After two days spent crossing the Drake Passage from the southern tip of Argentina, one of the world’s roughest stretches of water, it’s not just the sight of land that provides relief – it’s the prospect of any calm water at all.
The presence of giant albatross and petrels has been a comfort and a reminder that you’re a long way from anywhere during the crossing. As we finally enter the English Strait in the South Shetland Islands, these elegant birds wheel away to other parts of their stormy domain.
The strait delivers, quite literally, cold comfort – along with one of the most extraordinary vistas left on this crowded, noisy, polluted earth.
After the tempest of the crossing, suddenly we’re in dead calm waters, the only sounds a slight breeze and the splash of minke whales. The quiet is haunting. At 10 in the evening, the sun is low on the horizon, piercing the grey clouds, silhouetting the rocky spires to the west and illuminating the ice-covered islands to the east with a fiery glow.
It’s pristine, untouched – an icy Eden, and so alien it feels like you’ve travelled through space rather than across an ocean.
But just wait till you catch your first glimpse of the Antarctic continent. Ice cliffs tower a hundred metres into the air, glaciers calve off massive icebergs with a deadly creaking and crashing, avalanches of snow and ice slide down steep slopes with a deafening roar, while leopard seals slither menacingly into the frigid, mercury-coloured water.
The light shifts from gold to blinding white to silver as the sun makes a restless 24-hour passage, its light bouncing from horizon to horizon, but never quite leaving darkness behind.
No matter how long you stare at it, you have the strong impression the bluer than blue ice just can’t be real. Scientists say it has something to do with air molecules trapped within being compressed by the weight of frozen water. But it looks more like someone has mounted laser nightclub lighting for the amusement of passing penguins.
It’s the ice planet Hoth, a beautiful, but hyper-intense dream. Whatever it is, it just doesn’t seem real. Besides, no description will ever prepare you adequately.
Since childhood, I’ve been reading accounts of early Antarctic exploration, tales of derring-do, sacrifice and incredible courage. I’ve spent hours poring over the fabulous monochrome images of Frank Hurley and Herbert Ponting, dreaming of one day visiting the immense, threatening landscape they wrote of.
But not one account fully prepared me for the scale of it.
Arriving by cruise ship is a good start. (More than 26,500 tourists arrived in Antarctica by ship during the 2011-12 season). Being able to then leave the protective steel shell of the ship to climb into a small kayak and paddle away solo into the cold silence of the calm, icy waters is frozen nirvana.
World Expeditions offers kayaking as part of its cruise packages to Antarctica on the MV Plancius.
The kayaks are lowered by hand from the ship and you access them from a zodiac. For the few hours you’re on the water (depending on weather conditions), you feel the freedom and vulnerability of being a very small soul navigating one of the last great wilderness areas left.
The water temperature can drop to about -2 degrees celsius (it doesn’t freeze at zero because it’s saline). As long as you’re in thermals and a wetsuit, the crisp weather shouldn’t bother you. Kayaking here is not significantly more dangerous than anywhere else; the main risk is hypothermia. In the unlikely event that you do roll over, a zodiac crew is on standby to haul you out of the water pronto.
Hiking will also get you away from the ship and into places where the quiescence can be overwhelming. There’s no noise except for the wind and the elements and the crazy squawking of penguins – a curious bunch of critters who will come right up and eye-ball you if you decide to sit still long enough.
You’ll see nature play out its brutal course as the predatory south polar skuas attack other birds and eat their eggs. Male penguins provide the more comic element in the circle of life given they build their nests pebble by pebble in order to impress the females. Much like the human world: he builds, she shrugs – so off he struggles to get another pebble. And on it goes . . .
After so many natural highs, it’s a cold hard shock when the developed world – and the harsh reality of international political conflict over this area – reasserts itself at the sight of a group of heavily equipped commandos from HMS Protector visiting the British base at Port Lockroy – where a post office was established some years ago, as part of an attempt to support a claim of sovereignty.
Protector is the Royal Navy’s Antarctic patrol ship (it began its life as a Norwegian icebreaker and polar research vessel) and the commandos were in the area doing cold weather training.
A cynic might suggest they were flexing a bit of muscle, too, seeing as the Argentinian Antarctic claim overlaps most of the British claim – not to mention that vexed long-running Falklands issue, which is rumbling again.
But it only takes a short trip in a zodiac into a field of Dali-esque icebergs, glinting like giant blue diamonds floating in the sea, to return you to the fantastic, surreal world of pure Antarctica – one which you feel you never want to leave.
The writer travelled as a guest of World Expeditions, Qantas and Aerolineas. Qantas flies to Santiago, from $2557 return. qantas.com or call 131313. Aerolineas flies non-stop to Buenos Aires, from $1780 return. Connections to Ushuaia are available. aerolineas.com or 02 9234 9000. World Expeditions operates a range of itineraries to Antarctica, including the 12-day Antarctica Peninsula Basecamp trip, from $US7300 (quad share). The World Expeditions 32-day Ross Sea Explorer with mountaineer Greg Mortimer operates from Invercargill in New Zealand to Ushuaia through the Ross Sea. It has a helicopter on board for wildlife and landscape viewing. From $US23,990 (quad share) worldexpeditions.com or call 1300 720 000.
For more information on Antarctica, see the British Antarctic Survey: antarctica.ac.uk For more images see the AFR iPad app.