Deep South: Small-Ship Antarctica Expedition

This was probably the most common response I got from family and (non-travel industry) friends when I first announced I was going to Antarctica. Working in the adventure travel industry, where most of my colleagues have already been to Antarctica - some more than once - I forget that it’s not a place that most people realize that can be …

The thing about traveling to Antarctica is, it’s a long way away. It took two days of flights from Montana just to get to the port city of Ushuaia, at the southernmost tip of Argentina. From there, it was another two days of sailing across the Drake Passage, a notorious body of water between South America and the Antarctic peninsula. At the …

After two days at sea, we were all restless and eager to get off the Ocean Nova. We didn’t know until that morning exactly where we were, or where we were going: in lieu of a strict itinerary, our expedition leader worked with the captain to chart our course hour by hour, looking for the best landing sites with ideal weather windows as they …

This afternoon, we cruised over to the Danger Islands to make a landing for a sunset hike. I don’t recall the name of the island - I’m not sure if it even had a name - but it was home to a small colony of Adelie penguins. Like others we had seen so far, these ones were also moulting - losing all of their feathers to grow new ones - and …

This morning we were awakened far earlier than usual by the expedition leader announcing over the PA system that a pod of orcas had been spotted off the bow. Though it was barely 6am and the sun was just beginning to rise, most of us headed out onto the decks - some had thrown on the first clothes they touched, others had simply pulled boots and …

This afternoon, the weather steadily worsened until we were under the impression that we would be unable to make a second landing. Our expedition leader and captain set us on a course to try to get out from the weather system, and in the meantime, hosted a lecture on Scandinavian polar exploration history. We learned about the critical role that …

Because of the building storms, we took a rather ridiculous route on our cruise. Our expedition leader occasionally commented how worried he was about keeping his job since the course he set us on was so inefficient and fuel wasn’t cheap; as he was a gruff British fellow with a sense of humor drier than the McMurdo valleys, I’m truly …

Deception Island was one of the places in Antarctica that I had heard of before, and though I didn’t necessarily have expectations of making a landing there, when it was announced that this was our next stop, I was excited to see it.

Deception Island is so named because it looks like an ordinary island from most of its perimeter, but there …

So far, all of our landings had been on islands around the Antarctic peninsula. And though we had seen plenty of ice, penguins, whales and seals, we could have easily called everything so far an “Antarctic experience,” many of us still wanted a true continental landing, to set foot on the peninsula itself. Today was our last day in the …