The Land of Frozen Time...
Sometimes the things I see and the events I experience leave me craving desperately for the words to adequately convey the moments and somehow do them justice. Still I try, and admittedly often fail, but still I proceed forward. What other option is there besides letting the event reside simply in my memory where it will eventually fade and wither. Antarctica, a place I never thought to touch and at times still can't completely believe I did was such an experience.
After two days of relatively calm weather through the Drake Passage, I awoke to find the Macro Polo sitting placidly among islands shrouded in snow and water dotted with icebergs. The experience was almost surreal and even the bite of the chill antarctic air cutting easily through my mostly synthetic trekking gear was hard pressed to break the spell. We had arrived.
The sky was overcast and the sea was still and black. Everyone calmly doned their arctic gear but the excitement of our first excursion onto land was almost palpable. How do a bunch of backpackers from around the world end up in Antarctica? With a lot of luck. The crew outfitted us with lifevests and loaded us into the Zodiacs ten at a time. Then there was nothing else left but to make landfall.
Bleak yet beautiful. A contradiction yet anyone who has seen a desert knows it can be true. There is something timeless and majestic about this place frozen in snow and ice. Something almost otherworldly, and for a boy who grew up in a city of concrete and steel, it might as well be another world. Few things grow here. Even fewer things manage to eke out a life, yet the penguins live and thrive. By the end of the trip, I felt penguined-out much the same way I felt sea-lioned-out after the Galapagos, but I still had to greatly admire the little guys who somehow found a way.
All around us are ice shelves, some probably one hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand years old if some of the facts we learned can believed. From far away, they don't look that impressive until a smaller object enters the scene and lends scale to the picture. Then you realize these rough and jagged walls of compressed snow tower upwards for at least six or seven stories, if not more. That's not impressive, that's awe-inspiring.
The icebergs were also a constant part of the landscape. Of all shapes and sizes, uneven melting and corrison from weather had made some into floating ice sculptures. I even managed to sit on one that had beached itself near the shore where we landed. My friends and I quickly dubbed it the ice couch and took turns taking pictures on it.
All in all, we had three excursions to the White Continent. Too few and too short anyway you look at it, but three more than most I suppose. With so many places left to see, I don't know if I would be back to Antarctica any time soon, but the continent, as well as the people who shared it with me, made it a memory I will hold for years to come.
After two days of relatively calm weather through the Drake Passage, I awoke to find the Macro Polo sitting placidly among islands shrouded in snow and water dotted with icebergs. The experience was almost surreal and even the bite of the chill antarctic air cutting easily through my mostly synthetic trekking gear was hard pressed to break the spell. We had arrived.
The sky was overcast and the sea was still and black. Everyone calmly doned their arctic gear but the excitement of our first excursion onto land was almost palpable. How do a bunch of backpackers from around the world end up in Antarctica? With a lot of luck. The crew outfitted us with lifevests and loaded us into the Zodiacs ten at a time. Then there was nothing else left but to make landfall.
Bleak yet beautiful. A contradiction yet anyone who has seen a desert knows it can be true. There is something timeless and majestic about this place frozen in snow and ice. Something almost otherworldly, and for a boy who grew up in a city of concrete and steel, it might as well be another world. Few things grow here. Even fewer things manage to eke out a life, yet the penguins live and thrive. By the end of the trip, I felt penguined-out much the same way I felt sea-lioned-out after the Galapagos, but I still had to greatly admire the little guys who somehow found a way.
All around us are ice shelves, some probably one hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand years old if some of the facts we learned can believed. From far away, they don't look that impressive until a smaller object enters the scene and lends scale to the picture. Then you realize these rough and jagged walls of compressed snow tower upwards for at least six or seven stories, if not more. That's not impressive, that's awe-inspiring.
The icebergs were also a constant part of the landscape. Of all shapes and sizes, uneven melting and corrison from weather had made some into floating ice sculptures. I even managed to sit on one that had beached itself near the shore where we landed. My friends and I quickly dubbed it the ice couch and took turns taking pictures on it.
All in all, we had three excursions to the White Continent. Too few and too short anyway you look at it, but three more than most I suppose. With so many places left to see, I don't know if I would be back to Antarctica any time soon, but the continent, as well as the people who shared it with me, made it a memory I will hold for years to come.
posted by Z at
10:27 AM
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