Nigel, our guide from New Zealand,
described today’s destination as a ring-shaped island, about 8 miles in
diameter, enclosing a large harbor called Port Foster. It is the largest of
three volcanic centers in the South Shetlands. The eruption that formed the
caldera occurred about 10,000 years ago, but the volcano has remained
particularly active and is still classified as restless with significant risk.
The ship entered through what they called
Neptune’s Bellows, a wide passageway into the body of water enclosed by the
volcano. To our right, Nigel excitedly pointed out a shipwreck, an overturned,
rusty French ship named Telefon, which has been lying there since the early
1900’s.

The beach leads up to a gentle slope to the
rim of a crater. We stopped to pose for a family picture, and later walked to
right side to get a better view. It was gigantic hole, certainly bigger than
our Mt. Pinatubo, which the family hiked up in 2006. Funny, it reminded me of a
football stadium, magnified many times over. Our guides, Jonathan and Niko,
welcomed us at the rim. Niko seemed especially pleased, perhaps, having seen us
limp our way back from yesterday’s snowshoeing. “These two are still alive,” he
probably told himself. The guides walked back with Rhodora and me to the beach.
Jesse, Juliene, and Jason wanted to hike the longer, more scenic route, but ran
out of time and were forced to go down to the beach earlier than they wished.
(Something interesting: there was a family of chinstrap penguins walking on the
shore. They were about to cross our path, but stopped. We stopped, too, wanting
to give them the right of way. Some of us pulled out cameras. I didn’t know if
the chinstraps saw that, but as soon as my colleagues began setting up, the
chinstraps ran beyond camera range! “Nope, nope. No pictures, please!!!)
Read about seals, chinstrap penguins and how our kids took the polar plunge in my Antarctica Journal 6 (Part 3).
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