Back to Ushaia

Today has been another day at sea.  We seemed to have outrun the bad weather by this morning, and the Captain slowed the ship right down, so we had a very calm crossing for the day. 

There were huge number of birds following the ship throughout the day.  I spent a lot of time out on deck trying to get decent photos of some of them.  They are huge birds (a wandering albatross can have a wingspan of 13 feet).  I've attended some fascinating lectures while on board, and learned some unbelievable facts about these ocean birds.  A newly fledged albatross will spend around 6 years out of sight of land before it finally finds some remote island and mates.  They can switch off one side of their brain at a time in order to "sleep" while flying.  They drink sea water and have a special gland in the head that filters out the salt, the remaining very salty solution then runs out of their nose and drops off the end of their beak.  And I have been lucky enough to see several of these amazing birds on this trip.

A black-browed albatross alongside the ship

 

 

 

Today has been largely taken up with winding things up.  I had to return my rented boots, settle my ship board account, pack, etc.  Tonight we are anchored in the tBeagle channel, waiting for the Ushuaia harbor pilot to guide us in.  We should dock in Ushuaia at about 2am, and will disembark and head to the airport at about 9am tomorrow morning.

Naturally it's sad that the experience is drawing to a close.  So this is  a good time to reflect on this journey and how it's changed me.  Many people have tried and failed to describe Antarctica to someone who's never been there.  Of course it's vast, and the photographs you take cannot depict the scale of the mountains and ice bergs.  But actually what I found most striking was the absence of any evidence of people.  Every day when we go out in the street there is a constant background noise of humanity: traffic, machinery, other people talking.  But apart from my fellow passengers (and the odd seal belching) it was silent.  There was no background noise.  Nor was there any rubbish.  I've seen TV shows where people are taken out into the "wilds" of Northern Canada to survive on their own for a week.  The participants always seem to find plastic bottles or bits of rope, etc washed ashore on the beach even in these remote areas.  But there was no rubbish anywhere where we went.  I won't say it was clean, because there was plenty of seal and penguin poop around in most of the areas we landed, but that is natural - not man made.
One of the other amazing things was the quantity of wildlife that I encountered.  I imagined that we would be lucky to see a seal, or a whale.  Instead we saw seals everywhere, it was hard to keep from treading on them on some shore excursions.  We spotted whales in 3 or 4 locations, and sea birds (especially penguins) galore.  I'm not against zoos as I realise they have a role to play in preserving some species that are threatened in the wild,  but seeing the penguins and seals in their natural environment I had this deep feeling that this was how they were meant to be seen, not in a man-made environment in a zoo.   It was astounding how trusting these animals were too.  They were totally free and could swim away from us at any time, but they seemed to have no fear of us, in fact they seemed curious and were happy to swim right up to us when we were in the zodiac, or walk right up to us when we were ashore. Seeing them like this just felt "right".  This was their world not ours, and I'm left with a feeling of having been blessed that they were willing to accept my presence there. 
Antarctica was so different I'm left with the feeling that I've been to another planet rather than somewhere on this earth.   There will never be anywhere else I can go that will ever be like it.

During the vacation Denise asked one of our lecturers what proportion of the world's population had ever visited Antarctica and after much discussion the experts came up with a figure of probably about 0.01 %..    I  have had the good fortune to be within that 0.01%  and I will never forget it.