Well as you might or might not know, i went to Antarctica in December, did a 2 week cruise with a stop off in Buenos Aires on the way and way back.
It was an amazing time and like living the frozen planet.
I took thousands of photos, so its taken me ages to go through them, here are a few from the first few days.
Buenos aires from our hotel, very nice city
Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world and the starting point for the cruise across Drakes Passage, which is supposed to be the roughest stretch of sea in the world also.
This was our ship for the duration, a brand new giant yacht in effect, small for a cruise liner, but very luxurious, called L'Austral, and it had an identical sister ship (which we met up with during the trip) called Le Boreal. I've been on a 3 day mini cruise on a P&O liner to Belgium, but this was full on 10 days at sea.
The cabin was very nice, really modern, lots of leather, big LCD screen with on demand movies, GPS charted maps and cameras on the bow and stern you could watch. Was the nicest cabin i have seen on a cruise liner before, and this was the most basic one, had a lovely balcony too and large windows which was nice.
The boat had a swimming pool, but seeing as we wear heading to the southern ocean and to lots of snow, i didn't get to use it, which was a shame, especially as it looked so nice (well it was when they filled it up which they hadn't in this pic as the crossing back to land had been really bad and they lost half the water) with the sun out and bright blue sky.
We left land with amazing rather, which we hoped would continue as we entered the Drake, the voyage before had experienced terrible seas, and while we secretly wanted a bit of action, we really didn't want to be ill all the time! Even so, i took some Sturgeon tablets to help keep me from being effected, although they had another side effect unfortunately.....
The crossing would take a day and a half, which was our chance to get acquainted with the boat, our new gear and have a safety drill etc. We were given a life jacket for on the boat, and one for the land, which was much smaller and less restrictive etc.
It was a french boat, and as such, lots of french onboard, the captain was french, but also spoke very good english. We were split into 4 groups, which were pretty much our english group (there were 50 of us on the trip from my company), a french group, and 2 groups of Chinese. To sail us safely out of the estuary from the mainland we had a local pilot, who left the boat via a tug just before we entered the sea.
this was pretty much the last time we saw darkness like this for 10 days, the further south we got, the lighter it would stay at night, and at midnight it was still light for a fair few days.
It was a fairly quiet first day as we all felt a little sea sick and those of us who took tablets tried to hold in the diarrhoea in! I stopped taking them as that was worse than feeling ill. You were fine while lying down, but standing up was weird, i remember after the first night crossing, i got up, felt fine, and then got in the shower with the boat rocking, and it just hit me, felt terrible, had to go and lie down again. There was a piano onboard, which a member of our group liked to play, and he was surprisingly good.
link to video if you are interested http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_knight/6826547493/
We also had to take wellington boots for the landings, this is because we would be transported to land by zodiacs (big rubber dingys) and these would get close but we would still have to step into 10 inches plus of water getting off the boats. We also had to clean our boots, as they are very strict in antarctica that nothing enters or leaves the land, you need to be clean of any possible germs or matter you could leave there, like dirt on your boots. When leaving the boat or coming back we needed to wash our boots in disinfectant, and weren't allowed to remove anything from the land, and couldn't leave any rubbish etc. Antarctica is managed by a treaty of countries, no-one actually owns the area, although many would like to. We had seminars and briefings in the theatre onboard about all the wildlife there etc. Was very interesting and informative.
This was an exciting moment, as we had now crossed drakes passage and had entered into the area around the south shetland islands (interesting fact, these islands are at the same latitude as the shetland islands (above the UK) but to the south instead, Shetland are 60 degrees north, south shetland 62 degrees south) we saw our first iceberg, at the time we thought it was huge (pictured is about half of it), but we soon learnt that these things can be as big as towns!
They are amazing colours too, a lot bluer than i thought, and its all to do with the amount of oxygen in the water i believe. Also, their age, some of them are thousands of years old! They can go miles under the water too, the majority of them are below the water, but if you watched frozen planet, you know that anyway.
Anyway, this brings us up to the end of the crossing of the drake and our crossing into antarctic waters on our way to our first landing on Paulet Island, where there would be a colony of Chinstrap penguins, which was very exciting to finally come face to fare with a Penguin!
I'll update this thread with the pics from the next few days and continue the story if people wish me to continue. I might just be being very boring, I know it won't be to everyones taste, but I think it might have some interesting parts, and some very interesting pictures coming up, different types of penguins, seals, whales and an active volcano which is also an ex whaling station with some lovely abandoned buildings and equipment after the volcano erupted and drove them out.
It was an amazing time and like living the frozen planet.
I took thousands of photos, so its taken me ages to go through them, here are a few from the first few days.
Buenos aires from our hotel, very nice city
Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world and the starting point for the cruise across Drakes Passage, which is supposed to be the roughest stretch of sea in the world also.
This was our ship for the duration, a brand new giant yacht in effect, small for a cruise liner, but very luxurious, called L'Austral, and it had an identical sister ship (which we met up with during the trip) called Le Boreal. I've been on a 3 day mini cruise on a P&O liner to Belgium, but this was full on 10 days at sea.
The cabin was very nice, really modern, lots of leather, big LCD screen with on demand movies, GPS charted maps and cameras on the bow and stern you could watch. Was the nicest cabin i have seen on a cruise liner before, and this was the most basic one, had a lovely balcony too and large windows which was nice.
The boat had a swimming pool, but seeing as we wear heading to the southern ocean and to lots of snow, i didn't get to use it, which was a shame, especially as it looked so nice (well it was when they filled it up which they hadn't in this pic as the crossing back to land had been really bad and they lost half the water) with the sun out and bright blue sky.
We left land with amazing rather, which we hoped would continue as we entered the Drake, the voyage before had experienced terrible seas, and while we secretly wanted a bit of action, we really didn't want to be ill all the time! Even so, i took some Sturgeon tablets to help keep me from being effected, although they had another side effect unfortunately.....
The crossing would take a day and a half, which was our chance to get acquainted with the boat, our new gear and have a safety drill etc. We were given a life jacket for on the boat, and one for the land, which was much smaller and less restrictive etc.
It was a french boat, and as such, lots of french onboard, the captain was french, but also spoke very good english. We were split into 4 groups, which were pretty much our english group (there were 50 of us on the trip from my company), a french group, and 2 groups of Chinese. To sail us safely out of the estuary from the mainland we had a local pilot, who left the boat via a tug just before we entered the sea.
this was pretty much the last time we saw darkness like this for 10 days, the further south we got, the lighter it would stay at night, and at midnight it was still light for a fair few days.
It was a fairly quiet first day as we all felt a little sea sick and those of us who took tablets tried to hold in the diarrhoea in! I stopped taking them as that was worse than feeling ill. You were fine while lying down, but standing up was weird, i remember after the first night crossing, i got up, felt fine, and then got in the shower with the boat rocking, and it just hit me, felt terrible, had to go and lie down again. There was a piano onboard, which a member of our group liked to play, and he was surprisingly good.
link to video if you are interested http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_knight/6826547493/
We also had to take wellington boots for the landings, this is because we would be transported to land by zodiacs (big rubber dingys) and these would get close but we would still have to step into 10 inches plus of water getting off the boats. We also had to clean our boots, as they are very strict in antarctica that nothing enters or leaves the land, you need to be clean of any possible germs or matter you could leave there, like dirt on your boots. When leaving the boat or coming back we needed to wash our boots in disinfectant, and weren't allowed to remove anything from the land, and couldn't leave any rubbish etc. Antarctica is managed by a treaty of countries, no-one actually owns the area, although many would like to. We had seminars and briefings in the theatre onboard about all the wildlife there etc. Was very interesting and informative.
This was an exciting moment, as we had now crossed drakes passage and had entered into the area around the south shetland islands (interesting fact, these islands are at the same latitude as the shetland islands (above the UK) but to the south instead, Shetland are 60 degrees north, south shetland 62 degrees south) we saw our first iceberg, at the time we thought it was huge (pictured is about half of it), but we soon learnt that these things can be as big as towns!
They are amazing colours too, a lot bluer than i thought, and its all to do with the amount of oxygen in the water i believe. Also, their age, some of them are thousands of years old! They can go miles under the water too, the majority of them are below the water, but if you watched frozen planet, you know that anyway.
Anyway, this brings us up to the end of the crossing of the drake and our crossing into antarctic waters on our way to our first landing on Paulet Island, where there would be a colony of Chinstrap penguins, which was very exciting to finally come face to fare with a Penguin!
I'll update this thread with the pics from the next few days and continue the story if people wish me to continue. I might just be being very boring, I know it won't be to everyones taste, but I think it might have some interesting parts, and some very interesting pictures coming up, different types of penguins, seals, whales and an active volcano which is also an ex whaling station with some lovely abandoned buildings and equipment after the volcano erupted and drove them out.
