Some places have to be seen to be believed, however there are some places so fantastic that even when you find yourself in front of them, the idea that you are truly there takes a little longer to sink in. Elephant Island is one of those places. Probably one of the more widely known Antarctic sites due to its prominence as the launching point of Shackleton’s heroic voyage to South Georgia and where twenty two crew members remained, waiting to be rescued. Inhospitable doesn’t begin to describe the landscape. Jagged mountain peaks tower along the coastline, emanating a distinctly uninviting presence and ungraciously refusing to offer any protection from the howling wind to the tiny spit of rock that is Point Wild. Though time and tide have changed the terrain somewhat over the last century, the extreme conditions of such an environment make it almost unfathomable to imagine anyone lasting four days let alone four months, and yet they did. Now we come here to glimpse just a tiny sliver of what those men endured. Perhaps the lingering disbelief that this is indeed the location of such heroic survival is due to the incredibly incongruous conditions we experience of this identical backdrop.
Casting comforts aside, after a warm and filling breakfast of course, we take to the Zodiacs and set out for an even closer look at this iconic landmark of exploration history. Bouncing around in moderate swells of windswept seas the authenticity of the situation starts to sink in. Wave battered rocks provide a welcome habitat for the local chinstrap penguin colony but conceiving of humans being able to exist for any prolonged period of time still boggles the mind. Leopard seals friskily swim around us as we navigate through the roiling turquoise shallows, regarding us with a matching level of curiosity. The nearby glacier overlooks the old camp site where now a sculpted bust of Piloto Pardo is located. He was the captain of the Yelcho, the vessel that was finally able to come to the aid of the stranded Endurance crew. As we take our leave and return to the starkly contrasting coziness of the National Geographic Explorer the actuality of Elephant Island has now firmly become part of our voyage, transcribing from being just a place in a story, into reality and in turn that reality becomes yet another story we will always remember.
