I woke up feeling a bit better today, however the cough is lingering and this has been extremely frustrating. We’re called out of bed early today to watch the ship sail through the remains of the broken caldera wall, and we enter the bay inside the remains of the volcano without difficulty. I head up to see it, but really there wasn’t a lot to see except the boat being close to the sides of the rocks. I have some pictures I’ll share, but to me there wasn’t as much of a show as I expected there to be. We went from there to breakfast, and from breakfast (which has recently just been a plate of mostly bacon, some potatoes, and some fresh fruit recently) to our cabin to get dressed for the outing.
The break in the caldera wall
The time it takes to get dressed is getting shorter these days, we’ve gotten the routine down and things go smoothly. I do wish I had brought a lighter coat that was wind-resistant, however… as every time I wear the expedition parka I end up sweating through every single layer underneath it. It’s fantastically warm, and being the only wind-proof item that I have I’m having to wear it regardless of temperature (which is increasingly warmer as we head back north, “warm” being relative…. Of course.). Oh well, it just means I’m doing a lot of laundry really!
The morning outing was fun today, a great chance for some pictures of old buildings (something I love, weirdly) and get a good walk in along the way. The soil was very sooty, as one would expect, and most of the time the earth would move as you did almost like black, shifting sands beneath your feet. The boots came in very handy here, and we went from the landing site throughout the old parts of Whaler’s Bay and saw the buildings that are still standing there. Whaling was outlawed here some time ago, and preservation legislation was furthered in the 1990’s (this was also the legislation that allowed my trip, and trips like it), but Whaler’s Bay had been long abandoned before that. We saw buildings that included whale oil boiling stations (huge drums that look like fat, stout silos), an old barn, an abandoned airplane hanger, and others as we explored the beaches. Jen went on a hike up the mountainside (one option on the landing), while I walked back to the other side of the beach to see seals. I’ve learned on this trip that seals really just lie around a lot and even though they’re cute… there’s not a lot to photograph. I hear this changes from time to time, but I’ll reserve judgment! I waited around a bit, taking in the scenery of the rugged mountain ranges and the snow just visible on the tips and high passes, and then took a zodiac ride back to the ship.
Old whale boiling vats (ewwww…)
By this time, I was coughing quite a lot. I elected to skip the second outing that day (another hike up to the top of the mountains to see a smaller caldera, but no lava), and instead catch up on writing a few days of blog posts on which I had been remiss, and spent some time going through my first pictures to share here as well. Jen came back from the trip just as I finished, and we spent some time eating “tea time” snacks (they have this every day in the afternoon, but somehow I’d missed them until today), and headed down to a daily debrief, and dinner. If I remember right, I went straight to bed after dinner, hoping to make a fuller recovery from the cough. Overall that seems my thing on this trip… do the necessary bits (landings, meals, meetings), and then disappear to bed to try to get rid of this persistent inconvenient cough. I know it’s affected Jen, she’s been the one out having to mingle and meet people, alone, and I feel terrible for it… but it’s just not getting better when we’re hiking 4-8 miles a day and moving from one thing to the next every single hour. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
We weren’t the only ship taking shelter inside the caldera wall… this research yacht was sitting out the 30-foot waves in the Drake Passage today, and looking forward to a calmer crossing in the near future.
