Day 9 : Across the white desert

Antarctica from a climate category perspective is a desert, a white desert.

It never rains in Antarctica, and certainly much less than in the Sahara desert. Antarctica Fauna is designed for desert climate and young penguins cannot resist to the rain, as when they are born they don't have yet that waterproof layer of oily feather. With the gradual warming happening, especially in the Northern Antarctica peninsula, sometimes, heavy rain can happen and it kills them as they can't dry themselves and get too cold to survive.

Today as we continue our navigation thru the ice, and loose complete sight of the open sea, we also get to understand the meaning of white desert.

We are now 69.3 degrees south, so more than 3 degrees past the Antarctic circle. It is important to realize how remote this place is. Cruise ships can't reach that far without ice-breaking capability. Even resupply vessels don't come here often. Yesterday, as we stopped near the Argentina permanent research station of San Martin, we were the first ship they had seen in 9 months and the Chef graciously offered them 100kg of fresh fruits and vegetables.

The weather today started with some fog again in the morning but the sky cleared for a couple of hours and we got to enjoy sunshine and a glass of champagne on the helicopter deck.

Rare encounters

We can see some wildlife in the middle of this white desert. Lonely penguins and seals. But I got to spot a Ross Seal, which is a very rare kind, that even many of the on-board naturalists had never seen before. It is said that only 130,000 still live in Antarctica but they are rarely approached by humans. A weddell seal (I think), and then there is the magic sight of the Emperor Penguin, where lonely individual can sometimes be seen in this area, far from the big colonies. We were extremely lucky today.

Approaching Charcot Island...

The captain decided to take us to Charcot Island. The satellite image received during the night shows some possible route thru the icepack and our ship is heading straight there. It took the entire day to reach the island but the wildlife and the super scenic field of icebergs were astonishing. It does not seem easy to navigate thru the ice, yet certainly much easier than in 1909 when Jean-Baptiste Charcot discovered this island for the first time. Finally we get close by and the helicopter is sent to find a large ice plate where we could disembark on the ice !

The exploration team goes first into the ice and test the thickness and the safety, but unfortunately, the ice is too thin in some places and the disembarkation plans are called-off for the day.