Antarctica Bound - Again

 

The itinerary of the Norwegian Star sailing from Buenos Aires to Antarctica, February 4 - 18, 2024

When American Airlines flight 997, a fully loaded Boeing 787 lifted off from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on January 13, 2023, bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina, we thought we were departing on the trip of a lifetime. Once in Buenos Aires we would board the Norwegian Star cruise ship (our most favorite Norwegian ship) on a 14-day adventure to the littlest of latitudes – just a few miles from the Antarctic Circle.  We were seated in first/business class with the much needed lay-flat seats - a requirement for a nearly 11 hour flight!  As usual on American we were treated like royalty in First Class.

The Star is by far our most favorite ship in the Norwegian Cruise Line fleet.  We first sailed her on a 14 day Transatlantic cruise from Copenhagen to Miami.  Then there was 14 days to Antarctica in 2023 followed by 14 days in February 2024.  We will meet up again with her in Reykjavik, Iceland on July 1, 2024 for a short 12 day trip to Greenland, Maritime Canada, and docking in New York City.

Our itinerary took us first to Montevideo, the colonial capital of Uruguay then on to Puerto Madryn in the Chubut province of Argentina (which just so happens to be the only known home of the White-headed Steamer-Duck). After a day at sea, we were in Punta Arenas, Chile (my third time there), then through the crushingly beautiful Chilean fjords to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world and the southernmost commercial airport in the world. It was in Ushuaia in 2003 that I was banned for life from ever again renting a car from Hertz Rent-a-Car but that is a different story.

The beauty of the Chilean Fjords along the Beagle Channel and the Straits of Magellan will bring tears to your eyes  Photo by Dan Bauer in 1985

We spent a day crossing the infamous Drake Passage, home of some of the most wicked sea currents and massive waves on the planet before spending two days in and around the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. We didn’t step on the Antarctic continent (that would cost about $20,000 USD for 8 days) but we didn’t need too. From the comfort of our suite on Deck 9 aft we saw 5 species of Penguin (including thousands of Chinstrap Penguins doing their signature porosing “flight” through the water), 5 species of Albatross and 5 species of whales. At one point we sailed into a whale feeding frenzy and saw 20 whale spouts at the same time – they reminded me of miniature tornadoes on the Nebraska prairie.

Experienced travelers will tell you that the Drake Passage between southernmost Argentina and Antarctica comes in two forms.  Its either the "Drake Lake" when its calm or the "Drake Quake" when the seas are a bit nasty producing waves to 60 feet high.  This photo of the Drake Quake was taken by Dan Bauer from a ship much smaller than the 965 foot long Norwegian Star we will be on.

The owner of a bookstore in Anchorage Alaska once told me you should only see Alaska as an old person because if you see it when you are young “you have nothing left to look forward to.”  He had obviously never seen Antarctica!

Mile thick glaciers. Unscaled and unnamed mountains. Whales everywhere you look. Cape Petrels by the hundreds surrounding the ship. It was and remains unforgettable.

It is shocking how stunningly beautiful a completely black and white bird can be but that is the story of the Cape Petrel (also known as the Pintado Petrel).  Cape Petrels love to follow ships. In January 2023 we had a flock of 60 following our ship and one came so close I could reach out and touch it!  Penguins and Albatross aside, Cape Petrel is my most favorite Antarctica bird.

Those interested in Antarctic history know the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his harrowing escape from the ice of the Weddell Sea. This was followed by most of his crew surviving on the shore of Elephant Island (where they ate seal and penguin and used their fat for heat) more than a year, followed by Shackleton’s courageous transit of the Drake Passage in a 22-foot boat to a whaling station on South Georgia from which plans were eventually made to return to Elephant Island to rescue his crew.

Sir Ernest Shackleton and 5 of his crew members sailed in this 22 foot boat from Elephant Island 800 miles to South Georgia island where they began arrangements (eventually concluded in Punta Arenas Chile) to return to Elephant Island to rescue his crew.  A replica of this 22 foot boat is on display at a museum in Punta Arenas and we plan to visit it.

Luckily for us, Norwegian Cruise Line spent the better part of a morning cruising around the beach on Elephant Island where Shackleton’s crew miraculously survived. The temperature was 36 degrees F, there was a light mist falling, and we were in the comfort of a 965-foot ship. It was almost impossible to imagine the misery Shackleton’s crew endured on that beach for over a year. Surprisingly, not one of his crew perished during their year-long wait for Shackleton’s return.

Reluctantly leaving Antarctica we steamed north for a day to the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas if you are from Argentina) which reminded me of North Dakota because of all the wind. While I took off looking for Cobb’s Wren, a single-country endemic, Cathy hiked 11 miles to Gypsy Cove where she found and photographed a colony of King Penguins. Just like with Antarctica at the end of the day we did not want to leave the fantastic Falkland Islands. I fell in love with the Falkland Islands and joined the Falklands Islands Conservation Trust while there.  You should also!

Cathy Hayslett walked 11 miles roundtrip from the cruise terminal to Gypsy Cove on the Falkland Islands where she photographed this King Penguin.  In 2024 we are taking a shore excursion in a Land Rover to go look at Penguins.

We sailed north for two days from the Falklands and reluctantly returned to Buenos Aires. When we returned to Buenos Aires (the cruise terminal there is an absolute zoo!) Cathy said, “I want to do this cruise again.”  A week later I was on the phone with Norwegian Cruise Line booking a return trip to Antarctica on February 4, 2024. So much for it being a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

On February 2, 2024, we depart Sarasota bound first for Charlotte North Carolina and then to JFK for an 11-hour overnight flight back to Buenos Aires. This will be my 7^th and hopefully not final trip to my most favorite South American country.

After a day of recuperation, we board the Norwegian Star again and depart on the same itinerary we followed in 2023. This will be the first time in 22 cruises together that we are following the same itinerary as any previous cruise. That should tell you a bit about how fantastic Norwegian Cruise Line, the Norwegian Star, and Antarctica are! Our itinerary includes:

February 4 – Depart Buenos Aires

February 5 – Day in Montevideo, Uruguay (pairing Uruguayan beef with Uruguayan craft beer)

February 6 – At sea

February 7 – Puerto Madryn, Argentina (after an abysmal shore excursion there in 2023 we are staying near the pier drinking Malbec rather than wasting money on a totally unprofessional excursion)

February 8 – At sea

February 9 – Punta Arenas, Chile. We will visit a museum housing a replica of the 22-foot boat Shackleton escaped from Antarctica in and a replica of the HMS Beagle that housed Charles Darwin on his expedition to South America. Chuck’s birthday will be on February 12. We might have to drink a beer for him while looking at his ship.

February 10 – Ushuaia Argentina – a city that reminds me of Anchorage, Alaska, so much I think I am looking at the Chugach Mountains as I walk among the Kelp Geese and Southern Giant Petrels cruising the waterfront.

February 11 – Crossing the Drake Passage

February 12 – Paradise Bay, Antarctica

February 13 – Elephant Island, Antarctica

February 14 – At sea

February 15 – Falkland Islands (with an excursion to a penguin colony supporting 3 species of penguin)

February 16 – At sea

February 17 – At sea

February 18 – Reluctantly return to Buenos Aires. But quickly transfer to the nearby domestic airport for a 90-minute flight north on a day trip to Iguazu Falls on the Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay border.

Iguazu Falls on the border with Brazil and Paraguay, is one of the most spectacular sights you will witness in the natural world.  On my second trip to Argentina I flew up to Iguazu Falls and spent several days hiking the forests and looking at birds.  This trip we will only have a few hours there but it will be worth every second.

February 19 – Chill out in soccer-crazed Buenos Aires, described by many as “The Paris of South America.

Driving from the International Airport to the domestic airport in August 2001 I commented to the driver that Avenida 9 de Julio reminded me of the Champs-Elysees.  The driver said "Sir, did you not know that Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America?"  It certainly is!

February 20 – Reluctantly leave Buenos Aires late in the evening first to Miami, then Charlotte and on February 21 arriving in Sarasota. Friends from Rhode Island will be staying at our house while we are gone so don’t think about stopping by to rip us off. Plus, our neighbor has a gun.

We already have two more cruises planned for 2024 (Iceland and Greenland in July and Rome to Miami in November). Plus 2025 is filled up with Puerto Rico to Lisbon, Portugal in April 2025, the Greek Islands and Malta in July 2025 and a spin around the Caribbean from San Jaun to Bonaire in December 2025.

Maybe if my heart hasn’t given out by then and my ashes aren’t spread over the Amazon, we will try Antarctica in 2026. I’ll be getting quite feeble by then but it will be worth the effort to see it again.

The One Place I Was Happy

 

The "World's Largest Buffalo" is impossible to miss, even at night, as you travel Interstate 94 through Jamestown, North Dakota

A road sign flashed by us in the middle of an October night in North Dakota. It was 1957 and we were traveling west to Montana for my dad’s annual deer hunting trip with his uncle. The sign I saw said “James River” and seconds later, on the same side of the road, was a giant statue of an American bison referred to by the city father’s as “The World’s Largest Buffalo.”

This was my instantaneous introduction to Jamestown, North Dakota, that with 17,000 residents, was the fifth largest city in the Peace Garden State. Among its many claims to fame, Jamestown is the home of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center which, in my biased opinion, was the finest wildlife research center in the world.

 

Northern Prairie was a dream duty station for anyone who loves wildlife

At six years old, thanks to a walk in the forest with my grandfather, I knew that I wanted to be a biologist when I grew up. At nine years old, a female mallard I shot on the Brill River in Barron County Wisconsin, carried a band on her leg. I sent the band to the address on it, and several months later a “Certificate of Appreciation” arrived from the US Fish and Wildlife Service informing me where, when and by whom the female mallard had been banded. It occurred to me that if there was an organization putting bands on bird legs I would want to work for that organization. At 9 years old my goal became the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Throughout graduate school I sat in the library reading volume after volume of the Journal of Wildlife Management (later I called it the Journal of Metaphysical Wildlife). The Journal was filled with papers written by people named Cowardin and Johnson and Kantrud and Stewart and Lokemoen and Duebbert and others. They were each stationed at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown, North Dakota – the very same city with the world’s largest buffalo. One night in the library I made it a goal to be a biologist at Northern Prairie.

Summer 1976 with a brand-new Master’s Degree I was working for $3.00 an hour with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. A car driven by my supervisor Bruce Moss found me counting ducks at East Twin Lake in St. Croix County. Once the car stopped, David L. Trauger, the bombastic and egotistical Deputy Director of Northern Prairie rolled out of the car and began trying to awe us with his vast knowledge of everything. Something I said or did caught Dave's attention and two years later, when I was now a wildlife biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Minneapolis, Trauger brought me to Northern Prairie on loan for the summer.

My task was to work with world-famous wildlife biologist Harold Kantrud on an extensive research project he was conducting in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana to develop a grassland classification system based on breeding bird abundance. For two months Hal and I traveled together counting birds and recording plant species over the heart of the Northern Great Plains. In mid-July 1978 when my detail to Northern Prairie was complete I didn’t want to leave. As Jimmy Buffett sings in a song about Key West, Florida, “I have found me a home.”

Later that summer, through the machinations of how government works, a position fitting my exact expertise became available at Northern Prairie and not by surprise I was selected.

January 20, 1979, with my Chesapeake Bay Retriever seated next to me in a U-Haul, and my then-wife and 2-year-old daughter leading the way in our Ford Escort, we left Hudson, Wisconsin, on the 7-hour drive to Jamestown. When we arrived in the late afternoon, the high temperature for the day was -24 degrees F. It was an auspicious start to a new chapter in my life.

After two weeks in the Ramada Inn, we found and purchased a home at 1410 11^th Street Southeast, not far from the James River sign I had seen in 1957. My goal of being stationed at Northern Prairie was complete.

Over the next four years I conducted research on sandhill cranes in Nebraska, and breeding birds along the Platte River. We did a study of bird abundance and diversity that helped bring a proposed damn on the Pembina River to its deathbed. Another study examined the abundance of diversity of breeding songbird using unique woody habitats in western North Dakota that were scheduled to be consumed by coal production.  Probably my most valuable contribution was a study of the behavior and mortality of birds at powerlines in central North Dakota. Despite the study area, the research had implications for protecting birds from collisions with man-made structures from  Switzerland, to Fairbanks, Alaska.

When I wasn’t working we were out exploring. Another daughter arrived in June 1980 and 6 weeks after her birth we were on a train to Churchill Manitoba in Canada’s Arctic. A year later we were camping in southeast Arizona. There were trips to the Turtle Mountains and to Teddy Roosevelt National Park and not-often-enough returns to Wisconsin. Mid-September brought the beginning of hunting season. First it was mourning doves and then sharp-tailed grouse and on October 1, ducks and geese became fair game. My Chesapeake Bay Retriever was ecstatic because nearly every day he was tromping across a prairie or swimming in freezing water retrieving something we had harvested. It was impossible to be happier than I was in Jamestown, North Dakota.

There are many things to hunt in North Dakota. None, however, was finer than Sharp-tailed Grouse

It was an idyllic life. I was happy as the proverbial clam then on March 5, 1983 it all came crashing down. Two months to the day after “it” happened a Stutsman County Sheriff Deputy showed up at Northern Prairie and in front of all my colleagues served me with divorce papers. Four months later we sat in the divorce court in the Stutsman County Courthouse where I learned firsthand how much “justice” there is in the justice system.

To say I was rudderless was an understatement. Because of new living arrangements I had to take my Chesapeake Bay Retriever back to my parents farm in Wisconsin and leave him there. I still dream about that dog every week. Not only had I lost a family but I lost my best friend, a curly-haired dog who lived to hunt.

Jamestown, North Dakota, with its 17,000 people, was too small a town to live in without running into a former wife who took great pleasure in reminding me often that we were no longer married. Thanks once again to bombastic David L. Trauger, now director of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland, I transferred from Jamestown to a field station of Patuxent in Athens, Georgia.  There for 3 years I spent my summers in northern Michigan and my winters in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands studying Kirtland’s Warbler.  After three years of nearly constant travel (it was more running away than travel) I moved to Grand Island Nebraska, the Florida Keys, Ventura, California, and eventually Washington DC. 

None of those places were ever where I wanted to be. None of them were ever “home.”  I lived in many houses but not one of them has been home.  My home was on the pass at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota with my daughters watching ducks and geese pass 50 feet over our heads. Home was the forest of McElroy Park along the James River dripping with warblers in the middle of May, home was a near collision with a startled moose in the Pembina River valley, and home was a camping trip to the Turtle Mountains.

Since leaving my home on the prairie, the only other place I have been happy is at Barrow, Alaska, at 71 degrees North latitude, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. There I am on my own, counting birds, looking for polar bears and 500 miles away from the nearest road. The habitat, when the snow finally melts in June, looks surprisingly similar to the Missouri Coteau of North Dakota.  As with North Dakota, those Arctic wetlands are teeming with birds. The sad thing about Barrow is that I am only there for a few days and then have to leave.

 

Palustrine emergent wetlands like this one are almost too numerous to count at Barrow Alaska.  Their abundance reminds me of North Dakota's Missouri Coteau 45 years ago

Dorothy, in the “Wizard of Oz” transported herself to where she was happy by clicking the heels of her ruby slippers and saying “There’s no place like home” until she was home. I don’t have that luxury and quite honestly after living under a Florida palm tree for 16 years I could never live in North Dakota again.  However, just like wolves and fishers in northern Wisconsin I may never see one, but a glimmer of joy overcomes me when I remember that the North Dakota I loved was once there providing me with happiness.