Month: November 2017

With so much travel time on the ship, we were going to plan the next leg while struggling through the Drake Passage. Since we didn’t end up having any internet, that became impossible. So upon docking back in Ushuaia, we set about finding a rental car that Michael and I could potentially drive from Ushuaia, throughout Chile and western Argentina, through Patagonia, into Santiago to pick up Phil and Krystal at the end of December before going to Valparaiso for New Years, Mendoza for wine tasting and then drop off the car. I had read online that we could do this, however, the interwebs didn’t give me a ton of information about HOW to do it. So we started pounding pavement. Very soon we found out a few things: 

1. Everyone either doesn’t want to rent us a car for this type of trip, or they don’t have cars. 

2. Our backup plans are going to be just as hard to execute. 

Backup plans: 

#1: rent a car to drive only to Punta Arenas where we can drop it off and get our schedule back on track. No. 

#2: take a bus to Punta Arenas and get our schedule back on track. No bus availability until Wednesday. No.

#3: fly to Punta Arenas and get our schedule back on track. No flights until early next week and they were expensive! No.

#4: fly to Puerto Natales – No

#5 fly to El Calafate, rent a car to drive down to Puerto Natales where we can then explore Torres del Paine. After that, figure next steps out again. OK – this one might work.

So we were at least able to get the four of us out of Ushuaia on Monday morning to El Calafate. We booked those tickets and looked into transportation once arriving in the new city. The issue I was running into was the fact that no rental companies online would commit to letting me drive the rental car from El Calafate, in Argentina, to Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine in Chile. I knew you could, once again, I just couldn’t figure out how. So I sent out a bunch of emails to try to get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, Michael booked a place to stay in Calafate and investigated taking buses from Calafate to Puerto Natales, and from Puerto Natales to the National Park. He got a handle on a few buses we could take and I couldn’t sort through the rental car, so Michael booked us some bus tickets. Thirty seconds later, I got confirmation from Hertz that there was a way to take the rental car into Argentina, for a small fee. 

New game: try to get the bus tickets canceled. 

Michael got to work on this, but we were trying to reach them on Sunday while their offices were closed. So we went back to waiting. Monday morning, we headed to the Ushuaia airport, for our flight out. FINALLY! Upon checking in, we were informed that although we had reserved our tickets, we hadn’t paid and we were not on the flight. We had definitely entered credit card info, so this was hard to believe, but nothing to do but work with them. We dealt with a few people who mostly just told us to wait. 5 minutes. Wait more. 25 minutes. And then, finally, with just thirty minutes to the take off of our flight (note, take off, not boarding), they let us go through. No additional payments necessary. Not sure how they fixed the glitch, but we got through. 

Michael also had received an email from the bus company that didn’t respond to his question about canceling the tickets, but instead informed him that there wasn’t any room on the bus for us. Problem solved! While waiting to board, I jumped on my phone and booked the Hertz rental car. Problems solved! We were finally cooking with gas. 

The flight was easy into El Calafate. While we waited for baggage, Michael went over to get the rental car settled. No surprise, the didn’t have a car for us. Haha. No one had extra cars in the entire airport. So we took a taxi to our AirBNB, dropped off our stuff and went back into town to try to solve this new problem. It was smack dab in the afternoon, when most stores in Argentina are closed, so we walked around, got a feel for the town and emailed/texted a few inquiries to car rental companies. Once we hit 3:30/4 and stores began opening again, we found two cars in town. Just two. And settled on the cheaper option. So we are back on track, again. 

This was definitely a warning that Patagonia requires much more advanced planning than the internet led us to believe. Online there are tons of romantic stories about people just arriving at hotels and being able to find a place to stay or being picked up by the perfect bus going right to their final destination by chance. Bully for those people. For us, travel in Patagonia is hard. 

I have zero appropriate pictures for this probably boring post… so here’s a street sign where our hotel shuttle dropped us in town. Does it add any value to this post? Probably not, but here it is anyway. It shows latitude and longitude so that’s interesting. It also reminds us that we were still in Ushuaia, trying to get out! 

 

Imagine how others see USA Thanksgiving. What do they think of? Turkey – check. Mashed potatoes – check. Pie – ok… they made pecan happen. Stuffing – sure… it was close at least. Donuts – absolutely. What is more American than donuts?! So we must enjoy them as part of our Thanksgiving meal as well!! 

In all seriousness, the crew went above and beyond to try to help us celebrate our traditions. It was very sweet of them. Please note, I wore my fancy shirt to celebrate.

Plus we got to celebrate Leigh’s first Thanksgiving! 

With just under 20 hours left on the ship (25ish after the high winds kept us waiting to dock the next morning), we relaxed, enjoyed our new friends, played cards and tried to ride out a rough few final hours on the Drake. 

Thank you to the amazing crew! It was truly incredible. I hope that Michael and I will be able to come back again some day!

November 22

Since we’re back to the Drake Passage, trying to enjoy two days at sea, this is a good chance to stop talking about Antarctica and spend a few minutes talking about the super awesome people we’ve met on ship. 

We became fast friends with Leigh, Dale and Zach either the first or second day onboard. It’s a little bit like summer camp where the first day or two everyone is testing the waters, trying to figure out where they fit on the ship. But as opposed to being kids, here we have access to 199 passengers plus another ~140 crew/staff on board who are from around the globe with different travel experiences, backgrounds and cultures. 

Note: getting through the language barrier with Leigh was half the battle! 

After another day or so, we picked up Keith and Jackie and now we have a few other rotating seats at dinner and the Euchre table for Chad and Lauren from Denver, some crew members, Tom and a few other randoms. 

We have really enjoyed getting to know everyone and are super pumped to stay close for years to come. 

November 21

Today was our last day in Antarctica. We started our day at Deception Island. Deception Island is actually an active volcano. It last erupted in the 1970s. At that time, it had scientists living on the island. Before that, it was a whaling station until the 1930s. There are still a few buildings on land, but the cool thing about this island is that the water in some places is very warm. Hot tub warm. Shockingly warm. It’s not entirely clear to me why we didn’t polar plunge in this area instead.  Here, you can actually see the steam coming off the water:

We had some light hiking on the island that Michael joined me for. 

Also on Deception Island, we were able to see some krill that had washed up on shore. Krill is the main food source for penguins in Antarctica and some seals and whales. It is basically the bottom of the food chain that keeps everything moving. Note: a new trendy vitamin to take is krill oil (like taking fish oil pills) – which is contributing to a decline in the krill population in Antarctica and declining population of some penguin species. Global warming is also contributing, but that is a whole other conversation and after hearing a lecture on it on the ship, more complicated than anything I’m posting about here. So for now, krill:

The notable thing we saw on the zodiac cruise was a fur seal. I had previously seen a crab eater and a lot of weddell seals. So I was pumped to grab another type of seal. Totally can’t make a picture of this happen. 

We were supposed to head over to another spot in the afternoon for some zodiac cruises and skiing, but we found whales! There were two humpback whales that were spotted, so the Captain took our ship over in their direction to see if they wanted to play with us. 

It ended up being a mommy whale and a second year baby whale which was really fun to watch. The mom whale was teaching her baby how to dive and swim, so she would dive, showing off her fin and the baby would dive with their fin flopping to the left or right. We spent about an hour and a half watching the whales swim all over. 

By the time we finished with the whales, we had missed our window to go on shore the last time. Totally worth it. With it being our last night in Antarctica, we had a champagne toast and sushi on the back deck. With just a little time left before dinner, there was another whale sighting – Fin Whales! This is the third type of whales that I’ve seen (remember those orcas from a few days ago). From a few miles out, we could see six or seven whales blowing. These whales didn’t give us as good of a show as the humpbacks from earlier today, but it was still cool to see them. 

November 20 – Happy Bday J-Ro

Round two on this entry – definitely just accidentally deleted it. Whomp.

Today we went out to visit Danco Island. Michael cross country skied again today and had a lot of fun. Per Michael “it was a lot of fun”. The rest of us started our morning with a Zodiac ride around the island. The water was really rough which makes the ride less comfortable and wet. We saw this girl:

Dave, the photographer, was our driver and he was great – super informative and willing to go the extra mile to make the ride special. Dave pushed through some pretty thick ice to get into an area that was protected from the wind which gave us water that was as still as glass. It was breathtaking. 

While on the zodiac, we also had a great view of penguins coming back from the ocean. Some of the penguins struggled to get back on land which gave us a ton of entertainment. 

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Once on land, we had the chance to do a short hike up to a great vantage point. It looked deceptively easy, but after just a few steps, Mom B and Dad B opted out of the hike. The snow was very deep, so for half of the hike every step I took ended up with my boot going into knee deep powder. I was pumped to bump into our buddies, Zach and Dale, at the beginning of the hike. As we headed up the hill, Dale had many of the same struggles that I had walking. Zach, however, was like Jesus on the Galilean Sea. He just walked regularly on top of the snow and kept advising us to “just walk lightly”. He must have said it fifty times. Just walk lightly. Just. Walk. Lightly. I have no clue what that means or how to do it. Just walk lightly. So the hike was tough, but the view was well worth it. 

As we hiked, we had to cross the penguin highway a few times. This is the path that the penguins take from the ocean up to their nests. It was basically rush hour when we were there, and as we attempted to minimize our interactions and impact on the penguins, we spent quit a bit of time waiting for the penguins to pass us before we crossed the highway. 

​​(This is where you should see a really cute video of penguins, but my wifi isn’t strong enough to make that happen. Just imagine super cute penguins waddling around and say “awwwww”)
After our morning excursion and lunch, there was a second opportunity to go out on a zodiac cruise. Dad B and Michael stayed back to nap, but Mom B and I took advantage of another chance to get out on the water. 
It was lame. Our driver was not very informative and we didn’t see anything knew. With so little time here, there are few times where I have regretted going outside. This was an exception. 

Later that evening was the polar plunge. Michael and I had no interest in doing this going into this week. But peer pressure and fomo is incredibly powerful. So we grabbed our swim suits and fluffy bath robes and headed to the gangway. 107 out of 199 passengers did the polar plunge. We did it. It was a terrible 10 seconds of my life and then it was over. A few people LOVED doing it and a few people did it multiple times. I’m glad I did it, but mostly I’m just glad it’s over. 

Something I learned during our daily recap:

A lot of the icebergs and glaciers that we’ve seen have a beautiful blue hue. Sometimes the blue is slight and sometimes it is a stunning deep, dark blue. When ice forms, it has air bubbles in it. As pressure is applied to the ice, like when more snow falls on top of the ice, the air bubbles get pushed out. Those air bubbles act as lenses which reflects UV rays or white light. With fewer air bubbles, or lenses, in the ice, only blue UV rays get reflected. Ice thicker than 2 meters thick without air bubbles appears blue. 

Ice that is fewer than 2 meters thick that does not have air bubbles appears to be translucent. 

November 19

Jumped on another zodiac this morning to head to Paradise Harbour.

Today was a beautiful day! Lots of sun and really calm waters. This was also the day that we made it onto the mainland! 

A reminder that all of our landings so far have been on islands. Some people don’t even consider those island landings to be touching Antarctica. So this was a big deal for everyone. We got a bunch of pictures at Base Brown and hiked a decent amount to get a better vantage point. 

At the end of the hike, Michael and I hung out for awhile and our buddies, Leigh and Keith, joined us up top to enjoy the view. 

Back on the boat, we had lunch and pulled together a few people for a small mass. Tom was gracious enough to say mass for our small group and a few friends. It was really nice to spend some time reflecting on this trip. It was great, until… about halfway through when Shane came over the loud speaker alerting us to whales!! We had that moment of panic. We still had another 20 or so minutes to finish the mass, but whales!!! I hadn’t had a good sighting yet, and Michael hadn’t seen any! Everyone looked around, but we decided to finish the mass. It was a great decision. We finished mass and headed to the bow in time to spend maybe 30 minutes watching 8+ orcas swimming very close to the boat. They were beautiful! 

That evening, we reached the Lemaire Channel. This channel is 11 km long by 1.6 km wide and separates Booth Island from the continent. The views were just incredible and the night was so beautiful that it was great being out on the bow enjoying the show. When we got through the channel, we saw solid ice. Our ship was not getting through! So we sat at the end of the ice and enjoyed an outside dinner before turning around and heading back the way we came. 


One thing that is incredible is how flexible the ship, the captain and the crew have to be in this environment. There have been several times throughout the trip when plans have had to be altered or changed completely because of ice and animals. They work a few extra days into the 10 days to ensure that they can be flexible without sacrificing any of the amazing things that we’re seeing. 

Shout out to the incredible expedition team, led by Shane who’s famous (to a few of us at least) for ending his announcements with an energetic “see you about the ship!” 

November 18

Enterprise Island:

One of the cool things we saw was a wrecked whaling factory ship. In January of 1915, she had about 5050 cubed meters of whale oil in her tanks when it caught fire. To try to stop the blaze, the crews actually shot harpoon grenades into the hull to try to partially sink her and put out the fire. It didn’t work. The entire cargo was lost, but no people died, amazingly. 

Our zodiac cruise around Enterprise Island was led by Cam – the ice guy. There could not have been a better guide for this trip. I am consistently impressed by the majority of the staff how smart, patient and consistently energetic they are. It has been a real pleasure spending time and learning from them. 

Crystal clear water:

Cuverville Island: 

Cuverville Island is home to the largest gentoo penguin colony in the region. Like this guy:

And these too:

Also home to this Weddell Seal: 

Lots of cool pictures from the day, but none cooler than eating ice cream in Antarctica after our barbecue out on the deck! It was a crazy beautiful day with perfect weather!

November 17

On the afternoon of November 17th, we reached the South Shetland Islands. This would be our first step on Antarctica. Michael joined Pete’s ski group and headed out early with them to cross country ski on Half Moon Island. Half Moon Island is about 2km long and is crescent-shaped (making the name that much more obvious). Michael’s group saw a bunch of Gentoo penguins and ice burgs. They skied between the cliffs and the ocean, behind Half Moon’s peak. Four hours of tough skiing later, Michael had a new respect for how hard cross country skiing is on Antarctica and walked away with a few new friends. From below, I was able to grab a few pictures of the group. Please note our new buddy Keith is the person who is face planted on the snow:

While Michael skied, I jumped at an opportunity to see more of the island by snowshoe. This was my first time, so I was a little nervous, but also very excited to really get moving after a few days stuck on the boat. I met a new friend, Jackie, in the mud room as we got ready to go and buddied up with her for the excursion. We had a great trek – saw some Weddell seals and a crab eater seal along with some Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins. 

Later on the zodiac ride we also got the opportunity to see a mother Weddell seal with her pup. Usually by this time of the year, the pups have already left their mothers, so apparently this was a real treat. They were swimming aroun, but the mother always had her eye on us. 

November 15-16

The first two days on boat were travel days through the Drake Passage, notorious for sea-sicky rough waters. Packed with an inappropriate amount of Dramamine to combat the sea sickness, we felt ready to go. On the ship, people started getting to know new people and get familiar with the ship. This was also time for a ton of information from the crew along with the parka party and boot bash – where we get our huge yellow jackets (to keep) and waterproof boots (to borrow) for the trip. A lot of the shore excursions will require us to get off the zodiac boats in some water, so the boots are crucial. We also starting having informational sessions about the wildlife on the Drake Passage and in Antarctica. Sleeping that first night was tough – supposedly it wasn’t that bad, but I slept terrible and felt gross. I took some more Dramamine the next morning and consequently slept through a handful of lectures. After about 24 hours on the boat, I had pulled it together and got a bit accustomed to the moving ship. Smooth sailing from here… at least until we’re heading back on the Drake in a few days. 

November 14-15

Ushuaia is an incredibly beautiful town. I’m going to have to start coming up with better adjectives for this trip. “Incredible” “beautiful” “amazing”…. how can I communicate that something is special if I use the same words for everything? Hopefully my pictures help to explain.

Ushuaia looks like a Swiss mountain town with a cutesy downtown area, souvineer shops and restaurants. Mountains surround all sides of the town, making it quite picturesque. We checked into our AirBNB upon arrival and after dropping our stuff we walked into town to have dinner. Michael’s parents were long overdue for some legitimate sleep in a real bed, so we were going to take a quick meal and then straight to bed. 

While walking in town, trying to find something to eat, we came across a travel agent shop that had a sign on the door advertising discounted prices for a cruise leaving on the 15th. It was in our price range and in our time range, so we popped in to get more details. The travel agency closed at 9pm and we entered a few minutes before that. Despite the fact they were closed, they stayed open with us for nearly an hour as we tried to work out the details. Ultimately, they were able to get reservations for 3 of us. Michael’s reservation would not go through and as the ship’s office was closed, we had to wait until morning to fight through the details. I had always said it would be fine if we didn’t end up on a ship – that was the risk we were taking by not reserving in advance. But truthfully, I was bummed. I was bummed and Michael was not being optimistic. The travel agent also let us know that she didn’t see any other ships with openings for another week and by that time we may not be able to make it work with Mom B and Dad B’s flight back home. 

(Above: there is a very interesting history with the Falkland Islands aka Malvinas… Argentina still claims the islands even though it is considered a British overseas territory. Argentina occupied the islands for a few months in 1982. Most residents want to remain a UK territory. With just 2,841 residents, only 3 of them voted “no” in a 2013 referendum to remain a UK territory. But Argentina still insists the land is theirs. 

Below: some street art that I came across. Michael and I have been reading a handful of books that speak to some indigenous people in South America who have a strong mythology surrounding the mountains. My best guess is that the below is depicting something of that nature.) 

The next morning, we arrived at the travel agent’s office a little after 9am and finally got some more information: there were 2 rooms (triples) that were open. We had one reserved. The other one was being saved for a different group who had a medical emergency last week and had to miss the last ship. They were trying to make this boat, but were not sure if they would be able. We were told the other group had until 1pm to make a decision. So we went back to the waiting game… but with a few local beers this time to help with some of the anxiety. 
We got a message a few minutes before 1pm that Michael was good to go! We went back to the travel agent, filled out all our documents and rushed back to the Airbnb to collect our stuff. We had to meet the boat at 3:30. Not much time for error!

The above is not our boat. But with those awesome cats… I wish it was. 

We ended up on the Ocean Endeavor (run by Quark Expeditions) – a boat with 199 passengers and another 140 or so crew members. It’s the perfect size for us – big enough that the boat should be a little more steady in the Drake Passage, but small enough that you have flexibility to do a lot of activities and recognize some new friends that you’ve met. Taking this ship also meant that we got to meet up with an old friend – Fr. Tom, a friend of one of my closest family friends. Tom and I had met only a handful of times before – possibly 2, possibly 3 times – but it is still so much fun to reconnect in Antarctica! It didn’t take us long to meet up (1 point Tom – but remember I get 3 points for getting on the ship in the first place). Definitely looking forward to spending some more time together over the next 10 days.

The room situation ended up great – we had a triple and then Michael was in a separate triple with two random dudes. But when we got into our room, there were 4 beds! So we collected Michael and now we’re rooming pretty tight with all four of us breathing the same air… which is great. We’re only in the room to sleep, so it’s nice to have a central meeting point. 

We’re still trying to get orientated, but we’re starting to look into additional excursions and trips for the week. But let me tell you – I’m completely pumped!!!! 

Also not our boat but a super cool ship in the harbor: