KERI'S ANTARCTIC -- A place like no where else, preternatural. A place of magic and of change.       My first time in Antarctica was in 1986 when I left New Zealand aboard a 70 foot schooner, when after 43 days at sea we arrived in a world so unfamiliar it seemed magical. During our approach, with the ice encrusted mountains of Smith Island on the horizon, parades of massive icebergs stole along the cold Antarctic currents, their presence calming the seas. Sparkles of light filled the crisp air. Daylight lasted for twenty four hours revealing the different moods of the Antarctic Peninsula. Sleep seemed a mundane act of temperate climbs. And besides, there was just too much to see.       One of the memories that stand out from this first voyage to the "ice" was the persistent dampness and the cold. It probably didn't help that my clothes were all of the thrift store variety and that my rain gear had rips and tears in the most inconvenient locations. Added to that was the leaks in the hull and decks of the boat that dripped onto my bunk area, dampening everything I owned.       At twenty-two years old, my time in the Peninsula was truly dreamlike, an adventure. Fog and clouds hid 9000 foot glacial covered peaks, iceshelves loudly calved wave making chunks into the waters of our anchorages, filling them up with pieces of brash ice and bergy bits. Whales slide under the hull of the boat and surfaced near the bow, so close that if I could have just reached out two more inches, I could have touched them. We also met people, some on the bases that we were anchored near, and some on other sailboats. Their company was craved, all of us wanting to share our experiences and our feelings, with someone else who knew of the magic of the place. There, in an pack ice filled anchorage, I met my future husband. Mostly we were alone and saw no other human beings, making the place seem a very long way from anywhere else.       I really had no idea when I left New Zealand, what the Antarctic was like, just that for some reason, I had to go. And then, after spending what seemed too short a time there in February and March of 1986/87, I knew I had to go back. **************************       We returned again to the Antarctic Peninsula in the austral summer of 1996/97 again with climbing on our minds. Smith Island appeared on our landfall horizon, this time in all it's splendor, all its peaks visible against the cloudless, cerulean sky. Again, the tingling excitement of Antarctica, the sleepless nights in 24 hours of a revolving sun around the horizon, the whales, the penguins, the magic, it was all there.       A whirlwind tour through iceberg filled waters, sunshine gleaming nonstop and the whole of the Antarctic Peninsula exposed to us for our first time. Only a few nasty days of weather slowed us down near a beach of bleached whalebones, their anticedents wending through the icebergs just offshore, feeding, sounding and breaching. Whales, every time we left an anchorage, whales would surface behind, beside, in front of the boat. Humpbacks, Minke or Orcas were always nearby. Weddel seals basked on icefloes - "floating hotels" we joked. Sometimes, we would edge the boat nearer to a floe with a seal on it to get a closeup photo and thinking it was a Weddel seal or a Crabeater, we were often surprised to find a very mean looking Leopard seal. And the penguins, they were still there, in Port Lockroy, Pleneau, Peterman Island. We saw mostly Gentoo penguins. The Chinstraps seemed to be further north. We saw a few Adelie penguins on Peterman Island... they seem to be the most shy and vociferous thus the most sought after for photos.       Our mountain was on an isolated island of the South Shetland Group. It was the highest summit on the island, accessible only by landing a team on the shores closest to the ridge leading to the summit (unless you had a helicopter). The island, completely encapsulated by massive glaciers rolling down the slopes and ending at the sea in fearsome ice cliffs hundreds of feet high, was 80 miles from the nearest safe anchorage. We dropped the climbing team off an nubbin of rock, protruding out from under the glacier into the permanent Southern Ocean Swell.       Glaciers were crossed, this time with Canadians, experienced mountaineers. On ski treks to mountain walls, great crevasses were skirted; snow bridges that were there the previous year completely gone leaving gaping holes, darkening blue leading into the abyss. Two wonderful first ascents were made, magical moments of Antarctica shared through the passion of climbing. No one fell into any crevasses and a first ascent of Mount Foster was made. And in between we had many what some would call miserable weather days, for us spectacles of nature to experience and to photograph.       At one anchorage, the one that when we arrive, a part of me feels like I've come home, we were sharing it with three other sailboats. With the crew from the other boats and a few of the lads from the restoring team of an historical hut, we also shared dinners and yarns, memorable moments.       One morning, boat bound due to gusty, overcast weather, I was making coffee in the galley and happened to look out the portlight towards the penguin colony on shore. Somewhat taken aback, I was watching penguins scatter in front of brightly clad humans, what seemed to me like hundreds of them (humans). It was only about 30 people, but the realization of it made it seem much more momentous - there were now cruise ships in Antarctica!       We had passed in previous years, one or two cruise ships. This season in Antarctica, we saw five or six. I could only hope that the people voyaging on these massive ships were experiencing some of the magic, that they would leave the Antarctic touched in some way, knowing how much of a privilege it is for all of us to have the opportunity to be here.       That year, sailing north, we left a changing place. The glaciers were receding, the temperatures felt warmer, and tourist boats had arrived. ***************************       It took us five years to get back to Antarctica. The opportunity to winter in the Canadian arctic took us to the high latitudes of the north, to a desert. Though very special on it's own account, it was a place so unlike Antarctica and we never stopped dreaming our our return to the south.       A Drake Passage birthday in January 2003, celebrated us across the Antarctic Convergence and back into Antarctic waters. This time, we were there just to be there with a group of sailors.       Landfall Feb 21st 2002 62 47 S 62 12 W. No parades of icebergs this time. Only low clouds shrouding the summits of Smith Island, hiding the one we were looking to climb-Mount Foster, the reason we had spent five years acquiring Northanger and these last 6 months at sea. We were on a mission. A different voyage from nines years previous, yet regardless of the theme, the scintillating magic was still there.       It was so warm that some days we could wear t-shirts on deck. The place seemed to be from another story of Antarctica, a place where the sun always shines. We didn't see many other sailboats, missing them by a few hours or a day, in each anchorage we stopped. The Cruise ships motored in and out and past on a schedule, our favorite anchorage being one of their most popular stops. Now there were so many more.       We came back to the Peninsula again in February, again, with the hope to climb. A few exploratory forays by one climber found the crevasses wide open. You could see this without leaving the deck of the boat. In one bay, a bowl where we used to go to ski on previous trips was full of open crevasses, the darkened shadows showing the openings against the white of the glacier.       In this same bay, their were Gentoo penguins covering the whole peninsula where there had only been a few nests before. It seems to fluctuate from one year to the next, from accounts from other boats. They say last year, the ice didn't break out until late in the summer season so the penguins were born late and many died. Maybe they were making up for it in this bay.       And the Cruise ships...they just seemed to not stop. One boat disgorged its passengers onto a beach and I counted over a 100 redclad bodies. At least, I thought, they are wearing floater suits. The strangest thing was the animals on the beach seemed unperturbed. With a helicopter buzzing over head, crowds of people on the beach and a few sailboats in the bay...they must have been getting used to it.       Even so, special moments abounded. A whale, circling the boat for an hour, sounded so near that it seemed that he misjudged the depth of our keel and needed an extra flick of it's tail to go deeper. His tail flipped less than two feet from the side of the boat. It was incredible.       Next to a restored base, where the penguins are being studied for tourist impact, a young Gentoo penguin came to where I was sitting and laid it's head on my lap and let me stroke it's back. Whenever it shifted due to the slope of the ground, it would inch it's way back into the radius of my stroking hand.       Fur seals seemed to be further south than I remember on previous trips and there seemed to be more of them. Very disturbing was the Leopard seals. We often saw them in groups of two or more being very brazen, following the dingy or waiting for you at the shore. At the Ukranian base, some of the scientists had seen groups of six or more, hunting like a wolf pack.       Weather days kept us put in a few places though there where no severe storms as numbing as some we had on the previous voyages. We used these moments to rest from all the marvels the place had to offer. Even though February did not have the sunshine of January, some days cleared enough to climb.       I did not want to leave, always hoping something would allow us a few more days to hold onto the sensations of a land to which nothing else can compare. Even, with all the changes, magic pervades, imprinting in the memory a need, a desire to return. ...return to BACKGROUND index page