Today was a big day!

Recess Cove is a protected cove with a spit of land where we took our hike. The previous two days on the continent had been very stormy, so there were lots of new icebergs in the cove. Olivia told us we were lucky to see this, because otherwise, it would just be a mess of growlers around the cove.

Our zodiac dropped us off on a rocky beach, and then we walked up some snow steps for a tour around the land. Our previous shore excursions were on islands, but today was our first time stepping on the continent itself. To mark the occasion, the excursion crew had placed flags along the hiking trail, and they were on hand to take photos.

There are no penguin rookeries in this area, but we did see a few of the little guys. We also learned that a group of penguins in the water is called a raft of penguins and a group of penguins on land is called a waddle of penguins or a tuxedo of penguins. We also learned that the Mandarin word for penguin translates as “business goose.” I almost died when I heard that!

While we were on land, a whale swam into the harbor and cruised around for a while. As a zodiac came zipping into the cove to pick up passengers, I heard Olivia over the radio, “Incoming zodiac, slow way down. There’s a whale right beside you.” A short time later, as we were in our zodiac going back to the ship, a whale surfaced directly in front of our boat. It seemed like it was just five feet in front of us. 

We got back to the ship just in time for a barbecue lunch on the top deck.

I ended my afternoon with a ride in the submarine. I’ll make a separate post for that.

All in all, it was quite a day!

This morning, our Expedition Leader, Olivia, woke us up with a ship-wide announcement that we were going to sail through the La Mer Passage. This was a beautiful way to start the day! Wow!

La Mer was our southernmost visit on this voyage. After traveling down the passage and then heading back out, we turned northeast towards Goudier Island in the small harbor of Port Lockroy.

The port was originally established as a whaling station and you can see remnants today – oversized rusting chains where whaling ships used to tie up and a whale skeleton on the beach.

This little harbor has three islands. The largest is Goudier Island which has a research station with five scientists and a bunch of penguins living on it. There are also two smaller islands with penguins all over the place. In addition, there are black and white corcoran birds which look a lot like penguins, but they can actually fly. It’s easy to confuse the two from a distance.

After its whaling past, today, Goudier Island is dedicated to research and history, and it has a small museum for those brave enough to venture here. But perhaps the most interesting thing, though, is that this is the southernmost post office in the world. And here’s where worlds collide.

Our cruise ship brought 5.9 metric tons of supplies from England down this little island. These supplies left the UK in September and traveled a round-about way across the world until it was loaded on our ship in Ushuaia on December 8th. The payload included food, toiletries, and other essentials, but most importantly, Christmas presents from family members to the scientists! 

As long as our ship was meeting up with the island, one of the Goudier scientists came on board to give a lecture, and she brought a mailbox with her so we could send postcards from Antarctica.

Chad and I took a zodiac cruise at the end of the day, 6 pm. Our guide zipped us around the islands. We saw lots of penguins, of course. What was interesting was seeing some Adelie penguins which aren’t usually found this far south or west, so our guide steer our little boat over to them and then radioed the other guides to let them know to motor over as well.

We also saw two weddell seals sunning themselves plus a large flock of black and white corcorans roosting on the rocks with some of their chicks.

Back on the boat, we met up with Jolie and Lucy for another leisurely dinner. I’m now sitting in the Explorers’ Lounge with a final glass of wine, still astounded at the view around me. I want to just sit here and watch the scenery pass by. I feel so lucky to witness this. But I know we have a hike in the morning, so I’ll head to bed and know that it will be another amazing day tomorrow.

Day 6 was a full day at Fournier Bay. The bay is known for glaciers, icebergs, whales and seals, but there is no beach to land. We took a zodiac cruise around the inner bay in the morning past impressive snow formations, and I kept waiting to hear the thunder boom of an iceberg breaking away from the glacier, and while it didn’t happen for us, other guests said they saw avalanches and calving glaciers. 

Our zodiac took us around the back side of False Island where we found a little rock cliff cove.

In the afternoon, we had a cruise on a special ops boat. We learned that this boat was designed for the Norwegian navy, hence the name. It can travel as fast as 40 knots (we only went 18 knots, and it seemed FAST.) The boat was also designed to be carried by helicopter and dropped into the sea and then zoom! Viking has designed this cruise ship experience to accommodate the special ops boats because it allows people with mobility issues and people in wheelchairs to be able to get off of the large ship and out onto the water. Awesome!

The special ops boat is also able to venture farther away from the main ship than the zodiacs, and on this trip, we zipped off to see a couple of huge icebergs. These icebergs blew my mind, easily twice as tall as our ship, so maybe 12-15 stories tall. Plus, the one looked like a giant monopoly house.

At the end of the day, our captain announce that we would sail through a special S-curve passage, which was amazing, and we ended up with a beautiful sunset. 

On Friday morning, we awoke to a calm, glassy sea. After the choppy, windy weather of the day before, this was a welcome site. As we were standing at our stateroom window, we saw penguins and a whale cruising alongside us.

As we were finishing breakfast, our Expedition Leader, Olivia, came on the intercom system and said, “Good morning. I’m sorry to disturb you, but there are whales feeding in the water off the bow of the ship.” Of course, everyone went running to have a look, some people still in their pajamas, and there were three humpback whales swimming back and forth, spouting, breeching and submerging. So cool!

There are several scientists on board the ship, and there are usually a couple of science lectures each day. This morning, I attended one given by the penguin specialists and learned all about penguins and the research these women were doing to monitor the size and health of penguin colonies in the area.

At noon, we arrived at Mikkelsen Harbour and dropped anchor for the day. Chad and I got booked into two excursions. Our first was a hike on the island. We were on the first round of zodiacs, and we spent an hour walking around. There were remains of a whale, a whaling ship, and an old Argentine research hut. We also saw Weddell seals, an elephant seal, and so many gentoo penguins.

We kind of rushed to get back to the ship because we had a back-to-back booking for kayaking. We bounded up to our cabin to shed some layers and then went back to the launch deck to don dry suits and neoprene booties. We felt very fortunate to get a time slot for kayaking.

Back in September, Viking opened up the sign-up list for all of the excursions. I booked us into hikes and zodiac cruises and special ops boat cruises, but by the time I got to the kayak reservations, they were all booked up.  Man, was I bummed.

Fast forward to our second day on the ship. Despite not having reservations, we attended the kayak orientation and passed the physical test and got on the wait list. The lead kayak guy, Ramy, showed us the wait list and said that it was very long, so he didn’t think we would be able to get a booking.

The next day, as we were standing on the bow and passing through the English Strait, Chad struck up a conversation with Ramy and chat-chatted about I don’t know what. At the end of the conversation, Ramy asked for our room number. Guess who had a surprise kayak booking show up on their calendar? Now, I don’t know if it’s because Chad made a connection with Ramy or because our very first excursion got canceled or some combination of the two. Who cares? We got to go kayaking in Antarctica.

The kayaks were anchored on the far side of the island, so we took a zodiac over there and slipped over the side of the zodiac and into the kayak seats. (This was why we had to pass a physical test.) There was a lot of ice floating around, so our guide pulled a piece out of the sea and explained some physics to us. 

The ice started as snow. As the snow becomes more and more compacted, it turns to ice. The air in the snow becomes compressed and squeezed under pressure. As a result, when the ice melts, it makes little popping sounds as the air explodes out of the frozen bubbles. Then we paddled into an ice field and sat there quietly, listening to the little pops. It was like listening to a bowl of Rice Krispies!

Then we took a slow paddle around the island. Having done the hike earlier, it was cool to see the island from a different perspective. At the end of the tour, we power-paddled through a big ice field and met the zodiac on the other side. We hauled/flopped ourselves into the zodiac and zipped back to the ship.

We spent the evening with Jolie and Lucy with a cocktail in the Explorers’ Lounge and then dinner in one of the restaurants. After a very stimulating day of beautiful scenery, hiking among the penguins, and paddling on the water, I was in bed at 8:30 and sacked out by 8:45. We passed an uneventful night as the ship sailed to our next destination.

I have a couple of days of activities to catch up on, but in the meantime, I want to share what we woke up to this morning. Our Expedition Leader, Olivia, made a ship-wide announcement at 7:30 am to let us know that we were going to enter the La Mer Passage at 8:00. The passage is usually full of ice. Olivia and the captain didn’t know if we’d be able to enter the passage, so they didn’t announce this yesterday. They just made the decision this morning when we got to the passage.

The passage is seven miles long and only 2,000 meters wide at its narrowest point. We are the largest ship to ever sail down it, and this was only the second time to do so. At other times, it has either been too full of ice or the weather had low visibility. As you’ll see, the weather today is sunny and gorgeous! We were able to sail almost the full length of the passage. There was an ice blockage at the end, so we turned around and sailed back out. 

The passage is also called Kodak Alley, because it is the most photographed place in Antarctica. Enjoy!

After a second night of rocking back and forth while the ship finished crossing Drake’s Passage, we awoke to find that we were at the entrance to the English Strait. We had spent the last 36 hours crossing Drake’s, and we were happy to 1) see land and 2) officially see Antarctica. 

We went outside on the bow of the ship where the crew greeted us with hot chocolate and Irish coffee and watched as the ship navigated the strait with islands on either side.

During that time we saw lots of penguins swimming around the ship, popping up out of the water and then diving below the surface again. We also saw several whales off in the distance with water spouts and tails making an occasional appearance.

The weather wasn’t too bad (34 degrees, cloudy, slight breeze), so we stayed outside for an hour. During this time, the crew started a mandatory safety drill, so as we headed inside for breakfast, crew members were walking around in life vests going to various stations while announcements were being made over the intercom system. Because this was a simulation, the Expedition Leader, Olivia, would say, “For exercise,” before giving each instruction to the crew. My favorite was hearing “For exercise, for exercise, for exercise. Abandon ship. Abandon ship.” All while we were eating breakfast.

The ship continued to cruise through the morning until we reached Fort Point, our first “port” of call, at noon. The ship dropped anchor, and everyone prepared for an afternoon of outdoor activities. Each day, the ship sails to a new location where guests have a choice of excursions – going on land for a hike, taking a cruise around the bay, kayaking, or going for a submarine dive.

We were scheduled for a hike at 4 pm. The first set of zodiac boats ferried people across the water, and we watch people disembark and walk around the spit of land. There was a penguin colony at this location, so I was vibrating with excitement. The thing about penguins is that they poop, and when you have a colony of penguins, the smell from so much penguin poop can be overwhelming. We could even smell it from the ship.

When it was our turn for our hike, we got suited up and stood in line to get on a zodiac. We were a few minutes away from starting our adventure when all excursions were canceled for the rest of the day. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and there were large swells on the water and gusty winds which made it dangerous to go out. We were a bit disappointed, but we also know that you need to be flexible in Antarctica.

When we met up with Jolie and Lucy later in the afternoon, we heard that they had been on land when the weather turned. They were some of the last people to be ferried back to the ship, and their boat filled up with water on the way back due to the swells.  As Lucy put it, they got the Shackleton Experience where they thought they might die in Antarctica.

The four of us had a nice, leisurely dinner together sharing stories about our day. As we were finishing dinner, we looked outside and saw a big iceberg going by. Of course, we went bananas and took a bunch of photos. Little did we realize that 24 hours later we would have seen so many icebergs that we would say, “Oh look. Another iceberg. Whatever.”

The ship pulled anchor at 8 pm and sailed to our next destination on calm seas while we slept.

On Tuesday night, we went to sleep as the ship entered Drake’s Passage, and the water was pretty calm.

The thing about Drake’s Passage – it is the body of water between the tip of South America and Antarctica. It is also the craziest water on the whole planet. The way the ocean currents meet each other without any land masses to slow things down means that the water can be quite violent, but sometimes the water can be relatively calm. There are two nicknames for the passage – Drake Lake and Drake Shake.

We were lucky to have the Drake Lake during our 36-hour passage, so we didn’t experience violent waves or significant seasickness. However, the water did start to make the ship roll side to side, very gently, but enough to rock us awake during the night and make the boat creak and grown. So sleep was on and off, fitful during the night.

On Wednesday, as we continued across the passage, the boat continued to roll. As we moved around the ship, we found ourselves weaving left and right as we tried to walk in a straight line. It was like a ship full of toddlers trying to get around. It’s helpful to keep one hand touching a wall or handrail to stabilize yourself.

In the morning, we had another mandatory training session, this one in accordance with the agency that regulates tourism to Antarctica. We were taught how to walk on the land without disturbing the natural ecosystem like local plants, penguin “highways,” snow pack. We also learned about the importance of keeping the continent clean by not tracking in foreign objects on our clothes and shoes and preventing accidental littering (think about things getting blown out of your hands or falling out of your pockets), and we had to get our person gear inspected for foreign contaminants.

I also attended a lecture from the lead scientist on board our ship. Did I mention that our ship has a science lab with actual scientists and ongoing scientific research activities that are tied into research projects around the world? Awesome!

During the day, we also attended kayak training sessions where we learned about kayak protocol and had to do a physical test to show that we are able to slide from a zodiac boat into a kayak on the open ocean and get back onto the zodiac again. Let’s just say that it is not a graceful procedure.

Oh! I also had to go through a training session to be able to go on a submarine excursion. More on that later.

At the end of the day, a light supper amongst the four of us. Even though we had seasickness drugs, we all still felt funny after a day of the boat rolling around, so we all went to be early. And the boat kept rolling all night long, so we kept waking up and trying to go back to sleep and being annoyed, but it was all worth it the next morning when we spotted this…

A few months ago, I was texting my BFF, Jolie.  (Yeah, yeah, Juli and Jolie.) We hadn’t talked in a while, so I was catching her up on my life – cataracts, arthritis, maybe glaucoma – and she said, “Well I just got a huge promotion at work and then Lucy and I are going to Antarctica.”  I was speechless for a split second and then yelled, “OMG can I go with you?”  Well, I yelled via text.  And two days later Chad and I had booked tickets on the same trip.

I never thought I would actually go to Antarctica, but once the opportunity was staring me in the face, it became real.  I thought, I could wait until I retire when I’m older and my knees are tired and I might have physically difficulties, or I could just go now RIGHT NOW with my BFF of 50 years and her wife.  Oh, and with my husband, which was a touch and go decision for a little bit because of the potential for epic seasickness.  (More later on Drake’s Passage, the roughest water on the planet.)

To prepare for our trip, we had to purchase a few layers – wool socks, sock liners, long underwear, base layers, fleece, waterproof Gor-tex gloves, wool glove liners, wool neck gators – things I never thought I would purchase as someone who lives in the South.  The travel company provides a parka, winter overpants, and boots.  You have to give the pants and boots back, but you get to keep the parka.  Which will be so useful in Georgia.

The Antarctica portion of the trip takes about 2 weeks, itinerary is below.  And then we decided that, as long as we’re flying all that way, let’s spend Christmas week in Buenos Aires because 1) Buenos Aires is beautiful and 2) Christmas in a Catholic country is probably pretty amazing.  And thus our December in the Southern Hemisphere was born.

We went to the Emory University travel clinic primarily to get seasick meds (Drake’s Passage), but we came away with all kinds of prescriptions and vaccines for covid, Hep A, Hep B, typhoid, tetanus, traveler’s tummy. The travel clinic was doing its job and preparing us for illnesses that aren’t so common in the US but that we might be exposed to in Argentina.  The nurses also told us not to eat the street food in Argentina.  As if. I’ve already figured out where the food trucks are in B.A.

Now we’re finishing up the work week, super-cleaning the house for the Rover house sitters, and thinking about how we’re going to get all of our stuff into carry-on bags because we don’t check luggage.  Here’s a photo of my stuff from our 6-week trip to Italy in 2018 – carry-on is possible! But cold-weather clothes for Antarctica are bulky, so there’s that.

Here are some things we expect to see in Antarctica – gentoo penguins, Weddell seals, whales, glaciers, antarctic terns, giant petrels, other birds, whaling heritage, geology, fur seals, chinstrap penguins, and southern elephant seals.

Chad plans to unplug, but I will not!  I will be the Intrepid Travel Blogger!  (Except for maybe the Drake’s Passage seasickness part.) So check back for more posts over the next month if you want to follow along.

Itinerary:

Day 0 – depart Atlanta 7:30 pm

Day 1 – land in Buenos Aires 7:30 am, meet up with Jolie and Lucy at the Intercontinental Hotel, spend the day exploring the historic city center, stay the night

Day 2 – fly to Ushuaia, southernmost town in Argentina, board the boat, pray to the Gods of Calm Water

Day 3 – sail Drake’s Passage

Day 4 – arrive in Antarctica and anchor for a week, take a Zodiac cruise up the coast to explore

Day 5 – hike on Danco Island

Day 6 – travel down the coast in a Special Ops Boat, whatever that is

Day 7 – hike around Nekko Harbor

Day 8 – hike on Portal Point

Day 9 – hike around Mikkelson Harbor

Day 10 – hike Half Moon Island

Day 11 – Drake’s Passage, have mercy on us

Day 12 – scenic sail around Cape Horn, Chile

Day 13 – arrive back at Ushuaia, fly to Buenos Aires

Day 14-20 – Christmas in Argentina, lots of things to see and eat, more details to come, red eye flight out

Day 21 – arrive in Atlanta 5 am, Sunday – tired and maybe cranky at each other, but loving the experience…once in a lifetime…