Our last day in and around the Continent of Antarctica - got to be sad and yet something to celebrate too.
Today we’re visiting a polar base camp. It’s actually special on a variety of levels.
Firstly, for us, we came here five years ago but as you know in that occasion we were not able to disembark, so although was saw we didn’t conqueror. Secondly it’s a live station maintained by the Chilean armed forces purely because they can. Finally it’s the infamous base where almost 100 years ago Messrs. Bagshaw and Lester spent over a year marooned here and yet survived, even thrived since they wrote some of the first studies of the region and penguins.
Our visit was far less perilous, yet every bit as fascinating, to us anyway. We enjoyed the red carpet treatment afforded us by the Chilean Navy, their wonderful smiles and generosity in sharing their living space.
There’s only eleven men stationed here from December to April but during that time they annually repair and repaint the buildings to ensure the post is sustainable.
Quest gave them lunch, and restocked their ailing licquour store, in return we got five star treatment from them.
On this island the penguins are so close there’s no five meter rule, in fact 20 cm is more likely, and they really don’t mind - they are so used to visitors they are unshakable.
We toured the accommodations, the lookout tower, the museum (a small gift shop really) and the outlying buildings, before heading back.
There’s another attraction, specifically a white gentoo, suffering from melanoma deficiency so she is almost white. This is not the same as being an albino, but it’s a bit similar. She was missing for a good part of the day, as she swapped incubating jobs with her hubby, going out fishing, but returned just in time for us!
On our return we were lucky enough to see a minky whale right by the side of the ship, but it didn’t come back to play.
We repaired to the jacuzzi, first with a Long Island iced tea, then a Hemingway Daiquiri which was new to us and exceptionally leathal! We finished off with ice-cream then braved the freezing cold to dry off before almost running back to our cabin!
It was time for the briefing but of course tomorrow won’t bring another day in Antarctica so instead it was a reveiw, celebration and thanks to the entire expeditions team, all of whom have made our exploration of Antarctica safe, enjoyable and extremely rewarding.
After dinner was a Welsh comedian / magician who’s kit had mostly got lost on the flight out, so he’d not performed before. Turns out he’s one of our walking buddies although we didn’t know as he’d not said very much other than “bloody hell its hard to keep pace with you two.” His comedy show was totally hilarious, again we fell about laughing.
The internet had been blown off course again so although text (like this blog) gets through slowly my photos took over eight hours, and then some failed.
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