Elite Traveler November-December 2016

elite traveler NOV/DEC 2016 103

whales far off and in a turbulent sea. As we crossed the Antarctic Convergence, a host of tiny storm petrels and skinny albatrosses were flying with us, manipulating the headwinds to get uplift seemingly against all odds. Antarctica didn’t appear suddenly. Rather, it gathered around us, with stories and myths. First came the South Shetlands, where we visited rocky, dark-hued Elephant Island. This had been the hideaway for Shackleton and his crew in 1916. We explored it on a gloomy afternoon, observed by glum looking cormorants. The weather was heavenly, however, when we sailed into the flooded caldera of Deception Island. Walking on a red beach of volcanic sand was like entering a Max Ernst painting, the surreal effect made more powerful – and poignant – by the ruins of a vast whaling station. Fur seals basked in the sun here, and there was a lively colony of chinstrap penguins. Nature had reclaimed lost territory. A few of us undressed and dived in the surf, just to say we had. Then, after a night of deep, satisfying sleep, came Antarctica proper – or, at least, it felt like that. On my dawn lookout I spied a white cliff in the distance. It was too perfect, too white, to be anything else. Ironically, you know you are in the vicinity of the peninsula – the long finger of land that rises north out of Antarctica – because the weather is suddenly much better. Where the Southern Ocean is untamed and borderless, the vast Antarctic continent – it’s nearly twice the size of Australia – generates its own climates. The waters are often calmer around its edges, and the skies usually clearer. Wonders came with every outing, every walk, every deckwatch. At Charlotte Bay, on a coastal tip known as Graham Land, I watched as humpback whales breached the still waters yards from our Zodiac. At Neko Harbour, I got to stroll on the continent – a small conquest for any traveler, and an opportunity to sit and be apart from the group to gaze and ruminate. I took a steep walk to the top of a snow-capped hill overlooking the Almirante Brown Argentine base. The panorama was gun-metal grey and unearthly. For a moment I wondered what would happen if I was left there, as old explorers sometimes were. I spotted several species of whale, fur seals, Weddell seals, emperor penguins, chinstrap penguins, Magellanic penguins, a leopard seal, skuas and sheathbills. But white ice is as engaging as any other of nature’s wonders. I’d learned in one of the onboard lectures that it

the Falklands and our next pause, at South Georgia. Two days of blue-green ocean, and swirling, frothing crests. The Vavilov sailed into the archipelago’s supposedly protected eastern flank, only to be resisted by fierce, storm-force winds. Captain Beluga steered the vessel into Possession Bay, claimed by British explorer Captain James Cook for King George III in 1775. But now a violent katabatic wind, produced when cold air sweeps downwards, was hammering the bay, which is hemmed in by mountains. Bizarrely, the sky was empty of clouds and the sea devoid of swells. Yet this mighty gust was skimming waves and smearing the tops with white flecks. While the Vavilov waited, I stood at the bow and closed my eyes, thrilled by the cold blast. From here on in, everything about the cruise was extraordinary. We jumped into the Vavilov’s inflatable Zodiac boats before hiking around a broad bay called Salisbury Plain. Here, 40,000 king penguins were flirting, cawing, fishing, flapping, shuffling, shimmying, feeding, squatting and generally having a massive beach party. After wandering deep into the melee, I sat down and communed. From time to time, a penguin would approach, study me with one curious eye, get bored and then waddle back to its familiars. At Grytviken, South Georgia’s main settlement, I watched sooty albatrosses dive-bomb offshore, and explored an abandoned whaling station, which now houses a museum. Those of us who felt the need to stretch our lazy, ship-wobbly legs, got to do a serious hike, in serious weather, up a 'mountain' called Brown Hill. The hardy whalers and sealers who once occupied these remote shores had no time for fancy names. Then we took to the sea again. The weather was quite vile as we rounded the southern tip of South Georgia: moody and malevolent, an alienating green sea set against a sky roiling with purple clouds. It was time to enjoy cabin time – reading novels and polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s South , listening to music, scribbling notes, making drawings. I attended a few expert lectures on glaciation, birdlife and learned the rudiments of nature photography. I dined regularly now, chatting with my fellow cruisers – a jumble of world travelers, escapists, writers, artists, retired academics and wealthy drifters. The ship rolled and danced, swayed and spun… I kept to my morning routine of whale watching and wind-drinking. I spotted minke

Opposite page (from top): Abandoned whaling station on Deception Island; a waddle of king penguins, South Georgia; Ushuaia Harbor Above: Zodiac boat tour off Elephant Island

Photos: Getty Images; Getty Images/Nature Picture Library; Getty Images/Mint Images RF