Antarctica, Day 4 at Sea: Brown Bluff and Hope Bay

Morning Light

The next day, Omaha felt much better, and we agreed to go together out to the Brown Bluff excursion. (They called them “expeditions” but I refuse to go with that. An expedition is a voyage taken in exploration, scientific discovery, or war. An excursion is a short journey taken for pleasure or education. As occasionally unpleasant and even dangerous some of the excursions were, they weren’t expeditions by any measure.)

I was still getting up far earlier than she was, but that allowed me to go up one flight of stairs and walk the length of the ship to the cafe in Six Aft (yes, they really referred to the large installations like the lounges, restaurant, and cafe that way), where I had what was already becoming custom: two tall glasses of cold water (a half liter, total), and then a latte.

The ship was still in motion, but the day was already beautiful, if hovering at 1℃, but that was still nice enough to sit outside under the space heaters in the awnings and enjoy my coffee and read. I was not getting up before dawn; February 1st is late summer in Antarctica and sunrise happens around 4:45am. I’m not getting up that early.

The day fully “started” around 8am, when Juan, the Excursion Leader, did a public announcement that’s loud even in the cabins that the ship was steaming toward Brown Bluff and that the weather was nice enough we’d be making an excursion to the shore. I checked on Omaha and she was up, so we went to the smorgasbord breakfast where I got what was going to be my habit: a small bit of scrambled eggs, a small bowl of unsweetened whole yogurt with fruit, and a mound of roasted fresh vegetables.

The excursion crew allocates five Zodiacs for excursions, plus two more for rescue if it’s needed. The Zodiacs are stacked in the center of deck nine, with four cranes to load and unload them down the side of the boat. Deck nine outdoors is closed to passengers while the loading is going on, obviously.

Five zodiacs can move about 40 people, so the excursion groups are broken into six color codes, which rotate so that your group doesn’t have to be the “crack of dawn” group every day. This day, our color code, blue, was last, so Omaha and I had plenty of time to get our cold weather gear, parkas, beanies, and life preservers put together.

Boarding Process

We’re loaded into the Zodiacs through a massive swinging hatchway in the side of the boat on Deck 2. When we came on board, we were each issued a shipboard ID card with both a RFID chip and a bar code. The card isn’t actually used that much; mostly just to let us into the room and to get on and off the ship. We have to show the ID when we board the Zodiac, and again when we come back, just to make sure they have everyone. How you lose someone in a bright yellow parka and black pants against all that icy desolation is beyond me.

Like Deception Island, Brown Bluff is a volcano. Unlike Deception Island it hasn’t erupted within human memory and the geologists are sure it’s quite extinct. The day remained bright and sunny as we boarded the Zodiac and rode the ten-minute boat ride to the shore.

Melted Rock

A route had been laid for us through the penguin colony, a series of narrow poles about a meter high, which we were to walk along no more than a two meters from the path they described. Omaha and I walked the length of it, stopping to talk to the team excursionary geologist, who has a favorite rock in the whole world. This rock. It was ejected by one volcanic eruption tens of thousands of years ago, and then a second lava flow went past it, giving it this melted appearance. I figure if one must have a favorite rock, that one’s a good choice.

We discovered one thing: penguins stink. Holy mother of eldritch gods, do they stink. The smell is overwhelming, sun-baked bird shit derived completely from sea krill. In some of the photos, you can see streaks of pink on their white chests and bellies, and that’s entirely because they will, when they get tired, just flop down onto the ground, bird shit or not, and lie there for a break.

As we walked along, one of the guides pointed out this penguin mother and her chick, which looks adorable, but there’s a tragedy in this image. That other egg is dead. Given that it’s undamaged, the guide said it probably froze to death while the mother was out hunting for enough food to keep herself alive. That apparently happens a lot.

Tragic Chick

The penguin smell got bad enough that Omaha started to feel ill again. Fortunately, the wind was picking up and blowing in from the northeast, so when we walked back to the Zodiac landing zone it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, the freshening wind also moved icebergs, and the Pursuit had to move out of their way, so the hatch had to be closed and no Zodiacs were available to take us off. We waited half an hour before we were able to get a ride back to the ship.

Lunch was delightful, a buffet of mostly Indian dishes. Omaha and I found seating with another couple, older than we, who were spending most of their retirement just cruising around the world.

While we lunched, the Pursuit moved further south and west, to a new location about 30 kilometers away: Hope Bay. That excursion was a Zodiac tour: no getting off onto the land, just an hour-long run around to various locations while the driver and guide told stories of harrowing 19th and early 20th century expeditions, as well as descriptions of glaciers and ice, and how icebergs calved off as the glacier reached the edge of the land and broke apart under the force of gravity.

Omaha and I had dinner than night in the lounge, where there is a sushi bar. The sushi chef said, and I don’t know how sincere he was, that I was clearly a man who understood sushi since I didn’t use the soy sauce and I knew to order tomago. I was probably just being flattered. The sushi had been good enough, fresh enough, it hadn’t needed anything more, and I told him so.