Cuverville Island & Neko Harbor
After days of snow and wind, Antarctica showed us her gentler face today, and what a glorious face it is! This morning we approached Cuverville Island under sunny skies and with brilliant visibility. Every mountaintop along the Danco Coast of the Antarctic Peninsula glowed ahead of National Geographic Explorer, as did those on Brabant and Anvers Islands astern.
Zodiacs wove their way through a forest of small icebergs to the beach at Cuverville, one of the largest Gentoo penguin rookeries in the region. Although well over a meter of snow still lay on the land, most of the penguins had established nests and were incubating two eggs. Some birds were still nest building, and we watched as many pairs gathered small stones, decorously presenting them to each other, as if diamond engagement rings. Skuas patrolled overhead, swooping in to snatch any unguarded eggs for their morning meal. The hikers climbed several hundred feet above the beach to take in the breathtaking view of the Errera Channel and southern Gerlache Strait.
Once back aboard, we sailed south through the narrow Errera Channel into Andvord Bay for our afternoon landing at Neko Harbor. This tiny bight in the bay is named for the Neko, a factory whaling ship that frequented this anchorage in the early part of the 1900's. Despite an enormous amount of glacier ice drifting in the bay, we were able to coax the zodiacs ashore for a landing on the Antarctic Peninsula itself - a seventh continent for many. The masses of moving ice made for an exciting ride back to the ship, in a setting that continued to be unspeakably beautiful, bringing to mind Roald Amundsen’s words: “Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak, crevassed, wild as any land on our globe, it lies, unseen and untrodden.”
Our day was capped off perfectly as the moon shone brightly over clouds bathed by the golden light of the setting sun (it was almost midnight!).
After days of snow and wind, Antarctica showed us her gentler face today, and what a glorious face it is! This morning we approached Cuverville Island under sunny skies and with brilliant visibility. Every mountaintop along the Danco Coast of the Antarctic Peninsula glowed ahead of National Geographic Explorer, as did those on Brabant and Anvers Islands astern.
Zodiacs wove their way through a forest of small icebergs to the beach at Cuverville, one of the largest Gentoo penguin rookeries in the region. Although well over a meter of snow still lay on the land, most of the penguins had established nests and were incubating two eggs. Some birds were still nest building, and we watched as many pairs gathered small stones, decorously presenting them to each other, as if diamond engagement rings. Skuas patrolled overhead, swooping in to snatch any unguarded eggs for their morning meal. The hikers climbed several hundred feet above the beach to take in the breathtaking view of the Errera Channel and southern Gerlache Strait.
Once back aboard, we sailed south through the narrow Errera Channel into Andvord Bay for our afternoon landing at Neko Harbor. This tiny bight in the bay is named for the Neko, a factory whaling ship that frequented this anchorage in the early part of the 1900's. Despite an enormous amount of glacier ice drifting in the bay, we were able to coax the zodiacs ashore for a landing on the Antarctic Peninsula itself - a seventh continent for many. The masses of moving ice made for an exciting ride back to the ship, in a setting that continued to be unspeakably beautiful, bringing to mind Roald Amundsen’s words: “Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak, crevassed, wild as any land on our globe, it lies, unseen and untrodden.”
Our day was capped off perfectly as the moon shone brightly over clouds bathed by the golden light of the setting sun (it was almost midnight!).
