MuseumChick | Danee Gilmartin

Since I talk so much, I decided to give someone else a chance to tell this unique story about his trip to Antarctica. How many people do you know that would brave the Drake Passage to get to the most southern part of the earth?! I still find his story pretty impressive so, I want to share it with you. (In case you missed the first part- ATrip to Antarctica Part 1).

Written by Gil Elliot -

We were at a colony of Gentoo penguins when we spotted this boat in the water near our ship. Apparently this is a sailboat owned by a French couple who charter it out for voyages from France all the way down to Antarctica and back. The journey takes a little over six months round trip we were told. Check out the blue ice in the background.

On the Zodiac raft returning from the colony we encountered two whales- Humpback Whales, I believe. The zoom on the camera that I had was terrible, so the photo above was taken at probably five or six feet away from them. At one point they swam beneath our raft and then surfaced and exhaled right into us — whale breath sort of smells like the dried shrimp section of an Asian supermarket.

Once we returned to the ship, we set sail for mainland Antarctica. Apparently the places we had been to thus far were basically just islands or packed ice connected to the actual continent. We hadn’t set foot on Antarctica properly just yet.

Around this time the ice floes started to get more and more dense, so this guy the crew called “The Ice Captain” took control of the boat to navigate around the chunks of ice. He had special radar (or sonar) to do this. Other than this part of the trip, this guy didn’t do anything except hang out with us at the bar.

While traveling through the ice floe we found this Leopard Seal resting on a small chunk of ice. It’s sort-of difficult to get the scale in the picture but the crew seemed to think it was about 10-12 feet long. As I recall they are one of the top predators there and hunt penguins and smaller seals.

This was another stop along the way — this was were we actually stepped foot on the continent of Antarctica for the first time.

This is a juvenile elephant seal and here you can see two interesting things — one is that he doesn’t have his “trunk” yet since he’s still too young and also that he is shedding his coat which is why he appears to have patchy skin.

This is a small emergency shelter at the place where we stopped. It’s maintained by Argentina (as you can tell from the flag) and looks like it has actually seen quite a bit of use. Inside there are all sorts of things that people might find useful during an extended and involuntary stay. The frame contains a list of rules for guests, I don’t remember what they were but I think one of them was that the bookshelf operates on a “take-one/leave-one” sort of policy.

Surprise penguins!

I think this one is the mayor.

At this colony they had some little guys and some unhatched eggs.

Fish from yesterday- YUM!

This jelly fish that washed up had grown to freakish proportions — it was about three feet in diameter. I think that something about the clean environment plus the extreme cold helps animals like these grow bigger.

This is Port Lockroy — a British base in the Antarctic. During WW2 it was used as a listening post by the British government, but now it’s just a research center and historical site. It’s staffed by three people throughout part of the year and you can buy stamps and postcards. I got my passport stamped there and joined their ski club!

Chinstrap penguin yelling at her teenage kids.

At this point we set sail for Argentina to wrap up our trip. Despite how rough the trip down was, the Drake Passage on the way back was as smooth as a lake. Apparently the National Geographic ship that was a day or two behind us got stuck in a really bad storm, though.

©2011 Danee Gilmartin All rights reserved

The other day my group of girlfriends told me how much they like my good friend, Gil Elliot and also mentioned how much he talks. I thought this was strange since I usually describe him as quiet and introverted. Then it hit me- I talk so much that he never gets a chance. So I want to give him a chance now. I asked him to write a guest post on a place that most people haven’t been. There aren’t museums, artifacts or even a restaurant but it’s still too interesting not to share with you. We go most places together now, but before we were married he took the trip of a life time- to Antarctica. With the small ship + arctic waters= I’m too scared to go, so I’ll have to live vicariously through these pictures and story.

Written by my good friend,  Gil Elliot -

Our trip began with a couple of days in Buenos Aires followed by a flight down to Ushuaia (in the Tierra del Fuego). We were late due to our flight, so we got taken directly to our vessel, the MS Andrea. Never being on any sort of cruise, I was relieved to find out that we would be traveling on such a large, sturdy vessel, capable of carrying up to 150 passengers and crew. I later learned from my wife that this is actually minuscule compared to even the smallest cruise ships, sort of equivalent to riding a garbage can down I-95. In a moment of ominous foreshadowing, we were informed during our welcoming briefing that there was a large stock of Dramamine on board for the trip south.

One of the interesting things about the Drake Passage (which is the space lying between Argentina and Antarctica) is that it’s the narrowest point where the waters of the Pacific Ocean merge with the waters of the Atlantic. I did not understand the significance of this until we were underway, and spent the next two days in rough seas. I don’t remember much as I was in a Dramamine induced haze, though I recall 30′ waves, the ship rolling up to 20 degrees from side to side (so, if you looked out your window you would see nothing but sky… count to 4…. then you would see nothing but water….for two days).

Finally we arrived at Deception Island, an old whaling base.

Since this used to be a whaling base, these large tanks were for holding whale oil. The island is volcanic, hence the black sands.

I’ve always been interested in airplanes (particularly military planes), so I was intrigued by this pile of dinosaur bones. Not sure what the story is behind this plane, but it was leftover from some sort of British base that was destroyed by a volcano in the 60s or 70s. I think it’s a DeHaviland but ff anyone recognizes this, would someone please let me know in the comments below?

Before embarking, the trip leader told us that anyone who swam in the ocean here would get a free bottle of champagne when we were back up on the boat. I could not pass up this opportunity for free booze, plus how cool would it be to say that you swam in the Antarctic Ocean? Just I and one other member of our trip had the brains to take the trip leader up on this offer, and this is us right before we jumped in, sitting on the hot sand (the sand actually was very hot once you dug down a few inches- almost painfully hot due to the volcanic activity).

Jumping in the 40 degree (Fahrenheit) water felt like getting poked with a thousand needles while being electrocuted. Then as it turned out, we got a bottle of sparkling white wine instead of champagne. In fairness, the two of us just sort of flopped around and gasped- there wasn’t much swimming going on.

Here’s one of the inhabitants of the island- I think this was a Weddell Seal or a Crabeater Seal. The animals there have almost no fear of people. My camera had virtually no zoom on it, so in order to get this picture (and my others) I had to be basically right next to the animals. He was passed out on the sand pretty much the entire time we were there. I think he moved once- it’s a hard life to be a seal in Antarctica.

On our next quick stop, I found this juvenile seal (a guide told me it was a very young Elephant Seal) and a penguin colony. Funny story about the penguins- when we were at our first stop, there was a single Chinstrap Penguin and a seal. This was the first penguin any of us had seen on the trip, so all of us took a million photos of him. Little did we know we would see hundreds of penguins throughout our journey.

This is a colony of Gentoo Penguins (shout out to all of my wife’s Linux-running readers).

To be continued…

©2011 Danee Gilmartin All rights reserved