Zodiacs, stored at the MV Ushuaia´s stern until needed

The Zodiac Company first started making the rigid-hulled inflatable boats successfully during WWII, leading to a success that´s been so strong and consistent that all similar boats tend to be called ¨zodiacs¨ these days.  We rode the real deals.  It´s a good thing, because in freezing choppy waters filled with icebergs, killer whales, leopard seals and other cold-blooded threats, it´s nice to know you´re riding the best.  With the MV Ushuaia safely anchored in deep waters, it´s the zodiacs that serve as our primary means of getting in, on and around Antarctica.

Typically, zodiac rides are less than five minutes to set destinations, though in some cases, the ride is the destination.  ¨Iceberg Alley¨ is a reliable source of massive, imposing monoliths of ice, even more awe-inspiring from the fact that only about a third of the floating chunks are above visibly above water.  The sunken wreck of the Norweigian Governoren still remains a popular tourist attraction nearly a hundred years after it sank.  And any number of massive glaciers rendering my visit to Perito Moreno almost pointless by racing out to the water´s edge in monstrously forbidding walls of ice.

A flock of petrals takes to the sky as we pass a particularly interesting ice formation.

A flock of penguins swim by in their classic swim arch

More penguins. There was worry that we wouldn´t see many given that this trip was late in the season. We saw thousands.

Conditions were extremely choppy at times.

Brad, our tour master. Dropped out of an uninteresting life in HR back in the 70s and was amongst the first guides in Antarctica.

Chillin´

Passing by a tremendous natural ice bridge

Leopard Seals

Nearly at the top of the Antarctican food chain (it´s not a big chain) sits the leopard seal, who is actually fairly playful assuming it doesn´t perceive you as food (sorry, penguins).  Only the orcas — killer whales, a.k.a. ¨Willy¨ — look at the formidable seal and think ¨food.¨  Unlike the Weddell and Elephant seals (which we also get to meet), the leopard seal doesn´t swim too far below the surface of the water, focusing instead on penguins and krill for food.  The former are typically beaten to death before chowing down with sharp teeth and an extremely wide jaw (opens up to 150 degrees).  The latter — krill — are gathered by by swimming through krill-infested water and catching them with specialized molars.

While their necks are primarily white, they´re covered with black spots which helps give the seal its first name.  They tend to leave people alone, though have a strange attraction to the black ends of the zodiac pontoons, and have been known to puncture them, and we did notice a leopard seal take an interest in another zodiac on our trip, following it halfway back to the MV Ushuaia.  However, the one that came closest to any boat I was on was extremely playful.

A lone leopard seal swims around and under our boat playfully for twenty minutes, curiously checking us out.

This one caught a penguin and continously swung it back and forth on the water until it stopped moving before he proceeded to chow down. Brutal.

Iceberg Alley

Intermittant rain and slightly harsh conditions at times made this section of open water with an extremely high concentration of broken-off icebergs chillier and more damp than what would probably be optimal.  This would´ve been a great time to have a waterproof camera.

On the positive side, everyone in our crew traded pictures at the end of the trip, meaning that few great photo ops were lost.  On the negative side, this means I literally filtered through over 4000 pictures upon making it back to Ushuaia.  Fun day.

Getting up close and personal with an iceberg. I licked it. It was salty.

Whale Oil is Flammable

And around the turn of the last century, it was extremely valuable as well.  The ¨valuable¨ part is what brought so many whaling vessels this far south, despite such harsh conditions and a still mostly unexplored continent.  Sadly, the ¨flammable¨ thing is what put one of them, the Governoren, permanently out of commission and firmly locked into the Antarctic tourist circuit.

Celebrating the end of a season and a boat filled with the valuable — and again, flammable — whale oil, the crew participated in the tradition of having a tremendous party in the lower decks, complete with dancing, drinking, revelry and fire.  The latter turned out to be a problem.

The fire made the boat less than seaworthy at a rapid rate, but as a credit to the captain, no one was lost in the sinking.  Thinking fast, he grounded the boat just off of Enterprise Island where everyone was quickly evacuated.  Whaling was enough of an industry in the region at that point that it wasn´t long until they were rescued.

Now, an artifact from an industry that once pillaged natural resources stands as a monument for nature´s slow but eventually reclamation of everything.

Perito Moreno Glacier Was Probably an Unnecessary Trip

Don´t get me wrong: Perito Moreno´s a beautiful spectacle in every way.  But it loses a bit of its spectacle in comparison to almost anything here.  What else on Earth anywhere is like Antarctica?

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