Antarctic Creatures, Icebergs and Polar Explorers

Antarctic creatures, icebergs and polar explorers. No, Andryukha, this is all just too surreal! Could you ever have imagined that we would sail to Antarctica ourselves and walk among penguins, building little towers of agate and coloured jasper while Ladunya strolled along a penguin trail hand in hand with a veteran polar explorer? Or that we would reach Agate Bay by dinghy, coming from the bluest icebergs? No-o-o, it’s all just too surreal! .. .. .. I still can’t believe that we’re really here aboard our icebreaking Lady Mary. The day before Go over to Drake; elephant seals live there on the shore! — The polar explorers send us to the other side of King George Island, and the weather whispers: Go on, go! Our little party armed itself with a thermos and biscuits and set off for the valley exposed to the winds of the Drake Passage. On the sunny shore, among rocks and patches of moss and snow, fur seals lounge about at ease. Sometimes they call to one another with plaintive, childlike wails, then immediately start growling and baring their teeth at each other. While I got stuck watching the fur seals, my team reached the penguins and even the elephant seals. The mossy, pebbly valley of a frozen stream is strewn with tiny penguin feathers. The local mammals feed not so much on milk as on naïve little penguins. But on land, both hunters and prey are decidedly clumsy; the race for survival only begins at sea. And so two penguins march fearlessly straight towards the rookery of Antarctica’s greatest gluttons. The polar explorers affectionately call the penguins with entirely black heads Adélies. They say they are the nastiest of the penguin clan. They grumble if you walk past, and if you violate their personal space, the Adélies raise their tails as they flee and fire caustic faeces up to a metre. It’s difficult and disgusting to wash out. But this pair are not Adélies; they’re policemen. Scientifically, the policemen have another name, but the stripe running across the whole... muzzle? Or do birds have faces? ... anyway, the stripe makes them look like policemen in helmets, hence the name. The partners bravely waddle past the elephant seals. The four-metre bulk of a male lies belly-up; he seems to be drunk.. .. why else would he be snoring, grumbling and gurgling like that in broad daylight? Suddenly his swollen eyes, from which rivulets of tears run down his swamp-coloured fur, open and stare straight at us. But the elephant-potamus is too lazy to move, and he goes on roasting his belly in the sun. The slits of his eyes slam shut: Gurgle-gurgle-brrr-hrrr-pshhh-gurgle-gurgle.. .. Our whole family fits against the backdrop of a single elephant seal’s body. It brought back a photograph from Africa with a baobab: if all four of us joined hands, our outstretched line would barely reach from one side of the trunk to the other. The elephant seal is the local baobab. Around the snorer lie the more graceful bodies of his harem. One female, her belly dark pink from burgundy seaweed, has crawled down to the ocean; the others can’t be bothered. The unattractive padishah, looking like a fat slob in a bathhouse, continues rumbling in his sleep. The pair of penguins marched briskly past the elephant seals and disappeared behind the rocks, where an enchanting seal with leopard markings was resting. Could she actually be a leopard seal? How strangely her nostrils are arranged! They open on top of her muzzle in elegant slits. And she has the brown eyes of a wild chamois. We want to stroke her short, silvery fur, but restrain ourselves. Who knows—what if she gets emotional and falls ill? With a view of fur seals, elephant seals, penguins and the gentle seal, we had a little picnic of tea and biscuits. We clicked away with the camera and set off back through the valley. We reached Bellingshausen just in time for dinner. The expedition leader is already joking that he’ll put us on duty if we decide to hang around for another week. Afterwards, Vitaly the meteorologist invited us to the weather station enclosure to take the regular measurements. Then we visited the world’s southernmost dacha. Vitaly is a creative, crafty soul; the expedition gives his ikebana made from local seaweed to colleagues on special occasions. Even the Chinese ambassador has one of these beauties on his desk. And in an ordinary container fitted out as a storeroom for meteorological equipment, he has created a little dacha. A curtained window, an arched entrance, shelves with beautiful flasks and stones, vivid Russian landscapes, and a map of Antarctica decorated with curling seaweed objets d’art. There’s a little sofa, a computer desk and even a tea-and-coffee corner. The meteorologist comes here for a change of scene. While we are having tea, the radio suddenly speaks in a human voice: Lady Mary at the dacha! Lady Mary at the dacha! Answer the radio room!.. .. it turns out the doctor and the expedition leader are waiting for us to visit them next.. .. .. Once we reach the internet, we’ll decorate these reports with photographs of instruments, magical glass spheres, Antarctic churches, elephant seals, penguins and, of course, polar explorers. Before heading farther south, we made it to the Czech team’s farewell party. They had dismantled the private Czech Antarctic station on Nelson Island. It was a very strange station where some guy had organised survival courses. And they say someone there didn’t even survive.. .. Next year, apparently, they’ll be putting up a new station, a state-run one. The guys showed a video of their passage from Australia to Patagonia along the Antarctic coast, through the Ross Sea. This is the very place where Scott and Amundsen once landed on the icy continent. The southernmost place in the world that can be reached by ship. These guys had been aboard the yacht Selma, the very one we had been so amicably berthed alongside in Ushuaia. It’s nice to meet mutual acquaintances all the way down in Antarctica. On the fourth day, Lady Mary—laden with gifts from the polar explorers (our young sailor now has a berth crammed with soft toys), fantastic impressions and a tonne of new information for our brains—finally got the wind she needed. At dawn, the alarm clock sang “The Ballad of Struggle” once again. It’s below zero outside. The heater worked faithfully all night, warming the saloon to a mere +17°C. It’s a good thing we turned the forecabin into a cold storeroom; it would not have had enough power to heat a larger space. While Nastya and I secured things inside the yacht, the captain stowed the dinghy and outboard in their places. We sounded the horn in farewell, hoisted the mainsail and genoa, one or two of us sniffled, and we set off for the Antarctic Circle. Personally, I would have stayed at Bellingshausen longer—a month or two, or even a year. If I think about an alternative life I could have chosen instead of this one, I would definitely have joined a geological prospecting team somewhere, gone to a polar station or on an archaeological expedition. In short, I would have become some sort of oceanographer, archaeologist, geologist or some other kind of -ologist. My third alternative would have been theatre and cinema. It’s even a little sad that all those alternatives somehow passed me by. Still, setting off with the whole family on a round-the-world—and polar—sailing expedition isn’t bad either, is it? Thank you! Our dear friends, those we know and those we don’t, so distant and yet so close—thank you for your warm words and wonderful comments! We still wait for our shore team to forward them to us, and then we all read them aloud together. It’s such a tremendous support, guys! . . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. And our enormous gratitude goes to the true members of our shore brotherhood and team—to everyone who keeps the expedition going through PayPal.me/TravelyFamily. Thank you to Vladimir G., Anatoly M. from Novosibirsk and Alla G. from Moscow. We wish everyone the happiest spring in the world!