End of the World

"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine". REM

The zodiac is a rugged craft capable of navigating narrow, shallow and icy passages. It is the safari jeep.

Mark, our Welsh born, recently Campbell River based, guide is a skilled zodiac operator. For our morning expedition Mark hopes to circumnavigate Spert Island, part of the Antarctic Peninsula islands. The geology of the area is volcanic, abrupt cliff edges are everywhere, square edged, hard rock.

A glacier sits atop the island, a long white thick tongue covering much of the island's rocky surface. Scarred along the edges where large sheets of ice have calved off.

There are a lot of scars and so many icebergs floating around the water slowly melting during the short summer. Guiding here is never the same, as the narrow water passageways get blocked with new ice.

The first stop is a rock arch, every bit as beautiful as it's Mediterranean counterparts. We slowly circle in and out to give each of the nine of us a good view.

Then it's off to the first narrow passage that appears to have received a new delivery from the glacial tongue. We are the first of five boats sent off, so Mark carefully pushes through, finding a channel where the ice is loose enough to navigate, and just like that, we are into an amazing bay of icebergs. Every shape of iceberg imaginable. Like clouds we all see what our imaginations allow. Having just been in Turkey I can't help but see the iceberg equivalence of Cappadocia. Toppled columns of ice as the melting upper part of the iceberg causes the structure to capsize in a circular fashion.

Mark has spotted penguins hanging out on an iceberg so we scoot over to send our greetings; some are in the water trying to catch just-the-right wave to propel them back onto the berg with their mates.

We say good bye when Mark and Liz spot a seal sunning himself on a small sheet of ice. We race over and determine that it is a regionally-rare leopard seal. Leopard seals favourite food is penguin and given the number of penguins about I don't think this guy misses many meals.

We carry on soaking in all the natural beauty. Mark is determinedly looking to find a way around the ice filled waters, suddenly we spot some cat faced Weddell seals with teeth designed to cut through the ice so as to keep airholes open during the winters.

Eventually, Mark finds a way through and we spot the Polar Pioneer. But first, one last stop to another penguin hangout before hitting the cool open water. A lovely two hour journey. A shower and its time for lunch before the afternoon excursion.

It's a warm afternoon, +10°C in the sun. This excursion is to Palaver Point a lovely bay with a dozen or so humpback whales swimming about.

We disembark for a walk about amongst the chinstrap penguins, being careful to mind our distance. A few Weddell seals are lying about oblivious to any and all of the commotion. We climb up a small snow covered hill for a look over the pretty bay but Neil, Liz and I are anxious to get into the zodiac and go whale watching. The three of us along with Anna, a keen photographer, jump in a zodiac with Mark and start exploring. Two Vancouver Island whale watching captains and three passengers. Needless to say we have the experience of a life time. We get so close that as we kneel over the gunnel, Liz says "he is going underneath us" and we can see his colouring in the water below. Then just like that he surfaces within a few feet of the starboard bow.

Several other close encounters occur with mothers and babies, so many synchronizing their moves, tail fluke after tail fluke. It is breathtaking. Hopefully my pictures/videos will ultimately capture it. We are out for a half an hour and then we have to pick up seven others who have been climbing around the penguins.

We stay out for another 30-40 minutes with this larger group and see more whales but nothing beats that first fourty minute experience.

After dinner we spend some time on the bridge watching the whales work to collectively hunt for krill, bubble netting. Then it's bed time as we have a 5:45AM start.En savoir plus