Two maritime charts draped across the navigation table. According to both charts, these waters had not been surveyed. Using depth soundings, our captain charts a safe and steady course. This particular channel is completely new to him, though the captain is a regular Antarctic sailor.
Dusk brings challenges to seeing, and then it starts to snow. The icebergs that impeded the channel are harder to see as the huge snowflakes stick to the bridge windows. Luckily, radar clearly illuminates them. The large ice blocks show up orange on the screen. Up ahead, the monitor paints a giant orange blob nearly blocking the channel. Three kilometers separate us from the berg.
At one kilometer, the captain quickly gives a hushed command. Quickly and effectively, the helmsman steers the ship away from danger. Peeking through the snow and fog, we see the ghostly tabular iceberg. It’s a sight that can only be experienced in the southern ocean. Sporting straight sides that rise rapidly into the air, this berg is over one hundred feet tall. The top is very flat and very wide.
This gave Antarctica another chance to amaze me. Attempting to reach the Antarctic Circle, we have been cruising aboard a polar-class vessel. We hope to reach that imaginary vortex on the bottom of the globe. We’d gone by areas that were terribly remote and removed from life. Seventy-nine years after having been first sighted in 1820, a human spent an entire winter on Antarctica for the first time. Scientist followed after the first explorers who wanted to find the South Pole, but perished. Traveling to Antarctica used to be the reserve of the very rich. You’ll spend as much to cruise to Antarctica as you would to experience the Caribbean, thanks to falling prices.
Antarctica looks a little bit like a manta ray with a curved tail. The manta ray’s tail extends to within 500 miles of South America. The area is known for its perpetually bad seas and is called Drakes Passage. Passing through these waters, which have also been called the ‘Slobbering Jaws of Hell’ is a stiff price to pay to reach Antarctica. One nice woman reminds us to stow all of our gear and make sure our cabin portholes are well latched before we retire for the night.
After sailing from Ushuaia, in Argentina, we sailed through the Beagle Channel and reached the open ocean. The ship traveled on for two more days in extremely unsettled waters. Extremely strong winds constantly blew. The spray splashed even above my fourth-deck window as waves crashed across the bow. Seeing swells of fifteen to forty feet in size did nothing to quell our seasickness.
Two days out of South America, we found the Southern Ocean. The next morning, I woke up to a view of a coastal archipelago. The sea seemed to be settled a bit by the surrounding land. Mile-high summits were draped in wispy clouds. The ridges stuck through the smooth glaciers at sharp angles. The frozen ice slabs fell into the sea. They were chopped and cracked in appearance. The mountains, which looked they could house Everest, appeared to jump straight up from the sea.
Another passenger commented that the trip to get to Antarctica was like the labor of childbirth. Like a naughty kid, Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, highest and driest of all the earth’s continents. Though the surface holds seventy percent of the world’s freshwater in reserve, Death Valley gets the same amount of precipitation as its polar plateau. This land is not owned, has no indigenous human groups, or animals that stay year round on it.
This area of extreme weather makes planning difficult. Sailing routes and shore landings depend on that day’s weather. Our guides have advised us that we’ll need to be flexible, but our initial shore landing comes as scheduled. Our assigned groups met on deck. With the nine others in my group, I board an inflatable boat. We only have one more quarter mile of water to cross before we reach the land. And then, with just one step, I am among the few who can say they’ve stood on the Antarctic Continent.
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