I kept thinking, “I’m going to have to desaturate these images for anyone to believe them!” A curious leopard seal swam up to us and then dove under the zodiac and disappeared. As we motored through the bay surrounded by high mountain peaks, we saw two humpback whales napping on the surface of the water. It was just the first full day and I was already thinking, “This place is beyond my expectations; it’s such a privilege and a joy to be here”.
We travelled through the Neumeyer Channel (only 2.4 kms wide) around 4pm, with lovely dramatic scenery on either side, but not such great light. In the evening, though, we passed through the Lemaire Channel and it was spectacular: low-hanging clouds and wonderful reflections in the still water. I spent a few hours on the top deck, where you can easily move from one side to the other to photograph. We all knew it was a good transit of the Lemaire because even the expedition crew was up there taking pics! The Lemaire is a narrow channel (at its narrowest, it is only 600m wide) between the Antarctic Peninsula and Booth Island, lined on each side with high peaks –shrouded in clouds when we saw them. The light was soft and just the way I like it: I was in photo heaven!
The staff had set out a buffet dinner for us, knowing that people would straggle in from the amazing scenery. In the end I was the last one to come in for dinner: the light and the scenery were so magical that I couldn’t leave.
At dinner, I sat with one of the expedition staff and she told us that this is one of the smallest ships in the Antarctic fleet and how special that is. Those 500-person ships are constantly unloading and loading. She talked about one of those ships which put on a short snowshoeing excursion and it took 10 hours to give everyone on the ship a chance to do it. I felt so lucky to be on our small, but still very comfortable, ship.
I had another good night’s sleep, rocked in my bunk, though I was woken up a couple of times by loud bumps as we negotiated some big sea ice and a big thud at 5am. “Time to get up!” the thud seemed to say, “Get up! You’re in Antarctica!!”
Go to Part II of the blog.