Selling everything and moving away, riots, penguins, broken cameras and the frozen continent
Last November I wrapped up everything on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia and left with two bags; a backpack full of camera equipment and a duffel bag packed for Antarctica, South America, Europe, buying a sailboat, sunshine and the foreseeable future. It was a one way ticket —I had two 6-week contracts in Antarctica lined up with a 7-week break in the middle where I planned to meet Renée in Europe. The idea was to buy a boat somewhere in the Mediterranean (that’s a funny story that comes next —foreshadowing: we bought one, but not in a sunny place!) and then after the second Antarctic contract finished I’d return to Europe, meet Renée, jump on the boat and sail away (that’s also a funny story for later).
This is what happened in between leaving Salt Spring Island and arriving in Europe:
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With a bit of apprehension I flew into Santiago airport in Chile. The airport had been shutdown the week prior as a precaution because of the rioting and social movement that was upendeding the country. A million people were marching and protesting in the city outside the airport —and it wasn’t mellow.
Luckily, the transit went smoothly and I boarded another plane to Punta Arenas, the southernmost city on the actual mainland continent of South America. The town was partially marred by broken glass, boarded up windows, graffiti, and closed banks. I rendezvoused with the A21 team, then from there we flew even further south to Puerto Williams the southernmost town in the world where we posted up for a few days of crew training and waited for the ship to arrive —think drysuits, practice rolling zodiacs, etc.
Having just left Canadian winter, the Patagonian summer weather was hard to comprehend. Sun burns and snow storms within minutes of each other. My body clock was screwed up too. I left Canadian winter and 8-hours of daylight and arrived in southern Chilean summer with 18+ hours of daylight (not to mention dinners starting well my past Canadian bedtime). Safe to say, it took a few days to ‘settle.’
The Ocean Nova our trusty 73m ice class expedition vessel eventually arrived alongside after it’s long haul south from the Northern Hemisphere —it’s a chartered vessel, for the northern summer it’s used by other companies in the Arctic— and we spent a few days setting it up again for the season and saying hello to the ships crew we’d spent time with the previous season. After that, all that was left was a quick sail over to Ushuaia, Argentina to pick up our first guests of the season. Then it was off south into the Drake Passage to begin the Antarctic tourism season.
The Drake Passage is one of those places that receives a lot of hype. It’s infamously nicknamed the “Drake Lake or the Drake Shake.” In one scenario it is as calm as placid mercury, in the other, the seas can be 10m high swells whipped by the fierce winds of the southern ocean. In this scenario guests struggle to sort out just where to vomit, and instead tend to vomit just about everywhere.
I did a very poor job of checking the crew schedule before arriving and had no idea I had to cross it at all given the prior season I’d only done the fly-in cruises. Unwittingly, I’d signed up to cross it five times. A total of 10-days in a ship without stabilizers that rolls and yaws like a drunken street performer on a unicycle (I’d spend six more days in the same sea on the next contract heading out to South Georgia).
After the three “there'-and-back” trips from South America to Antarctica, the ship would remain in the Antarctic Peninsula for 45-days. During this endurance expedition phase guests, fresh staff and food would be flown in to King George Island, in the Shetland Islands, to a gravel runway maintained by the Chilean Military at base Frei. Everything and everyone is then walked down to the water and shuttled out to the ship in inflatable zodiacs.
Thankfully we were lucky in our crossings, the swell never got past 3-4m and things remained mostly in passengers stomachs.
One fun thing did happen to me though. For reasons unknown for the first 18-days onboard I never got more than 1-3 hours of sleep a night. It made driving zodiacs through ice and swell a whole lot more exciting.
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We’ll save some of the insights —such as the historically low Antarctic snow fall during the winter season, the impacts of tourism, and the changing climate of the polar regions for ‘Part 2,’ the upcoming post from the Peninsula Region and South Georgia and leave this post as a glory reel of some photos from the first half of the season.
And to explain the title, I was lucky to partner with Panasonic Lumix Canada for this contract, bringing with me two of their flagship Lumix S1R cameras and a suite of lenses with me. Lucky, because I broke my camera in the first week and then started a comical warranty process from the ship, in Antarctica, via a terrible satellite link, and ended up buying a full new suite of Canon camera gear and Zeiss lenses to replace the Lumix kit I’d broken that had to get sent to Canada, and then on to France, but with some of it getting picked up in England after being ordered in Wales before I had to return via France for the second contract… but more on that later.
Here are some highlights, hope you enjoy.
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Cape Horn & Southern Ocean:
On one of our quick trips we managed to squeeze in the chance to land at Cape Horn, Chile. The weather rarely cooperates for a landing (the swell makes the beach landing impossible), and for scheduling reasons we had to get ashore and back to the ship before 7am. It’s a place that features heavily in the mythology of sailors —a place of tragedy, and hope. It was both incredible, and haunting to step foot ashore there and look out over the southern ocean —a grave for so many.
Click photos to enlarge, hover over for captions.
Smith Island
A special detour on one trip south was to divert our exit point from the Drake Passage towards Smith Island, instead of towards the Shetland Islands. About 60 nautical miles away from the nearest landing, it had been tantalizingly close for expedition leaders, but never a good call to go to with guests.
No tour ships had ever landed there, it is exposed to the whole southern oceans swell and wind, is often wrapped in fog etc. But with a rapidly expanding fleet of ships in the peninsula region, having landing sites in your back pocket that no one else has ever been to before, is a massive asset —so the occasional explorative mission can be justified.
And in this case, Pablo had bet Mariano —our crew boss, and the man with the most expeditions led to Antarctica ever— we’d get there first. And after six years of joking about it… suddenly there it was looming out of the sunset clouds.
We launched a crew only zodiac with the hopes of landing and zipped for 30-minutes towards the island as the ship slowly came closer guided by it’s front facing sonar navigating a track through uncharted waters.
We got on land, nearly sank the boat, got a photo of Pablo, and had a hell of an evening.
Click photos to enlarge, hover over for captions.
Antarctic Peninsula
The peninsula region is the area that sticks out of Antarctica curving up like a thumb towards South America, east of the Shetland Islands, and west of the Weddel Sea. It’s an area that sees the vast majority of Antarctic tourism as it provides a huge abundance of wildlife, dynamic geography and importantly, shelter for ships. All of our “fly-cruises” involved 3-4 days in the peninsula region, and one day in the Shetland Islands on the way back so we could be within strike distance of the runway in case the plane had to come in early, or conditions to return to the runway were difficult.