Stromness 18/1/2012 afternoon landing

We stepped over blubber slugs in the tussock grass at Fortuna Bay

Overwhelmed by the morning’s activities, we let off steam that afternoon with a historic, two-hour hike to Stromness whaling station, following the path that Shackleton took almost 100 years earlier to conclude his epic self-rescue from his ice-crushed ship in the Weddell Sea to South Georgia. Landing at Fortuna Bay, we stepped over fur seals, and held our noses as we passed colossal elephant seals, or ‘blubber slugs’ as they’re affectionately referred to down here.

The glaciated peaks that Shackleton contended with

The day was hot and the cloudless sky gave clear views of the glaciated peaks, immense ice-fields and tooth-like ranges that Shackleton would have contended with. After sipping water and sunbathing by motionless tarns at the top of the saddle, we descended the waterfall, through which Shackleton’s party lowered themselves; sadly this feature was the also the site of a fatality earlier this year, where a tourist slipped and died on January 3^rd - with the near-vertical cliffs and loose scree here, a moment’s lapse in concentration could easily incite a fall.

Steep gorges and plummeting waterfalls on Shackleton's walk to Stromness

Descending the waterfall, as Stromness came into focus, we tried to imagine the elation that Shackleton would have felt as he neared his first taste of civilisation in over a year and a half of living on the ice. Stromness was closed in 1961 and, today, the rusting machinery and danger of asbestos mean that the whaling station is out of bounds; except to the hundreds of fur seals and reindeer that patrol the rusting buildings.

Blubber slugs at the rusting remains of Stromness


This blog-post forms part of a series of adventures experienced on-board the M/S Expedition in January 2012, whilst on an Antarctic Cruise - The Spirit of Shackleton - courtesy of Gadventures

At Sea: 15-17/1/2012

…which it didn’t. But luckily, I had found my sea-legs and could start to enter into the true spirit of Shackleton, experiencing the reality of an Antarctic expedition as the ship pitched and swayed across the Scotia Sea; feeling my mattress slide off my bed and back; seeing my books rush off the shelves and crash on the floor; clinging to the taps as I skidded in the shower; hearing the glasses behind the bar tinkle and crash; wincing as unfortunate passengers slipped on the deck; and watching the waiters counter-balance their trays of crockery as the floor of the dining room listed to port, then starboard, then port and back again.

Gadventure lectures in the Discovery Lounge

Days at sea on-board the M/S Expedition follow a full program of lectures, meals, socialising and whale watching: if weren’t riding out the swell in the lounge area, we were attending penguin, seal, whale, environmental and history lectures, delivered by Gadventures team of specialists; watching albatrosses and petrels hover above the surf at our stern; gorging ourselves in the dining room; spotting dolphins and seals as they lurched above the choppy waters around the ship; or looking out for the blow of fin whales and humpbacks: one morning, the blows went up right beside my breakfast table, as I was busy buttering my second piece of toast. Breeching followed the blows and we identified a pod of fin whales as they lurched out of the water to the ship’s bow. The show concluded with a spectacular dive as one whale displayed its magnificent tails as it made a slow, controlled descent to the ocean depths.

Whale watching from the stern

In preparation for South Georgia, we attended a rigorous environmental briefing, which included rucksack and Velcro vacuuming, as well as boot scrubbing and disinfecting: with strict environmental procedures in place, every effort is made to avoid introducing new species to the island, and so traces of plants and seeds had to be sucked off our clothes and bags, and soils and animal traces were washed away.

Sunny Stanley - Sunday 15th Jan

A few days into our Antarctic cruise, it seemed odd to see classic English phone-booths and red letter boxes as we walked ashore at Stanley this morning. Before exploring the town, we rambled to Gypsy Cove and clambered over the dunes – avoiding the land mines – to find a group of pink-faced magellanic penguins and a lone king penguin waddling around in the silicon-like sand and surfing the shore break. The king had apparently come ashore to malt – a rather uncomfortable time for a penguin, when its sheds its worn-out coat for an entire new plumage on an annual basis.

White sands and megellanic penguins at Gypsy Cove

Stanley itself is a peaceful town of colourful, corrugated iron houses and welcoming inhabitants - known as ‘kelpers’ - who are keen to chat about the history and daily life of their island. Stanley has roads but no traffic lights and no native trees. The gardens here are dressed in colourful flowers and organic vegetable patches burst with green leaves; “we grow these out of necessity – we need to eat,” one elderly resident informed me; “gardening in Stanley is not just for fun!”. After we'd hiked across the island, perused the gift shops and sunk a few beers in The Globe, the Gadventures team shuttled us back to the ship to continue our Antarctic cruise.

Stanley's colourful houses

Beers at the Globe in Stanley

Now back onboard the M/S Expedition, we enter the next chapter of our Spirit of Shackleton adventure and face two days at sea, on our voyage southwards to South Georgia. Sea-sickness tablets in our stomachs and sick-buckets on standby, we’re all hoping that the Antarctic weather will stay calm for the crossing…

This blog-post forms part of a series of adventures experienced on-board the M/S Expedition in January 2012, whilst on an Antarctic Cruise - The Spirit of Shackleton - courtesy of Gadventures

West Point Island

West Point Island, to the north of New Island, was the Spirit of Shackleton's afternoon anchorage. Disembarking the M/S Expedition, we walked under a hot sun across sheep-nibbled fields and clambered through jungle-like tussock grasses to Devil’s Nose, to spy on nesting albatrosses and rockhopper penguins, which lay centimetres from the concealed pathway.

Nesting albatross' at West Point Island

After staying long enough to observe them without disturbing their daily nesting and feeding schedule, we made for the home of West Point’s owners - Lilly and Roddy Napier - where we swung open the white picket gate, wandered through their sweet smelling cottage garden and were welcomed into their home where we were greeted by a table piled high with coffee cake, Victoria sponge, ginger loaf, raspberry macaroons, lemon tarts, cheese scones, jam puffs, chocolate brownies, vanilla biscuits, cinnamon cookies, huge urns of hot tea and a jumble of bone-china tea cups and saucers. We each indulged in platefuls of cake and biscuits whilst we lounged in their beautiful garden and soaked up the Antarctic rays.

Feeding time on West Point Island

Lupins in the Napier's 'English cottage garden'

New Island - Sat 14th

New Island

Penguins! Our first landing was on New Island; one of the Falkland’s smaller chunks of quartzite rock. The archipelago’s most westerly inhabited island, New Island lies to the far east of West Falkland and is home to unique wildlife and an astounding rookery of rockhopper Penguins, black-browed albatrosses and Antarctic Shags.

Rockhoppers at New Island: First landing on Spiritr of Shackleton  Antarctic cruise

Stepping off the M/S Expedition for the first time, we travelled to the shore via Zodiac, and made a wet landing alongside a rusting wreck, guarded by rooks. We ambled across to the windward side of New Island, stopping where the cliffs gave way to a rocky amphitheatre, populated by hundreds of rockhoppers. The squat little penguins glowered as we approached, fixing us with their fierce red eyes – if it wasn’t for their ridiculous, yellow spikey hair-dos and hilarious two-footed hops up and down the rock-face, they would have seemed almost menacing. The rockhoppers’ fluffy grey chicks squawked loudly in their pebbly nests and, at just 5 weeks old, they were close in height to their parents but their fuzzy coats and downy wings bore little resemblance to the white torsos and black wings that characterise the mature rockhoppers.

Chilled-out Chick: New Island 

Sharing the same cliff-face were one the Antarctic’s biggest birds; the black-browed albatross have a wingspan of around 2.5 metres, which they enjoyed displaying as they made a big show of flying over our heads and crash-landing by their nests. Alongside the rockhoppers and albatrosses were a few hundred shags, characterised by their electric-blue eyeliner and golden-yellow face markings. But as we watched the shags nibble their young in conical nests, the penguins hop and squabble along the cliff face and the albatrosses swoop and soar above them, a menacing and uninvited guest lurked on the fringe of the rookery; bloody-faced and beady-eyes, the skua is a keen enemy of nesting birds. Active predators of eggs and chicks, these dirty-golden slayers have frequently capture penguin chicks, despite weighing in around 5 times less.

Albatross' nest alongside rockhoppers and shags at New Island

This blog-post forms part of a series of adventures experienced on-board the M/S Expedition in January 2012, whilst on an Antarctic Cruise - The Spirit of Shackleton - courtesy of Gadventures

A bumpy ride

The M/S Expedition disembarked Ushuaia at 6pm yesterday (Thursday 12^th), with just over 100 passengers and 50-odd staff members. Destined for The Falkland Islands, we’ve skirted the eastern end of the Drake Passage and are now headed north-east. Scheduled to arrive in the Falkland Islands tomorrow morning (Friday 13^th), we’ve been briefed on Falkland history and birdlife, as well as how to dress ourselves in the mud-room and board our boat-to-shore vessels, or ‘Zodiacs'.

M/S Expedition departs Ushuaia for the Spirit of Shackleton  Antarctic cruise

Followed by albatross at our stern, dolphins were spotted this morning and the bird-watchers amongst us have been on-board for much of the day, peering through binoculars and extra-long zoom lenses. But for many, - myself included - the rough seas have been too much today and several hours have been spent watching the horizon soar and plummet through the port-holes of our cabins. Anti-nausea tablets are slowly taking a hold of the situation now and we’re beginning to find our sea legs but we’re all welcoming reconnecting with terra-firma tomorrow…

Safety onboard the M/S Expedition


This blog-post forms part of a series of adventures experienced on-board the M/S Expedition in January 2012, whilst on an Antarctic Cruise - The Spirit of Shackleton - courtesy of Gadventures

Arrival in Ushuaia

Day one of the Spirit of Shackleton Antarctic cruise with Gadventures: Landing in Ushuaia was remarkable. Three and a half hours after leaving Buenos Aires, we descended over the lakes and bogs of the Tierra del Fuego National Park: a wilderness reserve backed by immense mountains that look as if they’ve been hacked and torn at with a pair of scissors. Here, plateaued glaciers lick towards the valley floors and snow-filled basins contrast the rough-edged silhouette of the Andes mountains as they conclude their epic journey along South America’s western coastline and dissolve into the Beagle Channel.

The jagged silhouette of the Andes form the backdrop to Ushuaia

On arrival at tiny Ushuaia airport, customs consisted of a quick rifle through my rucksack and then it was a thirty peso, ten minute taxi ride to the centre of Ushuaia. With the airport to the west and the prison building of this former penal colony to the east, the most southerly city in the world sprawls along the Beagle Channel. As part and parcel of the  Spirit of Shackleton Antarctic cruise, Gadventures had booked me into the Cilene Del Faro spa hotel and my suite had an uninterrupted view of the harbour through room-length windows; I watched the ice-breakers and cruise-ships depart for - and return from - their Antarctic voyages, and waited in anticipation to catch my first glimpse of the M/S Expedition: my home for the next 3 weeks. It was early evening by the time I made it out onto St Martin - Ushuaia's main street-  for dinner at an Argentinian restaurant, and the evening was well under-way by the time I made it down the harbour to join the groups of tourists who amassed around the harbour, but by the time I made my way to bed, the sun was still hovering above the horizon.

First glimpse of Gadventures Antarctic cruise ship: The M/S Expedition

Lifetime imprisonment
On my first night at the end of the world, the sun finally set at 11pm and my plans to lie-in the following morning were interrupted by a 5:30 sunrise. No problem though, the early start gave me plenty of time to peruse the shops and cafes of St Martin high-street before visiting the prison - turned - museum and art gallery; this unique attraction houses masses of artefacts, with separate galleries dedicated to a history of Ushuaia, Antarctic exploration, the prison itself, contemporary artworks and penguin exhibits, with elements of each showcased in the original cells. One wing of the prison has been left in its original form, where you can shut yourself in a cell and imagine the days spent here by some of Argentina’s most notorious criminals and political prisoners – chilling stuff!

Former cell-life at Ushuaia museum

This blog-post forms part of a series of adventures experienced on-board the M/S Expedition in January 2012, whilst on an Antarctic Cruise - The Spirit of Shackleton - courtesy of Gadventures