The GCW Tour, Buenos Aires & Antarctica: Whaler's Bay

I had a professor in grad school who always argued that it was best to travel alone. By traveling alone, she asserted, you could figure out what kind of person you are without any influence from others.

Fair enough. Turns out I'm the kind of person that when a blizzard combines with cancer fatigue and gastrointestinal distress I choose to stay on the boat rather than gearing up and making my way ashore. (The blizzard eventually faded; not so much the other issues.)

In any case, today our first destination was Whaler's Bay. This is a marginally active volcano, one section of which collapsed a hundred or so years ago allowing the cone to fill with water. The passage is called Neptune's Bellows, and it's only a hundred or so yards wider than the boats that go in. The bay was used for whale processing way back in the day, then a few countries established science stations here, but volcanic activity in the 1960s forced all the stations to be abandoned.

Now it's just a tourist destination, where you can walk on the atoll, see the remainders of the stations and, if you're insane, swim in waters slightly warmed by the volcano.

Or you can take photos from the boat, and then take a nap.

On our way out of Whaler's Bay the Fram had to do some ice breaking. I'm not sure the ice was terribly thick, but it was still fun to watch the panels of ice break up and float away.