Cierva Cove – Portal Point – Orne Harbour
Waking up on the ship was always a fun experience. The expedition leader, Alex, always played a cheerful good morning song followed by his “Good morning… Good morning everyone… “, weather announcement and other random announcements, all of this delivered in his most gentle monotonic voice. I really wish I had recorded it! Although I thought it was ridiculous at the beginning, I got quite fond of his morning announcements.
The second day in Antarctica was a packed day. They made us get up at 6am to see the Ciera Cove. This Cove lies on the south side of Cape Herschel, within Hughes Bay. It is named after Juan de la Cierva, the inventor of the autogyro (the precursor to the helicopter, first flown in 1923). This site is known for its collection of stunning icebergs and abundance of leopard seals – although we didn’t see any. It is also home to Primavera, an Argentinian summer research station.
We were all really excited to get away from the ship and it was a gorgeous blue skied morning. That morning, we were only going to cruise around the cove in our zodiacs. “Antarctica never disappoints” is what Luke kept saying and he was right. We floated through the water, making our way through a sea of ice. We sighted some seals and penguins on our way and drove past a magnificent glacier. It was a fun first excursion.
Next, we went to Portal Point which was named by the British after they built a refuge hut at this site in 1956, enabling them to use a nearby snow slope as a gateway up onto the Peninsula plateau. This would be our first landing on the Antarctic continent.
I chose to first go kayaking. We were all still getting used to our kayaks, so we were advancing very slowly. But we enjoyed having penguins swim right past us. They were as curious about us as we were about them. They would swim, stop and poke their heads out, stare at us for a while, before heading somewhere else. Portal Point is very scenic due to the surrounding mountains, crevassed glaciers and glacial tongues that extend down to sea level. My landing at Portal Point ended up being very short, but it was still fun to set foot on land.
There were some Chinese passengers on the boat. Apparently a couple was on their honeymoon, so they organized a small photoshoot on the deck. The woman put on her wedding dress while her husband shot photos. We were all very impressed with her standing in the freezing cold in her wedding dress while we all had our big thermal coats on. I hope she got good pictures!
That day was also our first close sighting of humpback whales. We had seen a few before, but only very far in the distance. This time, they were about 100m from the boat and came out of the water multiple times. They splashed their fins and showed their tails when diving deep. What majestic animals.
Our last stop, Orne Harbour, was the most magnificent of the day and perhaps also of the whole trip. Orne Harbour is on the northwest side of the Arctowski Peninsula, near the northern entrance to the Errera Channel. It was discovered by de Gerlache in 1898 and named by whalers. The harbour has two parts and is surrounded by glaciers. We hiked up a long way to the top of a hill. As we hiked up, we had this stunning view over the bay, the glaciers and the ship. The view got better the higher we got. Once, we reached the top, we were also able to peek over the other side of the hill and the view just got more beautiful. You didn’t really know where to look anymore, it all seemed so surreal. As if this wasn’t enough, there was a colony of chinstrap penguins at the top of the mountain. The penguins were laying eggs and didn’t mind our presence. In fact, they didn’t hesitate to walk right past us. It was all just too good to be true. I was among the last set of people to leave. Hadleigh allowed us to run down the hill which was so much fun. Usually, any of the staff were quite paranoid about anyone getting injured. This is understandable, since there really isn’t any medical facility anywhere close, but it also sometimes felt a little ridiculous. So moments like those, when we were allowed to do fun things like running down a hill, became even more precious.
See more photos here.
Time-lapse videos of Portal Point and Orne Harbor (note that I did not take these videos):
