During the night we turned northwards, back across the Antarctic Circle, towards Goudier Island. A solo Minke whale led the way amidst a stunning setting as we approached the landing place for our morning visits. The safe harbour that was to be known as Port Lockroy was first encountered by the German expedition under Edward Dallman in 1873, and then by De Gerlache in 1898, but it was really put on the map a few years later by Jean Baptiste Charcot’s French expeditions. The landing site was adorned with evidence of its subsequent use as a whaling place in the form of rusty chains, as also testified by century-old whalebones there and at Jougla Point. But the highlight of Port Lockroy is Bransfield House, the British base built in 1944 and continuously occupied until 1962, now carefully preserved as a museum of base life. We were greeted by a host of engaging Gentoo penguins and their chicks, and by the four managers Laura, Lucy, Adéle and Hannah-Lara, who selflessly scrubbed our mucky boots, and warmly welcomed us to the post office and shop. A short Zodiac shuttle also took us to nearby Jougla Point where, amongst whalebones and the ubiquitous penguins, we were also able to appreciate its colony of Antarctic shags. Meanwhile, our undersea team Jared and Erin sent down the ROV to capture images of the fascinating and colorful sea life below the surface of the water.
Afterwards, as we sailed along the majestic beauty of the Neumayer Channel lined with lofty ice-covered slopes, our National Geographic Photographer Dan Westergren enthralled us with his account of ‘Photographing while it hurts’, taking us from the slopes of Kilimanjaro, and the Matterhorn, to the North Pole and Yellowstone National Park, as icebergs large and small floated past us. Our heads still filled with images of snow and light, to our great excitement the ship slowed as the water around us was alive with groups of Humpback and Killer Whales.
We emerged into the Gerlache Strait, between Anvers and Brabant Islands to port, and the Antarctic Peninsula to Starboard, and at last Eduardo gave a heartfelt talk on the Race for the South Pole between those two heroic figures of Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott. The whales continued to delight us until it was time to turn northwards again towards open seas and our passage north. The day was brought to a fitting conclusion with a much-anticipated evening showing of Dan Balog’s celebrated documentary ‘Chasing Ice’.
