Cierva Cove | One of the Peninsula's Great Zodiac Cruises

A Spanish aviation pioneer's name on a glacier-fed cove

Cierva Cove cuts into the western coast of Graham Land at the far northern end of Hughes Bay, opening into the Gerlache Strait. The cove was named in 1927 by a British expedition in honour of Juan de la Cierva, the Spanish engineer who invented the autogyro, a rotorcraft built in 1923 that pioneered the technology behind the modern helicopter. The naming reflects an Antarctic tradition that the toolkit of place-names in this part of the world is full of: pioneers of science, engineering, and exploration who never set foot on the continent.

The geography behind the name does the rest of the work. A glacier fills the back of the cove. The face calves regularly, throwing ice into the bay and feeding a constantly shifting mosaic of brash, growlers, and tabular bergs. The calving itself oxygenates the water and stirs up the food chain, which is why the cove tends to be active with wildlife.

Why Cierva Cove is one of the best Zodiac cruises on the Antarctic Peninsula

The cove is a Zodiac-cruise destination, not a landing site. Cierva Cove sits within a protected area, and visitors stay in the Zodiacs or on the ship, working the perimeter of the cove rather than going ashore on the peninsula itself. What that takes away in beach time it gives back in a different kind of polar morning.

The calving face is the focal point. Standing off in a Zodiac while a glacier sheds a piece of itself into the bay is the sort of moment that goes on the cover of every guest's photo album. The bergs that result, some the size of houses, drift across the cove for days afterwards. Working between them by Zodiac, at the pace the ice allows, is some of the best ice photography on the Peninsula.

The wildlife layers up around the ice. Weddell seals snooze on low-lying floes. Crabeater seals work the edges of the brash. Leopard seals hunt through the cove, sometimes swimming alongside the Zodiacs out of curiosity. Gentoo penguins porpoise through the water. Chinstrap penguins move along the rocky shoreline. Humpback whales and minke whales are common in the surrounding waters during the peak feeding months, and orca and fin whales pass through in the same season.

Then there is the vegetation. Cierva Cove has one of the densest covers of plant life anywhere on the Antarctic Peninsula. The microclimate, the protected aspect, and the surrounding cliffs combine to support bright orange lichens, vivid green mosses, and small patches of Antarctic hairgrass on the rock walls. Most Antarctic landings offer ice, rock, and wildlife. Cierva Cove adds colour.

Across the cove, the orange-red buildings of Base Primavera contrast against the rock and the ice. The Argentine summer station has operated since 1977, expanded from an earlier naval refuge built in 1954. Visitors are not permitted ashore at the base. A Zodiac pass close enough to see it clearly is part of the standard circuit.

Working the ice and the wildlife from a small ship

Cierva Cove is also one of the few sites on the Peninsula where too much ice can be the access problem, not too little. When the cove is jammed with brash and large bergs from a heavy calving stretch, even Zodiac cruising can be constrained. The site rewards operators who can work the ice rather than try to push through it.

This is exactly where small-ship voyaging earns its keep.

• All Zodiacs in the water together, all guests at the ice. With 36 guests on an Expedition Micro Cruise, every guest can be in a Zodiac at the same time, working different parts of the cove. No rotations, no half the ship watching from the deck.

• More time at the calving face. Where 200-guest ships have to shuttle visitors in shifts and pull guests back to the ship before the second group launches, our group can stay at the ice for the full window the conditions allow.

• Better navigation in heavy ice. A 36-guest deployment can work the available leads between bergs, slow down for a leopard seal, hold position at the glacier face, and reposition without the timing pressure of moving 200 guests through the same morning.

• Quiet engines at the calving front. Tier III NOx-filtered engines on our vessels let the ship hold position cleanly when humpbacks are working the bay, without pushing wake into a calving piece of ice.

• Naturalist guides on every Zodiac. With a small group, the guides are within speaking distance of every guest, calling species, behaviour, and the geology of the calving face as the morning unfolds.