Drake Passage, en route to Antarctica
Rock and Roll. We awake to a steady westerly, the wind and waves coiling off our starboard beam as we make our way south for the great southern continent, Antarctica. Time to leave behind the hustling world of sharp elbows and outrageous political promises to cleanse ourselves, in a manner of speaking, in the snowy white world of castle icebergs and tuxedoed birds. We find no false images here. Everything is as we see it: sea and sky, timeless and tumultuous, no different than what Sir Francis Drake sighted over 400 years ago, as he made his way around Cape Horn and found a horizon embroidered with magnificent birds, among the greatest fliers in nature: wandering albatrosses, black-browed albatrosses, giant petrels, pintado petrels, Antarctic prions, and others, always others. They fly as if they invented the wind.
We gather on the aft deck, cameras in hand, and do our best to photograph them. We watch them disappear into a deep trough, then emerge, bank and turn. Their wingtips touch a wave, and for an instant their eyes meet ours and take our stares and turn them back on us. Salt spray curls our hair and we laugh from sheer exhilaration, children again, giddy with discovery. Already the molecules are re-arranging inside us.
Of course we know much more than Drake did. Half a millennium has taught us much. We know Antarctica exists, that it contains ninety percent of the world's ice, and in some places (high up on the polar plateau) that ice is up to 15,000 feet thick and 650,000 years old. We know it's a continent surrounded by a great southern ocean (whereas the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents), and that only two percent of the continent is ice-free. We also know that the ice-free two percent is where penguins and seals gather to breed and bring forth a new generation of feisty, photogenic animals, dedicated as any wild creatures can be, and it's our privilege on the National Geographic Endeavour to journey south to be among them.
Rock and Roll. We awake to a steady westerly, the wind and waves coiling off our starboard beam as we make our way south for the great southern continent, Antarctica. Time to leave behind the hustling world of sharp elbows and outrageous political promises to cleanse ourselves, in a manner of speaking, in the snowy white world of castle icebergs and tuxedoed birds. We find no false images here. Everything is as we see it: sea and sky, timeless and tumultuous, no different than what Sir Francis Drake sighted over 400 years ago, as he made his way around Cape Horn and found a horizon embroidered with magnificent birds, among the greatest fliers in nature: wandering albatrosses, black-browed albatrosses, giant petrels, pintado petrels, Antarctic prions, and others, always others. They fly as if they invented the wind.
We gather on the aft deck, cameras in hand, and do our best to photograph them. We watch them disappear into a deep trough, then emerge, bank and turn. Their wingtips touch a wave, and for an instant their eyes meet ours and take our stares and turn them back on us. Salt spray curls our hair and we laugh from sheer exhilaration, children again, giddy with discovery. Already the molecules are re-arranging inside us.
Of course we know much more than Drake did. Half a millennium has taught us much. We know Antarctica exists, that it contains ninety percent of the world's ice, and in some places (high up on the polar plateau) that ice is up to 15,000 feet thick and 650,000 years old. We know it's a continent surrounded by a great southern ocean (whereas the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents), and that only two percent of the continent is ice-free. We also know that the ice-free two percent is where penguins and seals gather to breed and bring forth a new generation of feisty, photogenic animals, dedicated as any wild creatures can be, and it's our privilege on the National Geographic Endeavour to journey south to be among them.
