Antarctica Continental Landing 2/1 Sunday Day 14

At last, our first steps on the Antarctic continent! In the morning as we sailed toward Hope Bay on the eastern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, we had our mandatory IAATO (International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators) briefing. This organization regulates all tourism in Antarctica. It was basically a recap of all the important bio-security information we had already been applying for this whole trip, but attendance before landing on the continent is mandatory for all passengers. 

Afterwards, our guide Marcelo gave a presentation on the 1901 Swedish Antarctic expedition led by Otto Nordenskjold that ended in both disaster and good fortune. They spent the winter doing research on Snow Island, but were then stranded for nine months on Paulet Island (which we will be visiting tomorrow) after the ship coming to retrieve them sank. They built a hut out of stones to survive the winter, before being rescued the following spring. It seemed like a lot of the early Antarctic expeditions ended in mostly failure, with very few successes. The Scott expedition for the race to the pole is another example of a colossal failure, while the Amundsen expedition was a rare huge success. 

In the afternoon we made our continental landing at Hope Bay. We set out in the Zodiacs for a cruise to the large glacier, and past the Argentinian Military Base called Esperanza, for which our guide and retired Rear Admiral Marcelo had been the “boss of the boss of the boss” of the base commander. We landed in an area with a large Adelie Penguin colony and enjoyed a short hike up a hill to the colony with views of the bay. We were hoping for more snow for our first continental landing, but you get a lot of penguin poop and dirty, muddy snow in the middle of summer in Antarctica. February is the warmest month. If we were to come at the beginning of the tourism season in October or November, everything would be covered in snow and/or ice.

We had fun taking photos with our Antarctica flag that we had ordered from Etsy. Antarctica is known as the 7^th Continent, and it also seems to be the seventh continent that most people visit since it’s so remote and also quite spendy to visit. This was Steve’s seventh continent, but only my sixth, as I have not been to Australia, so we had the flag made to say 6^th Continent on one side and 7^th Continent on the other.

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