Where in the world are you going?

My friends often ask me this question and it makes me chuckle. It means that I’m not the  usual type of traveler. I like living outside of the pack.

Twenty years ago, I read the “Endurance” and vowed that I’d experience wild, untamed Antarctica and follow in Shackleton’s  heroic footsteps. It took two decades, but my number one bucket list trip never diminished in my mind.

My planning included picking a ship that would let me follow Shackleton’s late 1914-1915 expedition . I wanted to experience his last miles traversing South Georgia, seeking rescue at the Stromness whaling station. I picked a journey with a historian onboard ( the outstanding David “Woody” Wood) with hopes of landing at Elephant island, even though I’d been warned that only one ship out of nine would ever be able to navigate the rough water there.

I’m searching for answers about the psychological components that doomed Scott but saved Shackleton.Consider that Shackleton failed at most everything in his lifetime, but when his men were in jeopardy, he refused to let them die. He surmounted unbelievable hardships where he should have perished many times over. But he didn’t. He brought all of the men safely home to their wives and mothers. He had a backbone of metal.

Always in love with the ice, he died of a heart attack on his last expedition in 1922 at the Grytviken whaling station on South Georgia. I felt honored, standing by his graveside to toast his life with a wee dram of scotch. I poured some onto his grave, sharing with the “boss”. I think he would have liked that.IMG_0938.JPG

 

Shackleton isn’t the only reason Antarctica is so hot on my mind. As a kid, I never missed reading National Geographic and still continue to love the magazine that takes me on spectacular journeys from my couch.

I wanted to walk where few have gone– into the Antarctic wilderness– and walk amongst penguins, seals, and nesting albatross. I dreamed of soaring icebergs rimmed in glowing blue and so many glaciers that many are not named. In my mind, I imagined jumbled packs of sea ice forming endless geometric patterns with the rising or setting sun as a backdrop.

Follow along with me, because Quark and the expedition team led by Shane Evey gave me all of those visions and so many more.

 

 

 

Westpoint and Saunders Island Landings

Two days out of Ushuaia, Argentina enroute to the West Falkland weren’t spent sleeping, starting with 7:45 a.m. wake-up calls. The Marine animal specialist, Annie, did presentations on seals and whales while our ornithologist, Adrian, helped us identify birds of the Falklands and South Georgia Islands. Acacia, our photography guide taught us how to capture the perfect photo. Woody presented the history of the Falkland islands.

They tried to prepare us for the amazing experience on our morning landing at Westpoint Island and the afternoon landing at Saunders, which was quite the task. Westpoint has a booming summer population of four people and black-browed nesting Albatross and Rockhopper penguins by the thousands along the cliffs. We had to be careful walking to not step on these smallest (but most noisy) penguins or the endangered albatross that mate for life with their partners.

In the afternoon, the ship sailed to Saunders Island, site of the first English settlement in 1765. It is now home to 11,000 breeding pairs of black-browed albatross and five penguin species. The way I keep them straight:

Rockhopper–noisy and yellow brows

Gentoo–look like they have red lipstick and they are quite funny to watch as they steal rocks from other nests. They are quite animated.

Megellanic–live in burrows and bray like a donkey

Macaroni–Have a Donald Trump hairstyle and other mannerisms of the Trumpster.

King–tallest penguin in the Falklands (only the emperor is bigger) with orange markings. Juveniles are fluffy brown and must molt before they can enter the water to eat. Some of them are larger than their parents. Apparently, molting is a miserable experience as they seem to be shunned or perhaps depressed.

 

We also saw whale bones above the beach and two predators–the Skua looking so sweet with the baby chick (but they are quite vicious) and the Striated Caracara just waiting for a baby penguin left alone.