A Whale Bone on My Wall: My 40 Days in Antarctica

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

In my early twenties, I had a boyfriend who was a hot air balloon pilot and a mountaineer. He would go to the Brazilian base in Antarctica from time to time during our summers and, on one of those trips, he brought me a whale bone glued to an old piece of wood with a message written on the back.

Over 30 years later, this gift still hangs on my wall, but now in Canada—very far from the shores where it was found and pieced together.

The relationship ended not long after I received my unique gift, but my passion for hot air ballooning and mountaineering didn’t. I ended up navigating for hot air balloon pilots (women!) and climbed some high mountains, including four of the seven summits, as I already mentioned here.

What I didn’t mention is that I, too, had the chance to spend 40 days at the Brazilian base in Antarctica, Comandante Ferraz, in 1999. It was an incredible experience! We were at the infancy of blogging and the internet, and I think writing about my daily routine there was my first blogging experience.

I wrote about how Antarctica wasn’t deprived of colour, but full of it in little bursts—like the pebbles on the shores I liked to walk alone. Silence wasn’t a thing either, as Antarctica is full of life. One day, during one of my walks, I heard very loud breathing that scared me, only to discover the owner of that noisy breath: a whale!

I flew to Antarctica on a C-130 Hercules, landing on an unpaved airstrip, then took a polar ship from the Brazilian Navy called Almirante Rongel to reach the station after many hours at sea. As a high-altitude mountaineer, my job was to provide safety for the researchers working there.

One of my tasks was to follow the meteorologist to the top of a mountain while they changed the meteorological station. A Navy chopper took us up, but we came down on our own feet. Another task was to visit different areas of the bay by Zodiac, accompanying researchers and helping them set fish nets and other equipment for days or weeks until we’d return to retrieve them.

This allowed me to visit a penguin colony and the Polish and Peruvian stations, while having close encounters with seals, whales, and penguins swimming in those rich, cold waters.

A few years after my time at Ferraz, in 2012, the station burned down and was reconstructed to what it is today.