2023 Back to Antarctica - Day 15 Carcass Island, Falkland Islands

We could see the hills of Carcass Island, our landing site today, from yesterday’s mooring at Saunders Island. 

Despite the rather grisly name, the island got its name from the ship HMS Carcass which surveyed the island in 1766. It’s been a sheep farm for over a century and is presently privately owned. Despite the sheep farming, the island has been carefully maintained with a variety of vegetation. There are no rats or cats on the island. As a result, bird life thrives with all local species nesting on the ground. 

Greater Magellan or Upland Goose

We saw several pairs of striated caracara, a Near Threatened bird in the eagle/falcon family. There are about 500 nesting pairs in the Falklands. They, like most of the birds we saw here, were unperturbed by our presence. 

The expedition crew had loosely marked a 4 km route along the shore out to a spit of land dividing two beaches. We left the boat in bright sun, but on the zodiac ride over it hailed hard, stinging our faces as we rode to shore. Luckily, the weather changes quickly in the Falklands and the hail ended as we landed, turning into a lovely day for a walk. The brilliant blue water looked almost tropical.

Gorse, a non-native plant from Scotland, was in full bloom. It may be invasive, but it provides a splash of color in an otherwise rocky, brown environment. 

Our telltale red jackets make it easy for the crew to mark our progress.

A trio of small black and white dolphins frolicked around our zodiac when we got back to the ship. 

This is our final landing for the ship. Tomorrow is a sea day as we head southwest to Ushuaia, Argentina from which we will take a flight back to Buenos Aires. The lack of guidance and planning will be a big change we we head out for a few days of exploring on our own. 

2023 Back to Antarctica - Day 14 Saunders Island, Falkland Islands - and Rockhoppers!

We landed this morning on Saunders Island in the northwest Falklands. Our Plan A landing site was scratched due to high winds, but the ship found a safer place around the bend for Plan B where we could wade ashore to a wide beach. 

To the left was a walk to a Gentoo penguin colony. To the right a kelp-eating steer acting as a signpost to start a longer walk to an albatross breeding colony and rockhopper penguins. We headed right.

Brown-browed albatrosses (also known as the black-browed mollymawk) are the most common member of its family. They get their name from their dark eyebrow, which extend like dark eyeliner. Their wingspan of 7 to 8 feet is impressive but considerably less than their larger cousin the wandering albatross, which clocks in at 11 feet. Albatrosses, like penguins, sooty terns, shearwaters, and petrels are pelagic birds spending the greater portion of their lives on the open ocean. They only come to land to breed. 

Of 600,000 nesting pairs, 400,000 breed in the Falkland Islands. The colony on Saunders Island was spread along the edge of a cliff. Their nests, reused each year, are tidy pillars of mud and guano up to 20 inches high.

They have an elaborate courtship ritual (worth googling), which they begin practicing when two or three years old. They don’t actually start breeding until around their 10th year. That sounds old, but not so much when you consider they have a natural lifespan of over 70 years.

The Rockhopper penguin colony was a kilometer further along the coast. 

Only a video can do them justice. For the most part, they were clustered in the colony, tending their nests. Occasionally a group began to coalesce, building slowly to a critical mass that, after many false starts, made a beeline to another part of the colony, or to the ocean.

They would go faster and faster, progressing from a fast waddle to big leaps. 

They have a Groucho Marx eyebrow thing going on, lending to their overall comical appearance. They were a treat to observe, another highlight of the adventure.

2023 Return to Antarctica - Day 13 Volunteer Point, Falkland Islands - and Penguins!

We docked off shore from Stanley, the Falklands capital, this morning, and took a tender to the pier. The town is a few blocks deep, colorful roofs scattered along the shoreline. There was a National Geographic ship in the harbor, but we didn’t run into anyone from there.

Seals and gulls catching rays on a rare sunny day.

Hurtigruten included a walking tour of Stanley for all passengers, but we elected to pay for an optional excursion to Volunteer Point, the northeast corner of East Falkland. The first 30 minutes were on a 2-lane paved highway. The next 45 minutes were on a well-tended gravel road. The last hour was off-road over turf and peat fields. We traveled in 4X4s, which were absolutely necessary. We were warned it would be a jolting ride, and indeed it was. 

The vehicles traveled in convoys of 6-8 cars, and were equipped with winches to pull out anyone who got stuck (three vehicles got stuck, luckily ours was not amongst the casualties). When we reached Volunteer Point, everyone had to step in a chemical bath to assure we weren’t bringing pathogens to the penguin colonies. 

Three types of penguins nest here. The Gentoo penguins kept pretty much to themselves. They lay on nests scooped out of the turf, which look a lot more comfortable than the nests of pebbles I’ve seen in Antarctica. 

As in Antarctica, skuas swept over the nests trying to find an untended egg. This one succeeded, carrying the egg to just outside the nesting range where he proceeded to chip a hole in it and eat it.

Volunteer Point hosts the largest King Penguin colony in the Falklands, about 2,000 pairs. This is the northernmost point in their range. Our first encounter was this group of dignified, stolid specimens. The one of the right is molting into her Big Girl feathers.

Then we noticed the rotund brown puffballs.

They are 10-month old chicks. They are still being fed by their parents, and accordingly some walk around with an entourage of adults. 

Surveying the landscape we were serenaded by the kazoo like calls of the adults while the higher pitched whistles of the chicks created a true cacophony of sound.

What looks like flowers scattered upon the ground are actually feathers. The adult penguins molt every year, fasting for a month as they synthesize new feathers. During the molt, they aren’t waterproof so they stay ashore until the new plumage has grown in. By the time they finish, they can lose up to 44% of their body weight. This quartet is busy plucking out feathers. 

The third penguin species, Magellanic, were nesting in burrows on the beach. The males stand solitary guard.

A courting pair of king penguins enjoy a romantic moment on the beach.

2023 Return to Antarctica - Day 10-11-12 Penguin Island and Drake Passage

This is our last day in Antarctica. We landed at auspicious-sounding Penguin Island, home to colonies of Chinstrap and Adélie penguins. It’s the first time the MS Roald Amundsen has landed here. Antarctic landing sites are classified C-1, for ships carrying less than 200 passengers, and C-2, for larger ships. Our light passenger load let the ship qualify for a landing today.

Penguin Island is one of the smaller South Shetland Islands, roughly a mile square. The sea was choppy, which made transferring between the zodiac and the ship a matter of careful timing. But the most challenging part for me was landing on the island. We had to navigate along a long stretch of rocks and ice from the landing site to our base. Or, as I refer to it, the Walk of Shame. I was pretty much paralyzed with lack of confidence and balance, and required dedicated assistance to make it off the beach. 

The expedition team had marked out a hike for us. Unfortunately, the penguins were encamped on the far side of the island so we didn’t see a single one. 

The walk started out pleasantly enough.


And then right on schedule, the snow blew in at 10:30. Time to head back to the ship.

We had two and a half days to make our way up to the Falkland Islands. Again, we had an easy crossing of the Drake Passage, with swells around 10 feet. We were accompanied by groups of Cape Petrols and Brown Skuas. 

The crew kept us entertained with lectures on everything from feathers to Falkland Island history. The crew fielded a dance band once night, and there was a scavenger hunt.  Plus, of course, plenty of good food.

To the delight of both passengers and crew, we were escorted for a long while by dozens of hourglass dolphins riding the waves in front of the bow. 

The Falklands Islands, also known as the Islas Malvinas, are 750 miles from the tip of the Antarctic peninsula, and about 300 miles east of Argentina. They are an archipelago of hundreds of islands, though most of the land is found on East Falkland and West Falkland islands. 

There’s been controversy about the discovery and colonization of the Islands since they were first charted in the early 1600s. At various times, settlements were established by the French, British, Spanish and Argentines. Squabbles ensued. The Spanish paid the French to leave. The British got distracted by the American War of Independence and left, leaving behind a plaque asserting their claim on the Falklands. Then the Spanish left due to the Napoleonic wars. Only penguins, cows and gauchos remained. 

The British returned in 1833, reasserting authority over the Falkland Islands and ejecting the Argentine military garrison. There were occasional incidents challenging British authority during the ensuing decades, increasing during the 1960s.

The main point of reference here for Americans of a certain age is the brief 1982 Falkland Islands War (or Conflict). Unhappy with a southern border agreement between Chile and Argentina brokered by the British, Argentinian strongman Leopoldo Galtieri decided to resolve another territorial dispute by reclaiming the Falkland Islands. His special forces found little resistance, as only 57 British marines and eleven British sailers were on the islands. The occupying Argentinians began changing signage to Spanish, and tried to get traffic to drive to the right (this, despite there being few 2-lane roads at the time). Britain responded with an expeditionary force that arrived seven weeks later. The inexperienced teenage conscripts fielded by Argentina were no match for the British military, and were quickly defeated. Argentinian forces controlled the Falklands only from April 2 - June 14, 1982. Galtiere’s junta collapsed soon after.

Today the islands have a population of around 3,800, mostly of British descent. There are thousands of sheep, over 150 per resident. The islands were granted self-governance by the British in 2009. They have their own governor and chief executive. About half of the islands’ economy derives from fishing, while ecotourism - especially related to birds - continues to expand. 

2023 Return to Antarctica - Day 9 Plan A, B, C and Ice Ice Baby

This morning we rounded the head of the Antarctic peninsula and headed south towards Plan A, Brown Bluff. The site hosts two penguin colonies: an Adélie colony of 40,000 penguins, and a Gentoo encampment with a mere 3,000 penguins. Their sites were still snow covered, but we didn’t get close enough to see how much activity was going on there due to swells and an abundance of ice at the landing area

As the landing was thwarted by high winds and ice we headed further south. It was a beautiful day, with impressive icebergs and a passage through last winter’s sea ice

With the warming temperatures of Antarctic spring, the ice had just broken up the in last few days. We navigated through a giant jigsaw puzzle of flat ice floating on gentle swells. These pieces are big, 20-40 feet across. Our timing was fortunate; it will disperse and disappear over the next several days. 

Our next landing site Snow Hill Island (Plan B) was also nixed, so the ship turned and headed back towards the Antarctic peninsula. Plan C was a possible ice landing.

An announcement from the expedition leader, Fred, (he said he used the emergency override so it played in all of the cabins) sent most everyone scurrying to the outer decks to see an Emperor penguin. It’s unusual to see them here; it was the second one Fred had seen in five years of Antarctic sailings. This one had gone into the water by the time we got outside, perhaps frightened by the ship. Then it launched back onto the ice floe with a belly slide and popped up for the photo op. 

We were satisfied with the day at that point, but the best was yet to come. We were in frozen Goose Bay, facing about six miles of sea ice. The expedition team went out on a zodiac to measure the thickness of the ice. Our ship is capable of breaking through sea ice up to 1.5 meters and their measurements showed it was <1 meter. An attempted ice landing was on! 

The ship proceeded to ram its way into the ice sheet - twice. Crew and passengers (equally excited) watched from the bow. Huge sections fractured off from the port side. Adélie penguins on these sections were unperturbed, just going along for the ride. 

The expedition crew assessed stability on the starboard side, and proceeded to drag a gangway from the ship to the ice. Mark’s room had a great view of the goings-on

The ice stretched on for about 6 miles to land. Large icebergs have been trapped in the ice since it froze 6 or 7 months ago.

The first group of about 50 people went ashore for 1/2 hour. I wish I had a photo; a group of about 40 Adélie penguins rushed over to inspect them. Some waddled briskly; several propelled themselves on their bellies. They were so fast! After a few minutes, they rushed back towards the open waters. It was adorable.

And then we got our turn. On one hand, the ship looks immense (though a fraction of the size of a typical cruise ship). On the other, we felt small and inconsequential against the scope of our surroundings. 

Hurtigruten encourages the crew to share in experiences when they travel. Our waiters and cabin steward all got off the ship. They were as excited to share an ice landing as we were. It’s not something that happens every sailing, or even every season. 

There was a little excitement getting back on the ship as the slab of ice that supported the gangway separated from the main icepack. 

The crew tried winching the pieces back together and even brought in a zodiac to push and keep them from separating further. 

We were herded back towards the ship and crossed the gap one at a time. By the time we got back to our rooms, only the crew was left ashore. 

Unfortunately, the other half of the passengers could not go on the ice. The crew tried a different landing approach using zodiacs, but the wind was gusting up to 70 knots. It must have been very disappointing to be suited up and not get onto the ice.

As unique as the camping experience was the ice landing has been the defining event of the trip thus far, truly a unique and beautiful day!