Return to Antarctica: Trip Narrative & Sneak Peek Images
My favorite image from the trip: A pair of Adelie penguins atop a Virginia-shaped iceberg in a sea of fog.
I recently returned from a monthlong trip to Argentina and Antarctica with my then-partner and now-husband, Sam. Since so many of you have been curious about our experience, sharing here seemed sensible!
This trip was multi-faceted, involving summer days spent dancing and dining in Buenos Aires, tortuous days and nights being tossed violently about in our cabin as we crossed the Drake Passage, and our wedding ceremony ashore in Paradise Bay, Antarctica. Preparing and packing for everything was complicated and overwhelming to say the least (see my previous post on some of the packing considerations), involving dedicated staging areas for each of us, checklists, plenty of stress, and ultimately more than a TON of luggage. I spent most of our month away in a permanent state of embarrassment over the sheer quantity of luggage we were travelling with!
Briefly, for context, and for those of you that don’t already know, back in 2015, I won an incredible, life-changing trip to Antarctica from the Luminous Landscape website. I was a beginning landscape and nature photographer at the time, with a real hunger for adventure and new skills, and taking this trip opened many doors for me. One of them was meeting Sam at a local art museum in the run-up to my trip. Incredibly, he was presenting about his experiences travelling to Antarctica for photography. I had a lot of questions about preparing for my trip, so we had a lot to discuss!
I’ll spare you the rest of the meet-cute. Let’s just fast forward to nine years later, for our return to Antarctica, this time as much more experienced photographers and as a couple. We had hatched a crazy plan to get married in Antarctica! Well before we were engaged, we booked our trip with Wild Nature Photo Travel, owned by our friend Joshua Holko. Josh was incredibly open to our budding wedding plans, and he set about making the appropriate arrangements with the operator of our ship, the Polar Pioneer. Ultimately, the plan came to be and we were married on the continent at Paradise Bay on December 14th. I’m including just a few images below. Our wedding photographer was the inimitable and lovely Viktoria Haack.
From the perspective of the adventure and the photography, this trip didn’t disappoint! The Drake Passage is known as one of the most violent (not to mention most deadly) water bodies on the planet, and crossing it in one way or another is a non-negotiable part of visiting Antarctica. I flew across in 2015, but for this trip, we were sailing. I definitely didn’t look forward to this part of our adventure, since I suffered terribly from sea-sickness in 2015 when we crossed a much calmer body of water called the Gerlache Strait. I made sure I was heavily medicated with scopolamine as we departed Ushuaia, Argentina on the Polar Pioneer. The experience of the medication was unpleasant in its own right (side effects include dizziness, blurry vision, dry mouth, confusion, hallucinations), but it did keep the utter misery of seasickness at bay. Overall, between the meds and the motion of the ship, I was not loving life for a few days as we crossed. Seas were ‘gentle to moderate,’ but our ship had no stabilization structures due to being an ice-breaker, so even the calm seas had us rolling side to side in our bed like sausages in a pan. I was certain by day two that I would be delighted to never experience this sort of motion again… but of course, we had to cross it again on our return.
Our first evening was spent ashore at Fort Point in the South Shetland Islands, where we experienced the most beautiful warm sunset light as we wandered amongst chinstrap and gentoo penguin colonies. It was here that I began to notice penguins in pairs (inspired by my own wedding), and I made the first few images of my “Penguin Pairs” series (see Instagram). I’m so glad that we experienced the beautiful warm tones on this evening, since the remainder of the trip was primarily flat and overcast (which I personally love, but I also appreciate variety). The colors and tones on this trip were markedly different from those of my first in 2015, but I understand this is not unusual. Conditions can be highly variable, and this trip (December) we saw mostly overcast skies with snow (and even some rain) whereas in 2015 (February), we had every condition imaginable. For me, this variability is one of the joys of returning to landscapes.
For the next three or four days, we sailed south along the western side of the Peninsula. Our experience was a blur of beauty, with multiple landings, various zodiac cruises, and simply jaw-dropping views from the ship. Our wildlife encounters included pods of orcas, curious humpback whales, and weddell, crabeater and leopard seals. And birds, so many beautiful, elegant birds!
After our joyful wedding in Paradise Bay, we continued on as far south as Petermann Island, after which we turned north again to embark on a journey to a part of Antarctica that not many get to see. With conditions unusually favorable for it, we sailed around the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and then south along the eastern side of the Peninsula into the Weddell Sea. Snow Hill Island is the location of the northernmost colony of Emperor penguins, and our plan was to get as close as we could to this island. Normally this part of continent is inaccessible due to sea ice, but warmer temperatures meant the sea ice had broken up which allowed us access much further south than is usual. So we began a hunt for Emperor penguins.
As we moved into the Weddell sea, the landscape changed noticeably. Gorgeous, soft light and snowfall graced huge tabular icebergs with their own weather systems. Sea ice became more substantial as we approached Snow Hill Island. And then we found an Emperor! And another! We were so fortunate to be able to experience a couple of these giants which can be as much as three feet tall. Both were solo, hanging out on small bergs, and we had quite a bit of time with the second one. What a treat, and extra-special for Sam and I as we think this was our last trip to the white continent.
A beautiful Emperor penguin in snow, off Snow Hill Island
As we departed the Weddell Sea, we were once again confronted with the prospect of crossing the Drake Passage. Conditions were looking quite terrible, with ferocious winds forecasted for all three days of our crossing. I’m going to be honest and say my life was flashing before my eyes as I considered our relatively mild crossing over, and what those ferocious winds could mean in terms of motion… Fortunately, the universe took pity on us and the powerful winds never materialized. It was a “moderate” crossing, meaning higher seas than the trip down but not as rough as we expected (although even with our medication, we were unable to eat and had to remain flat on our backs whenever possible). Arriving back in the port of Ushuaia, Argentina was accompanied by a sweet sense of deep relief.
A month after our return, we are still basking in the glow of this remarkable experience. I believe each one of us on this trip came away with the very clear sense that we had experienced Antarctica in a rare way, seeing parts of it not many get to see. Simply breathing in the air of this place, and internalizing its beauty, is an uncommon privilege. To have also been able to recite our vows there has permanently connected Sam and I to this wondrous, utterly wild place. To say we are grateful is an absolute understatement.