site.btaBulgarian Delegation Visits Argentine Antarctic Base Esperanza

On Saturday, an official delegation from the Bulgarian naval research vessel Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii (RSV 421) visited Esperanza Base, Argentina’s Antarctic research station in Hope Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The delegation, led by the Varna Naval Academy’s Fleet Admiral Boyan Mednikarov and Captain Miroslav Tsvetkov, and comprising scientists and other participants in the 34th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition, was welcomed ashore by the base commander, Fernando Sosa.

Esperanza is inhabited year-round and is home to families with children. Marriages take place here, and children are born on site. The settlement even has a small cemetery, where the ashes of Argentine Antarctic personnel are scattered.

Sosa showed the delegation the base’s Antarctic museum, the church and the school. He noted that the school year at the base begins at the end of February, as in Argentina. Currently, 12 children are enrolled at the base school.

Adm. Mednikarov and Capt. Tsvetkov presented the commander of the Argentine base with a certificate from the Bulgarian Naval Academy, a calendar and traditional Bulgarian food products: lyutenitsa and white cheese.

RSV 421 set sail for the icy continent on November 7 from the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna.

BTA has had a national press club on board the vessel since 2022. In February 2024, the national news agency also opened one at the Bulgarian Antarctic Base on Livingston Island. The two press clubs exist thanks to the free support of the RSV 421 crew and of the Bulgarian base, which have provided the necessary premises. These are added to BTA's other 41 press clubs (33 in Bulgaria, seven abroad in neighbouring countries and countries with large Bulgarian communities, and one mobile called National Book Press Club).

The reports of BTA’s special correspondents from NIK 421 and from Antarctica are freely accessible in a special thematic section of the news agency’s website, entitled “Bulgaria-Antarctica BTA's Log,” in Bulgarian and English, and may be used freely by all media with attribution to BTA. According to BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, thanks to its special correspondents the agency appears among the first results in a Google search for the phrase “Antarctica correspondent”.