National Geographic Explorer at Elephant Island, Antarctica
Welcome to Antarctica.
The day began as any other day does, a hot cup of coffee and breakfast, but out the window the view was different than most of us are used to waking up to. Elephant Island loomed up out of the low fog. Ocean swell rolled up to the stern of the ship and then passed us by. Elephant Island, where Ernest Shackleton’s men spent five months of an Antarctic winter on a gravel and rocky beach at the foot of a glacier waiting for rescue. Elephant Island, where chinstrap penguins call home. Elephant Island, where the National Geographic Explorer makes its last stop of 2010, for tomorrow is a new year.
Pulling into the bay next to Point Wild, seeing the jagged black peaks, seeing the snow and glacier, seeing the fog and low clouds, there was awe that 22 men had spent so long here. Many looked to the monument set among the boulders commemorating the captain of the steamship Uruguay that rescued these hardy men. Zodiacs were launched and we braved the ocean swell rolling in to get a closer look. A calm ensued once all were in the Zodiacs, the unbalanced stumble of getting into a small boat while the ship rolled in the swell being over. Now, all eyes turned to the first look at chinstrap penguins on shore. Such hardy little birds, sitting on stony cliff tops braced against the wind, sitting on their newly hatched chicks, waiting for them to grow and fledge and continue the next generation. Penguins leaped out of the cold ocean water onto shore, and in the water around the Zodiacs. A leopard seal patrolled the waters around the colony, waiting for the chicks to be big enough to enter the water and provide an easy meal. Cape petrels soared overhead to and from nesting sites on the rocky ledges of sheer cliffs of black stone. The glacier let its presence be known too, calving off huge chunks of its icy face into the water below. Amazing.
Once we were all safely returned, the ship moved to the other side of Elephant Island and we cruised again around Cape Lookout, another Shackleton historical site. Here those men stopped, but then left again, there were better places to stop for a winter’s waiting. But here the lure of a macaroni penguin brought us into a Zodiac again. The wind and waves were calmer here. Cape petrels were in abundance, skuas, kelp gulls with chicks, and the ever comical snowy sheathbill. The macaroni was spotted here and there among the chinstraps, their yellow feathers and orange beak sticking out among all the black and white. Seals were resting on the beach, another tiring season of mating and pupping done and over with. The sun showed itself briefly. Everyone absorbed its warmth and cheer. The new year is nearly here. Now it is time to head closer to the continent. But in the meantime we will ring in the new year on the National Geographic Explorer deep in the Southern Ocean, rolling our way over the seas towards the south and a promising new tomorrow and a promising New Year. Welcome 2011.
