A trip to the end of the world

I visited Antarctica. While I don’t believe in the flat earth theory, ‘end of the world’ makes a much better title. I normally don’t write travel-type blogs, but this trip was special in many different ways, and I wanted to share this experience.

I don’t exactly recall what inspired this trip. I vaguely remember a wish to visit Antarctica a long time ago. I was stuck in a boring job and wanted to do something exciting. Travelling in general doesn’t excite me much. While each place is different in its own way, it kind of started to look similar. I expected to experience something different in Antarctica. And Antarctica totally met that expectation. It is on earth, but it felt like a different world.

Preparation

The plan was not so clear. I wanted to visit Antarctica. But it is a continent. And a big one. I had no clarity on which part of Antarctica to visit. After some googling, I found that most of the cruises leave from Ushuaia (Argentina) and visit the Antarctic Peninsula (a tail-like part close to South America). Thanks to my previous savings, I had a healthy budget of 20k USD. However, the issue was the time budget. Although my company allowed going negative on vacation days, my manager did not. So, I can’t book a longer trip. Reaching Ushuaia itself would consume two days.

Around September, I started looking at different options and found that most of them don’t cross the polar circle. Found this one trip that was not just touching the circle boundary, but was going far south beyond the circle. It also included Aurora Australis in the title. So, the decision was made. I paid the advance amount, booked flights and hotels. The ship was small, so the tour costs were much lower than my budget. I picked a cabin shared with one person. The trip was in March. It was still too early to process visa for Argentina. I finished that part in January.

I had read somewhere that the ‘preparation’ of the trip also contributes to happiness. To further maximize that happiness, I ordered a countdown flipper. Each day the count reduced, I got more excited. I also received a good job offer, so I decided to leave my boring job. I finished all the formalities. It added to the happiness because I knew that I will be stressfree during the trip. I ordered stuff that I needed for the trip. Borrowed a camera from my friend. Finally, it was time to leave.

Trip highlights

Everything went well with the flights and I reached Ushuaia on time (except I lost one sock in a flight). We boarded the ship. The crew and tour staff introduced themselves. That is when I learned that they considered this trip as an ‘expedition’. The plan was to go to Wilkins Ice Shelf. None of the crew members (including the captain) had sailed there. That area was not well charted either (i.e., water depth and iceberg location were not on the map; we had to rely on the ship radars). Although some other ships had been there, so it was not too risky. 

The first two days were a little rough. Drake passage had about 4 meters of waves and 40 knots of wind. Thanks to the motion sickness patches, I was not sick. I felt sleepy though. And before we knew it, we saw our first iceberg. As we reached closer to Antarcica, the views kept getting better. The sunrises and sunsets looked amazing with all the snowy mountains and icebergs. Antarctica is probably one of the few places on earth that is not yet polluted much by human activities. There are strick IAATO regulations that prevented us from leaving anything and even taking a stone from those areas. It was pristine. That’s what made it special.

We saw a great variety of wildlife during the trip. That includes 4 species of penguins, 3 species of whales, 5 species of seals, and a lot of polar birds. While coming back we even sighted 4 new humpback whales that were not present in the records of ‘happy whale’. We got to name two of them as well. They were named Ortelius Aurora and Ortelius Lazarev. Ortelius is the name of the ship and the whales were found in the Lazarev bay area.

The days were filled with landing on islands, zodiac cruising, watching wildlife and ice. On some nights, the skies were clear. Ocenwide had worked with an astronomy expert to fix the dates of the trip in such a way that we would have maximum chances of viewing auroras. And on one night we saw it. The ship was docked so we could capture that in our camera. We were all tired from the day activities, but the Auroras kept us all awake. We did not want to miss it.

The expedition staff made the trip even more special. They were not just ordinary tour guides. They were researchers. We had geologist, marine mammals expert, seabirds expert, photographers, climate researchers, an astronomer, and a NASA scientist who worked on the Europa Clipper project. When we were on the ship, they all gave lectures and tutorials on their subjects. The ship was small and we had only about 100 passengers. So, we got to interact with the staff a lot. In addition, we were always welcomed on the bridge and interact with the captain and other officers driving the ship. The ship was filled with amazing passengers as well.

Before the trip, I knew that we will be spending most of our time on the ship. I expected to get bored and downloaded movies and books. I was wrong. I did not get to finish even a single book and never started any movie. The ship did not have many entertainment options (unlike a cruise) and it did not need them. There was just so much to do. I found myself on the bridge watching icebergs and wildlife when no lectures were going on. 

After effects

During the trip, we had access to the internet. Not very fast though. However, I never needed to open Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. I barely checked my emails. When I checked, I decided to postpone taking action on them. When I came back, it took less than two hours to deal with those emails. The realization that I could disconnect so well with nearly no consequences was not new. I had experienced it before as well. Yet somehow, I end up getting back to checking emails frequently. After the trip I still haven’t opened social media and YouTube. Before the trip, I had reduced checking Facebook and Instagram only during weekends. I was still addicted to YouTube. This trip put a break on it. I hope to not get addicted again.

The stress levels were low during the trip. I knew that taking breaks and spending time with nature is important. I just experienced it. I am peaceful. Next week I will be starting my new job and I hope to maintain this peace.

Here are some of my favorite pics from the trip. The entire album is here.

"An Antarctic expedition is the worst way to have the best time of your life." – Apsley Cherry-Garrard