I can tell the sea is much calmer as soon as I wake this morning. Checking the TV itinerary shows we continued to make good time; we now have a landing at Half-Moon island and Cámara Base this afternoon.

After breakfast, we have a very long safety and IAATO briefing. Antarctica is the world’s last pristine wilderness and people are serious about keeping it that way. All of our external gear has to be inspected and decontaminated so we don’t bring any foreign flora or sickness to the Antarctic. The…

• How do ship stabilizers work?
• Why would we want ours turned off?

ship even has an IAATO observer on board to ensure the expedition complies with all these standards.

Luckily, we are able to avoid most of the decontamination hassle because our gear is either brand new or our ship-issued survival suits for kayaking.

11:30 – Just before lunch we sight land. The South Shetland Islands are a small archipelago that protects Antarctica from the sea on this side. We’ll weave through them and approach Half-moon Island from the continent side.

Fun fact: Alexandria and I were in the original, north, Shetland Islands this time last year for Up Helly Aa.

15:00 – We’ve begun our loop “behind” the South Shetland Islands on the continent side. The mood is light and excited. Although whether that is for our first landing or for these calmer waters is hard to tell. Many people are already suited up outside watching the islands and truly massive glaciers pass by.

On New Year’s Eve, we went to a party at the Faena Hotel in Buenos Aires. We met some Americans just returning from Antarctica who commented on how impressive the sheer scale of the place is. Even seeing these first small islands and glaciers really underscores…

• What does Cámara Station research?

how right they were. And we still haven’t seen the continent — an unbroken expanse of snow and ice the size of North America.

I can see on the ship’s nav that we are near Cámara station. I head out to the bow to try and glimpse our first stop with my binoculars (one of my best purchases, by the way). I can see it on the horizon but the wind nearly takes my glasses, even tied around my neck as they are. …at least we are still getting intermittent sun!

No sooner do I finish wrangling my glasses back on my face than I hear the clatter of the massive chains holding our anchors. The overly friendly series of tones that serve as prelude to an announcement come across the…

ship’s PA. The announcement is calling the kayak team to stations. Now Alexandria and I have to race to get into all of our survival gear for the first time and to remain on schedule for deployment.

As is always the case we rush out the door, arrive just in time… and then need to wait around for 20 minutes…

For kayaking we head out on zodiac craft away from the ship and then roll off the rafts into the kayaks. An easy enough plan. That is until you look back and see half the kayaks you were towing detached and drifting over the horizon and into the Antarctica Ocean. Luckily it’s for…

situations like this that we have powered boats! A wee bit of wrangling and we were once again sorted. Alexandria and I were the first to attempt the maneuver of jumping from raft to kayak in the open ocean (*because I volunteered us) and all went smoothly. In fact, things went mostly smoothly for everyone. Despite this, it is clear the divide in kayaking teams; the Coloradans and Oregonians are far and away the most adept…

Our luck is continuing unabated and the sun is filtering through the clouds. This is really just a trial run so we go along the coast and run some obstacle courses.

After kayaking we reversed manoeuvers and rolled from kayak to zodiac. We opted to go ashore with the rest of the ship. A decision we both regretted in the end. It was cool to get up close to the penguin colonies and the views were amazing. But even so, it’s a hassle to trek around when attired for kayaking. If going ashore was all I was able to do on one of these expeditions I’d be bored quick. Discussing this later, Alexandria pointed out that it isn’t dissimilar from game drives on safari. However, I think game drives hold more excitement because so many small or big things happen in ecosystems with so many…

animals interacting. Down here we are pretty much just watching penguins so I’m not sure how much variety that’ll provide. We saw spades of penguins on this first stop. The contrast between a penguin in the water and one on land is stark. In water, they’re sleek and fast and my favorite time to see them is when they’re “porpoising”, jumping out of the water. On land, they’re just plain comical. we saw a good variety of seals as well. Though, to my eyes they just look like driftwood. Luckily, we don’t have trees in the Antarctic so I can be confident any logs I see are, indeed, seals.

back on board we…

were treated to the fourth sunny evening of the prior two months. This brought an amazing and slow sunset behind the South Shetland Islands as we left them and made for the continent proper.

The transition from the calm Beagle Channel to the open ocean and the Drake Passage is enough to wake me up even through the Dramamine. The rocking of the ship and the crash of the waves keeps me awake for the next three hours I reckon and I doze off again around 03:00. I wake again at 06:00 and take another double-dose of Dramamine. I feel fine at this point and both Alexandria and I were lucky enough to make it through the night without getting sick. But, they tell us “it’s important to stay out in front of it.”

Our room has a monitor that displays the daily itinerary. Crossing the Drake Passage is supposed to take two days and most people spend that time sick. As such, the schedule is pretty light in these early days; mostly populated with briefings for the adventurous types. So, naturally, we still have plenty on with our briefings on kayaking and camping out on the continent.

With the ship locked down for The Drake Passage there is no way to see outside and see what’s happening. I hate that so I head outside to the observation deck as quick as I can. It…

is surprisingly calm out. From this vantage point the sea looks quite calm, not at all like some of the images from Instagram with waves cresting the bow.

It’s sunny and warm enough that I still don’t need a coat. The perfect day to sit through hours of briefings and lectures…

Today we have an “Intro to Antarctica” lecture, another on The Albatross, that being the only animal we have seen so far. We also have our prep for kayaking and campaign.

Our intro lecture was very interesting. I did not realize that the Antarctic Ocean was not recognized as an independent ocean until…

the 1990’s. Nor that the beginning of that ocean has such a shifting and loose definition along the Polar Convergence. Anything above 60° latitude is considered to be part of Antarctica. Our objective on this expedition is 66° latitude, The Antarctic Circle. Only one attempt to travel this far south is made each year, at the height of Antarctic summer.

Our kayaking and camping briefings are standard fare. Of those present, only 16 are allowed to kayak and 30 to camp. These briefings bring the usual shuffle of people realizing they are in over their heads and others who are “sure they booked it!”

Camping in particular is a Spartan affair. They provide you a sleeping bag (only rated to 0°F), a shovel, and send you out to dig your own trench to huddle into with your sleeping bag.

During tea time, we make the most important discovery to date: the ship bar has Lagavulin for only 8USD! Sadly, with no chance of resupply, this too must be rationed.

More good news comes our way at the day-end briefing; owing to the good weather we are on pace to complete our crossing and make landfall a full half-day early. If all goes well we will make our first kayaking excursion tomorrow afternoon.

Dinner tonight is a more typical seated and plated, four-course affair. We eat quickly and bed down early after our sleepless night the night before.

Another day of waiting is day 2. We needed to drop our luggage for transfer to the Sea Spirit at 08:00, we needed to leave our hotel at 10:00. But, we weren’t due to be picked up to go to the ship until 15:30. So began another day of waiting. We spent the day flopped in the lobby of our hotel, Arakur. We basically read all day until it was time to depart. At 15:30 we loaded onto a giant charter bus for transfer to the ship. There are only about 120 people on the ship plus 40 crew. As a result of our small numbers the…

transfer and boarding process was so smooth that it was over before I knew it began. With our bags pre-loaded, all we had to do was hop up the gangplank, pause for a quick photo, and enjoy our welcome champagne. Afterward, we were shown to our cabin, one deck down on two, the main deck. I’d never been on a cruise but I was expecting something at least as tiny as a London hotel room. I was pleasantly surprised to find our suite much nicer than many actual hotels I’d stayed in. We returned upstairs for our first orientation. As we gathered in the lounge…

for our briefing, work began to harden the ship for the Drake Passage crossing. The M/V Sea Spirit is an ice-hardened polar expedition ship. And even it needs a special configuration to cross The Drake. After the hatches were quite literally battened down, the crew had to affix giant aluminum panels over all the windows on even the upper decks. The effect of this precaution was to leave us in a dark, floating bunker. We got underway and began our departure form the Beagle Channel and to the open ocean. This leg would take about six hours. While still in the…

Beagle Channel the sea is so calm it’s difficult to detect our movement. And the weather is so warm you don’t even need a jacket. We don’t expect these conditions to last. We head down to the dining room for our first dinner on board; a simple but surprisingly good buffet. After dinner Alexandria and I both take a double dose of Dramamine (*we think) and went to bed early.

We had to learn the hard way that this was only Day 1 in the technical sense. Although our journey begins today in Ushuia, our ship, M.V. Sea Spirit, does not leave until tomorrow. On top of which we have been on the ground in Ushuia for a week already, since the preceding Friday. This confusion about our actual departure date nearly had negative consequences as it left us with a one-night gap in our hotel reservations and no place to stay. But, as tends to happen to us, this worked out to our advantage. The nation of Argentina had planned a general strike for this day…

which resulted in many of the flights being canceled. With many people unable to leave the hotel, management offered stays for half-price that night. A deal we were also able to take advantage of even though ours was a problem of having nowhere to go, not the one of being unable to get where we were going. It was against the backdrop of this mishap, and with an additional day of relaxation that our booked journey actually began. And it began with our popping down to the check-in desk for our expedition outfitters, Poseidon Expeditions. There we were provided with tags for our luggage so they could be taken…

to the ship for us. Due to our early arrival, this left us with a solid 30 hours to kill. We did so by putting the finishing touches on some work and then heading downstairs to the beautiful indoor/outdoor pool offered by our hotel. For dinner, we returned to Kaupé which had become our favorite restaurant in Ushuia, and one of my favorite in the world. It was against this backdrop of adversity that we moved on to…