Continental Antarctica

Today we enjoyed not one, but two wonderful landings on the Antarctic continent proper. First thing in the morning, we paid a visit to the Argentine Base Esperanza, located in Hope Bay, at almost the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. People in the base were sincerely happy to see us, as we are the first ship that visits them after having overwintered there! In addition to the base personnel, a funny and quite numerous troupe of Adélie penguins was also waiting at the landing site, which made it all the more remarkable for our guests.

We were offered an interesting guided tour of the base, and saw the remains of the stone hut where three men of Otto Nordenskjold’s expedition overwintered here in 1903, and a very interesting little museum. We finished our visit with a nice, warm cup of coffee and freshly baked medias lunas.

Our second continental landing was in Brown bluff, and there we enjoyed the Adélie penguin rookery, where we saw the first chick of this trip; hiked up the moraine and glanced over the glacier surrounding the bluff itself, and were able to take in the beautiful and VAST Antarctic panorama before us.

To close a wonderful day, we sailed en route to Paulet Island and could not reach it, because we were stopped in our wake by the edge of the fast ice. This was actually a very beautiful thing: for a start, it is very impressive to see ice-covered seas as far as the eye can reach; to continue, we were lucky enough to spot an emperor penguin on the ice; and finally, it feels wonderful to be at the end of the world…

Yankee Harbor

A photo diary of our first landing.
 

Birds and ice on a lake

Today we awoke to an incredibly calm Drake Passage, with gentle waves caressing MV Fram up and down the sea. Normally, no wind at sea means no birds are in sight, but today was an exception since we enjoyed their company all day long.

Adult Northern Giant Petrel

Thin-billed Prion

And what stupendous company that was!! While we enjoyed breakfast, we could see five different species of albatross flying around the vessel: wandering, black-browed, light-mantled sooty, grey-headed and even a royal albatross. The “even” comes from the fact that royal albatrosses breed in New Zealand, and they tend to stay around those islands, so it was quite a nice surprise to see it on the other side of the planet; this just serves to illustrate that these birds are majestic flyers that very deservedly were considered sacred/magical animals (Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner).

Giant Petrels



Around noon, we enjoyed a nice surprise: a quite big iceberg (some 70 meters tall and 300 wide) was floating ahead of our ship, reminding us that we are in course to Antarctica. It was surprising because we have not yet crossed the Antarctic convergence, the liquid boundary between the Southern Ocean and the other, northerly and warmer oceans; and icebergs tend to be corralled within the convergence’s frigid embrace.

Usually, we tend to flee from the cold: today, our southward course brought us directly to it and we were very happy for it. At around 9 o’clock this evening, slightly over 24 hours since we left Ushuaia, we crossed the convergence so, officially and happily, we are in Antarctica. Keen to see what this land has in store for us tomorrow, we were gently rolled to sleep by a real Drake “lake”!

Harbour Day

Today we entered Ushuaia again, to finish the one trip and start with the new one.

In town we stumbled over summer impressions and thousands of petrified penguins in the numerous souvenir shops. One group of them, almost looking like a frozen choir, was obviously dreaming of more species-friendly conditions.

When we were on our way back to Fram they somehow managed to follow us. Not a surprise, of all it is FRAM that is linked most with Antarctica.

When a dull gull around the ship became aware of what was going on it started flashing white and red as if to warn us. Our famous birder in the team managed to document this extraordinary behavior, just in the right moment that you can witness the gull in front of the red band on Fram’s hull.

Since we all love penguins we just shook our heads about that flashing bird. It just fled and did the same about us.

Looks like the frozen choir made it onboard and we all received a very warm and friendly farewell for this unique expedition.

Meetings in the Drake Passage

Two days of Drake Passage come to their end as we are approaching the Beagle Channel. It was two days with several meetings.

The morning after we had left the Peninsula our onboard university continued with four lecture sessions, each with two lectures at a time. We continued today and finalized with a meeting in the observation lounge. While discussing about climate change we passed by Cape Hoorn in rough water as you can expect it there.

On a long part of our way north we had several meetings with snow petrels. Astonishing all white birds, which nest even a hundred and more kilometers inside the Antarctic. For a while also giant petrels followed and circled us using the wind and better flight conditions around the ship.

And today another unexpected meeting attracted our attention. We passed by the “Europa”, that is on its way South. Watching the bark disappear behind higher waves and being shaken by the waves gave lots of us the right impression of how comfortable we travel onboard MV Fram.