Antarctica -- October-November 2010

OK, this is complicated. The plan was to go from Cuverville Island (a morning landing) to Paradise Harbor in the afternoon. However, when we got to the entrance to Paradise Harbor, the captain could see it was full of floating ice. He decided to backtrack and go to Neko Harbor. Both Paradse Harbor and Neko Harbor are on the Antarctic mainland. So Neko Harbor was out actual first time to set foot on the Antarctic continent.

(Antarctica LOOKS like a contient. However, I've read that may be somewhat of an illusion because most of it is covered with a thick ice cap. At least some geographers believe that IF it were possible to remove the icecap, it might look more like a group of islands, some of them quite large, but not continent-sized.)

I was a bit disappointed we "missed" Paradise Harbor. My understanding is that there was a small dock there (suitable for the small boats to use). There are supposed to be buildings from an abandoned Argintine base there (or at least one that has been closed for several years). The story is that an Argentine physician stationed there sort of berserked out, setting one of the buildings on fire (and he may have killed or injured one of his co-workers, I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of the story). Apparently, you walk past the building of the old base to get to the penguin rookery at the landing.

Because of "turning back" to get to Neko Harbor, the landing at Neko Harbor was pretty late (long after dinner). Looks like I have a photo taken after 9:30 pm (and my recollection is that we were one of the earlier groups off the ship at this landing). They could do this late landing because of the large number of daylight hours at this latitude this time of year. We were slightly more than two degrees north of the Antarctic Circle and only about four weeks before the longest day of the year (in that hemisphere). The sun went down every night, but it never REALLY got pitch dark.

I beleive Nekko Island was the place the expedition staff stayed on shore for several hours, after the passgers left, to test some tents (and latrine-type equipment). They were hoping to get approval for using this stuff in furture years to be able to sell extra-cost excursions for tourists to spend a night sleeping on the Antarctic Continent. I think that's one reason they were anxious to make at least one landing on the mainland (which most of the passengers wanted too). Turned out we were able make a second landing on the mainland a couple days later.