Penguin Mania has begun!

The 100 day mark has passed, and now so has the 50 day mark.  Time is FLYING!  Now we are trying to wrap our heads around how to pack all of the stuff we need for our trip and still have room for clothes.  Nakedness in Antarctica just won't be practical!

We booked a couple of tours for our group of 7 traveling together from NYC.  Randi and Steve Eisen, Sue and Steve Frederick, Michael, Rachel and I will be travel mates and tour mates.  The day after arrival, February 11,  all of us will be doing a hiking / canoeing tour in Tierra del Fuego National Park.  On February 12, five of us will do a half-day horseback ride on Mount Susanna.  We will still have plenty of time to explore the museums and town of Ushuaia.

In the meantime, I have fallen in love with penguins.  And become obsessed. Just. A. Little. And I am getting help from Rachel. Rachel found us some sweet Penguin sweaters, and I found some silly little Penguin Santa hats.  And then I found this adorable post of a Penguin being tickled.  Although we won't be able to touch the penguins, I do hope we get some of these crazy noises on video!

I am not sure how the very obvious arrival of El Nino will alter the weather conditions for our trip. Considering we haven't seen a drop of snow yet this winter in New England, I am not sure whether that will be a positive or a negative influence on our Southern Ocean crossings or our various landings.

Still lots to get done before our epic journey, but I think we have most of the things we need for the trip.  Now it is a matter of how well we can organize what we need to take on the trip.  Packing clothes and gear for scuba diving and photography for a 28 day trip is truly a challenge these days with all of the baggage restrictions.  We could have far worse problems!   

We have the TICKETS!

Last night we bought our plane tickets to Argentina.  Granted, we had a change of our initial plans, but this was a good deal.  Originally our intention was to spend a couple of days in Buenos Aires before heading to Ushuaia to catch the boat.  The idea was to let our luggage catch up with us in case it didn't make the flight (being without clothes or dive gear for the 23 day trip would be a disaster!).  I have to admit I was looking forward to exploring Buenos Aires and had done a decent amount of investigation into day tours and tango show possibilities.  And then Michael found a really good flight deal which only had a layover in B.A.  Turns out, it was too good of a deal to pass up. By choosing an international flight to Ushuaia we eliminated domestic baggage fees and the addition of a $500 per person round trip flight from B.A. to Ushuaia!  By flying from JFK vs Boston, we saved an additional $2400 total.  It all makes a difference.  Turns out, several of our other friends who will be on this trip discovered the same "deal" and will be with us on the flight to Argentina.

So instead of exploring Buenos Aires for a day or so, we will have extra time in Ushuaia at Tierra del Fuego National Park which doesn't sound like a bad deal. I have been researching local trips / excursions / adventures in Ushuaia.  So far we are considering a hiking / canoeing day in Tierra del Fuego National Park and a day of horseback riding before the rest of the gang joins us on February 12. There is also quite a bit of "in town" sightseeing to do as well:  Falklands War memorial, Maritime museum, and the Presidio museum.  Getting excited.

And then we tried booking hotels, only to find that most of them START at $250 a night and won't accommodate three adults.  Ugh.  The thought of Michael and me cramming into a twin for two nights was a bit....claustrophobic since I am a restless sleeper. Then I remembered my niece Marissa's high recommendations of the Airbnb services.  Voila!  We booked an apartment for 2 nights that will comfortably sleep 4 adults for less than the price of one night in a hotel!  SWEET!  We were able to book our own "cabin" for a one night stay at the end of the trip since the apartments aren't available for one night.  Let the adventures begin!  Everything is falling into place. 

Our amazing itinerary

Below is our itinerary for our epic trip.  We leave February 13 and arrive back in Ushuaia on March 6. I will post a map at some point when I figure out the best way to include it.  For more information you can visit the following link

PLEASE NOTE: This itinerary is for guidance only. Programs may vary depending on local ice and weather conditions, the availability of landing sites and opportunities to see wildlife. The final itinerary will be determined by the Expedition Leader on board. Flexibility is paramount for expedition cruises.

Day 1: Embark the vessel in Ushuaia and depart

In the afternoon, we embark in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world located at the Beagle Channel and sail through this scenic waterway for the rest of the evening.

Day 2: At sea

At sea, in the Westerly’s the ship is followed by several species of albatrosses, storm petrels, shearwaters and diving petrels.

Highlights

• ✓ Black-browed albatross
• ✓ Storm Petrel
• ✓ Shearwater

Day 3: Falkland Islands

In the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) we plan to spend the whole day on the fascinating western side of the archipelago. On Carcass Island we may encounter breeding Magellanic and Gentoo penguins, but also numerous waders and passerine birds are present. On Saunders Island, we can see the majestic Black-browed albatross and their sometimes-clumsy landings near their nesting site along with breeding Imperial shags and Rock hopper penguins. King penguins, Magellanic penguins, and Gentoo penguins are also present here.

Highlights

• ✓ Magellanic Penguin
• ✓ Saunders Island
• ✓ Carcass Island

Day 4: Port Stanley

In Stanley, the capital of the Falklands, we can experience Falkland culture, which has some South American characteristics as well as Victorian charm, colourful houses, well-tended gardens, and English style pubs. In Stanley and the surrounding area, we can see quite anumber of stranded clippers from a century ago. They bear witness to the hardships of sailors in the 19th Century. The small, but very interesting museum is well worth a visit featuring an exhibition covering the early days of settlement up to the Falklands War of 1982. Approximately 1300 people live in the small capital in which all passengers are free to wander around on their own.

Highlights

• ✓ Stanley

Day 5 - 6: At sea

On our way to South Georgia we will cross the Antarctic Convergence. Entering Antarctic currents, the temperature will drop considerably in the time span of only a few hours. Nutritious water is brought to the surface by the colliding water columns, which brings a multitude of southern seabirds near the ship: several species of albatrosses, shearwaters, petrels, prions and skuas.

Highlights

• ✓ Bird Watching

Day 7 - 10: South Georgia

During day 7 we arrive at our first landing site in South Georgia. We might visit the bay of Elsehul, with its very active fur seal breeding beach, and then set course to Right Whale Bay, Salisbury Plain, Godthul, St. Andrews Bay, Gold Harbour, Cooper Bay to give you a good opportunity to see a wide spectrum of landscapes and wildlife, like the Elephant seals, Fur seals, King and Macaroni penguins. One of many highlights may be our visit to Prion Island (the island is closed for visitors during breeding season from 20 November – 07 January), where we will witness the breeding efforts of the huge Wandering Albatross and enjoy watching their displays. At Fortuna Bay we might try to follow in the footsteps of the great British Explorer Ernest Shackleton and hike over to Stromness Bay. There and at Grytviken we will see an abandoned whaling station, where King penguins now walk in the streets and seals have taken residency. At Grytviken we’ll also offer a visit to the Whaling History Museum as well as to Shackleton´s grave nearby. We will depart from South Georgia in the afternoon of day 10.

Highlights

• ✓ The Shackleton walk
• ✓ Prion Island
• ✓ Grytviken

Day 11: At sea

Where the ship is again followed by a multitude of seabirds. At some point we might encounter sea-ice, and it is at the ice-edge where we might have a chance to see some high-Antarctic species like the McCormick skua and Snow petrel.

Highlights

• ✓ Snow Petrel
• ✓ Skua

Day 12 - 13: South Sandwich Islands

At the rarely visited and uninhabited South Sandwich Islands (British Territory) we will try to land on Zavodovski Island, home to over a million pairs of breeding Chinstrap Penguins, making it one of the world's largest penguin colonies. Other landings will be pursued on the steep-sided Candlemas Island and on Saunders Island. These volcanic islands, discovered by James Cook in 1775, with an ice cap on the top, are windswept and often shrouded in mist and fog, but do offer subtle pleasures. There is a nice variety of flora (mosses, lichens and flowering grasses) and fauna, such as Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins and Southern Giant petrels. Elephant seals and Fur seals also haul out at the beaches. This is the area where we meet the remains of the huge table ice bergs from the Weddell Sea of which those deep blue ice bergs remain. Southern Thule is a huge crater with a natural harbour like Deception Island. German explorer Wilhelm Filchner visited the South Shetland Islands in November 1911 on board the ´Deutschland´ prior to exploring the unknown Weddell Sea.

Highlights

• ✓ Chinstrap Penguin
• ✓ Gentoo Penguin
• ✓ Saunders Island

Day 14: At sea

Sailing along the ice edge to the west the ship is again followed by a multitude of seabirds. At the edge of the pack-ice which extends far to the north we might have a chance to see some high-Antarctic species like the McCormick skua and Snow petrel. The ice edge is a prime feeding area for the great whales such as Humpback whales and Fin whales. The very rare Southern Blue whale may also be spotted.

Highlights

• ✓ Fin Whale
• ✓ Humpback Whale

Day 15: South Orkney Islands

We will attempt a visit to the Argentinean Orcadas station – the oldest permanently manned Antarctic station. The friendly base personnel will show us their facilities and we can enjoy the wonderful views of the surrounding glaciers.

Highlights

• ✓ Orcadas Station

Day 16: At sea

At sea.

Highlights

• ✓ Bird Watching

Day 17 - 20: Antarctic Peninsula

If the ice conditions allow we will sail into the Weddell Sea through the ice-clogged Antarctic Sound. Huge tabular icebergs will announce our arrival to the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. We plan to visit Brown Bluff where we may set foot on the Continent. In good sailing conditions we may decide to extend our time in the Weddell Sea. We aim at Half Moon Island in the South Shetland Island for a visit to a Chinstrap penguin rookery. Often Weddell seals haul out on the beaches here. At Deception Island our ship braves into the entrance of the crater through the spectacular Neptune’s Bellows into the caldera of Deception Island. Deception itself is a sub ducted crater, which opens into the sea, creating a natural harbour for the ship. Here we find hot springs, an abandoned whaling station, thousands of Cape petrels and many Dominican gulls, Brown and South Polar skuas, and Antarctic terns. Wilson’s Storm petrels and Black-bellied Storm petrels nest in the ruins of the whaling station in Whalers Bay. On our last landing day before we venture into the Drake Passage we sail towards the northern parts of Gerlache Strait. One option is Charlotte Bay on the west coast of Graham Land was discovered by Adrien de Gerlache during the 1897–99 Belgica expedition and named after the fiancée of Georges Lecointe, Gerlache's executive officer, hydrographer and second-in-command of the expedition. The topography of the surrounding area is mountainous, with nunataks rising through the ice. Charlotte Bay is often filled with icebergs. Mostly we see seals on floes in Charlotte Bay, and occasional, kelp gulls, skuas, shags, or penguins. In Cierva Cove we will admire the rugged ice coated mountains of the Davis Coast and Mikkelsen Harbour offers a Gentoo penguin rookery and some great scenic cruising.

Highlights

• ✓ Deception Island
• ✓ Weddell Seal
• ✓ Brown Bluff

Day 21 - 22: At sea

On our way north we are again followed by a great selection of seabirds while crossing the Drake Passage.

Highlights

• ✓ Drake Passage

Day 23: Arrival in Ushuaia and disembark the vessel

We arrive in the morning in Ushuaia and disembark.

Lessons from Penguins

I am falling in love with Penguins.  I can't wait to watch their funny antics.  They are hilarious on land and so majestically perfect underwater.  They speed like bullets through the water.  We were lucky enough to dive with the northern-most living penguins of the world in the Galapagos, but I never did get any on film underwater because they were so fast. This time with video and perhaps photographs, I will get some winners like this:

Faith gave us a book for Christmas "Flipping Brilliant:  A Penguin's Guide to a Happy Life" by Patrick Regan.  Some of my favorites from that book are:

1.   Life is not black and white - even the mostly black and white penguins have bits of other colors: beaks, feet, "eyebrows", etc.  Indeed, life is all about the 50 shades of grey.  Black and white choices are easy, but they are rare in life. 
2. Determination makes all the difference.  Penguins certainly are determined creatures.  Completely awkward on land, they migrate around 100 miles inland to birth their young and travel back to the melting ice sheet to fish and feed. Life isn't easy for us either.  Having determination, spunk, and a bit of feistiness is essential to get through the rough patches.
3. Don't always follow the crowd, but do believe in the camaraderie of kindred souls.  During the migration, the penguins huddle together in a tight circle, rotating positions so that no one has to bear all the brunt of the high winds and bitter cold.  It is important to have friends in life.  There is nothing better than friends that just accept you for who you are, faults and all, and love you just the same.  
4. Uphills don't last forever.  Life has lots of uphills but eventually a downhill slide comes our way, and can it ever be a blast!   Without the uphills, perhaps we would not have as much appreciation for the times when life is free and easy.
5. Learn to be still.  Penguins, during the ferociousness of storms, learn to huddle together and be still.  They don't squawk, they don't even look up or around.  They duck their heads and become very still. Contemplative. We humans need more of that time.  Our world has become so overstimulating that we forget that our minds and hearts need to be still in order to grow and recharge. 

I am sure I will learn much more about Penguins and fall more in love with them when I visit Antarctica.  I hear the smell is overwhelming too (but will use that good ol' medic trick Vicks vapo-rub under the nose!).

Dreaming.....

You are going WHERE?

I began mentioning our epic trip to friends and acquaintances.  Responses fell into one of two categories:  1.  "Why would you ever want to go there?"  or 2.  "That's incredible!" I've decided that telling folks I am going on a long trip to Antarctica is tantamount to administering a full personality test.  Traveling to Antarctica is for folks who are not afraid to be "out of their element", out of their comfort zone, especially if you are diving. It is never a luxury cruise: comfortable, yes, but not luxurious. It requires a bit of the heart of the explorer. You never know quite what you will encounter or experience (cue the story of the tourist boat a year ago that got stuck in the ice and had to have a multitude of icebreaker boats to free it).  There are a lot of people that are perfectly content living their whole life in their own little worlds with little change, and that is fine.  But that is not me....

In talking to friends who have traveled there previously, they only use superlatives.  Unbelievable!  More beautiful than you can imagine!  It will be more stunning than anything your imagination can conjure up! It is a million shades of black, white, and blue and you have never seen anything this magnificent!

And then I ran across this quote from an article by Chris Jones in Afar Magazine (August / September 2014):

     "Months later, my memories of that trip aren't like my memories of other trips.  They 

     aren't even like my other memories.  There are no colors, no tall buildings, no roads or

     signs or music, no snapshots of indigenous faces, none of the usual time stamps given us 

     by day or night.  There was always light, the sun setting spectacularly before changing its

     mind at the last moment and rising again, true darkness just one more of Antarctica's vast

     repertoire of apparitions.  When I close my eyes, there are only shadows and blurs, a hundred

     shades of blue and white, snow and ice, sleeplessness and awe.  I don't really remember specific

     locations, and I can't say fully I remember moments even.  I remember the gooseflesh and lumps

     in my throat......In a world that can seem purpose-built and calculated for us, engineered for our

     safety and convenience, every part of that long-shot day, the entire lunatic trip, felt as fleeting

     as luck itself.  That feeling is what I remember and why Antarctica remains impervious to 

     memories and maps and the mental thumbtacks we might stick to them.  All of  its settlements are

     temporary.  Its borders migrate.  Its landmarks are seasonal.  Its ports are killer whales and its 

     capital cities are penguins."

 Oh YES.  I am ready.  Take me out of my element.  Make me oooh and ahhh and be surrounded by the incredible power and majesty of our planet. So freaking excited.

Penguin Ponderings

When I think of Antarctica I think of ice and frigid cold.  I really can't say it has ever been on my "bucket list" but, then again, I am open to traveling almost anywhere in the world - at least once.  We were in California in November 2013 to dive the Channel Islands and attend the 50th Anniversary celebrations of DUI - Diving Unlimited International in San Diego.  Our friend, Faith Ortins, mentioned that she had planned an "epic once-in-a-lifetime" group diving trip to Antarctica that followed Shackleton's famous trip, on the 100th anniversary.  Whoa.  Really?  That does sound like an epic trip.....one that shouldn't be missed.  Ushuaia, Argentina to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Islands, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney Islands, Elephant Island, Deception Island, and the Antarctica Peninsula.  23 days, 22 nights. Tons of money.  Yeah, right.  A Paramedic salary goes really far.  The trip was 2 years away.  1K per month away, more or less depending on one's room selection. Serious cash.  Crap.  I resigned myself to hearing the tales from the trip.

And then came the holidays and Michael's surprise...."I signed us up for the Antarctica trip and paid the down payment for both of us!".  Awesome.  Crap.  Incredible. What?  How do I manage this?  Gees, that's another rent/ mortgage payment per month.  Pretty much buying a new car over 2 years.  Almost a year of college tuition.  And then the wheels began turning and at this point, we are more "in the trip" than out.  More than halfway there. We only live once.  Life is short. We cancelled cable TV.  I paid off my car a few months later and the monthly car payment went towards the trip. We ate out less, spent less money on skiing and boat diving. It all helps.

As is true to my nature, I began researching everything about the trip and what we would see and do.  I fell in love with penguins and began watching every video about Antarctica.  I read Shackleton's book South and the book Endurance which is a compilation of the journals of the men on his expedition.  Even PBS fed my Antarctica obsession by creating a 3 part series called "Chasing Shackleton" which recreates Shackleton's rescue mission to travel from Elephant Island in a 30 foot lifeboat to the South Georgia Islands using early 1900's gear and technology. Obsessed and in love with everything Antarctic. Bring it ON!

We told our friends about the trip and due to the cost of the trip we never expected anyone to join us - and then there was Rachel.  Rachel McCann.  Since then it has been all plotting and planning and general craziness.  Antarctica or BUST!