Antarctica 2023-4 - Days 13-6 - 1/7-10/2024 - Journey home

I’ll combine the remaining days of the trip, as there was not much in terms of activity.

Days 13 and 14 were for sailing back across the Drake Passage toward Ushuaia. Even though the sea was choppier on the return voyage, I didn’t have any issues with seasickness this time around. Day 13 had about 3 meter swells, while Day 14 had 4-5 meter swells. The wind speed on the second day of the crossing reached 50-60 knots, high enough that they closed the outside decks of the ship.

Inside, the days were scheduled with talks and activities, though we skipped out on most of them. The subjects of the talks/activities that I did attend included: the geology of Antarctica, the Antarctic treaty, knot tying, our ship (Ocean Endeavor), orcas (aka killer whales), and a fundraising auction. The auction raised funds for WWF and the Citizen Science charity; notable items up for auction included: driving the ship for 20 minutes, delivering the morning wake-up announcement, the ship’s Antarctica flag for the voyage, and the expedition nautical chart (with additional artwork). The flag and chart each fetched about $800-$900. There was a captain’s farewell event, during which they also presented some employee-of-the-month awards. The executive chef also provided some fun statistics about the amount of food that was consumed during our 1877 (later adjusted to 1927) nautical mile voyage; I don’t remember any specific amounts, but most things mentioned were in the hundreds of kilograms.

Day 13 had a “plant based” dinner to promote Intrepid’s sustainable practices; I use the quotes because: (1) it was a vegetarian dinner, not a vegan one (as I expect the term plant-based to mean); (2) they still had the option to order the standard grilled chicken or fish that was available every dinner. In all, I think the dinner menu was reasonable for the clientele on board; I just have issues with the use of the term “plant based” to describe it.

On Day 14 we settled our shipboard accounts, which included all onboard purchases and gratuity for the ship and expedition crews (they automatically added a suggested amount, which we did not change). We also each got $50 credits for the late boarding and missing dinner the first night of the expedition. We also tagged our luggage with ribbons (organized by bus color) and set them out for pickup before 11pm.

We were originally supposed to be on the pink bus which went directly to the airport, but we changed to the green bus which went to a luggage storage location (a bar that they had rented for the morning/afternoon) since we had plenty of time before our 1:15pm flight. We disembarked around 9am, took the bus the short ride to storage, and stowed our luggage there for a couple of hours. We walked with Liz, Michelle, Diane, and Kayla to a cafe on the main street for breakfast. We made a couple more stops (cafe, pharmacy, chocolate shop) on the way back to storage, where we picked up our luggage and five of us (Diane’s flight was later that night) took a couple of Ubers to the airport.

I somehow didn’t get dinged for overweight luggage, but Michelle did. This caused her to have to wait in the incredibly slow payment line while the rest of us (minus Liz, who waited for her) went through security. It all worked out, though, and she made the flight with us. Liz and Kayla were on later flights. Seating on the Aerolineas Argentina flight was a little weird. The first class section had economy seats, but was half empty - they seemed to only fill at most the window and aisle seats of each set of 3. Fran and I each had a side of row 3 to ourselves; though we had initially selected seats in row 1 at purchase time. We also saw something like 15 or 20 other people from our expedition on the same flight out. And there was another Intrepid couple on our same flight from Buenos Aires to JFK. We had about 5.5 hours between the flights, which were once again in separate airports. We shared a taxi with Michelle from AEP to EZE. The check-in line for Delta was really long, but we had plenty of time and no cause for stress. The flights today were better than the other way a couple of weeks ago in terms of pelvic discomfort. I suspect that the 2 weeks of antibiotics might be helping, but another big factor is less anxiety/stress on the return. I’ll also give a shout-out once again to the Global Entry facial recognition system that made immigration a breeze. The exit process in Buenos Aires also used facial recognition, but it didn’t go quite as smoothly (especially since I scanned the wrong boarding pass barcode, but also because it required taking off my glasses to work). As an aside, we didn’t get Argentina stamps in our passports because I guess everything is going digital.

In closing, I’ll add a few thoughts about the trip overall. I can easily say that this was my favorite trip that I’ve taken over the last 6 years with Fran, and likely also my favorite of my lifetime; though there may be a bit of recency bias there, and I definitely struggle to remember all my past trips. And I say this even with the anxiety and discomfort caused by my pelvic condition. The landscape was more spectacular than anything I’ve seen before. And the excursions were (mostly) great, even though I’m not normally one for the cold. I particularly enjoyed getting close to the whales, and the seals and penguins were also fun to see. It was also good to have Fran to push me to do a couple of things, like day paddling, that I normally would not have done on my own.

When we were at port in Ushuaia, I noticed a couple of fancier looking ships alongside. That got me wondering how much, if at all, the experience would have been improved on a new ship - the Ocean Endeavor is about 40 years old. Besides creature comforts (the other ships had rooms with balconies, and fancier looking terraces), the newer ships would pollute less than the Ocean Endeavor (which seems to release a lot of sooty smoke) does. Intrepid claims to operate carbon neutral, so hopefully they have high quality carbon offsets to balance the ship’s emissions. Nevertheless, I can’t say that I have any regrets about the trip, and would highly recommend Antarctica and Intrepid to anyone interested.

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My favorite pictures from the trip can be found here.

Antarctica 2023-4 - Day 12 - 1/6/2024 - Last of the excursions (Base Brown & Danco Island)

We stayed in Downtown Peninsula for our last day of excursions. The day on ship began with a cool humpback sighting in the morning after breakfast, and ended with an exciting (Type B) orca sighting just before dinner.

The morning excursion to Brown Station was the farthest south we got - almost 65° in latitude. The flag route at the station included a hike up the hill, where they had set up path to slide down on our backs (this was permitted, as opposed to most locations where we weren’t even allowed to kneel, because this was a designated camping site). Fran being Fran, she ran up the hill and did the slide two more times before we left the site. She built up a reputation for being active, where multiple people (like the expedition doctor) were regularly asking her how many times she had been up and down the hills.

Our last excursion brought us back to Danco Island, in the previously visited Foyn Harbour. Fran and I decided that we liked cruising before the landing, so we stayed back a couple of groups after ours was called to ensure that we did the cruise first. The landing portion included more mini-hiking up snowy hillsides and observing Gentoo nests and highways.

After the recap all the passengers went out to the bow of the ship to take a group photo. The forecast for the return across the Drake passage is a bit ominous, with 3 meter swells the first day and potentially up to 5 meter swells the second day. Let’s hope that we can outrun the incoming low pressure zone and minimize the bumps. We began our Bonine course before going to bed.

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My favorite pictures from the trip can be found here.

Antarctica 2023-4 - Day 11 - 1/5/2024 - Foyn Harbour & Cuverville Island

We would spend the next couple of days in the area that the expedition leader referred to as “Downtown Peninsula”. This is the area that most Antarctic tourist expeditions visit. For the morning, we sailed down the Gerlache Strait and hung out in Foyn Harbour. We did a zodiac cruise that took us by a shipwreck (Guvernøren) of an old whaling company. A cool aspect of this cruise is that the ship sailed off afer dropping us off, and the zodiacs caught up to it down the harbor after cruising around.

The afternoon excursion was to nearby Cuverville Island, home to a Gentoo penguin colony. The cruise portion wove through an “iceberg graveyard” off the coast of the island. The landing portion felt a bit less invasive to me than when we went to the Adélie colony. I had been a little cold during the morning cruise, so I added an extra later for the afternoon. This ended up being a bit of a mistake, as I was overheating while walking around. But then I knew better for the next time.

Tonight was the camping night, for those (not us) who opted for that additional excursion. Transfer to the island in Leith Cove for camping began after dinner, around 10pm. There were 60 people camping, and many more on the waitlist. We heard from multiple guides that our expedition passengers signed up for more things than the typical tour group. This seemed to be because we had a younger group than normal; and that in turn was likely because there was a batch of 20+ Remote Year participants on the expedition.

Another random musing… The west side of the peninsula has a noticeably different landscape than the Weddell Sea side. There is more snow, mountains, and glaciers on the west side, while the east side is rockier. I like the general landscape better on the west side, but in the sea I prefer the majestic tabular icebergs of the Weddell Sea more.

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My favorite pictures from the trip can be found here.

Antarctica 2023-4 - Day 10 - 1/4/2024 - Freud Passage & Portal Point

Today was a day of alternate plans. Because, as Ryan would say, it’s an expedition after all. We were originally supposed to have a morning landing at Palaver Point and an afternoon landing at Cierva Cove. Right as they were starting the disembarkation announcements around 8am, they decided to call it off - the winds were too high and the water too choppy. They then scheduled some talks and onboard activities for the morning in place of the outing, while repositioning the ship to look for alternatives. Toward the end of the first talk, the presenter (who was a guide) let us know that he was being called to prepare for a standby excursion. And not too long after it was announced that we would be doing a short zodiac cruise in Freud Passage. We headed out around 10:15am for the one hour cruise with Carlos. The best thing about the cruise was watching 3 humpback whales from the zodiac, though we didn’t get all that close.

The afternoon excursion also ended up being a change from the original plan. It was a split landing / cruise at Portal Point. Since we were in the second to last mudroom group, we went on the cruise first - Julie was our zodiac driver. I think we were originally supposed to cruise for about 35 minutes, but it seemed closer to an hour by the time we were done. We spent the whole time watching a few groups of humpback whales feeding, sometimes getting as close as 100ish meters to them. It seemed like not more than 30 seconds would go by without us hearing spouting in some direction, then we’d each have to figure out which way it was to prepare to take shots as the whales surfaced. It was great seeing so many whales so close; Fran absolutely loved it. She also got a sighting of an almost full humpback breach (one of the things that I would most like to see during the expedition), but I missed it.

The (mainland) landing was at a place where we did a tiny bit of glacial hiking for an hour. The guides had flagged out a path that traversed 2 hills and circled back on itself. The path through the snow was narrow, and we were asked not to deviate from it (in one section in particular there was a danger of crevasses, and in fact that section was blocked off because a crevasse had been recently found). We were also treated to a group of seals resting on the snow - the initial group of 2 grew to 4 as we were leaving. The last point of note is that there was another small group of expeditioners nearby who had apparently traveled there in a yacht - we noticed them in the distance when our ship initially approached, and the hike took us even closer to where they were. I should also mention that we saw one or two cool iceberg calving events.

At dinner we chatted for a while with Chris and Marissa, the guide couple who had led our day paddle outing.

One random item of note… We took advantage of the shipboard laundry to help get our underwear through the whole trip. But I would have been much better off packing underwear for the full duration instead of the extra base layers that I brought along. Conservatively, I think I ended up not wearing about one-third of the clothes that I brought, and simply re-wore items more than I expected. And the laundry prices were as expensive as you’d find at a hotel - $2.50 per underwear, and more expensive for other items.

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My favorite pictures from the trip can be found here.

Antarctica 2023-4 - Day 9 - 1/3/2024 - View Point

In accordance with the early schedule for the day, we had breakfast at 6:30am - 30 minutes after it opened. We were the first normal mud room group (apart from the photography group, who is always first) called for the morning outing, with the call going out a little before 7:20am (about 10 minutes earlier than expected). The original plan was a split landing at View Point (our first Antarctic mainland landing), but the zodiac cruises were cancelled soon after we were on board, and everyone just did a landing. The site was a rocky beach that led to a walk over some shale to an outlook with some man-made structures. There was a meteorological station, two Chilean huts (one long abandoned) for emergency shelter, and a cross. The area around the huts was scattered with Crabeater seal bones and remains, from a hunt by humans. We spent about an hour on land before boarding the zodiacs for the return trip to the ship.

The return to the ship ended up being a bit of an adventure. We headed straight for the ship, but as soon as we approached they pulled up the gangways; the captain decided to move the ship to clearer waters to escape approaching ice. Unfortunately, these clearer waters were also choppier waters. We hovered around for a bit while the ship was being moved, and took a small diversion to go gawk at a seal laying on an ice floe. Afterward we turned and followed the ship through the path it had made through the ice, hovering around and waiting for a decision to open the gangways and allow approaching. After a couple of false starts and some circling, we became the second boat in line to approach. By this time the water was quite choppy in the 35-40 knot winds. The adrenaline level was elevated when the first zodiac had an incident where one side was caught under the gangway and resulted in a puncture of one of the seven compression chambers. Fortunately the passengers were able to unload without any injuries, as the zodiacs are built to withstand multiple punctures. We eventually made it off the boat successfully as well, in spite of the big bumps; we had been on the zodiac for about an hour by that time. All of the other zodiacs also had successful unloadings, and no other ones sustained damage. The expedition leader, Ryan, later said that this was in his top 5 roughest loadings/unloadings in his 70+ Antarctic expeditions.

The afternoon excursion was supposed to be a landing at Brown Bluff. But because of the sustained high winds, the rough time in the morning, and the fact that the ship was running behind schedule because of having to navigate sea ice, the afternoon outing was cancelled. Nobody in the restaurant seemed to be surprised when the announcement was made during lunch. The ship would instead get a head start on passing through the Antarctic Sound to head to the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The day’s programming was updated to include a few afternoon talks to replace the cancelled outing. Fran spent a couple of the afternoon hours out on deck and in the bridge of the ship; the ship has an open bridge policy, where (at almost any time) guests can come hang out in one corner of the bridge, and use provided binoculars. When I went to join her and a few others once, we got into a discussion about how read the electronic chart being displayed. Ryan, the expedition leader, happened to come up to the bridge, so I called him over to ask about the chart. This led to further discussions about his path to becoming an expedition leader, his experiences on Antarctic expeditions, how he plans expeditions and excursions, and other topics; it was an interesting and informative time for the group of people who were up there at the time.

The water became choppy as we navigated to the west side of the peninsula; so much so that I developed a hint of queasiness. I got through dinner alright, though, and then was fine to laze around the room for a couple of hours before turning in for almost 9 hours (!) of shut-eye.

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My favorite pictures from the trip can be found here.

Antarctica 2023-4 - Day 8 - 1/2/2024 - Croft Bay & Devil Island

It was an early morning, with breakfast starting at 6:30am and disembarkation starting around 8:30am. We were still on for the day paddle - basically, paddling in inflatable kayaks - and met in the reception area at 8:20am. Like the kayakers, day paddlers are given dry suits to wear over our internal layers. The instruction and preparation process took a while, but we eventually made it down to board a zodiac. The guides were Chris and Marissa, who just happened to be a couple. The zodiac had 5 inflatable tandem kayaks and 1 regular solo kayak tethered to it. Chris drove us out to some open water, and then we began boarding the kayaks.

I took the front seat of our kayak while Fran took the back. This was my first time in any sort of kayak, and I was initially not good at all. Enough so that Fran at one point told me to stop paddling so she could figure things out herself. I feel like I improved over the course of the 2 or so hours, though, and we were probably the second fastest kayak (vs fourth-ish initially) by the end. More importantly, the paddle was quite spectacular despite my initial learning curve frustrations. We spent a lot of the time paddling through grease ice - the thin layer of flexible ice that forms on top of water as it starts to freeze; this only made the learning curve steeper. In some cases Chris used the zodiac to break a path through the ice for us to follow. The weather was great - sunny and calm - so I ended up taking off my gloves and using just the paddling pogies. The harder than expected ice work and the sunny weather (still around freezing temperature-wise, though) meant that I worked up quite a sweat by the time that we were done. We hopped back on zodiac and Chris drove us back to the ship.

Because we were paddling, we missed out on the regular zodiac excursion. From what we later heard, we didn’t miss much, as they made a relatively simple split landing (half on land, half cruising; then switch) without a ton to see. The original hope was to make a landing on the fast ice at the south end of Croft Bay, but the scouts had found it not strong enough to hold the big groups.

The second outing of the day was another split landing, this time at Devil Island. The island is home to a large Adélie penguin rookery. We were in the second mud room group, so we were one of the first to disembark around 3:45pm. The first half went to land while the other half cruised, and then they switched after an hour on shore. A flag route was set up along the rocky beach, leading right into the penguin colony. We were directed to stay 5 meters away from any penguins, though this was pretty much impossible at times (and some people weren’t trying too hard to meet that guidance), and to walk at “penguin pace”. They also had us move in clusters at penguin pace so as to minimize blocking of the penguins’ paths between the water and their nesting areas. I had mixed feelings about this landing - while it was certainly nice to be so close to the penguins, it was obvious that we were disrupting them (even if without any significant long term impact) on their home turf. The zodiac cruise after the landing was nice, but less of a spectacle than the landing.

The plan for tomorrow includes two more landing attempts within the islands at the boundary of the Weddell Sea before we head over to the western side of the peninsula. However, there’s a chance that the high winds forecasted for tomorrow afternoon could cause that outing to be cancelled; the wind has already started picking up tonight. In any case, there will be an early start once again tomorrow. The post-dinner activity was a talk by one of the guides who spent the last summer and winter working in inland Antarctica for the US Antarctic Program, primarily at McMurdo Station.

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My favorite pictures from the trip can be found here.

Antarctica 2023-4 - Day 7 - 1/1/2024 - Admiralty Sound & Seymour Island

I finally got some decent sleep after the somewhat late night. Our expedition leader Ryan thought that we should start the new year off with a bang, scheduling the polar plunge (where passengers jump into the 0.5°C water) for this morning. Being averse to both cold and deep water, I did not take part in this activity; but Fran was super excited for it. Ryan was also sensible enough to start things off later than normal, with breakfast opening at 8am. Fran did the 8am yoga class, then we met up at 9am to eat.

The ship was parked in Admiralty Sound next to Cockburn Island. The weather for the day was pleasant - although the temperature was similar to yesterday’s 0°C, the sunny skies and lack of wind made things feel warmer. The plunging began around 10am, with Fran’s group being called about half an hour later. It was fun to watch (from the safety of the 7th/8th deck) the various types of jumps that people did. We later found out that 157 people took the plunge, more than 75% of the guests. Most people did some sort of pose facing the photographer, but some people got creative with it. Diane did a back dive, while Fran did a swan dive. A few people slipped as they jumped off, resulting in more of an awkward fall; a couple of people who slipped (including both Tom and TJ) took a second more successful go at it. They put down mats about halfway through to help prevent slipping. After Fran’s plunge she went up to the sauna to warm up alongside many of the other plungers.

As we were finishing up lunch Ryan came on to announce that the afternoon excursion would be to the primary location that he had mentioned the night before. This was the site of a group of mummified crabeater seals on Seymour Island - he had only just learned of this via a friend in the weeks leading up to the expedition, and was fairly sure that no tour group had ever tried to go there. He apparently consulted a research paper about the site and combined that with Google Maps sleuthing in order to come up with a plan. They had sent out two scout boats in the morning while the polar plunge was going on, and had managed to find the site. We later found out that one of the boats had to be left on the muddy shore because the tide had pulled out while they were scouting.

Zodiac boarding began around 2:30p. On each excursion (or plunge) they rotated which mudroom group to start with, so our group was moving closer to the front. However, we ended up boarding toward the end because I had to go back to the room to find my hat, which I apparently had accidentally dropped just outside our room. Our driver/guide was Carlos, who was another good navigator - so far I have been lucky with the drivers I’ve matched with (there have been a couple on other boats who seem  less experienced). The cruise had a bit of an unfortunate start, as a couple of the last boats (including us) were called back to pick up an extra passenger, as the number had apparently overflowed what they planned for; but the 2 hour clock restarted when we pushed off for the second time, so we didn’t lose those 20 minutes. We ended up staying out for almost 30 minutes longer than the planned 5pm return. And fortunately my bladder wasn’t struggling very much, probably thanks to my new technique of semi-dehydrating myself before the excursions.

As far as I can tell this excursion hit a new high point for all the guests. For one, we made a landing, so we can all say that we have set foot on the Antarctic continent. Secondly, the landing was at a rarely visited/seen site that required extra planning by the expedition crew. The nice weather also made a positive contribution. The site was quite far from the ship, and required going around Cockburn Island to get there. The landing site was a muddy beach next to a glacier. The seals were a short walk away across some rocky ground. There, Ryan proudly gave each incoming group a brief history of the site. I don’t think any of the groups came close to keeping under the 20 minutes that they were each supposed to stay at the site; but then again the guides were totally fine with people taking their time to soak it all in. On the cruise back to the ship we were met by the ship’s drone at the ice floe that still (we had seen it on the way out) had a Weddell seal lazing on it.

Dinner tonight was a BBQ buffet out on the aft of the 7th deck; plus a DJ. It was an admirable effort to take advantage of the nice weather, but with the boat moving it was too cold to hang around longer than the time it took to quickly eat. We later found out that the day paddle groups would be going out tomorrow, and we were set for the morning outing. A late announcement was made after 10pm when an emperor penguin was spotted on some ice - a rare sighting in these parts.

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My favorite pictures from the trip can be found here.