The Biology and Geography Post: Friday 12/21

It’s Friday, December 21^st. The summer solstice is here. We woke to the sight of land-- Livingston and Half Moon Islands.
To celebrate the solstice, the yogis did 108 sun salutations. Glad I skipped that 6:45 class. 

Our first excursion was in the AM. We wandered around in the bay while penguins dove beneath us. The water was so clear that you could see the bottom way below. 

We paddled to the island and then waddled around in our drysuits, looking like colorful versions of the penguins that we were watching.

This was our first visit with Adelie penguins, the silliest, most curious and most entertaining of all of the penguins here. We also saw a female elephant seal on the beach, sleeping on her back not unlike someone else we know. She was unconcerned with us as well as with the penguins that practically walked over her. 

These penguins are so curious. We’re supposed to stay 5 meters away from them. They had no intention of complying with that rule. They walked right in front of us, stood in our way, slid down the hill and just TRIED to run into us. A pair mated just for our entertainment. Yes, we do have video! See some Penguin Porn for yourself on Youtube:

http://youtu.be/PsuoCCFw1hY
Don't you just love the 3rd one that tried to get in on the action?

After lunch we went to Deception Island. This is a now-dormant volcano (but it was active as recently as the late ‘70s) with a narrow southern inlet, Neptune's Bellows. It’s also the sight of Whaler’s Bay, a former whaling station. It’s likely the most visited spot in Antarctica. It’s a protected harbor, with a beautiful landscape, black beaches and some thermal features. Then there’s the eerie historical significance. Contrasting with the ghosts of whaling are penguin colonies and several nesting areas of skuas, arctic terns and other seabirds.
When we arrived, a “small” sailboat (probably 70ft or so) with 8 passengers was there. Pretty sure they weren’t too happy to see us - they quickly left. Later a large cruise ship did a drive-through. It made our 300ft ship look petite.


This is probably a good time to give you a sense of the traffic here and maybe just how little of Antarctica we actually saw. While some 26K people visit the Antarctic each year, and 20K or so actually go to land, great pains are taken to limit the impact at each site. This is a HUGE area. It’s hard to get your head around that until you’re here and see the relatively small area we covered and the time it took to do so. Here’s a map to give you a sense of that. Remember, this is only the TIP of the Antarctic Peninsula. 

All landings are limited as to numbers of visitors, time, location and scope. The result is minimal impact to the environment and its inhabitants. It’s one of the reasons that the wildlife are unconcerned with us. They have no basis for fear.
The 2 boats mentioned above were the only ones we encountered.  For a week.

Now it gets interesting: Thursday 12/20

Thursday began a bit cloudy, but was soon replaced by BRIGHT sun. Whales were sighted early in the day and lunch was delayed in the hopes that they’d hang around for our viewing pleasure. Birds are everywhere because we are crossing a “shallow spot” --only 1K meters deep rather than 3K. Yes, that’s 9,000 feet deep. They respond to the upwelling of food; exactly what the whales were responding to.

The wind is icy cold, the water a dark midnight blue. 

We were briefed today on our kayaking process. The good news is that our drysuits are awesomely warm. The bad news? They look like oversized, baggy star trek uniforms. Our 1^st trip is tomorrow morning. We’ll find out tonight exactly where that will be.

 A real, not suspected, iceberg has been sighted. We may be able to see it ourselves before long. 

Oh wait-- Here it is. Zoom in. Those ARE Penguins.

A few more pics from the first days on the boat

Ok, maybe this is the best sunset. This is the fog at the convergence.

Petrel.

Making good use of Drake time. Working on pics & blog posts.

A chilly day for fitting the kayak. Cold AND windy!

The Dreaded Drake, Anticipation and Lot & Lots of Water : Wednesday, 12/19

Wednesday, December 19^th.

The view from our room

Our introduction to the dreaded Drake Passage began at 1:45 when I woke up thirsty. Common problem in this salty, arid environment  By the time I got some water and returned to the bed, the swaying had begun. I could still see land so we were still in the Beagle Channel. 2 hours later I woke again at twilight. More swaying. Open water. And the strangest green light I’d ever seen.

By breakfast, we estimated 5-7 ft seas, but whitecaps built and the swaying turned into something more. The teenagers (Michigan State students) were sick because they were too young, too goofy, too… epic to take their meds. We were fine.

Hanging out the window, a great POV. That's the bridge and a bird watcher.

Though it got worse throughout the day, it never got bad. Not a Lake. Certainly not a Shake. Something of a continual side to side roll. This caused the Drunken Drake Dance. It's funny to walk and more challenging to shower, eat, & climb stairs. The staff have sea legs – us, not so much.

We spent the day listening to talks on whales, birds and photography. We hung out on the bridge. And we napped. We also went to a pre-meeting about kayaking where Scott and I learned that were the most experienced of the small group. By many miles.

The best sunset of the week. Note the calm-ish water.

Around 4 the sun came out. At dinner the seas calmed further. We’d outrun the storm that was chasing us from Chile and were likely in the clear.

At around 10:30 (late sunset) after having stood on the bridge for an hour or so waiting out the sunset, a crew member come up, said something in Russian and grabbed the binoculars. Nosy me, I had to see what he was so excited about.

Icebergs? Yeah, I’d be watchful too.

Or so I thought. Turns out, it was the fogbank from the Antarctic convergence. This is where the Antarctic and Southern Ocean's waters meet. The temperature, salinity and density change is dramatic enough to be detected by the crew via the change in engine behavior. It also causes a fog bank that looks like a city skyline on the horizon, or in our case, icebergs. A polar mirage if you will.

The sunset never really finished. I hung out the window off and on for a few more hours and it became obvious as we got closer that this was a fogbank, not huge towers of ice.

Scott called it a day in his clothes with intentions of getting up at 2:30 to catch the early twilight.

The green sky never happened again, and Scott never got up.

We're back in the real world: December 29th

Sitting on the plane in Punta Arenas, Chile, on our way to Santiago. We have tons of stories and pics to share. I promise to begin posting ASAP, hopefully tonight.

It's been a great trip with no bad surprises and lots of good ones. Stay tuned!

Our Boat is Here!

Sorry for being incommunicado yesterday. I had some sort of 24 hour flu thing. No tummy problems; just a fever and NO appetite. The involuntary diet.

A little Aleve allowed a 6 mile hike in Tierra Del Fuego NP, and so no harm, no foul. Fortunately, it's over today, and to celebrate, I had "Hedgehog" for lunch (they were out of Beaver - seriously). I'm sure that it was not an actual mammal; I tend to think it was seafood and "hedgehog" was a strange translation for urchin or anemone or something similar. I won't say it was good, but it was different.

Tierra Del Fuego National Park

 We meet the boat in just a few minutes, so I'll be going off the grid soon. Let me leave you with a few pics from the past day or so. It's been sunny!

The Beagle Channel on a sunny day.

The boat!

Bonfires and Beer

From the Desk of Scott:

There was some sort of organized protest on the main drag in Ushuaia today.  No one I spoke with knew the details but this is how it went down.  The main commercial street through downtown was blocked by delivery trucks and large scale dirt moving equipment.  In the middle of the street, there were huge stacks of wooden pallets.  Later in the evening, they turned the pallets into bonfires in the middle of the street.  Lots of drums pounding and firecrackers cracking.  I'm sure we'll hear tomorrow what is was all about, but at least the Dublin Pub was open.  This place has a really good sandwich.  You start with a deep fried thin slab of steak.  Add an egg, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a nice roll.  Quite tasty when washed down with a Beagle Amber ale.

"Respect the Queue"

While Sheila is taking a snooze, I'll offer up a couple of observations about our stay in Buenos Aires two days ago:

Most of us have a basic respect for the things that keep us organized as a society, like not cutting in line - not so much down here.  I was in line waiting to check out of our very swanky Marriott (top floor balcony, two bathrooms, basically a small apartment with views of the city) and this guy comes up to the checkout counter and just starts talking with the person behind the counter. What started as a quick question turned into a 5 minute whine session about something.  The guy didn't even turn around to apologize for "jumping the queue".  Oh well, it was pretty funny to watch.

In the US, we have these nice little lines painted on the street called "lanes".  They are there to keep cars from ramming into each other.   They have them down here as well' it's just that no one pays any attention to them.  However, for our cab driver into the city, he thought the lines were there to indicate where you drove your car.  Right down the middle of the lane most of the time.  The cabby on the way back to the airport the next day had no regard for those little lines.  Sometimes he straddled them, sometimes he was in them, sometimes he crossed 3 at a time.  It's more of a free form way of driving.  No reason to be so restricted into staying in a lane for safety's sake.  It's more of a "free range" style of transportation.

Just a couple more pictures

Lunch

Summer in Ushuaia

Martial Glacier

Lest you think we didn't have fun today based on our previous weather report, au contraire ma petit chou! (oh wait, wrong language!)

We took a taxi to the parking lot at the base of the Martial Glacier. Then we skipped the unnecessary chairlift and walked up a ski slope (aka dirt road) to the trail that takes you to "Al Glacier". Regardless of the fast moving fog and clouds, and decreasing temperature, it was a beautiful hike with incredible views all along the way. We had some view of the city of Ushuaia the entire time, including the airport and the harbor and across the Beagle Channel. It's this scene that makes folks stay a week or a year and try to explore the whole thing.

We wandered several side trails, ate our lunch in the rain and then walked back to town (downhill, 3-4 miles). See that squiggly road? That was our road home. 

 

Tomorrow? Still headed (early!) to Tierra Del Fuego National Park. Hope our clothes will be dry by morning!

Decoding the weather forecast

Quick pop quiz: When the Weather Channel says, "50% chance of rain", what do you think? The actual correct answer is "a 50% chance of rain where you are".

Here, we think it means something like:
A: It's going to rain half the day, generally that half when you're outside.
B: If you're outside, you'll only get wet half of the time.
C. If you're outside and the wind is blowing as hard as usually does, you'll only get half-wet.
D. Our weather guys were on strike, protesting, hungover or any/all and so our forecast is 50% guess, and 50% wild-ass guess.

Consider these pictures of our partly-cloudy, 50% chance of rain day.

Here's how it started at about 10:30. 

Then things start getting, uh, interesting.

Oh, yeah, here's that 50%: it's 100% on our heads..

Until finally, we just embraced the badly-dressed drowned rat experience.

Ushuaia, the intro

The Beagle Channel

 Our plane was a bit delayed today but once we arrived all was forgiven. This is one beautiful corner of the world, although with some strange and unpredictable weather. It's little bit Juneau & a little bit Bozeman with a lot of wind, rain, mean-looking clouds and views that make you want to stay just see what happens next. It's the commercial center of this southern tip of SA and the only significant city for many miles. It's busy, and not just with tourists.

In case you need directions

We spent the evening (I use that term loosely because the sun didn't set until 10:30ish) at the Dublin pub where we met the executive chef of a German cruise ship. Tobias is very fond of fast cars, Las Vegas, and beer. He and Scott had plenty to discuss. I steered them away from politics with a well placed "so what do you think of the Tesla" and potentially saved the night. The bar was wild when we left and getting wilder. Like the views, you kind of wanted to stay just to see what might happen next.

Tomorrow we plan to visit the Martial glacier which requires a cab ride to a chairlift, then a hike of some unknown distance up and around the glacier, then a 4-mile walk down the hill back to town. Partly cloudy is the forecast which should also mean partly sunny, right? Monday's plan is to catch a bus into Tierra del Fuego National Park, and naturally, another hike.

Boys just wanna have fun (and punk their friends)

This could be the story of the week.

Four of the 5 guys (Aussie 20-somethings) that shared our tour yesterday decided to pull a little prank on the 5th, a very attractive, Georgetown educated, newly minted physician. 

While they were trying to learn a few words of Spanish for their SA trip, they decided to tell Dr. GQ that the Spanish word for please is "llameme".

Llameme, pronounced "ya ma may", is call me.

Brilliant, huh?

But wait; there's more! They didn't have a voice translator so they guessed on the pronunciation and (somewhat logically) it became "la-ma-may".

Which they discovered (thanks to our guide) roughly means.....wait for it......

blow me.

You can't make this stuff up.

Scott and our guide, Jonathan Evans at El Ateneo, a bookstore in a former theater.

That's Carlos Gardel depicted behind us. He's a famous Tango singer.

Thanks, Marriott!

Hell's Bells!

First, let me say that our travel to BA was uneventful, and thus far, on schedule. We left ATL on time, the Ambien worked fairly well, and we breezed through immigration. 

We got a cab & the driver started our day out right by blasting AC/DC Live, on his CD player. Yes, you guessed it:

HELL'S BELLS !!

"I'm rolling thunder, I'm a pouring rain, I'm coming on like a hurricane. My lightning's flashing across the sky...."

That described his driving pretty accurately. But you had to know it was gonna be a good day. 

So then we get to the Marriott, which used to be the Plaza (yeah, that Plaza). I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that this place is fairly palatial. It bears NO resemblance to the Hampton Inn. Thanks to Scott's status we were upgraded to a 1 bedroom, 2 bath suite. With a balcony. On the top floor. Crazy.

Dear Delta: 
Take a lesson here guys.
      Love, 
      The 2m mile, Diamond-Medallion pond scum in 26E.

We got settled in time to make it to Plaza Italia where we were meeting a tour guide. We had previously decided that 1 day does not provide enough time for our usual messing around. We needed adult supervision of the local kind that could get us to the sites and home safely. While we've never had guide before, it was well worth it for both the educational and entertainment value.

We visited a few neighborhoods, had a little lunch, wandered the Recoleta cemetery. The 1st part of the tour we shared with 5 20-something guys from Melbourne. More on that later. Before we knew it, it was 5:30 & the cemetery was closing. Back at the hotel, I had 5 (yes 5!) little bitty cafe con leches, a shower and we set out for dinner at a cafe overlooking the park. 

Tomorrow: an 11:10am flight to Ushuaia on LAN Argentina. I am so excited to see those mountains!

 

Problem solved?

This, my friends, is an ugly purse. 

Ok, maybe it's not that ugly but it was super cheap and of course it's not leather. I won't even glorify it by calling it "pleather". Let's be honest: it's PLASTIC. But, it is cavernous and cavernous is good when you encounter someone who may want to sneak away with the contents of said ugly purse.

It will be the cozy and hopefully secure home of my dear camera during our time in South America. Let's hope it does its job.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words. A Map, Two Thousand.

  

Here's the route, generally, that we'll be taking.

 

And here's the ship. You can't the see the kayaks, but we know they'll be there! 

These images are courtesy and © of One Ocean Expeditions.

Can we go to REI??????

Shopping 101- The all too familiar "Can we go to REI?" was ringing in my ears this sunday afternoon.  No! was my answer - it's rare when I am the voice of reason even though I think our family is the one of the primary reasons the E-commerce economy has kept the country afloat for the last six months as we have obsessed over what clothes, equipment, and toys to bring on our trip.  My new trail runners are just a tad too short - hoping my latest purchase from Amazon, a shoe stretcher, will provide the extra push to keep me from having to buy new shoes 5 days before we head out on our adventure.  If not, we will be heading to REI next weekend whether I like it our not.