Jaunted

Our first landing was on the South Shetlands, a chain of islands 120 kilometres north of the Antarctic Peninsula. As we queued to jump on board the Zodiacs that would transport us in groups of 10 to the shore, we surreptitiously looked each other up and down, just to be sure that the outdoor gear we’d acquired for ourselves was as fly and expensive as everyone else’s. (My own requisite four layers of synthetic threads had been begged and borrowed from friends and family, and caused me to swell to twice my usual surface area. Had I added a helmet, I could easily have bounced down a cliff face without incurring so much as a bruise.)

The inflatables quickly ferried us to Yankee Harbor, a sheltered bay, half shingle, half ice, on the southwest side of Greenwich Island. As with all of our excursions -- and there were usually two a day -- we were given around 90 minutes to explore the area. We were discouraged from wandering off into the backcountry, Captain Oates-style. The weather was surprisingly mild: I’ve felt colder in June in the north of England.

The landscape was less alien than I’d anticipated. If you took away the three species of penguins, the elephant seals, the exotic seabirds, the weirdly inorganic looking seaweed, the whale bones, the abandoned blubber-rending pots, the iridescent shards of blue ice poking out of the water (remember Superman’s base at the North Pole?) and the midnight sun, it might have been any stretch of cold and hostile coastline in the world.

Stunning as this panorama was, nothing could distract us for long from the penguins. Few wild animals are so untamed and yet so unthreatening. Three species of penguin were present on or near the beach: Adelie, Chinstrap and Gentoo. A colony of the latter had huddled together to form a huge rookery in which each member was employed either sheltering a newly hatched chick or collecting stones to augment the nest. (Like humans, penguins are scrupulously monogamous and live in couples.)

Every so often a skua (if you’ve seen Happy Feet you’ll know that the skua is the mortal enemy of the penguin –- or perhaps your knowledge of the natural world isn’t entirely drawn from animated movies, in which case you might have known this anyway) would swoop overhead, looking for a neglected chick to snack on. The Gentoos ignored us but kept a close watch on the skuas, following them in flight like children watching planes at an air show.

Video clip below. Tomorrow I’ll be describing our first landing on the ice continent proper…

Insider Tip: Even the cheapest berth on an Antarctic cruise will set you back around $6,000. Heavily discounted last-minute deals are available from travel agencies in Ushuaia but can only be booked in person.

Related Stories:
· Luxury Ice Capades: Surviving Seasickness [Jaunted]
· Jaunted in Antarctica [Jaunted]
· Roy and Silo: gay Chinstrap penguins [Wikipedia]