‘Get ready, because you're not leaving here now!’ The words of expedition leader Mariam Pousa hang in the presentation room of the SH Vega like a dark storm cloud. Outside, the South Atlantic is just beginning to flex its muscles. We have left Ushuaia, only to discover that the real end is still 800 kilometres to the south.
Mariam speaks of Antarctica not as a holiday destination. ‘The Drake Passage is inhospitable, unpredictable, dangerous,’ she explains, glancing at the weather maps, which show more purple warning colours than reassuring blue. ‘Tonight we can expect wave heights of over six metres and wind speeds in excess of 60 knots.’
That's 111 kilometres per hour. Storm force. Anyone hoping for ‘Drake Lake’, that mythical state of flattering wind, will be disappointed. We're getting the ‘Drake Shake’. The full package. I flee to the bridge before my stomach takes command. Captain Lyubomir Garciyanov, known as ‘Lubo’, stands with his legs apart in front of the instruments, as if he were bolted to the deck. ‘Our ship is not meant to be fast,’ he says, patting the console. ‘It's meant to be strong.’ The SH Vega is ice class 5, its hull can break through 1.20-metre-thick ice like dry bread.
Second Officer Lucian Dragan points to the stabiliser display. ‘Four-metre-long fins protrude from the hull below the waterline,’ he explains. ‘Hydraulic systems tilt them against the rolling motion at lightning speed.’ He grins broadly. ‘Constant westerly winds plus changing gusts. Soon we'll have a washing machine on spin cycle here.’
The Drake Passage is the gatekeeper of Antarctica. Anyone who wants to pass through here has to pay with patience, respect and the contents of their stomach. But it's worth the price.
Two days later, the ocean spits us out. The sea calms down, wisps of fog lift like theatre curtains and reveal an island that looks like something out of a Jules Verne novel: Greenwich Island. Rugged, dark brown rocks rise into the sky like warning fingers, surrounded by glaciers that shimmer blue in the twilight. Pure terra incognita.
We climb into the Zodiacs. The cool air bites our cheeks as we head for the black beach of Barrientos Island. The sand here is not sand, but crushed lava - a legacy of the fiery birth of these islands. But what makes this place so surreal is not the geology, but the noise.
There must be thousands of them. A colony of chinstrap and gentoo penguins has taken over the beach. The scene resembles a crowded small town at rush hour. They waddle, jostle, preen and, above all, scream. The noise is actually reminiscent of donkeys: a hoarse bellowing that pierces the salty air.
Then my gaze falls on an inconspicuous bird circling above the colony: the Arctic tern. My wife Annette and I stand there in amazement as an animal flies above us that leads one of the most extreme lives of any creature on earth. This bird is the ultimate commuter. It breeds in the Arctic and spends the winter here. That means it experiences two summers a year. A single bird once covered a record distance of 96,000 kilometres in a year. And the craziest thing? It sleeps while flying. One half of its brain rests while the other navigates. Multitasking on a level we can only dream of.
The SH Vega moves to Meusnier Point on the Eurydice Peninsula. The landscape here has something otherworldly about it, beautiful and threatening at the same time. Gustav Jonsson Länne, our expedition leader, steers the Zodiac through a labyrinth of drifting ice with the precision of a surgeon.
‘Don't just look at the shapes,’ he calls out over the noise of the engine. ‘Pay attention to the light.’ He slows down the outboard motor. Silence descends, interrupted only by the cracking of the ice, which sounds like gunshots in the distance.
A table iceberg rises out of the water in front of us, as big as a city block, but with the elegance of a modern sculpture. It glows in its cracks and crevices. No pigment, no trick, just pure, electric blue. It's a blue that cannot be painted. It seems unearthly, almost artificial, as if someone had laid neon tubes inside the ice. Gustav explains that this ice is thousands of years old. The pressure has squeezed out air bubbles so that only the blue light spectrum is reflected. We are not looking at ice, we are looking into time.
‘Whales ahead!’ The cry from the bridge triggers a mass migration on board. Everyone rushes to the deck, cameras at the ready. A huge back breaks the surface, followed by a blow that shoots into the cold air like a steam locomotive. Humpback whales.
Marine biologist Anya Astafurova grabs the microphone. Her voice trembles slightly with excitement. ‘For these animals, the world is sound,’ she explains. ‘They sing, moan and call to each other across the oceans.’ The giants dive down, their flukes rising as if to say goodbye. Anya calls out dryly, ‘Whale done!’
But the real show begins later. Captain Lubo reports orcas. Not one, not two: a whole pod. We count eight to nine animals. Two of them are twirling around each other in the water. A fight? ‘No,’ Anya explains, ‘they're mating!’ But the romance is short-lived. The group has a destination.
Orcas eat fish, penguins, seals and even larger whales. Only about a hundred of them live in the entire Antarctic. These animals have developed a remarkable hunting technique: wave washing. They swim synchronously, close together, just below the surface of the water towards an ice floe. The wave they create washes the prey into the water. For Weddell seals, about four waves are enough, but for the more defensive leopard seals, they need up to eighteen.
Port Lockroy lies in a bay on Wiencke Island like a forgotten film set. Black rocks, white glaciers and in the middle of it all: a building painted in the colours of the British Empire. The Union Jack flutters in the wind that always blows here. This is ‘Base A’, once a secret military station, now a museum and the southernmost commercial post office in the world.
Lou, one of the five-person station team, comes aboard the SH Vega. She is beaming, but you can see the hardships she endures. ‘We don't have running water at the base,’ she says. ‘No showers. If we want to wash, we have to wait until a ship like yours comes by.’ The deal is simple: she gives a talk about life at the end of the world, and in return she can use our showers. A fair exchange for both sides.
After Lou's talk, I meet Aleksander ‘Sasha’ Borodin at the railing. The Russian-born expedition expert with over 25 years of polar experience has travelled here with British and Russian expeditions on foot, on skis and in vehicles, and has circumnavigated Antarctica on a research vessel.
‘We're now looking for ice that's 1.2 million years old,’ he tells me. ‘We're drilling into the past to understand our future.’ He pulls up his collar. ‘Imagine a country,’ he says quietly, ‘bigger than Europe and Australia combined. But emptier than the Sahara. There's only one place that fits that description.’
It's 10 p.m., but the sun refuses to set. It hangs just above the horizon, bathing the world in liquid gold. We glide into the Lemaire Channel. Photographers call it ‘Kodak Gap.’ It's easy to see why.
At its narrowest point, the passage is barely 700 metres wide. To the left and right, black cliffs rise up to a thousand metres vertically out of the water. The sea is so still that it becomes the perfect mirror. Up is down. Mountain is water. The boundaries blur. We are not sailing on the water, we are floating through a painting of ice and rock.
The glaciers now glow in colours for which there are no names. Dark yellow, orange, a deep, almost painful violet. Alisa, our geologist, stands next to me. She has studied rocks, millions of years of history. But now, here, she is moved to tears. ‘I could cry,’ she whispers. And I understand her.
We land. Mainland. The Antarctic continent. When you stand here and look south, there is nothing else. Only ice. Up to 4,8 kilometres thick. 90 per cent of the world's ice is here. A white lid on the ground of reality. And all of this unchanged for 14 million years.
Antarctica is a continent without countries, without borders, without wars. This is where the human world ends. What remains is silence. A sense of wonder that makes you feel very small. And a humility that you take home with you, long after the ice has disappeared from the horizon.
The SH Vega from Swan Hellenic takes you to where icebergs glisten and penguins reign supreme. Expedition cruises with scientists on board, Zodiac, kayak and snowshoe excursions including shore excursions on the white continent – for everyone who loves discovery, wildlife and nature.
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