Sunday 12/17/2023
Where: World Explorer, Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctic Continent (Exact locations visited will be updated when I receive the voyage log)
Agenda: First 2-hour Zodiac cruise, First Continental Landing, Captain’s Welcome “party”
Zodiac Cruising!!!!!
Our first Zidaic Cruise was with Vladimir. When our zodiac was fully loaded, he turned to us and said: “Here are the rules; there are none. But please don’t stand up while I am driving, and we will switch off standing and sitting to for wildlife. Also, we go fast [because] I am Russian.” Sure enough, he zoomed away from the ship, and we quickly found ourselves watching a group of chinstrap and Adelie penguins. They were the first penguins I saw, and they were pretty cute. Cartoon penguins are much cuter, and in real life, you can see how silly and dirty these creatures are. We did not see Emperor penguins (the ones in Happy Feet) because they live much further inland. After we were done with the penguins, we drove past some ice cliffs and towering Icebergs. We found some whales that were logging (sleeping) and hung near them for a while. At one point, some other whales came in between us and an iceberg, and they were so close that we could hear them super loudly! It was just so cool!!!!
Post Zodiac Cruise
Coming back after a Zodiac cruise to a warm cup of rich cocoa is like nothing else in the world! The coffee station that I mentioned in an earlier post became one of our favorite places on the boat. After each Zodiac cruise, I would hurriedly get my coat and boots off and rush upstairs, get a cup of cocoa, and then walk up to my room to drop off all my gloves, hats, etc…
After our first Zodiac cruise, we had some time before lunch to chill, so I went up to the Observation Lounge. It is on the seventh deckhand and has almost complete wrap-around windows off the bow of the ship. It has an outside deck that goes all the way around the ship. Lots of lounging space, the ship library, a bar, and space for the afternoon tea to be served 😉 Lunch was really good! The lunches on board are buffet, but you can also order steaks, chicken, and other things. Each day, there is also a special dish that you can get at the counter. For example, one day, they were cooking pasta, especially on demand. Another day, they had whole pigs roasted and carved into nice chunks of meat right in front of you. Pigs, plural, over the course of the hour, I think they probably had 4 pigs served. Pigs for lunch in Antarctica!!!! Another thing to note, the buffets are not your normal buffets. These are nicely arranged and full of beautiful and delicious food. There are always mountains of bread (there are small plates of GF bread) and soups at lunch. Everything is kinda fancy but at the same time casual. With such few people on board, you get to know people, and everything seems so free and calm. On a large cruise ship, everyone is in their own world, but on our expedition ship, we were all in one world together.
After lunch, we waited and prepared to arrive at our afternoon continental landing site. My family was in the Pink group, and in the morning, we went last, so in the afternoon, we got to go first. There are four groups Pink, Green, Orange, and Yellow. The groups rotate each time we go out to give everyone a turn being first. All passengers go to a group, and you pick your group so you can be with family and friends. You stay in the same group throughout the whole voyage, but that’s why there is a rotation of the group exit times. Somehow, the majority of the pink group was from floor 6. This was a good thing but also bad because that meant that we all were cramming into the floor 6 locker row, which got very crowded very fast.
Sweating? In Antarctica????
My biggest fear of going to Antarctica was the cold weather. I had never been in below 0 celsius temperature. I grew up in Seattle, where it is normally in the 60’s and sometimes drooped below freezing in the winter, but rarely. I ski, and I’m used to cold weather, but the thing most people think about Antarctica is polar bears and cold. FYI there are NO polar bears in Antarctica. It might blow your mind, but they are only in the north. Well, on our first continental landing, we had a short hike up a “hill” to get a good view. Hiking in the cold Is hard because your breath does not come easily. Hiking in the sun on snow with about a million layers on makes the air seem like an oven. Once I reached the top, I immediately unzipped my coat and all my sweaters. I took off my gloves, hat, and neck warmer. I had a bag to put these in, but the thing is, you can’t touch anything but your shoes to the ground. There are bird flu bacteria and little microbes that we cant see that shouldn’t be spread around. This made de-layering extremely hard. So, the fix? Choose one person to be the bag and coat rack for a few minutes as everyone de-layers. We must have been a funny sight. Eventually, we got to the proper amount of layers, and all cooled off, I was able to practically run in the snow!
Yeah, I think this picture is pretty awesome because we are like in base layers with icebergs in the background. We had to keep our life jackets on because, of course, you can easily drown on land, right? 😉 The Quark coats we got also had these really nice “backpack straps” inside the coat, so you can wear It like a backpack if you get too hot.
After climbing the snow hill, my sister and I went back down to the boat area to wait for our family. We helped people navigate the slippery rocks to the boat, but in the end, we had to take the last boat because the rest of my family was stuck at the back of the line. This proved fortunate for us because we ended up in Vladimir’s boat. This meant that we were going to be able to go just a little bit closer to wildlife and go just a little bit faster than the other boats. Sure enough, we had whales swimming just below our boat!! They were so huge! A bunch of Zodiacs were just floating around and these whales were swimming around them and playing and showing their tails! We did not see any penguins, but Vladimir told us all to take our cameras out and start a timelapse. We followed his instructions, waiting for something, and then he drove really fast around an iceberg, and it created such a cool timelapse!
In Between Outdoor Adventure and Really Good Food
What do you do on a small ship in a quiet ocean? Well, there are plenty of things. Staring at icebergs, reading a book, walking around the ship, looking at the ship’s boutique, standing outside for as long as you can before you freeze… That last one is legit and it is very fun.
There are plenty of things to do, and in Antarctica, I was never bored. In the afternoons there is also afternoon tea served in the Observation lounge. There are drinks, snacks and sweets. Everyone hangs out and watches things, and it is super fun! The ship library is in the observation lounge, and it has books in several languages about Antarctic and polar adventures!
Before dinner, there was a “party” in the Main Lounge on deck 4. The captain came down, and all the staff captains lined up and introduced themselves and a lot of people dressed up nice. The adults drank champagne, and all the kids had orange juice. There were toasts to the voyage, and then everyone went off to dinner. Dinner was very good, but the dessert was so good!!!
| Friday, 12/15/2023 Punta Arenas Dream Hotel | Saturday 12/16/2023 Punta Arenas to King George Island | Sunday 12/17/2023 World Explorer, Antarctic Peninsula | |
| Briefing about Antarctica, the ship, and what will happen tomorrow | Drive to the Airport and board the flight with Quark group 1 (half of the ship’s guests) | First full day on the boat!! First breakfast and earning up in mudroom!! We are Pink Group, so we go last today. | |
| Pack and Re-pack to make things fit! | Receive Quark Coat, Special Boots, and Bag tags for non-Antarctic luggage. | Our first Zodiac cruise! Our guide was Vladimir! He was very funny and good at getting us close to the whales and penguins. | |
| Arriving in Antarctica and working to get onto the ship World Explorer | Being welcomed on the ship warmly and found our rooms! 🙂 | First Lunch aboard! We also hung out in the observatory lounge and met Annie, the Marine Biologist! | |
| Welcome dinner with the rest of the ship guests in the hotel | Lifeboat drill!! We had to all find our life jackets and go to our muster stations with our key cards! They scan every one to make sure nobody is missing. What a good system! | First Continental Landing! We had a very hot, sweaty snowy hike on the continental Antarctica! There was a seal by the path, and it was super lazy!! | |
| Off to sleep we go before our big travel day! | Wow! Our first dinner was so good!! They have gluten-free bread and a basic menu, as well as an international menu that changes every night with different themes! | Afternoon Zodiac cruise after continental landing with Vladimir again! We got very close to some whales, and they were breathing right next to us!! I also got a super cool wrap-around timelapse of an iceberg! | |