Andrea Zelinski
ABOARD THE ULTRAMARINE -- Just when I thought I'd sighted enough humpback whales to die happy, the expedition leader on the Quark Ultramarine announced another whale was feeding near the bow of the ship.
It was after 9 p.m. and still light outside, on the seventh of my 12-day itinerary to Antarctica, and I sprung from my room and rushed out. By now, I was quite used to the late evening or early morning announcements beckoning me onto the outside deck to see wildlife or a celestial event.
This was my first expedition cruise in the Antarctic but not my first expedition cruise. I sailed on the Seabourn Venture out of San Juan for an Eastern Caribbean section of a repositioning; the Viking Octantis during its inaugural summer season in the Great Lakes; and the Fridtjof Nansen from HX (formerly Hurtigruten Expeditions) for a few days out of Vancouver.
All these cruises were far from the poles, where these ships and crew were eventually headed. Now that I was finally here at the Antarctic Peninsula among glaciers as big as warehouses, colonies of tens of thousands of penguins and vast seas (seemingly) full of curious whales, I could see why so many cruise lines have entered the expedition sector -- and why it's so popular with travelers.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure for most cruisers, an opportunity to see nature and wildlife in a place so untouched by human development. I wasn't going to let a single moment pass me by.
I've cried over the beauty of Antarctica. Down here, things look so different from my part of the world that it might as well be another planet. About 180 other guests and I wandered around a massive colony of Adelie penguins and their chicks. We cruised around sculpture-like glaciers with blue hues reminiscent of blueberry Kool-Aid while looking for whales. We climbed steep switchbacks in the snow and navigated the rocks of a mossy green landscape to observe chinstrap penguins.
This was better than the adventure I imagined every time I considered the promise of expedition cruising.
As seen through the lens of a pair of binoculars, a half-moon rises ahead of the bow of the Quark Ultramarine on its way to Antarctica. Photo Credit: Andrea Zelinski
Crossing the Drake was a breeze (knock on wood; as of this writing I still have another day at sea left), and the weather was better here than in much of the U.S. We woke up to temps in the low-30s and lucked out with clear skies and calm winds most days. I only wore my super-warm mittens once.
We weren't only looking for wildlife on this journey. The voice of our expedition leader, Ryan, piped through the intercom after 10 p.m. one night, calling us to emerge from the ship to see a stunning half-moon rise. It looked to me like a figment of a mystical sci-fi movie. Another day he summoned us out around midday to watch juvenile orcas play with (or harass, we couldn't be sure which) large, tube-nose sea birds called petrels in front of the bow.
But the day of the humpback whales was a special one. We spent a good part of the afternoon in Charcot Bay sitting in zodiacs as the unmistakable sound of bus-sized mammals blasting air through their blowholes carried over the water. Pffft! We'd see the whale's dorsal fin and, if we were lucky, it's tail flukes slide gracefully back into the water. One whale dove directly under the nearest zodiac to me, and I held my breath watching it.
When Ryan's voice came over the intercom that night telling us to watch a humpback whale feed near the ship, I couldn't resist. I positioned myself on a mid-level deck, putting me closer to the water, and spotted the whale when it roamed to the port side. We were rewarded when the humpback showed its underside, namely its ventral pleats, as it opened its great wide mouth and fed.
A smile spread across my face. You don't see this from staying in bed.