IN A SILENT COVE JUST ABOVE THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE, the Collins glacier, a towering slab of ice scored with folds and crevasses, creeps towards the Southern Ocean. “If you stay still you can hear it move,” whispers Iva Vásquez, 27, putting a finger to her lips.
Apart from the groans of the ancient ice sheet, only the muffled flipper sounds of chinstrap penguins break the silence as fat snowflakes drift to the ground. Occasionally, one bird squawks and breaks from the huddle to slip noiselessly below the surface of the water, mottled with shards of ice.
This summer, Vásquez swapped her home on Chile’s isolated Robinson Crusoe Island for the bustle of Escudero base, a research facility in the South Shetland Islands, where she works as a navigator and guide for the hundreds of scientists from dozens of nations who pass through each year.
An hour’s Zodiac boat ride from the Collins glacier, Escudero base sits at the head of a wide pebble beach streaked with penguin excrement, giving it an acrid, fishy smell that cuts through the biting wind. Offshore, queues of
