“They are... like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children or old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner...”
Aspley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, 1922
Through the night, we travel south along the western coast of the Peninsula. Our plan this time is to visit Cuverville Island, home to one of the continent's largest colonies of gentoo penguins. Like its brush-tailed cousins, the gentoo is no more than two foot tall, by turns idiotically clumsy and supremely graceful, and loves nothing more than to squirt shit around the joint.
While that could describe the average Kilmarnocker (minus the grace, obviously) the shite here actually has a purpose. The penguins can only lay eggs on rocks, and the guano helps to melt the covering snow. Other times, they'll just stand still and concentrate on getting warm, melting a little circle below them. Alas, they're wee faces don't turn crimson while they try to dip through the earth like nuclear rods.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Before all that, though, people are just wiping the maple syrup from their chins when, for the third time, everything goes tits up at the cry of “whales!”
The difference, this time, is that the ocean is calm, the whales in no rush to go anywhere and the scenery amazing. Today, everyone gets a humpback whale. For the umpteeth time, however, Wee Mo find ourselves in the second group of boats to go out and meet them. And once again, this turns out to be a blessing.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
It's true that whales communicate by singing, but thankfully they're bilingual. Body language matters, and why bother humming a tune when you can belly splash to let people ken whaur ye urh? As the zodiacs chase a pod on the port side of the ship, our attention is drawn to starboard, where a whale about half a mile away is slapping the surface of the ocean with its tail, before arching its back and disappearing. Then, partly through luck, and partly through Wee Mo's fucking expertise, we point our cameras in the right direction for what happens next. Who knew that Even Wee-er Mo having humpback whale posters on her wall at the expense of Boyzone would pay off so handsomely all these years later?
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Thankfully, everyone is a good deal more relaxed when we do get out on the zodiac cruise too. It's almost as though the whales know as much, as they get closer and spend longer on the surface (to our satisfaction, none of them breach again though).
We get so close to these monsters that we can pick out individual barnacles on their backs; so close we can hear the thundering snorts of their huge blowholes; so close that when we see the white flash of their bellies beneath the boat there's a jolt of adrenaline. How close is too close?
We get so close to these monsters that we can pick out individual barnacles on their backs; so close we can hear the thundering snorts of their huge blowholes; so close that when we see the white flash of their bellies beneath the boat there's a jolt of adrenaline. How close is too close?
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
We go straight from our impromptu cruise onto Cuverville. The colours at sunset/rise are superb in this part of the world, but for us, it's the blues that we will always remember. From the navy and cobalt of the icy ocean, to the subtleties of turquoise and and baby in the icebergs, to the enormous, regal skies, blue is the colour – and white. White so white it wasn't even a colour any more, a nothing, a beautiful void of snow untouched by man or beast.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Of course, the penguins don't care for such things – they just raise their brushes, squirt out another Tam Kite, and go on with their weird little days. We humans, meanwhile, stumble and fall up a hill, through biscuity, knee-deep snow to a place we can sit, be close to them and get a look at the bay below. Hours pass like this in the sunshine, with the blues and white, the only noises in the air being the clicking of cameras, the squawking of the birds and the winking of their tireless little sphincters.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Although we were already spoiled rotten in the morning, the plan was originally for us to visit another site in the afternoon – Wilhemina Bay – but for the first and only time, the weather is our undoing. As always, the crew have a back-up plan, but even that is put to bed by winds topping 45 knots. In the end, we decide to simply anchor the boat at the base of a 32-mile-long glacier and try to take pictures in the ripsnorting wind. It's so blustery it's almost impossible to hold the camera still, but then, as though we were somehow due compensation, the sun dips and we get some of one of Antarctica's rarest commodeties: shadow.
