I’m sitting on the quay in the Argentine city of Ushuaia, waiting for my boat
to come in. A cold, grey drizzle is softening the view, blurring the join
between sea and sky in this, the world’s southernmost city, and I’m about to
embark on a voyage to the last place on earth.
My luggage is full of designer names such as North Face, Helly Hansen and
Sealskinz. My daywear is made from polypropylene, Gore-Tex and fleece. The
dinner suit and the Bermuda shorts, I left at home. This isn’t that sort of
cruise.
Nor is it that sort of cruise ship. The Akademik Sergei Vavilov was
commissioned in Finland in 1989 by the Russian Institute of Oceanology. And
the KGB. Ice-proof, bristling with antennae and capable of silent running on
electric engines, the Vavilov was built to pinpoint the location of any
submarine in the world.
Then the Soviet Union collapsed. Communism’s loss was tourism’s gain, as the
adventure-travel operators Peregrine acquired the finest expedition vessel
to cruise Antarctic waters, although if you come expecting dinner-dances,
you’ll find yourself out in the cold.
Not that the Vavilov isn’t comfortable. Immaculately managed by its Russian
crew, it has well-appointed cabins, a lecture theatre, a superb observation
bar, a sauna, a gym and a small library dedicated to polar exploration.
On deck, the loungers and quoits have been ousted by quivers of sleek yellow
kayaks and the blubbery bulk of a dozen Zodiac inflatables, leaving just
enough room for a small, unheated outdoor plunge pool, installed to detect
insanity among passengers and crew.
There’s a brisk breeze blowing as we sail down the Beagle Channel and steer
into the Drake Passage. These are the latitudes known as the roaring forties
and the screaming fifties, where banshee westerlies, unhindered by land,
create waves up to 50ft high.
“This isn’t cruising,” grins expedition guide David McGonigal three days
later, as the Vavilov slams into another trough, shuddering from stem to
stern. “This is seafaring.”
Sailors say that below 40 degrees there is no law, and below 50 degrees no
God. I beg to differ.
The mercury falls as we approach the bottom of the earth until, one bright
blue morning, we awake at anchor in the calm lee of the Antarctic Peninsula.
I emerge from my cabin to find the deck crowded yet silent but for the
clicking of shutters and the awestruck whispers of passengers and crew. It’s
like a scene from one of those Hollywood blockbusters when something alien
arrives to belittle humanity, and the notion that this continent stretches
away, unexplored, unclaimed and uninhabited, for thousands of frozen miles
is simply too much to consider before breakfast.
“Glittering white, shining blue, raven black: in the light of the sun, the
land looks like a fairy tale,” wrote Amundsen. “Pinnacle after pinnacle,
peak after peak, crevassed, wild as any land on our globe, it lies unseen
and untrodden.”
A soaring circle of unnamed, unclimbed, brilliant-white mountains surrounds
the ship, their summits hidden beneath miniature clouds created by the
evaporation of their own snow. Unexplored glaciers spill down their frozen
flanks, carrying 50,000-year-old ice to a slow death in the cold arms of an
ocean that bears away the remains like shades upon the Styx.
The icebergs drift as slowly as they melt, as blue as corpses, as white as
ghosts, as clear as the consciences of the absolved. The sparkling ocean
crackles with the release of glacial air trapped before Moses was born,
these dying gasps frequently drowned by distant crashes as the glacier gives
up another tower block-sized chunk to destiny. The captain steers us warily
between corrupted castles, crushed houses and collapsed cathedrals of ice,
their submarine bases nine times deeper than their height.
Icebergs are in a constant state of rotation, and the freshly turned are the
most beautiful of all: faces unblemished by wind and sun gleam like opals,
their flanks scalloped like beaten copper. The smallest floaters are called
bergy bits; those big enough to sink ships, but small enough to escape the
radar, are called growlers. Hear one running along the keel and you’ll
understand why. The Vavilov is an ice ship, built to navigate in sea ice,
but you’d be surprised how many of the cruise liners plying these remote and
dangerous waters aren’t.
There’s a skewed sense of incompleteness in Antarctica, as though God and
Gaudi had abandoned a joint venture at the sketching stage. Distance,
perspective and proportion are undecided and scale is impossible to gauge,
as though it’s not relevant. What’s most conspicuous is absence: no roads,
no buildings, no footprints, no trees, no culture and, with the exception of
the seals and the occasional throng of penguins, no life. The emptiness
should be chilling, but it’s not.
You feel almost a sense of trespass as the Zodiacs drop you ashore — strict
rules limit the number of human incursions — and those privileged to visit
go home as ambassadors for the last pristine wilderness on earth. But with
an estimated 50 billion barrels of oil beneath the Ross and Weddell Seas
alone, how long can Antarctica remain that way?
Travel details: Peregrine Adventures (01635 872300,
www.peregrineadventures.co.uk) has voyages aboard the Akademik Sergei
Vavilov, departing from Ushuaia, from November through to March, with prices
from £4,488pp, including flights from Heathrow via Buenos Aires.
Other operators include: Exodus (0870 240 5550,
www.exodus.co.uk), Discover the World (01737 218800,
www.discover-the-world.co.uk) and Last Frontiers (01296 653000,
www.lastfrontiers.com).
More wild cruises
The Galapagos: ever since Darwin’s little jaunt, this has
been the world’s wildlife classic. Cruising around the volcanic Galapagos
Islands feels like a glimpse into a world before man: the deep calm of
nature without big predators.
The Beagle, a pretty schooner, steel-hulled and teak-fitted, is a
great ship to do it on. Each day’s dinghy excursion — accompanied by a
naturalist — reveals new creatures in assorted breathtaking landscapes, from
the ghostly to the apocalyptic to the benign.
And March is a good month to visit, because it’s spring. Boy, is it spring.
The giant tortoises copulate furiously, male frigate birds spread their vast
wings and puff up their red pouches like balloons. Everywhere there are
intimate scenes: families of sea lions, mating turtles, baby blue-footed
boobies, floppy, fluffy and curious. To the awestruck visitor, it’s like the
Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve made their terrible mistake.
The Ultimate Travel Company (020 7386 4646,
www.theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk) has seven nights, full-board, on the
Beagle and two nights, B&B, in Quito, from £2,745pp, including flights.
Or try Tribes (01728 685971, www.tribestravel.com).
Costa Rica: the 60-passenger Sea Voyager plies the
Pacific coast, with naturalists aboard and regular zips by Zodiac to chase
howler and capuchin monkeys through the rainforest canopy or to watch sea
turtles nesting on Costa Rica’s beaches. Reef & Rainforest Tours
(01803 866965, www.reefandrainforest.co.uk) has an eight-day cruise in July
or August, 2007, from about £2,600pp, including flights, transfers and all
meals on board.
Alaska: humpbacks and harbour seals, black bears and bald
eagles — nothing gets you closer to Alaska’s white wilderness than a cruise
among the fjords of the Inside Passage. With Discover the World (01737
214255, www.discover-the-world.co.uk/alaska), a seven-night small-vessel
cruise, carving a route north among mountains, glaciers and waterfalls, and
gliding through Glacier Bay National Park, with its mountain goats and
grizzly bears, starts at £2,730pp (international flights about £900 extra).
