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Days 4 and 5: The Drake Passage |
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Oh my gosh, everyone!
I am on a ship called Ortelius heading south to Antarctica! It was one heck of an adventure to get here! Carlos surprised me with a $70 charge for the tour of Tierra del Fuego National Park, which left me with no cash to pay a taxi from his house to the port! That meant I had to ask the taxi driver to wait for me while I visited an ATM.
Argentinean banks have very specific ATMs! I waited in a long line at the first one only to find that they didn’t take my card, so we had to go to another, where I waited behind a lady trying to make a house payment, all while watching the ship through the window. It was 2:50! The ship was supposed to leave at 3:00!
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The taxi driver careened into the port, and I hustled a mean bustle through customs until I was standing at the side of the ship with no line of passengers waiting. The ship wasn’t actually supposed to leave until 4:00!
That should give me some time to tell you why I’m going to Antarctica. It’s a place that’s always intrigued me for its beauty and mystery. Plus, with all the melting going on around the world, who knows how long it will be there to enjoy? If George wanted to find a place that had history, beauty, and wonder, it would surely be in Antarctica!
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So, with the help of a London-based company called Swoop Antarctica, I booked a spot on the Basecamp Expedition, an active cruise meant to put folks on the continent as much as possible! Adventurers from all over the world trickled onto the floating hotel. I was assigned to Berth 303 on Deck 3, which would soon prove to be an unlucky deck!
See, I’ve been on boats before, but never on boats this big going over waves as big as they’re expecting on the Drake Passage, named for famed privateer, Sir Francis Drake, who braved these waters on his global circumnavigation between 1577 and 1580! Would I get seasick? Time would tell!
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The berth that would be my home for the next week was a quad dormitory with limited storage, portholes that always had to be covered due to the waves, and rusty water from the Soviet era pipes. That was okay, though, because this ship was going to take us to Antarctica!
I shared my berth with three other folks: Christopher from England, Bryan from Florida, and Mariano from Buenos Aires! All three were really nice folks, though Mariano was a world champion roncador at night. Also aboard the ship were lots of folks from Europe, especially from the Netherlands (Oceanwide Expeditions, who runs the trip, is a Dutch company), and even the first Malaysian to climb the 7 Summits!
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Our shared berth was on the same level as the lecture hall, where the staff briefed us on ship policies, like how you’re not allowed to go ashore in Antarctica without vacuuming all of your clothes and dipping your feet and tripods in disinfectant. Antarctica is about as pure a place as can still exist on Earth, and nobody wants to spread a disease between penguin colonies! They also warned us that weather here is unpredictable; the two ships ahead of us had to turn back, the first for thick sea ice, and the second because it caught fire. Zen is super important in Antarctica!
This was also where we had lectures about photography, wildlife, and climate change. There was a particularly interesting lecture about wandering albatrosses, but I had to cut it short so I could run to the bathroom and hurl! The lecture hall on Level 3 amplified every wave in a very warm, enclosed room, which was very dangerous! More on that later!
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Also, we learned that only 100 people are allowed on shore at a time, which was just fine because the Ortelius only has 123 passengers aboard! Each of us received a number that we needed to flip over if we went ashore and flip back when we returned to the ship. I was number 27!
The Ortelius had a really nice dining area with a carefully prepared breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Everything was really delicious, but I got the hint that the onboard chef had never been seasick. Tuna and green bean casserole on rough seas was really not a great idea!
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The lounge on Deck 5 was a great place to spend time on the long days at sea, because it had windows and air circulation, even a library of books about the Arctic and Antarctic! It’s also where I became best friends with Ginger Ale and had my energy realigned by a reiki healer named Karin!
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The reason I needed all of those things is because the Drake Passage is famously rough! The cold Pacific waters meet the warm Atlantic waters and cause a lot of turbulence! On our way down, a storm rolled in. Delphine, the activity director, warned everyone not to whistle aboard the ship, because it calls storms, and well, I forgot! The storm that set us back two days gave us 20-foot swells! It wasn’t scary to watch, but it made the ship pitch up and down, left and right. After the first half day at sea, the doors to the decks had to be shut down and no one was allowed outside!
When you’re rocking and rolling and trapped inside, every part of you wants to go out, especially your guts! Seasickness is no fun, folks! This beaver was not very prepared for it, and although the ship’s medic was well stocked, even with the ear patches on, I still felt pretty groggy and gross for the four-day crossing. It was only supposed to be two!
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I spent a lot of time up on deck staring at the horizon, which was great because the open deck had lots of binoculars and guidebooks for birds and whales. I was mesmerized by all the albatrosses and giant petrels floating so effortlessly among the mountainous waves! They are totally at ease in this environment, rain, shine, and wind be darned!
I also spent a lot of time staring at the navigation charts, which were really neat. There were digital programs tracking our progress, knot by knot, and sonar tracking waves and icebergs, but the main navigation maps were still paper and guided by a compass! For the most part, the ocean depths had been pretty well mapped, but in this part of the world, there were still huge blank spots! Here, there be monsters!
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After four days in limbo, and not the fun Caribbean kind, Delphine announced that the first icebergs were dead ahead! We had crossed from the Drake Passage into the Antarctic Convergence, where the water calmed, and icebergs as big as US states floated past us, shaped into arches and spikes and choo-choo trains! It was like passing through a whole ice city!
It’s pretty eerie down here, actually. There’s nothing but ice as far as the eye can see, and if it weren’t for the steady hum of the ship’s engine, I’ll bet it would be pretty quiet too! But the seabirds were guiding the Ortelius without fear, and by morning, we would be anchored at last in the appropriately named Paradise Bay! I am so excited to touch solid ground again, especially since it will be in Antarctica!
Ready, set, snow!
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