Skontorp Cove
This morning’s excursion was a zodiac cruise around Skontorp Cove in an area called Paradise Harbor. We would learn later just how appropriately named the place was. On each excursion you are paired with a different guide that drives the zodiac and gives their own personal take on the location based on their specific expertise and experience. On this trip, we happened to have the ship’s photography coach, Lisa, which was bound to be a special experience.
Neither of us are anything close to wildlife photographers, but we’ve learned a ton on this trip and have definitely improved our skills in this specific area. We were also getting more accustomed to taking photos from a rocking and rolling zodiac. This demands some unique settings in the camera to have any chance of catching an in-focus picture. We’ve also learned to look more closely at the behaviors of the animals to try to capture moments with some form of story behind them. All of these would be really useful on this trip.
Our first stop was at an Argentine science base (“Base Brown”) with a colony of Gentoo penguins all around it. The Argentine bases in particular make some great photo ops because the buildings are painted red and stand out fantastically from the snow. The Gentoos were playing around as they usually do, offering us a bunch of opportunities to capture their personalities.
We then cruised over to a rock formation that Lisa called “The Wall”. It’s a large cliff face covered in moss and lichen, along with a large Cormorant rookery, which offered both color and action. The Cormorant chicks were just learning to fly, and were every bit as frisky and energetic as their human counterparts. We sat and watched a few of the chicks bathing and playing in the water near the rocks. Then we watched several of the birds fly from the rocks into the middle of the bay to bathe and feed. A few other bird species joined in, providing an excellent opportunity for some bird photography.
Our last stop was to cruise around one of the glaciers. We watched the kayaks and some of the other zodiacs cruising around to provide some perspective on the size of the ice walls. We also saw some glaciers calving in the distance. This was a beautiful spot and we were sorry when the call came to head back to the ship, but there was much more in store.
Neko Harbor
We loaded the zodiacs and the ship moved on. As we left the harbor, we saw a Chilean science station along the shore line. Then we spotted a pod of Orcas swimming around the bay. The captain did the best he could do circle the ship around, but Orcas are much more nimble and always seemed to be right at the edge of our viewing distance.
After lunch, we got our first glimpse of our afternoon destination – Neko Harbor. Neko is a particularly pretty area. It is a narrow fjord with glaciers surrounding you in all directions. There is also a colony of Gentoo penguins at the far end of the harbor. We were going to have an extended excursion that combined a zodiac cruise with a landing.
The zodiac cruise actually started off fairly slowly. We were hoping for some whales and perhaps another Leopard seal that might give us a nice yawning pose. We didn’t see either, and with the massive amount of brash ice in the harbor. Our guide was having a difficult time navigating the zodiac through the ice to get closer looks at the seals in the ice.
We decided to head over to the penguin colony, since there was more wildlife action and that would be our landing point anyway. This is where things started to get interesting. There were a lot of penguins headed to and from the colony, and many of them were porpoising their way through the water. Most of my previous porpoising penguin photos were blurry, or had essentially no context to them. This was a great chance to really work on the skills to capture such an image, and I’m really happy with a few of the results.
The expedition crew was nervous about the landing site, because nearby glacier calving could generate waves that washed out the entire shoreline near the colony. We got the chance to observe a small instance of this just before we landed. The wave was only a couple of feet tall, but it was still pretty dramatic as it approached the landing area. We had to circle around the shore a couple of times before the crew would let us get out.
This was our final landing on the continent. We were greeted by hundreds of friendly Gentoos going up and down a multi-lane penguin highway, which was a site in and of itself. The real draw here was a hike up the snowy hill about 350 feet to an overlook down in the bay. There seemed to be views everywhere, and as we headed back down the hill, the late afternoon light really showcased the amazing natural beauty of the area.
We were the last zodiac off the island, and our driver, Nate, kindly agreed to take a nice leisurely cruise back to the ship. We saw more penguins along the way, but the landscape and sunset soon proved to be the star of the show. Sunsets in Antarctica can last for hours given the low angle of the sun and the extreme length of the days. We were in for a real treat.
Back aboard the ship, the crew had prepared a barbecue dinner. We ate out on the aft deck and enjoyed the incredible scenery. It was a dinner experience unlike any other. Even after dinner, the light, combined with just the right amount of clouds hanging at different levels, continued to put on a show. We went up on the forward observation deck, and while we were happily soaking in the sunset, a couple of humpback whales swam right in front of the boat. I was in the wrong place, but one of our group captured an image of the whale just below the water, with both flukes fully visible beneath the glass-like surface. It was simply amazing.
The experience left me feeling stunned. I still can’t sum up the right words to describe it. “Transcendent” seems about as close as I can get. This was more than a vacation, or an exotic photography expedition. It was a special moment. The scenery, the conditions, the light, and the wildlife all came together into a fantastic package that we will carry with us forever. If we had no other experiences on this trip, this afternoon was enough to make the entire thing worthwhile.
