Half Moon Island, Antarctica - January 2008

Back in 2008 Sam and I headed down to Antarctica on a cruise, one of the stops on the trip was at the small Half Moon Island. Half Moon Island is located on the Antarctic Peninsula and is only about two kilometres long, it is home to an Argentinean navy base in summer called Teniente Camara station, we didn't actually go into the base on this visit though. As we had cruised out of Ushuaia at the bottom of South America we spent our time in Antarctica visiting Argentine and Chilean outposts on the wild continent, if you want to visit Australian and New Zealand bases you have to leave from our part of the world. The disadvantage of leaving from Australia or New Zealand is that its a lot longer journey across the Southern Ocean to the 'relatively' calmer waters around Antarctica, this means a lot more money and a lot more chance of getting pretty sea sick. We were lucky on our two day trip over the Drake Passage (or the Drake Shake as us hardcore polar explorers call it:) neither of us suffered from sea sickness.

The zodiacs running back and forth to Half Moon Island.

Teniente Camara station

We had a relatively calm day for our zodiac landing on Half Moon Island, on shore we were allowed to walk up and down the rocky beach in front of the base. The stroll along the beach was enlivened by a large colony of Chinstrap Penguins that call the island home. As is the norm in Antarctica you are not allowed to approach the penguins closely but that doesn't stop the inquisitive birds waddling up to us and checking us out. The thing that surprises you when you go ashore in Antarctica is the smell, with the penguins diet consisting of a lot of krill, a lot of the snow and rocks around the penguin colonies is stained red with krill that has been through the digestive system of the penguins, and boy does it smell.

A colony of Chinstrap Penguins call Half Moon Island home, the red stuff is krill that has been through the penguins digestive system.

That's our ship at anchor in Moon Bay, I did a good job with the horizon on this photo, hey!

We walked along the rocky beach taking a few photos, with our ship anchored out in Moon Bay it made for some nice pictures. Walking up the beach a bit we came to an old abandoned whale boat slowly decaying away on the shore, a reminder of older times when whaling was common in the area. One would hope that humanity has learnt some lessons over time and we can at least preserve this wonderful place without raping and pillaging it anymore, but I'm not so sure...

The old whaling boat.

It was an open top boat like this that Shackleton used on his dash to get help for his trapped men, in one of the greatest journeys off all the Antarctic explorers.

Eventually our time on shore was over and we jumped back on the zodiac for our quick trip back to the boat. Our ship housed around 400  punters so we had to take it in turns going ashore during the day so that we didn't over whelm the animals. Once back on board we would pass the time walking around the decks or gazing out the windows while the rest of the groups went ashore, we would get about 2 hours on shore at each stop. 

Yeah, more Chinstraps.

The Dirt.

Like I mentioned we cruised out of Ushuaia, which is at the very southern tip of Argentina. We cruised with a company called Discovery but they don't seem to be around anymore. If you're contemplating a trip to Antarctica and time isn't an issue then there is a company in Ushuaia that specialises in filling vacancies on ships heading down to Antarctica at the last minute. You could lob into Ushuaia and wait for a cut price fare to pop up when they need to fill a ship. Back in 2008 we paid less than $7000 each for a room with a window and that included a flight back up to Buenos Aries and accommodation at the Sheraton when we got there, not to bad I thought.

Back on the ship.

Sunset, Antarctica style, this was around midnight.