I'm at the halfway point in my Southern Hemisphere expedition. Camping in New Zealand for the first time, you can see it's pretty much redneck car camping. Despite common belief, you cannot just camp anywhere here. Recently they've been cracking down on feral camping due to trash, vandalism and excrement. Only at campsites are you supposed to camp, just like most of Colorado and everywhere now.
Back to Antarctica... We went to Deception Island, a giant old volcanic caldera you sail into. Look it up on google maps. The water in the caldera is warmer, but not warm enough to swim in, thank you.
We then headed to Elephant Island, the northern and easternmost big island in the South Shetland islands. This is where Shackleton's expedition rowed to when the pack ice broke up. Shackleton and several others then sailed one of the small lifeboats from there to South Georgia. We took the Zodiacs in near Point Wild, named after Shackleton's lieutenant Frank Wild, where the crew waited in winter for months for a rescue that may have never come.
They stayed in overturned rowboats on that small spit of land, living on penguin and seal. We could not land there due to the extreme waves and winds. A big hazard in the Antarctic is the katabatic winds. Like chinooks, they blow down from the mountainside up to 100 mph. We were in 66 mph winds on that day (measured by one of the crew).
Not exactly a vacation beach, but allowed Shackleton's men to survive.
Next: South Georgia
Redneck camping in New Zealand
Point Wild in 60 mph katabatic winds
On the roof of the Polar Pioneer bridge, about to head for Deception Island
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