So having finally written a ‘sensible’ FAQ blog I can now revert to telling you about all the fun stuff we’ve been doing over the course of the past three weeks! I know I’ve said it before, but I still can’t believe how quickly time flies here and so I’m going to have to summarise the highlights!

High summer is peak season for the yachties here and we’ve had lots of visits over the course of the past three weeks with up to three yachts at anchor in the back bay at any one time. We’ve had groups of mountaineers, divers and also general interest groups, who are down here exploring the peninsula in small groups. The advantage of this being that there’s no fixed itinerary and the yachts can get into narrow channels and bays where expedition ships don’t often go. For anyone interested in doing just that, visiting yachts have included Xplore, Australis, Pelagic Australis, Spirit of Sydney, l’Esprit d’Equipe, Vahere, Santa Maria Australis and Pod Orange.

During January we’ve had many visits by ships but showers were a little light on the ground (!) as many of the ships were on tight itineraries and needed to head north immediately following their visits. Having said that, we’ve had some great visits from new and returning ships.  Since I last wrote to you we’ve had two great visits with both the Corinthian II and Prince Albert II. You’ve already heard all about our previous visits on board the Prince Albert II, but I’m not sure I’ve told you much about the Corinthian II. They visited us for the first time on 27 December with my friend and old flat mate  Alison’s parents on board.  It was so lovely to see their friendly smiling faces as I entered the ship’s lounge to participate in the pre-landing briefing and it was so nice to be able to show friends around our temporary home here and tell them more about everyday life on base.  With three ships that day, timing didn’t permit us to join the ship in the evening, however we’ve enjoyed two more evenings on board with the Captain, expedition team and passengers since then, including a great night out on Australia Day.  Like the Prince Albert II it’s an exceptionally comfortable ship and the dinner menu goes on forever with multiple courses served up. I tried to be modest but seemed to receive enormous helpings of everything, even courses I didn’t actually ask for…. it was only when we returned to base one evening that it transpired I had accidentally eaten Laura’s soup  – HA HA HA!  Just call me the human vacuum .

We’ve also had two more visits from Prince Albert II. The first was a special charter for the Hotchkiss School with 80 high school students and teachers on board.  This is the school that the Mars family attended and each year Mr Forrest Mars brings a group of students south to experience the Great White Continent for themselves. Mr Mars was on board with some close family and friends who very kindly donated a stash of chocolate, peanut M&Ms and Skittles which we divvied up between our little team.  Thank you very much to the Mars family and Hotchkiss School!!
A week or so later Prince Albert II was back and treated us to another overnight stay on board. Given that showers were a little thin on the ground in January, I decided I had some serious catching up to do and managed to have two showers and a bath in the space of six hours! You’ll be forgiven for thinking this is a slight overkill, however the No. 1 rule for girly girls in the Antarctic is shower as often as possible,… you never know when or where the next one is coming from!!!  Showers aside, we had lovely pre-dinner drinks with Captain Peter then joined him for dinner on our own little table.  We exchanged all sorts of funny stories over another five-course dinner (caramelised onion tart with rocket, followed by penne arrabiatta, followed by beef which would literally melt in your mouth with pesto and potato rosti, followed chocolate mousse presented with a chocolate and raspberry flower – I would like to point out at this point that Rick had two desserts!). We continued the evening in the bar sipping amarettos before having a bath and sinking into a soft warm bed. None of us got much sleep as we found the cabins so hot in comparison to our little hut, but to be honest, I was very happy lying awake in the comfort of a warm dry cabin .

 We had two visits the following day. The first was the passengers from the Prince Albert II and the second was the National Geographic Endeavour which we travelled south on.  We girls haven’t been on board for a while as they have made several early morning visits when Rick has gone onboard alone to do the briefing while we dragged ourselves out of bed and got the base ready for visitors. We were therefore really pleased when they came in the afternoon and we were invited on board for the evening and could spend some quality time with the crew and expedition team. 
After a quick sauna and shower (the third in 24 hours!), we headed for the lounge to join the passengers for the evening re-cap session.  En route we saw Lisa Trotter (Expedition Leader and Diver on board the Endeavour) emerging from the sea in her dive gear onto an ice floe close by a safety zodiac. We were gazing on as we walked down the steps to the lounge but our eyes were suddenly on stalks when we saw another long black object emerging behind her onto the ice floe. In recent weeks we’ve heard stories of recreational divers having interactions with leopard seals underwater, which is against IAATO guidelines and generally not a good idea as little is known about them and their behaviour is therefore unpredictable. The concern with underwater interaction being that one group’s interaction could potentially cause a seal to become interested in other divers who aren’t so keen on that kind of attention. We were really worried that Lisa was being followed onto an ice floe, but we needn’t have worried as it transpired it was just Robert, her dive buddy and friendly Hawaiian zodiac driver clambering onto the ice floe in his black head-to-toe dry suit to have his picture taken with her!  Needless to say, Lisa and Robert later had a very good laugh at our expense and we have since suitably chastised ourselves for having such overactive imaginations!

After the end of the daily recap session the Captain said a few words about the Endeavour’s future as the ship is drawing towards the end of her days in the Antarctic to retire to the Galapagos Islands. This is a very sad time for the crew and expedition team as she is a much-loved ship in the Antarctic tourist industry. Some time ago, a member of the crew hand-stitched a beautiful flag which has flown at the bow of the ship throughout many seasons. Over the course of the years many wealthy passengers have offered vast sums of money for the flag but it was so precious they couldn’t be persuaded to part with it. The Captain went on to explain however that in order to raise money to design and produce a t-shirt which could be given to all the staff and expedition team as a memory of their time on Endeavour at the end of her final Antarctic season, they were going to part with the flag. This may at first seem like a money spinner until the Captain went on to explain that they were unwilling to auction it off to the highest bidder, but would allow each passenger on board (80 passengers or so) the opportunity to buy just one ticket each at a cost of $10. At the end of the Drake Crossing they would draw a raffle and the winner would receive the flag.   Even now knowing how much the ship means to the crew I still feel really moved by the gesture. It will certainly be a very sad day when the Endeavour makes her final crossing of the Drake Passage. After the recap we all split up to sit and chat with different groups of passengers over dinner and I had a lovely evening with four Americans. Two ladies from California and one lovely couple from Colorado who used to live in Woking – small world!  We had a lovely conversation talking about everything under the sun.  They were particularly interested in everyday life at Lockroy and we spoke about how I’d got on being so far away from friends and family. Their son and daughter-in-law had lived in Africa for two years so they knew all about the long-awaited long-distance phone calls and awaiting the mail, etc. and also asked a lot of questions about what would happen when I get home. That’s something that has certainly been on all of our minds here when we hear just small snippets of what’s in the news back home.  I can’t pretend it’s not on my mind but we concluded that no matter what’s going on, this is a unique experience and I’ll come away with memories and funny stories which I hope I’ll never forget.

In other news…!  We were very excited to receive inbound post one week ago and I was personally very pleased with my package from mum and dad containing two boxes of Maltesers from the Woolworths closing down sale .  I was thrilled that despite the doom and gloom, finally some good had come from the economic downturn and we enjoyed them the following evening during a Port Lockroy cinema night .  Thank you Mum and Dad!

We’ve also had some great weather of late which has allowed us to crack on with base conservation and restoration work between ship visits. We’re coming on leaps and bounds with the painting and Rick and Nikki have also done a great job chipping away at the rock leading up to the base from the ‘Whaler’s Chains’ passenger landing point to make some news steps. This will hopefully make the path safer and the base more accessible to passengers a little less steady on their feet.  Rick has also enjoyed making a little border about one meter deep between the gentoo nests in front of the hut and the path where passengers walk up to the building. We hope this will make the area look a bit more tidy and help to create a more visible boundary between walkways and the gentoo nests.  He did this by churning up ‘muck’ (see last blog entry) and little stones from around the island and transporting it in his shiny new yellow wheel barrow .  The end result looks like a little garden. This hasn’t been lost on any of the expedition teams and no-one can resist teasing him about when the rose bushes will arrive. (For anyone who’s wondering, not only would they not survive the harsh weather here, but we’re not allowed to introduce new plant species to the Antarctic!).

On 27th January, we had a visit from the Brits in Saga Spirit of Adventure. They were a very enthusiastic bunch, many of whom knew people who had worked for BAS over the years either here or at other British bases on the peninsula. They were headed for Stanley so they also took out our mailbags for us and left us some very British gifts of tea bags, bacon and Heinz baked beans among other treats .

After that busy spell we were practically broken and really in need of a bit of a break. Like a knight in shining armour, Steven, the friendly Aussie, sailed into the bay on his yacht, Xplore. He had a group of ten passengers on board who visited the base in the morning and offered us the opportunity to join them on the yacht for the afternoon as they sailed down the Peltier Channel behind the base.  We were so exhausted I’m ashamed to say that it was actually quite a tough decision to go rather than enjoy a very rare lazy afternoon at the base writing a few postcards and writing these long-promised blogs, but after giving ourselves a good talking to we got ourselves sorted and radioed over to Steven to accept his very kind and thoughtful offer. It was the first time we’d left Port Lockroy since our trip to Palmer Station at the end of November.  It was a beautiful hot sunny day and we really couldn’t have asked for a better day to sail down the channel.  It’s a fairly wide stretch of water lined by a glacier on one side and the Fief mountain range on the other. The water was completely still and there were beautiful reflections of the rocky peaks on the water.  We sat out on deck chatting to the passengers, drinking tea out of thermos mugs and eating chocolate digestives and smarties…. heaven!  Four miles down the channel we arrived in a tiny bay and secured four lines to rocks to make a secure anchorage before getting our outdoor gear on and trekking up past a small gentoo colony to see some amazing views down towards the entrance to the Lemaire Channel.  Five of us followed the footsteps of an ‘advanced party’ up the snow hill, but when we got to a cluster of rocks the footsteps came to a natural end.  We continued along the same path with no sign of anyone ahead of us until we got dive bombed by Skuas  – argh!  Guessing that we were probably a little too close to a nest among the rocks, we darted back out onto the snow and walked on trying to find the others while still hitting the snowy deck every few minutes as the Skuas took great delight in swooping over us…  We couldn’t be anywhere near nests by this stage, so they were clearly dive-bombing us just for their amusement!  Eventually we found our friends….the only trouble being we had clearly walked straight on along the snow hill while the others had taken a gentle path down to the shore to the non-active Chilean base, Yelcho!  We scooted down the snow to join them and took a look around the base area making sure we left it the way we found it.  There was another small colony of gentoos who were slightly behind the breeding stage of our gentoos here, with many of them apparently still sitting on eggs. After making our way back to the yacht, we had a lovely Thai curry before Steven drove us all the way home in the zodiac.  Earlier in the day a huge glacier had calved here at Port Lockroy – the largest Rick has ever seen in all the summer’s he’s worked here (all captured on my trusty video camera – thank you everyone at IDC!).  By the evening the ice had been carried out by the tide into the channel so it was an amazing drive back through the ice to tiny Goudier Island.

So that takes me all the way up until yesterday!  We had Clipper Adventurer here in the morning, led by Laurie Dexter who was my Expedition Leader when I came to Antarctica last year, followed by Polar Star in the afternoon and Hanse Explorer in the evening. It was especially great to catch up with our buddies Chris and Joel, zodiac drivers on Polar Star. We’d not seen them since Christmas Eve and they had since been home for two weeks well deserved rest while the ship was chartered to another company. Sadly they were heading due north immediately following their visit but we hope we will catch up with them again soon.  During their visit Hanse Explorer motored into the back bay.  Hanse is a small luxury ship carrying just 12 passengers. They had a lovely Swiss group on board who invited us to join them for dinner.  Suffering with a cold, Nikki decided to spend the evening on base, but Rick, Laura and I were there before you could say Fondue!  We had a lovely evening with them and really did have the most fabulous fondue and were sent home with a goodie bag of bread, eggs, stilton and wine courtesy of Jerome, their lovely chef.
Wildlife at Lockroy

So all that remains is to fill you in on how our little black and white neighbours are doing. In the past two weeks they have shot up (and out!) and are growing in confidence every day.  By the middle of January most of the chicks on the island were between 2-4 weeks old. The elder chicks were starting to build up enough confidence to take a few steps away from the family nest and as the month wore on, they could be seen waddling around, flapping their little wings and chasing their parents for food! Most of the chicks are now between 4-6 weeks old.  While the chicks are young, their parents still take it in turns to swim out to sea to forage for food while the other keeps watch over them, however in the past week the chicks have started to huddle together in a crèche.  This is when the chicks group together in a small area while both parents leave them alone to go out and gather food. On this side of the island we currently have one crèche on the path in front of the hut and another in front of the boatshed. There are typically a few adults in the crèche that seem to be keeping an eye on them and do their best to fend off the Skuas (the chicks’ predators) but there is still the odd casualty which has been quite traumatic to see.

The little chicks are uber curious though and one little fella in particular regularly snoozes on the ramp leading up to the hut. We’ve even taken to closing the door when there aren’t people around as he seems pretty intent on coming inside to explore!

In the past few weeks the two resident leopard seals have also been putting on a show, patrolling the shore where the gentoos jump out the water at the end of the day.  They also like to play and show off around the zodiacs which whizz in and out of Goudier Island throughout the day.  I hold my breath every time I see one as I’m convinced it’s going to catch one of the gentoos, but the penguins are pretty speedy little swimmers and I’ve only actually seen one penguin being caught and thrashed around. For some reason, having paid much closer attention to the chicks of late, it wasn’t quite so traumatic as I thought until Rick pointed out that that would be another orphaned chick – argh!  Anyone who knows me well will realise I was not a happy camper!  Moving swiftly on, the two Snowy Sheathbill chicks from the nest under the boatshed have now hatched and the tiny chicks can be spotted scurrying around under the boatshed steps and the gentoo nests. The gentoo chicks aren’t quite sure what to make of them but copy their parents and hiss at them to shoo them out the way.  Unlike their parents Sheathbill chicks are small, brown and fluffy and I think they look a bit like quails. They’re much cuter than I expected too!  No sign of any more Sheathbill chicks for now but we expect chicks in the nest at the front door of the hut to arrive any day now.

Well that’s all my news for now but will be in touch again soon!