Antarctica- trip of a lifetime - part III- the ice arch and the leopard seal

We set up in the 'iceberg graveyard  for a few days and found ourselves a stunning ice arch to work with. Our young model and the Spanish model took places in the kayak under the arch. As the photographer was shooting the managed to encourage a leopard seal under the kayak, the seal played and breached for around half an hour, proving the most wonderful shots.

Me: 'Am I the only one who wants to lick an iceberg?'
Everyone else: 'yes, you will stick your tongue to it'
Me: 'If you see me going to lick an iceberg please stop me'
Camera crew: 'No we will grab our cameras!'

FYI I did lick the iceberg and I still have my tongue

"Life is like an ice-cream cone, you have to lick it one day at a time." - Charles M. Schulz 

The older lady who was also modelling did not feel comfortable at all at the thought of getting in the kayak in the open ocean. Her heart started racing and she was really nervous, so we decided she would not be involved on this occasion.

"Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic; it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation." - Vannevar Bush 

She had also been struggling with her back rather a lot, and we managed to get a couple of trips over to the other yacht where they had a spa for her to get a massage. After helping her with her clothes and onto the bed I was asked if I didn't want one too. 'Oh ok, don't mind if I do?!' So there I was in Antarctica on a multi-million pound yacht having a massage, thinking - when did my life come to this?!

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise." - Alice Walker 


"Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?" - Bob Marley 
 
One of the icebergs we were using to film from had all our gear on it, and we were parked in the zodiac (rubber dingy) at the bottom. By the end of the shoot we were on the opposite side of where we had been - its amazing to see how much the ice drift, you cannot use it to orientate yourself at all.

That evening a couple of the photographers was helping me learn a few of the basics of shooting at night - shutter speed and all that. We fiddled with all my camera settings and set up a tripod, despite a couple of glasses of vino I was starting to get it, but couldn't stay out in the cold any longer - my hands were almost frozen! 





"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still." - Dorothea Lange 
 
Next morning I got up and my camera settings were all over the place and I couldn't quite remember what was supposed to go where-  practice practice. For some reason (like the rules of tennis) I seem to be really struggling to get the info stuck into my brain. The first few shots managed a great line in under and over exposed!

On this day there wasn't much room in the zodiacs with camera kit, crew, models and vital peeps, so I was not able to go out to the location. After a morning on the boat, itching to get off, the expedition leader of the other boat offered whoever wanted a cruise around. We headed out amongst the icebergs and saw some wonderful sights from the bergs themselves.

Some of the icebergs looked like they had glitter coming off them as the snow blew off in the wind.

We had a leopard seal who came and played with our boat...

 ...whales...
"We owe it to our children to be better stewards of the environment. The alternative? - a world without whales. It's too terrible to imagine." - Pierce Brosnan 

...seals...

 ...a yacht full of people (and you think, I know what I ma doing in Antarctica, but what on earth are you doing here?!) ... 

...and some bikini clad crew form the other yacht posing on an iceberg for a TV production someone form the other boat was making....

"That woman's as cold as a nudist on an iceberg" - Foghorn Leghorn

Antarctica - trip of a lifetime - Part II - Antarctica: begin the bergs

Next we cross the Drake Passage (the roughest seas in the world as they flow round and round Antarctica and have nothing to get in their way, miles and miles of sea. The boat doesn't just pitch, or roll, it pitches and rolls and tips to 30 degrees and smacks up and down and grown men fall out of bed and your stomach spins and lurches and you have to cling on to everything including your stomach! 

"You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." - Rabindranath Tagore 
 [shame, that]

Four and half days of sea sickness accompanied the crossing. The most I could manage was to check on the other two, then a teeny tiny bit of food and to lie down straight away before I lost it again. After three days everyone was suffering cabin fever and the effects of the Dramamine patches were comatosing people. Some of the film crew persuaded me to go for a sauna which did us all good, at least if we couldn't exercise we could get the dross moving round our bodies. One of the guests on board had a bet with me that I would feel better than in the initial crossing (if he won I had to give him my Namibian dollars for his children's foreign money collection). We were ever so so thankful when we finally sighted Antarctica proper and as we came closer to land and were more land protected the motion of the ocean slowed a little. I handed over my dollars (more out of a mutual understanding of the love of collecting foreign currency than being 100% sure the second crossing had gone any better!).

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people." - W. C. Fields 

We eventually started to see land and snow and ice and icebergs! Seriously large and very beautiful, here are the first few bergs and bits of land we saw



Is that an iceberg I see in the distance?

"Picture an iceberg. The bulk of its power lies beneath the surface. The part of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, for example, was not the 10 percent abover the water; it was the 90 percent below the surface that did the damage. For human beings, it is also often true that the 90 percent below the surface- our unconscious beliefs, attitudes and habits sinks our fondest hopes and dreams."- Robert White
[lets hope not!]




This berg was flat on one side and had almost a church tower on the other from the way the sea had worn at it.

The blue ice is very old - and is a line of minerals or dirt trapped in the berg

This one had loads of arches the sea had cut into it, on top it was flat and went on for hundreds of metres

This one TOWERED above the boat and we sailed round it for quite some time

Ice dripping down the side

Glacial front from the land and slushy bergy bits all around

leopard seal on a berg

Here are some land shots - crazy white going on forever

You can see why some cultures have an excessive number of words for snow!

"The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love." - Margaret Atwood

pink lights on the snow as sunset starts

Sometimes you are in the shower or maybe it was the sauna and just don't have time to get dressed before you have to go and take a photo - plunged into minus so and so in my dressing gown all for that one perfect pic!

"Don't go out with wet hair you'll catch your death" - Grandma Lomax

Enjoying the view off the back of the boat

Time for a smoke  - again! Despite having brought cigarettes Oma preferred the little metal pipe. Only a couple of puffs were needed on this one, then you pop a piece of paper back in the end, roll it in your hands to cool it and pop it back in your pocket  - whilst I was praying she didn't set herself and the boat on fire!

"As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake."- Mark Twain 

Before we settled down for a few days in the 'iceberg graveyard' (where it literally looks like someone parked hundreds of bergs) we went through the Lamaire Channel. The mountains on either side of the channel reach up to 3000 metres, not that we could see this in eerie fog. we woke up at 530am to see the sights of this place - sunrise here was spectacular. The photos do not come close.

 Picture the scene: you have just woken up, the sea is calm (for the first time in DAYS), you go outside, surrounded by craggy, inhospitable misty mountains, its cold and eerie and you are suddenly aware you are miles from anyone else and anywhere else. Sublime. You see the below images....

....and someone turms to you, touches you on the shoulder and asks 'Did we die? and for a moment, you really cannot be sure, as heaven could just look like this and is just as far from everything else and everyone else you know.

"If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it." - Andrew Denton 

"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour." - William Blake 

Finally at anchor and still sea, the next part of the filming began. We rested a day when the light was not so good, which gave one of the other models a chance to do some filming for her dance project and us all to recover from rough seas.

Then to the ice arch...

See you in Part III