eleven people awaited our arrival. They had been separated from their families and cut off from the rest of the world already for few months, in order to work in service of science.
It took us little more than twenty-four hours to fly from Sofia via Milan and Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, a small town on the south coast of the Land of Fire or Tierra del Fuego, that prides itself as being ‘The World’s End.’ Then we sailed for three days onboard the ship Polar Star across the famous Drake Passage, one of the world’s most dangerous seaways notorious for its violent gale winds and rough seas.
We landed on Livingston Island in the early morning of February 15, 2003 to find ourselves surrounded by scenery that looked like nothing we had been prepared to see. Indeed, we were greatly amazed by the stunning beauty of the blue-white ice of Perunika Glacier close to the three small structures of the Bulgarian base. The weather turned out to be less severe than anticipated, with daytime temperatures slightly above the freezing point at that time of the year.
Bulgaria’s outpost in Antarctica is the St. Kliment Ohridski base built in April 1988 by four Bulgarian ‘Antarcticans’ and subsequently expanded in 1996. Although rather small in comparison to other nations’ bases, it is very cosy. We felt quite at home there, and even enjoyed traditional Bulgarian meals prepared with imported South American ingredients. Besides the expedition members, at the base we also met the English writer Jane King who had come to Antarctica to see the place and go through her own experience which she was to convey in her future novel. She got so charmed by the local hospitality that she chose to stay at the Bulgarian base throughout the austral summer rather than tour some other bases.
There were some penguins on the beach in front of the base but not many, with the majority of them being of the Policeman (Chinstrap) species. However, Bulgarian biologists in that summer season were carrying out research at the colony of Papua (Gentoo) penguins in a nearby cove, ferried there weekly by Zodiac inflatable boats operating from the Spanish base that is five kilometres away from St. Kliment Ohridski. We are among the few countries that do genetic studies connected with the human interference with the penguin environment. People in Antarctica try to minimize their disturbance of wildlife, that is for instance why Antarctic cruise vessels were permitted to land no more than one hundred tourists ashore at any one time.
Krumov Kamak is a minor peak protruding from the glacier surface about one kilometre from the base, where the Bulgarian team had celebrated the New Year’s Eve just few weeks earlier. Then, not far from that peak and shortly before our visit, they had used locally
