3/15/2016 – Kayaking the Antarctic and Setting Foot On (And Jumping Off) The Continent

3/15/2016

Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 2 PM

It will be a day long remembered.  My first kayak experience and the day I set foot on the Antarctica continent proper.  The former was around Cuverville Island and the latter is at Alimantre Brown in Paradise Harbor.

The morning began with strong winds and a chill in the air.  It was -0.7 degrees Celsius but as I rushed to the upper deck to snap a photo of the sunrise, I couldn’t help but feel the wind chill and the bluster.  Still, not a bad shot if I do say so myself:

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I originally saw the glowing colors from my porthole on starboard and thought it was pretty enough for a photo.  Only on the top deck did I realize this was merely a reflection of light and the sun itself was rising on the port bow.  The winds were so bad and the sea seemingly so angry with its myriad white caps, I felt there was no possibility of Meg and my one shot at a kayak trip this morning.

A quick breakfast later and Michelle announced unexpectedly that the winds were going to be dead calm around Cuverville Island and we would be able to kayak after all.  I wasn’t sure if I was excited or terrified about getting into an oblong shaped piece of plastic and paddling through the frigid Antarctic waters… but this is what I signed for and I made Meg promise me she wouldn’t let me chicken out.

Donning our kayaking gear in the mudroom, I added a third layer of socks as the people I had spoken to on yesterday’s kayak excursion said their feet got cold even with two layers.  It was a tight fit getting the onesie wet suit feet on over the layered socks, and the booties were of an Eastern foot binding tradition.  But after a tug here and a pull there, I was cinched in snugly and had my Narwhal wet skirt hiked to my hips.

Despite horror stories of friends going tandem on canoes or rafting trips (Meg herself experienced just such a thing in her past) we were in a double kayak.  The peddle controls were in the rear and the front person could help paddle or take photos.  Meg opted to let me shoot photos while she did most of the work in navigating and paddling.  Made for a very relaxing ride for me, save that doffing my paddle’s gloves to shoot meant I kept exposing them to the air and they seized up and froze quite a bit.  To Meg’s continued unending credit, she had some spare hand warmers that we threw into our dry bag and they made all the difference when things got particularly frigid.

We piled into a Zodiac and motored out to a more sheltered part of the bay, systematically entering the kayak and orienting ourselves to the process of paddling in tandem or solo.  The surroundings were majestic and jaw dropping, and honestly as we floated around at first, I just sat slack jawed at what was happening.  Here I was in Antarctica, after having run a marathon, zodiacing away from a converted Russian research vessel, to kayak amidst the largest Gentoo Penguin colony in the world.  Seals swam by or lounged around on floating blocks of ice.  And the quiet – save for the odd sound of paddles striking water or the distant hum of a zodiac ferrying other passengers to shore, it was silent.  A bubble.  The world warped and turned back in upon itself.  It was a surreal experience of sight and sound and, when downwind of the smelliest Gentoo penguin colony on earth, of smell.

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As has often happened on this trip, words fail me.

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The views were stunning.  The sight of a leopard seal snatching a penguin and stripping it clean was something out of National Geographic… or as the penguin’s lifeblood splattered up from the depths of the sea to the surface, something out of Jaws (1975).  The circle of life is strong in Antarctica.  Very strong.

Meg did an amazing job and would occasionally navigate us through two pieces of floating ice (which I think is called brash ice) and at times the smaller ones we’d just glide over.  The sound of this was one that will stay with me for a lifetime.  And, yes, we had more than a few Titanic moments wherein we ran into a larger piece of ice that would not budge.  But we never capsized nor sank, and we remained friends throughout.  I take that as a major win.  Rule # 1 for this trip was always, “Don’t die.”  Rule # 2 was probably, “Don’t hate each other when it’s done!”  Close quarters, the Drake Passage, tandem kayaks?  It all could have gone very, very wrong.  But I think we did pretty well, Meg and I.  It helps that she’s so great.

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About two hours into “the paddle,” as apparently seasoned kayakers call their outings, Liz and Michelle asked if anyone wanted to go ashore or if we wanted to keep paddling.  Two people wanted to go and try and get a photo of a penguin snuggling them but the rest of us were adamant in wanting to prolong our kayak adventure for as long as possible.  Our guides chuckled as this isn’t often the case with passengers, and their passion for the sport and the experiences it brings made them want to share even more with us.

And so we kayaked all the way around the 3.5 km island.

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About ¾ of the way around the island, with me snapping more photos than I should and gawking about like a kid in an ice cream parlor, Meg finally told me she needed a break and I helped paddle for a bit.  To be fair, I had been off and on but more off than on.  I found out pretty quick just what a workout paddling can be!

The swells started kicking up just as we rounded the bend and spotted the Ioffe on the horizon.  We paddled to a more secluded spot to enable us to de-kayak and re-zodiac.  It was just enough swell to make me understand why they would cancel this excursion in winds and rough seas… and just enough to make me appreciate how sorta fun it can be to cut through swells.

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Kayaking in Antarctica was all one could hope for and then some.

***

Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 6:27 PM

The afternoon excursion was three-pronged.  Almirante Brown has a maximum of 50 tourists on land at any one time.

Prong one, consisting of 50 people, would go ashore.  We were at the gangway early enough to go ashore first.  This area was on the Antarctica continent proper.  No islands or territory.  This was terra firma of the Antarctica continent mass.  So when we set foot here, we would join the 600,000 people who have stepped onto Antarctica ever.

Snow was falling but there was no wind.  Heavy fog ringed the area, adding to an eerie isolation, akin to the discovery of a snowy Shangri La passage to an untouched spot on earth.  Only it was touched – there is an Argentinian base at this location, one that apparently was built in the late 70s, early 80s.  The story goes that in 1982 a doctor was left at the station for the winter 6 months.  Upon arriving, the doctor realized this was a terrible mistake and thought the best way to get out of the assignment was to burn the place down.  His thinking being the ship that left him would see the fire and return to pick him up… only the ship didn’t see the flames and left him amidst the smoldering embers of his only shelter and refuge.  What could have been a truly epic tragedy turned into a rescue courtesy of the surrounding bases that helped the guy out and got him off the continent.  Truth be told, the guy wasn’t all there anyway – supposedly at the base that took him in, he was caught stealing toothbrushes, can goods, and other sundries, hording them as if he expected the apocalypse were around the corner.  In any event, Argentina converted the base into a summer time only location; only last week the Argentinian occupants finished up their summer season and effectively locked up the place for the winter.

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As we stepped onto dry land from our zodiac, I was immediately struck by the quiet and solitude.  Though we were amongst others, it was another silent world.  We crossed a rickety bridge that might have been a rejected design concept for the climax of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).  I even jokingly said to Meg, “Strong bridge, Indy!  Strong bridge!”  She told me not to jump on it … and truth be told, later the hand railings fell apart so we weren’t far off.

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A few penguins greeted us and waddled about.  I was dumbstruck at the snow and we trudged along taking snapshots and trying to capture a modicum of the moment.

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We came across a guy in running shorts doing laps between two stakes in the ground with volunteers clearing the new fallen snow from the makeshift track.  Apparently, this guy had gotten severely sick the day of the marathon and wasn’t able to run.  He somehow convinced Marathon Tours to let him run a half-marathon here during the excursion in the hopes of completing a race on the last continent.  How this plays against those that got pulled from the course for safety reasons I cannot say… but in the spirit of running, I wished the guy well.

A marker at the crest of one hillside was covered in snow.  As I wiped it away, like Indiana Jones blowing sand and dust from ancient markers, I exposed an engraving of significance.  But unlike Indy, I wasn’t able to identify the worn and slightly illegible sign.

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After a few more panoramic pics, Meg eventually quite rightly said to me she was going to stop taking photos and just enjoy the quiet and the surroundings.  She headed down to sit and share a moment with the penguins.  I spun around and tried to take it all in but as usual abhorred the vacuum and found myself filling the air with exclamations of, “Wow!” or “What a thing!”  Such exhalations no doubt distanced me from having a quiet moment with the penguins myself but I did shoot a vine-ish length video of me:

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As four o’clock rolled around, we returned to the rocky shoreline to board a Zodiac for prong two of our excursion.  Swapping people from shore to sea, prong two involved cruising around the area in Zodiacs.  Cody was our skipper and I use that term in the best sense of Disney Imagineering.  For what followed on our zodiac trip was nothing short of a real-world Jungle Cruise.  From the moment I tried boarding the zodiac and slid around the pontoon like an outtake from 1990s era America’s Funniest Home Videos, bad jokes and puns became de rigueur for our journey.  As others attempted to board the Zodiac to fill it to capacity, each person took a pill and since no one suffered any injury worse than hurt pride, it was all in good fun.  Meg deployed a well-timed, “And… you’re safe” umpire joke to a sliding passenger.  And from there, it just got more and more comical.

Cruising about the foggy waters though, it was as if we were in some defined space though Cody was zipping us from point to point trying to get us wildlife sightings and history lessons whenever possible.  A huge copper vein which Chile linked to their own Andes Mountains served as confirmation of the Gondwanaland/Pangea continental drift theories of Alfred Wagner.

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More than a few crab-eating seals (which don’t eat crab only krill and are therefore misnamed) were spotted lounging on ice sheets or swimming through the water.  Cody would adopt a goofy cartoon hillbilly voice and say, “Hey, fellas, whatcha doin’?”  And then in a slightly altered hillbilly voice he’d say, “Nothin’.  Fishin’.”  It really did have a cadence of a scripted comical tour patter.

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This was especially true for moments when we came across seals laying out on ice floes, lazily raising their heads to check us out and therefore become wildlife paparazzi prey.  It all felt like an animatronic display… but it was most assuredly real.  Or at least, I think it was a real… maybe Marathon Tours and One Ocean just locked us into a soundstage set and rotate the backgrounds behind us, only making us think we went to Antarctica when in fact we’re in some telenovela studio in downtown Buenos Aires.

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Adding to the fantastical reality, icebergs would float by, drifting into sight and then vanishing into the fog like predetermined “scenic ooh!” moments in a theme park ride.

But truth be told, this cruise was little more than a fun distraction, a time filler water-safari to enable passengers to rotate on and off shore and to lead up to the third element of today’s activities.

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The third prong was a polar plunge.

Yes, the polar plunge, where participants strip to their bathing suits and jump into frigid polar waters.  The Ioffe doesn’t often do the plunge on the Antarctic Continent proper; there’s a plunge pool on the upper deck that they fill with sea water or a few other island spots further north that provide a polar plunge option.  Given the rarity of the location, and given that this may be the only time I personally will be in Antarctica, I decided I would do it.  I thought I’d regret it much more if I DIDN’T take the plunge than if I did… and I thought it couldn’t possibly be worse than the marathon day.  After all, the plunge would be a moment or two and then I’d head back to the ship for a hot shower.  Easy, right?

Unlike the marathon, the One Ocean staff facility this event wanted everyone to know that we’d be on our own getting our dry clothes on.  They’d take photos and make it as safe as they could to get us to the plunge and back to the ship, but the onus was on ourselves to actually do it.  What the hell, right?  You only live once.

***

Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 9:18 PM
WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS EXTREME PROFANITY, PARTIAL NUDITY, AND EPIC STUPIDNESS.

I’ve been wrestling with how to describe the polar plunge.  But like Vietnam, if you weren’t in the shit, I’m not sure anyone can tell you how it really was.  But I’ll try.

After Cody dropped off the “non-swimmers” at the Ioffe, he spirited us back over to the shores of Almirante Brown.  Here we crossed the rickety bridge once more and made a left to get to the water’s edge… but in order to do this, we had to scurry over a series of slippery rocks.  Later I would think about the insurance nightmare of such an activity sponsored under a US flag and therefore having to hew to US health and safety codes.  But this being an international treaty continent, where rule of law is either international law or laws of the high seas, I guess things like safety and liability waivers are more guidelines than rules.  I’m sure I signed something at some stage absolving them of liability for doing incredibly stupid things; I know we signed one for kayaking but I can’t recall signing one that said, “Waiver of Liability for Any Injury Including Death Sustained While Doing One of The Dumbest, If Not THE DUMBEST, Things You’ve Ever Done In Your Life, I.E. The Polar Plunge.”

When first we arrived, two “swimmers” were already there.  A question was raised as a seal suddenly swam near the diving rocks and we were assured it was seal that only ate krill and penguins so we should be fine.  We should be fine?!  Should be!  As in the fine print “there’s a chance you could suffer bodily injury including death and SHOULD this happen, it’s your own bloomin’ fault, Kevin.”

Amidst the jagged rocks we stripped down to our bathing suits and dove in one by one.  Sounds simple enough, right?  The first guy, a large Polish man with a gruff accent and a manly attitude, stripped and then splashed water on his face and body like he was a Sumo wrestler of the water, and then dove in.  Easy peesy.  The guy didn’t even seem fazed.  Mark went next, plunging in and popping up, struggling with exiting the water amidst the rocks but saying it wasn’t too bad… so then I went for it.  Down to my blue swimsuit, I rushed over the rocks hoping to get this over with.  The Cruise Director Cheryl was apparently taking photos but I didn’t pose as I immediately slipped on a rock at the water’s edge and fell on my bum.  I scraped my back but the doctor on sight said it wasn’t bleeding so I was good to go (!!).  I dove in… and the rush of salty frigid water was something else.  Rising from the minimal depth to dunk my whole being, I breached the surface to applause… but struggled on the rocks.  I’m sure it was only a few half seconds, but I felt my body shivering, my voice lost to chattering teeth, as I floundered in the water, trying to get purchase on the slippery submerged rocks to pull myself out of the water.  Every hand or foothold seemed slick with penguin guano or some other slime that allowed no grip.  With cheers and applause at my bravery/stupidity, I kept thinking, “Why the fuck are you clapping?  Can’t you see I’m dying here?  That I can’t get out of this fuckin’ water?!  Somebody fuckin’—“ and by then I somehow, finally found something to hold onto, and like an animal emerging from the primordial ooze of prehistoric times, I crawled onto the jagged rocks, my breath equally jagged, gasping for air and warmth.

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The trouble with stupid things is that they are so stupid you don’t even really plan beyond the stupid thing.  My layers of clothes were on the rocks, a good five feet from where I burst forth from the frigid waters and I scrambled shivering over the sharp edges of the Antarctic continental shores, only to stand on my rubber boots as a makeshift mat while someone handed me a towel to dry off.  This towel was a pink half towel, perhaps a modified towel bath mat that I desperately tried to squeegee off cold water from my body as best in good while the snow kept falling around me and on me.  I struggled into my clothes, unable to feel my fingers but still having some dexterity of movement (unlike after the marathon).  My toes on the other hand were borderline frostbit, and trying to get them through my windbreaker pants proved a Herculean task…

By this time, Meg had stripped down and Cheryl told her to pose by the water’s edge before taking her plunge.  I saw her strike an SI pinup girl pose and then leap into the 1 degree Celsius waters.  I was still struggling to get my pants on and opted to abandon that for the time being and get my top layers sorted.  Meg emerged, freezing like me, struggling with the rocks but eventually she too emerged from the Almirante Brown baptism.  She rushed over, toweled off and saw me struggling with my pants.  She helped guide my rock solid foot through the mesh pant leg, once again saving my life on this trip.  We both quickly finished dressing and returned to the Zodiac launch, crawling over outcroppings and hopping over the slippery, snow covered shoreline.

Others followed – Matt then Mark and Jenny. Shivering, we boarded the Zodiac and they launched it half empty to get us back to the Ioffe as quickly as possible.  I have little memory of this, other than stating categorically that this was the dumbest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever done and I’ve done a lot of dumb fuckin’ things.

Soon after I stood under blistering hot water in the shared bathroom shower, the circulation returning to my appendages in that prickly painful feeling, like when you’ve slept on your arm wrong and the blood flows in a rush of pain and feeling, the nerve receptors reactivating and functioning but making you pay for your mistakes.  After several minutes of this, I emerged from a stream cloud with at least partial feeling and put on several layers of warm, dry clothes.

Wandering to the bar to grab my daily treat of a $2 Diet Coke, I bumped into a few people who asked me how it was.  I relayed a version of what I’ve just typed here.  When I got to, “It was literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life…” someone wisely and quite rightly pointed out that “it was also one of the most memorable.”  Sometimes it takes doing something completely stupid to complete a moment.  I would have regretted not doing this.  Some day, I would have.  With still only 85% feeling in my toes and fingers, I’m not yet ready to say I’m glad I did it.  But tomorrow, I suspect I will be.

In the meantime, it’s sufficient to say that I came to Antarctica, ran a marathon, and then jumped off the continent into freezing waters of the Antarctic Ocean.  That’s a story for a dinner party to be sure.