Beyond Fireland
John Harrison on the spectacular scenery and marine wildlife of the Antarctic Peninsula
Magellan named Tierra del Fuego ‘Fireland’ after the signal fires lit by natives to warn of his approach. It is a country of stark Andean peaks and labyrinthine channels in the west, subsiding to rolling plains in the east. The Argentine side offers a growing ski industry, Chile boasts world class trekking and rock climbing.
Tierra del Fuego markets itself as the End of the World but some stunning and little-visited places lie beyond, in the earth’s deep south. The stepping stones to them are the ports of Punta Arenas, Chile, and Ushuaia (Oosh-why-er) in Argentina.
The Andes do not stop here, but swing across the ocean floor in an easterly loop through the Falklands, South Georgia, South Orkneys, South Sandwich Islands. Finally they turn back west to the Antarctic Peninsula, uncurling like a seahorse’s tail, pointing back to the rest of the world. This is the Scotia Arc, and it contains some of the most remarkable scenery and marine wildlife in the world. This is the Serengeti of the oceans.
Antarctic tourism means sailing, and the boat is your hotel. In February and March this year I travelled as a lecturer aboard a luxury vessel, sailing from Punta Arenas. The ship was originally built as an Arctic trawler, very reassuring when you start hitting the sea ice. All food and drink is taken with you (bar the odd sheep picked up in the Falklands), and all rubbish is taken back.
The first possible stop on a cruise south is Cape Horn itself, indeed for one lady in her seventies, this was her main reason for taking the trip. We tucked in under the lee of the most murderous cape in the seven seas, and transferred ashore in fast inflatable rubber boats called zodiacs. Brave? Reckless? Well, no - it was nearly flat calm. Non-sailors often assume the open ocean is a non-stop maelstrom of meteorological fury.
The weather does consist of an endless series of low pressures marching easterly, but if you catch the intervals between, the day and a half crossing of the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula can be a lot kinder than crossing the English Channel. If not, however, expect to be confined to your bunk, studying your wildlife guides.
Most cruises track down the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula visiting the islands and hoping, weather and ice permitting, to make one landing on the continent itself. This is the most beautiful part of Antarctica and the balmiest, nicknamed the Banana Belt by scientists from harsher stations. Summer temperatures from December to February may not drop below zero, but any high winds soon make it feel forty below.
In clear weather the scenery is blue, turquoise, black and white, a simple but stunning landscape animated by designer ice floating by. Whatever the weather, the wildlife will not let you down. The only biological event visible from space is the annual bloom of Antarctica’s shrimp-like krill and the diatoms it feeds on. Krill feeds seals and birds, millions of them, and whales. Sadly, whales have learned to move away from large vessels, but in a zodiac, I have been so close to a forty-ton humpback that I could hear the colossus breathing.
Nothing truly prepares you for the innocence of most of the wildlife. The best way to look at penguins is to sit down five yards away from them. They will come up and investigate, pulling at clothes and boots. One chick preened my beard.
In late season you may be able to bolt south and cross the Antarctic Circle, we made it to the magic 66° 33.32’S. But don’t be disappointed if your trip can’t, you may miss more scenic places getting there. We then headed north, calling at Elephant Island off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Here, on a scrap of a beach, Ernest Shackleton’s men struggled to stay alive for four months in the southern winter of 1916, while he sailed for help in a tiny boat, all the way to South Georgia.
The South Orkneys and South Sandwich Islands are part of Britain’s Falkland Island Dependencies, and home only to scientific stations. Permission is needed to land. We aimed only to visit the Orkneys, and were given permission to land on the largest, Coronation Island. On the beach were specimens of one of the Southern Ocean’s great recovery stories, the Antarctic fur seal. The continent was discovered in 1819, these seals were believed to be extinct six years later, but perhaps five hundred survived on an islet off South Georgia. By the 1980’s there were 350,000, and now, around 3.5 million.
We sailed for their stronghold, South Georgia itself. The top of the Swiss Alps, deposited in mid ocean, is the definitive description. Add the melancholy romance of old whaling stations, seals the size of African elephants, colonies of half a million king penguins, and the most beautiful of all albatrosses, plus 30,000 light-mantled sooties. In Grytviken cemetery I made a pilgrimage among the whalers and sailors: Shackleton’s grave is easy to find, only one faces south.
The Falklands are no anticlimax. The moorland scenes around Port Stanley, familiar from television, are not the best the Islands offer. The west side is much more rugged and picturesque, very like the west coast of Scotland. The Falklands are mild, cool in winter and warm in summer, but they enjoy more sunshine than the south coast of England. The small islands often comprise one family and one farm: ‘Born here, always lived here, prob’ly die here, I ’spect.’ owner David Evans greeted us on the beach of Saunders Island, while rare Commerson’s dolphins swam past our wellies.
We photographed the nesting albatrosses and penguins, the oystercatchers, red-legged dolphin gulls, and sat helplessly with telephotos as the tussac bird, unique to the Falklands, landed on our boots. Take plenty of film.