Two nautical charts are spread out on the nautical table. The charts both show these waters have not been surveyed. Using depth soundings, our captain charts a safe and steady course. He's been through Antarctic waters many times before, but never in this particular spot.
Dusk approaches and it begins to snow in earnest. It is hard to see. I struggle to see the approaching icebergs as the large flakes fill the bridge windows. Each obstruction is clearly illuminated by the ship?s radar. The screen shows the icebergs in frigid orange. One enormous glob dominates the channel ahead on the monitor. Three kilometers separate us from the berg.
The captain issues a quiet command as we near the one kilometer mark. With a flick of the wheel, the helmsman steers the ship away from the danger. A tabular iceberg, which can only be seen in this region, looms like a ghost through the fog and snow. The top is flat and extremely wide, and the sides can rise straight up over one hundred feet.
This gave Antarctica another chance to amaze me. We are heading to the Antarctic Circle in our polar class cruise vessel. We'd passed extremely removed areas of land and some of the least life-filled places on the planet. Though Antarctica was officially found in 1820, no one wintered over on the land until 79 years later. Very soon after that first winter, explorers searched for the South Pole in a deadly quest, scientists followed them. Just recently, tourists who were not filthy rich could begin visiting Antarctica. Now, because the price of travel has fallen so much, you can cruise there for about the same amount of money as you could travel in the Caribbean.
You can imagine that Antarctica looks like a manta ray with a curved tail. Between the very tip of the tail and the very tip of South America sits five hundred miles of water. This stretch of seas is called Drakes Passage and is notorious for its turbulent waters. Reaching Antarctica by passing through this area, which has also been called the ?Slobbering Jaws of Hell,? is difficult, but worthwhile. One motherly passenger told us all to stow everything before going to bed, and to make sure that our cabin portholes were securely locked.
After sailing from Ushuaia, in Argentina, we sailed through the Beagle Channel and reached the open ocean. For two days we saw no land. We were tossed mightily by rough seas that whole time. Gusting winds blew the whole time, and reached near gale force. As waves crashed over the ship?s bow, spray bulleted past 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 my first view the next morning. Though still not smooth, the waters seemed to be a bit sedated by the land mass. Super tall mountains wore wispy clouds at their peaks. The ridges stuck through the smooth glaciers at sharp angles. The frozen ice slabs fell into the sea. They were chopped and cracked in appearance. Looking like the range in which you'd find Everest, it sticks straight up out of the water.
One passenger equated traveling to Antarctica to the labor in childbirth. This continent, just like a spoiled child, is the coldest, driest, highest, 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.
Depending on how the weather is on a single day, shore landings and sailing routes are altered. We are able to make our originally-planned shore landing, though the guides have warned us this is usually not the case. The assigned groups meet on deck. An inflatable boat hauls my group of ten across the water. We only have one more quarter mile of water to cross before we reach the land. And with that last step, I join a small number of people who have actually stood on the Antarctic Continent.
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