 Cliff and Doris Kolber
Nature and Travel Photography
Antarctica Newsletter #2: Penguins and Passages
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Antarctica Newsletter #2
Penguins and Passages
Join
us on Part 2 of our 21-day Antarctic expedition. We make landings
throughout the Antarctic Peninsula and mingle with penguins and seals. Incredible icebergs and amazing, desolate
landscapes are part of the journey.
Sailing to Antarctica
We spent
21 days on an expedition ship visiting Antarctica, South
Georgia Island and
the Falkland Islands. The following are
highlights of our days on the Antarctica
Peninsula. We were s cheduled
to reach the Peninsula on the third day of the
expedition, but we lost a day to weather and heavy seas. After days of rocking and rolling we were ready
to stand on firm ground! Everything is
subject to weather conditions, and the schedules change at a moment's notice
Our
strongest advice for photography is to shoot everything you see. Don't try to focus on anything in
particular. This is divergent from
normal order of things in photography, but Antarctica
is not a normal destination. Also, shoot
from the deck of the ship. Bear the
cold, the wind and the wet, but get out on deck and shoot! The scenery and the landscapes change moment
to moment. Shoot birds from the ship -
albatrosses and petrels soar with the ship's wake.
The ship
was rocking, rolling and pitching almost every day. It was difficult to walk without holding onto
something. Walking sounds simple but
it's not easy when a ship is being tossed and turned and pummeled by the
sea. Lunch and breakfast are served
buffet style, but it can be a challenge to get from the buffet table to the
dinner table without losing some food to the floor. It's a dance that takes time to master. 
Penguins!
Paulet Island was our first landing. It's a
small island surrounded by small icebergs with penguins swimming in the sea and
jumping on the icebergs. Wee to the
largest colony of Adelie penguins in the world -- about 250,000 adults and
chicks. There are birds everywhere... on the shore, in the water, on the
slopes. There are tens of thousands of
chicks running around  and crying for food!
The chicks would come over and start pecking at our clothing. If an
adult and a chick get separated they both start squawking. Even with hundreds of thousands of penguins
running around and squawking, they still find each other. The noise is deafening.
Narrow Passages
We sailed
through several incredibly amazing straits and channels - Bransfield
Strait, Gerlach Strait,
Antarctica Sound and the most famous for its scenery, Lemaire Channel. The landscape
along these straits is stunning and incredible.
Each day was more beautiful and spectacular than imagined. On overcast days (of which we had many) the
sky flows into the mountains while clouds and fog blend together as o ne. We could not tell where the sky ended and the
sea began.
Lemaire
Channel is about seven miles long and less than a mile wide so the mountains
and glaciers feel like they are right on top of you.  The weather was cold, windy, wet, snowy and
foggy but made for some great photography!
The channel always has a lot of ice and icebergs and is not always
navigable. We were able to navigate
through, but very slowly. All ships have
an Ice Captain aboard and our Ice Captain was on the bridge and Captain of the
ship whenever we were near ice.
Neko and
Cuverville
By the
fifth day of the expedition we had lost all sense of time and society. We had to ask to find out what day or date it
was. The ship distributes no world news
and there are no public channels on the television. On any other trip there is usually some type
of news or communication coming in from the world. But not in Antarctica. It is silence, and wonderful.
Neko Harbor is a small inlet with thousands
of Gentoo penguins and chicks. We were
able to hike up a small glacier overlooking the ocean where we could wat ch
walls of ice break from another glacier and explode into the bay. The ship was anchored in the middle of the
bay between the beach and the glaciers. This
was astonishing and incredible!
Because
of rough seas we lost more time so we made our next landing, Cuverville Island,
late at night instead of during the day.
It really didn't matter since the  sun never sets during the Antarctic
summer. Wildlife activity was stranger on
Cuverville Island than other places. Penguins were busy nesting and breeding and the
atmosphere felt almost business-like. At
other landings the penguins were socializing and playing, but here they spent
their time building nests, raising chicks and courting. We almost felt like we were intruding on
them. 
Glaciers and Gift
Stores
Port
Lockroy is the most visited place in Antarctica
and is also the world's most southern and remote gift store and post office. It's owned by the British with a few
buildings and of course, thousands of penguins live here. It was originally a whaling station and then
became a covert spy station for the British during World War II. After being on our ship and blacked out from civilization
for eight days, it felt very strange to be inside a store again. But, being faithful tourists, we bought
T-Shirts!
Hannah Point
The trip
only gets better every day. Hannah Point
is located in the South Shetland Islands, just off the coast of Antarctica. It's a
half-moon bay that slopes upward about 500 feet from a sandy beach. There are tens of thousands of penguins and
birds nesting on the Point along with elephant seals. Amazingly, there is no snow. In fact the landscape was covered with green
grass--Hannah Point
is the only place in Antarctica where grass
grows! It was like being in the tropics
again. Well, almost.
What
makes Hannah Point so special is the penguin rookery on
this island. Predators (Skuas and Giant P etrels) were more aggressive than
we've seen before. These guys were cruising all over the place swooping for
chicks. And in the middle of the action
were about 25 elephant seals who live permanently at the rookery. A full grown elephant seal can weigh as much
as four tons while a full grown gentoo penguin weighs about 15 lbs. And yet the penguins were bossing the seals
around! It was a riot.
At Hannah Point,
the smell of penguin guano (penguin poop) is bad, really bad. But we found something even worse. It's the smell coming from a colony of
four-ton elephant seals belching and expelling flatus (I can't say "fart"
here).  The smell is excruciating! Even the seals grunted and complained about
their own smell every once in a while! They were belching and expelling flatus
so loud and strong that there was steam coming from their bodies!
Antarctica
Words and
images cannot describe the incredible beauty, immense vastness and remote
desolation of this continent. It is the
coldest, windiest and driest continent in the world. It is the largest desert in the world,
averaging just 4 inches of precipitation a year. Since there is no evaporation,
ice and snow stacks up over years and millenniums, turning Antarctica
into the tallest continent in the world with ice up to 10,000 feet in some
places. It is incredible and magical. As much as we try, it is not possible to
record through images or words what this continent is all about.
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Thanks for visiting. Be sure to explore the outdoors  and enjoy our natural lands. Leave everything as it was when you arrived and it will be a rewarding experience for everyone.
Cliff and Doris Kolber
Kolberphotography.com
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