SHOPPING IN ANTARCTICA

Wonderful, amazing, precipitous, challenging, changeable, icy, scenic, foggy, snowing, bouncy, wild, isolated -  just a few more adjectives that can describe this frozen continent. We are truly experiencing Antarctica in all its majesty. 

Today we were fortunate to be able to land at three sites. We landed at Goudier Island,  Jougla Point and Culverville Island. And what a treat that was. Port Lockroy on Goudier Island is home to a restored British Antarctica Survey hut, museum and gift shop. Yes, that's right, a museum and gift ship in Antarctica. For those of us who love 'retail 'therapy' this was an unexpected but delightful surprise. Never did I think that part of my going ashore preparation would be to add my MasterCard to my gear. The gift shop was well supplied and people were buying up the postcards, t-shirts, calendars and other gift items. Port Lockroy is also the site of an Atarctic post office where tourists can mail their postcards and receive an Antarctic postmark. However, mail sent from here can take from a few weeks to several months to reach its destination as it travels from place to place before it finally arrives at a regular post office where it will complete its final journey to the chosen address. 

The museum at Port Lockroy shows the conditions under which the researchers of the BAS lived while stationed here between 1944 and 1962. Conditions were basic but adequate. There is a workshop, kitchen, bunk room, toilet, eating room with a bar and a  radio room. Heating was minimal but enough to keep the researchers relatively comfortable. 

The site is populated each year, for four months, by several staff whose job it is to keep the museum and gift shop functioning and to keep the buildings in good repair. As at all other sites we have landed at there are multitudes of Gentoo Penguins. However, at this particular site the penguins are the subject of a long-term research study and there are control areas within which tourists must not enter. The study is monitoring the long term impact of tourism activities on the penguins. 

Jougla Point is a rocky peninsula with rocky beaches and small coves. It is populated with Gentoo Penguins, blue-eyed shags, kelp gulls, skues and Weddell seals. This was once the site of whaling activities so part of the area is littered with whale bones left over from those times. 

Lastly, but certainly not least, was Cuverville Island, home to the largest (about 4,800 breeding Pairs) of Gentoo penguins in the area. And of course there is other wildlife to spot such as kelp gulls, Antarctic terns, south polar skuas, snowy sheathbills, and southern giant petrels. This rich wildlife lives amongst the snow, freezing waters of Errera Channel, and the vertical, moss covered cliffs that rise 650 feet from the shoreline of this rocky island.