At Sea
This is a voyage between islands. Linking our long looping route up the Atlantic, remote mountaintops rise above the sea, splendid and storied in their isolation. Some are mere specks of land, lost and alone in the vast ocean, while others huddle in small groups that by turning inward seem to deny the empty miles around them. South Georgia is the largest of all that we shall visit, and it is a part of an even larger island of unique character: the Antarctic.
Cut off from the rest of the planet by ocean currents that developed over 25 million years ago, the Antarctic is a separate world, an island of endless ice and freezing seas. Even at South Georgia, on the northern fringes of this frigid region, we were clearly in a place very different than the nearby temperate lands of the Falklands. The wind seems to howl with a special tone, glaciers tumble down from jagged peaks and Antarctic wildlife crowds the beaches.
The seas are yet more different. Nearly every species we encountered in these frozen waters is endemic to the Antarctic, as though we had walked through a door or across a border into a strange nation, a place of unknown inhabitants and weird, unexpected cultures. Orange sea spiders prowled through forests of pink anemones, anti-freeze fish swam through the kelp gardens and 100-year-old seastars clung to boulders beside scarlet sponges.
Best of all, perhaps, were the fur seal pups. Just learning to swim at this season, they gather in the kelp by the hundreds, splashing, twisting and diving, then leaping up again in a chaotic froth of small furry bodies. My presence among them only increased the frenzy. As they surrounded me, biting my flippers, crashing into my head, filling the water with clouds of bubbles, it was all I could do to hold the camera steady. But that was enough. The pup’s antics filled the tape and then filled the lounge with laughter.
Now South Georgia lies in our wake. Ahead our course will take us to Tristan da Cunha and the other fabled, nearly unreachable islands beyond. But the Antarctic has touched us all, as it always does. Sometime the biggest is the best.
This is a voyage between islands. Linking our long looping route up the Atlantic, remote mountaintops rise above the sea, splendid and storied in their isolation. Some are mere specks of land, lost and alone in the vast ocean, while others huddle in small groups that by turning inward seem to deny the empty miles around them. South Georgia is the largest of all that we shall visit, and it is a part of an even larger island of unique character: the Antarctic.
Cut off from the rest of the planet by ocean currents that developed over 25 million years ago, the Antarctic is a separate world, an island of endless ice and freezing seas. Even at South Georgia, on the northern fringes of this frigid region, we were clearly in a place very different than the nearby temperate lands of the Falklands. The wind seems to howl with a special tone, glaciers tumble down from jagged peaks and Antarctic wildlife crowds the beaches.
The seas are yet more different. Nearly every species we encountered in these frozen waters is endemic to the Antarctic, as though we had walked through a door or across a border into a strange nation, a place of unknown inhabitants and weird, unexpected cultures. Orange sea spiders prowled through forests of pink anemones, anti-freeze fish swam through the kelp gardens and 100-year-old seastars clung to boulders beside scarlet sponges.
Best of all, perhaps, were the fur seal pups. Just learning to swim at this season, they gather in the kelp by the hundreds, splashing, twisting and diving, then leaping up again in a chaotic froth of small furry bodies. My presence among them only increased the frenzy. As they surrounded me, biting my flippers, crashing into my head, filling the water with clouds of bubbles, it was all I could do to hold the camera steady. But that was enough. The pup’s antics filled the tape and then filled the lounge with laughter.
Now South Georgia lies in our wake. Ahead our course will take us to Tristan da Cunha and the other fabled, nearly unreachable islands beyond. But the Antarctic has touched us all, as it always does. Sometime the biggest is the best.
