Expedition Review: On Board the MV Orion

by Andrew Evans on


Where do people go when they’ve already been everywhere? On a ship that goes to places nobody else can get to. The MV Orion is such a ship, custom-built for expedition-style travel that takes you to the world’s more inaccessible places–place like Papua New Guinea, Australia’s wild northwestern Kimberley coastline, the remote corners of Indonesia, the lesser-known side of Antarctica, and as was my good fortune, the uninhabited windswept islands of New Zealand’s sub-antarctic. In English, those islands are: Macquarie Island, Campbell Island, Auckland Islands, the Snares, and Stewart Island–all forgotten bits of rock and shrubs in the Southern Ocean. Places where birds outnumber humans by about a million to one and if it’s not raining, then it’s about to.

It takes a certain kind of traveler to embark on such a voyage. This is not your typical spring break cruise to St. Thomas. Yes, there is a lounge with a talented musical act that plays late into the night. Yes, there is a spiral staircase near the bow with shiny brass handrails and a glass elevator shooting up to the top deck. Yes, the cruise director makes announcements on the loudspeaker (“dress warmly “), and yes, one eats abundantly and well (the food is extraordinary), however . . . there are some key differences.
Perhaps most important is that the Orion experience is intimate. While the cruise ship industry is trending towards behemoth floating cities (population 6,000) the MV Orion carried only 75 passengers (during my expedition) along with a crew of 75 (not such a bad ratio). Over the course of two weeks I had the chance to get to know every single passenger on board and what’s more, we all liked each other.

Indeed, it’s not where you travel, but who you travel with that matters. The two weeks I spent on the MV Orion were blessedly asshole-free. In fact, my fellow shipmates were all really cool people–not the rich and famous or the kind of spoiled, pretentious passport-boaster you find flying first class–just passionate, smart travelers chasing their wanderlust down under. Enamored birdwatchers were in search of the rare species, retirees were living out their lifelong dreams, a honeymooning couple was being unconventional, map nerds like me kept checking the library’s atlas against our personal GPS, and everyone showed an authentic lust for life. (It helped that most of my fellow travelers were Aussies–who are just born cool.)

The Captain was equally fun and down to earth. He had no problem diverting the ship so that we could get a closer look at passing icebergs, and when the weather turned out to be nicer than normal, he sped ahead to grant us an extra day with the penguins.

Cliche as it may sound, every day was an adventure. After breakfast we suited up in our all-weather gear, then head out in rubber zodiacs to the shore of whichever island we were exploring. Surely, the real luxury was found in the abundance and proximity of wildlife we experienced. In the course of 12 days, I saw over 80 bird species, at least half of which were endemic to the islands we were visiting. We hiked through rare albatross nesting grounds, watched yellow-eyed penguins tiptoe through fields of flowers and competed for beach space with bellowing bull elephant seals. Each day ended with an in-depth review of the day’s experience in pictures followed by a briefing that detailed tomorrow’s plan. Lectures were offered for anyone wanting to learn the intricacies of everything we experienced, from the plants and geology to pressing conservation issues for each of the islands we were visiting. In short, imagine a two week-long field trip for grown-ups but with 9-course tasters’ menus instead of a brown bag lunch instead and chilled champagne instead of juice boxes.

Also, my room was really nice. In fact, it wasn’t so much a room as it was the largest suite on the ship, a huge suite that was larger than most Manhattan lofts, which made me the spoiled one on the ship. However, I loved having a big desk to work on (with satellite internet) and a starboard balcony from which I could watch a considerate flow of dramatic scenery (a seagull even flew into my room, once). I also appreciated my own private deep dish bathtub with a square picture window which allowed for one to enjoy a bubble bath at sea. Surely the first sailors to happen upon these far flung islands did not luxuriate so. I slept a blissful eight hours every night, rocked gently by the waves of the Tasman Sea.

The common caveat phrase that cruise-goers love to use is, “you only have to unpack one.” That was definitely my experience–I unpacked my bags in Hobart and within the first day, felt as if my private domain reached to the farthest horizon. The word “exclusive” fails to capture the notion that I developed of traveling on the only ship on the only sea in the world. We went more than a week without seeing another ship and even longer without seeing any other humans.

Nature is a luxury in today’s world. Being surrounded by it–having seals poke their noses up from the water and then do water ballet under your shadow, getting a glimpse of a little brown bird that was once thought to be extinct, witnessing the icebergs you only heard about in the news, visiting a map speck that most of the world will never see–all of this is the kind of luxury that matters on an expedition ship.

So yeah, it was really, really great, obviously, and totally my style of travel: adventurous, comfortable and extremely nice–but relaxed nice, not prissy nice. On the MV Orion, I was glad to see that the destination mattered more than the amenities, and yet we were all so well-provided for as to never need worry about amenities. In fact, my main critique is that the food was just too good. With a menu designed by Australia’s celebrity chef Serge Dansereau, the Orion broke cruise ship conventions by offering small portions of gourmet standard in as many or as few courses as you wished, served by professional waitstaff. Lunch was served buffet-style but in a tasteful way that never got dull. In the first week, we ate Spanish, Filipino, Mexican, French, and Lebanese cuisine.

Sailing to the ends of the earth while staying dry, well-fed and comfortable is not a cheap endeavor: we’re talking just under a thousand dollars a day. BUT (there’s always a but)–this trip was actually worth it. That’s my new measure of good commercial travel products–do you get out of it what you put into it? For me, at the end of the day, as I laid down to sleep with a mind filled with dancing baby penguins and dramatic seascapes and memories of the afternoon’s lemon meringue teatime, I had to confess that it was all worth the price tag. In fact, as our credit card company likes to remind us: some things, like getting kissed by a baby seal, are priceless.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Live from Antarctica: part 4

by Jon Bowermaster on

WHITE THUNDER, NEKO HARBOUR, ANTARCTICA, DAY 4

Sitting atop a bared brown rock on top of a thousand-foot hill looking out over a relatively ice-free harbor – Neko, one of the most beautiful along the Peninsula, though even as I write that I am reminded of how often I say this place or that is “the most beautiful along the Peninsula” – I’m struck by two things: How quiet it is and simultaneously how much ambient sound there is in the air if you just sit … quietly … and listen.

I have long said that one of my favorite things about Antarctica is that it is truly a place that you can get remote. Take a hundred foot walk from the shoreline virtually anywhere along the Peninsula and you can be assured no one has ever walked there before. Climb a short hill, as I’ve just done, and the predominant sound is the beating of your heart. It is a perfectly still, calm day, sunny, 38 degrees F at nine in the morning. By noon it will be in the mid-forties, now-typical for the Peninsula this time of year.

Across the narrow bay, black rocky mountain peaks jut out of deep snow. The opposing hills would be incredible ski runs if you could hike up them without disappearing down one of the dozens of crevasses marked by grey shadows on the snow. A pair of glacial tongues roll down towards the sea each a mile-wide, built up over a many tens of thousands of years. The two hundred foot tall glacier walls drop straight into the cold black sea, which is dotted by small icebergs and bergy bits calved off them.

I have been to this harbor a dozen times before and each time it looks different. Often the currents in front of the sand-and-rock beach are fast, filled with moving ice, threatening landings. Big calvings off the glacies have been known to create eight-foot waves, washing everything – Zodiacs, penguins, humans – off the beach. The sea is blue black, highlighted by icebergs and the rings of aqua blue that rim them, reflections of the ice below the surface. The sky scudded by high clouds. Thirty miles to the north, towards the Lemaire Channel and Anvers Island, the peak of Mt. Francais – the highest peak along the Peninsula – pokes through the clouds, a rare sight. To the south stretches dozens of miles of snowcapped peaks heading for the Didier Channel … followed by many more dozens of miles of snowcapped peaks.

Each season I carry back from Antarctica too many mental images to possibly download. They’re all up there in my head, jumbled, roaming, floating. Thankfully they are permanently lodged and pop up at the oddest times – driving along Manhattan’s West Side highway, climbing in the Catskills, just falling asleep – which I always like.
But often it’s not the visual memories from here that stick with me most powerfully, which strike me at the oddest times. It’s the aural ones, the sounds of Antarctica.

The plop-plop-plopping of porpoising penguins. The blow of humpbacks, often heard before you see them breaching. The squawk of new mother and father penguins as they attempt to imprint their voices on brand-new chicks. The wind under the wings of a soaring pintado petrel as it sweeps just overhead.

But as I sit on this short hill above Neko Harbour, I’m waiting for my favorite Antarctic sound, which the Native Americans in Alaska called “White Thunder.” It’s the thunderous calving of the glaciers that occurs deep inside them. Loud, rumbling, often frightening. Whenever you hear that sound, you jerk your head around. But often there’s nothing to be seen. It’s the sound of glaciers evolving, breaking-up, but deep inside. The sound is not followed by falling ice, just … silence.

This day I wait and wait for that sound, but … nothing. Just after noon, after nearly four hours surveying the landscape from atop this rock, I walk down the hill with my friend Richard White. Just as we step down off the peak … out of sight of the end of the narrow harbor and its ending glacier for the first time in hours … when CRACK! Something’s broken off. This time though, it’s not White Thunder but more like Black Thunder. Real ice ripping off the glacier, falling into the black sea. Rippling waves and small pieces of ice emanating from the end of the harbor suggest it was a big piece of glacier that has fallen into the sea. Despite the beauty of the moment, it is that sound that will stay with me far longer.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Live from Antarctica: part 3

by Jon Bowermaster on


Tabular Heaven, Antarctica, Day 3

Every place along the Antarctic Peninsula tends to be my favorite. Bailey Head. Neko Harbor. Paradise Bay. Cuverville. The Lemaire Channel. The Grand Didier Channel. Crystal Sound. The Fish Island Group. Marguerite Bay. And on and on and on.

But in Antarctica places can tend to run together thanks to one commonality: Here it is truly all about just one thing, The Ice. Sure, we all know there’s rock and snow below (even petrified forests and most likely dinosaur bones). But for the moment still, I still come to the far south each austral summer for the ice.

I admit to having a favorite: The big, tabular icebergs that litter the Weddell Sea like giant white dominoes. Set free from their role as guardian of the coastline gives them an independence apparent in their grandness. Frozen sea built up over centuries of falling snow, these particular tabulars are broken off from, remnants of the Larsen Ice Shelf. They are drifting (very slowly) north through the Antarctic Sound, where they will eventually float (very slowly)from the Southern Ocean into the Atlantic where they will, in a decade or so?, melt.

Today they are significant for more than just their size. These were once the grand guardians of the glaciers lining the eastern side of the Peninsula. That they have broken off and drifted away means those glaciers are at risk of disappearing ever faster.

They are long (on average a mile, sometimes up to ten and twelve miles) and high (one hundred and fifty, two hundred feet) and barely on the move. At the moment most are grounded and lodged on the ocean floor, shearing it clean of all living things. Their role in Antarctica’s future is powerful. Free to roam, and to disappear with the assistance of wind, rain, and warming temperatures, they’ve given up their role as protectorate and taken on the role of floating idols, reflecting sky and sea in new patterns every single minute.

100 year old butter discovered in Antarctica

by Kraig Becker on

Last month we reported that 100-year old whiskey was discovered buried beneath a shack, belong to Ernest Shackleton, in Antarctica, and now it seems that there might be all kinds of food sitting around on the icy continent. The New Zealand Antarctic Trust says that is has found two blocks of butter in a completely different shack that was used by a completely different South Pole explorer.

The frozen butter, believed to be the oldest in the world, was discovered on Cape Evans in a stable attached to a cabin that was once used by Robert Falcon Scott. Both buildings were mostly buried beneath a century of snow and ice until a restoration team, sponsored by the Trust, recently arrived on the scene and went to work. The team was tasked with preserving the historical site and looking for artifacts whose origins could be traced back to New Zealand. Little did they know that they’d find kiwi butter left behind by the famous British explorer on his fateful 1910-12 expedition.

Examining the labels on the butter, historians found the letters “CCCDC”, which they believe stands for “Canterbury Central Co-operative Dairy Company”. The dairy was located in Christchurch and founded sometime in the 1890’s. In that era, many Antarctic expeditions set out from New Zealand, and it was common for them to resupply with local goods before departing.

After carefully examining the two bricks, they have now been placed back where the were found inside the stable. The butter has been frozen solid for nearly a century, and the restoration team fears that if it were brought to warmer temperatures, it would soon spoil. The bricks will stay in place for another 100 years, or longer, as a reminder of an age of exploration that has long passed.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Live from Antarctica: part 2

by Jon Bowermaster on
My first footsteps on Terra Antarctic this season were taken on Barrientos Island, one of the tiny Aitcho Island group, part of the South Shetlands, still one hundred miles off the continent. (It was just twenty miles from here, on King George Island, that we dropped – and then picked up – our kayaks two years ago.) Those first steps each austral summer are always fantastic, memorable, a reminder of why I keep coming back year after year.

The sky this morning is grey-green, the sun striving hard to burn through; the smell of the penguin colonies as powerful as ever. A recent snowstorm had buried many of the penguin nests, which have now been mostly unburied by their inhabitants. While the South Shetlands are not the most prolific wildlife spots in Antarctica, within a ten-minute walk I see three species of penguin (Gentoo, Chinstrap and a stand-alone, way-out-of-his-way King) and three different kinds of seal (Weddell, Elephant and Leopard).

The tall King – visible from the shore standing on the crest of a small hill, silhouetted – stands out distinctly because he is literally five times the size of the other birds. What he is doing here is a mystery; at some point he obviously made a wrong turn somewhere because his home is most likely South Georgia, 660 miles to the east. Apparently he’s been here for a couple seasons, so though he looks out of place, towering above the other penguins, he’s obviously decided to stay put. There are rumors he may have tried to breed while here, though unsuccessfully.

The afternoon’s walk is at one of my favorite stops, Deception Island. Landing on the beach at Bailey Head, with its steep and fast fall-off, is always a challenge. The reward? Somewhere between 120,000-160,000 breeding Chinstraps (even the penguin experts among us have a hard time counting them all). Walk off the black sand beach, beneath a heavily snowcapped volcano, and a wide valley opens up exposing a mile-long line of marching penguins, three, four, five abreast, making their way back and forth from the sea and up a gently-sloping, five-hundred-foot tall hill. Those coming from the cold Southern Ocean, stomachs swollen from several hours of fishing, many can barely stand or waddle. Those heading the other direction, towards the sea, are easily identifiable by their filthy stomachs, streaked in mud and guano from a long day spent nurturing a pair of eggs (chicks are coming within the next couple weeks).

From a seat on a chunk of ice atop the hill I watch the comings and goings for an hour. Below, on either side of the steep hill, plays out the whole lasciviousness of life: Flirtation. Sex. Birth. Loving. Feuding. Friendship. Feeding. Youth. Middle age. Impairment. Death.

What surprises most on their first visit to a colony – after they get used to the guano-tinged smell that will linger in their nose hairs for a couple weeks, even after they’ve left Antarctica – is the reality that everything in a penguin’s life takes place in this one place. Especially real is the dying. Skeletal remains in every form litter the black sand, from seashore to the top of the hill. Black-and-white wings attached to a Skua-cleaned skeleton; a solitary, perfectly intact foot; blood-filled bodies, just beginning to be pecked by scavengers; long, thin vertebrae. Elegiac, each is both art and a reminder that life often ends not far from where it began.

By eight p.m. a warmish breeze has blown up, the sun come … and gone, now hidden by clouds. In this season of course, it never gets completely dark – sunrise tomorrow is expected at 02:33.

Someone emailed a very good question the other day, regarding my own carbon footprint, especially when traveling to such remote places as Antarctica. It’s both a legitimate question and one we should all ponder.

I’ve tried to work out my own carbon footprint online a couple times in the past, but as soon as I start to respond to Question 2 – “How often do you fly?” – the computer starts blinking red and smoking. Flying is a sizable contributor to CO2 in the atmosphere; I do it constantly and around the world. My only rationale is that by bringing back-stories from the places I fly to, and sharing them — especially with classrooms – I’m a bit absolved, though not completely. An option would be to stay home; I guess … one I will continue to ponder.

I traveled a couple years ago in the high Arctic with Richard Branson, who – as an airline company owner – knows a few things about the environmental impact of flying. His company, he explained, was experimenting with less-polluting fuels. As for his own personal carbon footprint, when it came to all the flying he does he rationalized … as all of us frequent fliers do. He was off the next month, for example, to South Africa, to meet with Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and another nine peacemakers. “We could all walk there, I guess,” he said. “But I don’t think we’d get much accomplished. It doesn’t mean we don’t think about, or realize, the environmental impact of our actions.”

I’m out of the loop news-wise; has anyone published a story about the carbon contributions of the thousands who have gathered for eleven days in Copenhagen to debate the future of climate change?