AN
ANTARCTICA
LOVE AFFAIR
By Amanda Stadther
My fascination with Antarctica and everything
frozen began when I was a 10-year-old farm girl
on a school trip to the Antarctic Gallery at the
Canterbury Museum in New Zealand. The
collection of old photographs, clothing and maps
told the stories of Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated
expedition and Ernest Shackleton's long voyage
to save his crew and those images and stories
never left me.
Five years later I dropped out of high school, announced to my traumatized parents I was going to get a job and save enough money
to meet (or stalk!) Sir Peter Scott, Robert Falcon Scott's son, who founded what is now the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at
Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, England.
I wrote to the Trust and asked if they had any jobs I could do, thinking I would eventually get to meet Sir Peter. I got a very nice
letter back, not from Sir Peter, but from the curator saying "lets talk when you get here." A year later I arrived in Slimbridge, letter in
hand ready to meet the man. The alarmed curator gave me a summer job, sent me off with a shovel to clean up wildfowl droppings
and said Sir Peter should visit the Trust soon.
He did and I was so overwhelmed I tripped over my own feet and mumbled an incomprehensible "nice to meet you" and he moved
on, probably wondering what kind of people his curator was hiring.
After that I set my sights on going to Antarctica and to visit Ernest Shackleton's grave site on South Georgia and some 25 years later
I got there.
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS...
At sea for 30 days, covering 2500 miles on a former Russian research vessel, the Sergey Vavilov operated by a Canadian expedition.
Our starting point was Ushuaia in Southern Argentina and we traveled to the Antarctic Peninsula via the Falkland Islands and South
Georgia.
There were 95 passengers and 60 crew, we made 12 land excursions, and took several zodiac cruises. We had close encounters with
five species of penguin, an inquisitive leopard seal, thousands of bossy penguins, testosterone-fueled elephant seals and many cute
seals.
We saw seemingly endless species of albatross and other sea birds all fascinated by who we were and why we were passing through
their home.
We sailed through sea conditions which varied between the flat calm of the inner waters of the Antarctic Peninsula to 30 foot swells
in the Drake Passage.
During the first few days it became clear that most of us were not born sailors. A wise guide summed up seasickness in one sentence.
"First you think you are dying, then you want to die, then you wonder why you haven't died."
Any kind of dignity we might have had when boarding the ship, rapidly evaporated during the early days. Meal times seemed to
bring out the sea-sickness in those toughing it out without medication. The sight of the contents of their soup bowl rolling side to side
with the motion of the ship was too much to bear and the usual suspects made hasty retreats to their cabins.
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