Antarctica

Hope Bay

On Thursday, December 14, we were at Hope Bay.

The original plan was for our expedition to continue visiting coves and basy on the west side of the Palmer Archipelago, but ice conditions forced a change. From Recess Bay we headed north east to get to the east side of the peninsula. We found our way around the tip of the archipelago, into the Antarctic Sound and then to the Weddell Sea

Our first stop on this side of the archipelago was at Hope Bay at the tip. This is the site of a year-round Argentine research station called Esperanza and a summer research station called ECARE run by Uruguay. There is a huge colony of more than 100,000 Adélie penguins.

Hope Bay was discovered on January 15, 1902 by the Swedish Antarctic explorer Otto Nordenskiöld, who named it to commemorate the winter spent there by his expedition after his ship (the Antarctic) was crushed by the ice and lost. They were eventually rescued by the Argentine ship Uruguay.

There were no landings here, but we had a nice Zodiac cruise looking at penguins and scenery.

On the way coming through part of the Antarctic Sound we saw a lot of interesting iceberg types: tabular, wedge, mound, and a dry-dock that is shown in the video below.