Charcot cairn -Argentine Islands

The French explorer Charcot explored this area but he was unsure if his team would make it back so they built a cairn which contained their scientific results. It's high on a rock with a cross above the snow line. They did make it back. Although an important historical place for the French, for us it provided another high up spectacular view of two bays. The weather was clear and sunny really highlighting how beautiful this place can be when there is sunshine which of course is not always the case..

The landing, wet as usual, was on to large rocks. The crew were there to pull the zodiac up as far as possible and help us ashore. The crew and naturalists have to stand in freezing water for quite a few hours just managing us in and out of zodiacs. They have some protection but I doubt this is their preferred job. The walk was very easy and after seeing the cairn I spent some time looking over a small bay near the cairn. There were whales in the bay and the naturalist I was standing next to pointed out that it looked like they were bubble net fishing. This is where one whale blows bubbles to confuse the fish and then alerts other whales in the area that food is available.

It is incredible just how much wildlife there is in this frozen land. We don't see very many birds here and there are not as many penguins out and about either. Life in the water is abundant. Our zodiac cruises around Hidden Bay, the weather is so perfect we have been so fortunate. There are large icebergs all around us, pieces of ice floating in the water in a bay surrounded by glaciers. Our naturalist guide gets very excited when we see a single krill in the water. I was too far back in the zodiac, but I am fairly confident I have seen krill or something very similar before. This is quite funny given that krill, about four centimetres in length, gather together in the millions and here we see one. Our guide though had given a lecture on krill.

In the morning we had whales the afternoon was about seals, four different species, some in the water but most on icebergs. Crab eating seals, a mistake when it was named due to a translation error krill became shrimp then crabs even though there are none in Antarctica. These seals don't eat crabs they eat krill. They live in groups and are easy to see gathered on icebergs. One passenger (American) was very concerned that the seal on the iceberg was ill and wanted our guide to 'do something ', he pretended he hadn't heard her and explained what we were seeing was saliva red from eating krill. There is much excitement when a leopard seal on an iceberg is spotted, they are solitary creatures. Finally we see a Weddle seal, this is the only one we will see on the trip, there are not as many as the other seals. We've had a very good afternoon and again in perfect weather.Les mer