Gothic Art On Ice

We spent many days at sea, getting to know our fellow passengers, and delighting in the informed discussions with those who knew Antarctica; quite a few of whom had written the books in the well-stocked library. We made a breathtaking and hazardous landing on Tristan da Cunha, surely one of the most remote islands on the planet, an aborted attempt to land at Gough Island, a single crag, shrouded in mist and rain, and then we reached the Antarctic convergence - the mysterious, invisible place where the icy waters of the Antarctic meet and plummet below those of the warmer South Atlantic.

Enormous changes take place at this point: in air and sea temperatures, in concentration of krill, the tiny crustacean that forms the beginnings of the entire food chain, in fish and bird life. Somehow, this electrifying metamorphosis extended to us as we sensed the plunge into a new world.

For the next four weeks, we cruised the islands and mainland visiting seal breeding grounds, a retreating glacier, a still-active volcano. We danced with icebergs and shared the stark beauty of this remote world, silent except for the shrill cries of the wheeling skua gulls, the harsh, braying call of the jackass penguin, the crack of pack ice against our hull. We marveled at the huge rookeries of penguins, so quaintly named by Francis Drake's Welsh seamen (penn gwynne 'white hair' in their native Celtic tongue). Days of bright sunshine mingled with days shrouded in mist and heavy overcast. Whenever possible, we crammed into inflatable rubber boats called Zodiacs and explored the shoreline with an anxious crew scanning the horizon for the swift, howling squalls that swept through without warning.

Scattered about this pristine world, man has made little impact.