BONUS More Amazing Iceberg Photos

 REAL-TIME NOTE:  We are back in Orlando. (and WiFi).  Our flight from Ushuaia landed in Aruba!?  Turns out Argentina has no formal agreement with the US for inbound flights(?) so we landed in Aruba, deplaned, ID'ed baggage, went through US customs, re-checked in, reboarded and lifted off for Orlando!

Meantime more amazing photos of Antarctica:

This is a wreck of a whaling ship from around 100 years ago.  At the
end of a very successful season with the tanks full of whale oil, they celebrated
their fortune before sailing back to Norway.  Party got our of hand, a 
fire started and destroyed the ship and the oil and the company.  The
drunken sailors survived.  The mast behind is a modern sailboat!?
We discovered it takes sailboats 4 days to cross the Drake!  Insane with seas
10-30 feet!

Santa at the SOUTH Pole?

Christmas was celebrated with Santa, in a zodiac amongst the icebergs motoring to our ship to bring Christmas cookies for everyone.  The morning excursion and landing was on a huge ice field.  Lots of good views.  In the afternoon we motored among a huge number of icebergs.  Stunning.

 

A note on our days/night cycle.  Sunset is 12:24pm, sunrise is 2:09am.  We sleep by pulling our window blinds closed.  Since we aren't leaving the boat, our morning lecture was on "Who Owns Antarctica".  Short answer, nobody.  It wasn't even seen until 1820!  Of course, no indigenous human population.  Just penguins and seals on it and whales around it.  The penguins and seals continue to flourish, the whales are rebounding.....slowly.

Final two days, no more bandwith

 Hi all,

Short and sweet, no pictures.  Satellite bandwidth for wifi is gone.  I will post Saturday and Sunday's blog from either Argentina or Orlando during layovers.

Last two days were amazing, we'll catch you up, hopefully, Tuedsay morning.

An afternoon with the penguins.....up close.

 After the Orcas and lunch, the weather started to clear and we headed to a new penguin roockery on Danko Island.  Not as huge as the last one but, and not as dirty, either.  Great surrounding views and a few of the penguins were very curious of us.  An unexpected surprise was a minor landslide on other side of the bay.  It cracked like thunder and a 'bit' of snow descended.  The noise was more dramatic than the event.  All the snow stayed on the mountainside, none came down to the bay.

Orcas!

Summer in Antarctica is not like summer in the Arctic.  Since we were working above the Arctic Circle last summer, we are able to compare.  There is no comparison!  The Arctic is water surrounded by land, the Antarctic is land surrounded by water.  Warm, green, mosquitoes (due to mammals) in the Arctic, cold, snowy and no insects in Antarctica.  The list goes on.  BTW, Antarctica is the driest continent on earth,  only 2-3cm of precipitation per year!

The morning zodiac excursion was canceled.  Snow, fog, floating ice.  Indeed, it was announced that our destination was not accessible due to a report from a Russian Icebreaker that was leaving the area!  Nice that everyone is talking to each other.

A BIG surprise for the crew, a pod of around 20 Orcas starting playing with the bow of our ship!  Really, once-in-a-lifetime experience for everyone!  This continued for around 20 minutes.  Everybody was outside taking thousands of photos hoping for a few good ones!  Amazing.

Show off,  he flipped over diving under the ship!

Today, the weather won.....till the afternoon

 The plan today was to land on Useful Island.  Named by whalers a couple of generations ago. Turns out due to weather, high seas and snow depth on the island, it is Useless Island.  Instead, we got a lecture on whales and  went through Berlache Strait to whale watch.  Great lecture, two whales, well 'blows'.  A few saw a couple of whales blow, and that was it.  (We missed them).

So, backtracking to Cuverville Island.  The afternoon was very different.  Good weather, we all climbed into zodiacs and headed out amongst the icebergs to visit a huge penguin rockery.  6,000 breeding pairs!  They are currently arriving from the ocean where they spent the winter to breed and gorge themselves on krill.  Although our paths were controlled by highway cones, the penguins are curious and will waddle right up to you.

After our penguin experience Armann, from Iceland, our zodiac driver gave us an hour tour of the bay, incredible icebergs, and more penguins wherever we went.  A great afternoon.

On the water all day except for a summit

 After repositioning last night we are in Skontorp Cove where we find a Covid abandoned Argentinian outpost.  After a couple of hours of kayaking around icebergs (amazing), we hiked up a 'snow mountain' behind the very small settlement.  Good experience and exercise to work off the calories consumed three times a day.

In the PM, we repositioned to Neco Harbour and rode the zodiac all around the icebergs, big and small.  More penguins and a humpback whale surfaced.

We made it!

 Another night of rockin and rollin. And another day of walking like drunkards.  We are all getting our sea legs but none of us can walk in a straight line.  Drake's Passage was living up to its reputation.   

Follow up on that rogue wave that hit us yesterday morning.  Crew showed us a picture of the breakfast buffet food line, one of the three decks was all on the floor.  A BIG mess to clean up.  Also, crew included a primer on rogue waves at our debriefing last night.  We hope that is our last one!

Today we were fitted with our drysuits for kayaking.  We hope we don't have to use them.  If we go over in our kayak, we will stay dry but not warm.  They did tell us that when kayaks go out, there is a 'guardian angle' Zodiac watching everyone.  Reassuring.

Turned out to be a beautiful day.  In the afternoon, we climbed into the Zodiacs for a short cruise up to a rocky beach full of penguins.  Lots of penguins.  Lots of babies.  Great fun watching them move about.

Elephant seal relaxing

600 mile passage to Antarctica

 On Drake’s Passage.  Seas are pretty high.  The daily cruise report indicates the wind speed, we’ve seen 20-35mph.  But no waves height was reported.  They figure wind speed is helpful, wave height, scary.  They also have sorta-renamed Drake’s Passage.  Really two names: Drake’s Lake or Drake’s Shake.  We are traversing Drake’s Shake.

Orientation went well.  All 20 of the ‘cruise directors’ introduced themselves.  We met the captain and his team just before dinnr.  Another 15 or so all dressed in the navy blues.  Also, we have a large contingent of cooks and servers in the restaurants.  Finally, we have the people that clean the rooms.  In total there are 135 staff and crew.  A better than one-on-one ratio.

One of the numerous parlors to relax in.

Highlight of this day was getting our parkas and Muck boots to wear on the mainland.  (We get to keep the Parkas)  Also, we had to go through Bio-Security.  Any piece of clothing you are wearing in Antarctica as an outer shell, had to be screened.  They basically use a vacuum cleaner to check all the wrinkles, and Velcro areas to prevent any seeds or micro plastics hitch hiking into Antarctica.

Setting sail, well, not really, thanks Covid!

 Now, back to the harbor and on to the ship.  Lots of smiling friendly staff, champagne and finger sandwiches to orient and welcome us.  Our room and balcony are very nice. 

We mustered soon after boarding for our emergency drill with life vests on. Soon after that, we went down to the auditorium to go over our week’s activities.  HICCUP!!  One of the guests tested positive for Covid-19!!  Apparently, she tested negative before her flight to Orlando, negative at the quick test in Orlando.  When she boarded the boat she complained of  'flu-like symptoms', they retested her again and she came up positive.  

Our debriefing was canceled while they interviewed said carrier and did some contact tracing.  Back to the room to await our fate!  Hey, we are leaving port!   Only about 2-3 hours late.  Not bad.  Late dinner with two seatings rather than one, (pre-Covid), to help with social distancing.  

Next day: they gave us the orientation which was postponed from yesterday.  They told us about the Covid carrier.  They escorted her and her companion off the ship last night.  Otherwise, we're on our way but the seas are high and the lots of holding on the rails is essential.  Seas about 10-20 feet.  We were told that one rogue wave actually went over the bow!  This is 5 story ship.  That was a big wave!

This picture doesn't really present the tall waves

Getting There

 This is never easy.  Because we are having to work with a travel agent, they paid for and scheduled our flight from SFO to Orlando.  Normally, we book tickets months in advance for obvious reasons.  Not so with this travel agent.  After daily phone calls for two weeks, they finally booked our flight just last Friday!  Guess what, only a few middle seats in the back of the plane remained.  (This is just before Christmas to the Mecca-Disney World).

With constant checking of the United website, we were able to snag a couple of seats together.  Not easy.  After our pre-departure PCR Covid test, we drove into San Francisco Thursday to stay at a ski patrol friend of Gloria's, then an early morning drive to the airport.  Routine 5-hour flight, everyone behaved. 

 Argentina is very anal about knowing who is coming to their country in these Omicron times.  After numerous attempts to fill out their online multi-page, multi-lingual health and history form, we gave up.  A travel agent attempted as well, she gave up.  Finally, she filled in all the forms on her laptop attaching our negative Covid test and proof of health insurance.  Took over an hour.  We decided that my browser wasn't compatible.  Who knew.  Other travelers were lining up as we finished.

Next, tested again.  This time just a quick antigen test, 15 minutes later, we got a negative and we went into the ‘bubble’.  Food, drink, music, and an amazing magician awaited us for the next few hours. At the assigned time we were all led through the airport to our gate, we all questioned this since our ‘bubble’ collapsed.  Oh well.

We boarded our A-330 wide-body, seats for around 300, there were 126 of us with plenty of room to spread out.  An average dinner, a really lousy night’s sleep, a below-average breakfast, and 11 hours later we landed in Ushuaia.  Now through customs.  Slow like everywhere in the world.  On to three busses for a 40-minute ride to lunch.  Beautiful views of the mountains at the bottom of the world.

This was a dinner house where the focus is on mutton and sled dogs.  They barbeque the mutton and train the sled dogs……we think.  Good meal, continue to meet lots of people.  The average age is MUCH younger than we expected, even several families.  We may be close to the oldest!  

These are the sled dogs

                                                                                               

These are the sheep.....cooking

This is the restaurant's signature drink, kinda coffee with 
cognac, whiskey, scotch, a host of seasonings, actually quite
good.  Pour your own, cups are warmed by the fire.

Planning our Adventure

 This trip has been over one year in the making.  At the end of 2020, Covid was sorta, may be winding down and our interests in international travel were ratcheting up.  Mission/service dentistry was hoped for in summer 2021, Grenada specifically, and another trip to the South Pacific with Canvasback.  We had also been thinking about an Antarctica trip, December 2021, so we committed to that adventure, thinking it would be 'post-Covid'.

As 2021 progressed, all service missions were canceled for the summer as both the Caribbean and Pacific nations were still closed due to a lack of vaccine availability.  Antarctica is only 'open' in their summer/our winter, so we kept our fingers crossed.  Then we had the Delta surge in the fall and now the Omicron hiccup, but it is still a go.  

Timeline: Leave California Friday, December 17, set sail for Antarctica, Sunday, December 19.  We will be Covid tested here at home before we leave and in Orlando again before we head south to Ushaia, Argentina.  Two flights:  non-stop SFO to Orlando and non-stop from Orlando to Ushaia, (11 hours) on the southernmost tip of Argentina.  Quarantine when we arrive, another Covid test, then we board the ship heading to Antarctica.