Spiraling Southward
He consulted the two charts on the ship’s navigation table. Both charts show the ship has now entered waters that have never been surveyed. While concerned, the captain keeps us safe by setting a course over waters known to be safe because of depth soundings.He’s been through Antarctic waters many times before, but never in this particular spot.
Dusk sets in and reduces visibility. Then is starts to snow in earnest. The windows begin to fill with snow, which makes it even harder to see the icebergs ahead. The ship’s radar clearly illustrates each floating barrier.The monitor clearly shows each berg in blaring orange. Up ahead, the monitor paints a giant orange blob nearly blocking the channel. It’s only three kilometers away. You need to visit this site to learn about antarctica travel guide.
At one kilometer, the silence breaks with a whispered command from the captain. Quickly and effectively, the helmsman steers the ship away from danger. Found only here, the tabular iceberg peeks through the snow and fog like a shy ghost. The top is flat and extremely wide, and the sides can rise straight up over one hundred feet.
The sheer magnitude of Antarctica has dumbfounded me again. We’d boarded the polar class cruise vessel with the intention of reaching the Antarctic Circle.Having passed many unsettled and unoccupied areas of the planet, we are nearly there. Seventy-nine years after having been first sighted in 1820, a human spent an entire winter on Antarctica for the first time. Explorers searching for the southern pole struggled and scientists were the next to approach Antarctica. Only very rich tourists could visit Antarctica until very recent times. For about the same cost of visiting a Caribbean island, you can see Antarctica.
Some compare Antarctica to the shape of a manta ray with a curved tail. The manta ray’s tail is separated from South America by 500 miles of ocean. This is the Drake Passage, and some extremely rough seas are found here. Also known as ‘the slobbering jaws of hell’, it is truly difficult to pass through this area to the planets last continent. A reminder to make sure our cabin portholes are tightly latched and that our gear is thoroughly stowed before we retire comes from one caring passenger. Learn about adventure antarctica tours.
We left Ushuaia, the Argentine city on Tierra del Fuego, and crossed the calm waters of the Beagle Channel. It’s open ocean after that. We didn’t see land for the next two days as we were tossed in rough water. Nearly gale-forced winds pounded us the whole time.As waves broke over the bow, ocean spray shot up beyond my fourth deck window. Seeing swells of fifteen to forty feet in size did nothing to quell our seasickness.
Two days of travel brought us to the Southern Ocean. A coastal archipelago was a welcome sight that first morning. The land seemed to have a calming affect on the rough waters. Mile-high summits were draped in wispy clouds. Sharp ridges poked through the smooth glaciers and stood dark against their relative whiteness.Unusually rough, the bumpy slabs of ice fall right into the sea. It looks like a huge mountain range has been plopped into the middle of the ocean.
One traveler found the travel to Antarctica to be akin to childbirth?s labor. Antarctica, like a bratty kid, is the driest, highest, coldest and windiest of all the continents. Antarctica?s polar plateau gets the same amount of precipitation as Death Valley, but the continent holds 70 percent of all the freshwater we have on earth. No animal makes Antarctica its year-round home, nor is it owned by humans. It doesn’t even have a primordial human population.
We have to rely upon the weather to plan where to sail or when and where to land on shore in this inclement area. Our first trip to shore was actually able to proceed, even though we’d been warned this may not be the case. Those groups to which we’ve been assigned meet on deck. My name is called and I climb into the inflatable boat with 9 others. The powerful outboard quickly crosses the quarter mile to land. And then, with just one step, I am among the few who can say they’ve stood on the Antarctic Continent.
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