1 Day Floating in the Middle of a Vulcano Crater
Over night there was strong snowfall, so we were slow and our Captain and crew on the bridge sailed us carefully through the night. Therefore we were later to our destination and enjoyed a long late breakfast at the big table, with new interesting stories from fellow passengers.
Around midday we sailed through Neptune´s Bellows, to the left of Neptune´s Window, inside the Caldera of Deception Island, quite a scenario. This time with grey light and slight snowfall but you could well capture the view of the shorelines we passed and see the former Norwegian Whaling Station Hector in Whalers Bay of Port Foster, how the entire Caldera is called.
The guests went ashore while I met with the Expedition Leader aboard, in the meantime another ship came into the bay. The leaders on board frequently talk to each other and agree with friendly comradeship about who lands when precisely (apart from the pre-arranged itinerary) and how to avoid each other, so rules of the IAATO.org are always well followed.
Apart from the old whaling history of this place the excitement lies in the fact that this is a dormant volcano – an active one. 1906-1910 and 1967-70 there were the last strong eruptions, and today it is still seismologically active and measured.
There are research stations from Argentina and Spain, but they are normally not visited here as there is a lot of other interesting options too in this crater.
Most of our 8 passengers on board visited the station remains and hiked up to Neptunes Window, from where it is said that Nathaniel Palmer was the first one to sight the Antarctic Continent.
In the afternoon it was getting specially interesting and the advantage of travelling on a small ship with few passengers was clear: we made a small fine hike, 6 passengers, 4 crew and myself, where ships with 50-100-350 guests can logistically not do it. We drove over to a permitted shoreline with our zodiacs (there are relatively many protected sites here, but still much permitted space around) and hiked on, through the black volcano ash. We wanted to get to a small lake we had seen on the map. It was dry and we felt like the first ones standing on the moon when we got to the bottom of it. From there we walked on through the black sand to a side bay of the Caldera. Beautifully was it presented to us, easily downhill, green water surrounded by brown-black ash, and we went down to meet with the others again that hadn’t followed this way. By zodiac we went back to the middle of the crater to our ship.
In the evening there was another event scheduled that noone can really imagine, but is extreme fun: A bath in Antarctica. Only one Dutch fellow female passenger came along, so we both were driven over to the beach where crew had carefully taken temperatures. It was 65° Celsius water temperature and they had selected the place where this thermal waters mixed with the 0°C of the rest of Antarctica´s water so it made a fantastic 30-40°C for us. The Chief Ing. Joined us and we had really immense fun, laughing like children and did not want to get out of the water again, which we finally did without freezing, wrapped ourselves into the ships white bathrobes and were taken back to the ship. I tell you it is wonderful do float in Antarctic waters for some 20 minutes.
