25 December 2010

This morning the ship had to abandon plans to navigate through the Lemaire Channel and visit the Ukrainian station because there was a lot of ice blocking the passage. So we headed back north and did a quick landing on Dorian Island which had a few penguin colonies as well as a nice viewpoint from up top. It was only an hour stop because it was unscheduled and so late in the morning. Jordan, the guy who took off his clothes in the snow yesterday and held up the Israeli flag, stripped to his underwear again and posed for the camera with his favorite magazine. The magazine has a photo feature where readers take it to extreme locations. Half naked and posed in front of a penguin colony in Antarctica is pretty extreme.

Jordan. I travelled with him for a while in Argentina.

The staff from the old British research station turned museum Port Lockroy joined us for lunch and afterwards we visited their station. Again we were divided into two groups based on the number on our life vest. One group visited Port Lockroy while the other group visited the Jougla Point which is next to Port Lockroy.  I was in the group that visited Jougla Point first. On the way we saw a seal rip a penguin to shreds, thrashing it from side to side hard against the surface of the water to tenderize its lunch.  Aside from the several colonies of gentoo penguins there were also whale bones scattered along the shore of Jougla Point. Before the British took over, the area was a place where whalers docked their ships. There were old rusted chains for mooring as well as large cement blocks with metal hoops to lock into which the penguins had claimed as their own and built nests around.

Whale bones

On Jougla Point penguins waddled about up and down their highways wary of and keeping their distance from our group. They went about gathering pebbles for their nests and incubating their eggs. The snow was splattered brown and red with feces.

As soon as the Zodiacs dropped us off at Port Lockroy I rushed inside to compose and mail all twelve postcards. I did not write them on the ship because I wanted spontaneity and I wanted to be sure they would be mailed from Antarctica and until I was at Port Lockroy I wasn’t sure of that at all. Just as I finished and was reviewing them the Korean documentarian began filming me and asking how many postcards I had and who I had written. Stamps were only a dollar each. I also bought a sticker and bumper sticker.

At the review of the days events Sebastian said we would attempt a second landing on the peninsula tomorrow. I left dinner early and in the large social room, while I was writing and listening to music, one of the passengers alerted me to the presence of a whale near the ship. I hurried out to the deck while he ran off to the dining room to spread the news. Everyone dropped their forks and rushed outside to get a glimpse. It was a humpback whale. Because it was so close you could see the bumps on its face as it surfaced. After breaking through the water three times it dived deep into the ocean with a tremendous show of its flukes. For the next hour everyone followed the whale as it appeared and disappeared and reappeared off the horizon. It never got as close as it was when I first saw it.