Jan 20: Curtiss Bay and Mikkelsen Harbor (64 degrees south latitude)

 

I'm not sure if it's possible to have a perfect day - it seems there's always a fly in the ointment. But today was a pretty good day and whatever imperfections there might have been are so minor in comparison to the good as to not even warrant mention. With animals alone we saw gentoo and chinstrap penguins; leopard, crabeater, and Weddell seals; and at least a dozen kinds of birds. And, at the end of the day, we saw whales as the ship ended up close to a small group of three or four humpbacks and about a half mile from another small group of a similar size. Close enough to hear the sound of the blows, to see the back fin, and to see the tails of several as they dived - all in front of a magnificent backdrop of mountains lit golden by the setting sun. And that's just the animals - today we also had our first steps on the Antarctic continent, we spent several hours walking with penguins and riding a Zodiac in an area of incomparable beauty on what, back home, would be a lovely winter day and what is, here, an equally lovely summer day. 

Morning was a two-hour Zodiac tour of Curtiss Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula, plowing through brash ice and small ice bergs shining with the lucent blue of glacial ice. On one ice berg were penguins - Chinstrap and Gentoo - and, as we watched, the number of Gentoos went from two to three to four and five. Driving the Zodiac to the other side we saw maybe 20 of them clustered on the slope, small groups edging close to the water, looking into the water intently, and then backing away from the edge. And then a group of waterborne Gentoos approached, dove, and came shooting from the water and onto the ice, watched by some of their compatriots who were lined up like judges for the Penguin Olympics. How can you beat that? And that's just the penguins! Later in Curtiss Bay we saw a colony of Shags clinging to rocks deep in the bay, some Crabeater seals  basking in the sun on an ice floe, a lazy leopard seal on another floe, and some whales swimming and spouting with a strange whistling sound that our guide thought might be the sound of their singing. And, through it all, the sun was shining bright on the white snow beneath the deep blue polar sky (as an aside, we noticed that the more-distant snow had a dun color, not the pristine white of the nearer snow - turns out to be due to scattering of the light by the atmosphere; probably the same phenomenon that gives us our sunsets). 

Instead of the normal 90 minutes we were allowed to stay out for two hours, rushing back to the ship with only a short pause for some humpback whales that were spouting near our path. The highlight of the return trip (well, in addition to the whales) was the leopard seal, which managed to look menacing even while lazing in the sun. As Antarctica's apex predator he has nothing to fear from any creature other than the occasional orca and his toothy "smile" suggested he certainly didn't look at all concerned about us. 

After lunch the Captain repositioned Sea Spirit so that we could spend the afternoon on D'Hainaut Island, a speck of land in Mikkelsen Harbor that's home to a largish colony of Gentoo penguins and the skuas that prey on their chicks. Here we saw Gentoos following the "penguin highway" they'd tramped in the snow with Ken, the expedition ornithologist taking the role of traffic light, letting us know when we could cross and when approaching penguins called for us to yield the right-of-way. Penguin chicks were one of the draws here - feeding, squawking, and looking generally cute. While I could watch the penguins all day, there's not much more to tell about them other than random observations, and it's after midnight, so I need to get some sleep - we have two more days before starting the return to Ushuaia and I need to get to sleep.

 On the way back to the ship we detoured to an ice floe on which a Weddell seal had been seen earlier by the kayakers. It was still there, laying on an ice flow and looking as though it wanted nothing more than for us to scratch its belly. And that brings us to dinner, whale tails, and white mountains perched between sea and sky.

Tomorrow we're going further south (we won't cross the Antarctic Circle, but we'll get close) to Ketley Point and Lautaro Island, the latter at nearly 65 degrees south latitude. Sadly, we'll likely not see Adelie, nor the Emperor penguins. I might just have to return.