Those of you who follow my Antarctic Chronicles, will know already to what extent the isolation and extreme conditions involved in living in Antarctica causes an emotional shock and an awakening of the senses. Antarctica has opened up my senses more than any other trip that I have made so far. Antarctica forces us to reconsider our daily life, it makes us feel affection, it makes us feel disaffected, it makes us value the importance of a kind word, of a smile, of a hug. “I don’t want any more disagreements in my life,” said Susana Fernández to me while strolling by the Cerro de la Cruz, “now I only want agreement”.

Life is on edge for the thirty members of the expedition, at the Spanish base Gabriel de Castilla, Deception Island, where the volcano on the island is the most active in Antarctica. Yesterday, I watched the vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa set sail. This ship was my house for two months and as I watch it sailing away I got a lump in my throat. The austral continent opens the senses, and emotions run high on this side of the volcano, perhaps because we know that beneath our feet flows an ocean of magma, which can reach up to 1,500 degrees. Being under a volcano puts you directly at the emotional epicenter of life. As the poet Antonio Pereira said as he entered his town of El Bierzo: “I am home, to die or for whatever is needed.”

Antarctica. Deception Island, a place where the word fear makes no sense: only the words prevention and caution make sense. And all the respect in the world towards the sheer force of nature, the unpredictable sea and the foolish wind. Fear is a useless tool here and a heavy one to carry around in case of an evacuation. I am not braver than the others, and I have no idea what my reaction would be, or that of everyone else here for that matter, if suddenly, with a terrible geological roaring, the volcano erupted. This could very well happen… as it did during the summer of 1967. Ricardo Gil, who witnessed the violent eruption of lava and ash two kilometers away, recalls the harrowing evacuation of 14 Argentine team members trapped by the volcano.

Deception Island, named by the English captain McFarlane in 1820, was badly translated in Spanish as “Isla Decepción”, it should have been really named “Disappointment Island.”

This place is one of the busiest in Antarctica. It was discovered by Gabriel de Castilla in 1603. Then followed treasure hunters, seal hunters, whale hunters, Drake’s pirates, explorers and scientists. It even had a Norwegian factory with more than 300 permanent workers, from 1912 to 1931. Now, it has tourists on luxury cruises. Occasionally, a lone sailboat. This is a cosy, quiet island. The wide Foster Bay is inviting to sailors, the puffs of smoke and the crater’s cracks is a call to volcanologists, the continuous tremors of the volcano an attraction to seismologists.

Deception Island could have well come out of a Jules Verne story: it is a mysterious island, a lighthouse at the end of the world (that Verne located closed by, at the Isla de los Estados, facing Channel Beagle), it is a journey to the centre of the Earth, or the volcano of gold.

Between walks along the beach (made of volcanic ash), I read the book by the geographer Eduardo Martínez de Pisón, who studied Antarctica for many years. His book “La tierra de Jules Verne” is entertaining and fun, it is an invitation to a literary trip along the cavern of the crater, where rivers of gold flow. So believed friar Blas del Castillo, who in 1538 descended to the crater of the Masaya Volcano tied by a rope, to check if the lava was made of gold or silver. “A volcano whose next eruption will launch gold nuggets!” exclaims a character in Verne.

Nowadays, the volcano Deception only spews tephra, ash, lava and gases. But if Professor Lindebrock was able to enter a volcano through a crater, drill a hole, make a passage, pass through the centre of the Earth, and come out alive from the mouth of the Stromboli onto a Mediterranean field of olive trees, fig trees and vines, so can our own scientific mission.

Verne, Lovecraft, and even Cunqueiro wrote their imaginary journeys. Here, the seismologists and volcanologists, working at the same table where I write this report, are writing about their discoveries from their own scientific journeys, but based on the data collected and records taken during their field trips. From Deception Island, they share their discoveries about the secrets of this volcano with all the international scientific community. This place is fascinating and complex: red, green and black glaciers, crater holes, and real places with real names that seem to come out of a Jules Verne’s novel: Caleta Péndula, Bahía Balleneros, Cerro Caliente, Valle Ciego, Cráter Zapatilla, Collado de las Obsidianas, Costa Recta, Lago Escondido. These are real names for a surreal and eerie place, a place where it is not necessary to invent anything: this volcano outstrips fiction. I am writing this from a place called the Obsidian observatory after returning from our daily work at a penguin colony, and after a volcanic bath. You must believe me: yesterday I was an island, today I am volcano.

References:
Photo cover by Ricargo Gil during the volcano eruption of 1967.
Photos: Jose Benito Martin Martinez. The photos are taken from a short distance from the glacier. Without filters.
“The Deception Island”, text by Leandro Fernández, Journal Gazette Marinera, no. 755, Buenos Aires, 2012.
Martínez de Pisón, e., the land of Jules Verne, Ed. Forcola, Madrid, 2014.