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Finale

Just rounding this off!

I may get to post a few more photos - I have thousands - but time is short before we leave on our next adventure and there are a zillion things still to do.

Unfortunately, I have no videos in this blog yet, but I may still try to post a couple.  I don’t have many of them, but they take ages to post.  I always have to do a bit of editing on them (converting the format and reducing the file size among other things) and that is a slow online process that depends on other traffic on the website I use - and there are limits to how much I can process on any day.  And once they are ready to post, I can only post one at a time and it takes hours for each one to be queued and loaded - and I can’t send the next post until the previous one loads.  It’s all a very slow process that I may or may not find time to do.

We are off again in less than two weeks and I will send another email out about that before we leave, but otherwise, that is all for now.

Please be patient - more is comng.

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Almost the Last Post (for this time)

Day 58, Sunday, 12 February 2023

We arrived in Lyttleton, the port near Christchurch, in the early hours and although we could look around the port and nearby landscape from the deck, we were not allowed on shore until our selected tour became available.  For us, that meant 2 pm – or a little before so we could get up to the bus. We were tied up at the bunkering terminal and not allowed out there but were ferried to the marina in the lifeboats, with a long way to walk to the waiting bus.  The bus took us out of the dock area and up the hill to another bus that took us on our excursion.

I am guessing that we drove at least fifty kilometres, through old lava fields, pastoral and farming land, past Lake Ellesmere, and eventually to Manderley Farm.  It was an interesting drive that made me itch to return to NZ for a long, slow campervan adventure.  Of course, I was constantly scanning the area for birds and identified eleven species from the bus.

The road was pretty rough, very bouncy and at one point, there was a huge crash and jarring pain thumped through our backs – at least those passengers in the rear half of the bus. The back of the bus had bottomed out and hit the road very violently, obviously a common event because the driver never even blinked.

At the farm, we were treated to a sheepdog demonstration that was pretty amazing.  There were eight merinos half a kilometre or more up the hill from where we were standing, and the farmer released one of the farm dogs and controlled it with a small whistle.  It was very windy and I imagined that the dog would not be able to hear the whistle – it was quite faint to me and I was only ten metres away – but the farmer used long and short whistles in two pitches to tell the dog to go left or right, to approach the sheep, to stop and sit, etc., and within a few minutes, the whole little flock were down the hill and through the correct gate and to within a couple of metres of thirty humans.  Then the situation was reversed and all the humans were ushered back up the hill by a different dog – no, no!  Not the humans, it was the sheep!

We then went into the shearing shed and heard a bit more about the wool industry and the evil Chinese who manipulate prices to cheat honest Kiwi farmers out of a fair return – and in no time, the Chinese were being blamed for virtually everything that could possibly go wrong for the poor farmer.  I am sure there is some truth in his assertion but I think he overplayed his hand. The Chinese probably don’t control the local weather – just as a ‘for instance’.  Despite all of that, we still got to watch him shear a sheep – a young one, about 6 months old, getting its first haircut.

We then went through a really beautiful garden to where his wife had drinks for us to accompany the shortbreads and delicious sausage rolls.  It was all very nice and civilised, quite countrified,  and then it was back to the ship.  The bus took us back to the second bus that is apparently the only bus allowed to enter the port area (no idea why).  That bus delivered us to the lifeboat waiting at the end of the marina and that delivered us back to the ship.

We finalised the last of our packing and were ready to disembark.  During the bus trip, Heather had a series of emails with our wonderful travel agent (Thank you Bev!) who had been monitoring the cyclone (Gabrielle) threatening Auckland.  She is an absolute gem and arranged for us to stay at the Christchurch Airport hotel and fly with Qantas direct to Melbourne at the crack of dawn on Tuesday – instead of flying to Auckland and waiting nobody-knows-how-long to fly home with Air New Zealand.  That was really great – but I wonder if we will ever recover the extra cost from our parsimonious insurer, NIB.  Time will tell.

Day 59, Monday, 13 February 2023

We were up at 6 am and quickly dressed and ate breakfast for the last time this trip.  There were lots of goodbyes, most of which were repeated half an hour later as we gathered to collect our passports and pass NZ Immigration and Customs – a very quick and easy process.  Then it was on to the shuttle to take us to central Christchurch where we got a cab to the airport hotel – the Sudima.

When Bev managed to change our flight, we tried to change our booking for the shuttle from 7.30 to 8.30 but the ship said everything was locked in and they couldn’t change it.  As a result, we had an enjoyable ride into the city with the bus entirely to ourselves.  We had a driver and a guide who was very friendly and chatty, but it did seem a little excessive – surely a cab would have been cheaper or they could have made an exception and put us on the 8.30 shuttle, but not so.  We were quite happy and where we were dropped in the city, a second guide called a cab for us and we were on our way to the Sudima within five minutes maximum.

Of course, arriving at the hotel at 8 am meant they didn’t have a room available until noon at the earliest but we just sat in comfort in the foyer, logged on to their Wi-Fi and did a bit more writing.  Despite the noon deadline, we were in our room a tad after 10.30 with an upgrade to a very well-appointed suite.  So who’s complaining?  Not us!

We each went out for a short walk and found a shopping centre immediately adjacent to the hotel. It has a few restaurants, and we ate at a Chinese one – and found that the Chinese are not responsible for everything going bad.  It was an enjoyable meal at a reasonable price, within very easy walking distance from our hotel.

Day 60, Tuesday, 14 February 2023

We were up and dressed by 3 am and ready to go to the airport. Officially, we were supposed to be at the airport three hours before an international flight so we should have been there by 3 am for our 7 am flight - but the hotel staff told us that 3:45 would be fine (the terminal doesn’t open until 3 am anyway).

Of course, I had been awake for a couple of hours checking the clock every few minutes in case we were late, despite knowing that the alarm was set anyway.

We took the free shuttle and made it in plenty of time. We beat the crowds and were through the airport nightmare reasonably quickly - despite my carryon being examined in the finest detail by an overzealous officer. She did find a small jar of a special spread we had carried for at least 25,000 kilometres as a gift for our travel agent. She decided that it was a liquid and was just over 100 mls so I am sure she will enjoy it herself.

We had over an hour and a half to wait to board and then sat on the plane for another hour while they fixed some problem with the electronics. We left more than an hour late with a promise to make up the time during the flight.

Of course, as usual, I sat behind an ignorant ratbag who tilted his seat back as far as it would go and refused my polite request for him to be a bit more reasonable. I had maybe 15 centimetres from my nose to his seat. I simply don’t understand why they have reclining seats in planes. I paid for my standard 28 inches of space but he thought he was entitled to steal seven of them.

We arrived at Tullamarine only 40 minutes late and got through the crowd relatively quickly.  We had previously been told that our passports are not e-passports, but an attendant assured us that they were and that saved us at least an hour of two in the queue.  I wish we had known that before – it could have saved us days of queueing over the life of our passports.

There was a long wait for our baggage, but it all arrived safely and we eventually escaped the Hell that characterises every airport in the world.  Our Tony’s Taxi was waiting (Thanks again Bev) and we had a very comfortable trip home.

I collected our accumulated mail from the past two months or so (three mail items and two junk mails) and we spent the rest of the day unpacking and sorting all the clobber from the trip.

One really helpful factor was that we were able to repack a surprising amount of stuff straight back into our cases, in some cases, once the laundry was completed.  About four days later, we are about 90% packed for our next trip.  Watch this space!

Summary

How do I summarise such a diverse trip? I did a bit of a summary at the end of our first voyage so I will not rehash that, but our week or so in Ushuaia was an opportunity to catch our breath and explore a little of the tip of South America. It was a nice stopover but without any particular highlights.

The more recent voyage did include some highlights, not the least of which was reaching 78 degrees 44 minutes South latitude. And I have just stumbled on an online article that emphasises the significance of that. I recommend that you have a quick read at https://www.mycg.uscg.mil/News/Article/2969915/coast-guard-cutter-polar-star-sets-world-record-with-voyage-to-antarctica/. And note that the Spirit of Enderby is the ship that took us to Antarctica three years ago. By my calculations, the 1.32 seconds by which the US Coast Guard holds the record is equivalent to a bit under 41 metres that our ship could easily have beaten if we had just nudged up a bit closer to the ice. I doubt if we got within a hundred metres of it and I thought at the time that the Captain was being his usual conservative self, notwithstanding his expressed disappointment that we never set a new record.

Walking on the ice, particularly at Mt Siple, but also at Cape Hallett, gave me a big buzz - it was quite a unique experience.

Watching the ship crunch through the thick ice was also fascinating, even awe-inspiring, as we faced a solid wall of ice up to at least three metres thick - and simply smashed our way through. An amazing sight.

I loved the storms - Nature in the raw. They didn’t impact the ship to any great extent but watching the swell and huge clouds of spindrift was quite exciting. And seeing so much snow that decorated the external areas of the ship for several days was something quite new for me.

The wildlife is always a highlight although I never thought as much about it at the time this trip. But we saw five species of seals, millions (literally) of penguins, ninety-six species of birds and a few whales. We have probably seen more and more variety on other trips, but this was still impressive.

The Captain’s conservatism or risk-averseness meant we lost several opportunities to experience more but we had no control over that – unfortunately, he is God on board.

The food was fine, perhaps not quite what we expected from French chefs but perfectly adequate. The staff were brilliant and the lectures the best we have had on any previous trip. And ‘all you can drink’ for about 18 hours a day makes up for a lot.

All in all, it was a great trip with some once in a lifetime experiences that I will never forget. I just need time to cement the memories more securely before we embark on yet another extraordinary series of adventures.

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Just a few miscellaneous photos.  Three shots in the on-board science labs, the Le Soleal, a sister ship we passed, an ice and rock wall with a zodiac for scale, some more icicles, an ice cave, an iceberg more than 90 metres high (out of the water) and some seal tracks on an ice-floe.

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Part of the beautiful Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range at Cape Adair, an Adelie nest (they fight over the stones), a small area of Adelie ‘wet farts’ and an area of dead penguins.  (The dead penguins are not easy to see, but they cover the land with a pile has accumulated of the millennia and may be many hundreds of metres deep.)  Some calm water and some affected by the 150kph raging gale.  All we saw of the Balleny Islands and the deck warmer in full swing, preventing the build-up of snow on the outside decks.

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Cape Adair.  Borchgrevink’s Hut/s and the 'outhouse’, some pics inside the main Hut, a boat that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  A corner of the Giant Petrel nursery showing both dark and light morphs, some juveniles and a penguin for size comparison.  Lastly an Adelie that just looked cute to me in baggy trousers.

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Three examples of Blue Ice where intense pressure has squeezed all the air from the ice under the weight of the glacier.  Note the angled icicles on the third pic from where the iceberg has rolled over, perhaps many times as it melted and overbalanced.  An ice arch with more icicles, and another with some distant kayakers, two Emperor Penguins at Cape Hallett and an unidentified penguin sporting snoe-shoes.  A frozen waterfall, some pack-ice and one of many black islands in the Ross Sea.

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Days 55 to 57 - En Route to NZ

Day 55, Thursday, 9 February 2023

We are now really just filling in time until we get to New Zealand and head for home.  Life on board is pretty routine, punctuated by set times for meals and a couple of lectures each day.

It is actually quite comfortable just sailing along, occasionally rolling a little, but often quite smooth.  It is surprising how quickly the sea conditions change. Within ten or fifteen minutes, it can go from quite choppy to a millpond – or the reverse – but I have not needed any mal-de-mer medications for the whole trip. I took a Quells twice early in the trip just in case I got sick, but never needed them even when the sea was most excited – and exciting.  I really revelled in the rougher weather and we had quite a bit.  It has been surprisingly sunny day after day when the expectation was wet and gloomy, but we also had a few wonderful storms and a great deal of snow from time to time – much more than I have seen before.  And the temperatures are now consistently above zero, although the ‘feels like’ rating is still in the low minuses – 3 to 5 mainly.

We had another general knowledge quiz in which Heather came second and pipped me by one point, but George beat her by three.  He is a very smart cookie.  That was followed by the Captain spending 70-odd minutes of his allocated 55 explaining why this ship is the best ever built and that it includes a dozen or more first-in-the-world innovations.  Sounded very impressive even if I only understood half of it.

They have been running daily dance classes and craft workshops in the past week or so but we are not really interested – but Heather enjoys the cooking classes although most things are a bit elaborate and often too rich for our palate.  W have not used either pool, the spa, sauna or Snow Room and we have avoided the gym quite assiduously. There have also been a couple of cocktail-making sessions and we have participated in them – and their product. There are always a couple of other food and drink opportunities during the afternoon as well as the three bars and one Detox bar (that doesn’t get a lot of patronage!).

There was a second caviar-tasting session during the afternoon and a lecture about the French Dumont d’Urville Station and its first overwintering.

After dinner there was a Cabaret – very slick and professional with amazing lighting and effects. There are a few musicians a singer and a couple of other ‘gymnast/acrobats’ on the ship (under contract) and they put on a great show for us.  We hadn’t intended going, but did so at the last minute – so glad we did.  It was a great performance, particularly the musician and the athletic dancing.

Day 56, Friday, 10 February 2023

Mum’s birthday today – she would be 108 if she was still with us.  Sadly……. But I still think of her most days.

Another day at sea and it held the promise of the best birding day as we approached Campbell Island. The Captain had promised to call us early so we could see the Island (although for some reason, he said we could not approach closer than two-and-a-half-miles – we landed and walked across the island three years ago!) but he failed to keep his promise.  He later said it was a bit foggy so he decided that we wouldn’t want to see it or its birds!

I went out on deck for an hour or so and explored numerous observation points, but it was pretty cold and drizzling so I eventually retreated indoors – and then they locked us in completely because it was a bit rough outside.  They really are ultra-cautious and seem to think that zero risk is more important than client experience – but at least this time, we could get out on our balcony for a while until they came around and locked them too.  As it happened, there were very few birds anyway in what was the bird-richest area on our last trip down here.

I was out on deck while Heather went to a session about the results of the science undertaken on board this trip.  We toured the laboratories a couple of weeks ago and they were quite impressive – as were the scientists and the projects they are working on.

Heather went to another cooking class while I tried to identify some of the birds I had photographed before they locked us in.

After lunch, there was a lecture about a French Explorer that few Aussies have heard about despite a French Station being named for him almost due south from Australia.  He is Jules Dumont d’Urville and he put France on the Antarctic map – a very impressive leader and explorer.

Late in the afternoon, we had a presentation by the helicopter pilot about NZ Flight 901 that crashed on Mt Erebus in 1979.  He gave us a lot of information about the plane, the flight, the ground support, and the Government Enquiries in the aftermath.  He had obviously done quite a bit of research, but equally obviously, he believes he knows better than the enquiries and sheets the blame on everyone except the pilots.  As outsiders, we don’t have an opinion, but 237 people died as a result of numerous human errors – we are just not quite sure which humans were most to blame.

Day 57, Saturday, 11 February 2023

It was another day at sea with just one lecture in the morning.  It was about Mawson and it was possibly something the Aussies were waiting for.  It was a good lecture and although we knew the story, there were lots of snippets we didn’t know and it put more of it into perspective for us.

During the afternoon, there was a briefing about tomorrow’s land tours and final disembarkation early on Monday.  It seems they just want us off the ship and left to our own devices as soon as possible with no assistance in getting to the airport.  There were a couple of options where they would help if we topped up their coffers – about $AU600 per person for a private ride, but a combined maximum of three items of luggage (we have six) or a group transfer for about $AU400 per person with the same luggage restrictions – and neither options load your baggage for you.  You have to do it yourself.  We have opted for a shuttle into the city where we can get a cab to the airport – there are apparently no cabs at the port!

Then they drew a raffle to which we had not contributed – a good job we saved our money because we didn’t win anyway!  That was followed by the announcement of the winners of the Photo Competition.  There were four categories – Blue, Wildlife, the Ship and Landscape.  There were some great photos but none of mine got anywhere.  One guy won in two categories – but I wasn’t particularly rapt in his Wildlife pic – I reckon several others were better than his.  He was just lucky that he hit the shutter while a penguin was still in the air hopping onto an icefloe.

There was then a long final recap – over two hours – but it was quite brilliant. Most of the Expedition Team gave a little summary of their aspect of the trip, often adding a bit more, including several video clips.  One was from WIFFA 2022 – the Winter International Film Festival of Antarctica – an annual film festival of films made entirely during the dark months by people overwintering in Antarctica.  It is open to all Antarctic Stations and is a really big event with some absolutely brilliant films – look them up and watch on the web.  There was also an amazingly creative short video made by one of our on-board naturalists.  It is hard to describe but it traced a strange wriggly line around the screen, that eventually transformed into the outline of a photo she had taken during the voyage.  All the images were then linked into a powerful conservation message – strong and creative.  No idea how it was done but quite brilliant.

And after dinner, the crew put on an absolutely inspiring show that they had created together during the voyage.  There was some very energetic dancing, several instrumental and vocal musical performances and some funny skits. The one that really got to me was a superb rendition of Ave Maria by one of the male scientist – in the most fantastic high falsetto.  He could put Ivan Rebroff, maybe even Kiri, to shame.  I reckon he could go professional tomorrow – absolutely beautiful.

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Days 52-54 - Goodbye Antarctica

Day 52, Monday, 6 February 2023

During the night, the ship took us to Cape Adair – our last point of call on Antarctica.  I don’t imagine we will ever get back here, but we can always hope.

Last time we were here, a few passengers landed, before the wind and ice created an emergency and there was quite a dramatic evacuation back to the ship, with the expedition team literally up to their necks in freezing water and frightening surf getting everyone off safely.

This time, things looked much better so we were split into two groups, half to land while the other half zodiac-cruised – and then we all changed places.  We were in the second group to land and as we cruised in the zodiac, we saw some really rough sea and moving ice and I couldn’t imagine how we could possibly land – but once we returned to the landing place, we were beautifully sheltered and made a very comfortable landing.

The Borchgrevink huts from the very first overwintering expedition were close by but rather than line up to go inside (only three people and a guide allowed in at any time), we walked quite a long way to a small Southern Giant Petrel colony. It had several young birds as well as at least four of the less-common white morph birds. We returned to the huts where the queue was now much shorter and we went into the dark interior and took a few photographs before returning to the ship.

We were soon waving goodbye to Antarctica and sailing almost due north to the Balleny islands.  When we originally booked this trip, we were supposed to visit Macquarie Island but shortly before we left home, they decided to go to the bleak and dismal Ballenys instead.  Disappointing and as it happened, a really bad decision.

Great news!  I now have my visa to allow us to go to Chile as planned.  All we have to hope now is that the political unrest in Peru settles so as not to jeopardise our insurance policy for that part of the trip.  And talking about future travel, we had a discussion with Ponant’s on-board travel consultant and after conferring with a few other people (including our wonderful financial advisor) we have decided to book another voyage in September 2024 – to both the North Poles. It will be on this ship which is an icebreaker and will take us to both the Geographic and Magnetic North Poles. That will be quite different from this trip but it starts from Nome, Alaska, and ends in Longyearbyen in Svalbard. Aha – what to do after that?  It includes flights from Seattle to Nome and Longyearbyen to Paris so we will probably tack on something extra at one end or the other.

We had an interesting lecture in the afternoon, given by our knowledgeable geologist.  She traced the changes in the three main environmental factors impacting climate change over the past four billion years and finished with some suggestions on how we might help to slow down the current rapid changes.

Day 53, Tuesday, 7 February 2023

We were at sea all day and had a fairly weak lecture about seabirds from the same woman who lectured us about albatrosses a couple of weeks ago – also pretty weak then.  Heather then went to another cooking class: this one about making Crème Broulee.

Late in the morning, we were approaching the Balleny Islands that were sadly substituted for Macquarie Island as I mentioned above.  We saw a very vague outline of the southernmost island through the fog but the Captain said he was not willing to go closer than a couple of kilometres.  (Last time, we passed in a much lesser vessel and an even greater storm, and I reckon we were only 3-400 metres away. After that, we saw nothing.)  The Captain made numerous announcements about how clever he was navigating between two of the islands, but we never saw them. The fog was thick and it was snowing heavily.  (How come snow falls heavily when they talk about things being as light as a snowflake. One for Aristotle or Euclid I think.)  The whole exercise was a total farce.  We should have gone to Macquarie but if not, we should have passed close enough to the Ballenys to see something.  I really don’t think this wimp of a captain has earned the salary of a cabin boy this trip – yet most people applaud him.  Weird!

The snow was heavy because we were moving into a magical storm.  At one stage, the Captain announced that the winds were at 74 knots (137 kph) – a force 11 on the 12-point Beaufort Scale according to a short segment we got in the Recap.  The guy who gave us this segment has given us some great short pieces before – like the ball and orange explanation of the seasons, and one about the time zones.  He doesn’t seem to have a lot of polish, but he was a sea captain on numerous big ships for many years and has an immense amount of scientific knowledge.  He is also a really nice guy.

The storm was great – still not huge waves – I estimate it at about four to five metres – but the wind was fantastic and we had several hours of driving snow that replenished (three or four times over) the snow that had almost melted from the last wonderful storm.  We were in positive temperatures early in the morning (first time for almost 3 weeks at plus 0.3 degrees) but by mid-morning, we were back to minus 4.5.  It was a very exciting storm and I really loved watching it.

We crossed the Antarctic Circle back into the temperate zone during the early afternoon, but what was raging all around us belied the fact.  The wind abated somewhat around dinner time and although there was a bit of rocking and rolling, sleep came easily for most people, and I don’t think anyone was too seasick.  Most are wearing patches, but I think/hope I now have my sea legs. (That is sea legs, not seal eggs!)

In the evening, we had a preview of the Ship’s Cruise movie – an hour-long compilation of videos created by the official photographer that he will sell to anyone stupid to pay 150 euros for a DVD at the end of the cruise.  I thought his effort was really poor with whole days and several of the most important activities omitted entirely – to make space for politically correct comments and career protection snippets, many featuring his boss, the Captain. We were told that the rules he had to comply with prevented him showing any recognisable passengers’ faces but close to half of us (but not us) were easily recognised.  All up – and maybe I am being overly-critical due to some of the disappointments over the past few days – I reckon the whole production was a bit amateurish – good use of technology, but poor use of his subject matter or creativity.

We then had another quiz and our team and another one tied for first.  They decided to have a tiebreaker and the other team won – I can’t even recall what that question was.  But we should have won outright due to a disputed answer during the quiz.  The question was ‘What city has the highest Greek population after Athens and Thessalonica?’  As Melbournians, we answered ‘Melbourne’, of course – and nobody else got that.  But the quizmaster said the answer was Chicago.  Mr Google agreed with us, as did a few other references people found – and none of the others guessed Chicago anyway.  In the end, the quizmaster voided that question so we tied with the other team and lost the tiebreaker. Bummer – we could have used the luggage tags that were the prize.  But just wait until tomorrow when there is real money at stake!

Day 54, Wednesday, 8 February 2023

The storm had passed, but it was still pretty bouncy around the ship.  Heather went to a session about possible future Ponant cruises, but I was out on deck looking for birds.  There were very few, but I did see a couple of White-headed Shearwaters and a few Broad-billed Prions that I haven’t seen before.

Later in the day, we crossed the Southern Convergence where we expected to see more birds, but 24 hours later still almost nothing.  Where are they all?   Last time we came through here, there were thousands of them.  There were also quite a lot of whales, particularly Humpbacks and we have not seen one since before we left Cape Adair.

There was a lecture in the afternoon by one of the passengers – also a former geology guide on expedition ships.  I reckon it was a bit of a joyride for him, an opportunity to promote his company, dressed up in some apparently good science about capturing metals from the seafloor to create hydrogen power and batteries.  I was not convinced, but as he said, he had the microphone so he could say what he liked.  He did say that as our knowledge of the seabed increased, it may prove him wrong, but if he is right, he really is on a winner for the whole planet.

There was another lecture that started out sounding almost sacrilegious about hunting whales.  It was given by our bird expert and traced the history of whaling from antiquity (more than 6500 BC) and built up the story to the 16th and 17th centuries when whale oil became a commercial product and money became the driver for whaling rather than subsistence.  He then proceeded to systematically demolish every pro-whaling argument I can ever recall.  He started out justifying the legitimacy of whaling in the millennia long past and finished up shredding any possible reason for modern commercial whaling.

Then it was time for the quiz and it was run by the ship’s travel consultant about Ponant cruises and destinations.  We were in teams of two and I thought we did reasonably well – and when they announced the winners, we were tied with another couple.  Would you believe the prize was a 250-euro voucher for use on a future Ponant cruise – and we have just booked the Two Poles cruise.  Rather than have a tiebreaker, they gave both winning teams a voucher.  Very generous and we were delighted – so celebrated with yet another of their free champagnes.

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Days 50 and 51

Day 50, Saturday, 4 February 2023

Quite a strange and frustrating day today.  We sailed north all morning with just one lecture to break up the day.  It was a very complicated lecture about the geology and geological prehistory of Antarctica and unfortunately, I didn’t understand a lot of it – the second lecture that was wasted on me.  But that is my fault, rather than the team’s – if I had a better basic understanding of the issues underlying the lecture, I would probably have been able to understand a bit more of it.

Late in the morning, we reached our destination for the day: Coulman Island. It was pretty spectacular but they gave us absolutely no idea of what was planned (or possible) and we all sat around for more than four hours waiting for an announcement to give us some clues.  The Expedition Leader and a few others were away in the helicopter for at least two hours – and we suspect a lot of the helicopter excursions are sussing out options for the next trip rather than ours. Pretty annoying if we are cooling our heels, not starting anything, just waiting for information that never comes.  They finally announced that a landing would not be possible – something that almost everyone on the ship could have told them four hours ago just by looking out the door! Just about all the passengers were getting toey by the time they announced that we could do a zodiac cruise.

Heather decided to stay on board, but I felt it necessary to go out in case I wanted to complain about the delay later on.  We cruised around the ice-floes for a while and saw a couple of seals on the ice, although not very close.  We had a bit of a cowboy driving our zodiac and he wanted to get up close to one seal so decided to go around an area of ice and approach it from the other side. I saw the seal go into the water at the same time he started to go around and I thought everyone else saw it too. We poked around in and out of the ice for about fifteen minutes before I started wondering if he was still looking for it.  Sure enough, he was and I had some difficulty explaining that I had seen the seal take to the water long ago.  We cruised a little longer but were then summonsed back to the ship.  The ice was moving in quickly and we had to move immediately or we could get iced in.  Our driver was sure he could get through various leads and almost got us stuck twice. Fortunately, the zodiac had enough power to push through some brash and we made it back to the ship safely.  (Of course, you knew that or I wouldn’t be writing this now!)

The day seemed pretty much a waste with four hours just waiting and then a poor zodiac cruise that was cut very short anyway.

They had a cocktail making class late in the afternoon and Heather and I participated and each made a cucumber cocktail – and it was quite surprisingly good – tasty and refreshing.

Day 51, Sunday, 5 February 2023

We were woken by the bumps and grinds of the ship as it churned through thick ice that spread from horizon to horizon.  It was a glorious sight and lasted for at least an hour or two as we ground our way through to Cape Hallett.  They spent an inordinate amount of time checking out sites for a landing and eventually attempted (twice) to put the ship into the ice so we could walk down the gangplank on to the ice as we did a week or so ago.  Unfortunately, as the ship broke through into the ice, the ice around the area started to crack and open up so that was abandoned.  They eventually found a place where we could land on the ice by zodiac and go for a walk.

In the meantime, we had been told that our normal restaurant would be closed for breakfast because they were preparing for Sunday lunch.  We had to eat on Deck Five where there was no hot food today. Fine with us but we didn’t understand exactly what was happening.  They eventually encouraged us to go up to Deck Nine, our usual restaurant, for an early ‘brunch’ prior to walking out on the ice.  Brunch included a whole pig roasted on a spit, big prawns from Italy, more crab than I have seen before, oysters, caviar, and a whole range of accompanying delectables.  Oh, and the normal restaurant was also in full swing with its usual fifty options and some specials in there as well. We were welcomed into the restaurant with mimosas (Can I get you another one sir?) and a great saxophonist playing magic music right through our meal.  All this and then we still had to watch the beautiful ice and fantastic rocks just outside our window too.  But we managed!

We got into our zodiac cruising gear (a slightly cut-down version because we would mainly be walking) and were transferred onto the ice where we had to put snow-shoes on.  The ice here was just ice – almost no snow at all so ‘shoes with needles’ (as the Captain called crampons because he didn’t know the English word) were essential.  We found them pretty hard to put on and a bit clumsy to walk in, but we both agree that they were essential and increased our confidence tenfold at least when walking on extremely hard slippery ice at well below freezing point.  I had a minor trip when I trod on one shoe with the other but there were several other people who fell heavily with one woman cutting her hand on some sharp ice when she went down.  Heather walked a little way before turning back but I stayed the distance and walked about four kilometres to see a few Emperor Penguins way out on the ice.  We all had to stay close to our respective guides because there were hundreds of cracks across the ice in all directions and they were anxious to ensure that if the ice did break up, we would all be on the same floe.  The ice seemed to be quite secure, but if you stood with one foot on either side of a crack, you could sometimes feel movement as the ice moved with the current. You could also see tiny movements in the cracks if you looked carefully.  When we finally got back on the ship, I saw that three football-pitch-sized pieces of ice had broken away and drifted several metres out from the main shelf on the side of the ship opposite our landing place.  It obviously wasn’t quite as stable as we thought it was

We were supposed to go to Possession Island in the afternoon, but it never happened. It seems that the Captain makes all the decisions about what we are going to do rather than the Expedition Leader, so if he doesn’t want to go somewhere, we all miss out.  We were supposed to go to Possession Island, but for some reason, he decided that we would prefer another landing at yet another Adelie colony – how many do we need to visit?

Heather and I took the zodiac to the colony, but stayed in the zodiac when everyone else got out and had a private cruise around some nearby icebergs with lots of Adelies on them – so we probably got a better view of them than many of those who went ashore.  We then went back to collect those who had gone ashore and proceeded on a longer cruise to some more distant icebergs until the Captain called us all back because some ice was apparently moving our way.

The morning was great and the afternoon was good, but could have been better if we had gone to Possession Island with a lot more history involved.

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A mixture of photos.  Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans and the plaque inside the door.  The hut at Cape Royds that was out of bounds.  A few icicles on board and some more on land.  Some more orcas and the shadow of the ship passing an iceberg.

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Inside Scott’s Cape Evans Hut.  The second last one is of Scott’s bed.  As to the last pic, this penguin is dead, not sleeping, dead.  It hasn’t moved a feather since I photographed it three years ago.

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Cape Evans.  Two views from the ship. A defunct weather station.  The original cairn and replacement cross and plaque commemorating a couple of men who died on the ice.  The hut and our ship from the top of the hill.  Heather starting the climb up the hill and some of the original items preserved around the area of the hut.

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Days 48 & 49, 2-3 February 2023 - Capes Evans, Royds and Bird

Day 48, Thursday, 2 February 2023 

Almost half of February gone already!  Well, maybe almost almost!

We were awoken at 6 am with an announcement that a landing at Cape Evans was possible and we were eventually able to climb aboard the zodiacs at about 9.15 – after breakfast and a long wait in our unbearably hot clobber.

We landed much closer to the hut than last time we were here and were broken into three group to ensure we complied with the limitations on numbers in the hut at any time. I joined a group that climbed to the top of the hill, to a cross commemorating the souls lost during the polar exploration period.  It was a bit of a climb but the view was great and I took an easier path down to Heather and we lined up to enter the hut.  We had to take our boots off and wear carefully cleaned Crocs, no sticks inside, don’t touch anything, and so on – all sensible matters to preserve the artifacts in their original form for the future.  One cute thing was the mailbox outside.  Nobody knows what it was for, but a lot of people came up with the same idea that it looked like the postie was due any time in the next century or two.  We all walked around looking (but not touching) all the stuff around, much of it rubbish, but probably with some important purpose a hundred years ago.

The mailbox? 

We returned to the ship ahead of many of our fellows and enjoyed a hot chocolate and a hot shower.  We had to have showers so we could do some washing because that has to hang in the shower recess to dry.

The ship later returned to Cape Royds with the objective of finding a place where we could land and walk to Shackleton’s Hut.  They cruised well past the hut and turned back to explore the coast on one side of the Cape but it was completely iced in.  They then cruised along the other side of the Cape and although we were quite close to the hut, there was a big Adelie colony that we could not walk through between the beach and the hut.  The only alternative was a fairly long and precarious climb to go around the colony so any prospect of a landing was abandoned.  Probably a good thing really because even if the ice moved away, the only access to the hut would have been the treacherous steep rocky mountain climb that claimed one of our number when we were here three years ago.  And if the ice returned, we would probably not have had time to return from the hut to get back to the ship before the ship was iced in.

Interestingly, Heritage Expeditions has a ship down here at the moment, apparently doing the same voyage we did with them in 2020, and their Facebook page has photos of their visits to all the places we have been unable to visit (on the same days that we couldn’t visit), including Discovery Point!

It is impossible to get a meaningful map of where we are or the direction we are heading.  It is very frustrating.  Nobody seems to know the names of the islands we visited last time and even the Captain had to consult his main chart to find Inexpressible Island when we asked – and we are still convinced that the island he identified was not it.  Maybe something is lost in translation with the French speakers, but the Captain is fluently bilingual so no excuse.  It is all very strange.

We seemed to just cruise around aimlessly for several hours until they announced that we would spend the night in calm water just off Cape Bird to be ready for a landing in the morning.

Day 49, Friday, 3 February 2023

Sure enough, we woke with Cape Bird right outside and an announcement that told us nothing.  ‘Activities will start at 8:30’ but what activities?  We assumed a landing – but where will we land, what is there to see, how difficult is the terrain? We searched the ship for a Team member who might know but found nobody.  I eventually went down to Deck 3 where they were already loading people into zodiacs and found someone down there who said we could walk on the beach, look at another ten thousand Adelies, but only within a narrow perimeter – and we could not climb to the huts (that looked a long way away anyway).  Having visited numerous Adelie colonies in the past couple of weeks, we decided to have a quiet morning on board.  I was not feeling well with a minor infection on my leg so we just spent time in our cabin and watched out of our window.  Mt Bird was right out there and as far as I could see, it never moved all morning.

We had an entertaining lecture in the afternoon, supposedly about James Clark Ross, but there was as much content in it about his friends and fellow explorers as there was about him.  He is one of the tranche of polar explorers from the late 19th and early 20th century that never gets the recognition he deserves.  In his time, he was described as the most handsome man in the British Navy and every time Lucia (the lecturer) showed a photo of him, she dashed across the stage and tried to embrace him.

There was another gala dinner at night – but we are simply not interested in dressing up (as if we could) and going all-formal when the food is the same in our preferred restaurant and the views are certainly much better.

It was a very exciting afternoon and early evening though – certainly a highlight of the trip for me.  We were sailing north and a howling tailwind developed that whipped the sea into a fury. The ship’s wind recorder froze at about 80 knots (150kph) so who knows what the maximum gusts might have been. There was a bit of rolling but because it was a tailwind, not a lot of pitching.  Despite the extreme wind the waves were still only three or four metres, but the top of every wave was torn away into a foaming torrent.  We first experienced it over lunch when the noise of the raging gale became very obvious.  We actually thought it was the helicopter taking off at first but soon realised that the helicopter doesn’t make that much noise.  The ship was soon completely locked down – all the doors, including all our outside cabin doors, were locked by the crew as were all access doors to the decks.  We spent a couple of hours in the Observation Deck on Level Nine and it was thrilling to watch the sea ripped to ribbons by the wind. It was snowing heavily, to the point where we could hardly see the front of the ship on Deck Six.  The temperature was minus 8 and the snow started to build up on the deck until the heating in the floor kicked in and melted some of it but I loved every exciting minute of it.  More than 24 hours later, large chunks of ice were still falling off the exposed areas outside

Strangely, despite the fury of the storm, we walked from the bow area to the stern restaurant and the wind dropped astonishingly within a couple of minutes. We sailed into a large area of broken pack-ice that damped down the waves and quite suddenly, the sea looked amazingly different.  There was a long, slow, almost gentle surge across the surface of the sea that was quite beautiful.  This is all very difficult to describe but it looked more like someone gently flapping a sheet so a flow of air lifted and dropped the sheet as the column of air passed across it.  It was beautiful to see such a massive jigsaw of glistening ice rolling up and down across the sea.

There was another concert at night, mainly operatic singing by the soprano on board, but we don’t much like her anyway (a glamour-puss) so we chose to listen to more of our audiobook in bed instead.

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Mt Terror with Mt Erebus cowering faintly behind, and beautiful Mt Erebus. Discovery Point with a cross commemorating a sailor who died trying to bring a boat to shore 100-odd years ago - with part of the US base behind.  Scott’s Hut from which he left on his fateful last mission.  The big US base.  Another Ponant ship (Le Soleal) we passed - when we waved to them, they waved back!!!  Another ship, the Ortelius, similar to the tiny tubs we love, but this one has been heavily modified to accommodate at least 3 helicopters used to land (its 35?) passengers wherever they want to go.  Finally, us (Photo Credit: Cindy Miller Hopkins) and the ship’s flag prior to the group photo at the southernmost point of our voyage.

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Days 46-47 - Aborted Landings

Day 46, Monday, 30 January 2023

Why was there land outside our window when we woke up today?  It was a puzzle.  If we were travelling west along the ice-shelf and our cabin in on the starboard side, the ice-shelf should be on the port side.  We eventually discovered that we were actually not sailing west.  We were in the huge Bay of Whales, heading south with the eastern shore of the Bay outside our window.  

The ship slowly sailed south as far as it could - to 78 degrees 44 Minutes South – blocked only by a few thousand kilometres of 40-metre-high ice.  We stopped very close to the iceshelf and everyone was encouraged to go out on the helicopter deck and wear their orange Ponant jackets for a couple of group photos.  Once the photos were taken, we were all given a glass of Champagne or two – not another one!  It was pretty cold on deck but lots of photos were taken by everyone as well as the official photographer before we all scurried back in to warm cabins and more food and drink.

We did a ship-cruise around part of the Bay then returned north to continue our passage along the Ross Iceshelf.  There were frequent periods of fog and snowfalls that often reduced visibility to about 20 metres.

We had a excellent lecture about Humpbacks, the whale we are most likely to see in the next week or so.  We have previously seen quite a few on other voyages and they really are magnificent creatures – inquisitive and playful and very happy to show off for the humans.

We saw many seals and penguins, mainly Adelies and a few Emperors, and had several call-outs to view non-existent Orcas.  We did see quite a few of them, but always a long way away with very poor views, lots of splashing and diving and resurfacing in unexpected places, making photography very difficult.  Time after time, there was a sighting and everyone threw on an extra layer or two for the stampede to their preferred deck, only for us all to stand there, scanning the ocean and feeling our fingers slowly stiffening in the extreme cold. Nary a ripple so everyone trudges back to their cabin, more likely to one of the bars, to wait for the next wave of excitement.

Orcas - mainly males, with straight-backed fins up to two metres high. 

Heather had gone to a few French cooking classes and we both went along to one to learn how to make butter brioche.  The end product didn’t really excite me and there seemed to be a lot of time and work going into the process so if ever I find the need for one, I think I will source it from Brumby’s or Baker’s Delight.

During the afternoon, we had a lecture on Shackleton, given by perhaps the best French guide.  We had quite similar lectures from Nina, our great Australian storyteller on our Aurora voyage, and many of the snippets were identical.  On the other hand, our French guide was obviously not as enamoured by Shackleton as our Aurora guide, but I still regard him with honour – a heroic failure to say the least.

The Recap covered a few useful things about more of the wildlife down here as well as some of the huge historical and scientific significance of the area we are approaching.  The Precap also promised great things – some of which actually happened.

Day 47, Tuesday, 31 January 2023

I think we lost our sixth hour last night and you know what they say about tomorrow...... Tomorrow never comes – and for us, it most certainly won’t – and didn’t.  We will cross the International Date Line later in the day and suddenly 31 January will become 2 February with the first of the month going completely AWOL.  Go figure!

Very soon after waking up, we looked out of our window and saw Mt Terror with the top of Mt Erebus behind it.  I think Erebus must now be my most favourite mountain.  It was a glorious sunny day, minus seven, but it is surprising how we are accustoming to the cold.  As long as our skin is at least minimally exposed, we can stay outside for quite a while with just a parka and without the huge expedition jacket that seriously impedes our movement and makes many simple tasks surprisingly difficult.

Ross Island marks the end of the Ross Iceshelf.  Mounts Terror and Erebus are both on Ross Island and Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on the planet. It was such a clear day, and stayed so all day, that we had magnificent views of it all day.  Smoke could be seen drifting away from the summit and for much of the day, we could also see Terror, although not as well.

We sailed along the northern side of Ross Island until we reached Cape Royds where Shackleton’s hut was situated.  I visited this hut three years ago and getting to it was challenging.  One guy just in front of me fell on the rocks and smashed up his face pretty badly – with a lot of drama to go with that – but that is a longer story.  Given the terrain, I suspected that there would be no landing and as it turned out, I was right but for different reasons.

Shackleton’s Hut from way out at sea - protected by dangerous terrain and lots of less-dangerous Adelie Penguins. 

The Expedition Team went out and found a possible place to land, but by the time they returned to the ship, the wind had driven the ice back in and the Captain decided that the risk of the ship getting trapped in the ice was too great so we had to move on.  Landing aborted – and I thought that was probably a good thing.

We sailed on past Cape Evans to Discovery Point where Scott’s final journey started.  The huge McMurdo Sound US base is immediately adjacent to Scott’s Hut and the NZ base is just over the hill.  We were not allowed to land there due to the US activities near the Hut but it is the one that I remember best from our trip three years ago.  (Shackleton’s hut is the next most familiar one, but I was not keen to revisit it unless there was an easier way to access it.)

Interestingly, I saw on Facebook that the equivalent Heritage Expeditions trip that we did in 2020 did actually land and saw both Shackleton’s Hut and Discovery Point on the same day that we didn’t - very strange!

We stayed around the base for an hour or two (it was our dinnertime) before returning to near Cape Evans where we hoped to make a landing early next day – the Tooth of February.

It had been quite a good day despite the aborted landing and with the extra time spent in the bar, we were just in the mood to fall asleep while pretending to listen to more of our audiobook.

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Information for the persistent

If anyone has displayed the valour to reach this part of my blog, you deserve a medal with a pension for life.  But you may have missed quite a few photos that weren’t there during your journey.  I have just inserted quite a few photos that I was unable to post at the time with such intermittent internet - and I have still not been able to prepare any videos at all, so they may not end up in the blog.  Time will tell.

The new posts that insert the photos as close to the related text as possible are after the text for 21 January (1 post), 22 January (5 posts) and 25 January (1 post).

Congratulations once again for your extraordinary tenacity!

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Land Ahoy!!!  Heather photographing ship and one of both of us enjoying a fantastic sunny morning (Photo credit Dr Susan Currie).  The SHERP - an amphibious rescue vehicle - and a skidoo with the SHERP and the SHIP in the background.  Finally, a patch of ice that really doesn’t show what I wanted.  Wherever we walked, there were hundreds of tiny diamonds sparkling at our feet.  The snow crystals are like a thousand fireflies, glistening even brighter than the snow.