From Paradise to Hovgaard, Antarctica

Pitching our tents last night was a fabulous adventure. First, we created flat areas using a snow shovel and compressed the snow with our boots. We laid out a waterproof insulated sheet, then went to work assembling the tents and rain fly. The weather changes fast in Antarctica, and the warmth of the afternoon faded as clouds rolled in. Pitching a tent on a warm summer day is easy. Pitching a tent with slow-moving, cold fingers is not. In the summer, you need stakes in the soft earth. In the snow, you need ice anchors. As we finished our setup, a pair of Weddell seals serenaded us. If you’ve never heard a seal sing, seek it out. It is a lovely, haunting call, and is a sound I will never forget.

We boarded the zodiac and went back to the ship for a quick dinner before heading back to camp. Once back, we toasted our night on the continent of Antarctica. Champagne never tasted so sweet. The night was cold and damp, but the view and the experience was worth the price of admission.

That said, it is highly likely I will stick with summer camping.

After breakfast, we left Paradise and crossed the Lemaire Channel to Hovgaard, where we’ll stay for the next two nights. Just after the channel, we entered an area called the Iceberg Graveyard. Several channels feed in to a bay. Wind and tides push the icebergs into the bay, where small islands and outcroppings of rock trap them.

The Iceberg Graveyard is nature’s answer to contemporary museums of abstract sculpture; slabs of white and blue ice, of endless shapes and sizes towered above us. Arches and ridges of ice filled the bay; some worn smooth by the tides, others sharp and uneven. Chunks of ice or round snowballs the size of large boulders lay atop flat sheets of ice. Brilliant turquoise surrounded each iceberg, extending deep into the sea.

We’re expecting high winds tonight, so time to buckle up … it may be a wild ride!