Buenos Aires, Argentina
--Paraphrased telephone conversation--
17 December 2008
- Hola, Ana. This is Greg. I am a friend of your son Pablo.
- Ah! Hello, Gilbert. Pablo told me about you.
- Um, actually, my name is Greg. Pablo said that perhaps you could meet with me, to have a coffee, and tell me something about visiting Buenos Aires.
- Gilbert, unfortunately, this week is not so good. I am very busy with Pablo and with my visiting family and with Navidad. Next week is better for me.
- OK, OK, no problem. That is fine. By the way, Ana, me llamo es Greg, como Gregorio.
- Yes, well, Gilbert, welcome to Buenos Aires, and I am very sorry that I cannot meet you this week.
- Sure, claro. Feliz Navidid i prospero año nuevo, Ana. Also: my name is Greg.
- Bye-bye, Gilbert!
- Bye, Ana…
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Recovering in la Recoleta
la Recoleta
Buenos Aires, Argentina
16-17 December 2008
At the Art Hotel in Buenos Aires, I have a hot shower at long last. The Art Hotel is in the Recoleta, a central neighborhood in B.A., and one of the richest neighborhoods around, though not so rich as Palmero. Aesthetically, the hotel is very nice. But I don’t pay much attention to the art. The high ceilings, winding marble staircase and small handful of rooms on each floor make it a restful place. And the staff is the most helpful since I stayed at the Hotel Daphne in Rome so many months ago now – they act almost as travel agents, securing air tickets, calling restaurants and solving problems. Most problems. The light that is out in my room gets a replacement bulb, which turns out to be a bad idea – the fixture begins to catch fire. This makes my room smell like an asador for a day or two.
I venture out into the neighborhood, and a little of the larger city, making an obligatory stop at the cemetery in this neighborhood in which Eva Perón is buried (didn’t see her tomb.) And, well, there isn’t all that much to do in la Recoleta. I do spend a pleasant hour in a small museum dedicated to an interesting artist named Xul Solar, whose cartoony and iconic style is interesting to a beginning student of drawing like myself. A young woman there tries out her English on me, asking me about the drawings. I try out my Spanish on her, asking her about, well, probably umbrellas or monkeys or something, because we switch quickly back to English.
I stare for a long time at the studies of figures representing the "even" and "odd" Zodiac signs and the Planets, and wonder at all the detailed background of their personalities represented here in these mysterious faces, and how little I know about all that history and mythology and astrology, but my mood turns because all this astrology stuff reminds me of bad relationship times earlier this year…
I luxuriate in quiet naps in the afternoon these couple of days, and plug into the internet. Apparently, Obama will still be president of the USA and no one wants to buy American cars. Seems I haven’t missed that much in three weeks.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
16-17 December 2008
At the Art Hotel in Buenos Aires, I have a hot shower at long last. The Art Hotel is in the Recoleta, a central neighborhood in B.A., and one of the richest neighborhoods around, though not so rich as Palmero. Aesthetically, the hotel is very nice. But I don’t pay much attention to the art. The high ceilings, winding marble staircase and small handful of rooms on each floor make it a restful place. And the staff is the most helpful since I stayed at the Hotel Daphne in Rome so many months ago now – they act almost as travel agents, securing air tickets, calling restaurants and solving problems. Most problems. The light that is out in my room gets a replacement bulb, which turns out to be a bad idea – the fixture begins to catch fire. This makes my room smell like an asador for a day or two.
I venture out into the neighborhood, and a little of the larger city, making an obligatory stop at the cemetery in this neighborhood in which Eva Perón is buried (didn’t see her tomb.) And, well, there isn’t all that much to do in la Recoleta. I do spend a pleasant hour in a small museum dedicated to an interesting artist named Xul Solar, whose cartoony and iconic style is interesting to a beginning student of drawing like myself. A young woman there tries out her English on me, asking me about the drawings. I try out my Spanish on her, asking her about, well, probably umbrellas or monkeys or something, because we switch quickly back to English.
I stare for a long time at the studies of figures representing the "even" and "odd" Zodiac signs and the Planets, and wonder at all the detailed background of their personalities represented here in these mysterious faces, and how little I know about all that history and mythology and astrology, but my mood turns because all this astrology stuff reminds me of bad relationship times earlier this year…
I luxuriate in quiet naps in the afternoon these couple of days, and plug into the internet. Apparently, Obama will still be president of the USA and no one wants to buy American cars. Seems I haven’t missed that much in three weeks.
Monday, December 29, 2008
La Quinta
La Matanza, Buenos Aires
14-16 Dec 2008
I’m not a very good guest at Pablo and Nicole’s.
Within minutes of arriving, I realize how exhausted I am after two weeks of intense travel experience, not much sleep and 10,000 air miles. I really should have done this in reverse: spend a few days in air-conditioned comfort in central B.A., and then venture out to the exurban sprawl to la Matanza, and la Quinta.
That first night we visit a bit and have a simple meal. I find myself quieter than usual. Lucas and Sebastian (boys) are excited to be having me around. They call me “tio Greg” (uncle Greg) and at first speak charmingly to me in alternate Spanish and English, whichever strikes their fancy. They learn quickly though that speaking to me in English is easier, and I’m humbled by the bilingual fluency of a 2 and a 4 year-old. It’s a strange thing to feel at a loss and to sometimes rely on a 4-year-old to communicate or translate.
We hit the hay relatively early. Unfortunately, we sleep badly as Pablo becomes ill (too much carne, we later conclude), and I’m chewed by mosquitos which makes me sleep curled up, a posture that in turn gives me one of my colossal neck/headaches. The next morning, I’m much worse off than the day before. Bleary, nearly-mute, achy.
I fortify myself with 600mg of ibuprofin and the idea of my first real shower in two weeks.
The way hot water works here (and I guess in many places in South America) is that the turning on the hot water tap triggers an on-demand heater that, like a simpler version of those fancy Japanese instant tankless water heaters, produces hot water without the waste associated with US-style tanks, though it takes a minute or two to get going. As instructed, I set the bathroom sink hot faucet going in advance of the shower, so that the water will be hot when I turn on the shower faucets. This works, though the pressure drops while I’m in the shower, which I suppose turns off the flow valve in the califaccíon. OK, so I’ll just get out of the shower, and adjust the flowing bathroom sink hot tap to increase the flow. Soap in my eyes, I step out of the stall. WHANG! I forget, and also don’t see, the low horizontal bar of the aluminum shower door frame located right at head level. Well, my head level, anyway. Perhaps not your typical Argentinian villa vacation rental head level. I have completely clocked the top of the head against the bar, stepping out at a full walk speed. I stagger. No question of continuing the shower. Soapy, I feel my head - already a big bump. With a bloody hand, I turn off all the taps. I slowly towel-off and dress, my head now aching in two different ways.
A lethargic morning follows. The boys play – they have their own swimming pool and a big yard full of things to do. My head slowly rings down, back to normality. We visit. I don’t move much. Occasional magnificent birds of prey that I’ve never seen before fly by. I’m surprised to see them here in la Matanza.
Pablo & Nicole are anthropologists. So, Pablo & I decide go off and perform some anthropological field work: grocery shopping outside the compound in greater la Matanza. Pablo cautions me to avoid speaking at all when we’re around people outside la Quinta. Having driven for many kilometers through the area, I already know he’s right.
Pablo and I have a nice visit as we walk through the not-quite-city, not-quite-country. It’s strange to fall silent, though, every time we approach people. In the shops themselves, I find it interesting to see how Argentines interact. Pablo talks at length with every merchant, and it’s clear they all enjoy this. I’m treated to the elaborate ritual of retail life here, in which a series of tiny pieces of paper are exchanged, signed, discussed, and memorialized. Each has print so small and the onion skin slip so insubstantial that the exchange can only mean something like, “I trust you in this transaction” or “Please take this token of our appreciation for your patronage.” I infer this since I can see there is no way the details of a transaction can be reconstructed from these slips. I later find in my own transactions that aside from their size, every Argentine receipt turns out to be printed with some kind of disappearing ink. Removing a tiny crinkled paper from your pocket an hour after a transaction produces a nearly blank tissue of a receipt – a kind of merchant mandala.
With time, I see that I could probably navigate this poor area OK by myself – the people we meet are fine. But, there are plenty of poor young men around who would have no problem relieving me of my iPhone…
Grim sights are around, though. We walk a couple of times past a dog carcass eaten by, well, other dogs. It lies on the sidewalk, a few minutes walk from the nearest stores. A bit further is a large burlap sack, tied-off, in the curb, and buzzing with flies. Obviously, something large and dead is inside. We don’t look, and passersby don’t even glance at it.
Everywhere is trash, partially burned structures, piles of furniture and ruined shacks. But, the neighborhood is plenty alive. People go about their business, and the streets have plenty of kids and the occasional soccer ball.
Pablo refers to la Quinta and the rental compound as the “Green Zone.” Later, Nicole tells me that she and the kids haven’t left the Green Zone since they arrived a couple of weeks ago. I don’t blame them, as it would be distressing for their boys to see dog-eaten dogs lying in the street.
Having successfully shopped outside the Green Zone, we return to relax, and have dinner with Pablo’s good friend from childhood, Fernando and his family. They’re clearly old friends. I’m thrown off balance early on though, since Pablo starts a bilingual conversation with my observation about the poverty here and specifically, the amount of trash everywhere and the degraded environment people live in. I’ve naively fallen into the rich, privledged, First-Worlder trap of criticizing poorer places, though I didn’t mean for anyone else to hear me. Fernando defends his country and people with the argument that the government of Argentina, and American-style corporatism, have oppressed and exploited the people here and everywhere. True enough, I agree. What I don’t voice, partly because of my non-fluency, and partly out of deference, is my thought that this argument is the same as saying “life is unfair, so I’m not going to wash my hands after I crap.”
But, it’s friendly enough, and we enjoy a nice dinner, with the kids (F has an 8-year-old daughter) getting wound-up big time, running all around. I pass out early, and apparently everyone, including the little ones, stays up late out in the yard, laughing, having beers, playing with hand puppets, and visiting in pure Spanish; no gringo-interpretation required.
The next day, I’m still lethargic. I decide I need air-conditioning, an internet connection and two sleep-cycles a day. So, I beat a retreat to central B.A., where I’ve booked a mid-to-upper range hotel. We make plans for me to hook up with P’s family members and for us adults to go out in B.A. without kids later in the week. I pile once more into Walter’s remise, OK? The little boys, confused a bit, wave at me. I’m off to the First World, rubbing the scab on my head and feeling a little embarrassed to have failed to complete even a short tour of duty in the Green Zone.
14-16 Dec 2008
I’m not a very good guest at Pablo and Nicole’s.
Within minutes of arriving, I realize how exhausted I am after two weeks of intense travel experience, not much sleep and 10,000 air miles. I really should have done this in reverse: spend a few days in air-conditioned comfort in central B.A., and then venture out to the exurban sprawl to la Matanza, and la Quinta.
That first night we visit a bit and have a simple meal. I find myself quieter than usual. Lucas and Sebastian (boys) are excited to be having me around. They call me “tio Greg” (uncle Greg) and at first speak charmingly to me in alternate Spanish and English, whichever strikes their fancy. They learn quickly though that speaking to me in English is easier, and I’m humbled by the bilingual fluency of a 2 and a 4 year-old. It’s a strange thing to feel at a loss and to sometimes rely on a 4-year-old to communicate or translate.
We hit the hay relatively early. Unfortunately, we sleep badly as Pablo becomes ill (too much carne, we later conclude), and I’m chewed by mosquitos which makes me sleep curled up, a posture that in turn gives me one of my colossal neck/headaches. The next morning, I’m much worse off than the day before. Bleary, nearly-mute, achy.
I fortify myself with 600mg of ibuprofin and the idea of my first real shower in two weeks.
The way hot water works here (and I guess in many places in South America) is that the turning on the hot water tap triggers an on-demand heater that, like a simpler version of those fancy Japanese instant tankless water heaters, produces hot water without the waste associated with US-style tanks, though it takes a minute or two to get going. As instructed, I set the bathroom sink hot faucet going in advance of the shower, so that the water will be hot when I turn on the shower faucets. This works, though the pressure drops while I’m in the shower, which I suppose turns off the flow valve in the califaccíon. OK, so I’ll just get out of the shower, and adjust the flowing bathroom sink hot tap to increase the flow. Soap in my eyes, I step out of the stall. WHANG! I forget, and also don’t see, the low horizontal bar of the aluminum shower door frame located right at head level. Well, my head level, anyway. Perhaps not your typical Argentinian villa vacation rental head level. I have completely clocked the top of the head against the bar, stepping out at a full walk speed. I stagger. No question of continuing the shower. Soapy, I feel my head - already a big bump. With a bloody hand, I turn off all the taps. I slowly towel-off and dress, my head now aching in two different ways.
A lethargic morning follows. The boys play – they have their own swimming pool and a big yard full of things to do. My head slowly rings down, back to normality. We visit. I don’t move much. Occasional magnificent birds of prey that I’ve never seen before fly by. I’m surprised to see them here in la Matanza.
Pablo & Nicole are anthropologists. So, Pablo & I decide go off and perform some anthropological field work: grocery shopping outside the compound in greater la Matanza. Pablo cautions me to avoid speaking at all when we’re around people outside la Quinta. Having driven for many kilometers through the area, I already know he’s right.
Pablo and I have a nice visit as we walk through the not-quite-city, not-quite-country. It’s strange to fall silent, though, every time we approach people. In the shops themselves, I find it interesting to see how Argentines interact. Pablo talks at length with every merchant, and it’s clear they all enjoy this. I’m treated to the elaborate ritual of retail life here, in which a series of tiny pieces of paper are exchanged, signed, discussed, and memorialized. Each has print so small and the onion skin slip so insubstantial that the exchange can only mean something like, “I trust you in this transaction” or “Please take this token of our appreciation for your patronage.” I infer this since I can see there is no way the details of a transaction can be reconstructed from these slips. I later find in my own transactions that aside from their size, every Argentine receipt turns out to be printed with some kind of disappearing ink. Removing a tiny crinkled paper from your pocket an hour after a transaction produces a nearly blank tissue of a receipt – a kind of merchant mandala.
With time, I see that I could probably navigate this poor area OK by myself – the people we meet are fine. But, there are plenty of poor young men around who would have no problem relieving me of my iPhone…
Grim sights are around, though. We walk a couple of times past a dog carcass eaten by, well, other dogs. It lies on the sidewalk, a few minutes walk from the nearest stores. A bit further is a large burlap sack, tied-off, in the curb, and buzzing with flies. Obviously, something large and dead is inside. We don’t look, and passersby don’t even glance at it.
Everywhere is trash, partially burned structures, piles of furniture and ruined shacks. But, the neighborhood is plenty alive. People go about their business, and the streets have plenty of kids and the occasional soccer ball.
Pablo refers to la Quinta and the rental compound as the “Green Zone.” Later, Nicole tells me that she and the kids haven’t left the Green Zone since they arrived a couple of weeks ago. I don’t blame them, as it would be distressing for their boys to see dog-eaten dogs lying in the street.
Having successfully shopped outside the Green Zone, we return to relax, and have dinner with Pablo’s good friend from childhood, Fernando and his family. They’re clearly old friends. I’m thrown off balance early on though, since Pablo starts a bilingual conversation with my observation about the poverty here and specifically, the amount of trash everywhere and the degraded environment people live in. I’ve naively fallen into the rich, privledged, First-Worlder trap of criticizing poorer places, though I didn’t mean for anyone else to hear me. Fernando defends his country and people with the argument that the government of Argentina, and American-style corporatism, have oppressed and exploited the people here and everywhere. True enough, I agree. What I don’t voice, partly because of my non-fluency, and partly out of deference, is my thought that this argument is the same as saying “life is unfair, so I’m not going to wash my hands after I crap.”
But, it’s friendly enough, and we enjoy a nice dinner, with the kids (F has an 8-year-old daughter) getting wound-up big time, running all around. I pass out early, and apparently everyone, including the little ones, stays up late out in the yard, laughing, having beers, playing with hand puppets, and visiting in pure Spanish; no gringo-interpretation required.
The next day, I’m still lethargic. I decide I need air-conditioning, an internet connection and two sleep-cycles a day. So, I beat a retreat to central B.A., where I’ve booked a mid-to-upper range hotel. We make plans for me to hook up with P’s family members and for us adults to go out in B.A. without kids later in the week. I pile once more into Walter’s remise, OK? The little boys, confused a bit, wave at me. I’m off to the First World, rubbing the scab on my head and feeling a little embarrassed to have failed to complete even a short tour of duty in the Green Zone.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Shock and Ahhh…
Buenos Aires
14 Dec 2008
Greg Spooner. That is what the hand-written little sign says. Walter, a somewhat pudgy “remise” driver from Buenos Aires is holding it up patiently as I exit the glass doors at Jorge Newbery Airport. Shaking hands, Walter takes one of my roller bags and we head to his remise – basically a hired car – in the airport parking structure. We take an elevator that won’t go to the 2nd floor, though there is nothing to indicate this, and we find out only after riding it for a while. We change elevators and make our way to the auto. This elevator ride is a portent of the Argentine hardware I will encounter, but I don’t know it yet.
Walter speaks little English, and my Spanish is better. But he won’t stay with the Spanish. As we drive to La Matanza, an exurban barrio of Buenos Aires where my friends Pablo and Nicole have rented a house for the holidays, we converse haltingly. Walter ends every sentence, well, every word or phrase with “OK.” Or, “OK?” I learn that if the OK’s end interrogatively, it’s just like the “stop” in a telegram – more words are coming. However, if the OK ends declaratively (“OK.”), that’s the end of the paragraph, and perhaps that’s all there is to say on the subject. A full-stop, as it were.
It takes 10 minutes for me to discover that I’m not riding with the remise company Pablo originally had arranged for me, but rather a relative who has his own remise business. OK? Pablo and Walter are cousins of some kind. Our communication does not allow us to find out exactly how. OK.
We drive and drive. Buenos Aires is huge and sprawling in extent. I hear various things, but it seems to be somewhere between 150 and 200 kilometers wide. La Matanza is far from the center, far from where almost any visitor would range.
Outside, the landscape gets increasingly poor and desperate. Trash everywhere, shacks and huge potholes. At 20 kilometers along Ruta 3, Walter asks me to lock my door. After a while, I see occasional open fires, untended. Rubbish, perhaps? There are hundreds of stray dogs walking everywhere, including on Ruta 3 itself. This part of B.A. looks as poor as the poorest places I’ve been – as poor as Guatamala City, and perhaps as poor as the parts of Istanbul that I was brave enough to visit. The only indications of wealth are the occasional billboards obviously aimed at upper class Porteños who must drive through here.
We have a conversation about how the “lo-jack” satellite device Walter has in his remise would allow him to recover his car should it be car-jacked, OK? But the complexity of discussing why he doesn’t have a warning sign on the car to deter potential car-jackers in the first place proves too much for us, OK.
At 30km, we begin seeing occasional donkey carts. This surprises me, since the guidebooks and tourists I’ve spoken with invariably refer to B.A. as the “Paris of South America.” I don’t remember donkey carts in Paris. My ignorance of just how poor this place is turns out to be profound. At 35 km, we stop seeing km marker signs, and have to ask for directions a couple of times, OK?
I learn that La Matanza is a stronghold of Peronistas (populist supporters of the party of Juan and Eva Peron), and is an important region in national politics, in spite of (because of?) the poverty. Walter doesn’t like Peronistas, OK.
At 39.5km, where the turn-off is supposed to be, we find the gate to “La Quinta de Monserrat”, which is a compound with armed guards and high iron fences. We creep in and find another gate surrounding the house and yard that P & N have rented. We enter the yard and the house, with P, N and their two little semi-naked boys in the kitchen. I’m very happy to see them all, and relieved to see someone I actually know after two weeks on my own. OK.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
The Traveler’s Funnel
Ushuaia, Argentina
Buenos Aires, Argentina
14 Dec 2008
When you travel somewhere for an event where you’ll gather with other people, you can see the Traveler’s Funnel. It’s most obvious in reverse, when you return home, and see the people you’ve been gathered with for your event dispersing, becoming fewer and more spread out, until finally, you’re alone in a cab or a shuttle from the airport to your house with no chance of seeing your fellow travelers on the last leg of your journey home.
On the way to the event, the Traveler's Funnel is harder to notice. But as you wait in line at the airport check-in counter at the start of your journey, you notice one or two people you saw on the subway ride in. Then you see more of them on the plane, more familiar faces at the other end of the flight. Maybe you see some again at the hotel, so that by the time you get to where you’re going there are often many familiar faces. This can be awkward if the guy who cuts in line at the taxi stand at the airport becomes the guy sitting next to you at the conference.
So, in Ushuaia, we have a concentrated form of the reverse funneling, as today’s disembarked Professor Molchanov passengers (the non-Finns, anyway), mill around the town for half the day, repeatedly seeing each other at cafes and on the sidewalk. The middle-aged guys and I hang out and have a nice meal, watching Prof M passengers occasionally walk by the windows of our parilla. At the tiny airport there must be a dozen of us, sitting around and talking about what comes next for each.
On the plane now we are only three: Sarah the kayaker, Freddie the Swiss-German and me. As we pick out our bags at the Jorge Newbery Airport in Buenos Aires and head off separately, there is the somewhat awkward goodbye of recently-minted acquaintances who will likely never see each other again. The three of us roll our bags in three divergent directions, each of us now moving singly again through the world.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Day 10 – Disembarcadero
Beagle Channel, Argentina
Ushuaia, Argentina
14 Dec 2008
Very early wake up call today – 5:45AM. We’re already at the port, holding out for a berth to open. The Finns have an early flight, so the non-Finns are sequestered in our cabins with instructions to let the Finns breakfast, stage their bags, then disembark. While the Finns breakfast, we dock. After they’re off board (no-chance for me to say goodbye to the Finns I’m friendly with), we’re released to our own last breakfast, and our own luggage staging. As we sit in the dining hall, Delphine announces on the PA that the Finns are successfully off-board for their early flight. I’m a little embarrassed that a few Anglophones voice approval and clap derisively.
We linger on the concrete pier, saying goodbyes and blinking at the huge 2000-passenger Nordic Sun that is disgorging passengers. It makes the Professor Molchanov seem like a toy. I don’t think the passengers walking past us realize that we’re also disembarking from a cruise ship.
In 10 days, we’ve gotten used to not seeing many people or structures and it takes a few minutes for it to seem normal again. I’m standing on solid ground, but I’m not wearing neoprene shoes or Wellingtons.
Since we’re non-Finnish, we apparently all have to fly in the afternoon. It’s only 9AM. We’ve got a day to kill and we’re all burdened with big bags. A number of us agree to band together and take turns guarding our luggage out-of-doors as there is no facility for luggage storage open today (!) We gather up everyone who wants to participate, slowing the goodbyes. No one is in a hurry.
I shake hands with the staff, and exchange a warm goodbye with Anjali the tour guide. We both travel a lot, we say to each other: let’s keep in touch, and we’ll see each other again, maybe? It may be.
Day 9 – Past the Drake Passage
Drake Passage/South Atlantic Ocean
13 Dec 2008
Today is the last day of Drake. We are winding the trip down. The cleaning staff of the Prof M crew is in overdrive. We hear the last lectures by Tari and Anjali. Passengers relax in the bar, or deal with their sea-sickness. The young set takes advantage of the sauna, and I join them a final time.
When we awakened, we were already cross the Antarctic Convergence it’s very much warmer outside. Standing on the stern outside our cabin immediately after I roll out of the top bunk and dress, it feels like the climate is different and that we’re in a different sea, though we’ve probably traveled only 150km since I last stood out here. Soon the bridge will be closed to passengers when we reach the Beagle Channel because a pilot takes over the navigation from the mouth of the Beagle Channel all the way to Ushuaia.
The rhythm aboard the Prof M during the Drake crossing is now dominated primarily by mealtimes, with the PA system crackling to life to announce them. I’ve gotten used to Jan, our Belgian hotelier, saying more or less the same thing everyday in his heavy Belgian accent:
“Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, it is 8 o’clock, and that means our crew has a delicious breakfast waiting for you, so please join us in the dining room!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is 12:30, and a nice lunch is waiting for you in the dining, room, so please, join us. Bon Apetit!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is 7 o’clock, and our chef has prepared a delicious dinner that is waiting for you in the dining room, so please, join us. Bon Apetit!”
Of course, Annika repeats these in Finnish each time.
In the two parallel dining halls are several long tables, perpendicular to the axis of the ship. One side has portholes. Usually, if it’s lunch or dinner, there is a small starter or appetizer dish waiting at each setting. Today there isn’t. Instead, we’re served carrot broth soup. Afterwards, a community bowl of lettuce and red beet salad at each table. For the non-vegetarians there a fish fillet with roasted potato halves. Afterwards, chocolate ice cream scoop on top of small, diced fruit. Coffee, tea brought around by Jessica and the main Russian serving woman. All the food is made from pretty good quality ingredients, but except for the curry we have once, not much spice or intensity. I suppose when the meals are limited, you can’t afford to offend people with bold flavors, because there isn’t anything else to eat except cookies and nuts in the bar.
Usually at breakfast or lunch, Jan will come around and ask who wants a vegetarian version of that night’s dinner. The staff joins us for meals, but never the crew. We never see the crew eat except at the BBQ. We never even see the crew sit down anywhere on the ship. There is a whole separate crew world down below, which we don’t see.
In the afternoon and evening, I spend time in the bar. I alternate between the middle-aged Anglophone guys I’m now friendly with and the younger set.
The Anglophones include: Malcolm, an interesting lawyer and photographer and globetrotter from Berkeley across San Francisco Bay from me; Phil, the semi-retired Aussie farmer who is part of the Kayak Five, and Kerry, a voluble and friendly globetrotter who is also an Aussie. I like to listen to Phil talk, because he uses the craziest Aussie slang, and because his drawl makes him say the word “yeah” with what sounds to me like four syllables. “Yea-uh-er-ah”. Something like that.
The younger set includes: Sarah, the kayaker from Cape Cod; Kathryn, the Canadian who both jumps in the ocean and baths in the thermal bath; Patrick, the Aussie kayaker and sauna-ist; Sielke, the Swiss-German young woman who dances almost as hard as Jessica at the BBQ. Actually, all four are sauna-ists, taking every opportunity to steam together.
Anjali takes a minute to give me a photo she took of me. At first I think it’s not so interesting, but gradually realize it captured the essence of my experience: it’s an image of me from the back, standing alone on deck with cold weather gear, staring by out at the sea and ice. It’s a nice moment we share.
After dinner there is a mad exchange of digital photos, a presentation of the expedition log prepared by the staff (a nice surprise), a showing of a handful of photos submitted to a group presentation by a dozen or so passengers, and finally a screening of the a draft video highlights feature, independently prepared by the ship’s doctor. The doc obviously knows something about video production, but the choice of alternatively silly music (accompanying some clowning penguin scenes) and earnest music (accompanying scenes of soaring majesty, grand splendor, etc.), and the repeated video subject/muse of the young and pretty Jessica in much of the video led me to feel a little embarrassed for our generous doctor… (I wonder if the absence of passengers in the video was to avoid worrying about getting permission from those who were taped.)
We all have last drinks. I buy Malcolm a scotch. The younger set rumored that there might be a second party like the BBQ at Almirante Brown, but it doesn’t materialize.
I wake in the middle of the night to realize that it actually is dark out. The first true night that we have had since the night we embarked.
Viekko
Viekko is a good mate. I think we might be the only Finn/non-Finn pairing of cabin mates.
He’s neat, clean, quiet. He doesn’t spend a lot of time in the cabin, and has traveled much lighter than I have. In my defense, I’ve got a large suitcase dedicated mostly to polar kayaking gear. On principle, I use only have of the storage space available in the cabin. Viekko doesn’t use all of the other half, and I could spread out and take up more space, but I don’t.
Neither one of us takes many showers in the tiny bathroom, because the times that are available for showering (outside the daytime activities) are usually when the ship is moving. And when the ship moving, you risk falling down in the shower. So, the bathroom stays clean and dry. That’s good, because it’s one of those bathrooms in which taking a shower means the toilet, sink, door, floor and walls all take a shower with you. The flyweight shower curtain flutters and waves colorfully during a shower, but it doesn’t seem designed to keep water in the shower area. I find that to be the most important feature of shower curtains.
Viekko spends a lot of time fussing with some kind of GPS device, punching in numbers. I think he is carefully tracking everywhere we go. He spends a lot of time charging camera batteries, swapping memory cards and otherwise digitally recording the experience. I’m at the other end of the recording experience, writing, (pre-)blogging and reading. What we have in common is a continuous need to use the lone receptacle in the cabin to charge our electronics.
It has been strange sleeping in the same small room with someone with whom I almost can’t communicate - he speaks little English, and I speak no Finnish. Towards the end now, we often don’t speak at all in the cabin. Not because we find each other disagreeable – it’s just that we have little to say to each other, and it’s very hard to say it.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Swell II
The weather being better on the return across the Drake, I stand outside on the side decks and stern (I avoid the bow mostly) much more than on the way south. The seas are still high on the first day – I estimate 4 meter swells. The waves are sometimes on our beam, and sometimes more directly on our bow. On the beam, the boat rolls a lot, as before. On the bow, we periodically slam down and experience a second or two of free-fall when the timing of the waves is right. This is both scary, and from the looks on the faces of my fellow passengers, sickening.
I’m still not sea-sick, and I don’t know if it’s because I don’t get sea-sick, or because I’m so effectively drugged.
I’m not as afraid as I once was. If I really think about where I am, and look at the water for a long time, I can spook myself. But, now my fear is more like being on an airplane: most of the time you take for granted the fact that you’re 10 kilometers above the Earth, but if you concentrate on what it would mean to for the plane to fall, or for you to fall out of it, you can scare yourself.
Still, I get lost sometimes when I stare into the sea, thinking of how it would feel to be out in it. I hold the white iron rail tightly, imagining how it would feel to fall overboard and watch the Professor Molchanov steam away, no one on Earth knowing that I was bobbing alone in the icy grey rolls of forever.
Day 8 – North across the Drake
Drake Passage/South Atlantic Ocean
12 Dec 2008
I had a good rest, though I woke repeatedly because of the rolling of the ship.
We have a leisurely breakfast (meals are better attended on the way back north across the Passage), followed by lectures and movies. These feel like distractions, rather than an integral part of the trip, created by the staff to keep us from getting bored and annoyed by the 2+ days of rolling travel through the open ocean.
Life aboard a small vessel is beginning to get to me. The control over my time that the crew and staff have is part of the reason I generally avoid any kind of tour or group activities. On board a small ocean-going vessel, the control is necessarily strong. When and what you eat, what you can do with your time, even when you can sleep. If the P.A. blasts announcements at 6AM, well, you wake up at 6AM. Though this doesn’t happen this morning, since there is no urgency in waking up today.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Day 7 – from Lockroy to Melchoir Islands and north…
Antarctic Peninsula
11 Dec 2008
I awoke near Port Lockroy at 5:30AM to find a note on the floor of our cabin from Frode saying it was too windy for kayaking. Our ambitious early kayaking trip was not to be. The note was marked 4:50AM, from the bridge, comically scrawled. Frode must have been bleary at that early hour.
We waited for wind and ice to allow a Port Lockroy Zodiac landing to visit the famous station, but we gave up around 8AM. Ever flexible, we headed back to the Neumayer Channel (now in reverse I think?), and then plan was to proceed on to Gerlache Strait, with a stop or a cruise of Melchoir Islands our final off-the-ship activity.
The Gerlache Strait is cold! I had been standing on deck for a couple of hours in full gear, and when we moved from the ice-rich Neumayer Channel to open waters of the Gerlache, it got so cold I couldn’t stay out all the time.
Post-lunch, we reached the Melchior Island group. The wind is once again too high, so that’s the end of the kayaking. And our last Antarctic activity was to be: a Zodiac tour through the islands. This sounds kind of boring, but the 5 boats were full, and it was fun. There was driving snow, and it was cold and wet. There were lots of cool-looking big icebergs, some tossed up onto beach coves, some even trapped inside rock island formations, which I though was, in the Canadian words of S, neat. The Melchior Islands have huge icecaps, though the islands themselves are quite low in elevation – it must snow here a lot. I got some reasonably good photos of penguins, which I realized earlier today that I didn’t have much of, having spent my penguin time standing still near them and waiting for them to walk by me.
Upon re-boarding the Prof. Molchanov, Jan the hotelier had a small glass of some warm liqueur-based drink for everyone to toast our journey with. We went onto the bow, into the snow, still wearing our Zodiac gear, and all the staff and passengers had a toast and poured a few drops overboard to appease the god Neptune for a safe crossing. I guess the strict tourism rules that the IAATO has drawn up still allow us to pour a few ounces of liquor overboard…
We had a typical dinner, early this time. 6PM. That’s because we are now heading for the open waters of Drake’s Passage, which will mean rough seas, wind, a rolling and pitching Prof. Molchanov, and sea-sick passengers. I had slapped a new Scopalomine patch on in the morning, anticipating our return sail. This is the secret of my sea-sickness success: early and often application of medicine.
I wanted to stay up, to savor some not-very-good ship’s house wine and to read and write. Because in the non-stop activity during our Antarctic time, I haven’t gotten in much reading or writing or blogging. But, today day’s activities and the anti-nausea drugs knocked me out. I fell asleep in the bar, even though I was surrounded by socializing passengers. I woke up in the bar, and carried myself off to bed very early: 9PM.
Tiny revelation
The moon is upside down. Of course it is. I’m standing almost upside down on the Earth compared to where I usually stand, but the moon has the same orientation with respect to the Earth it always does.
Here’s my question to you: What does the moon look like at the equator relative to how it looks in the Northern Hemisphere?
Apartheid
Two parallel systems have evolved for the nearly equal division of passengers: one for the Anglophones, and one for the Finns. Dining halls are separate, Zodiacs are typically separate, lectures are mostly separate (some Finns attend English language lectures). In the bar, the starboard side is typically Finnish, and the port side English. Natural enough, I suppose. But some bad feelings have developed. Rumored and semi-reported minor incidents between Finns and Anglophones (I won’t go into them here) have turned into semi-open Anglophone “dissing” and some Anglophones make jokes at the expense of the Finns. As an experiment, I sit in the Finnish side of the bar more often. It’s accepted, but sometime I get Finn-looks when it gets crowded and people are trying to find room at the tables. Once, I walk into the Finn dining room for breakfast. Their stares back me slowly into the other dining room.
Even good-intentioned, well-educated, well-off people out for a good time can slide into prejudice, misunderstanding and ethno-cultural tension.
Day 6 – Lamaire, Vernadsky, and our ice-locked Zodiacs (10 Dec)
The morning wake-up calls - English, Finnish – get us up early for passage through the well-known, picturesque and oft-pictured Lamaire Channel. I spend almost two hours on the bow, taking pictures and staring. While cold and windy, the weather and visibility were great. Lamaire is a narrow channel with huge mountains arising on both sides, tons of ice. Often, the Lamaire is not navigable, they tell us. It’s no problem today. In fact, we see the ship the Fram ahead as we finish the passage, and behind us we see another, larger ship. I don’t think I’ve ever taken so many photos, and in fact, forced myself to not take photos for minutes at a time to just experience the vistas.
After the Lamaire, we attempted several anchorages, but there is ice everywhere. We finally settle on the Ukrainian research station Akademi Vernadsky. This former British station (we’re told later that the British sold to it to Ukraine some years back for 1 sterling pound so that the Brits didn’t have to clean up and remediate the site) is on one of the “Argentine Islands” (specifically Galindez Island), which are a group of small, low islands near the Palmer Archipelago. We all Zodiac to the station, navigating lots of ice.
The station consists of a few low buildings and physical plant features like a generator and fuel depots. The Ukrainian staff welcomes us and we all pile into the very warm main building, in front of which is your classic signpost pointing the directions and distances of places of interest to Ukrainians, most of which are more than 12,000 kilometers away. We get somewhat spontaneous tours of the first floor which houses quarters, labs, infirmary, communications, gear, workout room (which most of us linger in to look at Ukrainian-style cheesecake posters of women arranged around the weight machines.) This is officially a research station, but the gear all looks like it’s from 1957 Soviet machine shop, and it’s hard from my point of view as a scientist to believe much research gets done here.
The energy level picks up after we pad up, bootless now, to the second level. Here, there is the kitchen, dining hall, and a real bar with pool tables, music and home-made vodka. I don’t ask what the vodka is home-made from, but buy a shot for 2 Euro and choke it down. Many of us are lined up to send postcards from the “post office”, which is two Vernadsky station members with a metal cash box, some stamps and a pile of postcards. Some people get their passports unofficially stamped, but this surpasses the touristy threshold for me. The Prof M staff is animated in the presence of the Vernadsky station crew, and there is a lot of visiting between them. It feels like a party. I gather they know each other somewhat.
After 90 minutes of this, it’s time set out again for the Prof M. But the Zodiacs have a touch time finding their way back out through the ice, which has piled up under the on-shore winds. We bake in the strong Antarctic summer sun while we fight the ice for an hour. Many of us later had sunburned faces. I slapped on a lot of SPF50, feeling the weakly ozone-filtered, summertime, mid-day Antarctic UV on my skin. Each Zodiac pulls out its spare paddles and the front passengers push aside the larger pieces of ice and the Zodiac pilots make crazy tight loops to try and find a path out to the open waters. Natalia breaks a wooden paddle when it levers between a large piece of ice and her Zodiac. Thinking about this I watch doubtfully as some passengers kick at the ice, wondering if someone’s leg will end up like Natalie’s paddle. At one point, we are nearly motionless, trapped in the ice, as Delphine’s lead boat repeatedly experiences a stalled outboard motor.
The Professor Molchanov came to the rescue and got us when we finally reach open water, probably 2 km from the original anchorage.
We set sail for Petermann Island – but there was again too much ice for anchorage, so we ended up going back through Lamaire Channel in the opposite direction, then a near-mainland Zodiac cruise. The location was a bit obscure, but I think we were between the mainland and Renaud Island.
Very cold and windy during the Zodiac-ing! The coldest experience I’ve had here yet. The waves were rough, the skies grey, strong winds, and low temperatures. But, we had up-close dramatic views of glacial faces, huge icebergs, and 2 meter long icicles hanging from some of the wave-eroded glacial faces. I was in a boat with the Doctor, Jessica and a Russian crew member – only the three of us. I got a little short-changed this time around, because we got loaded last, and they didn’t think they’d need all the Zodiacs, so the three of us had to wait while the crew put the last Zodiac in the water. Then, our mute Russian crew member (I never did learn this fellow’s name) tried to make up for lost time, but between trying to catch up to the others. Not having an interpretive guide, we didn’t see as much.
Our ship’s doctor video-taped most of the time during this Zodiac cruise. The lovely Jessica, of course, was filmed extensively, the sea and ice was too, our Zodiac pilot and the back of the boat a lot less so, and me – the only other person on the boat - not at all. I’m less photogenic than an outboard motor, I take it.
The Zodiac bumped pretty hard with so little weight in it and sea wind chop from 1 - 1.5 meters. As we loaded back on board the Prof M, some passengers grumbled and were a little unhappy, feeling like we should not have gone out in these conditions. But I was exhilarated by the experience. As if to prove their point though, our guide Tari, while riding his now-empty Zodiac up on the crane used to stage the inflatables, was suddenly picked up by a gust of wind and very nearly flipped his boat in mid-air.
Obviously, no kayaking on this day.
But we made a plan with Frode in the evening for an ambitious 6AM kayak circumnavigation of Doumer Island. The Prof M returned to the area of Lockroy, finally anchoring near the Iofe, a larger cruise ship. I went to bed early, anticipating a very early day. As I lay reading in my top bunkbed I could see Zodiacs rounding the Prof M starboard side and boarding the Iofe. I assumed it was a Prof M – Iofe crew social thing, but was later told by Anjali that it was instead the Port Lockroy folks coming aboard the Iofe to visit. The sea traffic that night was busier than any time since we embarked, reminding me of civilization a few degrees north of us.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
What’s your Zodiac?
Semi-loyal reader Chitchatchinese asks: what’s a Zodiac?
OK, Zodiacs. They are the motorized inflatable rubber pontoon crafts used as utility watercraft around the world. They look like river rafts for tourists, except they have a motor and propellor in the back. Think: Jacques Cousteau. “Phillippe gently nuzzles ze pregnant humpback weef ze prow of ze Zodiac. Ze black rubber pontoon bumps ze female as she prepares to geeve birth…”
The Zodiac boats on the Prof M are used for all kinds of “tender” operations: ferrying passengers to the shore, cruising passengers around bays and channels, accompanying kayaks, transferring crew and light equipment, surveying… We load the Zodiacs by walking down the gangway on the starboard side of the boat from Deck 3, the main deck, moving onto the boats by gripping the arm of a Russian crew member on a Zodiac with a “sailor’s grip” and stepping onto the pontoon and into the board, where we immediately sit on a pontoon on one side or the other, typically squeezing 5 passengers on a side.
The boats are powered by an outboard motor and prop, and the Russian crew member or tour staff typically stands in the stern of the boat and steers the outboard. The boats are highly maneuverable and flexible.
A few idiosyncracies about the Prof M Zodiac-ing:
Keeping track
The system for keeping track of whether someone is on board the Prof M or not is dismayingly simple. There is a tagboard on Deck 3 near the door to the gangway. There are a series of round plastic tags on hooks with numbers. Every passenger has a number. When you leave the boat, you flip the tag around to read the word, “OFF”. When you return, you flip it back to your number. When all the numbers face outward, the crew of the Prof M is free to pull anchor and steam off. So, if you forget to flip your number when you leave the Prof M, and you don’t make it back, no one necessarily will know, and you could be stranded. On the other hand, this scenario depends on you making two mistakes, and I suppose if you make two mistakes like this, you probably deserve to freeze to death anyway. A similarly simple system is used on shore: everyone is required to wear inflatable life vests before boarding a Zodiac from the Prof M, and everyone is required to pile their vests on shore in a central location after disembarking the Zodiacs. When the pile is all used up on reboarding the Zodiacs, that means all are accounted for. So, really, one would have to make three mistakes to get left on shore. Once I understood that, I realized that the system for tracking passenger locations was actually pretty robust. So, I didn’t die of hypothermia from being stranded in Antarctica. As it turns out.
Noise
Cruising around on the Zodiacs is fun, but it’s always a little noisy, and when moving slowly, you smell the exhaust. This makes me glad to have stuck to my decision to find a kayaking trip, even though it took two years.
Boots
On landing, you typically step into shallow water, so required equipment is Wellington-style rubber boots. We all have ‘em. But, the OceanWide Expeditions** organization takes its stewardship role seriously, and takes pains to make sure that what gets on our boots (mainly pink-colored penguin guano) doesn’t make it to the next landing beach, where it could bring contamination and disease to a new penguin colony, or introduce new bugs. So, when we get back on board the Prof M., in addition to turning your number tag around, you have to immediately wash/rinse your boots on the bow in a couple of tubs of disinfectant, scrubbing the bottoms with nylon brushes that are kept jammed into some railing.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Day 5 – various landing attempts ending in Lockroy (9 Dec)
There is a white board near the dining room on Deck 3. The day’s plans are laid out there, and can change rapidly, depending on conditions. This day is a good example of that. We first set out for one destination, arrive there to find conditions not good for anchorage or landing (wind, ice, typically). As the board gradually came to read on this day (I’m paraphrasing):
Plan A: Neko harbor – too much ice to enter the harbor
Plan B: Danko Island – too much ice
Plan C: Useful Island – too windy to anchor or Zodiac
Plan D: Paradise Bay – no good anchorage
Plan E: Neumayer Channel
After cruising the Neumayer Channel neighborhood, we anchored outside Port Lockroy, a famous British station on the Wiencke Island, which itself is between the mainland Peninsula and the much larger Anvers Island. This time, all of us simply Zodiac-ed over to a beach next to the Port Lockroy Station.
We climb a ridge with deep snow in our Wellingtons. Anjali leads the way, drawing a line in the snow beyond which she judges too dangerous to venture. To my experienced eyes, this line is way too conservative, and in fact, she soon allows us to walk back down the slope, over the line. We have a view of the anchorage, and of Port Lockroy. There is some snow wrestling among the staff. We can see a lot of penguins. Mostly gentoos, both at the beach, and over at the next back at Lockroy. Penguins appear to be all over the Lockroy station, even on the steps leading to the front door. Our guides tell us that the penguins often nest near humans, and some studies show that the breeding success rate is higher in these cases. Hypothesis is that predators shy away from humans.
After this landing, we return to the Prof. M. It is now late afternoon, and the plan was to not sail or do any more landings for the afternoon/evening, but to set out that night for the famously picturesque Lamaire Channel. Delphine unexpectedly called the kayakers up to the bridge, and offered us the chance to kayak while everyone else remained on board and waited for dinner. We all agree. So, the kayakers set out for Port Lockroy. I’m back in my blue single this time, and I’m glad of it. The day is colder than other kayaking outings, the sky closer, and the light lower. This is more like what I expected kayaking here to feel like. I dress lighter, however, having learned that the drysuit holds a lot of heat in. I also take care to squeeze all the spare air out of my drysuit, so I don’t look like the Michelin Man. The suit is so airtight that if you don’t bleed air out when you put it on, you retain that air the whole time you wear the suit, looking, as Frode might say, stupid.
Once at Lockroy, we off-loaded on some rocks and pulled the boats up. Walking up to the empty station (we didn’t visit Lockroy as an entire cruise company because the station staff was away for the day at another station visiting), we saw penguins sitting on eggs, penguins stealing stones from each other, and some kind of white bird that waits next to nesting/egg sitting penguins for the opportunity to steal an egg, I think. To prove our valor, we took a few “take one” pamphlets from inside the front door. We all took photos of each other by the station, the old dog sled, and of course, in front of penguins.
We piled back into the kayaks, and while I waited for everyone to get in their boats, I watched the Gentoo penguins swim under my kayak, like the birds they are.
Anchored in the protected harbor of Lockroy was a sailing yacht we’d sighted earlier. A fascinating ship. Aluminum hall. Sails in ice. I wanted to get a close look. So we headed into the harbor further, and rounded the Pelagic Australis. On approach, a woman came out to greet us. We could see that they were having drinks and dinner, so we only stayed a short time, bobbing in the water, asking polite questions as the Pelagic crew smoked cigars. They were on a 21 day trip, 3 crew, 8 guests, who appeared to be jovial Russians. They said the Drake’s Passage crossing wasn’t tough (though I can only imagine what a sailing crew on a 60 or so foot yacht would think was tough sailing) I was fascinated to see that tied to the rigging of the stern were 4 dressed lambs, apparently stored there for convenience. I wanted to ask why the skuas and petrals didn’t pick at the lamb meat as they sailed, but I kept quiet on that question.
We had to set off for the Professor Molchanov, as it was late. Kate and Phil took off in the double – I chased them down and mentioned that we couldn’t keep up, but they kept up their pace. Later, I’d learn Kate was making a beeline for the bathroom. This time, though, Patrick was good and stayed with the group. It got colder and windy. Challenging conditions, but fun. I felt it was the best trip so far.
On board the Prof M., we had a late dinner, especially held over for us, making us feel like champions a little. We sat in the “Finn” dining room, admiring the yellow wall paneling and how different it felt to sit in another dining room after 20 or so meals in the non-Finn room.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Sea and ice
There is so much ice. We see a tiny part of what presents itself to the sea at the northern tip of a peninsular tongue sticking out from a giant continent, itself covered with hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of ice, ice, baby. Looking at it is like having a white crystalline clamp on your head that squeezes you just hard enough so you almost, but not quite, imagine how much ice there really is. Every mountain is spilling ice into the sea from every possible place. These walls of glacier or just ice are 50 or 100 or more meters tall. There is an infinite variety of ice in the sea itself. Giant iceberg blocks, tall and squarish. Sometimes hundreds of meters across. Irregular pieces bobbing and on the move. In some places, there are only huge pieces. In many places, there are tens of thousands of pieces, from baseball sized up to 30 meters across. Most are white, some are an ethereal blue – especially on the bottom and in the sea. A few are completely transparent, even black-looking, and these ones tend to have a scalloped texture for reasons I can’t guess at. Even though I’ve seen countless thousands of pieces of ice, every new one that swims into view makes me want to look it over. At Akademi Vernadsky station, the ice flowed together into a slushy commonwealth of sea ice, lumpy and mushy and chunky. When the sea is swelling, the ice moves together in slow waves, giving you the disorienting impression of being in a white earthquake. Some ice has multiple snow falls as cover, others are scoured clean and sharp. Occasionally, a berg will have penguins on it, or tracks of penguins. Very rarely, a seal sits on one.
Stricken
I startle awake in the middle of the night suddenly, bumping my head painfully on the low ceiling above my bunkbed. A claustrophobic dream spins into a waking panic. I suddenly realize how confined I’ve been for 5 days and nights. A tiny bed, narrow hallways, a small galley three times a day so filled with people that we move like sliding tile puzzle pieces when we want a glass of juice or to excuse ourselves from the dinner table, sequencing after a hesitation to move through the few open spaces available to us. I think: even in the open polar sea and on the Antarctic shore, how I am plugged into a tiny kayak, confined in 4 layers of fabric and wedged into a narrow plastic tube, or on shore, scraping along in oversized boots along narrow strips of prescribed land, or squeezed 5 on a side on a small rubber Zodiac, shoulder to shoulder on the nearly overloaded boats. And, casting forward, I see that I will be stuck in this world for another 6 days and nights. How will I get through it?
It fades slowly as I waken further, and I realize that the ocean deep offers something besides fear: the idea of the open seas as psychic relief from the closeness and claustrophobia of life on a boat.
It fades slowly as I waken further, and I realize that the ocean deep offers something besides fear: the idea of the open seas as psychic relief from the closeness and claustrophobia of life on a boat.
Day 4 – Couverville Island & Errera Channel (8 Dec)
We steamed southward through the night. In the AM, we had already arrived at the Errera Channel, and anchored at Couverville Island. This is Antarctica proper, though not the mainland.
It turned out to be a day of extraordinary kayaking. After breakfast, we loaded the kayaks on the Zodiacs themselves (a deviation from our normal kayak protocol) to make landfall with the rest of the passengers on a penguin-covered beach on the little island of Couverville.
The rest of passenger group Zodiac-ed over to walk amongst the penguins (Chinstraps, mostly.) After a short lookaround at the penguins, all kayakers set out. We spent a little time near the penguin tourist landing, taking photos, Hollywood-style, of each of us in front of picturesque bergs, posing with arms in a paddling motion while Frode snapped pictures. In his brusque style, he said to me at some point, “Lean forward for the picture, or you’re going to look stupid in the photo.” That made me laugh. After that, we decide we have enough time to circumnavigate the island, clockwise, and end up at the Prof. Molchanov. We sight another vessel – someone supposes it is the National Geographic Endeavor. It’s a little windy, but just beautiful, with some deep blue bergs – and many more photos. My rudder in the blue kayak is useless, so I pull it up. Sarah lags, but not badly. All in all, very nice.
Back on board, we have lunch. Meals are pretty regulated in that they occur at an announced time, everyone who wants to eat is expected to show up during the appointed hour, and we all remain seated while the Russian kitchen staff really humps to get the typically three course meal out. This happens no matter how the ship is moving, and on more than one occasion, we all grab for tipping soup tureens and spilling water glasses as crashing noise come from the kitchen. I never do learn the head Russian woman’s name, though I ask a couple of times, I fail to understand it, and I never see her on board the ship except at mealtimes.
Portions are modest, but the food is good. A typical lunch would be: a small amount of greens, a cup of broth, a bowl of noodles with chicken (or “chook” as my Aussie dining companions would say!). Always at the end of lunch and dinner is a modest dessert after, say strawberry spongecake. Coffee, tea service. No one drinks alcohol during lunch, that I can see. Some folks have wine with dinner.
Afternoon, we continue thru Errera Channel, cross Andvord Bay, then through the Aguirre Passage on the way to Paradise Harbour. We pass a Chilean research station, “Gabriel Gonzalez Videla.” I hear that we made radio contact between the bridge and the station, and that this station routines asks cruise ships to identify themselves and state their intentions, as though being challenged in Chilean national waters. We continue on to a Argentine station which is actually on the mainland itself. “Almirante Brown.” No one home, as is the case for many of these Argentine station, which appear to be here to stake a claim, and nothing more.
Anchorage. It’s very different here. Couverville had a few large bergs. Here, the water is littered with countless thousands of relatively small bergs and chunks of ice.
We set out on a combination kayak and landfall trip. The plan was to kayak for 90 minutes, and then join Zodiac-ers at the Almirante Brown station for a short hike, and a hill, and our first continental landing. I volunteer to give up my single and paddle with Sarah. She’s a little challenged in the double kayak. It is impossible to avoid hitting ice with our kayaks, skilled operators or not. We depart this time directly from the gangway and head towards Skorptorn (sp?), a dead end bay. Kate falls way behind. The bay is surrounded by steep mountains all pushing glacial faces into the sea. While we wait for Kate to catch up (we’re now at a bend) Patrick takes off, ignoring Frode’s earlier caution about staying together. Kate catches up, now Frode and the support Zodiac have to go look for Patrick. Meanwhile, one of the tourist cruise Zodiacs calls in a leopard seal, that then heads towards us, making me a little nervous. Pat can no longer be seen. The situation is a little riskier than it should be, because Frode and the support Zodiac are further up Skoptorn, looking for Pat, while the rest of us hang back in a group. Without a Zodiac or a radio, if something bad happened, we would not be able to signal for help. Finally, Frode returns with Pat in tow. Sheesh.
We don’t have much time now for the 2nd half - a landing at the Argentinian station. But we do land briefly. It’s our first “continental” landing. My paddling partner Sarah is annoyed at the somewhat chaotic afternoon. But I simply climb partway up the 70m hill behind Almirante Brown for a view. I’m rewarded with a dramatic view of this part of Paradise Harbour. But the skies are grey now, and it’s snowing.
We get back into the kayaks, and make a quick few hundred meter trip back to the Prof. M, which is in sight of the landing/station area. I am too tired to get my skirt on, and paddle back with my cockpit unskirted.
We return to find two surprises back on board: (1) preparation for an Antarctic polar swim (plus a sauna afterwards) for the brave, and (2) a BBQ/party for all, including some crew, on the stern.
For the swim, the crew lowered the gangway and brought out a short loop of rope. Those crazy enough to try, line up on the main deck near the gangway, while a small team of Russians plus Frode help people in and out of the water. Most of the approximately twenty folks getting into the water are Finnish women. The younger Anglophones fall in, too. Me, Patrick, Sarah, Kate, a quiet Japanese guy named Yama, young Russian Dimitri, German Sielke, and Kathryn. The procedure is to tie a rope around you before you get in, so you can be pulled back after the shock of the freezing plunge. The Finns calmly lower themselves in, swim about, and pull themselves out. Some Anglophones dive. I cannonball with a yell. It’s a big shock, though I can move once in the water. Sputtering, I thrash back to the gangway immediately.
Afterwards, we squeeze into the small Deck 2 sauna, and Natalie uses my camera to take foggy pix of us by throwing open the sauna door unexpectedly.
The BBQ is an actual BBQ – and there is a lot of meat. Some of the crew are around, and all the staff. We stood around on the stern of the Prof M, eating and drinking. It started snowing after a bit, but that didn’t stop people from dancing to some pretty random music piped over the PA system. It slowly turned into a dance party. The “chicken dance”, swing dancing, rock and roll... Not feeling the dance spirit, I slipped away to the bar. When it got darker and colder, the rump of the party moved into the bar, for crazier dancing, and I moved into my cabin. Even Viekko lasted longer at the party than me…
It turned out to be a day of extraordinary kayaking. After breakfast, we loaded the kayaks on the Zodiacs themselves (a deviation from our normal kayak protocol) to make landfall with the rest of the passengers on a penguin-covered beach on the little island of Couverville.
The rest of passenger group Zodiac-ed over to walk amongst the penguins (Chinstraps, mostly.) After a short lookaround at the penguins, all kayakers set out. We spent a little time near the penguin tourist landing, taking photos, Hollywood-style, of each of us in front of picturesque bergs, posing with arms in a paddling motion while Frode snapped pictures. In his brusque style, he said to me at some point, “Lean forward for the picture, or you’re going to look stupid in the photo.” That made me laugh. After that, we decide we have enough time to circumnavigate the island, clockwise, and end up at the Prof. Molchanov. We sight another vessel – someone supposes it is the National Geographic Endeavor. It’s a little windy, but just beautiful, with some deep blue bergs – and many more photos. My rudder in the blue kayak is useless, so I pull it up. Sarah lags, but not badly. All in all, very nice.
Back on board, we have lunch. Meals are pretty regulated in that they occur at an announced time, everyone who wants to eat is expected to show up during the appointed hour, and we all remain seated while the Russian kitchen staff really humps to get the typically three course meal out. This happens no matter how the ship is moving, and on more than one occasion, we all grab for tipping soup tureens and spilling water glasses as crashing noise come from the kitchen. I never do learn the head Russian woman’s name, though I ask a couple of times, I fail to understand it, and I never see her on board the ship except at mealtimes.
Portions are modest, but the food is good. A typical lunch would be: a small amount of greens, a cup of broth, a bowl of noodles with chicken (or “chook” as my Aussie dining companions would say!). Always at the end of lunch and dinner is a modest dessert after, say strawberry spongecake. Coffee, tea service. No one drinks alcohol during lunch, that I can see. Some folks have wine with dinner.
Afternoon, we continue thru Errera Channel, cross Andvord Bay, then through the Aguirre Passage on the way to Paradise Harbour. We pass a Chilean research station, “Gabriel Gonzalez Videla.” I hear that we made radio contact between the bridge and the station, and that this station routines asks cruise ships to identify themselves and state their intentions, as though being challenged in Chilean national waters. We continue on to a Argentine station which is actually on the mainland itself. “Almirante Brown.” No one home, as is the case for many of these Argentine station, which appear to be here to stake a claim, and nothing more.
Anchorage. It’s very different here. Couverville had a few large bergs. Here, the water is littered with countless thousands of relatively small bergs and chunks of ice.
We set out on a combination kayak and landfall trip. The plan was to kayak for 90 minutes, and then join Zodiac-ers at the Almirante Brown station for a short hike, and a hill, and our first continental landing. I volunteer to give up my single and paddle with Sarah. She’s a little challenged in the double kayak. It is impossible to avoid hitting ice with our kayaks, skilled operators or not. We depart this time directly from the gangway and head towards Skorptorn (sp?), a dead end bay. Kate falls way behind. The bay is surrounded by steep mountains all pushing glacial faces into the sea. While we wait for Kate to catch up (we’re now at a bend) Patrick takes off, ignoring Frode’s earlier caution about staying together. Kate catches up, now Frode and the support Zodiac have to go look for Patrick. Meanwhile, one of the tourist cruise Zodiacs calls in a leopard seal, that then heads towards us, making me a little nervous. Pat can no longer be seen. The situation is a little riskier than it should be, because Frode and the support Zodiac are further up Skoptorn, looking for Pat, while the rest of us hang back in a group. Without a Zodiac or a radio, if something bad happened, we would not be able to signal for help. Finally, Frode returns with Pat in tow. Sheesh.
We don’t have much time now for the 2nd half - a landing at the Argentinian station. But we do land briefly. It’s our first “continental” landing. My paddling partner Sarah is annoyed at the somewhat chaotic afternoon. But I simply climb partway up the 70m hill behind Almirante Brown for a view. I’m rewarded with a dramatic view of this part of Paradise Harbour. But the skies are grey now, and it’s snowing.
We get back into the kayaks, and make a quick few hundred meter trip back to the Prof. M, which is in sight of the landing/station area. I am too tired to get my skirt on, and paddle back with my cockpit unskirted.
We return to find two surprises back on board: (1) preparation for an Antarctic polar swim (plus a sauna afterwards) for the brave, and (2) a BBQ/party for all, including some crew, on the stern.
For the swim, the crew lowered the gangway and brought out a short loop of rope. Those crazy enough to try, line up on the main deck near the gangway, while a small team of Russians plus Frode help people in and out of the water. Most of the approximately twenty folks getting into the water are Finnish women. The younger Anglophones fall in, too. Me, Patrick, Sarah, Kate, a quiet Japanese guy named Yama, young Russian Dimitri, German Sielke, and Kathryn. The procedure is to tie a rope around you before you get in, so you can be pulled back after the shock of the freezing plunge. The Finns calmly lower themselves in, swim about, and pull themselves out. Some Anglophones dive. I cannonball with a yell. It’s a big shock, though I can move once in the water. Sputtering, I thrash back to the gangway immediately.
Afterwards, we squeeze into the small Deck 2 sauna, and Natalie uses my camera to take foggy pix of us by throwing open the sauna door unexpectedly.
The BBQ is an actual BBQ – and there is a lot of meat. Some of the crew are around, and all the staff. We stood around on the stern of the Prof M, eating and drinking. It started snowing after a bit, but that didn’t stop people from dancing to some pretty random music piped over the PA system. It slowly turned into a dance party. The “chicken dance”, swing dancing, rock and roll... Not feeling the dance spirit, I slipped away to the bar. When it got darker and colder, the rump of the party moved into the bar, for crazier dancing, and I moved into my cabin. Even Viekko lasted longer at the party than me…
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Professor Molchanov
Our ship is an “ice-strengthened” research vessel, built in Finland, but owned by a Russian company. Oceanwide Expeditions leases it, and it has been converted to a cruise line ship, though a rough one. The Prof M sleeps 52 passengers and about 20 staff and crew. The steel ship is 72 meters in length, has a shallow enough draft to get into shallow waters and bays, has a relatively open bow and stern, and a boxy rise in the center. The central structure rises 2 decks above the main deck (deck 3) where the bow and stern are. On top is the bridge deck - half taken up with the bridge and related rooms, and the other half are suites. It’s an “open bridge” ship, which means that passengers are almost always welcome on the bridge to look out at the sea and to watch the crew and instruments at work.
The instrument controls look kind of old (I think the ship was built in the 80’s.) I tend to focus on the GPS instrument at the back of the bridge where the nav charts are always laid out, and the communication gear lives. The navigator marks our position in pencil on a map occasionally. When cruising around the Antarctic Penninsula, this happens often, and when crossing the Drake, it only happens every few hours. There are also printout of weather and sea conditions, and advisories. Today, for example, there is a single page about the sea conditions as we cross the Drake. Moderate to rough seas, swells at 4 meters.
I spend a fair amount of time on the bridge during the Drake Passage crossings. I watch the swells and try to determine their height. Looking over the bow, onto the main deck and beyond, you can appreciate how much this ship rolls and pitches. With a 180 degree view of the sea, one can estimate the pitch and roll. In the Drake, the ship easily rolls +/-20 degrees and pitches +/- 10 degrees. The Drake swells and currents usually strike our beam, so the motion of the ship is unpredictable. Every few swells, there is a big combination pitch and roll, and it seems that the main deck rail will surely dip down into the sea. Not only does it never do this, but rarely does seawater even splash up onto the deck. Nevertheless, the motion is vertiginous and disconcerting. My drugs work well, and it doesn’t make me ill, though it is disquieting.
The bow itself looks like a large scallop from the bridge, with the steel hull displaying a vertical rib every meter or so. The rim of the hull is painted a sky blue, (as is the exterior of the hull), the interior of the hull and the ribbing is white, and the deck floor itself is dark green. Lotta gear out there, but also a lot of space to walk around. The deck rail at the top of the hull is 1.5-2 meters tall, sloping away from the ship, and most of the sections between the ribs have a little step built in so that one can step up and lean over the rail and see the sea. I like doing this when we’re encountering ice because it’s fun to watch the ice get cracked and crushed when the bow strikes it. I tend to stay off the bow deck when there are a lot of other passengers out there, or when people strike the “I’m the king of the world!” pose for photographs.
There is a bar on the 4th deck, where I spend a lot of time reading, writing, having a drink, or chatting with other passengers. On the 3rd deck are the twin dining rooms, which also serve as lecture halls and movie theaters. Just beside the dining room is a white board with the day’s activities and announcements plus a map of the Antarctic Peninsula that gets updated with a marker pen to track where we’ve been.
Passengers have cabins on decks 3, 4, 5. Staff on deck 2, that houses laundry, the sauna. I think the crew sleeps and eats on deck 1, where I’ve not been. The bridge is on deck 6, and there are stairs outside that allow you to walk outside the ship on the main deck (3), decks 4 & 5, and you can also ascend stairs to stand on top of the bridge deck. This is a great vantage point but is exposed and often cold and windy.
All over the ship are handles, hand rails and banisters. While at sea, you really need them because it is difficult to walk or move without supporting yourself. Stuffed between the handrails and the walls are small motion sickness bags, and occasionally a bottle of water. As people take them from the handrails, the staff replaces them.
The ship is always either warm or hot, and often doors are open to the outside decks. One of the two side doors at the back of the bridge are always open, no matter how bad the weather. I’m on deck 5, and an outside door to the stern side of deck 5 is right next to our door. I like to pop out this door and sample the air and see the sea when I step out of our cabin on my way to somewhere.
The instrument controls look kind of old (I think the ship was built in the 80’s.) I tend to focus on the GPS instrument at the back of the bridge where the nav charts are always laid out, and the communication gear lives. The navigator marks our position in pencil on a map occasionally. When cruising around the Antarctic Penninsula, this happens often, and when crossing the Drake, it only happens every few hours. There are also printout of weather and sea conditions, and advisories. Today, for example, there is a single page about the sea conditions as we cross the Drake. Moderate to rough seas, swells at 4 meters.
I spend a fair amount of time on the bridge during the Drake Passage crossings. I watch the swells and try to determine their height. Looking over the bow, onto the main deck and beyond, you can appreciate how much this ship rolls and pitches. With a 180 degree view of the sea, one can estimate the pitch and roll. In the Drake, the ship easily rolls +/-20 degrees and pitches +/- 10 degrees. The Drake swells and currents usually strike our beam, so the motion of the ship is unpredictable. Every few swells, there is a big combination pitch and roll, and it seems that the main deck rail will surely dip down into the sea. Not only does it never do this, but rarely does seawater even splash up onto the deck. Nevertheless, the motion is vertiginous and disconcerting. My drugs work well, and it doesn’t make me ill, though it is disquieting.
The bow itself looks like a large scallop from the bridge, with the steel hull displaying a vertical rib every meter or so. The rim of the hull is painted a sky blue, (as is the exterior of the hull), the interior of the hull and the ribbing is white, and the deck floor itself is dark green. Lotta gear out there, but also a lot of space to walk around. The deck rail at the top of the hull is 1.5-2 meters tall, sloping away from the ship, and most of the sections between the ribs have a little step built in so that one can step up and lean over the rail and see the sea. I like doing this when we’re encountering ice because it’s fun to watch the ice get cracked and crushed when the bow strikes it. I tend to stay off the bow deck when there are a lot of other passengers out there, or when people strike the “I’m the king of the world!” pose for photographs.
There is a bar on the 4th deck, where I spend a lot of time reading, writing, having a drink, or chatting with other passengers. On the 3rd deck are the twin dining rooms, which also serve as lecture halls and movie theaters. Just beside the dining room is a white board with the day’s activities and announcements plus a map of the Antarctic Peninsula that gets updated with a marker pen to track where we’ve been.
Passengers have cabins on decks 3, 4, 5. Staff on deck 2, that houses laundry, the sauna. I think the crew sleeps and eats on deck 1, where I’ve not been. The bridge is on deck 6, and there are stairs outside that allow you to walk outside the ship on the main deck (3), decks 4 & 5, and you can also ascend stairs to stand on top of the bridge deck. This is a great vantage point but is exposed and often cold and windy.
All over the ship are handles, hand rails and banisters. While at sea, you really need them because it is difficult to walk or move without supporting yourself. Stuffed between the handrails and the walls are small motion sickness bags, and occasionally a bottle of water. As people take them from the handrails, the staff replaces them.
The ship is always either warm or hot, and often doors are open to the outside decks. One of the two side doors at the back of the bridge are always open, no matter how bad the weather. I’m on deck 5, and an outside door to the stern side of deck 5 is right next to our door. I like to pop out this door and sample the air and see the sea when I step out of our cabin on my way to somewhere.
The kayaking
The way the kayaking generally works is that the kayaks will be loaded into the water by hand (by the Russian crew), and we enter the kayaks from a Zodiac tied up next to the anchored Prof. Molchanov. The Russians and sometimes Frode stabilize the kayaks while we enter the boats. The loading Zodiac is then piloted by a lone Russian who discreetly trails us, ready to pluck us from the polar waters should we flip or otherwise get into trouble. Generally, kayaking happens in parallel with the balance 40 passengers being loaded onto the other 4 Zodiacs for shore landings or Zodiac cruises.
Frode and I wear drysuits, which allow us to be in the polar water for quite some time, should we need to be. The others wear wetsuits with clothing underneath (!). They would be kept warm enough to be rescued should they fall in.
Frequently when you’re actually in the sea, penguins torpedo through water under and around you, and often “purpoise” right in front of you (think of porpoises or dolphins and how they pop out of the water as they are swimming.) It’s common to bump into “bergy bits” of ice while navigating around. Small ones are OK, but man-sized ones should be avoided so as not to damage the kayaks, or destabilize you from the impact.
The polar waters are dark and sort of clear, but when you are next to a large piece of ice, the light blue color of the underwater part of the ice (which is the bulk of the ice, right?) makes the water a spectacular swimming pool blue. It’s really something to be sitting in ice water, stopping paddling for a moment to listen. There is always some gentle sound: metallic clinking together of collections of small ice bits, cracking and popping of larger pieces, waves lapping the shore, or more commonly, waves breaking upon icebergs themselves which makes a different kind of noise. We keep our distance from glacial faces or large bergs, and ice could dump into the sea at any moment. Also icebergs can rotate and flip over as they melt and erode. When these things happen, a large wave can swamp your boat.
Frode made me a little nervous at our one of our briefings by cautioning us to hold our hands and arms in towards our chests if we see leopard seals nearby…
Day 3 – Landfall at the Shetland Islands (7 Dec)
Our first landfall was in the South Shetland Islands, which are still some sailing distance from the actual Antarctic Peninsula mainland. We anchored at tiny Half Moon Island in Moon Bay. Moon Bay is part of a much larger island called Livingston Island. From the map this bay seems to be a well-protected area. We were about to learn an important lesson about Antarctic weather…
Having already been briefed by Frode, our kayak guide, on how to prep and how to load into the kayaks from the Professor Molchanov, we made fairly quick work of getting into the boats. Russian crew members staged us from a Zodiac, steadying the boats one-by-one and allowing us to enter the cockpits from the side of the Zodiacs. I forget the order, but I think Frode was first, then Sarah, then me, then Pat and Phil in the double, and finally Kate in a single.
During the loading, there was almost no wind. By the time all the boats were in the water (maybe 10 minutes?), the winds had risen to perhaps 30 knots, with even greater gusts. The wind suddenly the strongest I’ve ever paddled in. Each boat became absorbed in just staying upright and not flipping over. Unknown to me, Sarah had already flipped into the polar drink, and was plucked out by the Russian crew member piloting the Zodiac, which was bobbing around, watching over us. Immediately Frode called for us to abort, and we all struggled to return to the Prof M.
Turns out that Sarah lost her camera, and one of her Wellington boots (Wellingtons, or similar are required wear on the expedition cruise for Zodiac landings, as we often step from the Zodiac into shallow water.) Later, some of the kayakers groused a little and were somewhat resentful regarding our instructor’s judgement. For my part, I just chalked it up to the crazy Antarctic environment and it seemed like part of the adventure to me…
We immediately went to plan B: run over to shore in the Zodiacs with everyone else.
This small island had a lot of penguins (3 types! Chinstraps, Gentoos and a lone Adelie), and seals, too. We just tramped around a little (only small deposits of snow), taking pix of penguins. Because the island is surrounded by another island, there are lots of glacier-covered mountains to look at. The weather changed a couple of times, very rapidly. I was standing talking to someone when the wind suddenly gusted from zero to maybe 40mph. We almost fell over.
Our second stop of the day was Deception Island. It’s a pretty desolate place. The sea fills a great caldera at the center of the (formerly) volcanic island through a narrow entry. The navigation is somewhat hazardous because of a submerged ship sinker called “Ravn Rock.” Deception Island used to be a whaling station, then a sealing station. We anchored near “Whaler’s Bay.” There is a ton of old whaling equipment rusting on the beach. There turned out to be a lot of wildlife, though we were told on board the Prof M to expect not much wildlife at this stop. We saw a leopard seal lolling on the beach, some chinstraps & Gentoos, terns dive-bombing us as we accidently walked through their nesting sites, various petrals, and a Wedell seal. Our activity was hiking up and down beach (Frode cancelled kayaking on account of high winds). At one end of Whaler’s Bay is “Neptune’s window”, a natural opening in the steep caldera rock walls that you can climb and get an outside view of the sea beyond Deception Island. Climbers were rewarded with the site of an ice-encased Trinity Island (I think.) Natalia, wearing a foam pad strapped to her butt so she could sit anywhere, sat at the edge of a precipice at Neptune’s Window (with a vertical drop of perhaps 100 meters.) I had to move away from her, because it made me very nervous to watch her move around the precipice so casually.
At the end of the landing, Natalia insisted on digging a hole in the geothermal beach sands and soaking in the resulting warm water. This is a tourist tradition which is now somewhat discouraged, because it involves shoveling a big hole in the beach. It’s not a big deal when the number of passengers is low, because the tide simply washes out the pit that gets dug. Natalia brought a shovel from the Prof. M. She was joined by Patrick the Aussie kayaker, and Kathryn, a young Canadian woman. The younger crowd and kayakers gave me a hard time, because I declined to join in. I thought about it, but the overhead seemed high. Piling up clothes on the beach in Antarctic winds to sit in a muddy shallow warm water pit that smells of sulfer while the other 40 tourists look on. I think saying I had done it would be 95% of the fun, though getting semi-naked with the two charming young women would have provided a little frission…
After Zodiacing back on board: the Prof. M hotel staff had chocolate rum drink for us all…
Evening sailing brings us back to lots of rolling and pitching of the Professor Molchanov as we move through the Branford Strait. We’ve got 10 hours of sailing to get to Ronge Island and Errera Channel. Passengers are getting a bit green again, but I’m fine. We have beautiful weather after another nice dinner. I sit in the bar with the increasingly loose staff, Anjali the biologist, Delphine the expedition leader. As groups of us chat, Trinity Island float by at 10 PM, with Alpine-glow-like sun illuminating huge ice bergs. Very beautiful. Albatross and other seabirds are skimming inches over the seas outside the ship, as islands and majestic glaciers drift by. I sit with Julie the Scottish conservationist, Patrick the Melborne-ite kayakers (who gets enormous credit for being very green much of the trip, but rising repeatedly to the occasion – and being the only guy to get in the thermally heated dugout at Deception Island.) Pat shows up to every meal, even if the meal for him consists only of lying down on the back seats of the dining hall and staring at the ceiling while us lucky ones chow down.
Having already been briefed by Frode, our kayak guide, on how to prep and how to load into the kayaks from the Professor Molchanov, we made fairly quick work of getting into the boats. Russian crew members staged us from a Zodiac, steadying the boats one-by-one and allowing us to enter the cockpits from the side of the Zodiacs. I forget the order, but I think Frode was first, then Sarah, then me, then Pat and Phil in the double, and finally Kate in a single.
During the loading, there was almost no wind. By the time all the boats were in the water (maybe 10 minutes?), the winds had risen to perhaps 30 knots, with even greater gusts. The wind suddenly the strongest I’ve ever paddled in. Each boat became absorbed in just staying upright and not flipping over. Unknown to me, Sarah had already flipped into the polar drink, and was plucked out by the Russian crew member piloting the Zodiac, which was bobbing around, watching over us. Immediately Frode called for us to abort, and we all struggled to return to the Prof M.
Turns out that Sarah lost her camera, and one of her Wellington boots (Wellingtons, or similar are required wear on the expedition cruise for Zodiac landings, as we often step from the Zodiac into shallow water.) Later, some of the kayakers groused a little and were somewhat resentful regarding our instructor’s judgement. For my part, I just chalked it up to the crazy Antarctic environment and it seemed like part of the adventure to me…
We immediately went to plan B: run over to shore in the Zodiacs with everyone else.
This small island had a lot of penguins (3 types! Chinstraps, Gentoos and a lone Adelie), and seals, too. We just tramped around a little (only small deposits of snow), taking pix of penguins. Because the island is surrounded by another island, there are lots of glacier-covered mountains to look at. The weather changed a couple of times, very rapidly. I was standing talking to someone when the wind suddenly gusted from zero to maybe 40mph. We almost fell over.
Our second stop of the day was Deception Island. It’s a pretty desolate place. The sea fills a great caldera at the center of the (formerly) volcanic island through a narrow entry. The navigation is somewhat hazardous because of a submerged ship sinker called “Ravn Rock.” Deception Island used to be a whaling station, then a sealing station. We anchored near “Whaler’s Bay.” There is a ton of old whaling equipment rusting on the beach. There turned out to be a lot of wildlife, though we were told on board the Prof M to expect not much wildlife at this stop. We saw a leopard seal lolling on the beach, some chinstraps & Gentoos, terns dive-bombing us as we accidently walked through their nesting sites, various petrals, and a Wedell seal. Our activity was hiking up and down beach (Frode cancelled kayaking on account of high winds). At one end of Whaler’s Bay is “Neptune’s window”, a natural opening in the steep caldera rock walls that you can climb and get an outside view of the sea beyond Deception Island. Climbers were rewarded with the site of an ice-encased Trinity Island (I think.) Natalia, wearing a foam pad strapped to her butt so she could sit anywhere, sat at the edge of a precipice at Neptune’s Window (with a vertical drop of perhaps 100 meters.) I had to move away from her, because it made me very nervous to watch her move around the precipice so casually.
At the end of the landing, Natalia insisted on digging a hole in the geothermal beach sands and soaking in the resulting warm water. This is a tourist tradition which is now somewhat discouraged, because it involves shoveling a big hole in the beach. It’s not a big deal when the number of passengers is low, because the tide simply washes out the pit that gets dug. Natalia brought a shovel from the Prof. M. She was joined by Patrick the Aussie kayaker, and Kathryn, a young Canadian woman. The younger crowd and kayakers gave me a hard time, because I declined to join in. I thought about it, but the overhead seemed high. Piling up clothes on the beach in Antarctic winds to sit in a muddy shallow warm water pit that smells of sulfer while the other 40 tourists look on. I think saying I had done it would be 95% of the fun, though getting semi-naked with the two charming young women would have provided a little frission…
After Zodiacing back on board: the Prof. M hotel staff had chocolate rum drink for us all…
Evening sailing brings us back to lots of rolling and pitching of the Professor Molchanov as we move through the Branford Strait. We’ve got 10 hours of sailing to get to Ronge Island and Errera Channel. Passengers are getting a bit green again, but I’m fine. We have beautiful weather after another nice dinner. I sit in the bar with the increasingly loose staff, Anjali the biologist, Delphine the expedition leader. As groups of us chat, Trinity Island float by at 10 PM, with Alpine-glow-like sun illuminating huge ice bergs. Very beautiful. Albatross and other seabirds are skimming inches over the seas outside the ship, as islands and majestic glaciers drift by. I sit with Julie the Scottish conservationist, Patrick the Melborne-ite kayakers (who gets enormous credit for being very green much of the trip, but rising repeatedly to the occasion – and being the only guy to get in the thermally heated dugout at Deception Island.) Pat shows up to every meal, even if the meal for him consists only of lying down on the back seats of the dining hall and staring at the ceiling while us lucky ones chow down.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Day 2 – Drake’s Passage and the Antarctic Convergence (6 Dec)
Couldn’t sleep past 04:30 hours. So much motion of the ship. It’s not making me ill, but I’m not very comfortable in my tiny upper bunk bed. Last night we had the biggest seas yet. There were 2 or 3 hours of very strong rolling – I was actually sliding up and down my bunk, my feet striking the starboard bulkhead, and then in the other direction, my head and pillow squooshing up against the interior wall of the cabin. It’s a bit frightening to look out into the dimness (it’s never completely dark) and see a flashing white of a breaking wavetop far above my porthole up here on deck 5 (the waterline is below deck 2), and then to feel the impact seconds later. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the swells were greater than 6 meters. I got up at about 05:00 and went down to read and write and drink tea. I had the bar to myself.
I thought I would be sick, and I thought I would be fearful, but I’m far from sick, and except for the occasional moment of anxiety (during 5+ meter swells, like last night) I’m not too worried. There are still lots of sick folks. As you walk the passage ways of the sleeping decks, occasionally you see the open doors of sea-sick passengers, allowing a little fresh air in. You catch sight of a droopy arm or a lolling head sticking out of the blankets. Sometimes the Prof. Molchanov feels like an infirmary or a hospital ward, and in fact the on-board MD has been dispensing various kinds of medicines. Some people haven’t been sighted out of their cabins since the hours after we embarked. As the sea improves, they are venturing out, choking down crackers and sipping at instant soup, their eyes glassy and their faces pallid and greasy. A curious joke dynamic developed between myself and the two younger women kayakers – one was quite ill, though she had a Scopalomine patch on. She decided to remove her patch, and started feeling better. Subsequently, these two women began a campaign to get me to take off my patch. Why? I don’t know, but at one point one of them was semi-jokingly threatening to rip it from behind my ear. It was at that moment that I realized I was going to have to knock them over the railing into the near-freezing Southern Ocean waters…
Looks like tomorrow we’ll have our first ship landings. Frode gave us kayakers a briefing in the afternoon. The five kayakers are: me, Pat, Kate, Phil and Sarah? All Anglophones, curiously. Phil is an older gentleman – a farmer from Australia. Patrick and Kate are younger, and also from Australia. Sarah is one of the youngest aboard the ship, and she hails from Cape Cod. As far as I can tell, she is the only other American aboard.
We have a couple more lectures today. Expedition leader Delphine talked about penguins. Finnish ice-man Tari talked about snow, physics, morphology, climate, albedo… Again I had all the questions. I think I’m coming across as a smart alec. But they don’t get down into the real science much in these lectures, so I end up wanting to hear a more. It’s as if you attended a seminar on some topic, but only got to hear the introductory 10 minutes and not the meat of the talk. Oh well. It’s aimed at a lay audience, and the staff is sensitive to the fact that many people can’t stay in the dining rooms for long because of the heat, lack of air, and rocking of the ship.
Today is Finnish independence day, and the Finns, in their separate dining chamber, drank vodka and sang Finnish national songs. Tari, one of the OceanWide staff, is Finnish, and the orientation meetings, lectures, announcements are done in both English and Finnish. Finish is the strangest language. There are these glottal stops and staccato endings to many words. I have a compulsion to mock it, because it sounds so funny to my ear…
At evening we are closing in on 61deg S, and about 70 nautical miles from the Shetlands. Unless the weather changes (it’s snowy and 20-30 knot winds now), we will reach the Islands around 3AM, with Zodiac and kayakers setting out shortly after 8AM. While I was figuring this out on the bridge, looking at the GPS coordinates and the nav maps, I noticed two penguins “porpoising” off the starboard side. I was amazed to see penguins 70 miles from any land or ice.
From our cabin, I observed the sunset, because the sun had fallen below the cloud cover. With a flat horizon and very good visibility, I thought I might observe the final seconds of the sunset to look for the “green flash” phenomena I’ve read about for years. I saw it perfectly!
I thought I would be sick, and I thought I would be fearful, but I’m far from sick, and except for the occasional moment of anxiety (during 5+ meter swells, like last night) I’m not too worried. There are still lots of sick folks. As you walk the passage ways of the sleeping decks, occasionally you see the open doors of sea-sick passengers, allowing a little fresh air in. You catch sight of a droopy arm or a lolling head sticking out of the blankets. Sometimes the Prof. Molchanov feels like an infirmary or a hospital ward, and in fact the on-board MD has been dispensing various kinds of medicines. Some people haven’t been sighted out of their cabins since the hours after we embarked. As the sea improves, they are venturing out, choking down crackers and sipping at instant soup, their eyes glassy and their faces pallid and greasy. A curious joke dynamic developed between myself and the two younger women kayakers – one was quite ill, though she had a Scopalomine patch on. She decided to remove her patch, and started feeling better. Subsequently, these two women began a campaign to get me to take off my patch. Why? I don’t know, but at one point one of them was semi-jokingly threatening to rip it from behind my ear. It was at that moment that I realized I was going to have to knock them over the railing into the near-freezing Southern Ocean waters…
Looks like tomorrow we’ll have our first ship landings. Frode gave us kayakers a briefing in the afternoon. The five kayakers are: me, Pat, Kate, Phil and Sarah? All Anglophones, curiously. Phil is an older gentleman – a farmer from Australia. Patrick and Kate are younger, and also from Australia. Sarah is one of the youngest aboard the ship, and she hails from Cape Cod. As far as I can tell, she is the only other American aboard.
We have a couple more lectures today. Expedition leader Delphine talked about penguins. Finnish ice-man Tari talked about snow, physics, morphology, climate, albedo… Again I had all the questions. I think I’m coming across as a smart alec. But they don’t get down into the real science much in these lectures, so I end up wanting to hear a more. It’s as if you attended a seminar on some topic, but only got to hear the introductory 10 minutes and not the meat of the talk. Oh well. It’s aimed at a lay audience, and the staff is sensitive to the fact that many people can’t stay in the dining rooms for long because of the heat, lack of air, and rocking of the ship.
Today is Finnish independence day, and the Finns, in their separate dining chamber, drank vodka and sang Finnish national songs. Tari, one of the OceanWide staff, is Finnish, and the orientation meetings, lectures, announcements are done in both English and Finnish. Finish is the strangest language. There are these glottal stops and staccato endings to many words. I have a compulsion to mock it, because it sounds so funny to my ear…
At evening we are closing in on 61deg S, and about 70 nautical miles from the Shetlands. Unless the weather changes (it’s snowy and 20-30 knot winds now), we will reach the Islands around 3AM, with Zodiac and kayakers setting out shortly after 8AM. While I was figuring this out on the bridge, looking at the GPS coordinates and the nav maps, I noticed two penguins “porpoising” off the starboard side. I was amazed to see penguins 70 miles from any land or ice.
From our cabin, I observed the sunset, because the sun had fallen below the cloud cover. With a flat horizon and very good visibility, I thought I might observe the final seconds of the sunset to look for the “green flash” phenomena I’ve read about for years. I saw it perfectly!
Day 1 - Drake’s Passage (5 Dec)
I retired early last night, knowing that around midnight we’d be out of the Beagle Channel and into the open seas, and that those seas would be rough. I wanted at least 2 hrs of sleep. It did get rough, and I didn’t get sick, but sleeping was a restless experience.
I awoke at 7AM, and tried to get dressed without making noise so as not to disturb my Finnish cabin mate Viekko, who was asleep in the bottom bunk bed. I walked outside onto the starboard main deck and looked over the rail, just before breakfast. I estimated that the swells were up to 4 meters (later confirmed by captain.)
A third to half of the 51 passengers showed up for breakfast. I assumed the rest are sick in their cabins. I’m not the least bit sick myself, though my mind is fuzzy. A strange side effect of Scopalomine is that when you focus at infinity, you sometimes perceive a shearing motion in your field of view. The horizon appears to slide sideways as you look at it. Last night as I was readying for bed, I’d look at the mountains of the Beagle Channel and the mountains looked like they were lurching sideways. This is a somewhat familiar feeling, as when you actually have motion sickness you see objects and scenes shift in crazy ways. I know this not because I’ve been ill on boats before (I haven’t), but 15 years ago I collapsed from vertigo apparently induced by an inner ear infection. But now I don’t have any feeling of nausea. Many people are apparently quite ill. I still don’t know if I even get sea sick, as I have waged a preventative war against it with the Scopalomine patch and occasionally a tablet of meclazine/Dramamine.
After a leisurely breakfast, I headed up to the bridge, where everyone is welcome most of the time. It’s a great place to look out on the ocean, and to see the instruments and maps and crew. It’s fun to read the GPS coordinates and to look at the navigation maps to figure our location and progress. On my first visit to the bridge, I noted that we were only going 7 knots southward, and it would take more than 2 days to go my estimation of the distance (900km.) If the weather and sea improves, we’d go faster. The maximum ship speed is only 12 knots, which would mean at best 72 hours. 3 days. I think I must have the distance wrong. At least I hope I do.
A group of us (approximately 20) are about the ship all day, eating meals, looking out at the sea and the swells, attending lectures, reading in the bar, drinking tea or coffee, and in my case, pre-blogging. I kill time by occasionally walking through the ship and out onto the side decks to take in fresh air (but not for long – it’s too windy, rough and wet!),
I’m not as afraid as I thought I would be, but every once in a while I have a mini-panic in which I realize that we are so far out into the ocean, that it would probably take a day for help to arrive. And learning that the passengers aboard the grounded and disabled MV Ushuaia down on the Peninsula will have to be evacuated reinforces my feelings. The staff decided to make an announcement to the passengers of the fate of the Ushuaia. Also, on the bridge is a printout from some marine agency giving details. The ~90 passengers will be evacuated and repatriated, after which the Argentine forces and the the ~30 crew members will try and refloat the Ushuaia and sail it back to Tierra del Fuego and the town of Ushuaia. (See the image of the announcement.)
Late in the morning I, and approximately 15 others, attended the first on-board lecture by “Anjali”, a staffer who is a fisheries scientist. We learned a little about krill, ice mackerel and the Patagonia toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass.) Lectures and presentations like this take place in the dining room/galley, are less than 30 minutes, and are somewhat superficial and aimed at a broad audience. I find myself wanting to know more.
In the afternoon, there was a screening of the crazy documentary about Antarctic life by Werner Herzog (the Wild Blue Yonder?) I’d seen recently it San Francisco, so I skipped out. And still later in the evening, a short documentary about the Endurance and Shackleton. A very interesting story, which I’d forgotten some of.
In two days, I had not seen another ship or plane. One of the staffers said that we probably wouldn’t, even when we reach the islands and the peninsula, as they try and keep spaced out – also, we probably would not go anywhere near where the MV Ushuaia ran aground, as there are naval vessels and aircraft present there. There is a remote chance we’d be called upon to take some of their passengers aboard.
Even though we’re all in close contact, conversation is somewhat strained and awkward. Not sure why, but the sea-sickness and general irritation of having the boat pitch and roll (non-stop now for 30 hours), makes for short, shallow conversations. Also, about half of the group is Finnish, and they don’t speak much English, so there is a kind of de facto apartheid. The dining room is actually two separate rooms with the galley in the middle and connecting them. The Finns sit in the port side dining room, and everyone else on the starboard side. I plan on trying to break this up tomorrow by breakfasting with the Finns.
In the bar, where people gather to hang out, talk, read and someday maybe even drink, is amusing because all the chairs and stools which are not fastened to the floor are tied up with lengths of twine to keep them from launching across the room. From time to time, a stool or chair falls over, and someone will wearily walk over and set it up again.
As the evening wore on, people who had not yet gotten sick were beginning to fall ill. It seems that the number of tourists not feeling anything at all is no more than 15, and some of the staff seem ill, too. Only the Russian crew, whom almost completely non-communicative, seem unaffected. I celebrated my good fortune by having a couple of glasses of white wine in the evening, putting me in a small minority of people drinking alcohol. I’d say about 5 people.
I’ve been following our progress on the bridge. Very slow going. When I retired to cabin 521 at about 23:00 (Viekko playing with some electronics in his lower bunkbed), we had only reached latitude 56S. So, at bedtime we were still far from the Antarctic Convergence, the boundary between the circumpolar Antarctic currents and the warmer, less-nutrient-filled current system of the rest of the world’s oceans. Not sure what to expect when we reach this boundary, though a staff member said the water would look the same, but that there would be a dramatic change in the birds and other wildlife. The prediction was to reach the Convergence (which here is about 57deg S) at 6AM on 6 Dec.
I awoke at 7AM, and tried to get dressed without making noise so as not to disturb my Finnish cabin mate Viekko, who was asleep in the bottom bunk bed. I walked outside onto the starboard main deck and looked over the rail, just before breakfast. I estimated that the swells were up to 4 meters (later confirmed by captain.)
A third to half of the 51 passengers showed up for breakfast. I assumed the rest are sick in their cabins. I’m not the least bit sick myself, though my mind is fuzzy. A strange side effect of Scopalomine is that when you focus at infinity, you sometimes perceive a shearing motion in your field of view. The horizon appears to slide sideways as you look at it. Last night as I was readying for bed, I’d look at the mountains of the Beagle Channel and the mountains looked like they were lurching sideways. This is a somewhat familiar feeling, as when you actually have motion sickness you see objects and scenes shift in crazy ways. I know this not because I’ve been ill on boats before (I haven’t), but 15 years ago I collapsed from vertigo apparently induced by an inner ear infection. But now I don’t have any feeling of nausea. Many people are apparently quite ill. I still don’t know if I even get sea sick, as I have waged a preventative war against it with the Scopalomine patch and occasionally a tablet of meclazine/Dramamine.
After a leisurely breakfast, I headed up to the bridge, where everyone is welcome most of the time. It’s a great place to look out on the ocean, and to see the instruments and maps and crew. It’s fun to read the GPS coordinates and to look at the navigation maps to figure our location and progress. On my first visit to the bridge, I noted that we were only going 7 knots southward, and it would take more than 2 days to go my estimation of the distance (900km.) If the weather and sea improves, we’d go faster. The maximum ship speed is only 12 knots, which would mean at best 72 hours. 3 days. I think I must have the distance wrong. At least I hope I do.
A group of us (approximately 20) are about the ship all day, eating meals, looking out at the sea and the swells, attending lectures, reading in the bar, drinking tea or coffee, and in my case, pre-blogging. I kill time by occasionally walking through the ship and out onto the side decks to take in fresh air (but not for long – it’s too windy, rough and wet!),
I’m not as afraid as I thought I would be, but every once in a while I have a mini-panic in which I realize that we are so far out into the ocean, that it would probably take a day for help to arrive. And learning that the passengers aboard the grounded and disabled MV Ushuaia down on the Peninsula will have to be evacuated reinforces my feelings. The staff decided to make an announcement to the passengers of the fate of the Ushuaia. Also, on the bridge is a printout from some marine agency giving details. The ~90 passengers will be evacuated and repatriated, after which the Argentine forces and the the ~30 crew members will try and refloat the Ushuaia and sail it back to Tierra del Fuego and the town of Ushuaia. (See the image of the announcement.)
Late in the morning I, and approximately 15 others, attended the first on-board lecture by “Anjali”, a staffer who is a fisheries scientist. We learned a little about krill, ice mackerel and the Patagonia toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass.) Lectures and presentations like this take place in the dining room/galley, are less than 30 minutes, and are somewhat superficial and aimed at a broad audience. I find myself wanting to know more.
In the afternoon, there was a screening of the crazy documentary about Antarctic life by Werner Herzog (the Wild Blue Yonder?) I’d seen recently it San Francisco, so I skipped out. And still later in the evening, a short documentary about the Endurance and Shackleton. A very interesting story, which I’d forgotten some of.
In two days, I had not seen another ship or plane. One of the staffers said that we probably wouldn’t, even when we reach the islands and the peninsula, as they try and keep spaced out – also, we probably would not go anywhere near where the MV Ushuaia ran aground, as there are naval vessels and aircraft present there. There is a remote chance we’d be called upon to take some of their passengers aboard.
Even though we’re all in close contact, conversation is somewhat strained and awkward. Not sure why, but the sea-sickness and general irritation of having the boat pitch and roll (non-stop now for 30 hours), makes for short, shallow conversations. Also, about half of the group is Finnish, and they don’t speak much English, so there is a kind of de facto apartheid. The dining room is actually two separate rooms with the galley in the middle and connecting them. The Finns sit in the port side dining room, and everyone else on the starboard side. I plan on trying to break this up tomorrow by breakfasting with the Finns.
In the bar, where people gather to hang out, talk, read and someday maybe even drink, is amusing because all the chairs and stools which are not fastened to the floor are tied up with lengths of twine to keep them from launching across the room. From time to time, a stool or chair falls over, and someone will wearily walk over and set it up again.
As the evening wore on, people who had not yet gotten sick were beginning to fall ill. It seems that the number of tourists not feeling anything at all is no more than 15, and some of the staff seem ill, too. Only the Russian crew, whom almost completely non-communicative, seem unaffected. I celebrated my good fortune by having a couple of glasses of white wine in the evening, putting me in a small minority of people drinking alcohol. I’d say about 5 people.
I’ve been following our progress on the bridge. Very slow going. When I retired to cabin 521 at about 23:00 (Viekko playing with some electronics in his lower bunkbed), we had only reached latitude 56S. So, at bedtime we were still far from the Antarctic Convergence, the boundary between the circumpolar Antarctic currents and the warmer, less-nutrient-filled current system of the rest of the world’s oceans. Not sure what to expect when we reach this boundary, though a staff member said the water would look the same, but that there would be a dramatic change in the birds and other wildlife. The prediction was to reach the Convergence (which here is about 57deg S) at 6AM on 6 Dec.
Day 0 – Embarcadero
(4 Dec)
I’m early boarding the Professor Molchanov. It doesn’t look very big, I think, as I walk towards it on the only pier in town. I roll my two bags with the Australians that I met in the lobby of the Albatros earlier. The pier sticks almost straight out into the Beagle Channel. At the ship, we are greeted by staff members checking names off a list and chalking our bags with our cabin numbers. The crew stows my luggage in my cabin, which will be shared by someone I don’t yet know, and I wander the ship, trying to figure out what is what.
An hour before, I had learned of the MV Ushuaia which had just run aground in the part of the Antarctic Peninsula where we’re headed. Pablo sent me a link from a newswire, and I’d loaded the story on my laptop just before leaving the lobby of the Albatros. The Ushuaia may require rescuing. I though I should not say anything about it until after our first dinner and the brief life boat drill to follow. However, as I sat for the first time in the ship’s bar, passengers began asking me what I was reading on my laptop. Some of the tour staff were present, and were very surprised to learn about this. I guess the staff weren’t informed, and maybe even the crew didn’t know. But I don’t suppose they’d advertise it if they did.
There are 51 passengers on this ship capable of holding 52 passengers (one lucky bloke got a cabin to himself without paying for it.) Turns out I’m sharing a cabin with an older Finnish gentlemen named “Viekko.” We’re on the 5th deck, which is fairly high. Is this good? Is it bad? I guess we’ll find out. Not many of the people aboard are wearing the Scopalomine anti-sea-sickness patches behind their ears. One of the guides (Tari) who “specializes in everything that is frozen” is wearing one.
There seem to be few Americans aboard. There is a large Finnish group, which comprises almost half of the passengers. Germans, Aussies, one Japanese fellow and a smattering of others.
As we get underway, the staff introduces itself to us in the crowded bar, and Delfine, the expedition leader gives us a bit of an orientation, including instructions on a soon-to-occur lifeboat drill.
“Frode” the kayaking guide fitted everyone in the kayaking group (there are five of us in total) with wetsuits, skirts and life jackets. Frode seems like a serious fellow. Only he and I will have dry suits, as I had acquired a new Kokatat paddling drysuit just a couple of days before departing San Francisco. I now think that I prepared correctly for the kayaking experience. There are 10 kayaks on board, 5 single, and 5 double. I’m going to try and have my own boat, but we’ll just have to see. Frode gave us a short orientation to how the kayaking goes – turns out that the usual thing to do is to launch directly from the Prof. Molchanov gangway with a Zodiac motor craft to follow and support us. I had been advised when booking the trip that there would be a guide:paddler ratio of 1:2. Here it is 1:5 , unless you count the Zodiac maniac, which makes it 2:5.
Before dinner, the ship’s alarms sound, and we assembled for the drill. Pretty serious. The lifeboat crafts (2) seal up completely and are designed to roll and remain watertight. They have their own prop, supplies including water rations. One glaring thing missing is telecommunications gear. I asked this question, but received a “I’ll get back to you on that” answer. The most interesting thing to me was the tidbit that the first order of business after launching a life boat is to dig out the anti-sea-sickness meds on board. The idea is that with limited supplies, you cannot afford to get dehydrated, and also at very close quarters anyone who becomes nauseous would quickly make the situation even more miserable.
At my randomly selected dining table this evening was Natalie, a friendly young Ukrainian woman. Because she speaks Russian, she is friendly with the non-English speaking Russian crew. She claimed that the captain said the size of the swells in Drake’s Passage (which we have to cross to get to Antarctica) were predicted to be 10 meters (!) tonight. We would not reach the beginning of Drake’s until midnight, since sailing out of Ushuaia and through the Beagle Channel to the open sea would take hours.
In the dining room, the pretty, young, German woman in charge of meal service and hospitality (Jessica) asks every single person (in English, but also in German and Russian) if they liked the dish. She didn’t fail. All 8 people at my table got asked this 3x each. There was something slightly arousing about having her smile broadly at you and say, “Did you like it OK?” or “Was it good for you?” in a charming German accent…
As the evening doesn’t quite fall (it’s light here most of the day and night), our expedition leader, Delfin, gave strong advice over the PA. Firstly, we were to secure everything in the cabin. This was referred to as “Drake-proofing.” (Uh-oh.) Secondly, we were also encouraged to take some sea-sickness meds. (I mean sea-sickness preventing, not sea-sickness causing. The latter wouldn’t make much sense, though, would it? I guess I really am an amateur sailor…)
Thursday, December 4, 2008
I'm OK!
The Antarctic cruise ship that ran aground today is NOT my ship. That ship is the "Ushuaia". I just boarded the Prof Molchanov.
Don't worry!
-Greg
Don't worry!
-Greg
Swell
I’m afraid of the ocean, of deep waters. Always have been. The smothering depths. Cold rough water piled over me like a hundred cubic mile tombstone. I’m not afraid of anything in particular: sharks, sealife, etc. It’s like being afraid of death. The only thing to do is to try and get used to it, expose myself to it.
In recent years I’ve learned to sea kayak, and to surf. So, I’m OK now when I’m near the shore. And I’ve been on large ferries near land or in the Mediterranean. Also, sailboats near a shore, or on the San Francisco Bay. But I’ve never been out in the open ocean, days away from land. The though of it freezes me up, strickens my chest, tightens my throat. Writing about it makes the tips of my fingers sweaty.
I’m going anyway, it seems. I board the Prof. Molchanov in a few hours, then out at sea for 10 days.
People I tell about my fear think I’m concerned about the odds of something happening, the particular dangers of a particular situation, or perhaps being seasick. It’s more general than that, though.
Crossing Drake’s Passage is how one gets to the Antarctic Peninsula. Drake’s and the Souther Ocean are home to some of the roughest seas in the world. You can’t make this trip without a good traveler’s insurance policy for repatriation and medical evacuation. Can you imagine someone having a heart attack 2 days away from land and needed to be evacuated by helicopter? Sweet Palin’s Ghost!
I could not help but look at the sea conditions and the forecast. It looks like we’ll encounter 6 meter (18+ feet) swells. I’ve put on my Scopalomine anti-sea-sickness patch, Meclazine to follow in the next hour.
Scopalomine works by making you pre-dizzy, it seems. Haha. I’m in a bit of a fog from it. I don’t actually know if I get sea-sick, but whenever I’ve talked to anyone who’s done this, they have said: “You will get sick.” Ulp.
What will I actually do when I get there? Standard the Zodiac landings and little boating tours to look at wildlife, ice formations, bergs, whales. But the reason I signed up with OceanWide is that I will be sea-kayaking. I bought a “dry suit” and lots of neoprene gear to survive polar waters should I dump my craft. I sure hope I don’t. The water is between -2 and +3C. That. Is. Cold.
We’ll be heading towards the South Shetland Islands, Lemaire Channel, Port Lockroy and Deception Island, and points along the north-western side of the tail of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Weddell Sea and the Larsen Ice Shelf lie on the other side of the Peninsula. I do not think we will see that. The itinerary is vague, because conditions greatly determine where you go, what you do. I’m excited to see all this stuff, but anxiety and fear are the dominant things now. With luck and time, that will change. It will take something like 2+ days each way to cross Drake’s Passage.
This will be the last post until at least 14 December, when I make landfall here in Ushuaia again…
I see the Tierra, but I don’t see the Fuego!
First stop, End of the World. The town of Ushuaia, in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego, bills itself as the southern-most town in the world. That’s true only if one doesn’t count the many settlements around and on Antarctica, some of which are town-sized. The various governments that lay claim to parts of the 7th continent don’t call them towns because by international treaty they’re only supposed to be science outposts and the like.
Why am I here? I’ve always wanted to visit Antarctica, and that’s what this leg of the trip is about. Tomorrow I board the Professor Molchanov, a converted Finnish research vessel that is used for adventure cruises in polar regions. The Prof. Molchanov is operated by Oceanwide Expeditions. You can find some nice photos and a description of the vessel here, though you have to navigate around the site a little.
Ushuaia is a busy tourist port, where cruise vessels, large and tiny, depart for the Antarctic Peninsula, the South Georgia Islands and other polar points. Tierra del Fuego is by far the closest continental land to any part of Antarctica, and so this really is the gateway to that continent. My vessel is on the tiny side. 52 passengers, and a crew of about 20. Ulp.
It’s the height of summer here in Ushuaia, warm during the day, but fairly cold when the sun slowly, slowly falls. The spiky, dramatic mountains that surround the place combined with the outpost feel of the town make it seem possible that this is in fact the end of the world. If so, the world ends genially, as Ushuaia is a pleasant enough place. Definitely a tourist town, but not as in-your-face as most. The architecture is a fusion of ramshackle Latin American dwellings, alpine snow cabins and Swiss chalets.
The slow movement of sun and light through the sky sets a pace different than in mid-latitudes. It’s a nice feeling to look up in the sky after a half hour of doing something, and to notice that the light hasn’t changed much. It really helps slow one down. On the other hand, time gets away from you, as you eventually notice that it’s 10PM and you haven’t even thought about dinner yet.
I’m pleased to discover that my Spanish is working out OK. I think I’m more relaxed about speaking Spanish incorrectly than I used to be, and so communication with me is not so trying (I think.) Sometimes I don’t even think about what I’m saying, and of course it comes out all wrong. Interestingly, this often produces a better result than when I bite my lip and stammer out the most correct Spanish I know. At times I just approximate the words I want. I can’t believe it’s taken me 30 years to relax in this way. I had a very nice conversation in Spanish with a young woman at the local tourist information kiosk. She told me just that – don’t worry about your Spanish, just speak!
What has sparked the most conversations so far is an electronic e-book product I carry with me called a Kindle, marketed by Amazon.com. This was a very generous early Xmas gift from S. It’s great for travel, because you can load many books and periodical into a small, battery-efficient, e-paper-based gadget. So far two different women have approached me with a “What’s that thing?” question. I have to admit, it is a pretty cool device, but it’s surprising to me that it such a conversation starter. It’s been around for a year, though there isn’t widespread awareness of it, especially here at the end of the world. I’ve loaded Amundsen’s account of his successful conquest of the South Pole, a book on the scientific and philosophical examination of religion by Dennett, and Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”. I wanted to put some good comics on the Kindle, but the titles available are generally the lowest book humor around - joke books, “You know you’re a redneck when…”, and the like.
I’m staying at the Hotel Albatros (www.albatroshotel.com.ar), directly across from the only pier in Ushuaia. I can see the tour, cruise and cargo ships coming and going from my room, if I try hard. From the restaurant bar, there is a great view of the bay. The Albatros is convenient, but not all that helpful (they haven’t been able to [1] store luggage long term, [2] find me a local shipper/Fedex office, [3] give me directions to a good restaurant, or [4] locate for me a barber shop.). It’s also loud in the rooms, which is surprising since I don’t think there are all that many people staying here. The location is great, but I’d stay somewhere else next time. The best thing is having a glass of wine in the bar and looking out across the Bahia Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel to the mountains in the south.
I’m getting mixed messages about the local economy. The hotel is not all that busy, but the cab driver told me that the financial collapse and global economic crisis has had not effect here, because this destination is for the richer tourists. Not sure I believe it, as I see signs all over town trying to sell the last berths on the Prof. Molchanov.
One night I went to dinner at a nice place recommended by Lonely Planet, “Maria Lola Resto”. The food was good quality, good ingredient, though bland. I’m beginning to think that is what Argentine cuisine is about. Good seafood and meats, prepared well but with little seasoning or spice. Anyway, the view from MLR is spectacular and panoramic. That’s really the attraction. It’s slightly off the main tourist drag, and so it’s a peaceful place. A full dinner there was about $30 US, which is less than you’d pay for a pedestrian meal on the tourist streets of Maipu or San Martin.
Friend and travel agent M recommended I try the local specialty, “centolla” (centosha). Centolla is actually a kind of Pacific king crab, rather than a dish, but it gets prepared in particular few ways and they’re all referred to as centolla. On my first night (2 nights total here) I had a kind of stew with tomato-based sauce (I think), some cheese and lots of crab legs. This crab is everywhere here. I don’t know if they’re in environmental trouble, but they are delicious. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more centolla aboard the Prof. Molchanov, though my understanding is that these trips don’t involve catching seafood or fish en route. Never having been on a cruise of any type, I really don’t know what to expect…
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