Dec. 12 - Lovely photos

So, we slipped and slid our way back to the beach area and donned our life jackets. Ivan managed somehow to take these postcard-worthy photos of the Stella at anchor in the bay in front of Pia Glacier:

One thing we had to do, which caused some consternation among those who had worn regular shoes, instead of hiking boots or rubber boots, on these land excursions, was to stop once on board the ship to have our footwear rinsed off by a crew member. Ivan took this photo of me getting by hiking boots "washed:"

After returning to our cabins, we showered and dressed for what had to be one of the strangest onboard events ever! The Stella was going through "Glacier Alley," starting around 6PM. This is a long channel with numerous very large glaciers, each of which was named for the country of the person who discovered it. This struck me as a bit odd because these glaciers could have ALL been discovered by the same person traveling through this channel! They are very close to each other - it took us only about 45 minutes to pass all of them. The first one we passed is called Romanche (not sure why because it's not the name of a country!). This glacier has receeded very far from the edge of the water and the substrate on which it lies is granite. Huge, long waterfalls cascaded down this rocky area. We have no photos of this glacier, but there is an excellent one at this Flickr web address:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/unhooknow/4389173421/. And now for the reason we have a photo of only one of these glaciers. Tradition has it (at least on board the Stella Australis!) that, as the ship passes each glacier, everyone on the 5th deck, coincidentally also the bar level, be served a drink typical of the country for which the glacier was named. So, our first drink was a glass of champagne. Next glacier was Germany for which Ivan had his camera at the ready:

Germany Glacier

For this glacier we were served, what else?, a small glass of beer.  Next up was France (more champagne), then Italy (pizza and wine), and, lastly, Holland (cheese and more beer). Truth be told, by this time, many passengers had no idea what they were drinking or why, but they were having a wonderful time!

Once the glaciers - and alcohol - were out of sight, the crew gave us our Cape Horn briefing for our visit, if conditions were favorable, to Cape Horn National Park and our crossing of the Horn in the Stella, again, if conditions allowed. The idea of this trip around Cape Horn gave me a shiver of delight! I have read a couple of extremely interesting books about maritime travel in those parts in the 1500's and I was hoping with all my heart and soul that the weather would continue cooperating with our intentions.

Sunset on Dec. 12, 2011 was at 10:03PM.

Dec. 12 - Hilltop views and . . . !

So, we trudged up the narrow trail and were occasionally aided by thick ropes that had been tied to trailside trees. I actually felt sort of sorry for the trees because some of the people, who should probably NOT have gone up this trail, were quite, shall we say, large. I hope that someone removes the ropes in the offseason to let the trees expand their girth too! Once at the top, we were all exultant!

Everyone was sweating and some looked like they may soon need resuscitation, but it felt good to see the glacier from this new vantage point. We wandered around a little and Enrique, guide for our group, Drake, stationed himself near a sort of cliff and discouraged errant walkers from getting too close. The view was wonderful and the sounds seemed even more loud and serious. I quickly spotted a bird I knew - the Rufous-collared Sparrow, but there were not many FFC's to be seen.

Eventually, we were all standing staring at the glacier, listening with growing excitement as the cracks became thuds and then became booms! The sounds seemed to be coming from the right side area, but, really, how can one tell what part of a glacier is about to fall into the water? Several of us had voted for a particular part of the face that had a big slab that stood upright, but seemed to be getting more separated from the face of the glacier. On this photo, I made a big (but thin, once again) circle around the part we thought was about to fall away:

(Boy, that circle is really thin - sorry! I made the picture as big as I can. The circle is toward the right side of the glacier face and even extends into the water.) All eyes were glued on that big crack to see if it was getting bigger. Some of us thought it was, but we, of course, had no way to measure. Finally, Enrique said we had to head back down the slope to get the zodiacs back to the boat. After much booing and jeering, we waited until almost everyone had headed down the trail, and reluctantly did so ourselves. Again, please understand that I am NOT making this up! As I turned around and started down the trail, there was this tremendous BOOM! accompanied by shouts of joy and delight from the 3 or 4 people who were determined to be the last ones off the hill! I raced back to the summit, but the thing had already collapsed into the water! That whole, entire slab of ice had calved off the face of Pia Glacier - and I missed it! Dang! Now the water on that side of the bay was full of big chunks of ice, floating their way to oblivion.

Dec. 12 - Preparing to disembark at Pia Glacier

In preparing to disembark from the Stella and board one of the zodiacs, we had to don our life jackets. Each cabin had two life jackets in the closet. On our first day, we had been told to try ours on and, if necessary, ask for a larger or smaller one. Ours fit perfectly. These were no-nonsense life jackets too. Each had a light that went on if the jacket was in water, a whistle, two or three buckles across the chest and a strap that went from the back to the front in between one's legs. See the little blue circle on my vest? That has our room number on the other side and every life jacket has this thing.  You can see Ivan's too. Once in the line to board the zodiacs, we were to un-clip the number and hang it on a board that had hooks for each cabin on the boat. Then, when we returned to the ship, we retrieved our number and re-clipped it to the life jacket. The theory was that, should anyone be inadvertently left behind, their number would still be on the board when everyone else is on the ship and has retrieved their numbers. I'm pretty sure that this never got tested with our group of 110 passengers, but it was comforting to realize that there was a safety plan in place to be sure that all were accounted for. Additionally, as we became first in line to board the zodiac, a crew member would check each person's life jacket to be sure it was properly fastened and that the little room number thing was not still attached.

So, we all zoomed off to see Pia Glacier up close and personal and then, those of us who felt so inclined would be led on a somewhat strenuous hike up a nearby hill for even better views of the glacier. This photo was taken after we had climbed the hill near the glacier. I include it here because it gives a good sort of panorama of the whole glacier.

Pia is to the left. The other glacier, whose name I do not know, was full of debris and was melting quickly from underneath. It looked like there was a large cave at the right side of that glacier, caused by this sub-glacial runoff.

I took this photo of Pia Glacier from sea level:

A huge portion of Pia had recently calved off on the left. We heard loud cracking and booming as the ice slowly moved. You can see all the bits of ice floating in the water.
Once on dry land, we were allowed to remove our life jackets, so this is what that looked like:

The Stella certainly looks far away, doesn't it?

Water seemed to be flowing everywhere, so many of us stashed our life vests in whatever trees or tree-like plants we could find! The air temperature, and I am not kidding, was around 50°F (no, I am not kidding!), so several of us shed raincoats and jackets too.

We sat on the bare rock at the left of the recently calved face of the glacier and listened to the weird cracking sounds. Sometimes we saw smaller bits of the face fall into the water below. Many of these popping sounds came from what seemed like the right side area of the glacier, but nothing of any consequence happened. The guides rousted us up for the climb to the top of the hill which had even better views. Some chose to stay put and just watch the changing face of the glacier, while about 30 of us headed up, following the guides. Along the way, we were delighted by some non-glacial, floral sights:

Chaura berries

Chaura plant

Small white flower and Chaura

Trillium? Orchid?  Tom, we need some help here!

Dec. 12 - Pia Glacier!

Sunrise on Dec. 12 was at 4:48AM.
This day was mostly spent steaming along - well, let's check the map:

I made a BIG, but thin, circle around the location of our encounter, at 3AM, with the dreaded 'open ocean.' Our destination, later in the day, was Pia Glacier, a medium-sized, but actively moving glacier. In the morning after breakfast, we had a series of talks on glaciology and on some the indigenous tribes that lived in this area. One thing I learned about glaciers is that a glacier that looks white is composed of minimally compressed snow containing a lot of air, hence all light is reflected from the surface. A glacier that looks blue is composed of extremely compressed snow, so compressed that the small amount of air scatters light in blue, or very short, wavelengths. A glacier that looks clear contains minute amounts of air and light passes right through it.
Three of the indigenous tribes were called the Yámana, the Hausch, and the Selk'nam. The Yámana lived in the Cape Horn area and were a peaceable tribe. They hunted and fished, built and traveled in canoes and moved around a lot. We were told that they wore no clothing, except for a small loincloth, and the women regularly swam in the water and dived for mussels and clams! There was a lot of discussion about whether this was believable or not! Think about it - the waters around Cape Horn . . . 900 km from Antarctica . . . naked women diving into the water for food . . . ?!  Charles Darwin expressed amazement that they were always barefoot, even in the snow. The Hausch and Selk'nam lived inland on the main island of Tierra del Fuego and hunted guanacos. Both tribes were known to be fierce warriors.
After lunch we prepared for our third trip in the zodiacs, this time to see the Pia Glacier. We disembarked at the place on the map that has the number 3 in red, but it's kind of hard to see. It's just to the right of the words, "Glaciar Pia." This was a wonderful and exciting excursion.

Dec. 11 - Bird List work

Once we returned to the Stella, our afternoon was pretty much ours. If we had had internet, this blog would probably already be done! Ivan was much in need of a nap, so he stretched out and I decided to work on the bird list. I've finished it now (today is Christmas Eve!) and have already emailed it to my brother-in-law, Lar and to my cousin-in-law, Judy. (If any of you would like me to email it to you, please let me know and it'll be done. I'll let you know in the last post, how many species we saw, and will include mammals.)
At dinner this night, we were told that, at around 3AM, the Stella would be entering open ocean for a short period of time and we should put everything on the floor and expect a lot of rocking and rolling. They said this turbulence would last only 30 minutes or so. Ivan and I slept peacefully all through the night. We became aware of some increased rolling of the ship, but I was disappointed that it wasn't longer lasting!
Sunset on Dec. 11 was at 10:09PM

Dec. 11 - Afternoon circumnavigation of Tucker Islet

After a hearty lunch on board the Stella Australis, we once again donned our "rainproof" gear for a circumnavigation in the zodiac of Tucker Islet. This small islet is 30 nautical miles from our morning excursion in Ainsworth Bay. (I really sound like an experienced mariner, don't I?!) The reported 'circumnavigation' of Tucker Islet took about an hour, but it sounds quite impressive, doesn't it?! And now for the very cool bit of info - one 'nautical mile' is equal to one degree of latitude. This translates into one nm equalling 6026 feet, whereas one land mile is 5280 feet.  Ergo, 1 nm = 1.15 mi. There will be a quiz later.
So, back to Tucker Islet. We all boarded the zodiacs as we had been taught to, but somehow, Ivan and I got into the zodiac of a different group. Our group was the 'Drake' group and we had all bonded and developed a strong sense of unity and purpose, although exactly what that purpose was remains uncertain. We were on the zodiac with people we had not seen before. This became important later because the guide was unknown to us and something not good happened while we were in that zodiac. More on that later.
We zipped over to a rocky island, with low elevation at one end and high (~75') granite-like cliffs with dozens of Rock Cormorants on them. Most of the cormorants were on nests which probably had either eggs or young in them. Ivan, in spite of the bobbing up and down of the zodiac, managed this very nice photo:

Rock Cormorant with chick

Note the lovely face of this bird with the red pattern and white spot. Note, too, that the black on the bird's chest stops mid-way up the chest area. This gave instantaneous differentiation between these birds and the Imperial, or King, Cormorant which we also saw and which are pictured a bit below. Both parents of this species tend to the young, so there was a lot of coming and going of adult cormorants. Unlike the Imperial Cormorants, these birds make their nests, as their name would imply, on rock ledges on these islands. They also seemed to be quite peaceable with each other - again unlike the Imperial.

After watching these birds for awhile, the driver of our boat suddenly opened the throttle and zoomed away from the island, in a direction 180° from where he should have been going. I looked at him and he was grinning and laughing at something. I looked to the bow of the zodiac and there, in the water was a large bird frantically trying to swim away from the boat. We were almost on top of the bird when the driver turned us back to our proper course and I saw that the bird he had been chasing was a Flightless Steamer-Duck! That bird is incapable of flying and he had been mercilessly chasing it - something he thought was funny. To say I was outraged would be an understatement. I gave a dirty look to the guide, who merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Once back on board the Stella, I went directly to the Officer of the Day and read him the riot act. Unfortunately I didn't know the name of either the zodiac driver or the guide in the boat. The Officer was horrified, and said that, since all crew had been instructed to respect the wildlife, and since I didn't know any names, all crew would be sternly reminded that this type of harassment of wildlife is unacceptable. I made sure I was never in the offending driver's zodiac ever again. I was pleased that the Officer agreed with me and that something would be done.

So, back to the visit to the other side of Tucker Islet. This was the side with lower elevation and had lots of grassy vegetation and soil in which Magellanic Penguins were nesting. I've already included some photos of this small penguin and, since we were at the mercy of the waves, photographing these penguins was quite difficult. We did, however, see and photograph the Imperial Penguin at their nest colony. Here are two taken in succession:

Note the cormorant on the left in front on the rocks.
It has a bunch of grasses in its bill and is attempting to take the grass to its nest.
As it neared the other cormorants, they would jab at it and try to take its grasses.
A Chilean Skua got involved and the poor cormorant dropped its bill-load in fright.

These are Imperial, or King, Cormorants.
Remember the black and white pattern of the Rock Cormorant?
This one has white all the way up to its beak.

Another difference between these two species is that the Imperial Cormorant nests are situated very close to each other. There is limited nesting material readily available, so fighting and stealing materials from each other are common. These birds were also not as far along in their nesting as the Rock Cormorants were.

With the exception of the unfortunate incident with the Steamer-Duck, this excursion was extremely interesting.

Dec. 11 - Excursion to shore of Ainsworth Bay

After breakfast, we returned to our cabin and donned our "waterproof" clothes (thank you, REI!), put on our big orange life jackets and went to the 5th deck lounge for our "Disembarkation briefing." It sounded impressive. Once there, with all the other guests, some of whom could barely walk, we understood the importance of the instruction. We were told how to walk down to the zodiac, how to grasp the arm of the staff person who would be there to help each person board the zodiac, and how to sit on the gunwale of the zodiac. When I'm told how to do something with this degree of detail, especially if it's something I've never done before, I obey precisely what I am told to do. I was astonished at how many people tried to board the zodiac their own way. Fortunately, the staff are used to this and they know how to get the guests to do it the correct way without embarrassing them. This was our first trip in the zodiacs and the only person I knew on my zodiac was Ivan. Sitting thigh to thigh with other enthusiastic adventurers usually leads to excited conversation, and this time was no different. Everyone was eager to get to the island and see what it had in store for us.
I took this photo of where we disembarked from the zodiacs and Ivan took the bottom one of our ship once we had all arrived on the island:

The ground was very gravelly, rather than sandy, with many crushed shells about. We somehow got divided into groups of about 15 people and our guide was Enrique, a young enthusiastic man who knew a lot about the history of these bays and islands. He told us about the forest, about the wildlife there, about the management of the area. This is a photo of some of our group listening to him describe the small tree in front of him:

The early explorers thought it was a cinnamon tree because it smells strongly of the spice. It turned out not to be cinnamon, but, I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit, I had found myself fascinated by the amount of water that was slowly trickling down the hillside and I don't remember what the tree is called - sorry.
This is what this area, essentially a temperate rainforest, looked like:

Ainsworth Bay island close-up

The area from a distance

We spent about 90 minutes hiking around the island, examining rocks, ferns, berries (calafate, or blueberries, and chaura were everywhere) and learning a bit about the history of the settling of the island.

After returning to the ship, we prepared for lunch and our next excursion to Tucker Islets.