Antarctic Adventure

After the African safari, there was only one continent that we had not visited, Antarctica. So Mark forced Kate-Lynne, Meg and Wink to undertake an adventure to the final continent. The goal was to set foot on Antarctica. There are severe travel restrictions when visiting the final continent. Ships with large contingents of passengers are not allowed to land and were thus not considered. It is only permitted to have one hundred guests on the continent at a time. We finally settled on Viking Cruise Line as our carrier.

Viking would not book flights from South Africa so we had to do that ourselves. Viking considered Meg and Kate as a separate booking from Mark and Wink, resulting in unintended consequences. Meg’s travel bookings were different from Mark and Wink. Because it was a winter travel event, we decided to go down a day early. Mark and Wink were booked through Miami and Meg was booked through Atlanta. The day of departure Atlanta got six inches of snow and was shut down. Meg got up early and got rerouted through Houston. It was a miserable trip for Meg but she arrived in Buenos Aries safely. Because we came a day early, Viking did not provide a shuttle to the hotel. The hotel claimed it had a shuttle but it didn’t. After we cleared up our misconceptions we got a taxi to the hotel and some much needed rest.

Day One – Jan. 13

Viking passengers gathered as a group at the hotel a day before the cruise. The next morning we had a charter flights to Ushuaia, Argentina. We were herded onto buses and brought directly to the ship, Viking Octantis. It was a 1485 mile plane ride and a huge difference in climate.

We got onto the ship.

Features

• Size: 665 ft long and 77 ft wide 
• Capacity: 378 passengers and 256 crew 
• Staterooms: 189 staterooms, including an Owner’s Suite, Explorer Suite, Nordic Junior Suite, and Nordic Penthouse 
• Expedition equipment: Tenders, Zodiacs, kayaks, Special Operations Boats (SOB), and six-person submarines 
• Science lab: Passengers can participate in citizen science activities 

We set sail that afternoon and headed into the Drake Passage. This is where the Pacific Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean and the seas can get quite rough there. We transited the Drake Passage the first 48 hours on the ship. It was not particularly rough and the ship had good stabilizers.

Here is our actual itinerary.

One of the keys to the Antarctic expedition is the weather. Particularly important is the wind speed, wind direction and the sea state. The itinerary you end up with is seldom the one you started with. There were two occasions where the areas we wished to visit were inaccessible due to ice. We were on an expedition ship. This meant there were opportunities to get out and experience the artic environment. There were four basic activities available to us: zodiacs (including shore landings), kayaks, special operations boats and a submarine. There were limiting sea states for each activity with the submarine requiring the least swell, kayaks next, then the zodiacs and finally the SO boats. Shore landings were also affected by the tides. A determination of safety would be made before a shore landing could be undertaken.

When we got underway from the dock, the first activity was the safety instruction. The alarm sounds were demonstrated, we were shown how to put on our life jackets and located our muster station. After the safety issues, our room stewards introduced themselves and started fitting us with our cold weather gear. The ship provided us with red expedition jackets. There were also pants and boots to fit. We rented further cold weather gear and it was delivered at this time.

It was Meg’s birthday and we had a special meal at the onboard Italian Restaurant complete with birthday cake.

Day Two – Jan. 14

The next day was preparation for the expeditions. There was a briefing for the submarine. There was also testing for the kayaks. You had to demonstrate the ability to get in and out of the kayak from a zodiac. So a test area was set up in the hangar.

I hate to admit it, but I was far from graceful in the field when trying to do this maneuver with a slight swell. I did manage but without my dignity intact. In the brochure they had the Hobie pedal kayaks, but in practice they had too high a center of gravity and too many people were going for a swim.

Day Three – Jan. 15

The morning of Day Three we were still in transit. We arrived at the Melchior Islands in time to explore the area in the afternoon. The weather was not great so only zodiac and SO operations were available. This was a good introduction to Antarctic weather as it was our first time to get dressed in our gear. It took me more than a half hour to get my gear assembled and on. We got better at it as we got more practice. The key to staying warm was having layers. For my legs, I had mid- weight long underwear, polar fleece pants, and waterproof pants. For my feet, I had socks, wool socks and expedition boots. For my torso, I had a medium-weight long underwear top, a polar fleece shirt, a quilted inner jacket and the expedition jacket. For my head, i had a gator, a wool cap, a hood and eye protection. Here is Mark kitted out for the cold:

This was our first trip out in the zodiac. It was snowing, blowing and a there was a bit of a swell. We had a dry bag for our camera and extra gear. It was a good thing our gear was waterproof because we got wet, both from the weather and the spray from the zodiac in the swell. We did not go ashore but we did get close to the landing areas for the base camp on shore.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures this day. Partly it is very challenging to take the sort of pictures I want to take in a bouncing zodiac. It is hard to get the camera settled on the image. There is also a desire to try to keep the camera dry! The weather also impacted picture quality. As a result, I didn’t get many pictures and few good ones. We did see some Gentoo penguins.

We also were beginning to get used to Viking dining.

So we had our introduction to Antarctica.

Mark, Wink, Meg and Kate-Lynne