MS National Geographic Endeavour
Pleneau Island, Iceberg Alley, and Port Lockroy
Sunday, January 25, 2009

    Another early morning start. Eventually, this string of busy 20-hour days of climbing around on mud and guano-covered slick rocks is going to catch up to me. I just hope it is not before we get back to Ushuaia on our way home. I have plenty of time to sleep on the back-to-back-to-back flights from Ushuaia to Santiago to Miami and finally on to Los Angeles.

    We sailed north all night from Detaille Island south of the Antarctic Circle and headed toward Pleneau Island near the southern end of the Lamaire Channel. There is a colony of Gentoo penguins on Pleaneau and it is located in a narrow channel that acts as a net to capture passing icebergs. This area is known as “Iceberg Alley” and we took extensive Zodiac tours through the fields of ice sculptures. It is an incredible experience to see up close the many varied forms and colors of these behemoths. The icebergs that are captured in this area stay for a long time, but move relative to each other. This means that it is different each time someone visits, even though a lot of the bergs are the same. There is ice that is hard and shiny and ice that is rough and snowy looking. And then there is the blue ice, ranging from a light pastel to a deep full-bodied blue. Many of the icebergs appear to be floating in the water surrounded by a moat of blue-green liquid. This, of course, is due to the color of the ice below the surface with its color filtered by the seawater.

    As we were cruising around the aisles of our ice art museum in our trusty Zodiac, we got a special delivery from the ship. They sent out the Cocoa Express Zodiac with hot chocolate laced with whiskey and Scandinavian ginger cookies.

    Pleneau Island and iceberg alley are surrounded by steep glacier and snow-covered cliffs. This made a beautiful backdrop for photographing the Gentoo penguins on the island. In order to try and get good angles for pictures, I had to really get down and dirty on this trip. I came away covered from top-to-bottom with the usual mixture of guano and mud. Just inside the tender entrance in the side of the ship where we embark and disembark the Zodiacs, the have a mud room with a pressure hose and ingenious brush contraptions for trying to clean up. Everyone also must step in a tray of serious disinfectant before going ashore and before reentering the ship. This stuff will kill anything on your boots and is part of the Antarctic Treaty to prevent contamination of the continent. Even using the power hose with warm water and bushes, you can never get all the stains out of your clothing – and the odor will last a lifetime.

    Leaving Pleneau, we sailed north back through the magnificent Lamaire Channel on our way to Port Lockroy. The port was a British station during World War II manned as part of a program to monitor and report on Nazi activities. You might say it was successful, even if they had nothing to report. Abandoned for a long time, it was recently restored as an historical site and is now maintained and open to visitors during the Antarctic summer months. They live rather spartanly with no running water. They cherish the visits of vessels like the Endeavour, since they are usually invited over to talk about the station, get invited to dinner, and have an opportunity for a hot shower. They receive about 15,000 visitors each year. The restored base is a museum that one can visit by crossing from ship to shore via Zodiac and the caretakers operate a small gift shop to raise cash to help maintain the monument. Rick, the operator, has worked on scientific expeditions in the Antarctic since the late 1950s and has authored a book on the significance dogs played in the exploration of the Antarctic. The seminar that we received the other evening was based on his book. I bought a copy and Rick signed it for me. It was great to meet him in person. There is also a small colony of Gentoo penguins there. The area was also used in the past by whalers, so there are a number of huge whale skeletal remains on the beach.

    After dinner, we delivered Rick and the women back to their island and continued to sail north. Tomorrow is likely our last day that will include a landing. The good news is that if weather and sea conditions permit, we will try a landing on Hydrurga Rocks where a colony of Chinstrap penguins breed. We will also be sailing in an area popular with large sea mammals, so we will be on the lookout for whales.