BACKGROUND
Three years ago, I realized that I kept defaulting in my travels to Europe so I decided I wanted to see other diverse and unique parts of the world. I made it my goal to visit all the continents, leaving Antarctica last because it just felt natural that this continent that hardly anyone ever goes to should be last. There were of course other things that drew me to Antarctica—the remoteness. The natural beauty. And of course, the penguins! Typically, landscapes, animals and solitude are key elements when visiting somewhere that turns into one of my favorites. You wouldn’t think so, but Antarctica is one of the easiest trips I’ve planned. Since I don’t really book organized tours or packages, I’m used to planning every logistical detail. But tourists are unable to visit Antarctica on their own. They must go with an organized tour, preferably one that strives to leave less of an environmental impact.
THE DRAKE PASSAGE
Early in my research, the company, Quark Expeditions, kept standing out to me with great reviews. Some of the travel bloggers I follow traveled with them. A lot of travel forum groups I belong to raved about them. So about three years ago, I decided when it came time, Quark Expeditions is the company I would go with. As I researched more and more about Antarctica, I read a lot about the dreaded “Drake Passage” ships have to sail through and that it is some of the roughest waters in the world. Waves can be around 30 feet high with strong winds and you sail through that for literally 48 hours. Nope. I started having second thoughts about the trip because I can get pretty sea sick in a little bit of rocky waters. This is on another level. Luckily, I found that Quark Expeditions had a cruise option called Fly the Drake. Instead of leaving from the bottom of Chile or Argentina and sailing through the Drake Passage, you board a 2 hour flight in Chile that takes you to King George Island in Antarctica where you get on your ship. That saves you about four days of crossing the ocean and possible vomiting most of that time. I didn’t see any other company that had this option. One company offered a fly the drake down, but sail it back option.
TRIP COST
As you can imagine, the trip I picked was much more expensive than a cruise there and back option. But if you look at those itineraries, the actual time in Antarctica is about 3 maybe 4 days. I was able to spend 10 full days in Antarctica. Now there’s the obvious question most people want to know, second only to if I saw any polar bears (spoiler alert—polar bears are up North in the Arctic, not Antarctica)—how much does a trip to Antarctica cost? Well, the cheapest trips would probably start at $4000. Those would typically be last minute deals where maybe you are in Chile or Antarctica and are waiting there to fill any remaining spots. Those would likely be in a triple room. Cruises can run all the way up to $50,000 depending on if you are upgrading to the best rooms on the ship. On average, I would say a sail over trip would be about $7,000. Luckily, a lot of companies offer the option if you are traveling solo to pay for your share and they will pair you with another single. Otherwise you would be paying double for the room. I opted the second cheapest option and picked a twin room instead of a triple. I ended up booking and starting to pay for this trip two years out, after starting to save money for this trip a year prior.
GEAR
I did a lot of obsessing over what to bring and buy for this trip. I was actually really stressed out about this, as we were only allowed to bring 30 pounds worth of gear. This being all winter gear and the fact that I never pack less than 50 pounds had me obsessing about this for a couple of months. I could probably do a separate blog post on just the packing alone, but in general, what you should wear is basically a base layer that wicks sweat (either wool or heatgear by Under Armour), a fleece layer over that, then a waterproof layer on top. Most expedition companies provide a waterproof coat for you to wear. Quark Expeditions has their signature yellow parka.
STRESS
I’d never felt so stressed out going into a trip! I was worried so many things. I was worried about my roommate—would she snore, would she keep the room really hot, would she even speak English? Rooms on cruise ships are notoriously tiny and we were going to be sharing one for 10 days. I wouldn’t have been so worried about it if we were in a regular sized hotel room. Then there was the gear situation. Y’all, I was literally measuring out strands of floss for this trip in order to come within the weight limits. There isn’t a drug store or Target in Antarctica if you need something so there was the added stress to have everything I need. I was also super worried about getting sick. Antarctica is an expedition, not a vacation or just a trip. You need to be running around a moving boat, changing gear quickly, hopping on shaky zodiac boats and paddling in freezing water. So getting sick would really compromise the trip. I was also worried about my experience level with sea kayaking and if it would be enough for this trip. So I was a little ball of stress leading up to this trip.
CHILE
Since I had to fly to Antarctica from Chile, I figured I might as well take some extra time to explore Chile. I was in Chile for two weeks before my embarkment date which turned out to be both a good thing and a bad thing—bad because traveling around Chile for two weeks was very draining and one person I was traveling with got me sick when I had tried so hard to be 100% healthy before this trip. Good because Quark Expeditions ended up starting our Antarctica trip a day early! I happened to already be at the hotel we were departing from when I received the email with the change of plans because I wanted to spend two nights and one day relaxing and recharging from my Chile trip. Nope.
When booking the trip, they warned us extensively that there was a real possibility weather conditions could cause our flight to be delayed leaving. It could even possibly leave several days after the original departure date. In fact, a couple weeks prior an entire trip was cancelled because the weather just wouldn’t clear up. When booking the trip, I had the option to go with a 7 day trip or a 10 day one. I picked the 10 day one precisely because I knew a several day delay was a real possibility. But no one ever mentioned leaving early was a possibility. This certainly added to my stress level as I was prepared to relax before Antarctica. However, many other people on my trip had it a lot worse—as we were sent an email on a Friday afternoon that we were leaving Saturday morning instead of Sunday afternoon, many people planned their flights to arrive in Chile late Saturday. So there was a mad scramble for people to change their flights in order to make it on time. Luckily, only a couple of people were unable to make it and catch the flight to Antarctica out of the 116 guests that were to be onboard.
Another new stressor for me was that the coronavirus was just announced in China and we happened to be on a ship heading to the end of the world with no hospitals around with about 30 people who just came from mainland China.
But let’s get on with the expedition, shall we?
ANTARCTICA
DAY 1- EMBARKATION
As I mentioned above, our first day was supposed to be dedicated to having a briefing about logistics on our flights and getting to our cruise ship followed by a group dinner. But our expedition leader looked at the forecast and determined that the weather for Sunday looked bad and our flight would be likely canceled, so she bumped our departure up to Saturday morning. Instead of relaxing Friday night, we did things like collect our boots and coat, have any debris vacuumed from our luggage, fill out necessary paperwork and then weigh our luggage (I may or may not have shoved in a few extra things after my luggage was weighed). We were split between two flights and I was the on the second flight. In the morning, we had breakfast and waited for our groups to be called to be taken to the airport. The Punta Arenas airport is very small with only a few gates so it didn’t take long to get through check in and security. Immigration took some time, however. Finally, we boarded our two-hour flights on planes that looked like penguins.
We landed on King George island at a Chilean military base that allows Quark Expeditions guests to walk through their base in order to catch zodiac cruise boats to take us to our ship. Zodiac boats are small inflatable open air boats that allow for 10 passengers who face each other in the boat. They are used on Antarctica trips both to transport people from the cruise ship to the shore and also for cruising around the water to find different animals like whales and seals. The small boats allow you to get close, which you can’t do in a cruise ship. On a typical day in Antarctica, we would normally do one landing and one zodiac cruise. However, I booked a sea kayaking excursion option which allowed me to be on a sea kayak as opposed to zodiac cruise when conditions allowed.
After we walked through the Chilean military base, we were greeted by our first penguins and some of the guides who took us on the zodiacs to the cruise ship. I met my roommate on the ship in our tiny room. My roommate was a woman from Madeira Island Portugal which ironically is where I had my next trip planned so she gave me a lot of good travel trips. She also didn’t snore and didn’t mind me keeping our room on the cooler side. Overall, a good roommate. She did get a cold at the end of the trip, though, so I was worried I would catch that.
We finally had our first briefing. So every night, we would have a briefing where we would go over what happened that day and team members would give different presentations on things related to what happened, for example what animals we saw, photography tips, and presentations on the geology. At the end of those briefings, our expedition leader would let us know the plan for the next day. For any Antarctica trip, you don’t have a specific schedule like you would for a typical cruise. Each day is planned the night before after the expedition leader and the ship captain look at the projected wind and weather patterns of the surrounding sights.
DAY 2- GRAHAM PASSAGE
When I first booked my Antarctica trip two years prior, I immediately signed up for the sea kayaking excursion. From all my research, I found everyone couldn’t say enough about the sea kayaking program in that it completely changed their experience, which I would certainly agree with. Only 16 people can be apart of the program and two people ended up dropping it as recommended by the instructors for health reasons. Basically, whenever the rest of the ship is doing zodiac cruises, we can be out on our kayaks as long as the ocean isn’t too rough. We also have the option to do the kayaking during landings, but I ended up preferring to explore the land as much as possible instead of kayaking. The sea kayaking was offered nine times during this trip and I went seven out of the nine.
The sea kayaking was also something that made me feel a little stressed as I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with it, so last summer I did a lot of local kayaking and used the row machine a lot. I never did do a “wet exit,” which I didn’t know was something recommended for the excursion. A wet exit is basically being able to escape from a sea kayak if it flips over since you have a spray skirt attached to you that you fasten around the opening of the kayak so you really have to be able to pull yourself out. Our instructors didn’t act like it was a big deal for those of us who hadn’t done a wet exit before (they basically just told us to feel along the sides until you feel the tab at the front and pull it up to escape). Luckily, none of us ended flipping over.
Because we got out to Antarctica a full day early, we were able to start our trip exploring a place called Graham Passage. That morning, we had our sea kayak fittings and briefings and it was determined that the weather would be safe for sea kayaking. I was glad I could get the first time over with so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. Our gear for kayaking was different than the gear we would wear for the zodiac boats and landings. On top of our fleece layer of clothes, we wore onesie dry suits with little booties, a life jacket, waterproof gloves and normally two different hats—a beanie to keep you warm and a baseball hat to keep any water or sun out of your eyes. Since it got hot waiting around with all that gear, we would all wait up on the top deck watching as the zodiacs got loaded into the water and the sea kayaks got attached to one of the zodiacs.
Another big plus about the sea kayaking program was that we were always the first group of people to leave the ship so we would be the first ones out and usually the last ones back in, getting more time out than everyone else. We would get on the zodiac boat that would tow the kayaks out and then get on our kayak from the zodiac boat. I was super worried about this at first, worrying I’d fall in, but the guide has his kayak on the outside of your kayak and on the other side of your kayak is the zodiac boat, so you are pretty wedged in there and its not too difficult to slide from the zodiac boat to your kayak.
We had the option to either use a single or double kayak, and it didn’t matter either way to me so the whole time I was in double kayaks but my kayak partners changed several times during the week. Sea kayaks are different than regular kayaks in that your kayak is submerged in the water and you have a spray skirt keeping the elements out so it felt warmer in the sea kayak than it did on the zodiac boat. The steering took some time to get used to. The person in the back of the kayak has pedals that you push down to determine which direction you go, while in a recreational kayak you are steering with the oars. I was also surprised by how calm the water was. I did a lot of practice last summer in a local lake and it was as calm as the lake since we were wedged in between different bodies of land to block the waves. The kayaking was one of my favorite things about Antarctica as it was really peaceful and you felt very connected to the land since it was just you and your kayak.
In general, at Graham Passage we just kind of got used to the kayaking and saw different birds and glaciers. It was pretty misty and cloudy that first day as well. I didn’t bring my camera the first time since I didn’t really know what to expect. After we got back on land, we had dinner, our briefing, and a lecture on Antarctic photography before going to bed. In general, I don't have as many pictures of myself that I usually do on trips. Going solo provides challenges when it comes to taking pictures of yourself. I didn't really want to ask a lot of people to take pictures of me, a lot of the reason being the whole germ issue since the coronavirus was just beginning. Also you kind of have to take what you get when it comes to strangers and people still seem to think a good picture involves a close up of your smiling face, centered, with hardly any backyard. And most places were too windy and unstable to set up my tripod. I also didn't wear make up since my weight limits permitted me from carrying it and we didn't really have much time in the morning to get ready. So I came into the trip knowing most of my pictures would be of landscapes and penguins.
DAY 3- DANCO ISLAND & THE MELCHIORS
On a typical day during the course of the trip, we would sail to two different locations to explore. We would wake up, have breakfast, explore our first destination of the day, sail to a second location during lunch, explore the second destination of the day, have our briefing, have dinner, have a presentation, then go to bed. We were basically on the go from 7AM or earlier until 9 or 10PM. As the age demographic for the ship was mainly people of retirement age, I was thoroughly impressed with their ability to push through, as the trip in general was pretty physically demanding—pulling on and off our heavy gear several times throughout the day, hopping on moving zodiac boats, cruising around the boats in the rain snow and wind, hiking up snow covered mountains, going non-stop for basically 12 hours. It was pretty exhausting for me who goes to the gym 5 days a week so those retirees were really bad ass! `
Danco Island was our first landing on the Antarctic peninsula! The Zodiac boats took us to the island which had a steep 590 foot high slope that we trekked up for the gorgeous views and (more importantly) our first look at gentoo penguins. Gentoo penguins are the third largest penguin (after the emperor and king) and are known for their distinctive red-orange peaks and white-feather caps. They are found in more northern parts of the Antarctic and stay closer to the water. We saw more gentoos during the trip than any other penguin species. One really cute thing about them is they give a pebble to their mate as a gift! Like a lot of the places we went, the snow is covered in pink and green algae, which sometimes makes it hard to tell whether the snow covering is penguin poop or the pink algae. After taking it up to the top of the hill, we came across more than 1000 breeding pairs along with a lot of baby chicks.
Besides the sea kayaking, my other favorite part of the trip was when I could kind of go off on my own and just sit and watch the penguins, taking everything in. This place was the first of those moments. As a rule, Quark Expeditions will not allow guests to get less than 15 feet away from the penguins. If they come to you, that’s okay but you cannot approach them any closer than that. So I was able to just sit in the snow 15 feet from them and watch them interact with each other most of the time we were on that island.
Before lunch, our captain spotted Orca (killer whales)! Orca are extremely rare to see. During the trip prior to ours, our crew said they didn’t see any at all. They were spotted at several different points, so we had to keep pulling on all of our cold weather gear and running outside.
After lunch, we had our afternoon excursion to cruise around the Melchiors. Because the weather was quite “sporty,” we weren’t able to kayak this day, so we did a zodiac cruise instead. Here, we saw a few stray chinstrap penguins and my first fur seals. Beginning in the 1790s and continuing on throughout the 19th century, fur seals were heavily hunted during the America Fur Seal trade. They were hunted to near extinction but now the population is pretty heavy. Fur seals tend to resemble sea lions more than seals though.
The Melchiors also have an Argentinian base located on the island, but it is hardly ever manned.
DAY 4- LEMAIRE CHANNEL, YALOUR ISLANDS & PETERMANN ISLAND
This day was one of my two favorite days in Antarctica because of Petermann Island. First, though, we were woken up with the news that we were sailing through the Lemaire Channel! The Lemaire Channel is a big deal because most Antarctica cruises don’t go much further than this place since they have those four days at sea traveling through the drake passage. It is also well known for the beautiful view since you have glaciers very close on either side of you. Unfortunately, that morning the weather was pretty gray, but when we came through several days later, it was a lot prettier.
After breakfast, we did some kayaking around the Yalour islands. This was a cool destination because we got to kayak between some narrow land masses. You could also see and hear the waves crashing behind different glaciers.
Then, back on the ship, we spotted even more orca! This time I got a full look at them. The majority of time when you’re seeing whales, you mainly will see the tail and a little bit of the body sticking out.
After lunch we did a landing at Petermann Island. I loveddddd this place! This island is home to both Adelie penguins (around 500 pairs) and the most southernly colony of gentoo penguins in Antarctica (around 2000 breeding pairs). Of the four penguin species we saw during the week, Adelies were my favorite. I thought they were really pretty, with a little white circle around their eyes that almost look blue. They are also cold-weather badasses because they are only one out of two penguin species that both live on the continent year-round and breed there. There is the misconception that all penguins are monogamous, but that’s not the case. Adelie penguins have a very short breeding period, so if their mate from last year doesn’t show up on time, they “divorce” and find a new one.
This island was very pretty in general, especially with all the pink sea algae. We were able to walk around pretty far on this island and went up a hill with beautiful water views. Then I went back to try to get on a zodiac to take me back to the ship, there was a long line so I just sat for awhile on some rocks, watching the penguins run around and soaked it all in.
Although this was one of my favorite destinations and days in Antarctica, this was my least favorite night. This particular itinerary included crossing the Antarctic Circle. I should have thought about that more clearly and what it meant. And what this meant was that to get there, you are crossing through open water. And the reason I didn’t want to cross the Drake was because you are going through open water, meaning there isn’t any land to break up the ocean current. So this night, the night before we crossed the Antarctic Circle, I got really sea sick. I tried to go outside and look out into the ocean to stop from getting sick. People were really helpful on the ship. The maître D located the ship doctor for me who gave me sea sick meds. My sea kayaking guide brought me water and kept checking on me. Even though it was freezing outside, I stood out there for 40 minutes until finally, I just got sick everywhere. I decided just to go to my room because the outside air wasn’t helping and my roommate was super nice and brought me water and ice. But I just kept getting sick. The ship was pretty much doing a rolling motion. Later, the crew said that what we experienced that night was not even a quarter as bad as what the Drake Passage can bring.
So in general, the ship rolled more than I expected, throughout the whole week. Someone on the ship said it had to do with the recent renovations for the ship, so it made it roll differently. Either way, after that night, I took Dramamine everyday as a precaution. And it definitely made me glad I didn’t cross the Drake Passage if that was so much worse than this!
DAY 5- CROSSING THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE AND DETAILLE ISLAND
Every morning, our expedition leader would wake us up over the ship intercom, usually playing snippets of a song followed by announcing our location using the longitude/latitude and how many nautical miles we traveled during the night. This morning was unique because we were about to cross the Antarctic Circle. The Antarctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It is the parallel of latitude at 66° 33′ 39″ south of the Equator, crossing mostly the Southern Ocean. In the Antarctic Circle, all places have twenty-four hours of daylight on the Summer Solstice in December. It’s a pretty big deal to make it this far South, as none of the expedition ships sailing across the Drake Passage would have enough time to make it this far and even some fly and cruise expeditions fail to reach this far because ice sometimes takes so long to break up and melt that cruising this far isn’t possible until way into the summer season. In fact, our expedition trip is the only one that will go this far this whole year for Quark Expeditions. A previous voyage was supposed to make it this far a couple weeks earlier but there was too much ice that it would have taken two extra days at sea just to make it. Our expedition trip was also the last fly and cruise expedition of the season, so we were so lucky to be able to make it so far.
As exciting as it was, I was still feeling gross and worn out from my bout with seasickness the night before. As we went to the decks to celebrate crossing the circle, the crew was handing out grog (rum and ginger ale) for us to toast with. I’m not normally one to welcome alcohol after a night of being sick, but I figured I’d made an exception for the occasion.
Our sea kayaking that morning was one of my favorites! We went out in an area called Crystal Sound where there was sea ice floating all over. Sea ice is different in that it is frozen ocean water. It forms, grows, and melts in the ocean. In contrast, icebergs, glaciers, and ice shelves float in the ocean but originate on land. We literally had to push the ice out of the way as we were kayaking and you would hear the constant snap, crackle, and pop of the ice. We also got pretty close to a lot of crabeater seals who were sleeping on random pieces of ice. It was so peaceful and so cool hardly any tourists make it this far.
We had a little hot chocolate stop on the water and then were able to all get out of our boats and stand on a piece of floating sea ice. From there, we spotted an Emperor penguin! Through binoculars though since it was so far away. Emperor penguin live on a completely different side of Antarctica. You have to go on an Emperor penguin specific expedition wayyyy far off the beaten path to see the colonies, so this one definitely got lost. They are the largest of all the penguin species. We all must have scared it because the zodiac boats moved toward its last location but no one could find it. Our expedition leader, who has been in the industry for more than 10 years, said that was the first time she ever spotted an emperor penguin so even though we didn’t get up close, the fact we saw it was bad ass. The picture below is from a camera on super zoom mode.
Our afternoon excursion was a landing at the Detaille Island, where a hut was used as a British station and was abandoned in 1959. The station still has the same items there that they did in 1959 like newspapers, books, bedding, maps, and pantry items since the crew left most things behind when they trekked the 25 miles to reach a boat to leave since the boat couldn't break through the sea ice. It was really interesting to see this place as basically a time capsule from that period. We also saw a lot more crabeater seals and some Weddell seals.
Most of the time when we came back from one of our excursions, the crew would have little snacks and sandwiches ready for us and I would usually get hot chocolate. We definitely did a lot of eating during the week. Alcohol drinks were the only things not included in the fare for the week, but normally everyday, something special was going on where they would pass out a free drink at whatever new thing was happening. Wine was also included during dinners. Our breakfast and lunches were buffets with a special dish option prepared in front of you that varied each day and the soup differed as well. We had a couple of buffet dinners, but most were sit down with three courses. The tables were pretty large which encouraged different parties to sit together for meals. The Quark staff would also split up during the meals and sit with guests to get to know them better and have a nice chat.
DAY 6- FISH ISLANDS, THE POLAR PLUNGE & PROSPECT POINT
The Fish Islands were a really fun place to kayak. There were literally very small islands located all around the area that is home to around 4000 breeding pairs of Adelie penguins between colonies. We were able to kayak really close to the little islands and get really close to them. There were also new types of birds that would dance right above the ocean and dive in.
As soon as we got back on the ship, our expedition leader announced that today was the day! The weather was calm enough for the polar plunge. Now I do not like cold water. Even in the summer time sometimes its hard for me to get in the water because it feels too cold. Back in my hometown, every January, we have a polar plunge. I always thought it was soooo stupid. Why would anyone ever do that?? What a dumb thing to do—go to the beach in January and jump in the freezing water. Well. Here I was, deciding that I had to do it, because when else would I get the opportunity to jump in the ocean in Antarctica below the Antarctic Circle? If you’re going to do something stupid, you might as well go all in, you know? We weren’t supposed to wear robes or anything, just our swimsuit and some shoes and they would give us a towel after we came up. I rushed to be near the front of the line just to get it all over with. Unfortunately, they offered to give us shots of vodka AFTER we finished the plunge which made no sense to me. What’s the point of doing it after that fact? Had I know, I probably would have taken a couple of shots at the upstairs bar before getting in line. I started to regret my decision as soon as I got near the front of the line and felt the wind coming in from the outside. Finally, it was my turn. Throughout the week, I talked to crew members about the polar plunge who had done it before. They all seemed to be in agreement that the worst part is when they fasten the cold, wet rope around your waist and the second worst part is walking barefoot down the cold metal steps. Nope. The worst part is when the hit the ice cold water after jumping off the launch point. That. Was. Cold. Shockingly cold. I feel for Rose and Jack when they jumped off the Titanic. Then, you have to swim back up to the surface and climb out, wait for them to untie the rope, climb up the steps before finally having a towel handed to you. Was I glad I did it in hindsight? Yep. Will I ever do a polar plunge again? Nope. Absolutely not. I immediately ran to my room to shower and it took me ages to feel warm again. But I definitely felt like a badass. Only 47 out of the 116 guests jumped in.
After we all did the plunge, lunch was served as we headed to our next destination—our first continental landing on Antarctica! The Antarctic Peninsula is quite long, so up until this point, we were on scattered islands among the peninsula. A lot of Antarctic cruises never actually land on the portion that is a part of the mass continent since they don’t travel as far south as we did. So the fact that we actually were about to was really exciting! The actual place, Prospect Point, not so much. We basically got to walk up a steep hill so see some views and also see some remains when this area was used as a British research station. It’s worth noting, however, that the further South we got, the bluer the skies seemed to get! It was also fun watching a bunch of Adelie penguins scooting back and forth our walking route on their bellies. We were able to take pictures with the Antarctica flag which was nice. I heard from people on other excursions that if you wanted to take pictures with a flag, you had to purchase it at the ship’s gift shop for $75 so it was nice this was provided for us.
This very long day ended with a deck BBQ! Every other night we ate dinner in the dining room. This night, they served the food up on the deck and prepared the tables for us to sit outside. I sat with my friend Sam and her mom. Her mom had the brilliant idea to sit next to the hot tub, as it was giving off steam and made us a little warmer while we were sailing along. We also had great views off the back of the ship to watch as seals swam closely behind the ship.
DAY 7 PLEANAU BAY, PORT CHARCOT & PORT LOCKROY
On day seven, we went kayaking at a place called Pleanau Bay. This place is known for having what’s called an iceberg graveyard. An iceberg graveyard is when big chunks of ice break off from glaciers and they all get stuck in a specific area, crashing into one another so they can’t float anywhere else and essentially die there. We also had a super awesome experience of Minke whales breaching all around our kayaks! Very cool.
While we were kayaking, we got word from our expedition leader that she found a safe place for us to do a landing on a small ice-free patch of land called Booth Island. So we all got on a zodiac boat which took us to the landing in our kayak gear. It was pretty slippery trekking up the hill at the site and there were a lot of different penguin highways we had to stop for. A penguin highway is an area that the penguins have all decided to cross through so you have to stop and wait for them to go by. There were remains there from a French expedition including the remains of a magnetic hut and a hilltop cairn. We also saw a bunch of fur seals and gentoo penguins.
Back on board, we transitioned once again through the Lemaire Channel going northbound this time. And this time it was bright, sunny and beautiful! If you recall, on day 4 when we went through it southbound, it was very gray and misty. This time it looked like the pictures in all those online brochures and Instagram posts!
For our afternoon landing, we went to Port Lockroy. Port Lockroy is an occupied research station but is more well-known for the only (tiny) gift shop in Antarctica as well as the only post office in Antarctica. This is where you mail your letters if you want to have an Antarctica stamp and to officially be considered mail from Antarctica. I mailed a few letters for some friends and one to myself. You can also have them stamp your passport. While there, we also saw a piece of a glacier break off and fall in the ocean.
Port Lockroy does a lot of research in observing penguins and penguin babies. Because of this, these penguins are super used to humans so they get right next to you! This one baby was climbing on the boots of a girl next to me.
Before heading back to the ship, our zodiac dropped us at Port Charcot that had some whale bones for us to see and a lot more gentoo penguins. I sat on some of the rocks and got to watch them for awhile which was really peaceful.
DAY 8 NEKO HARBOUR & FOYN HARBOUR
The morning in Neko Harbour was beautiful and sunny. It ended up being our last time kayaking. I was in the back of the kayak and my pedals were messed up, so it was a little bit challenging steering. It was really peaceful, though. We could hear the sounds of the glaciers cracking and there were whales, seals and penguins swimming all around us. We also spotted some krill which is the main source of food for penguins and some of the whales and seals.
Then we were taken to our second continental landing! It’s a pretty big deal to be able to go on the actual continent of Antarctica not just once but a second time!
The afternoon excursion brought the worst weather as we made our way to Enterprise Island. We had to zodiac cruise instead of kayak because of the sporty waves and it was actually snowing! I was in the front of the zodiac so by face took a beating from all of the elements. This place was still really cool though. There were actually boats still left in the ocean that sunk during the whaling boom and you could see them clearly poking out of the water. We also saw a leopard seal. Since the weather was so windy, wet, and cold, I didn’t take any of my cameras out to take photos of them though.
We saw probably a dozen or so humpback whales during this trip out! I guess the crappy weather makes for good wildlife viewing. Humpback whales are like the super heros of the whale world. They try to save animals when they see they are being hunted by killer whales. For instance, there was an article about a humpback whale carrying a Weddell seal to safety on its belly after an encounter with a killer whale. There was also a person stranded at sea and a humpback whale took it out of harms way. Studies have concluded that it wasn’t necessarily that the humpback whale cared so much for the other species—it simply wanted to make things difficult for the killer whale.
DAY 9 THE SOUTH SHETLANDS- DECEPTION ISLAND & HALF MOON ISLAND
Deception Island was one of the few specific places I heard about from other people. I was super pumped to hear that we were headed here, as it is completelyyyy different than anywhere in Antarctica—it is actually an active volcano! The island is made of the volcano’s caldera and located near the tip of the Antarctic peninsula and has erupted several times since humans first set foot in the South Shetlands around 1820. When erupted, the volcano repeatedly spewed ash and hot lava into the frigid waters of the surrounding ocean. A violent eruption about 10,000 years ago caused the volcano’s summit to collapse and formed the flooded caldera in the center of the island.
It takes a skilled captain to get to this destination, as the passage (called Neptune’s Bellow) is extremely narrow and there is submerged rock just eight feet below the water level in the middle of the small opening. We woke up at 7AM so watch as the ship navigated through the passage. Unfortunately, the weather was very gray. I was looking forward to taking some really cool photos with the black ash and cinder. Our kayak guide also told us since there was so much to see on the island, he didn’t recommend kayaking. But I didn’t realize we would still be doing a zodiac cruise before our landing. The day before, we also did a zodiac cruise since the weather was bad and I wasn’t feeling two zodiac cruises in a row, which again made me happy I chose the sea kayaking program, as I would have added seven more zodiac cruises to the trip.
The area we explored by zodiac cruise was called Whalers’ Bay. We saw some fur seals and different birds, but I was eager to get to our landing and our cruise was an hour. I didn’t mention this before, but there are restrictions on the number of people who are allowed on different parts of Antarctica at a time. The number is capped at about 100, but we had 116 total on our ship, plus the staff that needs to be on the landing site to help facilitate logistics. So that’s basically why we were doing the cruise and not on the landing site with everyone.
So finally, we were dropped at Deception Island. So besides being a super cool unique volcanic island, Deception Island was set up in 1912 as a whaling station. And on the island, the buildings, whaling equipment and boats are still scattered about. So you’re looking at basically a museum frozen in time on this island along with the volcanic ash and a hot spring. We could also see random artifacts like whale bone and old barrels. So this is just an incredibly cool place to see. One of my favorites from the trip. I wanted to take super cool contrasting photos, as I mentioned, but the weather was just not nice for this landing.
The afternoon brought another really exciting surprise—we were going to see a chinstrap penguin colony! Although we already saw random chinstrap penguins throughout the trip, we had yet to see an actual colony and Half Moon Island has 3300 pairs of them. They are called chinstrap penguins because they literally look like they have a little chin strap beard. The penguins themselves just have a goofier vibe that the other ones we saw. They seem to walk goofier and the chin strap probably doesn’t help. But firstttt, before we went to the island, we had to do another zodiac cruise. I was super salty about a third zodiac cruise in a row, as I just wanted to get to the island.
Finally, we were dropped at the island and THIS PLACE was definitely in my top three places of the trip! First, the weather was beautiful and blue again. Second, there were chinstrap penguins everywhere. And third, the view was just killer! We also got really close to elephant seals and fur seals on the land—not because we were trying to, but because they were laying around on the beach and we had to pass them to view the chinstrap colonies. It was a little unnerving because the fur seals blended in very well as the rocks on the beach so a couple of times I almost walked right up to a couple unknowingly. Getting off the zodiac, we had to hike up to the viewpoint and then go back down on the other side to the beach, walking on rocks the whole time so we didn’t block the pathway for the penguins. Again I thought how awesome it was that the retirees were able to do all these treacherous things. The colonies on the rocks on the beach were cool, but my favorite part was being able to sit on the rocks and watch the penguins as they dove into the ocean and swam away. I probably sat on the rocks for about half an hour watching them. I was one of the last guests left when we had to get up and go back to the ship. The only bad thing was a macaroni penguin was spotted and I missed it! Just one lone macaroni penguin. They are so crazy looking so I wanted to see one. Look them up. They have what looks like really big lips and bright yellow hair.
So that night was our farewell dinner since it was our last night on the ship. The kitchen staff put on a little dance number like they do on most cruises and then surprised us with a chocolate spread for dessert. Then we went to the lounge because our photo guide but together a 30 minute video using her and other guests photos as a video for us to remember our trip. We were sent a copy to download as well. Obviously the cruise was really expensive, but they could have told people that they had to buy one if they wanted a copy. So it was nice they gave us this.
DAY 10- DISEMBARKATION
This concluded our trip. We were actually supposed to leave closer to afternoon, but rough weather was set to move in, so our departure time was pushed up by a couple hours. We had breakfast and then our sea kayaking group had to meet to return our gear and say our goodbyes. Our sea kayaking guide also made a video for us of our week and we were able to download that as well. We toasted to our trip and parted ways.
I went back to my room to await disembarkation since I was the second (last) group to leave. While waiting, they played an entertaining penguin documentary called Blackfish. It covered a lot of penguin mating rituals and was pretty funny. Finally, we left as we came. We took the zodiac boat to King George Island. We walked through the Chile base to the gangway. While there, we saw our planes come in and land. We took our two hour flight back to Punta Arenas and hopped onto a bus to take us to our hotel. Before leaving our ship, it seemed like half the people on the ship were sick with some sort of cold. I wanted to avoid catching anything so I upgraded that night to have a room to myself, which was soooo nice after 10 days of sharing such a small space with someone. After that, I really wanted to finally be able to eat by myself so I went to a pizza place on my own and got to read and enjoy the quiet.
The next day was a long travel day as I had three different flights before I was home. I was finally home after nearly a month because I was in Chile for a couple weeks before my Antarctica expedition. And it really was an expedition. We explored. We were flexible. Every day was unexpected. Every day was challenging in some way. I will say my initial anxieties were warranted but I’m so glad I did it. It was a personal challenge to me. To visit all the continents. To do this alone. To see a place less than 1% of the population will see. And it was important for me to do this now. Who knows what Antarctica will look like in 20 years, 10 years, or even 5? It’s amazing to see these animals and see how unafraid they are. How wild and free they are in their own environment. How humans haven’t yet taken over, even though they tried with the fur seal trade and the whaling industry. Hopefully the actual continent can remain untouched by humans. What a place to discover.
