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| ♫ Follow the red algae road ♫ |
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| Penguin hide-and-seek. |
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| Red and green algae in the ice. |
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| On the left, you can see a yacht. |
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| It was one of a pair of yachts but you can only see one in these shots. |
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| Zodiac's eye view of the icebergs. |
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| Beautiful sugary ice. |
As I've already mentioned, we picked the cheapest cabin to stay in to save money and also to be in the part of the ship that moves the least. On the latter point, I can only imagine what the Drake Passage crossing was like for those higher up or further along.
The room itself was compact, but absolutely fine. Its width was that of two single beds separated by a set of drawers. There were two drawers which were enough for us to fill one each with everything we needed. There was a single AC outlet above the drawers into which I plugged a USB power bank via a Europlug adapter. This took care of most of the charging devices that even life down in Antarctica entails.
Beyond that there was a chair, a table, a wardrobe and a bathroom. The bathroom was unsurprisingly compact, but in all honesty I've had more cramped ones in dodgily converted hotels before now. There was a shower, a toilet, a sink and a cabinet. Towels and dressing gowns were provided. Showering while the boat is rocking could be either alarming or hilarious depending on your disposition at the time. I generally found it the latter. There were plenty of handles screwed to the walls and you quickly learn to use them instinctually.
Everything else in the room becomes a surface to hang drying clothes on, assuming you are also on a low luggage allowance and you don't want to shell out for the laundry service. Some parts of the room were better than others for this, typically those near the ventilation. Incidentally for handwashing we used Dr Beckman's Non-Bio Travel Wash Gel which did a good enough job, especially when we got back to hot and humid South America.
Another advantage of being down on deck four was that we were on a corridor off the mud room. This meant that we could get there quickly when our group was called, which isn't a huge advantage but does sometimes give a bit more room to get your gear on. Getting the gear on could be a production, especially the pulling on boots without getting mud on your socks. Mud being, of course, penguin guano.
Great pains are taken to clean everyone before they enter the ship from a zodiac. There are tubs of disinfectant with brushes fixed inside like teeth that you are encouraged to jam your booted feet into repeatedly until a crew member deems them clean enough to board. However the system isn't perfect and the mud room takes on a very distinct aroma. So does deck 4, and so did our cabin. I think everyone's cabins must have smelled of it too because it permeates your clothes whether you come into contact with any or not. After a while, you get used to it. I used to live near a pig farm and it's nowhere near as bad as that.
On our Zodiac ride around Cuverville Island we saw a couple of yachts moored amongst the ice. This was surprising to me and solved an earlier mystery. We'd seen other cruise ships in the region already. There are a fair number of tour operators following similar routes so it's inevitable that you'd come across one occasionally. One night there had even been one lit up like a Christmas tree and barely visible in the fog. It was a haunting sight and made me very aware of how astonishing our comfortable little floating vessel would have been to someone exploring the region even a hundred years ago. Another night, out on the aft deck behind the bar, someone had spotted a light in the distance. All I could make out in the darkness was the grey mass of the coastline. But zooming in with my Lumix, I could just about see the small pinprick of a light flashing every now and then. At this point it hadn't occurred to me that there could be anything other than large ships around. So what was I looking at? A hut, or piece of equipment? The idea of a solitary person flashing a lamp in the utter wilderness of Antarctica fired my imagination. Were they signalling? Well, obviously not. The yachts seen in this reel's views make it clear that yachts can and do make it this far south and that it was probably just one of their lights being cast this way and that by the tide. Still, even with the modern technology available, sailing to Antarctica strikes me as pretty hardcore. I looked the one in the photos up - it's the Bazileus, a sailing vessel (not yacht although the technical distinction between the two is a rabbit hole I had to reverse out of) registered in Malaysia. At the time of writing, it’s in Antarctica again.
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