Questions I Get About Antarctica, Starting With the Most Asked One

So what’d that run you??

A lot.  More than the rest of my trip combined thus far (with the exception of the Galapagos excursion).  More than any single vacation I’ve ever taken.  More than anything I’ve ever bought before that wasn’t a house or car.

In short, 3,900 dollars.

Could it have been cheaper?

Probably.  But not by as much as travel gossip would have one believe.  Countless people told me stories of last minute travelers with time to kill that hung out in Ushuaia, waiting until a cruise’s embarkation day, only to giddily secure spots on-board for a fraction of what I paid.

Last-minute travelers on my cruise did not find this to be the case.  I was surprised at how many people purchased their tickets within two days of the cruise, but every single one spent the same 3,900 dollars that I did.  On top of receiving no discounts, since there were open spots in some of the larger, upper-deck cabins, those that purchased tickets well in advance (me) were bumped up, with the lower decks now being filled with last-minute  stragglers.

This isn’t to say that these deals don’t exist; quite possibly they do.  But as our late March voyage was to be the last tourist cruise of the year, the crew didn’t seem to have much of a problem filling it up.

We tended to egg each other one when it came to being tremendous dorks for the camera.

Do you expect the price to change?

I couldn’t say for certain.  Looking in advance, there were some boats that offered deals as low as $3,500, and at times tour companies would run promotions knocking an additional five hundred off of that, but these deals typically were impossible to find, and meant the traveler had to be beyond flexible with dates for making the voyage.

There is also the threat of a fuel surcharge added on top of ticket prices at embarkation based on the current cost of gas.  Luckily, gas prices had sunk back down to reasonable prices by March, but back when my ticket was purchased in the fall, I was warned that travelers were paying an additional six hundred dollars upon arriving on the boat.

As these are boat trips are to some of the wildest, most unpredictable climates on Earth, costly accidents happen more regularly than one might hope.  Less than a month prior to my trip, the Ocean Nova ran aground and just in December, the MV Ushuaia — my ship — suffered a similar fate.  Both required evacuation to other nearby vessels while the cruise ships could be freed and repaired, but pale in comparison to the 2007 sinking of the MS Explorer which went full-on Titanic and sank after hitting an iceberg.  Everyone was safely rescued, but not before losing everything they’d brought along and sitting for several harrowing hours in the lifeboats waiting for help.

The Freestyle group unloads all of our gear from the taxi

Combining all of the above with general increasing demand, I wouldn’t think there’d be much of a decrease in price any time soon.

Why Antarctica?

When I announced my intentions to head as due south as possible on this trip, people either “got it” immediately, or were fairly incredulous.  It is a large, freezing and mostly dead place, and about as much of an opposite as you can get from traditional vacation destinations.  Despite this, the place has a calling to it that some people feel the need to answer, and since I was a child I’ve had a strange compulsion to make it there at some point in my life.

If someone says they intend to visit all seven continents in their lifetime and hasn’t yet been to Antarctica, the claim is laughable.  The same claim made after said trip is imminently believable.  So I’ve got that going for me.

As all cruises head out from Ushuaia, and as it was unlikely I would just happen to be down in this region again at any later point in my life, now was clearly the time.  Tickets from New York to Ushuaia never drop below a thousand dollars, so honestly I was saving money by taking this trip when I did!

Right.

A map displaying Antarctica and the boundaries of the Southern or Antarctican Ocean. It was only officially declared an ocean in 2000. The peninsula is the section at 10 o'clock.

So you went to the South Pole?

No, we just barely touched down on the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out past the Antarctic Circle.  It’s a continent, so it’s still fairly large (fifth largest, it beats out Europe and Australia for size, even in the summer — it takes up nearly twice as much space in the winter due to ice).  At our furthest point inland, we were about as far from the South Pole as we were from Ushuaia.

How big are the boats?

They vary in size, though I was careful to select one that carries less than one hundred passengers.  That seems to be the magic number with regard to the amount of tourists that can land on any given site along the penninsula.  Over 100 and by international law, some people have to stay behind on the cruise ship while others frolic in the cold, barren Antarctic tundra.  They usually keep track of those left behind so that no one has to do it more than once, but given that none of us will likely be back on the continent again, every visit counts.

A newer trend in Antarctic travel is the taking of massive cruise ships down to the penninsula with upwards of 500-3000 people.  These involve no actual landings on the penninsula, which seems to defeat the purpose of going this far south.  In addition, little has been done to these ships to modify their hulls and make them ice-ready, so there is a good deal of Titanic-level worry about these new routes.  All the danger, none of the fun penguin harrassment!

The (St. Patrick’s) Day Before We Leave

Four of us have already pre-bonded together at our hostel the night before our cruise departs.  As two of them are Irish and this is St. Patrick’s Day, this bodes well for the evening.  They agree that the US has co-opted this holiday, often making it into far more of a green, drunken spectacle than you would ever find in Ireland, but they’re certainly not above celebrating.  As Ushuaia’s got a population of 6000 or so, I suppose it makes perfect sense that there are three Irish pubs here.

The St. Patrick's Day crew

Prior to any evening revelry, I’ve checked off every remaining task from  my official and unofficial pre-Antarctica to-do lists.

• Check in with tour company
• Pack, dividing things into “cruise gear” and “stored gear”
• Arrange return lodging at Freestyle and place any gear not coming along in their storage closet
• Rent winterwear — Coat and pants.  They rent boots as well, though these are provided by the cruise ship, and thus are not necessary.  All tour companies recommend the same rental shop, where a full set of gear runs one hundred American dollars, requires an additional hundred security deposit and refuses to take credit cards — a tremendous hassle.  Luckily, Patrick (one of the two aforementioned Irish, and a great guy) found a spot on main street that rents as well as sells winter gear — for about a third of the price ($25).
• Buy rum.  Food is apparently fantastic on the trip, and is part of the cost.  Alcohol, on the other hand, is charged to your account.
• I send my emails, make my calls and say my goodbyes.  For eleven days, I’ll be effectively cut off from everything.

It’s eight o’clock and an Israeli and I are the only ones in the Irish pub.  The decor and name may be Irish, but its hours are definitely Argentinian — it won’t fill up til around midnight, but it’ll keep going until dawn.  Despite knowing this, the Israeli and I start drinking while we wait for Patrick and some others who’d mentioned getting in around the same time.  The night picks up nicely, but my early start has me drained and exhausted by one in the morning, and I retire early to get well rested for my big trip tomorrow.

Embarkation

Adam and I post with our gear at the port with the MV Ushuaia in the background

The group that met at our hostel spend the bulk of the day killing time, blogging and recovering from the prior night’s Irish-themed excess.  A man in his 20′s from Hong Kong arrives in the morning for our trip, only to discover that his luggage was lost in transit and would not possibly arrive in Ushuaia before the boat departs.  He spends the day navigating the various clothing stores that are actually open (Arriving at noon, and having to leave by four places him directly in the midst of siesta hours) to re-purchase every piece of winterwear he’d only just bought in Hong Kong the week prior.

Our things are scanned as we pass through customs, though food and beverages aren’t issues here.  There are extensive international treaties keeping all types of food and human waste off of Antarctica, but on the cruise ships, nearly anything goes (excepting stuff that, you know, explodes).  Two or three other boats sit in port, but only the last one bears the marking “MV Ushuaia.”

I'm the tall one in the distance, watching Ushuaia disappear. The hanging orange thing on the left of the shot is one of the two lifeboats.

After an excessive photo shoot, our group of six present our boarding passes and walk the gangway onto the ship.  Immediately noticeable are the life boats, held aloft to either side of the ship and painted a vivid neon orange and shaped like futuristic mini-submarines.  A small line has formed around the bar, though it’s not open for drinks yet.  Names are being removed from the list and insurance forms are being checked — one prerequisite for the trip is to be insured for emergency medical evacuation up to $100,000.

One deck below, I meet my roommate Helmut for the first time.  I would’ve preferred one of the younger people I’d already gotten to know at the Freestyle to the German in his late 70′s, but he was a really nice guy, and I appreciated that his age didn’t preclude him from more adventuresome travel.  Daily conversations never really strayed beyond small talk, but he was a good guy.

The room itself is small; not as cramped as the broom closet masquerading as a shared bedroom that I slept in while on the Galapagos cruise, but still fairly minimal.  Bunk-beds are built into the wall along the far side of the room, and while the top bunk’s lack of a railing seems particularly frightening given that the Drake Passage is known to regularly rock boats as far as 35 degrees in either direction, it does come with a window.  Helmut being in his 70′s, my precarious placement above is assured without question.

Other than that, decorations are sparse: A desk, a shared closet, a picture of some ice (it must be assumed anyone on this trip likes ice), a sink.  There’s a bathroom as well, which is shared with the adjacent room.  Showering and/or urinating while in rough seas is particularly entertaining, and a surplus of steel handrails in key positions only makes it slightly easier.  I don’t know why it took several days for the idea of sitting down to pee to occur to me, as the normal alternative can be very messy in these conditions.

The "Welcome Aboard" buffet

A champagne toast and impressive buffet of meats, cheeses and assorted finger foods start us off, and as introductions are made, the MV Ushuaia departs from port.  The younger travelers tend to gravitate towards each other and acquaintances are made as the city of Ushuaia shrinks down to nothing behind us.

Hours later, inhabited land is long gone, but we’ve consistently been alongside the various islands around the tip of South America since departing.  Argentina requires that an official “pilot” remain with the ship as it navigates out from the southern islands of South America.  They’d announced that he would be leaving as soon as we were safely in the Drake Passage, though none of us were exactly sure how this would happen.  Just after ten, lights on the water announce the presence of another vessel, much smaller than our own.  Without either boat even slowing, the Argentinian pilot descends over the edge of the MV Ushuaia on a small ladder, jumping down onto the coast guard ship matching our speed alongside us.

As the smaller boat turns back towards Argentina, the last hints of land disappear into the horizon and out of sight.

We’ve reached the Drake Passage.

Champagne meet-and-greet