Arctowski Station, King George Island, Antarctica - January 2008

This time last year on the blog I was bitching about how nothing had changed. I was referring to climate change and the bushfires that were burning around the country, however other things were about to change  in a big way! I also mentioned that I had little planned for this year, except for a trip up to the APY lands in northern South Australia... hmmm. Needless to say that trip was off and I spent a good chunk of the year only being allowed outside my front door for an hour a day to exercise.... this might sound like an exaggeration however by the end of our long lockdown I was ready to take my chances with the fucken' virus rather than live a life that consisted being locked inside for 23 hours a day. I'm thinking some of my fellow Melburnian readers might understand? 

This year hasn't started off great either. After a dash to cross the border on NYE (we were in the Australian Capital Territory when we found out we had 7 hours to get back into Victoria if we didn't want to quarantine for two weeks) we then spent the next two days trying to find a Covid testing site that we could get into... good times! That's all travel in the Covid age I suppose, flexibility and adaptability are the key. 

Anyway, let's hope that things settle down a bit sometime this year. As you may have guessed I've got bugger all firm plans locked in for this year. The tour company has still got my money for my APY lands walk, although really I can't see how I can venture that far from Victoria in case the borders shut down suddenly and I become a refugee (Dutton might send me to Manus!), so I think I'll have to leave that trip on the table for another year. Until a vaccine comes along and hopefully starts to settle things down a bit it looks like my trips will have to be either in Victoria or within half a days drive of the border... so I'll see everyone up in the High Country... or down The Prom.... or up in the Mallee...or over in the Grampians... actually things aren't that bad really! Happy New Year everyone:)

Adélie Penguin

Chinstrap Penguins

The name Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station doesn't exactly roll off the tongue however that's the official name of this outpost down on King George Island in Antarctica. Sam and I visited here on our cruise around the Antarctic Peninsula back in 2008, this spot being one of the half a dozen spots that we went ashore in Antarctica. King George Island is part of the Shetland Islands Group that is just off the tip of Antarctic Peninsula and this base is a fairly popular spot for ships to stop on their journey south from Ushuaia or spots further afield.

Heading ashore on the zodiac was an adventure in itself.

Arctowski Station

The shoreline features a lot of these rounded stones which makes walking slow.

Adélie Penguin. There was nothing stopping the penguins coming over to check us out.

It wasn't all penguins down here, this is an Antarctic Fur Seal I think.

I'm guessing that the ships like to stop here for a few reasons, firstly it's a reasonably safe place to bring a zodiac ashore, secondly there is a lot of wildlife close at hand and thirdly the Polish base is a pretty friendly spot - they even had a little gift shop! Our visit today was highly regulated affair though. Firstly we were split into groups on the ship and given a time slot, then when coming ashore we had to go through a boot wash down, we then had around an hour and a half on shore in a designated area to stop us getting too friendly with the wildlife, before finally returning to the ship and going through another wash down. 

Adélie Penguins on King George Island.

What the photos don't convey is the smell of this place. The penguins mostly eat krill which haven't got a pleasant smell after passing through a penguins digestive system. 

There were some big colonies watching us from the hills.

More Adélie Penguins.

Now I mentioned that we had a designated area to keep us from getting too friendly with the wildlife, however what you have to realise is that while the wildlife were safe from us there was nothing stopping the wildlife from coming over to investigate us. The penguins in particular were pretty curious and more than once they'd waddle up to us to check us out. With King George Island being home to populations of Adélie, Chinstrap and Gentoo Penguins there were plenty of penguins to go around today though! 

Yes, I know it's a bit of a self indulgent photo dump.

The red stain on their tummies and on the rocks is the krill.

More Adélie Penguins on King George Island.

Check out my PFD - yes, I'm a big unit.

King George Island, Antarctica.

The mother ship anchored in Arctowski Cove.

It's wasn't only wildlife here though, the rocky beach near the station also has various bleached whale bones scattered about left over from the old whalers, a poignant reminder that what looks like a fairly pristine place has long been altered by man. Heading back towards the zodiac after our allotted time we dropped in to check out the small shop that the station runs as well as a makeshift Virgin May shrine embedded in a rock outcrop, both fairly incongruous sights down here.

Leopard Seals waiting for a snack.

The penguins have got the seals scoped out now.

King George Island.

Here's something different - these guys are Gentoo Penguins...

... and these are Adélie's.

The beach near the station features a lot of whale bones... and some more Gentoo Penguins.

With Sam's retail therapy needs satisfied we jumped back on the zodiac and headed back to the ship. Antarctica was one of those spots where it was hard not to want to be outside on the deck checking out the views however when the ship was in motion the combination of very cold ambient temperatures and the wind meant that it was hard to stay out on the deck for long. So the good thing about the days when we were anchored was that it was generally a little more comfortable outside and this afternoon was one of those good times.

Gentoo Penguins.

Heading back to the zodiac. On a small ship like the one we were on overcrowding wasn't an issue.

There is a small shrine at the station...

... as well as a gift shop. Sam looks happy.

Waiting for the zodiac

Wherever you look down here the scenery is stunning.

We got very lucky with the benign conditions today.

The Dirt.

We cruised Antarctica with a company called Discovery and both the ship and the company don't seem to be around anymore. Arctowski Station is a fairly popular stop with tourists that venture down to Antarctica, there was even a couple of yachts anchored there when we went through.

Relevant Posts.

Base Antarctica Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, Antarctica, 2008.

Half Moon Island, Antarctica, 2008.

Arctowski Station on King George Island. Once back on the ship we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the scenery.

King George Island, Antarctica.

King George Island, Antarctica.

King George Island, Antarctica. 

When we were out of the wind the temperatures were not too bad, when the wind came up though it was bitingly cold.

Antarctica - January 2008

I need to apologise in advance - this post features a lot of photos.

Antarctica 

This little excursion had it's genesis in a traffic jam on the Pacific Highway at Coffs Harbour around 12 months earlier. Sitting in the summer holiday traffic going nowhere I was getting pretty jacked off with the  seething mass of sweaty humanity that is the east coast of Australia during the summer school holidays. As we slowly inched the Troopie south past the fast food vendors and used car lots on the outskirts of Coffs I had an epiphany...yes, next year we were going to get as far away from the summer school holiday crowds as possible. 

Arriving at Wollongong the next piece of the puzzle was solved when we checked into the Quest and I picked up a copy of their corporate mag to flick through while I watched the cricket on TV. Somewhat serendipitously the magazine featured a spread about Antarctica in it (I'm not quite sure why, as there aren't too many Quest Hotels down there?). Fuck it, I thought (I'm nothing if not eloquent!), we should go to Antarctica next summer. After managing to make it home Sam and I caught up with our long suffering and slightly startled travel agent, Ali (I don't think Antarctica and Patagonia were high rotation destinations for most punters in Frankston back in the day). To Ali's credit she took us seriously and after throwing around a few options we settled on a cruise out of Ushuaia at the very bottom of Argentina, in the Tierra del Fuego region. To ramp up the logistical degree of difficulty a bit we even decided on a whistle stop tour to the El Calafate region of Patagonia on the way.

Leaving El Calafate and heading for Ushuaia.

Ushuaia airport with the mountains of Tierra del Fuego in the distance.

We spent a night in a hotel on the side of the mountain above Ushuaia.

Looking down towards the Beagle Channel from our hotel.

Ushuaia is a bustling little city with lots to see and do.

I've loosely covered Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego before on my blog and I've even featured a few of the destinations in Antarctica where we went ashore. What I haven't done though was feature the cruising bit of the trip on the blog, and on any trip to Antarctica the cruising component of it is going to make up a large part of the holiday. So anyway, after making our way down most of the length of Argentina, from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, Sam and I found ourselves lugging our bags out onto the windswept wharf in Patagonia and boarding what would be our floating home for the next couple of weeks.

Our hotel was the one on the left on the mountain behind the city.

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego.

Things were pretty low key back in the day getting onto the ship at Ushuaia - after flashing our ticket at a bored looking security guard, we wandered up the jetty with our bags before climbing the gang plank onto the ship.

After spending a night and the next day in port we sailed out into the Beagle Channel after dinner on day two, our departure from Ushuaia delayed for a few hours as strong winds had kept us pinned to the wharf. Waking the next day we were well into the Drake Passage, a wild 1000 kilometre stretch of ocean between Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula that is sometimes known by mariners as the Drake Shake. Apart from it's reputation as a rough crossing the Drake Passage is also provides for the quickest way to get to Antarctica from the rest of the rest of the world, heading down from Australia or New Zealand will mean a lot more time getting acquainted with the Southern Ocean. The weather gods smiled on us on our two day voyage south on this trip though as we had fairly benign conditions to deal with thankfully.

The Drake Passage

We were extremely lucky with the weather on our crossing of the Drake Passage.

The ship was fairly old however it was still comfortable enough, we had our own ensuite as well as a porthole.

Lunch was enjoyed in this informal area, breakfast and dinner were in a formal dining room.

After two days crossing the the Drake Passage where the ship was pitching around a bit we awoke on the third day to an unusual stillness, looking out our porthole the sight of icebergs floating by confirmed that we had arrived into the relatively sheltered waters around the Antarctic Peninsula. Our days now were spent making our way up and down the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, either scenic cruising or stopping to visit remote outposts and scientific stations.

Now this is something we don't see out the window every day!

This post is a bit of a photo dump from here on.

It never really got dark for the two weeks we were down in Antarctica.

Most of our evenings were spent gazing out the windows in the library - it wasn't a Fairstar the Funship type of cruise!

Sam and I got pretty lucky with the weather on this cruise, while it wasn't exactly sunshine and blue skies every day we mostly had fairly calm conditions. The wind and swell only really picking up for one day and that was on our return crossing of the Drake Passage as we headed for Ushuaia at the end of our cruise. While we were down in Antarctica we only had one day of really average weather when it snowed a bit, although really you wouldn't want to visit Antarctica without some snow falling I'm thinking. Apart from the one day of snow the rest of our visit was either under dry but overcast skies or blue sky and sunshine. The really good news was that we had fairly good visibility for the whole cruise, we were never really stuck in any fog which meant that with basically 24 hours of daylight we pretty well had a scenic view whenever we cared to glance outside.

So long as we were out of the wind the conditions were pretty reasonable out on the deck.

If we are ever lucky enough to go back down to Antarctica again I'll take a decent camera with some good telephoto capabilities. 

Now I'm not going to try and go through the cruise blow by blow because basically I can't remember all the details, this was well before I really even knew what a blog was so I wasn't really thinking that one day I'd be sticking it up on-line. So having said that then this post is a bit of a self indulgent photo dump really, but gee these photos hold some great memories for Sam and I. To everybody else well I hope you can find some enjoyment out of them.

We only really had one day of bad weather on the whole trip.

Still it wouldn't be a trip to Antarctica without some snow I don't think.

We occasionally went for short excursions on the zodiacs.

 

Gentoo Penguins

It was very easy to spot whales down here - Sea Shepherd were down here harassing the Japanese Whalers at the same time as us.

The Dirt.

The cost of cruising to Antarctica can be fairly daunting, the only way Sam and I could afford it back then was to head across from Ushuaia at the bottom of Argentina. Apart from it being relatively affordable heading across from there also allowed us to visit Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, not to mention Buenos Aires. We are hoping that one day our budget might stretch to the longer crossing from Australia or New Zealand although time will tell how that goes I suppose. For any people with time on their side who are looking for cheaper options to reach Antarctica then when we visited Ushuaia there was a business selling last minute type fares, obviously you'd have to flexible, however it could be an option as hanging out in Ushuaia for awhile over summer wouldn't be the worst thing in the world - better than traffic in Coffs Harbour anyway! Apart from all the onboard lectures from everyone from Glaciologists, Historians and Naturalists I also used Lonely Planet's Antarctica Guide (I kid you not) as well as a book by Peter Carey and Craig Franklin called Antarctica Cruising Guide.  

Relevant Posts.

El Calafate, Patagonia, 2008.

Torres del Paine Journal, Patagonia, Chile, 2012.

I'm thinking that this was pretty late at night judging by the light...

... and my after dinner wear!

Arctowski Station ... I'm sitting on a post from here.