The penguins are screaming bloody murder tonight. It’s pitch black on Wiencke Island, a frozen but sheltered island along the Antarctic Peninsula, and all I can hear is the purr, cry, and screams of hundreds of gentoo penguins settling into their nests for the evening.
“It’s a very beautiful sound,” says my cheery camping guide, Ingvild Riska, who has camped out on Antarctica dozens of times and seems unfazed by the colony’s hubbub. Riska has come to inspect my tent, which I’ve only half-succeeded at erecting on the ice in the gathering gloom. In the glow of her headlamp, Riska helps me hammer in the last pegs, then all that’s left to do is settle into my new cosy home.
The last thing I see before I zip my tent is Riska returning to her own, which is a replica of a canvas pyramid tent used by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen during his legendary 1911 expedition to the South Pole. Lying back in my sleeping bag, I can’t help but wonder what Amundsen – and other polar explorers like Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott and Australian Douglas Mawson – would have made of the strange shrieking in the dark unknown.
Less than a week ago, I set sail on a 12-day voyage with HX Expeditions bound for the White Continent. Departing from Ushuaia, a small port town at the southernmost tip of South America, our ship endured two days crossing the infamously tempestuous Drake Passage before arriving in the calmer waters of the Antarctic Peninsula. When I peeled back my suite’s curtains on the third morning, a welcome party of fur seals was already waiting to greet me from a small ice floe that happened to be lazily drifting past.
Since then, I’ve walked among penguin colonies at Pleneau Island, explored preserved artefacts inside a historic transit station hut (anyone fancy custard powder dating back to 1993?), snowshoed across Damoy Point, and camped out on the ice. I may not be forging a new route to the South Pole as Amundsen did, but I am exploring Antarctica aboard a pioneering vessel named in his honour.
New era of polar tourism
HX Expeditions’ MS Roald Amundsen was unveiled as one of the world’s first hybrid expedition ships in 2019, ushering in a more sustainably minded era of polar tourism. The ship combines battery packs with low-emission engines to reduce its overall carbon output, while using smart engineering methods to recycle water, energy and food waste. The pool and sauna are heated using residual power from the engines and food waste is converted into fish pellets.
The heart of the ship is the state-of-the-art Science Center, which is bustling most of the day with resident scientists and expedition team members hosting lectures and interactive workshops on everything from Antarctic politics to whale biology. I soon learn scientific discovery isn’t confined to a lab, with guests encouraged to participate in a range of citizen science projects around the ship.
Over the coming days I record survey data during guided wildlife spotting sessions on the ship’s bow. I log photos of whale flukes that will help biologists track their migratory movements from Antarctica to Alaska. One frigid morning, I set out on a special Zodiac excursion, carefully lowering measuring instruments down into the black water and scooping water samples from the choppy sea.
Inside each sample is phytoplankton, a type of microalgae that can help scientists monitor the overall health of the Southern Ocean. Science Coordinator Sonja Storm tells me the samples will be refrigerated and then shipped to Buenos Aires to be studied. There’s a strange sense of pride knowing the sample I just collected will be helping to protect this beautiful place.
During a shore landing at Neko Harbour, I walk past a pair of guest researchers from Western Washington University, who are fastidiously collecting green snow algae samples for their studies. While they have their eyes glued to the ground, I’m looking up at a rocky hill covered in gentoo penguins.
Meet the penguins
The snow is covered in moulted feathers shed by penguin chicks who are just coming into their waterproof adult coats. As their juvenile feathers aren’t waterproof, they won’t be able to go hunting in the ocean until they’ve finished moulting. The result is a crowd of hangry, awkward-looking teenage penguins and their put-upon parents. I spot two hungry chicks desperately inspecting an orange cone used to cordon off areas. One guide says they might be mistaking the orange shape for their mother’s beak and hoping food will pop out.
But I don’t think anyone should be rushing to get into the water anyway. Two leopard seals are on patrol, their lithe jet-grey bodies darting back and forth along the pebbled beach waiting for a penguin foolhardy enough to try leaving. There’s a collective gasp from spectators as we witness a couple of near misses, but no success for the leopard seals. “I don’t think they are trying very hard,” observes marine biologist and guide Matthew Gledhill from our vantage point. “They’re just cruising to see what they can get but their hearts are not in it.”
Maybe a night with a hungry belly is what they need for encouragement? The next morning, I step out onto the bow just in time to witness a high-speed chase between leopard seal and penguin. A small splash and a gurgle of blood, and the polar predator claims its prize. Leopard seals can’t digest feathers and beaks, so they must prepare their prey by thrashing it in the water until it turns inside out. It’s a brutal display but Captain Rune Alme is ecstatic when I meet him later in the Science Center. “I’ve been coming to Antarctica since 2010 and I’ve never, ever seen a leopard seal take a penguin and do that,” he tells me.
I retreat indoors and swap layers of thermals and jackets for gym attire so I can join a group yoga session hosted by one of the expedition leaders. After a day lugging around heavy camera equipment, I help my muscles unwind with an extended session in the Nordic sauna, located on the uppermost deck so I can soak in panoramic views as I sweat the day out.
Guests can choose to dine at one of three onboard restaurants, ranging from casual burgers and milkshakes right up to buffets and fine dining. Nobody tells you before you go that Antarctic expeditions make you ravenously hungry (a side effect of your body working extra hard to keep you warm), so I decide to treat myself at Lindstrøm, a fine dining restaurant with moody lighting and crisp white linen, dining on filet mignon and grazing on a cheeseboard.
Feeling sleepy, I retreat to my suite for the evening. Just as I pull back the covers on my bed, I hear a reverberant ‘humph’ coming from outside. I step out onto my private balcony to find a mother humpback whale and her calf, spyhopping in the gentle glow of the ship, as if to bid me goodnight.
Photographs: Kay Fochtmann.
