Port Lockroy and Jougla Point, Antarctica
What is big, bright, bold, blue and makes you go burrrrr? Ice. Ice flows down mountains in streams, floats in the deep blue sea with aqua “feet” and is sculpted as castles, swans, whales, boats, and towers. Ice growling, fracturing, falling, and melting defines the seventh continent and all life. We have seen the ice and its legacy. Ice carved the u-shaped valleys, frosted the tallest peaks, and started as the gentle fall of snowflakes. Water in the cracks of rocks froze, thawed, and broke the rock into smaller pieces used to build a penguin’s nest.
Dripping in the heat of the sun, water freezes into icicles and decorates caves and edges of icebergs. The beauty of the ice, the power of the ice, and the changing form of ice dazzles our eyes. Today, like most everyday of our expedition the landscape was better than a Master’s painting.
We visited Port Lockroy, the oldest British structure on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is confined to an island surrounded by glaciers. Ice and rocks shape human history. The continent was too covered by snow and ice to get to the rocks so the base was located on an island of granite. Here penguins also found good sites to occupy and erect structures. Penguins take advantage of the buildings of the base and nest under them where they are protected from the wind, rain, and snow. Because islands are more ice-free than the continents, the islands, more than the continent, teem with life. It is the islands where the rocks are exposed first. Rocks are important for securing human structures and essential for building a penguin nest.
This year there was little snow at Jougla Point so Gentoo penguins can see the British flag at Lockroy from their nests. The strong winds blew what little snow fell exposing, a dark intrusive rock called diorite, making it possible for Gentoo penguins and Blue-eyed shags to build their nests. We saw the station, mailed our postcards, viewed the glacier and observed the granitic rocks that secure the British base and are the building material for penguin nests. Many of us watched the penguins and shags feed and squabble.
In the afternoon we cruised into beautiful Paradise Bay and watched several humpback whales dive deep in water reflecting the glacier covered mountains. We landed at Neko Harbor and just above the beach was a lone juvenile King penguin. What a thrill to see a King Penguin at least 800 miles from its nearest breeding colony. In the evening in Dallmann Bay we watched the light danced on the ice. Ice and rocks shaped the landscape and penguins thrill the soul.
