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| In a thrilling reprisal of last week's photo, Liz has now met the crew member. |
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| The seals everyone was watching. |
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| If you look closely you can see one of them is yawning in this shot. |
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| Just rocks here, right? Wrong! This shows how easy it is to blunder across a seal. |
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| Back to the busy seals. It's worth noting the greenery in the background, a sure sign that we are now much further north than we were. |
I've never visited a James Bond villain's secret lair, partly because I'm not James Bond, but mostly because outside of some recent billionaires, such super-villains remain fictional. Deception Island is however as close as I'm likely to get. With its natural harbour in the caldera of an active volcano, it certainly ticks many of the boxes. If there ever was a secret base there however, it would have met the same fate as the other stations present when the volcano erupted in the sixties. Maybe it was James Bond who blew them up and the volcano is a cover story? I could tell you more, but I'd have to kill you.
In reality there was a great deal of structure and infrastructure on the island before it erupted, and what now remains of them makes for a surreal scene. The Ocean Endeavour had navigated its way through Neptune's Bellows and into Whalers Bay, which is the site of the remains of the British station. The various parts of the station stretched over some distance. Nearest to our landing spot were the living quarters and facilities. They looked like they had melted, which despite being destroyed by a volcano was not the case, as they would have burned down. They were actually damaged by ash and mud flows which overran them. The resulting scattering of collapsed buildings is further confused by the fact that the base had originally used buildings from an abandoned whaling station on the site. In 1946 some of this burned down, and so the eerie detritus we were visiting spanned several eras. We were free to explore around the buildings, but obviously entering any of them was strictly out of bounds. There was an information board attached to the remains of the main British building, Biscoe House. It provides a potted history of the island from a British perspective, along with a disclaimer that anyone entering the ruined structure does so at their own risk. It then rather quaintly gives the address and phone number for the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge.
The other notable structure was the aircraft hanger which had fared better than the rest of the base as it is a short walk away. Unfortunately I didn't make it that far, having been distracted by Neptune's Window and many penguins. Oh, and also nearly being eaten by a seal, obviously. As such I ran out of time. It looked quite impressive from a distance however, and an expedition crew member who had been in the British Antarctic Survey was greeting people there with a story and a shot of something alcoholic. That's how badly I ran out of time - I couldn't even fit in a free drink!
Perhaps the most striking pieces of decaying infrastructure were the huge, spherical and cylindrical fuel containers which had been part of the whaling station. These looked as though they were slowly being devoured by the black sand that characterised the region. And indeed wandering around the beach there were the remains of other structures poking out, presumably well on their way to disappearing completely. I photographed them obsessively, fascinated by what time and volcanic activity had done to them. In the foreground a fur seal yawned, at home in the bewitching environment and oblivious to the idea that people once lived there.
As a footnote, you may have noticed there aren't any View-Master shots of the buildings. This was a practical decision I had to make when I realised I was short on time. It takes a while to set up shots with that camera, so I concentrated on the digital cameras for speed and for their wider-angled lenses.
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