Orrne Harbor
We tumbled out of bed just a hair early; the call was for whales. We were travelling the Gerlache Strait. The sky was soft and grey as a pigeon’s belly, and the sea was dark and lightly planished. Humpbacks swam all about us, puffing, lifting their tails with ponderous grace, sinking to feast in the icy depths. The humpbacks were graceful, and neared the ship, which was exciting enough, but not as exciting as the second whales that swam into view – killer whales! Four of these handsome predators swam close to us, bisecting groups of unperturbed humpbacks.
At Orne Harbor we went ashore. There wasn’t much room for a landing – just a rocky seaside shelf. There was nowhere to go but up. Trudging along a switchback path through the snow, we climbed a steep hillside. With each step, the ship lay further below, and seemed more and more a diminutive part of an overwhelming landscape.
Rising over the crest of the hill, we found a ridge of softly rounded snow, which gradually steepened to join the sea on the other side of the peninsula. Jutting from the gentle curves of the snow were jagged rocks, fragmented into shards by the ferocity of winter. And here, hundreds of feet above the sea, perched on likely eagles’ aeries, sat penguins! These were Chinstraps, mountaineers of the penguin world. In search of snow-free nesting, they climb to astonishing heights. Chinstrap colonies are often raucous places, and though the air was occasionally rent by their squeaky cackles, the scene was generally placid, with the birds meditatively hunkered down over eggs or tiny chicks. Others commuted dutifully to or from the sea, their feet marking pink trails across the snowy hills.
Our vantage provided great view of the broken glaciers slumped in the hills, of rocky towers soaring above us, of Zodiac cruisers following whales, and of our ship – our home – far below.
After a quick descent and back on the ship, many decided to continue the adventure with a polar plunge. The water was delightful at 32 degrees!
Back in Gerlache Strait, we found more humpbacks. The sea seemed thick with them, and some came close enough to give us spectacular views.
Late in the afternoon, we entered Dallman Bay. The sides of this fjord are thickly caked with glacial ice, blindingly white or coolly shadowed, smooth or shattered by blue crevasses, and often lightly scored by avalanche. The bay was filled with chunks of ice of every size – no water was visible, and the ship moved with a steady slushy hiss. Crabeater seals lay about the bergs everywhere. We saw scores of them, and here it was easy to believe that crabeaters outnumber all other seal species combined.
After dinner we turned north, and drew away from the Palmer Archipelago. The sun shone brightly on the icy mountains, and Antarctica seemed pristine and ever more remote. It was a fitting farewell to the White Continent.
