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| My home on the peninsula, the Ocean Endeavour. |
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| A gentle incline becomes quite challenging when layered up and trying not to slip on the ice. |
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| The first penguins I met. I say met, but what with the minimum distance restriction I just cheerily waved at them. |
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| Part of the rookery. The penguins liked hanging out on rocks. Even ones they'd copiously covered in poo. |
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| The pink colour on the rocks is the aforementioned poo. |
This is the part of the blog where the photos look, to the external observer, like a random collection of photos of Antarctica. That's because it more or less is. The View-Master Personal camera is less useful than my digital camera in some conditions. If the weather is too dull the shots won't generally be worth taking. Inside the ship without a flash or tripod wasn't going to work even with a very steady hand and ASA 100, let alone 50. The flash for the camera is a large dish reflector that takes bulbs and has a plastic cover because they sometimes explode. I decided it was best to leave it at home. And the tripod would be extra weight in my luggage that I couldn’t afford. I would not be allowed to use it on land anyway. The camera has 25mm f3.5 fixed-focus lenses, so compared to modern digital cameras you really have to get close to smaller subjects. I always took it out on zodiacs with me, but it only came out of my dry bag if conditions were calm and dry. As such there are some parts of the trip that are barely represented here. I covered them with other more suitable cameras.
Our arrival in Antarctica was heralded by a wake-up call from Stephi, the expedition leader for this particular expedition. It was her job to plan our route with the captain in response to ever-changing conditions, and boy would she have her work cut out over the coming week. She was also to be the consistent voice of the expedition, announcing the day's schedule every morning over the PA and running the daily pre-dinner updates in the main bar every evening.
We had powered on through the Drake Passage in the night, so when we woke up early in the morning we were there. By this time we had spent two full days crossing the passage. We had left Ushuaia on Tuesday afternoon and it was now Friday morning. We excitedly went up on deck as soon as possible to get our first look at this most remote of continents.
The view did not disappoint. There was no recreation of the episode of Fawlty Towers where Basil explains with exasperation that the sea is over there, between the land and the sky. Most of the view was indeed sea, land and sky, with very little else to distract. It was spectacular. I have to be economical with my language here as I have a lot of spectacular things to describe over the coming reels. Hopefully the photos do them some justice.
Following this initial sightseeing, we went for breakfast in the dining room at the bow of the ship. This would form the basis of routine life on board over the next week. Each day would - conditions permitting - consist of two zodiac expeditions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with lunch in-between. I'll get into the food another time, and I'll talk about the zodiac landings in detail next time.
On this first day we visited Port Charcot in the morning and Pléneau Island in the afternoon. You might be led to believe by its name that Port Charcot harbours (pun intended) signs of civilisation, but unless the penguins were up to something crafty that was not the case. They might have been up to something crafty, I wouldn't put it past them. However the names of practically everything on the peninsula were given by the first explorers at the dawn of the heroic era of Antarctic exploration. Port Charcot is named after Jean-Baptiste Charcot, who led the French Antarctic Expedition between 1903 and 1905. It has three species of penguin - Gentoo, Chinstrap and Adelie, although I didn't see any of the latter anywhere on this trip.
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