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[MachineHead]

Did you happen to see any of these little critters? Shades of 20,000 leagues....

THE CRITTER.

[John Gateley]

No, I didn't, not even giant or regular sized ones. I saw orcas but no sperm whales (maybe the colossal ones ate all the sperm whales).

You can do scuba diving trips there though, and have the chance to meet one face to face!

j

[MachineHead]

You can do scuba diving trips there though, and have the chance to meet one face to face!

Judging from the article, that won't be happening anytime soon for this guy. Maybe Doof the diver...

[Doof]

You went to Antarctica?

Damn... that's one of my goals in life... to dive down there. I saw this video of some guys exploring that giant iceberg that broke away from Antarctica a while back. They were checking out this underwater ice cave... really amazing stuff. The next morning the entire iceberg just disintegrated. It could have been pretty disastrous if they had been diving it at the time.

How was the trip?

[John Gateley]

Hi Doof,

The trip was better than I expected, and I was expecting for over a year.

I considered the diving trip, but I don't have near enough experience (dry suit, cold water).

The fauna outside the sea is rather limited: seals, penguins, flying birds, whales (well, ok, the backs of whales). Underneath, it is supposed to be incredible.

So: go do it, and come back and tell me how much I missed by not doing the diving trip.

Really - go do it.

Pics are at:
http://www.jriver.com/photos/gateley

j

[Doof]

I'd love to. I actually wasn't even aware that it was really a tourist type of place. I always imagined it would be one of those researcher-type places.

Who did you go through?

[zevele10]

Doof

What  John did was one of my project many yers ago.
It is still a project ,because at this time ,from France it was just to much big money to go there.
There is a short time of the year where some tourists can travel here.
You travel using a chilian boat from the very south of south america- or can be an argentinian one ,i do not remember-

you need to buy special clothes and so on.

Do not know how much it cost now , but when i wanted to do it , it was like 4 or 5 months of  our worker salary.

[TimB]

Mr G.

How were the flights down there?  Specifically I've heard nightmare stories about ontime departure reliability, long delays, etc.  Antarctica has always fascinated me and I was reading about trips recently but the idea of arriving after the ship has left is strangely troubling.

-=Tim=-

[John Gateley]

Hi Y'all,

Google "antarctica trip" and you'll find tons of travel agents. My tour was run by Quark Expeditions, but there are about 25 ships down there.

The ship I was on was built in Sweden in the 70s, and had a russian crew (this is pretty typical).

I didn't buy special clothes because I live in Minnesota. I had to buy rubber boots, but that was it.

I only had one plane that was late, and that was the last flight of my return trip (and only about 45 minutes late). The trip down was spaced out: I left sunday morning and got to Buenos Aires monday at noon. I spent the afternoon/night there and tuesday morning I flew to Ushuaia (where the ship was). I had until wednesday evening in Ushuaia before boarding the ship. So, even with four flights to arrive, there was plenty of time to arrange changes.

I met a couple who had lost a passport on the way. Their ship departed 2 days before mine, and they couldn't get on it until the passport arrived, and it didn't. They were able to switch to my ship without problems.

j

[aussie1]

I went to Antarctica with Aurora Expeditions, an Australian company. The leader was the Aussie to climb Everest. He was also the first Aussie to climb K2. There was quite a spirit of adventure on that trip. Aurora does a good job.

I didn't have any problem with flight connections.

Temperature (in December) was mostly in the 30s. I didn't buy special clothes. - just used my normal ski gear.

[John Gateley]

Hi Aussie1,

I looked very hard at the Australian trips, but it was hard enough to get time off for the trip on my half of the world . Your temp was about the same as mine. Where did you go? (I'm guessing it wasn't the peninsula).

j

[aussie1]

Born and raised in Denver, I lived in Sydney for a few years. I’m in Cupertino, CA now. I started investigating Antarctica trips while down under and visited the offices of Aurora Expeditions. When I moved back here, I booked my trip with them through a local travel agent.

My Itinerary was probably quite similar to yours. We started in Ushuaia, crossed the calm waters of the Drake passage, and finally sighted land in the South Shetlands. We stopped at Aitcho Island, then headed over to the Peninsula at Esperanza, the Argentine base, and Brown Bluff.  We stopped at Deception Island, then headed down the Gerlache Strait into the Lemaire Channel. We eventually got to the point where our Russian Icebreaker couldn’t go any further and hacked through the ice for a while. Amazing! Just writing this makes me want to go again. I’m sure you’ve got lots of great stories.

In December, the Penguin chicks had just hatched and were still confined to their nests, nursed by their parents. The stench wasn’t as bad as you probably experienced.

Aurora and others offer a diving trip. The downside is that the divers spend a lot of time preparing to go under water. The stay down for only a brief time, then they have to recover for a while once they return to the surface. Meanwhile, other passengers are able to explore land for quite a while. So, I’ve heard divers complain that they missed out on a lot of the Antarctica experience by sticking to the diving.  I’d love to try it sometime, though.

My excursing was targeted to climbers and photographers. In addition to the Aussie who had climbed Everest and K2, there was another guy who had done the seven summits. As a result the overall age on the boat was fairly young. The climbers attempted to scale some peaks that had never been climbed before.  Their spirit of adventure was such a welcome change from the fast-paced corporate world here.

I was in Antarctica for two weeks total. The trip was part of a sabbatical. I also did some volunteer work in Paraguay and traveled around Argentina.

Enough about me. I’m curious to hear stories. I look forward to seeing pictures.  Where did you go? What were the highlights?