Just back into Ushuaia after a 10 day expedition down the Antarctic Peninsula. Absolutely amazing. Not only was it a trip of a lifetime but to sharing it with my family and best mate made it even more special.
The itinerary roughly consisted of a 2 day sea voyage across the Drake Passage (one of the roughest bits of water in the world), 6 days of cruising to various sites along the Antarctic Peninsula, then 2 days at sea to get back to Ushuaia. All this in a 70m ice-breaking ship with about 50 passengers and 30 crew/staff.
It really felt like being in a wildlife documentary. Never have I travelled somewhere so alien, somewhere so surreal and foreign that you weren´t really sure you were actually there. Noisy, smelly penguin colonies all over the islands, the gentoo penguins especially look like cartoons, you can hardly believe they´re real. Huge icebergs and vast expanses of water covered in brash ice (broken up chunks). Whales surfacing to breath with their spouts like steam trains in the freezing air. Cracked and broken glaciers running from the mountains right down to the water looking like huge, crumbling wedding cake icing. Seals lolling about on beaches and ice floes, happily snoozing in the wind and driving snow.
Even better was that Jack, Evan and I got to paddle through this environment pretty much every day. While the other passengers were landed on the shore with zodiacs, we got into sea kayaks straight off the ship and explored the waterline up close. We paddled through the brash ice and in between bright blue icebergs. A couple of days were so windy the snow was horizontal but it was worth it for the perfectly calm, glassy days where we paddled right next to huge ice cliffs and could hear the cracking like gunshots deep in the glacier as it slowly edged forward. Our best paddle finished with a humpback whale popping up right in front of us! We also did a couple of landings so we could walk around amongst the penguins so we got the best of both worlds.
Now sitting in an internet cafe in Ushuaia it feels like it almost didn´t happen. I am actually land sick though, spinning around on solid earth, so I must have been on a boat. The last two days across the Drake were quite rough and most of the passengers were sick but it was worth it and we definitely earned our adventure. We rounded Cape Horn yesterday so, according to Royal Navy traditional, we can all put an elbow on the table during dinner!
What an adventure. I´m trying hard to digest it all, especially in amongst all this other travelling, but I think it will take a while to sink in. Even now it´s quite something to see a book or documentary on Antartica and think that I´ve been there! Hopefully the photos do it justice...
