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ABOARD
THE DISCOVERY, Antarctica
Capt. Derrick Kemp watched from the bridge of the Discovery
as the cruise ship backed from the harbor in Argentina
at the tip of South America and turned toward Antarctica.
"So, the adventure begins," Kemp said to a
small group of onlookers.
It was 10:30 p.m., the daylight just beginning to dim,
when the ship left Ushuaia (pronounced ooo-swi-uh), the
southernmost city in the world. Some five hours later,
we got our first taste of the captain's prediction.
The lamp between the beds in my cabin slid off the nightstand
and two bottles of water flew from the dresser. The door
swung open on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and
the contents dumped into the sink. A cacophony of similar
crashes came from the adjoining staterooms as a storm
beat against the windows.
I fumbled in the dark, belatedly, for my seasickness
patch.
The ship was still rolling when a few brave passengers
showed up for breakfast that morning. Wobbling through
the buffet line, I took my hand off the tray to grab a
croissant and everything went airborne. Coffee, juice,
two eggs over-easy oozed amid the smashed china. The patch
did its job.
Welcome to Drake Passage, which runs 400 miles from Cape
Horn to the Antarctic Peninsula and is reputed to be navigation's
nastiest stretch of open ocean. The passage is part of
the Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica, its waters
whipped by winds that swirl around the continent.
"There is no land mass to block the wind, so it's
like a whirlwind going round and round," Kemp explained
later. "We had winds up to 50 knots and swells up
to 25 feet that night. That's gale to strong gale; 8 to
10 on the Beaufort wind scale - 11 is catastrophic."
If the devil lived in the ocean, hell would be Drake
Passage.
But the weather changes by the hour in Antarctica. By
afternoon, blue skies shone over deeper blue seas. We
spent the next few days visiting penguin rookeries ashore
or sightseeing from the ship's decks, watching the passing
parade of icebergs in fantastical forms. Like gliding
through a Dali landscape.
Even the captain was impressed, coming out from his berth
on the bridge to snap a photo or two. "I promised
you a show, didn't I?" he said.
With glistening glaciers hanging from rugged mountains
and floating "bergy bits" that glow Windex blue
as if they're illuminated from within, Antarctica is an
otherworldly place, like visiting some frozen outpost
of the solar system. Greenery is limited to patches of
moss on dark pebble beaches.
But it is not lifeless. Humpback whales break the surface
of the water, seals bask like furry sausages on the moving
icebergs and seabirds swoop in the wake of the ship. I
watched a black-browed albatross soar and circle for more
than an hour without flapping its wings once, a model
of aerodynamic efficiency.
Inhospitable in winter, Antarctica warms up during its
summer, from December through March, when the sun sometimes
shines around the clock. The temperature reached 68 degrees
while I was there in January; back home it was winter
and single digits. The ship's two outdoor hot tubs were
full, including one guy in a thong who was old enough
to know better.
Peter Carey, the research scientist who led the lecture
series and offshore excursions on the Discovery, has been
to Antarctica 53 times on five ships and understands why
it is growing as a tourist destination, drawing some 20,000
visitors this season.
"It's so different than any other place on the planet,"
he said. "It just knocks peoples' socks off."
"Set a course for adventure"
For centuries, explorers from Sir Francis Drake to Sir
Ernest Shackleton have been drawn to the world's coldest,
windiest continent. Shackleton arrived in 1914 aboard
the Endurance, which was crushed by ice, forcing him and
his men into a grueling land-and-sea odyssey worthy of
Ulysses.
I arrived on the Love Boat.
The Discovery was known as the Island Princess when it
was one of two ships used as settings for the venerable
ABC series about romance on the high seas. Gerry Herrod,
a British entrepreneur, wasn't looking for love, just
a profit, when he bought the Princess in 2001.
Herrod, who had owned four cruise ships, planned to "flip"
the Island Princess in a quick sale. But the boat was
delivered to him in Malta on Sept. 11, the day a terrorist
act on the other side of the Atlantic flattened the tourism
market.
"I lost $5 million that day," said Herrod,
who was aboard the Discovery during its stop in Ushuaia.
"I couldn't sell it. I had to get back into the cruise
business. We spent twice as much on the ship as we paid
for it - about $30 million" in renovations.
"We did the whole ship - new decks, new cabins,"
he added.
Today, the renovated Discovery holds 650 passengers,
but prefers to sail with about 500 to simplify shore excursions
in the 12-passenger inflatable Zodiacs. Cabins are comfy
and come in various configurations. There's a small casino
(that was largely empty), a theater lounge for daily lectures
and nightly live shows, and two pools, one under a retractable
roof that was innovative when the ship was built in 1971.
The menu onboard was varied, the offerings plentiful.
As a gentleman behind me in the buffet line at lunch said:
"The food is good, not memorable. Better than I get
at home." The Filipino crew delivered impeccable
dining and housekeeping service with a smile.
The cabin brochure rates for the 13-night Antarctic Peninsula
exploration range from $3,595 to $5,295 per person, based
on double occupancy. That includes three nights in a first-class
hotel in Buenos Aires, wines with dinner during the cruise
and a complimentary parka that is bright red so the crew
can keep an eye on you during shore excursions. The cruise
line also can arrange air fares for about $645 round-trip
from most American cities.
Herrod noted that the Discovery, which he plans to sell
later this year, is modest in size and amenities when
compared to some of the mega-ships cruising Antarctica
these days.
"We try to make it more personal; we don't have
all the gadgets," he said. "Our crew gets to
know the passengers; they become very friendly. You can't
get to know the passengers when there's 3,500 of them.
"The big ships are all right if you're 20 and want
to gamble and dance all night. Our clients are older,
more inquisitive. They want to see interesting places,
not sit in casinos."
Suffering like Shackleton
There are no cities in Antarctica, only research stations
maintained by various nations. No country owns Antartica,
but seven nations claim slices of the continent. The research
scientists used to jealously guard the remote continent,
viewing tourists as amusing, but messy. Kind of like the
penguins.
Lars-Eric Linblad began taking tourists to Antarctica
on the Linblad Explorer in 1969, establishing a model
that is still followed for visiting the fragile ecosystem
without trampling it. By 1994, the number of tourists
outnumbered scientists, and those numbers have been growing
since.
Carey, the research scientist on the Discovery, said
the 32 cruise ships slated to visit this tourist season
will help spread knowledge about the continent without
doing it great harm. "The impact still is very slight,"
he said. "Everybody is briefed about not stepping
on the moss and not harassing the penguins."
There are three kinds of cruise ships arriving:
Small ships with 100 or so passengers who go on a dozen
or more shore visits.
The Discovery and the upscale Marco Polo, which bring
about 500 passengers each and offer two or three shore
trips.
The large lines with thousands of passengers that offer
no shore excursions.
The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators
(www.iaato.org) includes 69 outfitters who offer Antarctica
expeditions. The group has established restrictions for
tourist visits, including no more than 100 ashore at a
site at one time.
Carey said it used to be that most visitors to Antarctica
were wealthy older folks with time on their hands. That
still would describe many of those aboard the Discovery.
"But it's getting younger," Carey said. "And
it's no longer the hard-core nature buffs who spend 18
hours out on deck watching birds.
"It's a destination that people see as safer in
these times, and they don't have to suffer like Shackleton
to see it."
Checked out by a penguin
Our first chance to go ashore was aborted - by another
of Antarctica's awesome displays of nature's force.
The Discovery sat in Hope Bay, and from its deck I could
see the gray hillsides along the shore, with thousands
of black-and-white specks standing amid islands of pink.
The specks were Adelie penguins - 100,000 nesting pairs
with two chicks each. The pink was guano - penguin poop.
As the first Zodiac was being loaded, I awaited my turn
on a leather chair in the ship's library, the large windows
looking out on a glacier that hung to the water's edge
on the side of the bay opposite the penguin colony. Suddenly,
the front of the ice broke free; a chunk the length of
a football field plummeted with a thunderous roar into
the water. The resulting wave rocked the cruise ship.
The Zodiac passengers had reached shore and unloaded
when the wave hit, lifting the empty boat and depositing
it on the beach. Captain Kemp, watching from the bridge
wing, ordered the crew to get everybody back onboard.
Carey came on the ship's speakers and said: "Freshly
calved ice is filling Hope Bay. It's very important that
we be on the other side of that tongue of ice."
As we sped out of Hope Bay, I looked back and saw that
the spot where the ship sat was now a solid pack of ice.
Carey said of the experience: "That was the biggest
calving event I've seen in Antarctica. It was certainly
several apartment buildings' worth. The penguins immediately
turned and scampered uphill. The issue was that we didn't
want to be stuck on the inside of the bay. The other concern
was getting the Zodiac back to the ship."
We later visited a gentoo penguin colony at Paradise
Harbor near the Chilean research station, and chinstrap
penguins on the rocky outcroppings of Half Moon Island.
The first site also featured a young female elephant seal
dozing near the water, while the second had three Antarctic
fur seals.
The seals barely stirred to see what was up, but the
penguins provided enough material for a sitcom.
The penguins build their nests of gathered rocks, and
they routinely steal stones from their neighbor's pile.
One penguin would be bent over snatching a rock from a
nearby nest while the one behind her would be returning
the favor. If a penguin decides to go for a swim, it has
to waddle among the maze of nests. The birds are territorial
and nip anything they can reach without getting up. The
meandering penguin faces a gauntlet of sharp beaks. The
fluffy gray chicks have beer bellies that sag to their
feet.
Penguins, by the way, are found only in the Southern
Hemisphere, while polar bears inhabit only the North.
Seems like the South won this one.
While they squawked among themselves, the penguins seemed
uninterested in the strangers in red parkas who stooped,
knelt, bent and stretched to get yet another photo angle.
Carey had instructed us in Penguin 101 that the birds
have the right of way when they go for a walk.
"The beauty of Antarctica is, if you stay in one
place, the wildlife will come to you," he said. "It's
a wonderful thing to have a penguin come up and check
you out."
P.S. - The Drake Passage was a lamb on the way back.
Reporter Tom Uhlenbrock
E-mail: tuhlenbrock@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8268
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