26 Sep Antarctic Peninsula — Paddling the Bellingshausen Sea

When I was a kid there was a TV witch named Miss Boo. I never knew much about Miss Boo except that, starring in a kids’ TV show, she was a friendly witch. And, years later when both of us had gone on to lesser pursuits, I heard she’d taken a trip to Antarctica. Now I knew she wasn’t the first person to go to Antarctica. Heck, she probably wasn’t even the first witch to go to Antarctica, but she was the first person from my childhood to make the trip, and that stuck in my mind.

I also knew it had to have been an exciting trip because the only way to get to Antarctica is across the Drake Passage, and the Drake is what the travel literature refers to as a “rite of passage.” That’s because crossing the Drake involves the Roaring Forties.

The Roaring Forties may be the most aptly named stretch of ocean anywhere. It’s certainly the only bit that runs all the way around the planet with no land to slow the howling winds or break the towering waves. Depending on the ferocity of the hurricanes you get caught in, crossing the Drake is a two, maybe three-day affair. Then two, maybe three, days back. So the “eight days in Antarctica” the brochure promises might well turn into two days in Antarctica and six days retching in your cabin.

I’d chalked up plenty of rites of passage in my life, involving such things as a Rambler American convertible with reclining seats, or actually getting out of high school, without crossing the Drake, and figured I’d let that one go.

Then, years later while Peggy and I were organizing a trip along the General Pinochet Longitudinal Highway at the far bottom of Chile, she pointed out that, since we were going to be in the neighborhood anyway, we should hop over to Antarctica. And visions of Miss Boo, face even greener than usual and moaning in her bunk, came dancing in my head. Still, if Peggy wanted to go I had to make the effort to look into it. This is where the internet came to the rescue.

What I discovered was a company, one single company based in Montana of all places, sailing under the slogan, “Fly the Drake, Cruise the Antarctic.” The idea was to go by plane from Punta Arenas at the very tip of South America to a Chilean naval base on King George III Island where we would hook up with a cruise ship that was already down there. Problem solved, and I signed us up.

Only to discover that, even by air the Forties still roar. The plane can’t take you there until there’s enough of a break in the weather for the pilot to get to King George III Island, land, unload, and return to South America before the break in the weather heals itself. Which meant waiting for an entire five-hour period of relative calm. Sometimes, when you Fly the Drake, Cruise the Antarctic, you spend the whole trip hanging around Punta Arenas waiting for that five hours. The travel company is good about it, though. They arrange for you to kayak while you wait.

Kayaking was one of the things you got to do if you actually made it to Antarctica. It wasn’t mentioned in the literature, but I got an email about it a couple of weeks before we set out. In true salesman fashion, the message was very clear: I had to act immediately or there would be no kayaking in Antarctica for Peggy and me. There were only ten spots, no spots would be sold on the ship, and we had to sign up right now. In fact right now was probably already too late because some people had gotten their emails before I did. Sorry about that, but that’s just the way it is. It’s the same with those brokerage houses that move their offices as close as possible to the stock exchange. Light only travels so fast and, like hot stock tips, kayaking in Antarctica is first come, first served.

In a situation like that, who had time to check with Peggy? I did the responsible thing and signed us right up. Also, who had time to read the fine print? It wasn’t until the following morning that she, in her careful businessman manner, actually looked over the qualifications we were supposed to have to go anywhere near a kayak in Antarctica.

It turned out there were skills involved. We needed to know about ocean waves. And tricky currents. And how to come back up if the kayak rolled over. And how to get back in a kayak if it rolled over and came back up without us. There was lots of other stuff, too. A whole list of different kinds of water and weather we had to know about but, what the hey? People do this. And we’re people, right? So how hard could it be?

We landed at King George III Island on a gravel, military airstrip and were hustled past a line of folks in parkas and boots and puffy pants heading to the plane. Those guys had gotten a cut-rate trip to Antarctica by dead-heading across the Drake in the ship we’d flown down to meet, landing at the Chilean naval base, and flying directly back to Punta Arenas. It made me wonder how naïve a person could get.

A few minutes later a dozen or so of us were motoring out to the ship on a rubber zodiac when the pilot turned and asked if any of us would be kayaking. Her name was Pernilla. She was blonde. She was a gorgeous. athletic Dane, and she was in charge of kayaking. Peggy and I raised our hands and looked around. No one else had their hands up. Pernilla stared a moment, and sighed, and gave us a look like . . . well, it was a lot like the look I’d given those people who imagined it was a good idea to take a tiny cruise ship all the way across the Drake just to fly back to South America.

Lucky for Pernilla we’d signed up because, despite the sales talk, all ten spots had not filled. In fact, the spots were so unfilled, management started hawking them on the ship. And as for skills, nothing was ever said about skills, just, “Come kayak the Bellingshausen Sea with us.” But it didn’t do any good. By then, the other passengers had already seen the Bellingshausen Sea.

You already know what Antarctica looks like. It looks like the pictures of Antarctica. Except more so, because it’s all around you

 

 

and it is indescribably lovely.

There were two landings a day where passengers queued up at a door at the waterline, stepped onto a zodiac, and motored off to visit some feature of Antarctica. If you were a kayaker, you strode to the head of the line like a celebrity gracing a swanky nightclub with his presence, boarded the first zodiac, zoomed off a couple of hundred yards, climbed into your kayak and paddled to the same place the others were heading. Only you got to go along the back side of icebergs

 

 

and through isolated bays

 

 

and past cliffs

 

 

and rookeries and empty shorelines. And it was quiet, just the lapping of paddles and the call of seabirds. And no wind at all.

Maybe it had something to do with global warming, who knows? But that January, the January we were there, the sea was so silvery and beautiful, the air so still, the water so glassy, we might have been kayaking across a mirror.

 

 

Sometimes penguins would shoot by underwater, then rocket to the surface and leap from the waves. Or seals would slide beneath our kayaks.

On the cliffs Antarctic terns shared narrow ledges with Arctic terns summering over during their 24,000 mile migration.

 

 

One afternoon we launched on a zodiac pilotd by a Russian named Ruslan. We’d just pulled to a stop and were about to climb into the kayaks when a pod of humpbacks spouted a few hundred yards away. Then spotted us and came to play, breaching and slapping

 

 

the water with their fins, and swimming around the zodiac and gliding through the clear water beneath us.

Then, out where the humpbacks had been, orcas showed up, breaching and sounding and snorting and playing. Pernilla was entranced. Ruslan was entranced. Peggy and I were entrance. The other kayakers were entranced, and we all sat in the zodiac and watched. The tourists stuck on the ship were not entranced.

We had the zodiac and Ruslan wasn’t making any moves to pick them up. Ruslan was a photographer in real life and that afternoon, at that moment, he was in photography heaven. He took pictures of whales breaching. He took pictures of whales sounding.

He took pictures of whales snorting.

 

 

He put his cameral in the water and took pictures of whales swimming beneath the zodiac. What he did not do, was go back for the other passengers.

“Ruslan?” his radio crackled.

In the words of Uncle Remus, “Ruslan, he lay low,“ and kept on snapping pictures.

“Ruslan, is there some problem?”

“Ruslan, you’re needed back at the ship.”

“Ruslan, get your butt back here.”

“RUSLAN.”

“NOW”

Ruslan was as immortal as an employee could get who isn’t the offspring of the boss. Ruslan had signed on for one season in Antarctica. Ruslan didn’t plan to come back next year, and in Antarctica they couldn’t exactly give him his walking papers. Ruslan just kept taking pictures.

After a while the paddlers loaded into the kayaks, but we didn’t go very far. We just paddled around the zodiac with Ruslan still taking pictures.

The whales slapped the water and played and dove beneath us. I don’t remember if we ever made it to the scheduled landing, but I don’t think we missed much because I’m not sure anybody else landed, either.