23 December 2010

Yesterday was uneventful. I could not sleep at night so I slept the entire day. The rocking motion of the boat takes some getting used to. Several folks offered me pills or patches but I haven’t had need of them and I’d rather not use them. The Drake Passage, which we are passing through, is reputedly one of the world's roughest bodies of water. There were two seminars, one on the birds of Antarctica and one on the geography of Antarctica.

Today at 2:30pm we made our first landing on Barrientos Island which is a part of the Atichoo Islands in the South Shetland Islands. In the morning we had a briefing on how to behave on shore and how to get in and out of the Zodiac boats which will take us to shore. The Zodiac boats are black inflatable rubber boats with a motor. We were also given a numbered emergency life preserver that we must wear the entire time we are in the Zodiacs and onshore.

Approaching Barrientos Island

The island was rocky and snow covered. The stench of hundreds of penguins filled the air as did their ceaseless squawking. Penguins were everywhere: waddling in the snow, resting on the beach after a swim, incubating their eggs in their rock nests, gathering pebbles for their nests. The ground was a soft wet mixture of mud, moss, feces, feathers, and pebbles. There were several penguin skeletons and bone fragments laying about. I watched as one penguin regurgitated her food and her chicks stuck their beaks in her mouth to feed. We were told to stay in a line and not stray from the path our guide was leading us down and to not get too close to the penguins.

Penguin skeleton?

I walked back up the hill to the boat landing area and waited for everyone so we could begin the hike to the other side of the island. To avoid trampling the moss we trudged across the snow up a slight hill until we arrived at an overlook revealing a gray cove. Two giant formations like fingers jutted towards the sky. We made our way past them and the elephant seals sleeping beneath them to the beach amongst the seaweed. The landscape was like a graveyard with whale vertebrae and jawbones strewn amongst the rocks. The sky was grey with clouds obscuring the horizon and a light snow falling.

Elephant seals

A grisly boneyard

Back on the ship there was a snack waiting for us. The expedition leader, Sebastian, who looks remarkably similar to Steve Guttenberg, did a recap of the days events. He said tomorrow we will probably do a landing in the morning and the afternoon. He also said we were making really good time and that the Drake passage had been unusually calm. A whale was spotted playing in the distance but it disappeared quickly.

Today is Otto Kraus’s birthday. He is part of the family from Wisconsin. He’s twenty-five today. The kitchen staff brought out a cake for him and they sung a song for him which was really just the jingle of a toy store in Chile named Otto Kraus.  The jingle goes, “Otto Kraus, Otto Kraus, Otto Kraus”, and there's some clapping as well.  Most of the kitchen staff is Chilean.  Everyone else gave a cheer at the behest of Otto’s father, Allen. We shouted: “Hip, Hip, Hooray!”