Our final day at Bransfield House was predictably a cleaning day! We de-cluttered all the shelves, cleaned the kitchen and scrubbed out the entire base. We made excellent progress but our plan to enjoy a final relaxing afternoon at Lockroy was thwarted when a funny looking ship sailed into the bay. It turned out to be the Argentinian navy patrol ship wanting to make a visit. Excellent timing! About 30 of the crew came ashore in all their military gear. Of course we’ve had naval visitors before but it’s always a funny sight seeing people in uniform rather than the multi-coloured expedition gear we see most days. With only Laura speaking Spanish, communication was somewhat limited but they were a nice bunch who seemed to have a good time and it was a nice way to fill our final afternoon.
Climbing the weather tower
After their departure we finished our tasks, had dinner and enjoyed one final walk around the island. As if in honour of our departure, we spotted both visiting Adelie and Chinstrap penguins among the gentoo colonies which was also a nice surprise. Neither of them were being made particularly welcome by their gentoo neighbours but giving as good as they got! Nikki and I also decided that given it was our last opportunity, we should probably climb the weather tower for an aerial view over the island. The weather tower was used when the base was operational but is now generally only used for taking in the scenery. I’d never really felt the urge to climb it all summer as it looks a bit scary and we have fantastic views anyway, but not wishing to return home with any regrets I decided to commit. The weather tower is in front of the main house and essentially looks like an electricity pylon with a narrow metal ladder running up one side. At a guess I would say it ascends approximately 15m to a viewing platform. You may not think that sounds very scary, but when the base of the tower is already on a large rocky surface on the highest point on the island, everything beneath you becomes very small very fast! About half way up I had a small sense of humour failure and questioned the wisdom of climbing any further, but I gave myself a good talking to and eventually reached the top. The view was stunning as I could see around the entire island and way out into the bay but typically it was at that point that my camera battery died! Fortunately Nikki managed to get some shots from the ground though so my efforts certainly weren’t in vain!
Soon after I fell into bed at Bransfield House one final time, all tucked up in my two sleeping bags on top of my furry sheepskin throw. It was very strange to think this was my last night dropping off to sleep to the background noise of chirruping penguins and the little sheathbill chick cheeping away in the nest directly beneath my bunk, but after a busy day it didn’t taking me long.
On our last morning we were up at 6 as the Peregrine expedition team was still working on South Georgia time (GMT-2) and were keen to make an early start. It was still fairly dark when we awoke and when we looked out the windows we could see that it was a particularly low tide and we could see armies of little gentoos standing in packs ready to dive in and set off to feed for the day. In no time at all we were also good to go with all the bedding stacked up on one bunk, luggage piled high in the bunk room and ready to receive our final group of guests at 7am.
The visit passed quickly and they were a really nice group. Being a Peregrine Adventures group, there were a lot of Australians and Brits of varying ages so we were really looking forward to travelling home with them. During the course of the visit Rick dismantled the final communications aerials, placed the dog sledges back in the boatshed and the team very kindly took all of of our luggage out to the ship. The visit was finished by about 10am and the Expedition Leader Woody and John waited with us as we scrubbed out the bunk room, removed pictures and signs to be locked away for winter and lowered the union jack. It all felt a bit strange. I expected us to be running around and leaving in a huge rush but it was all unexpectedly calm. Our ship, the Akademik Sergey Vavilov, was anchored quite far out in the bay so it was quite a little way in the zodiac and I couldn’t resist snapping away taking photos as our island became smaller and smaller behind the wake of the boat.
Leaving Goudier Island
Once on board, we were shown to our cabins. Rick would share with Solan, a very nice Alaskan sea kayak guide that Rick knows from working up north in the Arctic and the three of us girls were shown to a lovely triple cabin with an en-suite bathroom on the 5th deck (just a hop, skip and a jump from the main observation lounge and bar – what a result!). We had very quick showers and were done just in time to see Port Lockroy disappear from view after the Captain heaved anchor and sailed us out of the bay. It’s only when we were out in the Neumeyer Channel that we were reminded just how tiny Port Lockroy actually is, dwarfed by the glaciers and mountain ranges which surround it.
After lunch we headed due north and cruised up the Neumeyer Channel sipping hot chocolate with Baileys out on the aft deck. It was a beautiful sunny day and within an hour, we’d seen a pod of three minke whales sleeping on the surface of the water, humpbacks gliding in and out of the sea showing off the underside of their huge tail flukes and penguins standing on the slope of a huge iceberg. It was all typical Kodak stuff and the penguins on the iceberg is the shot I’d been hoping for all summer (!) but once again, no camera! Still, it was amazing just to stand out on deck and take it all in. We’ve had an amazing summer watching the landscape change, observing the breeding success of the gentoos and noticing all the little things we may not had noticed had we been charging around on a ship, but it does have to be said that sometimes it was easy to forget there was a whole continent out there!
In the afternoon we visited Cuverville Island. This is a spot I visited last year on my holiday to Antarctica but that was much earlier in the year and by the end of the summer months with the snow and ice all gone, the landing site was almost unrecognisable to me. We made a beach landing by zodiac and the shore was covered in huge pale grey rocks. It was strange though as despite the beach being covered in penguins, it seemed that there was nowhere near as much guano around the place as Goudier Island! We had a very peaceful walk along the shore and as we strolled along, we saw several large groups of penguins swimming home from sea, porpoising in and out of the water at great speed before shooting out onto the beach. It was an extremely peaceful setting, particularly when you throw in a small group of kayakers paddling past in their multi-coloured boats, with huge icebergs as a backdrop.
In the evening we sailed back south through a narrow channel, and I have to confess at this point I have no idea where we were (!) but it was stunning. Not quite so narrow as the Lemaire but there were steep mountains protruding from the sea either side of us and the channel itself was filled with brash ice, bergy bits and small icebergs. To top it off, it was a totally still evening so the sea became like a mirror image of the mountains lining our path.
Today, we made two continental landings and both were places we had visited on our way south with the National Geographic Endeavour in November, so we were keen to see how they had changed.
Our first landing was at Neko Harbour which isn’t actually far from Port Lockroy. From the landing point we could even see Mount Francais which is a mountain we also look onto from our little sun terrace at Lockroy! Neko has a very active glacier near the landing point and as soon as we arrived we had to trek straight away from the beach as glacial calving has been known to cause huge waves which could send zodiacs right up onto beach. This was (!) also the site of an Argentinian refuge hut which has been blown down and destroyed by a local storm two weeks ago. We had heard a lot about this mysterious occurrence over our past two weeks at Port Lockroy so we were keen to see it with our own eyes. When we got there all that was left of the small hut was wooden planks, bits of corrugated iron from the roof and the contents of hut which were strewn everywhere. The site of the hut was typically covered in penguins who are curious at the best of times. They couldn’t seem to resist pecking at all the interesting shapes and coloured objects scattered about and they made a racket padding across the old tin roof. We can only hope that this debris will be removed before the winter comes.
Trekking way above the Neko Harbour glaciers
After taking a few photos, we started the long hike up the side of the hill and soon realised just how unfit we had become over the course of the summer. We eventually made it to the top right above the glacier. There were constant rumblings but we only ever saw a couple of small calvings. Generally the amount of ice that calves never seems enough to match the angry roar of the glacier! At the top of the hill we saw another pod of Minke whales but they were swimming purposefully and soon disappeared from sight. After taking a few obligatory glacier photos, we very ungraciously slipped and slid all the way back down, landing on ours bums on more than a couple of occasions, much to one another’s bemusement! The landing was followed by a zodiac cruise past vast glacial caves with their steep walls towering maybe 60m above sea level.
Curious gentoos rummaging through the debris at Neko
This afternoon, we made our final landing at Almirante Brown, an old Argentinian base. The flag was flying but as is often the case, the base was unoccupied and it’s quite likely it’s occupants were probably on board the vessel that visited us at Lockroy a couple of days ago. We had a wander around the site though and took another long walk way above sea level to take in the view across the bay.
Almirante Brown has an interesting history. In 1984, the base was due to have a seasonal switchover of base personnel. The doctor on base at the time had not had an easy tour and was desperate to leave. He wasn’t told until the last minute however that there was no replacement for him and he would have to stay and overwinter. He was devastated and the only way he could think of being able to return home was to burn the base down! So no sooner had the supply ship set sail he torched the place. The irony was that the ship didn’t see and they had no comms equipment as it had been destroyed. It was a little while before they were rescued and in the mean time had to live in an even smaller building away from the main base area. Needless to say he was put behind bars and you can’t help but wonder whether he would have been happier sitting out his days at Almirante Brown after all!
Up close and personal with the glaciers of Skontorp Cove
Laura, Rick and I trekked to the top of the hill through surprisingly deep snow for this time of year. Some areas of rock were exposed and we had to scramble up over this to reach the highest point of the landing site. From here we had a magnificent view over the now restored base and aptly named, ‘Paradise Bay’.
The final landing was divided in two, the first half being a walk around the station and the second being a zodiac cruise. I have to say until that point it hadn’t really sunk in that we were leaving but I felt very sad when I looked around at all the little gentoos, wondering if and when I might see them again. The zodiac cruise was a nice way to finish the landing. We cruised around the glaciers of Paradise Bay and at one point cut the engine and sat in complete silence for 5 minutes in the zodiac taking in the noise of brash ice crackling on the water’s surface and the noise of the glacier with it’s near constant rumblings. Other zodiacs had a close encounter with two Minkes swimming around their zodiac which we unfortunately missed, but what we did see was a huge jellyfish swimming at the surface with it’s long tentacles gliding in the clear water below. It’s not something I ever thought I’d see and have never heard any other groups encounter them so that was also a very special sighting and a nice way to end our final landing.
