And I turn 31

Date: 17th Jan, 2011

The day we arrived in Ushuaia happened to be my 31st b'day too. Thanks to Andy and the enthusiastic/friendly co-passengers on Akademik Ioffe, we had a great celebration the previous night on board the ship. I thoroughly enjoyed the party and ofcourse the drinks that flew through out the evening. While turning 31 is not very exciting, we were quite excited to get back on land to give the news of engagement to our parents/friends. We checked in at a cute B&B in Ushuaia and immediately headed out for some brunch. Andy was missing for some good hot chocolate that was never available during the entire duration of our trip.

Having already visited Ushuaia 2yrs ago, we decided to avoid all the touristy destinations and instead head towards the Tierra del Fuego national park for a hike. We hoarded an hourly van to reach the park. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon. Given that the sun sets at 11pm in this part of the world, we had plenty of time to finish the hike. It was a great hike, mostly in shade with wild rabbits along the path by the side of the Beagle channel. After 3hrs we arrived at a restaurant where we gladly tried several Argentinian empanadas and beer.

The host at the B&B where we were staying follows the custom of playing some Tango music for the guests accompanied by wine. We enjoyed the show before hitting the bed to wake up early for our flight to Buenos Aires in the morning. In the morning we head to the airport on time where we came across some of our friends from the expedition ship. The airport at Ushuaia looks like a cute wooden cottage that is maintained very nicely by the staff but the flight was delayed.

The rest of the journey back to San Francisco was smooth. We were quite surprised to see some great weather in San Francisco. Overall it was a great trip. As the cliche goes, All good things come to an end. I am left with a sinking feeling of all fun getting over and now it is time to get back to routine.

Link to photo album

Dreaded Drake passage

Date: 15th Jan - 16th Jan 2011

When we woke up we get a last glance at the south shetland islands and the ship was already in open waters. Everybody were preparing for the dreaded Drake passage with their anti-sickness patches and pills. It turned out that Sir Drake was not angry at our expedition and we had an absolutely great sail through the Drake passage for almost 2 days. The sea was very calm and all our preparations went down the drain. The last chance to encounter some adventure before the end of the trip did not materialize.

On the first day at sea back to Ushuaia, we had the usual 4 talks planned for the day - 1 related to the history of antarctic treaty and the other 3 on birds and marine mammals. We conveniently skipped all of them and caught up on some movies and books which we had planned for the trip. The weather outside was quite cloudy with calm waters. In the evening we decided to head to the bar for some happy hour where Carlos (our bartender) was pouring "screwdriver" cocktail as the special for the evening. The bar is usually filled with people with many of them sipping on beers or wine. DJ Weddell was also there spinning brazilian music off his iPod. At dinner we were given hints about the program for the next day which is going to be our last day at sea.

We skipped breakfast in the morning and marched our way to the talks directly at 10am. Jamie was giving a presentation on climate change. It was quite interesting to see some of the myths/facts about climate change and its effect on the polar regions. This presentation was followed by a tour of the ship that includes the bridge where the captain controls the ship, the engine room and the mud room. It was quite fascinating to see the internals of a big ship like the Akademik Ioffe. This is a ship that was built in 1989 for research purposes. It can carry fuel for 20,000 nautical miles and 400 tones of fresh water. There is a team of 14 russian crew members who manage the ship in 4-hr shifts. The captain seems very friendly and we are going to have a special dinner with him this evening.

Cape Horn is the chilean tip of south america which is notorious for sinking many of the ships in the early 1900s. Due to calm open sea we were back at the tip of south america early in the afternoon. The captain decided to take us close to Cape Horn before heading to Ushuaia via the Beagle channel. We arrived in Ushuaia at around 9am after breakfast and Quark had arranged to drop off our luggage at their conveniently located luggage room near downtown. They had also confirmed our outgoing flights to Buenos Aires and collected boarding passes from Aerolineas Argentinas.

Here is a summary of the trip:

Total: 3350 nautical miles

Furthest south: 63 deg 31.3s

63 species of birds

15 marine mammals

1 land mammal

Heading back north

Date: 14th Jan, 2011

It was quite sad to leave the Antarctic peninsula behind as our ship made its way towards south shetland islands. The plan was to land at two islands before proceeding back to Ushuaia. The first one was supposed to see the chinstrap penguins which we haven't had a chance to see a lot of them during this trip. The second one was at Yankee harbor which is an Argentinian base station that is also home to many seals and penguins. Sadly we had to face force-9 winds that made landing almost impossible. The ship did circle around to seek other wind protected islands but with no great luck. An unfortunate decision was made to abandon our plans and head north towards Ushuaia. It was very important to reach Ushuaia on time because many of the co-passengers had a flight out of Ushuaia on the same day we land there. The wind was so strong that the ship had to literally crawl through the passage at 0.5-0.7knots/hr between south shetland islands.

On our way back to Ushuaia we have to pass through the Drake passage. This passage is famous for high winds that cause gigantic waves where the pacific and atlantic oceans meet. It is also called the "sea-sickness passage". Knowing that we will hit the dreaded Drake passage later in the day when we set sail in the open waters leaving behind the south shetland islands, we ended up applying the anti-sickness patch and popping a dromamine pill. There was a screening of the movie "slumdog millionaire" in the presentation room and having watched that movie 3 times already, we decided to take a nap instead.

In the evening, we were invited to an after-dinner beach theme party in the bar. According to the staff this made sense because we are heading north which is way warmer than the south and the beach party was relevant to welcome this change after 15 days in the southern oceans. They were quite creative in coming up with beach costumes. It was good fun enjoying some beach music played by one of the co-passengers (Larry who was called DJ Weddell for this event) who had a good collection of music readily available based on his long experience in the music records label industry. We danced a little bit while sipping on some Amaretto sours. Ofcourse the life of the party were the members of the expedition team who put great effort in dressing themselves in creative beach costumes.

The sunset was absolutely gorgeous which we could conveniently enjoy right from our cabin window.

Link to photo album

Mainland Antarctica

Date: 13th Jan, 2011

Finally the day for the Antarctic continent arrived. The plan was to land at two places on the main continent - brown bluff and hope bay. The ship was stationed closed to a huge mountain which is at the tip of the Antarctic peninsula. It was pretty cloudy with low visibility. We dressed ourselves in lots of warm layers and hit the gang way to load the zodiacs. Due to constantly changing weather conditions we were informed to make this a short landing for about 1hr only. Brown bluff has some nice rock formations which are beautifully covered with yellow lichens. We landed here and immediately made our way to the sharp icicles that seem to be melting because of summer. There were lots of these hanging at the base of the glacier along the coast. The right side of the island was home to 2 species of penguins - Adelies and Gentoos. We walked on the little rocks encountering sparsely spread out colonies of the penguins until we arrived at a big one. It was amazing to see a lot of penguin chicks nourished by their parents. We could rarely see any penguin chicks unguarded from the predators such as Skuas. The Adelie penguins like marching along the beach forming long lines until they come across a right spot for jumping into the water. They tend to stick together even while hunting for fish/krill in the sea.

I was so glad that we could get at least an hour landing time on the actual Antarctic continent amidst bad weather. I had planned to propose marriage to Andy on this special continent that is also my favorite. Here is an opportunity to make it the most memorable too. I did pop the question going down on my knees with a solitaire in hand at around 10am amidst penguins and light snowfall. She accepted and here are some after engagement pics.

The Gentoo penguins were hanging out away from the sea just below the rocky mountains leaving the region close to the sea for the Adelie penguins. It was quite windy and these penguins nest behind the rocks to keep themselves warm. We could also spot some albatrosses scouting the scene to salvage any dead birds. The wind was blowing hard and it also snowed a little bit while we were walking back and forth on this landing site. This is the first time we had set foot on the seventh continent and many fellow passengers wanted to take of their shoes/socks to step the actual foot here. The kayakers were having a good time after paddling their way from the ship to the coast. Apparently it was difficult to navigate for them in these strong winds and they were constantly pushed towards the coast. They got a bit of both kayaking and landing experience and seemed extremely happy. Shortly we had the expedition staff chasing us back to the ship so that we can get to the next landing site quickly.

Next stop was Hope bay which is located very close to Brown bluff in the Antarctic sound. Sound is the term used to describe a strait or passage between islands. The ship did sail close to hope bay but the captain could not manage to anchor it due to the heavy winds. We had to abandon this landing and move on to our next destination which was carefully picked based on the direction of the winds and the protection offered by the surrounding mountains. As we moved along the Antarctic sound we could see a large Agentinian base station called Esperanza at Hope bay. It was quite foggy but still nicely visible due to sunshine. The sea was getting rougher due to the winds and this means less food to avoid sea sickness symptoms.

In the late afternoon we arrived at an island called Madder cliffs with calm waters surround by huge glaciers and abundant wildlife. Seemed like a perfect spot for zodiac cruise. We headed out to the madder cliffs to spot some Weddell seals and penguins on the cliffs. There were lots and lots of Adelie and Gentoo penguins walking on the glacier to reach the top of the glacier to their nests. It was quite a scenery to see black dots spread all over the white ice that covered the mountain. David who was our zodiac cruise driver was enthusiastic to heed to my request to get closer to the glaciers. This is quite a brave thing to do because the glaciers can break away and fall into the ocean causing huge waves that can topple our zodiacs easily. Seeing these glaciers from close is the true Antarctic experience in my opinion. The weather was great with abundant light to snap away at these glaciers. We were also greeted by some Antarctic terns but no whales which apparently hang out close to the glaciers. After our close encounter with the glaciers we had to head back to the ship. It seemed like all I needed was this zodiac cruise to complete the missing piece towards a true Antarctic experience.

Back on the ship the sunlight was so good to capture some great shots of the glaciers surrounding us. We went to the deck followed by a visit to the captain's bridge to enjoy this beautiful scenery. Very soon all the zodiacs returned back to the ship and we set sail northwest towards south shetland islands. There were lots and lots of ice bergs scattered all over the sea.

There was a special pre-dinner event planned to raise awareness about "save the albatross" initiative. Lynn proposed 3 toasts before the auction started - to pristine Antarctica, to all of us whose friends and family asked "why go to antarctica for holidays?" and never quite understood/appreciated the beauty of this wilderness and to the crew who made this all happen.The ship staff auctioned off 6-8 items and all the proceeds were meant to fund the initiative. Duncan did a great job auctioning these items quickly one after the other while we sat at our tables sipping champagne and enjoying the show. It was fun cheering the bidders. After dinner we spent some time at the bridge spotting whales until sunset. It was a beautiful sunset with the sky turning completely orange that looked like somebody set it on fire. Many of us tried to capture this scenery when this orange light hit the huge tablets of ice bergs that created a fantastic effect.

Link to photo album

Frozen continent...finally here!

Date: 12th Jan, 2011

We woke up to peep through our cabin window looking for a stunning scenery and it was right in front of us as expected. It was absolutely gorgeous to look at floating ice bergs with amazing glaciers in the background. The ship was parked close to Paulet island which is close to the Antarctic peninsula. We quickly got dressed up and joined the rest of the passengers in the dining room for breakfast. As usual, Lynn had made a plan after consultation with the ship captain. Everybody looked very happy with a constant grin on their faces that seem to suggest "Yes, we made it!". The plan was to land at Paulet island followed by Devil's island. We had absolutely no clue on what to expect in either of these islands. After a short zodiac cruise we were on the island. The situation here was quite similar to the Salisbury plain in south georgia except for ice and type of penguins. The island hosted a massive collection of Adelie penguins which we haven't had a chance to see during this trip so far. The Adelie penguins are neither shy nor curious. They seem to be interested in getting along with their life and not bothered with our presence on the island. A french explorer d'Urville named these penguins Adelie after his wife's name. These penguins use stones to build their nests. It is quite a common situation to see a penguin steal the stones religiously brought by its neighbor. Apparently the stones are used as tokens of currency in this strange penguin world. It is also one of the factors that the females consider before mating with the male penguins.

We walked along the shore to a high cliff where we could see plenty of blue-eyed shags living harmoniously with the Adelie penguins. I had lots of ideas for taking photos here - penguins getting into water, jumping into water, feeding the chicks, pruning themselves, etc. Got some good shots of penguins and blue-eyed shags on these cliffs. The weather turned out to be great with some light sunshine. We had gone through the pain of carrying a tripod after seeing a fog filled island from our ship but I never got a chance to use it on the island. Both penguin and shag chicks looked like small brown balls carefully guarded by their parents. They had not yet molted for the season. There were lots of skuas wandering around looking for an opportunity to grab the chicks. We could even see two skuas tearing apart a poor chick. It was a great site to watch the penguins hopping on/off small sheets of ice near the island. We just sat there watching some routine penguin activity.

The plan for the afternoon was to land on Devil's island but due to bad weather we had to abandon this plan. Instead we were taken on a zodiac cruise that brought us close to the ice bergs floating around in the Weddell sea. We got to see some amazing ice formations and some of them reflected bright turquoise blue. There were some huge tabular shaped ice bergs and some small sheets where penguins took rest before continuing on hunting for more krill. Soon enough we came across a sheet of ice where a lazy Weddell seal was taking a nap. There were about 2-3 zodiacs in all directions taking pictures of this giant seal on the sheet of ice. It woke up occasionally realizing all the star-like attention it has been getting that afternoon. After about 2hrs of cruising we returned back to our ship. Apparently, our fellow passengers who were on other zodiacs saw more seals than us. They showed us pictures of leopard seal and crabeater seals. We did get a bit jealous but glad that at least some of us got to see more action on the floating ice bergs.

Based on the previous zodiac cruise experience, we decided to put on 2 pairs of gloves and 3 layers of socks. Apparently this turned out to be not enough for a long zodiac cruise. The feet and fingers were quite frozen by the end of the cruise. This is probably the effect of cold winds though the temperature itself was not very low. There were lots and lots of gigantic ice bergs floating all over the Weddell sea and it was quite a challenge for the captain to navigate through them. Low light conditions are great for photographing these ice bergs to highlight the turquoise blue color reflecting from them. Due to lack of phytoplanktons, we did not see a lot of wildlife in comparison to other islands we have visited during this trip earlier.

Link to photo album

Rough Antarctic waters

Date: 9th, 10th, 11th Jan 2011

The next two days were "at sea" days and the first day was supposed to be fairly relaxed with no wake up calls. We had brunch at 10am instead of breakfast and lunch. We woke up feeling the waves of a rough sea in which our ship was navigating. Everybody seem to be performing a wave dance in the corridors due to all the bouncing while trying to make slow progress towards their destination. I had popped in a sea sickness pill the previous night which did not help greatly. It was time to apply a sea-sickness patch behind your ear which was supposed to strengthen the defense against sea sickness. Unfortunately the effect of a patch is supposed to kick-in only after 4-6hrs. These pills and patches are supposed to cause drowsiness and after brunch we slept like a log until 3pm. Meanwhile we had missed the screen of a documentary called "congress of penguins" and a talk by Damien on "Shackleton - the boss". We did manage to attend the talk by Pat on "penguins in peninsula".

In the evening, we decided to laze around in the lounge area of the ship sipping some rum cocktails and watching "Mama Mia" which Lisa picked up quickly after going through a big collection of DVDs. I had not watched the movie and enjoyed some funny parts here and there. It reminded us of bollywood movies with contextual songs/dance sprinkled all over it. We barely sat for dinner and I could feel the effect of sea sickness. Immediately returned back to the cabin and tried to get some rest after throwing up once. The ship doctor was very nice to come by our cabin and gave some advice on what to eat and how I can feel better soon. We managed to catch up a little bit on "Star Wars 5" before getting to bed.

The wake up call was at 7.30am and they had planned for a packed day full of talks. Pat talking about "shorebirds in antarctica", Jimmy about "seals in antarctica", Damien about "Swedish expedition" and Jamie about "ice". The sea was not very rough and we had a good breakfast during which we planned on attending 3 out of the 4 talks planned for the day. We found out later that there was a heavy storm on the straight-line path from S. Georgia to South Orkney islands and the captain decided to take the longer less bumpy route which added an extra day to reach our destination. Just to laugh a little bit before visiting the penguins in Antarctic peninsula, Duncan had planned to screen the movie "Happy Feet" which we missed due to the drowsy side-effect of the sea sickness pills.

On the 3rd "at sea" day, the sea got rougher again. We spent some time in the bridge, after lunch, trying to spot some whales but with no luck. We could sense the restlessness in everybody's faces since this was the longest we had gone so far with no land or wildlife in site except for some flying prions and albatrosses. By dinner time we sighted our first big ice berg with the orkney islands in the background. Almost all the passengers were on the bridge and nobody wanted to head to the dining room for dinner. The ice bergs were huge with interesting formations and amazing colors. The blue ones are the oldest and densest. As we approached the Orkneys islands we could spot some fin whales crossing across the front of the ship. The temperature had dropped terribly and it was quite a challenge to go on to the deck for taking some photos without proper windproof gear. It was almost the time for sunset and the sky colors were amazing with beautiful patterns. The conditions were not great for a landing on South Orkneys. The island was hardly visible. After cruising through the ice bergs we moved along to our next destination which would be the Antarctic peninsula. The sea continued to be rough and I applied the anti-sickness patch along with a pill to counter the menace of sea-sickness. We could see fewer people coming to the dining room and many skipping lunch/dinner due to motion sickness.

We had no problem sleeping through the rock-n-roll of the ship. We were looking forward for the next day when we will be reaching the frozen continent. We slept early thinking about those beautiful images of ice bergs and abundant wildlife which will entertain us soon.

Link to photo album

Bye bye, South Georgia

Date: 8th Jan, 2011

Today is the last day in South Georgia and Lynn decided to pack it up with lots of action. The ship was heading north passing some of the spots we had already visited during the past 3 days. The wake up call was at 5.30am and we were promptly at the gang way boarding the zodiac at 6am. The plan was to go on a zodiac cruise around prince olive harbor and elephant cove. It was a cloudy morning with some rough winds churning the ocean. We got quite wet on the zodiacs and I manage to get some shots along the way. Prince olav harbor has the ruins of a whaling station with huge tanks that were used to store the whale oil. It also has a ship wreck that is more than 100yrs old. The shore was full of fur seals and it was a great idea not to land there. The mountains were covered with fog but we could still see the horizontal/vertical strips of sediments that could be a great playground for archaeologists. We learned from our guide that the vegetation in s. georgia is similar to that of south american continent and very unlike africa. This lead to the speculation that s. georgia was probably a part of s. america and not africa before the gondwana land split apart. The elephant cove is quite secluded with decent bird life and shallow waters.

Back on the ship we had a fairly late breakfast while we waited for our next landing at right whale bay which is supposed to be the place where the right whales hung out before the whaling began. Due to strong winds and bad weather, we could not land at this site and decided to head south again towards Prion island. Apparently Prion island is a paradise for albatross and other air borne birds. The south georgian government has some rules to let us land on this island only on specific days/times. Fortunately, today was one of those days and Lynn was trying to work around our itineraries in the past 3-4 days to make this landing possible. Probably this explains why we started heading south earlier and then came back up north keeping in mind that our next major destination Antarctica is located further south.

Visiting Prion island requires following some extra rules because it supports a delicate vegetation that can easily be disrupted by human intervention. This is one of the few islands that has no rats and birds like pipits can survive here. Only 50 people are allowed on this island at any time. We were put in groups 10 and shuttled off to the island. The weather was cloudy with strong winds. The ocean was very rough and it was a quite a challenge to maneuver the zodiac. There is a nice board walk to reach the top of the island where the albatross nests are located. As always we were greeted by fur seals on both sides of the board walk. We reached the top and could easily spot many albatross es and soots. There was one big male albatross sitting on its egg right across the board walk. We got some great shots in spite of the rain which was trying hard to spoil our camera gear. After about 15-20 min, we had to leave making room for the next group. This was our last landing in south georgia and we had to sadly bid goodbye to this wildlife paradise of the south. We were informed later that the last 14+ people could not make it to the island because of changing wind conditions that apparently picked up during the later part of the day.

Without wasting much time, the ship sailed crossing south georgia's northern tip. There was an announcement that we need to secure our things in the cabin before we hit the open waters that night. The sea got rougher with terribly long waves. We could feel the difference and it was barely possible to walk without having one hand on the rails. For tonight, everybody was invited to attend a "hat" party at the bar to raise a toast for south georgia.

Link to photo album

South Georgian Harbors

Date: 7th Jan, 2011

The ship headed further south and the winds picked up quickly. Our next stop was Gold harbor which is located close to the south eastern tip of the island. It has a good combination of the usual south georgian wildlife - fur seals, elephant seals, king and gentoo penguins. This is the first place where we encountered the huge elephant seals lazing around the beach.

We had two options, either follow Damien to visit the Gentoo penguin colonies or follow our ornithologist Pat to see some Albatross nesting up in the hills. We decided to go up the Albatross route. It was a steep climb over loose rocks on a bright day. We intentionally lagged behind the rest of the gang and took some nice shots of the meadows with glaciers in the background. Soon enough we came across some albatrosses seated graciously in the grass meadows. We rested on a steep cliff filled with tussock grass to watch the lightmantled sooty and giant albatross flying nearby. Unfortunately we could not locate their nests even after trying to follow them with our binoculars for about half an hour. We were running out of time for the last zodiac and had to head back, though we did not want to. We could easily spend two more hours in this gorgeous place. At the beach we got some cool shots of the big blobs of elephant seals lying there snorting over each other. This harbor also has abundance of king penguins. We had some close encounters with Skuas and baby seals while waiting for our turn to board the zodiac back to the ship - a couple of Skuas approached Trinity apparently interested in bitting her boots.

In the afternoon, the plan was to visit the Royal bay but due to strong winds the captain could not secure a safe anchor for the ship. We headed further north to the calm waters near Ocean harbor. During this stretch we seemed to have crossed the St. Andrews bay, the largest king penguin colony, which I badly wanted to visit and due to strong winds it was not included as a part of the plan. Meanwhile, the kayakers on the ship were getting restless since they haven't had a chance to head out even once in their kayaks. Ocean harbor seemed like a perfect location with great weather for kayaking. We booked this trip about 2 months ago and all the 16 coveted spots for kayaking were already taken. We had to stay with the rest of the gang and go ashore ocean harbor. This landing site was not quite different from the rest of the sites we visited earlier except that it is an abandoned whaling station with lots of elephant seals on the beach.

We had an option to follow the guides on two scenic walks but we decided to take it easy and head out on our own. This is the first fully equipped whaling station that even had a railroad for transporting goods. We could see some remnants of the rail engines that the fur seals have gladly made it their home now. We decided to head up the hill and we were greeted by an aggressive fur seal which came charging at us on the way and it was hard to convince it otherwise. Fur seals can bite especially during the end of the breeding season. The male seals can bite us out of stress when we approach their territory during the last few days of the breeding season when they haven't had a chance to find a female seal for mating. Looks like the general techniques to face the bears in Yosemite seem to work well to defend against fur seals. We came across a ship wreck that was supposedly in great condition after 80yrs of staying stagnated in the bay. We headed up the hill, enjoying the last bit of sun and got a rare glimpse of some reindeers before heading back down. This time we just followed our courageous guide Damien who saved us from the fur seals while listening to his stories when he lived/worked in South Georgia about 30yrs ago.

In the past two days, we have been getting some good exercise hiking around the bays in s. georgia. It has been 3 busy days around this island with absolutely no time for anything else on the ship. We had unnecessarily prepared ourselves with lots of books, computer/card games, dvds, etc to keep ourselves busy during the trip.

Link to photo album

Day of hiking in South Georgia

Date: 6th Jan, 2011

The plan for South Georgia was to move from north eastern part of the island towards the south along the coast. After two awesome landings we continued down the island for the second day. Today the plan was to wake up at 5.30am and get ready to board the zodiacs at 6am for a 3.5hr hike from Fortuna Bay to Stromness bay. This is part of the walk that Shackleton crossed along with 2 other men from his crew after a strenuous journey from Elephant island to S. Georgia in search of rescue. We heard about the hike plans during dinner the previous night and immediately looked at each other and our eyes glowed, we said: yes, we are in!

It was a great hike with amazing view of the mountains and the bay. The winds were blowing really hard and we got a taste for the Catabatic winds which is probably the strongest winds we have ever faced. Trinity was almost blown away. One of our guides Solan read some of the inspiring excerpts from the Shackleton's book along the hike. It was approximately a 5.5mile hike and we took about 3hrs before catching a glimpse of the abandoned Stromness bay whaling station from atop. During the last stretch of the hike we did come across a nice waterfall and a plain grassland with reindeers that were descendants of those introduced by Norwegian whaler Larsen in 1911.

We had another hike planned for the afternoon. After a hurried up lunch we hit the shores again for a hike starting out from Myviken. We can probably say that this is one of the very few scenic walks we have ever did. We were greeted by fur seals along the lake during the initial part of the hike. The weather was great with temperatures in mid 10s. It was time for a group shot when we came across a beautiful waterfall before starting a steep ascent that culminated with a gorgeous view of Mount Paget along with its sister mountains. I believe this is the tallest mountain under the British control and it was completely covered with snow. It reminded me of the Himalayan range in Nepal and as the tradition goes I did get some nice panoramic shots of these mountains. The wind was not too strong unlike the Shackleton walk that we took earlier in the day. It was a short 3mi hike and we took our own sweet time to slowly descend down to Grytviken which is the capital town of S. Georgia.

Grytviken was a whaling station back in early 1900s. It has a church built by the Norwegian whalers. Currently about 4 people stay in this little town with 1 managing the post office, 1 taking care of the museum and 2 working in the gift shop for tourists. They are present here only during the 4 summer months when the tourist ships visit them. After a quick stop at the church we headed to the post office and sent some cards to our loved ones. Being a prior philately enthusiast, I had to hoard up some stamps and first day covers related to Antarctica wildlife and history. The gift shop is located inside the museum and here you can find all the commonly found souvenir items. The staff were very friendly and they do accept dollars, euros, sterling pounds and major credit cards.

All the ships visiting South Georgia has to make a pit stop at Grytviken to clear customs and obtain necessary paper work to visit the rest of the island. Every season Grytviken receives on the order of 16-17 ships and each of them have about 100 passengers on an average. After his epic journey in 1916, Shackleton returned to South Georgia aboard "Quest" where he had a tragic heart attack. His grave is one of the frequently visited spots in the town. It is a tradition to gather around his grave and raise rum shots to salute this great explorer, and so we did at 5:45pm, at the end of our visit.

King Edward point is located just across the bay from Grytviken and it hosts about 4-5 British scientists who are studying the wildlife in the region. In the evening, we hosted a few scientists in the ship to give talks about their work in the region. Apparently there is a massive effort to get rid of the rats which feed on bird chicks. We learned a little bit about the fishery control and penguin/seal research with a brief introduction to the-life-of-a-researcher-in-south-georgia. This was followed by an american style BBQ on the deck of the ship. The chef team did a great job organizing the BBQ in fairly windy conditions. The hot dogs and hamburgers were great and even Trinity seem to have missed these american delicacies after staying away from home for about 10 days now. We enjoyed the warm Glu wine watching the sun set behind the mountains surrounding Grytviken. It was great to catch up on some movie sipping over cognac/honey in our cozy cabin.

Link to photo album

South Georgia - Day 1

Date: Jan 5th, 2011

Sunrise: 3.01am

Sunset: 20.05

The ship engines picked up full speed overnight and by sunrise we were at North eastern tip of south georgia. Based on some reading in the library the previous night, I had discovered that Bird island is like the wildlife paradise in South Georgia with lots and lots of varieties of birds. Sadly, this island is off limits for tourists and currently occupied by British Antarctic Survey folks for research purposes. The next destination on my mind was St. Andrews Bay which is the largest king penguin rookery in the world. Here you can see millions of penguin pairs with snow capped mountains in the background. About 2-3 yrs ago we saw an amazing picture of king penguins at St. Andrews Bay and fell in love with this place. We decided our first itinerary to Antarctica should definitely include South Georgia for the amazing wildlife found down here. The wildlife such as penguins and seals have predators in water and none on land. As a result they are not afraid of humans watching them on land which provides great proximity to wildlife in the southern oceans.

Today was our first day in South Georgia and we were quite excited to check it out especially the king penguin colony that was planned for the afternoon. It was a cloudy day and the first outing was planned for a zodiac cruise to watch the penguins, albatross, petrels and seals along the beaches in Elsahul. We started out great but soon it started drizzling followed by light rain but we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was great to see the seals playing all around our zodiacs. It was a treat watching the king penguins majestically standing at the beach in big groups. This was the first time we saw king penguins in such large numbers. Apart from penguins and seals which are commonly found in South Georgia, we could see storm petrels, black browed albatross, lightmantled sooty, ducks and terns. The ocean had good amount of floating kelps and our experienced guides navigated carefully among them. At times they switched off the engines of the zodiacs and we could hear the sounds of all the abundant wildlife around us. Unfortunately the rain did spoil most of my pictures leaving me wanting for more.

After lunch we boarded our zodiacs again to land at Salisbury plain. This is the second largest king penguin colony after St. Andrews bay. This is one amazing place with so many king penguins. A huge plain with groups and groups of king penguins - I believe there are more than 500k pairs on this single bay - and fur seals. The penguin chicks are brown in color and are generally found in the middle of the pack protected by the parent birds around them. The penguin chicks are very curious and completely not afraid of approaching us. These are brown in color and were yet to shed their skin in preparation for the upcoming winter. [Interesting was to notice that the chicks seem to grow in disproportional way - sometimes they have adult size feet and "wings" along with a small body - quite odd.] The whole trip would have been worth it just to visit this penguin colony. We had never experienced such a beautiful place during any of our previous travels. We landed at the beach flooded with fur seals and to walk about half a km to get to the actual dense colony of king penguins. There was a nice glacier in the background and the light was amazing for photographs. Literally, my fingers were engaged clicking pictures for 3hrs at full speed and we were the last to leave this place after constant nagging from our guides trying to chase us before the last zodiac leaves for the ship. We got some great shots and wish we had more time to actually sit back and enjoy the scenery.

Andy: Srinath couldn't literally stop clicking, this was amazing. I had never seen him so excited about taking pictures before.. Guess buying the new lens was really worth it after all.

The ship crew announced an iceberg sighting competition - the person who would guess the day/time closest to our first ice berg sighting gets a bottle of wine. In no time we saw a big list of contenders with guesses that spread over 4-5 day period. Even the Russian crew got excited about it and registered their guesses. We came across the first ice berg at around 9pm according to the report from the captain at the bridge. The winner was proudly announced during dinner that evening.

Got a good taste for South Georgia on our first day and we were so glad that we still have 3 more days to go on this beautiful island. Everybody seemed very happy with these excursions and could not stop talking about all their experiences with the wildlife. We decided to celebrate our visit to S. Georgia, at dinner, with some wine that we had picked up in Ushuaia. The bar crew were very friendly and opened our wine bottle with no additional corkage fee. Cannot wait to find out what is in store for the next day…

Link to photo album

Moving on

Dates: 3rd Jan - 4th Jan 2011

Sunrise: 4.51am

Sunset: 20.55

After bidding good bye to Falklands, we set sailing east towards South Georgia. It takes 2 full days in open seas to complete this journey from Falklands to S. Georgia. Our experience in Falklands was already quite impressive but we heard from many of the veteran polar travelers "wait till you get to South Georgia". I can imagine south georgia to be a good mix of - land and ice, birds and animals, flora and fauna, etc. In preparation for this trip I had done some reading about South Georgia and it apparently has abundant wildlife due to its unique location. There is abundant phytoplankton around this island that supports krill which in turn supports penguins, albatrosses, whales and seals. I remember in one of the talks, Jamie mentioned that the crap of krill along with that of some whales provide the perfect manure needed for the growth of phytoplanktons. An interesting ecological inter-dependence going on in the southern oceans for ages which has been heavily disturbed due to brutal whaling by humans.

Andy: Yeah, I was sad to hear that the whaling period is the one responsible for me having to keep such an eye open to spot the big animals, otherwise, the oceans would be just filled with them…

The "at sea" days are kind of boring though there are plenty of things happening on board. We have numerous talks on various related topics such as birds of the southern oceans, mammals and history of this region. These talks gave some good tips on bird/animal movements to help us identify them easily. The library on board is very good with nice hand-picked books related to all you want to know about Antarctica, Falklands and South Georgia. The lounge next to the bar has warm drinks 24x7 along with a TV and a good collection of DVDs. We did carry some books and movies for the trip but so far we haven't had a chance to open them. Along with all these options we should not forget all the interesting conversations with fellow passengers, sharing each other's travel experiences and pictures.

Normally there are 4 talks per day each lasting about an hour. The presentation rooms are not big enough to accommodate all of them in a single room and as a result each talk is presented twice. The people on the left (port) side of the ship attend one talk while those on the right (starboard) side attend the other. They switch rooms after the talks are over. A typical "at sea" day is as follows:

- wake up call at 7.30am

- breakfast at 8am

- talk 1 at 10am

- talk 2 at 11am

- lunch at 1pm

- talk 3 at 3pm

- talk 4 at 5pm

- happy hour at 6.30pm

- dinner at 7.30pm

- movie at 9.15pm

Jamie presented a talk on "River of Krill", Pat presented 2 talks about birds in Falklands and southern oceans, Jimmy talked about whales and marine mammals, Damien talked about history of Falklands and Lynn presented a primer on south georgia. The talks were very informative and the presenters always welcomed questions from those passengers who are enthusiastic to learn more. I made it a point to attend all the talks on birds and conveniently skipped those about history of the region. The weather has been constant over the past 2 days since we left Stanley - very cloudy and foggy with a visibility range of about 30m. The sea is starting to get rough and for the first time I felt a little bit of sea sickness this afternoon. Just to be safe I avoided the lunch and took an anti-sea-sickness pill which caused drowsiness and guess what I did all of the afternoon? The pill worked great and I was back to normal by evening. We even dined over some Malbec wine that we had picked up in Ushuaia. We watched a documentary movie "Endurance" which narrates the story of Shackleton with real pictures and videos taken by Frank Hurley during this famous and ambitious journey taken by Shackleton with 27 member crew to cross the Antarctic continent for the first time in 1914. The next day morning we were informed that we have crossed the "Antarctic convergence" which is an imaginary circle around Antarctica. Within the convergence the sea water temperatures drop by about 4C and the terms of the Antarctic treaty come into effect. This is also the region with abundant sea life though we haven't been able to see a lot due to the foggy conditions.

Link to photo album

Stanley: capital of the Falklands

Date: 2nd Jan, 2011

Sunrise: 4.38

Sunset: 22.15

Very bright sunlight woke us up early at around 6.30am. We were still surrounded by some islands whose terrain looked quite like those which we visited the previous day. Today was the day to visit Stanley which is the capital of Falkland Islands. Stanley is a small town with about 2,050 residents. There are very few brick houses and all the remaining have bright colorful rooftops. We even joked that the government might regulate the choice of colors to paint the rooftops. We did take Larry's suggestion seriously and prepared our backpacks/clothing for a run along the coast of Stanley. The visitor center at Stanley is run by 3 ladies who were our main point of contact for any activities which we might want to do in the city. There are a wide variety of choices that matches the tastes of people of all ages. There is a museum, wrecked ships, battlefield tour, penguin colony tour, bars/pubs and nice english bakeries. There is also a house of some guy whose backyard is filled with whale bones along with slogans against whaling in this region.

We decided to start the day in an unconventional way and opted for jogging on our own to Gypsy cove which is nicely located over the cliff of a white sand beach with some penguins lazing around. It has some beautiful cliffs and we get to see the birds (red shags) nesting on them. During our jog we came across the Elizabeth ship wreck which looked nicely stationed over a platform of sand close to an iron bridge over the shallow part of the ocean. After a nice long 5km run we arrived at the cove and walked around reading up about the unique vegetation, flora and fauna normally found in this region. There is also a big gun that was stationed here during World War II to keep the Germans away from invading this English territory.

The white sand beach next to the cove looked very inviting but the beach is off limits for tourists. During the 1982 Falklands war, Argentina planted 134 minefields to blow up the English army. After losing the war to the British, Argentina cleverly destroyed the papers that kept a record of the location of these minefields. Only few of these have been discovered so far. After a quick walk we jogged back to the downtown for some fish n chips over German beer for lunch. Did get to buy a whole lot of souvenirs for friends along with lots and lots of bird stamps from Falkland Islands to add to my collection. I was quite pleased with my purchase. We walked around town clicking pictures of colorful rooftops and flowers along the main street. For us Stanley brings out the image of houses with colorful rooftops and each resident owning at least 2-3 big range rovers.

Now for some ranting...

Today is our 4th day on the trip and we have gradually gotten into the habit of arriving 10-15 min late for dinner. On a ship where the average age of passengers is around 45-50yrs, we can expect most of them to be quite disciplined and stick to the posted dining hours. The dining room on the ship has exactly the same capacity as the number of passengers. We arrived late and the dining hall was full with very few scattered seats being available. We have about 6 passengers from Japan and they usually sit at a separate table aloof from the rest of us. They seem to go through extra pains of bringing a rice cooker on board to cook the rice noodles and share it among themselves as an appetizer. With no other seats available in the dining room we ended up sitting at their table after asking the gentleman at the table if it was alright. He was quite polite and had no problem with it. After a little while four other  Chinese comrades arrived at the table claiming their seats. Suddenly we were the intruders and it was quite embarrassing to see everybody completely panic with each of them muttering in a language we don't understand. One woman went to the waitress to complain while the other men started talking among themselves. We politely offered our seats and agreed to shift to the next table where a very friendly canadian couple gladly made space on the table to accommodate us. Unfortunately the dining room has a fixed number of chairs and all of them are latched to the floor in preparation against the swaying due to rough winds. The Chinese couple stood there staring at our table and not accepting the emptied seats. Wtf?? We are just there for dinner, let us just have food and not complicate things with all this fuss over such a simple matter. The whole episode was quite embarrassing and we ended up finishing the dinner with a note to self - avoid the troublesome Chinese table and try to get to dinner on time. It turned out that they were quite polite with us during the rest of the trip.

The day has been quite tiring due to the 8k run in Stanley this morning. Andy has been planning on getting me to watch Star Wars for quite some time now. We plan on watching the first of the many Star Wars movies before we hit the bed. Adios!

Link to photo album

Arriving in Falkland Islands

Dates: 1st Jan, 2nd Jan 2011

Today is the first day of 2011. Don't quite remember when was the last new year's day I woke up as early as 6am. Seems like there is a first time for everything and this trip was packed with so many such unique experiences. It was a beautiful sunny morning and for a change we were surrounded by small islands instead of open ocean on all sides. Yes, we had arrived on schedule at the Falkland Islands. We had to go out to the deck of the ship to sink in this beautiful vista blessed with great weather. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of some dolphins but ended up sighting some penguins swimming in the water. It was like showing a candy to a kid and immediately hiding it just to leave the kid wanting for more but we were hopeful to see more later in the day.

After an early breakfast we were shuttled off to the Saunder's islands for a 3-4 hour dance with the penguins. Looks like this island was chosen to give us the maximum bang for the buck. The geography of this island was quite impressive with two hills on either side and a small valley surrounded by ocean on all sides. It has very rich bird life that included 5 different species of penguins (Magelanic, Rockhopper, Gentoo, King and Macaroni) living in harmony. We started off exploring the Gentoo penguins who like to hang out in groups of 50-60 on small mounds. Occasionally you would see some moving from one mound to the other as if they were going to visit its extended family. The Magelanic penguins are the shy kind who also like to organize themselves into well disciplined groups before taking a plunge into the ocean.

My favorite on this island were the Rockhopper penguins and as the name suggests they are hang out on the rocks and have no fear against getting thrown out by the ocean on to the rocks. They have bright red eyes/beaks and easy to identify based on yellow strings jetting out of their head. I would describe them as "dudes with a cool attitude". We also got to say hello to some of the petrels that are only found around this island along with the usual cunning Skuas. The skuas hang out close to the penguin colonies waiting for an opportunity to grab penguin chicks. We could also see some huge whale bones perfectly preserved by the beach close to a small colony of king penguins. Time just flew by on this amazing island and very soon we had the staff members chasing us down to head back for lunch. We could have easily spent a whole day on this island watching some amazing wildlife. Today was our first zodiac ride and it went much smoother and fun than we had pictured it.

After lunch we had another landing scheduled to visit the Carrcass Island. Along with Magelanic penguins this island is shared by terns, ducks, geese, hawks and song birds. A unique vegetation of this island was Tussock grass which grows to about 10ft high that apparently is strong enough to pull yourself over a cliff with just a just tuft of this grass. We walked across the island for about 2-2.5mile to the McGill family home that takes care of this island. We were pleasantly welcomed with a lot of cakes/cookies along with an english style high tea. Probably one of the few times we absolutely forgot about the calories behind these delightful snacks. Many of us shamelessly wanted to stuff them into the pockets and take them back to the ship. While we were nibbling over these snacks inside there were some hawks attacking our backpacks in the lawn outside.

It was nice to hit the gym on board before getting some dinner. The gym on board is probably one of the most ill equipped gyms I have ever visited. I managed to get the treadmill working with the help of the doctor who apparently use the gym regularly. The conversation at dinner was quite interesting too. We had the pleasure of dining with one of the polar travel veterans who had some nice tips to enjoy these kind of trips and recommendations for future trips. He suggested us to go running in Stanley, capital of Falkland Islands, which was on the cards for the next day.

Time seems to be flying by so quickly on this trip. I wish I had more time to enjoy these magical moments. Before retiring to bed, here I am in the library on the ship writing this blog. We were soon joined by a fellow passenger who is a tech attorney from Canada. We chatted about how fortunate we are to be on this trip that 95-99% of the world does not get to go for various reasons. Just like a typical conversation in the bay area, we soon steered towards all the latest and greatest happenings in the tech world. When the conversation turned towards the history of England I excused myself to go to bed.

Link to photo album

At sea

Date: 31st Dec, 2010

Sunrise: 4.50am

Woke up with Lynn's wake up call. It was a cold and cloudy morning and we were excited to try out our first breakfast on board. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and I was quite impressed with the choices they provided which included mainly US style continental stuff. The crew managing the ship and the guides planning it were awesome. They have experience planning out every detail without overloading us with a lot of information. All in all they were very well organized and completely professional in making us feel at home on board.

We were given some tips to watch out for whales and dolphins in the open seas. We visited all the ship decks to check out the cool waters and it was drizzling on the decks. It was very windy and slippery. We even saw an old guy fall on the deck with a big camera hanging over his neck. Did not seem like a great day for taking pictures. Today was the day at sea heading north east towards Falkland Islands. We had a number of talks to attend including the mandatory briefings about zodiacs and IAATO regulations. The other informative talks were about the biology in the patagonian shelf and a brief history about Falklands.. We had almost full house attendance in these talks. In between the talks we had about an hour free time to checkout the birds from the ship deck or visit the bridge where the captain steers the ship. The bridge is an interesting place where we get to see all the actions of navigating the ship. You can see all the cool equipments, maps, lat/long data with a constantly changing TV monitor that indicates ship speed, wind speed, time, humidity, depth, temperature, etc.

The ship is quite stable but still rocks back-n-forth

Landing ashore can get us wet and we need special boots which we tried them on and set them aside in preparation for our upcoming visits to the shore. We had to vacuum all our outer layer clothes and waterproof bags to avoid introducing any invasive species into the pristine continent. All in all, the day was spent with preparations for the next day when we will have our first shore landing.

Today is new year's eve and as the custom says - it doesn't matter where you are in the world you have to raise a toast and welcome the new year in style. The theme for the new year's party was to get creative and wear a bow tie. The bar was decked up with lights and new year writings. Starting 22h we raised a toast with a countdown every half hour until midnight. All of us know how much fun it is to drink with the Australians and with our ship filled with so many of them it was a great way to welcome the new year with some noisy merrymaking. The staff were very cheerful and we had champagne flowing on the house. I have had great unique experiences welcoming the new year over the past few years and this one seemed to continue the tradition in the same style. Knowing that we had to wake up early (6am) for our first land sighting of Falklands we retired to bed at about 1.30am. Just 4.5hrs of sleep? Ouch! Are we on a vacation?

Though we thought it wasn't that great for taking pictures, it's hard at first to get used to the bouncing movement, we enjoyed our first day of wildlife watching on deck. Giant petrols would come flying along the ship, in it's beautiful flight and poise, for several times and we could see them very closely.

Link to photo album

The adventure begins

Date: 31st Dec, 2010

Today is the day we are going to start our epic journey. We were waiting for this special day for so long and it was finally here. 

Probably we were in Ushuaia in the peak of the summer and the day-time temperatures were around 25C with not a lot of winds compared to our visit 2 yrs ago. It was good to start the day early with a nice job/run along the Beagle channel. It was a great opportunity to discover some parts of Ushuaia that tourists like us normally don't go. The trick was just to follow a local Argentinian running along the channel.

After some good breakfast and dropping off the bags for our expedition, we had some time until late afternoon to explore more of what Ushuaia had to offer. We chose to head to the Martial Glacier which was just a 7km taxi ride to the chair lift station. The ride on the chairlift was quite scenic but the weather was not great for good pictures. The base of the Glacier is quite beautiful but we did not have enough time to hike up. Weather is so unpredictable in this part of the world and a testimony to this fact was waiting to reveal itself on our way back from the base of the Glacier. It was nice and warm when we started to descend down the chair lift but we picked up a lot of rain mid-way, having nowhere to seek shelter on the open chairlift we just had to sit and get wet on your descent. Fortunately we managed to save the camera from cold Ushuaia showers.

In preparation for the trip we stocked up on 4-5 bottles of wine and a bottle of local cognac from a local super market. Not to forget, we did get a bottle of champagne to celebrate the new year's on board the ship. The boarding started on time and we were greeted by the friendly staff members on board the Akademik Ioffe. It was a treat to see all the happy faces of the fellow passengers and I am quite sure this was a dream trip for many of them. The cabins were nice and warm with 2 bunk beds and 1 sofa bed. These were semi-private cabins which means you share the bathroom with the couple next door.

We quickly unpacked our bags and headed down to the dining room for the welcome snacks/drinks that notably included martinis and cherry cocktails. We talked to a whole bunch of co-passengers and it was great to listen to all their stories about the reason to visit Antarctica which they narrated with great excitement. For about 50% of them it was their 2nd or 3rd trip to the frozen continent. The menu for dinner was great which was very professionally selected/made/served. If this is the kind of food that we get to eat for the remaining 18 days then I will be sure to put on some good weight which is something I strive hard normally with meagre results. The crew members were introduced during the dinner and each of them seemed very passionate about what they do. We had some experts in marine biology, ornithology and history who seemed very approachable to answer all our questions about southern oceans. We were briefed about the program for the next day.

The ship set sail right on time. We had an Argentine pilot on board temporarily to accompany us until we cross the Beagle channel which almost took about 5hrs. We could see the pilot jumping on to a moving smaller boat at the end of the Beagle channel. The sun set at 22.35h and we had some light until 23.30h. The ship is quite sturdy and we could hardly feel the ship moving until well after midnight when we noticed our wine bottles rolling and hitting each other due to rough open seas. As always Andy had a nice solution to take care of the wine bottles which fortunately did not include throwing them off board or finishing them up.

Link to photo album

Fin del mundo

Date: Dec 30th, 2010

Our flight's approach to Ushuaia was beautiful and the pilot seemed to take more than usual time to go around this tiny island giving us a glimpse of the beautiful landscape surrounding the city. Ushuaia is the capital of Tierra del Fuego nicely tucked amidst snow capped mountains. It is beautiful little town located close to the Tierra del Fuego national park. I get the feeling that it is one of those small towns where everybody knows everybody else. The life here centers around the San Martin street which has shops for anything and everything that one could possibly want away from home. 

Though our flight was an hour late, the expeditions staff were promptly there to pick us up from the airport and get us settled in. The briefing for our Antarctic journey was scheduled for some time later in the evening and we got some time to nibble fish and king crab soup for lunch. You can't go wrong ordering sea food in Ushuaia along with warm drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic). On our way back to the briefing, Trinity noticed a ship docked at the port which read 'National Geographic Endeavor' and we promised ourselves to return soon to take some shots of this well known research vessel. Unfortunately, the next time we got there it had already left the port.

The briefing for the trip was fairly straight-forward and concise with focus on the logistics. This was the first time we got to meet some of our fellow passengers. We could not help but notice that there was a fairly large percentage of Australians and Brits on our expedition and those of us in the minority were from Netherlands, China, Canada and US. Andy and I were the only representatives with Brazil and Indian passports. The day ended with a light dinner and a bottle of Dulce wine that I was not very impressed with. Argentinians seem impatient with making wine and we could see a lot wines made and sold in the same year unlike Californian wines.

It felt good to be back in Ushuaia. Feels like the actual holiday just got started.

Link to photo album

On our way

Date: 30th Dec, 2010

Srinath:

We had a morning flight out of SF to Buenos Aires via Lima. Surprisingly everything was on time and we did get to pose for some pictures for fun while waiting at the airport. We are pleasantly surprised at LAN Peru airlines due to the variety of movies/TV shows and a decent choice of food combined with good wine. So far I have had 2 glasses of wine, watched a chicflick movie and a couple of TV shows. 

Andy seems to be deeply engrossed with her book Paratii by Amyr Klink. He is this dude from Brazil who traveled from Arctic to Antarctic alone in a sailing boat specially design for his trip. Quite an inspiring book to read on a trip like this. She is quite excited and can't stop quoting some interesting phrases from the book. The rest of the flight journey was quite smooth. We could not catch any sleep though. At the immigration in Buenos Aires, I was pulled over to the long visitors queue but Andy could breeze through another line due to her no-visa-required Mercosul citizenship. Don't I hate this partialityt? Guess, one of those moments when I missed the world failing to adopt the concept of global citizenship. Luckily none of our bags went missing and we arrived at a downtown hotel after a long taxi ride that breezed through the crazy Buenos Aires traffic.

We had a pleasant stay in Buenos Aires, we went to a local chain called Havana for breakfast and the highlight was the "Alfajores" which looks like some sweet filling that was sandwiched between two pieces of biscuits.  The croissants here are way different from those we find in France, less butter and more shiny texture and these are called medialunas aka half-moons. Argentina is very popular for the steak and after doing a lot of research on the best affordable steak in  town, Andy zeroed in on the restaurant "El Desnivel" which did delight us with some good steak and palm-hearts salad. It was great walking in the shady streets of the San Telma neighborhood. The day ended with a visit to a fairly modern bar which was not bluntly called "Le Bar" located in the Centro…imagine psychedelic music with a suite of south american favored cocktails.

Our flight to Ushuaia was in the early morning and thanks to some time difference hick-ups, my iPhone failed to wake us up on time. We almost missed the flight but felt good to have made it on time. After this little morning adventure it was time to succumb to the fairly strict baggage restrictions of 15kilos/person for the Buenos Aires to Ushuaia flight and we ended up grudgingly shelling out the extra baggage fees.

Though we had been to Buenos Aires in the past, we did notice certain unusual things about this city. Notably, the traffic lights go in Red -> Orange -> Green sequence unlike US roads. The cab drivers are obsessed with boring talk shows unlike those of us who would like to listen to Lady Gaga while driving on 101 :) Though Buenos Aires is located on the coast, the life in this city is not centered around the beaches unlike Rio de Janeiro. I would say Buenos Aires is more like New York of the south.

Andy:

This morning… aah, I love that we had time for everything in the morning before leaving and there was no sign of "late" anywhere around us.  For a bit of diversion, I can't help remembering this one time I was in Greece with my parents and sister, we were just leaving Athens and decided to go visit a last temple, a bit away from the city and ended up hurrying to the airport on the last minute. My father was driving, we had rented a car, and in that time there were no smartphones or gps available (or was it my dad who wasn't familiar with these kind of technologies? hum…), in a hurry, we didn't have a map with a clear route to the airport so we started asking local athenians for directions - to our surprise and desperation, we found almost no one  spoke english… bad, bad timing!  Luckily, due to my father's interest in historical and linguistic subjects, we were able to get away, after he figured out, reading greek from the road signs, that the word for airport was aerodromo - and we started following those signs. We barely made it, although quite embarrassing since we kept everybody waiting.

Now back to our trip, I promised myself I'd study some spanish since it is so close to my native language portuguese, but that didn't happen until the last minute when on flight I discovered some basic sentence/vocabulary practice entertainment program which offered some basic training with 22 different languages - how practical is that?

Preparations

While choosing a trip to Antarctica there are many possible itineraries that fits a wide variety of people. You might be a curious traveler who wants to go as far down south as possible or your goal is to just cross the Antarctic circle or you might be a wildlife enthusiast. I even heard of people visiting Antarctica to get married!! Since wildlife / nature was the priority for this first trip of ours to the southern waters, we decided on the following itinerary which seemed to offer a good mix of wildlife viewing and varied landscapes.

Ushuaia -> Falkland Islands -> South Georgia -> Antarctic Peninsula -> Ushuaia - for 18 days on a Russian vessel "Akademik Ioffe". We booked with Quark Expeditions which was highly recommended by one of my friends.

In my opinion, visiting Antarctica requires good preparations if you want to thoroughly enjoy it. There are a few cruises each year that take visitors to Antarctica in the southern summer months of Nov - Feb. I did my usual research this year, contacted a few agencies, even made reservations for Dec 2010 but unfortunately due to some other priorities it almost looked like we might not make it. Just two months ago I received one of those spam emails advertising a trip to Antarctica and we gladly signed up for it after some initial thoughts/planning.

The time was short for the preparations and we still decided to go ahead. Most importantly I had to beef up my camera + lens collection and ended up getting a Nikon D700, 17-35mm f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8, 70-300mm f4 along with some filters, flash and a pair of good binoculors. Of course we do need a lot of warm layers and hoarded these mostly from Patagonia and North Face. Not to forget, as a part of the preparations we did end up making a lot of todo / checklists, reading blogs and books, watching movies/documentaries about Antarctica (see below for a list), etc. Looking back it seems like a lot of work but we enjoyed the process. Even after all this, while writing this on our flight from SF to Lima, I still have some uneasy feeling, somewhere in the back of my mind, that we might have forgotten something. During this whole phase, I came to realize that there is never enough time to prepare for your dream trip that you so much desire to make it close to perfection. Eager to find out? Read on...

The Dream trip

I can't believe I am already on a plane while writing this on my way to the dream destination. This is the place I so much dreamed of as a kid.

It all began with my hobby while in high school when I teamed up with my brother on a lofty goal to amass all the stamps in the world but soon we realized that there are more stamps than we can probably imagine. We decided to pick a theme for our stamps collection and get serious about it. Soon we had picked 3 themes - birds, animals and Antarctica. We had several discussions with a fellow collector on the topic of Antarctica. It was a great way to learn all about this "mystery continent" while growing up. Those were the days of no Internet and our text books hardly taught us anything about Antarctic history or geography. We did spend a lot of time in the library learning about the continent and taking notes about the key milestones in Antarctica's history. At that point we were only focussed to go after the stamps that depict major milestones/research/wildlife which would enable us to compete in philatelic exhibitions. Participating in these exhibitions required not just having a huge pile of stamps but to narrate a story with relevant philatelic illustrations. It was interesting to read all about Antarctica - the explorers, the seasons, the flora and fauna, the base stations, the icebergs and more.

I got super excited when I found out that India also has a base station called "Maitri" in the north-east of Antarctica. Apparently only researchers get to visit/work at these base stations. In my opinion, visiting Antarctica is as exotic as space travel itself, the only difference being we will be still on Earth. In my imaginations, I pictured Antarctica as a totally different planet :)

Until a few years ago I had no clue it was possible to visit this blue-ice continent. It was my b'day in 2008 and we were looking for some interesting non-commonplace destination to travel. Tierra del Fuego in the southernmost tip of Argentina suddenly seemed accessible owing to my work assignment in Brazil. We planned up a week-long trip to Argentina with a short stay in Buenos Aires (as the protocol goes..) and most of the time in Ushuaia. It was a great trip, we got to see the Argentinian penguins, seals, the beautiful Beagle channel, the end of world (fin del mundo) train, the hikes and the long days.

On one of the boat rides to see the penguins, I mentioned to Andy about my dream trip to Antarctica. After a little research we discovered that Ushuaia is the gateway to visit Antarctica. We visited a bunch of travel agencies and collected all possible details about a possible trip next year. Frankly speaking, this turned out to be the highlight of our trip to Ushuaia. With a promise to return back soon we left Ushuaia. Due to some work related changes our next visit to Ushuaia took longer than expected. Every year I spent hours of time doing research geared towards visiting Antarctica while watching documentaries and reading lonely planet guides/blogs/websites. Now, after 2yrs the we are finally going and I am super duper excited. I am glad Andy shares the same excitement. We plan on enjoying each and every moment on this childhood dream trip of mine and I'm very eager to find out how it goes.