“In memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. …heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.
-Sir Ernest Shackelton
“Wilderness is not a political designation here; it’s an essential truth.”
-Kim Heacox in Antarctica, the Last Continent
We’re on the final leg of our ship journey. This morning we viewed Cape Horn from the ship. The rope lines (stretched across all open spaces) are down and no one is staggering like a drunken sailor any more. These two days at sea have been a nice time to decompress and begin the mental re-entry to the “real” world.
We started the return with some humpback whales just off the ship who breached over 30 times while we were watching. Tonight we’ll be docked in Ushuaia and will wander through the town.
If you’re just looking at this blog of the trip, you’ll want to scroll to the bottom and click through to the beginning and read chronologically. We were limited by internet bandwidth issues from uploading everything we’d wanted, but there are more pictures on our Flickr site (see under Photos in the right-hand column).
Chuck won the final photo contest tonight. The National Geographic and wildlife photographers complimented him on the composition of the winning photo today but they also said they were recognizing his body of work all week and that his photos had been in contention every day. Donna says thank heavens that he won as life might not have been worth living if Chuck had been the only one of the three serious (though nonprofessional) photographers in our group who didn’t win.
Drake Lake (not!). The return passage has had lots of rockin’ and rollin’ as the ship moves through big swells. One thing can be said with certainty: this is a heavily medicated group of passengers at the moment. Though not as calm as our first journey through the passage, apparently this is still quite smooth compared to what it could be.
We have another winning photograph from our group. Chuey won Sunday night for the picture below. He had stiff competition as each succeeding day has brought more and more people submitting entries. The judge is a National Geographic photographer, so we’re all happy for Chuey and Gary who won previously.
Tremendous fun kayaking at Port Lockroy this morning. First we visited a small British museum memorializing a station they set up in Antarctica in the 40’s to monitor German maritime operations. Then it was an hour and a half on the water with very calm seas and warm (by Antarctica standards) weather. This was our last excursion before we to into the Drake Passage tonight heading for Ushuaia.
Morning brought Petermann Island, site of an Oceanites Project field camp and home to Adelie and Gentoo penguins. Penguins were first counted and studied on Petermann almost a hundred years ago.
The afternoon’s grand zodiac excursion was in the Grandidier Channel. To quote Roald Amundsen, “Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak, crevasses, wild as any land on our globe, it lies unseen and untrodden.”
Friday night we traveled through one of the most beautiful areas of our trip, the Lemaire Channel. There were snow capped peaks and glaciers on both sides with small ice floes and icebergs in the water. It is hard to imagine there is any place on earth more beautiful and untouched. While we reveled in the beauty, a leopard seal was not pleased to see us as we distrubed his rest on an ice floe.
Today was extreme sports day from the perspective of a southern California landlubber. We had a glorious morning on the ice in sea kayaks. Very great fun
Here’s the photo that won Thursday’s photo competition on board the National Geographic Endeavour.
And here are a few other fun shots.
Gary won the photo contest today. I’ll get the picture from him later today and post it. He had some stiff competition with over 90 photos entered. Chuck and Chuey are determined to try to match him. In the meantime, we’ve posted lots of photos on our Flickr site. Click under the Photos link in the right hand column. Most are by Chuck with a few by Donna.
