5 February, Punta Arenas, Chile

I have arrived in Punta Arenas on the southern tip of Chile after a 24-hour whistlestop tour of South American airports. Pleased to see my bags have made it too. I was asked to avoid packing synthetic and down clothing wherever possible because it could contaminate the environment, so was pleased all those carefully selected natural fibres had made it with me across the Atlantic. Luke, my press contact at Greenpeace, meets me, which is just as well as I don’t really speak Spanish. We get a taxi to the dock and I have my first view of the Arctic Sunrise – the Greenpeace ship last in the news when it was stormed by the Russian FSB in the Arctic. It is bustling with people fixing things, loading things, working and chatting. Everyone is friendly. I wonder about the different stories that bring them all here. Are they the kind of people who want to jump off the edge of the map, as Werner Herzog found in his documentary about the Antarctic? The ship is smaller than I’d imagined and more “workmanlike”. If I had ever been in any doubt, I now realise that the next two weeks, crossing some of the roughest water in the world to a place that is mostly uninhabitable, isn’t going to be a cruise.

6 February, Punta Arenas

We were meant to set sail first thing this morning. But the ship is still a flurry of activity and the weather in the Drake Passage – the notorious stretch of water between South America and the Antarctic – is described as “not good”, so we have to wait. I decide to stretch my legs with a walk into the centre of Punta Arenas. It starts off well with a magical view out over forbidding seas towards the Southern Ocean, and I think I spot an albatross. But it ends more prosaically when I am attacked by a dog.

7 February, Punta Arenas

At breakfast I hear sobering tales of the passage ahead. Apparently the ship is notorious for its pitching and rolling, and known affectionately as the “washing machine.” The ship’s doctor, a lovely man, said it can be so severe the walls become the floor and if you hold on to the rail on the bridge your legs fly up behind you so you effectively do a handstand. In the afternoon, I work in my cabin – I want to make sure I make the most of the trip journalistically. Greenpeace is supporting an EU-backed proposal to create the world’s biggest ocean sanctuary in the waters around Antarctica – seas controlled by a disparate group of countries including the UK, US and Australia. While here I hope to report on the undiscovered ecosystems discovered by scientists on board the ship, the threats facing wildlife because of climate change and krill fishing, and the state of the Antarctic ice shelves. But at least as important for me is to soak up as much as I can of this place, and to absorb any wider lessons there may be here for the broader environment movement.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Guardian’s Matthew Taylor in the Antarctic. Photograph: Daniel Beltrá/Daniel Beltrá / Greenpeace

8 February, Punta Arenas

Did some exercise in the makeshift gym in the hold (a couple of yoga mats, some free weights, a rowing machine and exercise bike) before breakfast. At 8am it is cleaning duty – as I am not crew I don’t have to help out but was told that it aids morale if people pitch in. Surprisingly I have found I quite enjoy sweeping the corridors and cleaning the toilets – it makes me feel, in a very small way, part of the daily routine of life on board. We are due to set sail today and at lunch I overhear the captain and some of the engineers laughing as the “newbies” (journalists, photographers, Greenpeace campaign team) tumble into the mess, talking and laughing. They say something along the lines of “look at them all laughing and happy now ... they have no idea what is coming”.

9 February, Atlantic Ocean, Argentinian coast

I wake to a moderate swell. During cleaning duties I begin to feel a bit rough so finish an article and lie down, which helps a lot. Later I go up on the bridge and speak to the first mate, Fernando, who shows me the weather forecast for the next few days – five-metre-plus swell and 40-knot headwinds. “It will be rough,” he tells me cheerfully. “You will not enjoy it, but it is not dangerous.”

11 February, Drake Passage

I have not been able to leave my bunk for two days as the ship is tossed around by huge waves. The pitching and rolling don’t seem to have any rhythm. One minute I am being pushed with some force into my mattress - the next I am lifted, almost hovering, above the bed. My head is repeatedly shunted into the headboard, my feet into the wall at the end of the bed. Every so often a wave catches the boat just right and I am lifted and shunted at the same time so I am left standing, pretty much vertical, on the wall at the bottom of my bed. I try to make it to the mess but the stairs, which in normal times are steep, become momentarily horizontal when each wave hits. My brain, in its current scrambled state, cannot work out when it is safe to try to get up them, so I retreat to my bed. Luke very kindly brings me a banana.

12 February, Drake Passage

Apparently I am not the only one who has been suffering. Many people have been confined to their bunks and one crew member has been so ill he has been put on a drip. Managed to get up for a bit this afternoon and watch Pulp Fiction on the ship television but soon retreat to my bunk. Been told that tomorrow we will wake up in Antarctica proper – and calmer waters!

13 February, Selvick Cove, Antarctic peninsula (64°39′S 62°34′W)

A different world. I see an iceberg through the porthole in the cabin before I get out of bed. After my first breakfast in three days I go onto deck – the first time we have been allowed outside in days. The sea is much calmer and the air bitterly cold. It is quite a scene. Low cloud obscures the tops of the ice-covered mountains rising straight out of the sea and icebergs loom up on either side of the ship. Before I have finished my cup of tea, I see three pods of whales, several seals and innumerable penguins. The place teems with life. To my deprived modern eye, used to sparsely populated “nature”, it feels an almost claustrophobic, disconcerting level of abundance. Another whale – a humpback – arches its tail out of the water and dives into the deep 100 metres from the ship. We have arrived.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gentoo penguins at Neko Harbour. Photograph: Daniel Beltrá/Daniel Beltrá / Greenpeace

14 February, Danco Island, Antarctic peninsula (64°44′S 62°37′W)

Greenpeace takes its responsibilities here seriously. The expedition involves lots of landings to view penguin colonies and seals close up. We have had several biosecurity briefings explaining how to avoid spreading diseases on our boots and clothes. And today we have to abort a trip to a penguin colony for the wonderful reason that there is too much wildlife. It is impossible to land without disturbing them. As one of the ship’s crew says, “this has to be a place where the needs of the wildlife come before anything else.”



15 February, Cuverville Island, Antarctic peninsula (64°41′S 62°38′W)

I’m supposed to be going on a helicopter ride across the peninsula to land – the first time it’s been done – on the huge iceberg the size of London that broke away from the Larsen C ice shelf last year. So far, however, the weather has not been good enough. I am slightly anxious about the trip as the pilot, who is very experienced in the region, is obviously not convinced it is a good idea (too far, difficult terrain, etc). But we are on standby to fly at first light tomorrow if weather permits.

16 February, Neko Harbour, Antarctic peninsula (64°50′S 62°39′W)

A bad night’s sleep, due in part to the prospect of the helicopter trip and in part to dreams haunted by the wonderful book I am reading – Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World, a fascinating and terrifying account of the bravery of the men involved in the British attempt to reach the south pole in 1910. At a 4am meeting, it is decided the weather is too bad. Later, Greenpeace decides to cancel the trip altogether because of the pilot’s concerns. It is a shame, but the right decision. It is the second mate’s birthday and there’s a bit of a party in the evening, booze flowing and good fun all round.

18 February, McFarlane Strait to Hero Bay

A magical day. It is my favourite kind of weather: clear blue sky and sharp cold air. The visibility is pin-sharp and the views from the ship are quite incredible – some of the ridges and peaks I can see would be famous if they were anywhere else in the world. Spent a couple of hours in a penguin colony just watching them waddle to and from the sea, as seals bobbed in and out of the surf and whales glided past in the distance. A day that will stay long in the memory.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Greenpeace inflatables explore one of the South Shetland Islands. Photograph: Daniel Beltrá/Daniel Beltrá / Greenpeace

20 February, King George Island (62°02′S 58°21′W)



Last morning on the ship. We don’t have to brave the Drake Passage on the way back, but our flight on a small plane to Chile is weather-dependent, so I’m a bit tense. I have been away for nearly three weeks and I’m keen to be reunited with my young family. But after a couple of hours’ wait we get the all-clear from the airport – which I later discover consists of a couple of huts on a bleak, wind-ravaged island – and we are on our way. I take one last look out of the window at the Antarctic being swallowed up by the cloud below. What a privilege it has been.

21 February, Santiago Airport, Chile

I sit in the airport, having a beer and waiting for my 14-hour flight back to London. The images of ice and mountains, and the abundance of life in Antarctic waters, are still fresh in my mind: they bring a smile to my face as I write. I have discovered I don’t possess sea-legs but have nevertheless managed to publish articles from the ship, trying to give readers an idea of what is at stake down here – and how a new ocean sanctuary might begin to address some of those issues. I feel I have gained a lifelong appreciation for this truly remarkable place and an understanding – which I hope has come across in my reporting – that although Antarctica seems like an untouched, pristine wilderness, it is threatened by the all-too-familiar perils of climate change and industrial-scale fishing. As I scroll through my emails waiting to board, I read some grim reports about freakishly high temperatures at the other side of the world, in the Arctic. This only reinforces the overriding impression I have been left with at the end of this trip: if we don’t wake up to the threats we face and change, this place – along with much else – will be lost.