Heather's travel tales 2023: February 6 Cape Adare and Borchgrevink’s huts

This morning was a little sad as we had left the Ross Sea and would soon be on our northward journey ‘home’. We had arrived at Cape Adare which separates the Ross Sea from the Southern Ocean and is home to one of the world’s largest Adélie Penguin colonies. It is also the site of the first human structures built in Antarctica. We had high hopes of making a landing.

This Adélie Penguin was happy to share the icefloe with this seal.

Some of us went zodiac cruising before landing. The sea was breathtakingly beautiful

In January 1895, Norwegian explorers Henrik Bull and Carsten Borchgrevink from the ship Antarctic landed at Cape Adare. It was the first documented landing on Antarctica. Borchgrevink returned to the Cape leading his own expedition in 1899 and erected two huts, the first human structures built in Antarctica. The expedition members overwintered there. It was the first expedition party ever to spend winter on the Antarctic continent. These huts are still standing and the site is recognized internationally as a significant historic site. Members of the Northern Party of Scott's Terra Nova Expedition overwintered at Cape Adare in 1911 and 1912. They erected one hut, which sadly is in ruins today.

When we visited Cape Adare back in 2020, we tried twice to land with little luck - on the first attempt the advance party was turned back by rough seas and ice along the shore, and the second attempt had to be aborted after only a few people landed as the sea was simply too wild. But this time, three years later we made it!

The shoreline was crowded with large chunks of ice making landing a challenge

There are a few large birds in this shot, it is a small colony of Giant Petrels

Walking carefully through the debris of the colony

It was quite exciting wandering through the massive penguin colony. We also saw a Giant Petrel colony which is rare. The Giant Petrels are a much-maligned bird as people see them as penguins killers. In fact they eat mostly krill, squid and other invertebrates or scavenge dead of decaying matter. They serve a valuable service in huge colonies like this one as they help clean up dead birds. If not for those birds, we would be walking knee-deep in dead penguins. Even so we saw many desiccated birds lying around.

We were able to enter the one hut which is still in good repair - one of Borchgrevink’s hut from his 1899 expedition, the other is being restored. Sadly the hut from Scott’s northern party is no longer.

These are nests perhaps 100s of years old

One of Borchgrevink's hut being restored

The structures provide shelter for the penguins

There is a lot of restoration work still to be done

It was a busy, noisy, smelly but fascinating place to visit

The Adelie Penguins are the cutest. This little guy seems to be waving us farewell.

Then it was back to the ship to have our boots hosed down after walking through layers of penguin guano. There was a little party on the back deck to farewell Antarctica as we were heading north first to the Balleny Islands then New Zealand 6 days away.