The waiting game

We travelled to Antarctica with an organisation called Antarctica XXI. The company promotes itself as the “First Air Cruise to Antarctica.” To date, it’s still the only company offering scheduled cruises that begin and end with a flight over the notoriously rough seas of the Drake Passage. These charter flights save you almost two full days of sailing in each direction – and the sea sickness that often accompanies the voyage.

Antarctica XXI has been organising fly-in cruise tours for more than eight years. During this period no tour group has ever been delayed by inclement weather for more than 24 hours. However, the company very clearly warns passengers that weather can cause serious delays. This disclaimer concerned me enough to do additional research before finally booking our Christmas cruise. However, I read that most flights are only delayed a few hours; half a day at most.

However, the Polar Regions are a fickle place. As fate would have it, Garry and I, along with 57 other passengers, found ourselves proving an exception to the rule. After six breathtaking days of cruising, we sailed back into Maxwell Bay, King George Island, ready to join our flight back to Mainland Chile on December 29. However, low clouds and poor visibility kept the charter plane waiting in Punta Arenas. A single day’s delay soon turned into a second day followed by a third before the seasonal winds finally returned. Yes, you read that correctly, an unprecedented three days passed before the cloud ceiling lifted enough for our plane to land.

Garry and I couldn’t believe our luck. We gained three extra days of cruising Antarctic waters at no extra cost and much to our delight celebrated New Year's Eve in Antarctica. We were effectively stranded. Apparently, the Brazilian President suffered a similar fate when he visited King George Island in 2005. He was stranded on the island by poor weather for five days.

As each delay mounted our cruise director worked with the ship’s captain to arrange unscheduled excursions to scenic locations within two hours of sailing time from the airstrip. This time window reflected the minimum period required for the cruise company to file a flight plan, assemble the next tour group, load the plane, and take to the air thus giving us enough time to terminate an impromptu excursion and return to base.

Our first additional day saw us anchored offshore by the airfield. We ventured onto shore once to visit the local Russian research base and its incredibly quaint Russian Orthodox Church. By chance, I’d come across references to this church before our cruise. I never imagined I’d actually get to see it as the building wasn’t listed as an excursion destination for our cruise.

The church was built in Siberia in 2002 entirely from cedar wood and hefty spruce logs. It consists of three small rooms; an entrance annexe, a high-ceiling nave, and a small back chapel. Outside, the roof of each room is topped by a classic onion dome. It was then disassembled and shipped to Antarctica. The structure was reassembled on a low hill overlooking Maxwell Bay on King George Island. To ensure that the gale-force polar winds can't sweep it away, the building is firmly bolded to bedrock by six impressive yellow chains.

Day Two of our unscheduled extension saw us lift anchor and sail off to neighbouring Admiralty Bay. Here we took to the zodiac boats and spent several hours cruising along the five-kilometre-long face of an impressive glacier. Highlights of our time on the water included an encounter with a rather menacing leopard seal that repeatedly yawned on request resulting in numerous iconic photos. We also witnessed the glacier carving several times. Some ice chunks were large enough to send wave after wave of powerful rolling swells across the bay.

Our third and final extension day took us to a nearby cove where Argentina has established a large research base. It’s inhabited all year round; hosting more than 100 people in Summer and 30 in Winter. It’s currently home to eight women which must make for an interesting social dynamic. The base commander took us along the shore to observe juvenile elephant seals before we ventured inside for a short lecture on the base’s research program.

It’s an impressive complex, complete with its own polar diving team that dives all year round including excursions under the ice in Winter. It also hosts one of only two barometric pressure chambers along the Antarctic peninsula. This facility is used to help divers decompress after lengthy dives or save divers suffering life-threatening bends. This excursion was easily our most insightful research base visit of the entire cruise. Previous base tours had involved little more than securing a stamp in our passports (I have three such stamps now) and shopping for the odd souvenir.

Upon our return to Maxwell Bay, we were advised that we’d be forced to spend New Year’s Eve in Antarctica. Some of our tour group were initially angry at the prospect of spending a third unscheduled night on board. However, Garry and I teamed up with a friendly bunch of Australians to organise an impromptu New Year’s Eve concert. The crew responded by organising a trivia quiz and the hospitality manager called on the ship’s engineers to unbolt tables in its panorama lounge, forming a temporary dance floor.

I designed an invite that the ship circulated during dinner and our Australian companions organised four national choirs who each wrote a song about our dilemma. The Australians (and Kiwis) sang a song about watching ice flows to the tune of Waltzing Matilda, the Americans rewrote the theme song to Gilligan’s Island (a 70’s sitcom), and the British reworked Twelve Days of Christmas, earning some of the largest laughs of the night.

As midnight neared we then surprised the crew with a re-naming ceremony. We gave each crew member a new nickname while sharing an anecdote that captured the history of their name. Several of the crew told us afterwards they’d never had a tour group honour them so warmly. Finally, I pulled up a copy of Auld Lang Sine I just so happened to have loaded into my iPhone as we counted down to midnight.

In the end, a determined group of us successfully transformed an initially hostile situation into an evening filled with laughter, singing, dancing, and memories everyone will treasure for years to come. For me, the ultimate personal highlight came shortly after midnight. I found myself standing alone on the top deck looking out across a perfectly calm bay as snow gently fell around me. At the moment, in the perpetual summer twilight of the polar region (that's the image above), I truly felt I was in Antarctica celebrating the beginning of a new decade. Happy New Year everyone!