Paradise Harbor
The first thing you notice is the silence between sounds — the deep crack of a glacier face releasing itself, the splash that follows, the swell that rocks the hull of your ship a few seconds later. Paradise Harbor sits on the Danco Coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of only two harbors on the continent that expedition cruise ships can actually enter. Steep glaciers press down to the waterline on all sides, and gentoo penguins cross the ice in loose, purposeful lines, indifferent to onlookers.
This is a working piece of Antarctica, not a scenic backdrop. The Argentine station Almirante Brown operates here in summer, and the ruins of the Chilean González Videla Base stand at Waterboat Point as a designated historic monument. Ice moves through the harbor with the tides, sometimes reaching three knots, and the light in December barely fades at all.
How Paradise Harbor came to be
The Belgian Antarctic Expedition made the first rough survey of this coastline in February 1898. Whalers followed, and by 1913 the Scottish geologist David Ferguson had come through aboard the whaler Hanka. The harbor's name was in common use among whalers by 1920, and Skontorp Cove still carries the name of Edvard Skontorp, a Norwegian whale gunner who worked these waters for Christian Salvesen and Co. of Leith — whose home city is also remembered in Leith Cove nearby.
At Waterboat Point, two British scientists, T. W. Bagshawe and M. C. Lester, spent 1921 to 1922 overwintering in a shelter they partly built from an upturned boat left by whalers — that structure is now a historic monument. Argentina established Almirante Brown Base in 1949–50, named for the Irish-Argentine admiral who founded the Argentine Navy; it burned down in 1984 and was only partially rebuilt. Chile's González Videla Station, operational from 1951 to 1958, commemorates the Chilean president who became the first head of state to set foot in Antarctica.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Temperatures hover around freezing even at the height of summer, so dress in proper expedition layers regardless of the calendar. December brings near-constant daylight and heavy ice; January and February offer the most settled conditions; by March the light shortens and the first whales of the season move through.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.