Irene and I left for Antarctica on January 17, 2005, flying from Dulles Airport to Miami to Santiago to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. On the 19th in Ushuaia, we boarded Lindblad's M.S. Endeavor, and headed south across the Drake Passage, which proved more punishing than I had thought it would be. As the sampling below from my thousands of photos proves, even though my stomach and head occasionally protested, the trip was still worth it.
 Before setting sail from Ushuaia, we toured Tierra del Fuego National Park |
In Tierra del Fuego, we stood at the beginning of the Pan-American Highway, which stretched north 17,848 kilometers to Alaska |
Heading south through the Drake Passage, the currents were so rough that ropes were strung through the common areas of the ship, as shown outside the dining area here |
 That dot to the lower left of our ship is one of the inflatable Zodiacs that brought us ashore at our first stop, Aitcho Island |
Gentoo penguins care for their chicks in one of the many rookeries on Aitcho Island |
The lazy elephant seals on Aticho Island occasionally stirred themselves enough to lift their heads to peek at us, but rarely found the energy for much more |
 I felt privileged to see penguins while as a guest in their world, rather than when they are prisoners in ours |
Moulting elephant seals sleep— which is all they seemed to do |
If only you could hear the sound of the penguins make when they toss their heads back— just be glad that you can't smell them |
 Hiking a mile across Aitcho Island brought us to this stark vista |
The gentoo penguins treat this beachfront pinnacle like Times Square |
This Scott of the Antarctic assumed that he'd arrive at a better fate than the first Scott of the Antarctic |
 Irene walks among Adélie penguins on the smooth stones that cover the shore of Paulet Island |
One Adélie penguin walks quickly by— |
—while another chooses a more relaxing form of locomotion |
 An Adélie penguin feeds its chicks— |
—as another runs from them |
Birth and death in Antarctica— while a skua feeds on a downed penguin nearby, a parents continues to feed its chick |
 Paulet Island also contains a colony of blue-eyed shags |
Nervous Adélie penguins head out to feed, hoping to avoid hungry leopard seals |
Not every penguin makes it |
 Up from the beach, the next generation of penguins gathers into creches |
Scott finds happiness amid 100,000 pairs of nesting penguins |
It's lunch time for a hungry chick |
 Baby penguins wait for their parents to return |
Scott stands before the stone hut in which Capt. Larsen and crew over-wintered in 1903 after their ship was crushed in the ice |
Can there ever be too many pictures of penguins? |
 Scott wanders inland with one lone penguin (and with Irene, who snapped this picture) |
A skua nests on the remains of the hut that sheltered the survivors of the Nordenskjold expedition |
The hut once sheltered men, but now it belongs to the penguins |
 At Brown Bluff, we step on the the mainland of the Antarctic continent for the first time |
On the beach, we meet a Weddell seal, doing what Weddell seals do best |
A Gentoo and two Adélie penguins seem curious at the invasion of red-jacketed humans |
 An Adélie chick has climbed atop a mound—and only it knows the reason why |
For the over 20,000 nesting pairs of Adélies. it's always time for a meal |
A chick is moulting, and its adult colors are starting to show through |
 We climbed up the volcanic face of Brown Bluff— |
—and found a rare snowy petrel chick nesting in a crevasse |
There were breathtaking vistas in every direction |
 After I lay motionless in the snow for awhile, a Gentoo became fearless enough to scamper by on its stomach |
Penguins sometimes wandered so close, it was impossible to take a picture that contained the entire creature |
This Gentoo was guarding two eggs, but it was likely too late in the season for them to survive |
 Scott was having so much fun that he wanted to to spend the night on the beach, but his pleas fell on deaf ears |
Irene bids farewell to Brown Bluff |
As we leave Brown Bluff, the Weddell seal that greeted us has barely moved |
 When we faced the penguins on land, they seemed unperturbed, but whenever the ship passed them on their ice floes, they panicked and ran for the water |
The captain found a triangular iceberg two miles around and 100 feet tall— |
—which we slowly circumnavigated through the icy waters |
 The equipment on the bridge gave ample warning of all obstacles—and as you can see, the icebergs were endless |
One morning, the captain parked the ship by an ice floe, and allowed us all to feel like Shackleton |
We took the world's shortest Zodiac rides so we could all walk on water |
 Far behind Irene and our ice floe, icebergs loomed |
Before we could fully explore the floe, the captain warned that the ice was closing in, and we had to return to the ship ASAP — but there was always time for a final picture |
As we pulled away from the floe, all that remained were our footprints as evidence that we had landed |
 A pod of orca played nearby, moving out into impassable waters before we could approach—but there would be closer whale encounters to come |
On the beach at Devils Island, penguins played on the ice that had washed ashore |
As usual, there were penguins as far as they eye could see |
 As we wandered inland, we came across a skua minding its eggs |
From atop one of Devils Island's two horns, the penguin colonies can be seen on the beach far below |
The Adélie penguins enjoy a rare moment of sun (it was overcast for most of our visit) |
 Later, we saw minkes in the distance |
This group of whales allowed us to get close— |
—very close! |
 At Deception Island, we took to the Zodiacs to watch leopard seals hunt penguins along the shore— |
—but though we saw them feed, they proved difficult to photograph, and so we only ended up with pictures of each other |
We later entered the giant caldera of Deception Island, and went ashore within the center of the flooded crater |
 Inside was Whalers Bay, where a Norwegian whaling station operated from 1910 to 1931—the rusting rendering tanks still dominated the beach |
Not all whalers made it home from the sea |
Deception has erupted nine times during the past two centuries, including in 1967, 1969, and 1970—and this tractor, buried under volcanic ash, stands as a reminder |
 Along the beach were scattered what appeared to be jelly fish—but were not (and when I track down the correct technical term, I'll add it here) |
As we walked up towards Neptune's window, the red, rocky landscape looked like Mars |
At Telefon Bay, we climbed to peer into a recently formed (1967) crater |
 The Lemaire Channel, one mile long and seven miles wide— |
—is famous for its glaciers and steep, snow-covered mountains |
The seals who lived on its ice floes, however, didn't appreciate visitors, and took to the water as soon as the ship approached |
 Palmer Station is the only U.S. Research Station in the Antarctic peninular region |
At Port Lockroy, a British Antarctic Survey hut operated from 1943 through 1962, but it is now a visitors center and historical museum |
Gentoo penguins don't seem to mind visitors and nest at the footings of the hut |
 The Gentoo penguin at right has a stone between its beak that it has stolen for nest building |
On Goudier Island, whale bones litter the beach |
A parent stands watch over two chicks |
 Penguins wander the beach of Cuverville Island |
5,000 pairs of Gentoo penguins breed in the shadows of the mountains of Cuverville Island |
We were warned to stay away from the trails the penguins made through the snow, as one could fall into hole made by one of our boots |
 Gentoo penguins at home in the snow |
Perched on rocks in the shallow water, penguins attempt to get up the courage to feed |
We saw hundreds of thousands of penguins, and I think I tried to photograph them each individually |
 On our last night in Antarctica before heading home through the Drake Passage, a humpback whale was attracted to the krill stirred up by the ship |
It rose up directly beneath us at least a dozen times— |
—moving back and forth from port to starboard ... and so this was our last memory of Antarctica |