Antarctica - November, 2005

One of Bill’s “dream” trips had always been a visit to the icy realms of Antarctica.  In November of 2004, he finally got the chance to realize his dream with a two-week odyssey.

In 2005, the opportunity came with a trip organized by Quark Expeditions.

The first leg of the trip was a long plane ride from Portland to the tiny town of Ushuaia, Argentina.  As it is the southernmost inhabited city in the world, Ushuaia proudly bills itself as el fin del mundo (“the end of the world” to those of you not fluent in Spanish).  It started out as a penal colony, but now caters mostly to tourists who are visiting Tierra del Fuego or are sailing to Antarctica.

After two nights in Ushuaia, we boarded the Russian ship Lyubov Orlova to begin our voyage.  The Orlova is named after a Russian movie star (no kidding) because, well, that’s how they name their ships in Russia.  I suppose politicians are too transitory to risk naming a ship after them.  The Orlova is a small vessel, carrying 104 passengers in comfort, if not luxury.  Almost before we boarded, Bill discovered that the ship’s doctor was an alumna of the same high school Bill had attended in Beirut.  We immediately convened a two-person school reunion.  We didn’t see too much of her during the rest of the trip since she was mostly busy handing out seasick pills.

The reason for the pills quickly became apparent as we sailed into the notorious Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica.  For 36 hours the ship was rocking and rolling to the point where we couldn’t even play Scrabble (the tiles would slide off the board!) and walking involved frequent crashes into fellow passengers or various hard parts of the ship.  The crew was very helpful, constantly assuring us that this was an exceptionally smooth passage.

Once we got close to Antarctica, though, the seas moderated and we sailed in calm, clear weather as we toured around.  As you can see from our pictures, the weather was beautiful and sunny.  It was also not terribly cold – around freezing for the most part.  We made landfalls and were able to go ashore nearly every day.  At every stop, we were greeted by huge colonies of penguins.  Depending on the location and species, they were engaged in various stages of mating, ranging from the initial courtship to sitting on eggs.  The varieties we same all made nests out of pebbles on patches of ice-free ground.  They mostly stayed fairly close to the water so they were able to feed easily.  The item that most surprised us was the awful smell.  You see, penguins are not housebroken, and their feces smell like you would expect from animals that live on fish.  In addition, there is no rain to wash things away, so it just stays there and reeks.  Our presence didn’t seem to bother the birds although we had been told not too get to close to nesting pairs.

We took many pictures of the most spectacular scenery we have ever seen.  Majestic, icy peaks and glaciers constantly surrounded us at all times.  Each day we would hop on the Zodiacs and cruise to shore through floating ice-mountains.  Through it all, the weather remained postcard perfect and we might have been sailing in the Caribbean (except for the trifling matter of being bundled up to our eyeballs at all times we were outdoors).

At the end of the ten days, we took another 36 hour cruise through the Drake Passage back to Ushuaia and headed for home.  This trip will definitely go down as one of Bill’s top ten.