Beyond Rye 
Our Third Antarctic Adventure

– By David Magee –

My wife Franny and I left on the long journey for our third trip to the Antarctic in mid-December with “courage high and hearts aglow.” The main impetus for our trip was to meet up again with our old friends, the Ponchicks (whom we met on our first trip in 1983), and to get to know their two children, Jeffrey and Laura, who turned out to be truly delightful.

After a long 10-hour, non-stop flight to Buenos Aires, we had dinner with our friends (and friends of theirs) at a tango restaurant, where we watched haute-coutured Spanish senoritas doing the tango with a series of heavily brilliantined Rudolf Valentino clones.

Our flight to Ushuaia, scheduled for mid-afternoon, was over three hours late in leaving, as all Argentine flights appear to be. Upon arrival, we were met by fierce, cold winds, and wondered what we were doing in such a forbidding-looking area.

What a difference a day makes! Our hotel, called the Tolkeyen (I didn't see any Ents), was surrounded by snow-covered mountains on three sides, fronted by lovely lupins and other flowers, on an inlet full of all kinds of sea birds. That morning, Franny, Elliot and Teri elected to walk to the town (pop. 65,000). Jeffrey, Laura and I showed eminently more sense and took a taxi. We all met at a seafood restaurant and ate crabs, which Ushuaia seemed to be famous for.

The following day our trip officially started. We boarded our ship at last, the good ship Sarpik Ittuk, which was built in Denmark. Like so many of the small ships we travel on, it started out as a car ferry. The officers were multi-national, while the crew were mostly Filipino, so I was able to talk to them in Tagalog.

The Drake Passage on the way to the Antarctic peninsula can be some of the roughest water in all the world's oceans, particularly so in a ship like ours with no keel or stabilizers. This trip was not too rough, but many people seemed to be absent from the dining room and lecture hall. They missed some fabulous talks on birds, whales and history, and a very good artist from England.

We were not able to visit several places because of too much ice and made other stops that were not on the schedule. We got off the ship almost every day, sometimes twice a day, seeing beautifully carved icebergs and thousands and thousands of penguins. We saw Adelies, Gentoos, Chinstraps, and one astounding sighting of an Emperor (a la march of) at midnight.

The sun never really sets this time of year. We saw many penguins on the nest and many skuas, birds of prey which feed on baby penguins and their eggs. I watched one skua devour a baby penguin (not a pleasant sight). Among the other wild life we saw were elephant seals, huge animals that makes noises from both ends, Weddell seals, and, of course, countless sea birds.

One afternoon, people were invited to go swimming. Only the foolhardy teenagers tried this, while their more sensible parents watched and applauded from above. The kids just jumped in and out, attached to a tether. There actually are hot springs in the area, particularly in a place called Deception Island, which we had visited before. Some of our company dipped into these waters, although sometimes they are too hot for comfort.

It is really hard to describe this astounding part of the world. You look on your globe at home and see a small white blob called the Antarctic. It is bigger than North America.

One hears talk of the icecaps shrinking, but there was little sign of that. There is a view in some circles that the southern icecap is actually growing. The ice is over one mile deep on the continent in some places. Some 30 years ago, a berg broke off that was as big as Rhode Island.

One cannot fully appreciate the beauty of this area —snow-capped mountains, rock piles covered with penguins, some on the nest, against a brilliant blue sky. Sometimes we felt that we had “touched the face of God.”

When we set off for home across the treacherous Drake Passage, huge albatrosses followed in our wake.