Puerto Montt - Draga's Day Off

“There’s a world out there,” she said this morning, looking out the porthole of our cabin, “It’s a beautiful day. If I can’t share it with you, I’ll walk into that world out there.”

“Bring back pictures,” I said. She knows I can’t leave my work, but she also knows how important it is to me to know that there are places that are not made from steel and grease and peeling paint and rust.

I’ve lived so long in my own head, looking at the laws that make the world tick, that I forget what I’m part of. Someone once said that a cow is so dumb that he can stand to his knees in snow and still die of thirst. I know now that I’m that cow. When I met Draga on the Amazon last year, I didn’t know how thirsty I was. I didn’t even know what I was thirsting for.

Somehow she pried her way into my head and found a barren world. Ever since then she’s been plowing furrows and planting seeds. There are flowers in my head now; green pastures on mountains, and lakes between them with boats bobbing on them and quaint white churches with friendly people inside on their banks. Far away the snow is on the pinnacles. There are dilapidated cottages by every travel road. There’s even a lama.

That’s my Draga; my lifeline to the real world.

Lama

Pretty white church with friendly people

Dilapidated cottage by the travel road

Snow on pinnacle

River flowing into a lake

Boats bobbing on a lake

Boat house on the lake

Snow on a volcano - Puerto Montt, Chile

Puerto Montt, Chile - Little Germany below the volcano

The southern shore of Chile consists of magnificent fjords that make for a scenery that easily rivals that of Alaska and Norway. The waters also contain enormous amounts of debris, shrimp and other things that clog up the seawater systems, and we spent most of the trip eying pressure gauges and splitting filters and condensers.

Finally, at the north end of this swamp we arrive in Puerto Montt, rumored to be a quaint Bavarian village with lots to do. We are too exhausted to partake and slump down next to gracefully humming engines and compressors. In the evening we sit on deck and overlook the port. Music drifts in from shore. Far ahead a volcano rises from the horizon. On a nearer hill stands a cross, which, we all agree, is not at all as imposing as the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio. But then, very little is.

Sunrise over the Chilean fjords

 

The cross at Puerto Montt, Chile



Puerto Montt, Chile - Little Germany below the volcano



Puerto Montt, Chile



Penguins in Punta Arenas

At some point during the evening I remember my man Ludin, and how he was blabbering this morning about penguins and how mean it was that he wasn’t allowed to go ashore to see some. I reminded him that I had sent him shore in Rio, to take pictures of the statue of Christ the Redeemer, but he said that Christ the Redeemer was no penguin and he wanted to see penguins.

When he showed up again, two minutes before departure, he insisted that I had clearly given in and let him go ashore. I recalled no such thing, and Ludin was put on volunteer duty once again and will spend the rest of the week cleaning filters.

Here are Ludin’s pictures:

Penguins in Punta Arenas

Penguins in Punta Arenas

Penguins in Punta Arenas

Penguins in Punta Arenas

Penguins in Punta Arenas

Penguins in Punta Arenas

UFO's over Punta Arenas, Chile

We’re in Chile, apparently, although nobody has time or a mind to going out. Perhaps we’re all still too saturated from seeing the grandeur of Antarctica; perhaps we’re plain old lazy. We spend a few hours tied to shore but hardly look over the railing. Our world exists entirely between the bulkheads; out there is a universe we’re only technically a part of.

At departure, a fleet of UFO’s emerges from the horizon. Some unusual natural phenomenon casts shadowy beams across their backs, as if somewhere out there the mother ship is calling us home. We don’t head her call. Lines are cast and we head north, meandering through the Chilean fjords, looking for definition.

UFO's over Punta Arenas, Chile

Punta Arenas, Chile

UFO's over Punta Arenas, Chile

UFO's over Punta Arenas, Chile

Ushuaia, Argentina - the southern most city in the world

Exhausted from the southern storms that howl around Cape Horn, we drift into the fjords and exhale, let go of railings and relax the frowns off our faces. We’ve made it, we congratulate ourselves.

In the distance drifts a sailboat in the orange glow of the morning. We whisper envious appreciations and imagine ourselves rich and retired and on that ship, in the arms of someone who truly loves us.

The crew goes for a saunter and comes back exited. The enormous yacht that’s tied up next to us – which we assumed from afar was some research or government vessel – is none other than the famous Octopus, owned by Microsoft foreman Paul Allen. Didn’t he loose a helicopter last year? Or was it last week? We notice damage at the bow, secretly fantasize about being chief engineer on board Paul Allen’s Octopus.

In the pastel distance are high peaks, still covered with snow. Ahead is the town, and boats of all sized bob in the marina. Last year I thought of moving here, far away from everywhere, with Antarctica just south to escape to. A few weeks later, on the Amazon river, I met Draga and came home for the first time in decades.



Ushuaia, Argentina - the southern most city in the world



The Ushuaiah pulling into port



Please retire me - sailboat at sunrise

Paul Allen's Octopus in Ushuaia, Argentina 

Ushuaia, Argentina - the southern most city in the world

Ushuaia, Argentina - the southern most city in the world

Fisherfleet of Ushuaia, Argentina

Cape Horn - proof that South America truly exists

Just a week ago South America felt like the other side of the world. Now, when we’re coming up from Antarctica, seeing Cape Horn in the distance feels like coming home. Having been to Antarctica is like having visited another world. Cape Horn ahead is where we have come from; it’s where we are from, our world.

Cape Horn

Yours truly with Cape Horn in the background

Antarctica Impressions

The continent of Antarctica is hugely vast and we’ve covered only a tiny portion of it. But in those few days we’ve seen sights that can’t be seen anywhere else on earth. Here follow some impressions:

Antarctica

Antarctica

Antarctica

Antarctica

Midnight in Antarctica

Humpback whale in Antarctica

Antarctica

Jackie Mueller, scientist at Palmer Station

Part of our super-secret mission is hauling scientists to Palmer Station, which is a science station located at the southern point of Anvers Island, which is part of the Palmer Archipelago. The Palmer Archipelago in turn is part of the Antarctic Peninsula, which is the landmass that protrudes from Antarctica towards the tip of South America, recognizable on any map. The Palmer Archipelago was named after Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, who sailed a sloop south from Cape Horn in 1820 and became the first person to sight the peninsula.

“What brings you to Palmer Station?” I ask Jackie Mueller, who stands at the gangway waiting for the zodiac to arrive. We’ve slowed down to a stop and stare mesmerized at the shore. Whatever Jackie is here to investigate, she’ll have a hell of a view while at it.

“I’m going to look at how viruses control phyto plankton, and also at bacterial population dynamics,” she says, and explains that she’s in her second year of a Ph.D. program at the University of Hawaii. She’ll be stationed at Palmer for two months.

I want to ask her about her life, about the people she’s left behind, about what phyto plankton actually might be. But as the zodiac pulls along side and we begin to sling her luggage over the side I realize that I mostly want to tell her that I envy her. She boards the little boat and pulls off to what will be an experience of a life time.

I hope she’ll get to see lots of penguins, lots of candy-wrapper sunsets and lots of friendly fellow scientists. And if the world is to be a better place when mankind understands phyto plankton, then we can rest assured: Jackie Mueller is at Palmer station figuring it out. I dropped her off myself.

Jackie Mueller, scientist at Palmer Station

A Palmer Station zodiac takes Jackie home

Jackie's view for the next two months

View from the bay where Palmer Station is located

Penguins in Hope Bay, Antarctica

Beautiful as Antarctica is, we’re here to work and wouldn’t you know, just when Draga and I were inside conducting our business, our ship passed a small group of penguins huddled on a floe. Luckily, nurse Lisa stood on deck and shot these nifty photos (“Look, look! Look at his little hairdo! Look at his little feet! Aren’t they cute! They’re so cute!”).

The certainly are, Lisa.

She allowed me to post them on the proviso that I mention that she took them. So here they are; Nurse Lisa’s photos of penguins in Hope Bay, Antarctica:

Penguins in Hope Bay, Antarctica

Penguins in Hope Bay, Antarctica

A Flying Penguin? There now...

Hope Bay, Antarctica

No matter how grandiose and unique, every country on earth can be readily compared with some other country. Massachusetts has features in common with Washington state. I’ve seen signature elements of the land of China repeated in New Zealand. Even Alaska, which I’ve been in love with ever since I went there for the first time twenty years ago, is not unlike the Norwegian or even Chilean fjords. But nothing - nothing but the moon! - compares to Antarctica.

I’m here for the second time in my life and it’s like treading on holy ground. We’re all aware that if something happens to the ship, we’re pretty much done for, but we can’t make ourselves fear the grandeur, the blue light sweeping off the ice or the endlessly forbidding planes that lie ahead. It’s simply mind boggling to be here; humbling, exiting and more awe inspiring than any place on earth I know.

According to the Antarctic Treaty, no country can claim this continent for itself. In that regard Antarctica is like the moon, which also can’t be owned by anyone but all of us. And that makes this place so special too. It fulfills an almost messianic role between the earth, upon which rivaling clans wage their ridiculous territorial wars, and the heavens where people exist free and freely sharing the bounties of creation without needing to claim ownership.

Draga whispers beside me that we don’t really belong in Antarctica. We’re invaders, she says, but I squeeze her closer and disagree. We humans weren’t simply born on planet earth, we’re part of it. All of us were brought forth by this planet in its entirety; all of its elements and economies, all of its weathers and area’s. We don’t own the planet and it doesn’t own us; we’re it. We are the earth, and there is no place on earth where we can or should not go.

Luckily for all of us, the Powers That Be have decided to no longer allow vessels that have no urgent business here access to Antarctic waters. The nature of our present mission prohibits me from informing the reader what it is that Draga and I are doing here, or even on which kind of ship we are, but the new treaty pretty much means that this is our last time here. If we were ever to return here, it would be to do something else, something that serves the land with a purpose great enough to warrant blasting tons of exhaust gasses into its atmosphere.

My God in heaven, could it be that we’re finally learning?

Icebergs in Antarctica waters

Icebergs in Antarctica

Hope Bay, Antarctica

Hope Bay, Antarctica



Esperanza Station at Hope Bay, Antarctica



Esperanza Station at Hope Bay, Antarctica