Bad weather, amazing adventure

There’s no such thing as a cyclone party. They’re not a lot of fun, especially on a ship. But once you make it through, boy, making it to your destination is a lot of fun.

My second try to Antarctica got me to land. My first try, back in 2020, was on a big cruise ship that was more of a drive through than anything else. From there, I’d planned a disembarkation, but it got “weathered” out. This time, despite the weather, I set foot on the continent. You’re told to take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints so I don’t have a rock, but I did leave my voice there.

But the weather … oh my. First of all, I was sick as a dog the entire first day. “The Drake Shake” – when you go through the Drake Passage with bad waves – didn’t help, but looking back, a lot of it was just fatigue. Going out, I changed one flight to cut down my Amman layover from about 15 hours to about 7, but it was still a 7-hour layover. The next flight was 2.5 hours, followed by a 4-hour layover. In Istanbul, I got on the long flight, which was to Buenos Aires, but it first stopped in Sao Paulo for almost 2 hours, and then, following a brutal 6-hour layover in the Buenos Aires check-in area (because I was leaving international and going domestic; I couldn’t hang out in the lounge and had to sit in a chair), I got on my final flight to Ushuaia. That’s when I realized my flight to Ushuaia wasn’t direct; we had a 1.5-hour stop in some other city. Seriously, I spent three mornings in airports. I left Baghdad on Thursday morning and I arrived on … gosh, I don’t even know. I think it was Saturday around lunch. I checked into the hotel, met my roommate and tried to sleep but didn’t have much luck.

So although I had a rough first morning on The Drake, I honestly think I was more tired than anything. The ship was rocking and rolling but I mostly just crashed in bed. The first night, I didn’t eat anything until the 4:30 p.m. tea; I just had zero appetite. That pretty much went for the whole cruise. The food was amazing, but I didn’t indulge, with the exception of ice cream at lunch. The scoops were tiny, though!

The weather for the first 5-6 days was awful. Horizontal rain, snow, sleet, massive (but not rogue) waves. My point-and-shoot as the photos and the cord I brought on the trip doesn’t work, so I can’t get the photos uploaded yet, but it was brutal. We had been expecting to do an excursion out on the Zodiacs on the evening of the third day and that was out of the question. The next morning, the captain tried in vain to find some reasonably sheltered place to let us off the boat, but it didn’t work. Same for the next afternoon, and the following day.

The expedition team was amazing. We had lectures – incredibly scientific – several times a day, but before the weather cleared, they were having to invent things to keep us from mutinying. Think airplane races and games with marshmallows. Everyone was still good natured about it – I mean, what can you do? – but everyone wanted us off the boat.

One night, the poor captain had a brutal time trying to find shelter. The winds were absolutely awful and, TBH, I wondered if there was a chance we might capsize. The boat, the World Explorer, was fairly new and had safety features so I really wasn’t worried but I did wonder. My roommate, however, worried. The morning after what we later learned were Cat 4-level winds rocked us, I discovered she’d slept right next to her life jacket.

With that, though, the weather kind of broke. We got out the next morning on super choppy waves. I landed in a less-crowded Zodiac and was sitting at the front, meaning I got super crushed by waves. The scenery was fantastic and I was soaked through to my underwear, despite my Minsk “waterproof” snow pants. Icebergs closer up are even more beautiful than they are from a distance, like wandering through a floating sculpture gallery. It’s never boring, but it can be cold and wet.

Seriously, it snowed. That just doesn’t happen. People built a little snowman! It was just strange weather. We had a deck covered in snow – big, fat flakes.

After the first excursion, though, the weather got better. My three layers of pants never got soaked through again, and I met penguins, whales and all kinds of seals. We visited Port Lockroy and, although I didn’t mail any postcards, I did get my passport stamped and bought a magnet. Coincidentally, I have a new tourist passport and the Port Lockroy stamp – which includes a penguin – is the first stamp in the new passport.

This was the trip I wanted to Antarctica. Although I was happy with my previous trip, the whole point had been to set foot on the continent and see critters up close, and I finally got to do that.

More later. At the moment, I am on my second trip and I am headed to see Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfall in the world.