Day 8 – The Drake Lake & Day 9 – Land Sweet Land

Our first night on the Drake was not too bad – we had some mild rolling around, but nothing these now seasoned ocean goers couldn’t handle.  I’m back to walking like a drunk and I always make sure to hold on with two hands when walking anywhere – no need to get cocky.  When we headed down for breakfast, we noticed that the barf bags were loaded up all over the ship again.  Not much reassuring about that, but so far we are good. 

Today is just a lazy day – we attended a few programs, but for the most part, it is an eat, nap, watch movies kind of day.  At about 3:30, we all got called down for an “impromptu overview” of weather and goings on for tomorrow.  Since anything impromptu is out of the ordinary, I figured the weather was going to change and be much worse than we expected, or we were moving so quickly due to the moderately calm waters that we might make it back to Ushuaia a day early.

The weather patterns are predicted using color overlays on top of a map.  Blue/Green = good; Orange = okay; Pink/Red/Maroon = very bad.  The first screen shot was saw was conditions now – all green, all good.  Then we saw the prediction for tomorrow afternoon into tomorrow night as we approached the Beagle Channel.  The channel, which is the last 5 hours to Ushuaia, is protected, so the goal is to get to that point before the red hits.  The map showed us heading straight into all red and maroon at exactly the wrong time and it did not appear there would be any way around it once we got going.  You see screen shots like that and just get sort of a sinking feeling because you have no choice and nowhere else to go.  Nothing like knowing you are aiming for hurricane force winds and massive ocean swells.

Our captain has obviously been well appraised of weather patterns for days, which explains why we spent our last day in the Shetlands – ultimately cutting a half day from our trip back.  We’ve been charging full steam ahead at a brisk 14.5 knots to try to beat the storm that sits between us and Ushuaia. 

We also found out in the briefing there is a medical emergency on board – we never found out who or what the emergency was, but our choices, as explained by the expedition leader, were to turn around and go 24 hours back to the peninsula where there is one island (King George Island) that has a landing strip so the person could be airlifted back to the mainland, or, we could make a run for Ushuaia and hopefully be there in 24 hours.  The captain felt it was better to make a run to Ushuaia than to turn around and go back to AA where they could do a helicopter evac.  So right now, it looks like pending any major weather shifts, we will make it back to Ushuaia early and avoid the converging storms.

Dinner was uneventful but the swells were getting much bigger.  I didn’t feel nauseous, but the rolling always feels worse if you are standing or moving around.  We opted to skip the last evening presentation and stay in bed watching movies.  You still get the rolling around, but for some reason, there is no dizziness when lying down.  A mostly uneventful day and while I wouldn’t call it the Drake Lake, it was certainly a much calmer ride on the way back.

DAY 9:

I’m writing this last post at 7am the day before we are supposed to disembark.  Today was supposed to be our second full day at sea and we were supposed to arrive in Ushuaia tomorrow morning, but overnight, we made it into the Beagle Channel before the massive storm hit (halle-freaking-luyah!) and it looks like we should get to Ushuaia before lunchtime – nearly one entire day before we were supposed to.  Not sure what they have in store for us today, but I assume they will let us live on the ship while docked since we don’t really have anywhere else to go until tomorrow.  Hard to believe this adventure is almost over.  Sigh.

To gain some perspective on our two Drake crossings, you can see on the GPS tracker how on the way there, we were changing position to make sure we were always heading into the waves whereas on the way back, you can see that we made a perfectly straight shot back, saving a ton of time.  It is pretty obvious where we got hit with the rogue wave on the way out...

We arrived “near” Ushuaia around 10 or 11am but much like an early arrival at O’Hare, our “gate” wasn’t ready, so we had to Anchor a few hundred feet from the dock waiting to get cleared by customs and for a spot to open where we could park.  Parking a 159-foot ship is fun to watch – we just got parallel to the spot and slid in sideways.  Nice to have those side thrusters!  By about 2pm, we were docked and given permission to get off the ship if we chose to do.

It is very strange to be back in civilization, so we chose to stay on the ship for a while, and then the lure of Wifi got us moving.  We made it to the security check point, maybe a 5-minute walk, in gale force winds (remember that weather picture???)  The security area was a tiny building on the dock, but it had free WiFi.  We loaded up our work email (ugh) and basically said “f-this” and turned around and walked back to the ship.  On the 5-minute walk back, the waves were hitting the dock and spray was blowing everywhere, so in addition to the wind, we were getting hit with sea water.  Safely back on the ship we, you guessed it, napped and watched movies. 

The ship was conducting the normal presentations as if we were still at sea, so we did attend a few more presentations on climate change and the other Quark expeditions we might be interested in.  We had our final champagne toast on the back deck with the captain, ate our last dinner, and then went back to the lounge for the trip highlight – our wonderful ship photographer (Nikki) had put together a spectacular slide show for us comprised of pictures and videos that we had all submitted along with pictures that she had taken.  We will have it in a few weeks and I will most definitely post it – a professional vision of what we did over 8 days in a 15-minute video.  We laughed, we cried.  There was a slo-mo video of a penguin pooping (I’m not the only one obsessed).  You’ll just have to wait and see.

We went to bed early as there was not much else to do (although I heard the young single crowd partied until 4am).  We woke up at 6, showered, packed, ate breakfast and were off the ship by 8.  We met up with Martin & Camila for a final breakfast before heading to the airport for the 28-hour trip home.

And with that, our unbelievable adventure is over and we look forward to accumulating enough vacation time and United miles in the very near future to continue our travels to the far ends of the earth.  While the North Pole and polar bears hold some allure, I swear our next trip will not involve ice, snow or long underwear.          

 

Day 7 - Penguins, Penguins and more Penguins

Our last full day in Antarctica.  Hard to believe months of planning and weeks of travelling are coming to an end.  Overnight, we sailed far North to the South Shetland Islands – the last land (and protected waters) before entering the Drake Passage.  Given the predicted path of bad weather that stands between us and Ushuaia, it seems captain wanted to give us as big of a head start as possible so we are as close to Ushuaia as we can get before the really bad stuff hits.

We did hit some rolling swells overnight as we crossed through the Bransfield Straight to get to the South Shetland Islands, but we got back to protected waters for our daily excursions, so I can walk steady at least through today. 

Our morning zodiac was to Fort Point (not surprisingly named after an 85-meter high rocky point) and Hardy Cove on Greenwich Island where we got to see FOUR different penguin species – the Gentoo, which is everywhere, the Chinstrap, which we hadn’t seen en masse yet, and then two completely random Macaroni penguins (a mating pair) mixed in with the others trying not to be conspicuous.  “Just act like you belong and maybe no one will notice…” and one lone Adelie perched on top of a hill.

Chinstrap chatting up a Gentoo:

The lone Adelie:

The two macaronis right in the middle (you can sort of see the yellow feathers):

The Macaronis are cool because they have bright yellow feathers sticking out of their heads and apparently the got their name from the Yankee Doodle song (stuck a feather in his hat and called it Macaroni).  We also had a view of a glacier that we could get up close and personal with.  Because it was a land glacier vs. one that feeds into the ocean, there is no chance of calving, so it is safe enough to get close.

The island we landed on was comprised almost entirely of rocks and boulders that had been tumbled by the ocean so they were smooth.  Not so fun to walk on as they are true ankle breakers.  Every rock moves when you step on it.  Pleased to say that we got through the landing unscathed.

Damon freaked because he thought there was a huge piece of garbage - it was ice:

Giant shipwrecked mast that had washed up on the island:

We came back to the ship for lunch, repositioned the ship to another location, the Aitcho Islands (they were named after “Hydrographic Office” of the UK Admiralty or “HO” or “Aitcho”) and then launched the afternoon zodiac tour.  The waves were much rougher today and the wind speed had increased, so it was chilly.  My 47 layers kept me well insulated along with the heat packs in my mittens, and all was good. 

Our group did the zodiac tour first around a bunch of smaller islands.  The landscape is much different today.  We are out of iceberg territory (sad because they are super cool) and into these small islands that don’t have a lot of snow on them.  They have mosses that grow bringing some color to the typical monochrome landscape.  We cruised around several islands looking at penguins, seals and birds.  People love birds around these parts!

The second half of our outing was landing on one of the islands.  We had free reign to roam.  We are usually somewhat cordoned off because of the penguins and chicks, but for this island, there were thousands and thousands of penguins.  You couldn’t really walk anywhere without being close to them, so we had some light rules (try to stay 15’ away, give penguins the right of way, etc.), but there were so many penguins roaming around, they were hard to avoid.

I know I’ve said it before, but thousands of penguins make thousands of penguin poops.  The smell was overpowering in some parts where you need something over your face to breathe through.  Plus, the squirty noises… penguins are cute and fun to watch, but they are also so very gross.  They can fire a solid three feet and have no qualms about nailing their neighbors (or their chicks) in the face or chest.  Damon was incredibly proud of this artistic shot of 360 degrees of penguin poop.

Most of the chicks hatched a few weeks ago, so there were tons of babies – also fun to watch - especially when they start chasing the adults around – we saw two chicks gang up on an adult and chase it all over the breeding ground.  I was told later that the chicks were chasing around a parent trying to get food.  Apparently hell hath no fury like a hungry chick!

This next part is not for the squeamish.  We saw or first pseudo predation, otherwise known as nature's food chain.  Many of the birds out here are massive predator birds that feast on baby penguin chicks.  When you have an island filled with baby penguin chicks, the birds are ever present looking for their next meal.  While we didn't see the Northern Giant Petrel actually grab the penguin chick, we did see the ensuing fight between it and a Skua for the prize.  Without going into too much detail, the chick didn't stand a chance.  We watched for a minute and then moved on.  On our way back to the zodiac later, we saw what was left.  Yes, it is totally gross, but the baby chick feet were so comically large and untouched that it did warrant another picture.

The other cool thing we saw on this landing was a group of four elephant seals.  They were mostly laying on top of each other, so hard to see faces.  Sadly, we had to get back to the ship and say goodbye to the last land we will see &/or step foot on until we land in Ushuaia in 2 ½ days.

One other note that I haven’t mentioned is the organization of our landings.  There is a big mud room on deck 4 where we all have lockers that house our muck boots, zodiac life vest, parkas, and waterproof pants.  When the time comes for zodiac cruising, they call our four groups out one at a time, we flock to the mudroom, gear up and head to the zodiac launch spots.  We step in some type of cleaning solution when there will be a landing (vs just cruising) to avoid any type of organic contamination on land, our jackets have a special window on the arm where we stash our ID/key cards and we are scanned off the ship.  When we return, we are re-scanned back onto the ship, dip boots again, take our gear off, and are greeted with a warm cup of something – hot chocolate, hot mocha, lemon tea, ginger tea – a nice way to get back on board!

Around 6:30pm, we were all called to the bow of the ship for our final champagne toast to Antarctica as we left all visible land behind and headed into the dreaded Drake passage.  We regularly get a weather briefing that is as close to predicting conditions as possible – it actually looks like we may get smooth sailing for most of our trip home. A big ugly hurricane force wind storm is brewing, but we may be able to outrun it.  Last land view...

There is nothing reassuring about future weather assessments when they are followed by a full ship announcement reminding us to secure our belongings or put them on the floor before we get into the Drake, and reminding us that the onboard doctor will be holding a seasickness clinic to hand out drugs and advice.  We Scop’d up yesterday just to be prepared for anything.

We had a quick dinner while once again watching whales and other wildlife leaping around outside of the window and headed back up to the room on the early side to get sleep and start the arduous process of going through the 1,800 pictures and video we’ve taken!

Day 6 - LeMaire and the Collision Course

They weren’t kidding with the 6am wake-up announcement!  Apparently the LeMaire Channel is a trip highlight noted for its scenery.  It is the farthest South we will be going and thus (because it is colder) there is some level of concern about what to expect ice-wise.  The satellite pictures from a few days back show that there is still a fair amount of sea ice (when the salt water sea freezes vs. when chunks of fresh water ice break off from a glacier), but the captain decided it is worth checking out to see what it looks like today.

Not ones to miss anything, we rolled out of bed (on purpose this time) suited up in our cold weather gear, packed on our cameras, and headed to the front of the ship.  We had an unusually clear day with spots of blue sky.  The scenery (not to reuse the same word over and over) was breathtaking.  The channel is relatively narrow and is lined with craggy black snow-covered mountains.  Since the sky is mostly white today, the mountains really stand out against the snow.  Add to that the misty low hanging clouds and the views are surreal. 

I think the coolest thing about this passage is the ice.  As we headed up the channel, we were surrounded by more icebergs and sea ice than anywhere we’ve been so far.  We wondered if there would be wildlife in this area and much to our amusement, there are penguins all over the place – we often see them in groups “porpoising” around the ship – basically jumping in and out of the water.  We also saw some seals lounging on icebergs.  As the sea ice is generally flat, it makes for a good landing spot for all critters around here and you often see footprints all over them, confirming that there is a fair amount of wildlife in the area.

The goal was to get to the Southern end of the channel and do our morning zodiac excursion, but as we continued South and the ice became thicker, the captain and excursion leader determined that the ice plus the strong current would not make for a safe excursion.  So, a decision was made to about face and head back up the channel to get to less “chunky” waters.  As we plowed through the sea ice and bergs, it amazed me how, for the most part, they had very little impact on the ship – we literally just rolled right over them!  Of course, the ship does have some fancy steel reinforced hull for just this scenario, but it was still odd to just chug right through the ice.  Every now and then, though, we got a little too confident and you could feel a decent “oops” hit.

Damon, who is still battling a cold, headed back to sleep and I decided to hang out on the bow where I struck up a conversation with one of the staff.  I asked him how many times he had been up and down the channel and he said 47, so basically, he has some experience.  As we were chatting, the ship changed course and started heading to the left – one would assume it was to avoid something large, but I didn’t see anything in our path.  Again, we are in a narrow channel and had been driving a straight path up the middle the entire time thus far.

I kept looking at the mountain face that was dead ahead in our path and then looking at him, and back and forth.  He looked at the mountain and said “huh” and then looked up at the bridge to see if it had been overtaken by a suicidal nut case intending to ram us.  We continued to head toward the rock face and at one point, we started to get (in my opinion) unusually close.  I said, “does this seem strange to you” and he said “yes, this seems a bit strange”.  He was definitely not completely relaxed with our current course.  (Note the likely madman on the bridge).

I started to plan my escape route to avoid sure death by mountain.  Run back to cabin and get Damon, grab our immersion suits (you can survive for a week in frigid water) and run to the back of the ship so we will be the last ones to feel the impact.  Okay, so I can be a bit dramatic.  But all these other suckers were just standing around watching an obviously impending impact without doing anything.  I was prepared. 

I saw the staff guy looking around the ship to see what we were avoiding and he kept looking up at the bridge.  Not gonna say he was nervous, but he was not 100% not nervous either.  Eventually we changed course back to the middle of the channel.  Crisis averted.  I immediately ran to the back of the ship to get a picture of our wake so I could show Damon our close call since he missed it and all.  If you look closely, you can see the dark s-shaped line cleared of ice, which was our path toward doom.

As I write this blog post (by the way, this is my view),  

an announcement just came on that may be worse than a head-on collision with a mountain.  The Polar Plunge.  This is my nightmare.  I’m 99.9% certain that I will not do it and even peer pressure will not change my mind.  I hate being cold in general and the thought of jumping into arctic frozen waters “for fun” does not seem awesome to me.  At all.  Call me a wimp, but remember that I have no problem jumping of a 120’ bridge on the end of a bungy into a river.  It is just the heart-stopping cold!  For the first time on this vacation, I’m officially caught up on the blog, so I think I will retreat to the cabin for, what else, a little nap.

By lunchtime, I think many people had headed to their cabins to relax since our morning excursion had been canceled, so the crew blackmailed us back outside by serving hamburgers and hot dogs on the deck.  It was just a bit chilly outside, so had to eat my burger with mittens on.  There were multiple announcements about the Polar Plunge, but the wind and current were too strong, so it was all put on hold.  Here’s to selfishly hoping it is canceled.

By 2pm, we had arrived at our afternoon landing location – it was an Argentine research base – and it was on the continent (versus an island), that means two landings on the continent!  Half the group went to the base while the other went on a zodiac cruise.  There were humpbacks in the area so we stayed and watched those from a distance. 

Eventually our zodiac driver pulled us away from the ever-entertaining whales to go find seals or glaciers, so we took a 10-minute zodiac cruise full speed on open water.  It was COLD!  We couldn’t find anything and people were starting to get a little disappointed because we all wanted to watch the whales.  We stopped in an area where whales had been spotted and within 2 minutes, a huge humpback breaches right in front of us.  Everyone whipped out the cameras and it breached again.  This is a cool thing because the whales are in feed mode right now and breaching is typically only a mating activity, which they do not do in Antarctica.  So that made the whole zodiac trip worth it!

Our second stop was the landing by the base –

we wandered around looking at more penguins which, while they stink something awful, are still fun to watch waddle around.  We got to hike up a hill,

which, when you are not moving on a ship most of the day, actually feels really good.  And there are always amazing views from higher up!  One other interesting thing about this area is that while we are so used to seeing nothing but whites and grays, for some reason, moss grows on the base.  One of our naturalists was super excited to show us a tuft of grass (the only one on the island) growing in the moss.  And, if that wasn't exciting enough, he dug around until he located a "flightless midge" - the ONLY insect that exists in Antarctica.

Everyone got back to the ship around 5:30 or 6, and that was when they made the plunge announcement.  Okay, I’m a wuss.  I could not do it.  Damon has been sick and opted not to turn a head cold into pneumonia.  And who am I to make him feel bad by jumping without him?  I selflessly opted to stand by my man and not do the plunge (if he reads this, okay, truth – no freaking way I was jumping whether he was sick or not).  Will I regret it?  Probably.  But I’m cold enough on land, no need to be dunking myself in frigid waters.  They basically opened the two areas on a lower deck where we usually load the zodiacs.  Everyone who jumped was tied to a rope, you know, just in case… and they were in and out of the water in about 10 seconds flat.  I probably could have done it, but, well.  I didn’t.  If I need to convince myself further, let us go back to our first day on the ship when we spent a solid hour learning about ship safety and all the reasons NOT to go in the water, and how to get out of the water as quickly as possible.  Because cold arctic water is bad!

We had our evening recap where we learned plans for tomorrow (our last day, sob) plus expected weather on the 2-day trip back to Ushuaia.  It looks like we are going to have one okay day and one horrible day.  Ahh, doubling down on the Drake Shake.  We’ve reapplied our Scop patches and are ready to face whatever the Drake wants to throw at us.

Day 5 - The Penguin Post Office

Each day just gets better than the last.  Today we woke up to the sun trying to peek through the haze and an estimated 39-40 degrees.  At least that is what I think.  Everything here is in Celsius.  We had a quick breakfast and got called up for our first outing of the day – a zodiac cruise around Lion Island.  Apparently at some point in time someone who discovered it thought it looked like a lion lying down.  I didn’t see it.  In any case, the island was surrounded by narrow(ish) passages and the scenery was breathtaking.

We had snow covered mountains/glaciers towering up on both sides of us. I asked Damon to describe them and he said “rugged and foreboding”.  To me, they were majestic.    These mountains were covered in glacial snow and cracks and crevasses cause large chunks to “calve” off.  Those chunks become massive floating icebergs.  We were surrounded by these monster icebergs everywhere.  We always tried to get another zodiac in the pictures for scale – they were that big.  Also, they were often blue – so blue that you didn’t know if you could accurately portray the vibrant turquoise coloring in a photo.  I think we got a few good ones.  

Looking at these massive icebergs and the stripes and lines carved in by water and time, you think that they are fake - they almost look like Styrofoam.  I am in awe.

Our zodiac cruise lasted about 2 hours and then we got back on the ship in time for lunch.  For the afternoon, they split us up into two groups – one group stayed on the ship while the other went on an excursion.   Then they split our group in half again and half of us went to a penguin colony and the other half went to a British Research Center called Port Lockroy. 

Dotted along the coast of the peninsula, there are international scientific research posts - some are staffed for the summer, others seem to be vacant.  We've seen maybe 2-3 so far.  Most of them seem to be a country’s attempt to stake a claim to Antarctica.  We passed one from afar and I never caught who it belonged to, but we did stop at the British outpost, which also housed a museum, a post-office, and a colony of Gentoo penguins.

The tiny green dot lower right is a research center.

Port Lockroy from far away and zoomed in:

Before we got to the outpost, our group stopped at the penguin island across from the research station where hundreds or maybe thousands of penguins were hanging out – many with their fluff ball newborn chicks.  Watching penguins is something you can do all day long – they are goofy and uncoordinated and everything they do is entertaining.  They waddle around with their "arms" backwards for balance, they hop from rock to rock, they fall, they slide, and they are just generally entertaining.  I could have stayed there all day but for the smell.  

Penguins, while cute, are the smelliest things I’ve ever encountered.  And they poop everywhere.  Basically, if you are not on white snow, you are walking in some sort of poop sludge that covers the entire area.  Also, there are “penguin highways” – penguins carve out intricate routes that they take from the water to the rocks or from rocks to rocks, etc.  We were instructed to always let penguins have the right of way as they waddled or hopped from one place to another on their stinky poop-filled walkways.  National Geographic does not accurately portray what a penguin colony looks or smells like...

Back on the poop thing (sorry, I'm obsessed), not only could you smell it, but if you stopped to listen for a minute, you would hear a non-stop chorus of squirty noises.  They have no shame as the poop on each other, on the chicks, in each other's faces, or, if they are lucky, on the rocks or snow.  They can shoot poop a solid 3-5 feet so no one is safe.  After a healthy 45-minute dose of penguin watching, we took a zodiac shuttle to the research center.

I was unaware that there are manned research stations on/in Antarctica, but there are a few - we've heard maybe 30 or so, but would need to confirm.  This one was a research center up until about 1959 and then it fell into disrepair before the British decided to rehab it.  The original building now houses an amazing museum where they put most of the rooms (kitchen, bunks, dark room, workshop, outhouse, etc. back to how it looked in the 50’s with all original furnishings.  I’ve never seen a 1950’s kitchen, but they had 100’s of canned food items and other authentic stuff from years ago.  They also added a gift shop, and yes, a post office.  We could mail postcards from Antarctica – we hear it takes 3 weeks to 3 months for a postcard to reach its destination as the mail goes from Antarctica, to the Falkland Islands, then to England, then through the British postal service, but it is a legit active post office.  There are a few lucky recipients out there who will be getting a postcard by April!

The research station is staffed 5 months out of the year (summer) by 4-5 people and they feel privileged to be able to stay there despite the somewhat primitive conditions.  They have a new "pod" structure that looks nice, but we weren’t able to go inside.  This station is visited by an average of 2 cruise ships per day, so I assume they don’t get bored with hundreds of people visiting daily.  The penguins have migrated from the island and have invaded the outpost area as well, so we could get up close and personal with them.  After about 45 minutes at the outpost, we were shuttled back to the ship to chill for a few hours while the other groups repeated our journey.

Even though our days are primarily eating and sleeping with 2 excursions a day, we are often tired – I think the cold can zap you (plus Damon is battling a wicked cold), so it is nice to go back to the cabin and relax (and warm up).  For our 2-hour break, we started with a movie in the lounge about the history of the research station before retreating to our cabin for movies and nap time. 

Dinner tonight was surreal.  5 days ago we were saying “I can’t believe we are going to Antarctica” followed by “OMG, we are in Antarctica” followed by “Wow – look at those glaciers in Antarctica” and then “Can you believe the sun is shining and the weather is perfect in Antarctica?”.  Dinner trumped everything to date as we sat on the outer deck in full blue sky and total sunlight for a BBQ with reggae music playing in the background.  

The latest slogan “I can’t believe we are drinking wine and eating BBQ outside in perfect weather with a blue sky on the deck of an awesome ship while we are cruising through icebergs surrounded by amazing glaciers and mountain formations while in Antarctica, oh and look, there is another whale.”  I’d call this one a good day.

One note I forgot to mention from earlier – with the sky so blue all day, the water took on a completely different color – much more of a royal blue as compared to the grays we’ve seen so far.  The water is so clear that it just reflects whatever the sky is doing that day.

This picture is completely untouched!

With no evening activities, we headed back to our cabin for an early bedtime because we were told there would be a 6am wake-up call as we entered the LeMaire Channel and would want to spend the early morning outside.