In early November of this year (2018) we were fortunate to be able to take an indescribably amazing 10 day voyage on the Ocean Diamond across the Drake Passage from Cape Horn to Antarctica! All of the information you need to take a similar journey is available in our post, How To Go to Antarctica Cheap. This post is dedicated to showing some of the amazing photographs that we captured and encourage you to think about Antarctica and all of the natural beauty it possesses. For more information about Antarctica and Antarctica conservation, check out these links, or follow the amazing polar photographer @Paulnicklen on Instagram.
For our trip, we departed Ushuaia, Argentina for a two day trip across the Drake Passage to our first land sighting in the South Shetland Islands. We landed on Barrientos (Aitcho Islands) and saw our first several hundred, penguins! From there we cruised through the night and the morning saw our first view of the Antarctic Peninsula. We landed on Hydrurga Rocks, an island close to the peninsula in the morning and in the afternoon made our first official Antarctica Continental landing on Portal Point. It was named this because to early explorers it was seen as the best point to begin the journey by foot to the interior of Antarctica. To us, it sure didn’t look like a place to take off by foot, but the adventurers who first explored Antarctica were a very hardy bunch.
After that we took in Cuverville Island, a very scenic island with colonies of Gentoo Penguins. That afternoon we visited Waterboat Point at Chilean Base Videla. It received its name as an homage to two young men who overwintered on Waterboat Point from 1921-1922 in a shack built from the wood of a whaling water boat. For a very interesting story about their survival and geological research, look up Thomas W. Bagshawe and Maxime C. Lester.
The following day we were disappointed by ice in the first bay we tried to visit, but found a great alternative at Danco Island and then cruised through Skorntorp Cove (Paradise Bay).
On our final morning at the Peninsula, we were the first ship of the year to be able to successfully traverse the Lemaire Channel, a straight between Kiev Island and the Antarctic peninsula. It is 11 km long and at one point as narrow as 1600 meters. The granite cliffs that jut up the sides are spectacular and the waters are filled with icebergs. The credit goes to our amazing captain for giving us the opportunity to see this amazing channel. As a result, we were also able to land on Petermann Island, and see our third species of penguins, the Adelie.
No trip to Antarctica is complete without a momentary loss of sanity, which we both experienced when we decided to participate in the Antarctic Polar Plunge. We stepped outside into the falling snow and jumped into waters that were just below 0 degrees Celsius. It was a perfect way to bid farewell, and for me embodied the spirit of the many incredibly brave and adventurous explorers who came before us and discovered the wonders of Antarctica.
Our return trip was fairly uneventful, with our ship squeezing between two cyclone storm systems, keeping our ocean swells down to no more than 6 meters at their highest.
I am very grateful to have been able to make this journey and thankful to the Quark Expedition team for such an amazing experience!
Don’t forget, if you want to experience Antarctica as cheaply as possible, read our post, How to Go to Antarctica Cheap. You might also be interested in our tips to travel in Argentina, which you can find here!
Antarctica has long been on my bucket list. While attending the military medical school I found a doctor stationed at McMurdo Sound to sponsor me for 12 weeks, but couldn’t get the Navy to agree to fly me. I’m not sure a polar bear plunge would be good for my heart though! I couldn’t find your post How To Go to Antarctica Cheap.
Thanks for reading! I will have the post on Antarctica on a budget up by Monday, 12/17. I asked the ship doctor if he could give me a good reason not to do the plunge and he didn’t have anything for me, so I decided I needed to do it! It was an amazing experience and our trip was only 10 days. I’m sure they’re always happy to have a good doctor or two around. They told us a story of a doctor who was there for a 1 year contract but the replacement doctor wasn’t able to come so he was going to have to stay for another winter. He wanted to go home so badly that he set fire to the entire base. He did get to go home, but not as a free man. Look for the new post on Monday. Take care!!