The 1.9 percent club

I read today that the Antarctic tourism season is drawing to a close for another year. The season typically runs from mid-October to early April. The last season, ending April 2024, saw a record number of visitors. 124,262 people visited the Antarctic, with 80,251 making at least one shore landing, albeit on an offshore island or the continent itself.

These stats made me curious about the year Garry and I visited the white continent. We flew to King George Island and cruised the Antarctic Peninsula in the Summer of 2010-11. Interestingly, the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) publishes a report at the end of every season. According to its report, the season we visited recorded 19,065 landings. Another 14,373 passengers cruised in the region without making landfall. Ten per cent of these travellers were Australians.

By the end of the 2010-11 season, it's estimated that around 450,000 tourists had landed in Antarctica since tourism started in the late 1960s. Including the season of our visit, only 304,811 tourists had done so since records began in 1992. Less than 7,000 were visiting annually before 1992, hence the lifetime figure of less than half a million. 

I was surprised to learn that only 531 people participated in air-cruise voyages including Garry and me. Only two vessels were supporting these visitors, Ocean Nova the ship we sailed on, and a smaller 12-passenger motor yacht. Apparently, the year before, only 345 people had arrived in Antarctica this way. As for our vessel, 501 passengers that sailed on her flew across the Drake Passage. This was the first year Antarctica 21, the company we cruised with, flew more than 500 people in a single season. It seems we were very much tourism pioneers.

As an aside, I’ve also read that in the years since our tour, only one other flight has been delayed three days like we were. If I understood the data correctly, this was the group that came after us as they were also delayed three days. Apparently, four flights have been delayed longer. Antarctica 21 has operated 310 flights up to April 2024. This means we were one of only six flights, or 1.9%, that experienced a significant delay. How lucky are we!

We've done our seventh continent

We’ve completed our Antarctic Christmas cruise. What an incredible experience. Every account you’ve ever read about the white continent’s beauty and serenity honestly doesn’t do it justice. Antarctica really is the world’s most pristine, untouched wilderness. Nature is definitely master of this domain as we discovered when inclement weather delayed our flight from King George Island to Punta Arenas for three days.

This delay meant that Garry and I were lucky enough to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Antarctica; all at no additional cost. I use to fantasize about celebrating the start of the new millennium in Antarctica but ultimately never booked a cruise. In my wildest dreams I never imagined ten years later my youthful fantasy would become reality.

In the end we spent eight nights and nine days cruising around the South Shetland Islands and along the Antarctic peninsula. We travelled as far south as 65.05 degrees before pack ice finally blocked our route. Along the way we enjoyed up to three daily excursions, each offering something new and unique. Day after day the polar scenery never failed to amaze, while the wildlife proved more numerous and accessible than I’d ever imagined.  The photo below is just one example.  It's now used by the cruise company on its home page to promote the very cruise we enjoyed.

Highlights include watching penguins mate, build nests and feed new born chicks. We also saw Humpback whales, Fin whales and Killer whales feeding and frolicking; often several times a day. Seals were found basking on ice flows and beaches almost every day. We spotted Crabeater seals, Leopard seals, Weddell seals and juvenile Elephant seals. The bird life was equally abundant. We saw Cormorants feeding chicks on their nests and encountered more than one curious Skua (that’s a large, dull brown scavenger bird).

With so much to share I’ve drafted a separate post covering each day of our cruise. Enjoy these summaries of our incredible experience:

• A brief stopover in lonely Punta Arenas
• Flying across the Drake Passage
• Our first whale sighting
• The ultimate White Christmas
• Standing on an ice flow 65.05 degrees south
• The day we finally stood on our seventh continent - the view and weather were spectacular
• Deception Island's battered, abandoned whaling station
• Stranded on New Year's Eve.

Finally, enjoy the best of more than two thousands photos I’ve taken along the way. Choosing which to upload has been hard work. Everything in the polar regions is a photo opportunity to die for. Without a doubt Antarctica was well worth the wait. Go if you can!

EDITING NOTE
As of January 5, I've posted detailed summaries of entire Antarctic cruise. I'll continue to upload more photos for each post as time and Internet access allows. Check back every few days for more great images of our polar experience.

You can also download a daily logbook prepared by our cruise director.

Introducing the instant travel agent

Our unprecedented stranding in Antarctica meant we missed two scheduled flight connections and a pre-paid tour of Easter Island. As a result, when we finally touched down in Mainland Chile shortly before 5pm on January 1 we had no idea if our itinerary could be salvaged.  I had called the travel agent before boarding our flight from the South Shetlands (apparently this is the only place in Antarctica with mobile coverage).  He'd confirmed that an alternative itinerary was available and suggested we call back after landing in Punta Arenas. I'll never forget his shock after explaining that I was calling from Antarctica.

Upon landing, I spent the next two hours making frantic calls to hotels, airlines and travel agents. We established we could catch a flight to Santiago in time for a connecting flight to Easter Island the following morning if we could get everything reticketed in the time available. The travel agent finally confirmed everything was in place shortly after we reached our hotel in Punta Arenas – provided we immediately dashed back to Punta Arenas airport

In addition to the tight departure time, we grabbed the last two seats on a flight from Easter Island to Santiago three days later, and the only room still available at the island hotel we’d originally booked. Incredibly, we checked-in at Punta Arenas less than 25 minutes before our flight departed. By the narrowest of margins, our original itinerary was back on track, minus a three-day layover previously scheduled for Santiago. We also had to forfeit our business class ticket to secure seats on the January 2 flight to Easter Island.

I suspect everyone reading this post will have little sympathy for our cattle class plight. Garry and I totally agree that one Economy class leg won’t kill us and one city looks much like another when it comes to keeping Easter Island on our itinerary. We’ll still manage to squeeze in 1.5 days in Santiago before we leave South America so all is not lost. Of course, we’ve lost hundreds of dollars in tour bookings which Garry is already committed to claiming back on insurance. Fingers crossed he’ll be successful.

Regardless, we count ourselves lucky. Our extra three days in Antarctica came at a painful cost for the tour group that followed us. They lost these extra days and were forced to accept a highly truncated three-day tour. They also suffered the indignity of boarding their flight south on the second day of delay only to have it turn back an hour into the journey. Worse still, the small print in our cruise contract makes it very clear that no refund will be offered if the cruise is curtailed. If they get you to Antarctica, they've delivered their end of the deal. A partial refund is only available if the entire cruise is cancelled.

However, the experience is still worth every cent.  Antarctica really is the final frontier. It's a pristine, untouched wilderness where people are clearly just the visitors. The only crowds you'll encounter are captured in the video below. Go if you can!

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 invitation 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 renaming 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 Syne 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!

Life on a volcano

Having successfully stepped onto the shore of Antarctica, our cruise made its way back across the swelling waters of the Bransfield Strait. Once again, most of us retired early for the night as the rolling boat played havoc with our senses. However, just before entering the main strait, the captain made a brief detour through a narrow scenic passage called the Friera Channel. It was here that we enjoyed the most memorable sunset of our entire cruise.

The following morning, we woke early to witness our ship entering the narrow entrance of Foster Bay at Deception Island. The bay is actually the sunken caldera of an active volcano. Deception Island last erupted in 1963, destroying part of a British research base at Whalers Bay. The base was evacuated and has remained abandoned ever since. Our ship dropped anchor in the bay shortly before 8am after carefully making its way through the caldera's treacherous fog-shrouded entrance.

After breakfast we boarded the zodiacs and made our way ashore. We then spent several hours exploring the rusting remains of a Norwegian whaling station and the British research base. The island once boasted an active airfield. Today all the remains of this facility is a large, decaying aircraft hanger which also marks the boundary of a nature reserve closed to visitors.

After reaching the grounds surrounding the hangar, we retraced our path and made our way back along the shore. Our route took us past abandoned wooden-hulled ships and smaller sun-bleached whale boats towards a low ridge on the edge of the island. A short, steep climb soon has us standing on the ridgeline. 

On a clear day, this ridge, called Neptune’s Window, provides a glimpse of the Antarctic Peninsula. Historians believe that the first conclusive sighting of the mainland was made by explorers from this vantage point. Sadly, the weather wasn't clear enough for us to experience the same view.

Mid-morning, we set sail again for Half Moon Island, a small crescent of rock located off the coast of the South Shetland Islands. Here we ventured ashore again to watch Chinstrap penguins nesting among the rocks. Once again, we were lucky enough to watch the birds feeding their young or incubating their precious clutch of eggs – usually no more than two eggs. It was here that we also saw our first and only Maraconi penguin on the entire cruise. These birds can be identified by a series of prominent yellow feathers on either side of their head.

We then set sail for Maxwell Bay on King George island thus marking the end of our cruise itinerary – or so we thought. As I’ve posted earlier, low cloud and fog prevented our return flight from landing for another three days and so our Antarctic adventure continued on into the New Year.

The final continent

Our fourth day in Antarctica proved to be the highlight of our entire cruise. It was also our busiest day on tour with three separate excursions. We later learnt that our cruise enjoyed more excursions that any other so far this season. The weather played a significant role in us realising such a packed agenda. As had happened on Boxing Day, we woke to more sunshine and blue sky on December 27.

I was particularly excited to see such perfect weather as this was to be the day that Garry and I finally stepped foot on the Antarctic mainland. Up to this point we’d only ventured onto numerous islands off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. While geographers consider these islands part of the Antarctic territory, I wanted to step foot on the continent itself and thus truly claimed to have visited every continent on Earth.

Our first expedition of the day though saw us take to a zodiac boat and explore the ice flow filled waters of Paradise Bay. This bay is aptly named. As with so many locations on the Antarctic peninsula the area is flanked by stunning mountain peaks (clad in snow and ice of course). The head of the bay is also fringed by several spectacular glaciers, each of which sheds fresh bergs on a daily basis.

The eastern corner of the bay is also highly sheltered resulting in a zone of perfectly still water. Imagine this scene if you can; gliding silently through iridescent blue bergs as a vista of stunning mountains are reflected as perfect mirror images in the water surrounding your boat. This was truly the stuff that Antarctic postcards are made of. Words simply cannot do justice to the experience.

Our second stop of the day was equally mind-blowing. We cruised to the opposite end of Paradise Bay, to a rocky outcrop called Waterboat Point. At low tide it’s joined to the mainland by a natural causeway. However, when we landed the tide was in and so we couldn’t really claim to have stood on the Antarctic peninsula. This sheltered, picturesque location is noted in history as the site where two young men (the oldest of whom was 23) lived an entire winter alone in 1822.

In more recent years Chile has built a research base at Waterboat Point, right the middle of an active Gentoo penguin colony. As a result, visitors reach the base’s building by literally walking around the nests of penguins incubating their precious clutch of eggs. Garry and I was left speechless by the experience. As we quietly walked along a guano smeared path we witnessed one penguin after another adjusting its eggs, while other fended off scavenging birds. We even saw a couple of penguins mating, a rare sight so late in the season.

While at the base we stopped to get an Antarctic base stamp in our passports. This was to become the first of three such stamps we secured during our cruise. The base also had a small museum and gift shop in operation. We indulged ourselves and purchased a couple of long-sleeve t-shirts as mementos of our visit.

Our third and final excursion of the day was the iconic moment we’d been waiting for! Our ship sailed on into Neko Harbour, yet another picturesque bay, located on the peninsula. It was here that Garry and I finally set foot on our seventh, and last, continent. It also marked the moment when we could actually claim to have stepped on every continent in a single year. This remarkable feat was never planned and probably won’t happen again in our lifetime.

As you look back through this blog you’ll see that we visited:

• Africa – celebrating the start of the new year in Port Elizabeth, South Africa
• Asia – visiting India on our way back to London last August (I also went to Malaysia on business in November)
• North America – where we spent the Summer cruising from Vancouver to Alaska
• Australia – completing our annual round-the-world ticket in August
• Europe – where we’ve been living for the last five years
• South America – where we joined our Antarctic cruise.

Everyone on our cruise went ashore. As the last person landed our crew surprised us all with champagne toast. A smaller group then ventured off to climb up a snowy incline to a rocky outcrop several hundred metres above the bay. I joined the climbing party while Garry elected to tramp along the shore to observe a stunning glacier calving into the bay.

 The climb through knee-deep snow was exhausting to say the least. However, those of us who finally made to the top were greeted with the most extraordinary vista. It was easily the most memorable of our entire cruise, made all the more spectacular thanks to plenty of sunshine and blue skies. Once again I gave the video function on my digital camera a solid work out; click below for the result.

Imagine if you can a sweeping view across a scenic bay, surrounded by soaring snow-capped rocky peaks, through which glacier after glacier could be seen inching their way towards the sea. Then cap off this scene with a series of misty distant mountains, silhouetted by the glint of sunlight reflecting on the harbour’s surface. I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to finally make landfall on my seventh and final continent.

Read on for our final day of cruising (or so we thought); which included landfall on active volcano!