Above: a little teaser. The view from our campsite in Antarctica.
For a long time I had dreamed about visiting this place. At first I assumed it wasn't possible to visit as a tourist, so I kinda gave up on it. But then I found out about expedition cruises and knew I had to go! Before I knew it, I was on the long journey south. From Vancouver, Canada to Ushuaia, Argentina it took me 48 hours in transit, and I was unable to sleep the entire time. Let's just say I'm envious of people who can sleep on planes!
In Ushuaia I met up with my friends and we explored the city for a couple days. I will not cover that in this blog, so let's fast forward to boarding the ship! These are not your typical cruise ships - they are small, about the size of a ferry, and the one I was boarding only takes about 100 passengers. We got settled in and began the next step of our journey: crossing the notorious Drake Passage. By ship it takes 48 hours to cross and is famous for having awful weather, but we got lucky on our initial crossing.
Time flew, and before we knew it, we were in Antarctica.
It was like another world down there.
One of the highlights was getting into the zodiacs, zipping around and checking out icebergs. The icebergs in a place called Neko Harbor were particularly striking.
That last one was like the mouth of a shark, complete with icicles for teeth! I reached as far as I could without falling out of the zodiac and fired off a few shots as fast as I could. The water in Antarctica is nearly -2c, so falling in could have very serious consequences. Getting this close to icebergs is also a bit risky, as pieces could fall off, or worse, the iceberg could suddenly flip. You do not want to be near as iceberg when this happens! There is a reason the saying "the tip of the iceberg" exists. It's because most of the iceberg is underwater, with the top only representing a small part of it.
And speaking of icebergs, those were the small ones. One of the highlights of the trip was a huge, one mile long iceberg.
It is hard to describe the scale of this thing. It truly was enormous. It was like seeing The Wall in Game of Thrones.
There were giant cracks in the iceberg, with an otherworldly blue glow.
We were also treated to some dramatic mountain landscapes.
In Antarctica, the mountains are quite literally buried in ice. It makes you wonder how life manages to even exist down there. But it doesn't just exist, it thrives! I'm not much of a wildlife photographer, but I knew I had to take some shots of the animals or face huge regret.
That scene was certainly one of the best moments in my life.
The penguins were hilarious to watch. Sometimes they would waddle, but other times they would get on there bellies and slide around on the snow, propelling themselves with their little feet.
I'm going to end this with an image I took of our ship. The zodiac on the right really helps to show how small it is! On our way back across the Drake Passage, sailing was smooth for the first day. But on day two, we were literally woken up by getting rolled out of our beds. The ocean was angry, with 32 foot tall waves. Not many people came out of their rooms that morning, and my friends and I were few of the souls brave enough to go to breakfast!
I hope you enjoyed a look at the least visited continent. Let me know in the comments if you would ever take a trip here, or share your own Antarctic experience!