Tag Archives: Tourism

Nearly There…final preparations!

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Thursday 22 February 2024 – We headed for bed having crossed the Circumpolar Current which delineates the Antarctic Ocean and provides the cut-off mechanism which effectively isolates it from other oceans it touches. This normally means a change in the weather – usually colder and often foggier. For us, not so much.

We really have been sensationally lucky with the weather enabling a calm crossing of the Drake Passage.  (Mind you, we have to head north again on the return journey, so the weather gods probably haven’t finished toying with us yet.)

We’re nearly there…

The food selection for breakfast was a little less to my liking than yesterday’s – frankfurter and hard-boiled rather than bacon and scrambled – but I did make one discovery that brought Oceanwide Adventures even closer to my heart.

We were promised a busy day, full of lectures and final preparations for actually leaving the boat at some stage, maybe even tomorrow. And so it proved.

The lecture programme started with a very engaging presentation from Sasha, a Russian Antarctic Scientist, who provided us with the first actual joke in all the lectures we’ve had so far.

He pointed out many arcane facts about Antarctica, which is, of course, a continent – but you knew that, didn’t you?:

  • At over 13 million square kilometres, it’s not the smallest continent. You can fit Australia or North America within Antarctica’s land mass
  • Its ice sheet contains 70% of the world’s fresh water, is up to 4km thick and is so heavy that it distorts the earth’s crust
  • If you were to remove the ice, before the crust sprang back into shape (at a sort of geological pace), this is what the continent would actually look like:

Yes, the Antarctic Peninsula (top left above) would be an island!

Sacha’s joke was based on comparing Antarctica and Russia. Antarctica is nearly 14 million square kilometres in area; Russia is just over 15 million square kilometres.  Antarctica is cold, 99% covered in ice. Russia is cold, 65% covered in permafrost.  Antarctica has Emperor Penguins. “And Russia”, he said, deadpan, “used to have an Emperor”.

The other lecture, from Ursula, a Swiss scientist, covered Pinnipeds.  She talked about five varieties in the Antarctic region, many of them concentrated around South Georgia.  There are true ones, there are eared ones, there are toothed ones. There are some which walk, some which can only waddle. They are seals – fur, leopard, Weddell, elephant and crabeater.

Humans are much more interested these days in conserving the various seal species than they used to be; fur seals, for example, were once hunted to near extinction because of the effectiveness of their pelts as warm clothing. The population has since recovered nicely and is thriving. This is not so much from human conservation, as from human predation on another species, principally the blue whale. Because of the effectiveness of human whaling, the  number of whales around to eat the krill that is such a key element in the food chain of the local fauna plummeted, thus leaving more krill for the fur seals, enabling the population to recover quickly. Unintended consequences litter the world of human hunting and conservation.

The preparations bit of the day was quite intense, mainly because there was quite a lot of it to be done and it had to be done to for any passenger who wanted to leave the boat on an expedition, i.e. all 170 of us.

Firstly, we all had to collect waterproof boots, which had been referred to as muck boots and which were a non-negotiable piece of clothing for any Zodiac-based landing.  Having collected ours, we discovered why they’re called muck boots.

The next, and particularly chaotic, process was the Biosecurity Session, to get all of our outerwear inspected, cleaned and disinfected, to ensure we don’t carry unwanted life forms to, from or between Antarctic locations.  So we carried our coats, waterproof trousers, backpacks, poles, gloves, hats, scarves, lifejackets, and boots down the four flights of stairs to a scene of barely controlled pandemonium.

The expedition staff were really earning their keep, dashing from one person to the next and helping them check their gear over – little bits of grit stuck in boot treads, fragments of seed caught in Velcro, splashes of mud anywhere, all had to be cleaned up and anything that would contact the ground, meaning boots and poles, disinfected.  It might have been somewhat chaotic, but it was done with charm and energy and we were soon checked over, signed off and free to lug our stuff back up the four flights of stairs to our cabin.

Evidence that we’re getting closer to the Antarctic landmass came in the form of sighting of the first iceberg.

The wonderful visibility that enabled us to see the iceberg at such a distance didn’t last. We suddenly found ourselves fogged in.  It looked very dense fog from our cabin window, but I thought I saw a fogbow forming so popped up to the top deck.

I wondered at the time whether the fog had come about because we were now near the South Shetland Islands (we had been told earlier that we might be able to see them as we went by). It turns out that our proximity to the islands was through a change of course which, in turn, had been necessitated by the need for a medical evacuation of a passenger.  Pippa gathered everyone together to brief us: the Plan B we’d been on was to become a Plan C whilst we took the boat close to where there was an airstrip via which the evacuation could take place – King George Island.

In a relative way, we were lucky – particularly the passenger who had to be evacuated – because the calm weather and our consequent good progress meant that we could likely combine the diverted route and evacuation procedure with an expedition to somewhere on the South Shetlands before heading south of the Antarctic Circle. The Plan B itinerary had had these components in the reverse order.

This was the plan, then, as we went into Dinner. During dinner, our slightly eccentric dining pattern drew the attention of Aleks, the restaurant manager, and Marvin, the senior steward, who are beginning to get used to the two odd English people who never have a main course at dinner.  The food on the boat is great, but, as with all cruises, there’s too much of it; also, we don’t like taking on a big dinner – at home we typically have just two meals a day.  So we have been having just a soup and starter.  Of course, the ship’s restaurant is geared up to whizzing out 170 full meals as efficiently as possible, and they do it very well – hordes of waiters scurrying back and forth dispensing plates of food with good cheer. The odd couple who don’t want one of the courses is thus a bit non-standard; but they’re beginning to cotton on, bless them.

Before dinner, Pippa had emphasised that the auguries for Plan C were good, but that, of course, we were still dependent upon the weather gods, and the times of the critical flight into and out of King George Island.

Which changed at least once, in what is clearly becoming very much business as usual for expedition-style trips such as this one.  Pippa’s original Plan C – let’s call it plan C1 – had involved everyone going out on a Zodiac cruise (i.e. no landings) tomorrow morning.  As we were dining, Plan C2 was announced, meaning that there would after all be a split expedition – one set of people going out for a landing, the other on a Zodiac cruise, with the two groups swapping over during the expedition timeslot. That’s the plan as we head to bed.

Let’s see if Plan C2 prevails, or whether a C3, or even C4, is needed.

Day 3 – Ushered through Ushuaia

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Monday 19 February 2024 – We were due to be collected at 0800 to be taken to Buenos Aires’s domestic airport for our flight to Ushuaia, so the alarm was a little early, but, hey, we’re travelling; early alarm calls are routine. The hotel breakfast was fancy but otherwise unsatisfactory; we like yoghurt and fruit and wholesome things, whereas what was on offer was elegant but largely pastry-based. No matter; we got some sustenance and a car turned up at 0800 to take us, via a strange and circuitous route, to what felt like a very dodgy entrance to the departures bit of Aeroparque Jorge Newbery – it was surrounded by people who looked like they had no business there, but there was at least the reassuring presence of some people wearing high-vis vests and earpieces to counter any nervousness.

Any nervousness which had been dispelled was immediately rekindled on entering the place. It was a fucking zoo.

It really was difficult to work where one was supposed to go, since absolutely everywhere seemed to start with a queue.  In the end, Jane spotted a desk with no queue marked “Sky Priority” and so we thought we’d blunder up and pretend to be ignorant British tourists, which was frankly not much of a stretch for our acting abilities.  Remarkably, it turned out to be exactly the right place to get us checked in and we were on our way upstairs to the departure gates in very short order.

The departure area was a splendidly calm contrast to the barely-contained stress of all those check-in queues.

We treated ourselves to coffee and then pottered on to security. The journey through the vetting seemed to be going OK until an operative, seeing me about to pick up my backpack, came over and said “yours?”.  When I said yes, he pointed to the tripod strapped to the outside and said something that sounded like “check or discard”.  I didn’t understand and he found an English-speaking colleague who explained that tripods weren’t allowed in cabin baggage as they might be used as weapons, so my options were: take it back downstairs; or discard it.

This was a bit of a facer, frankly. I had travelled to, across and home from the whole of continental North America with a tripod strapped to the very same backpack with nary a murmur from the authorities. Since we appeared to have only about 30 minutes until boarding and I simply couldn’t face the prospect of going back down into the zoo, I was on the point of discarding the thing when another official did what officials are normally trained not to do – he came to the rescue.  The tripod in question is a Joby Gorillapod, which has bendy, rubber-covered legs intended to enable setup wrapped around things or in other oddball circumstances.  As such, he deemed it not to be a weapon. Its status as a non-weapon could be confirmed if we could fit it inside our carry-on rather than strapped to the outside, thus rendering it completely non-dangerous. Fortunately, Jane’s backpack had room and we could carry on with our tripod as carry-on. Blimey, what a carry-on!

The rest of the journey to Ushuaia passed off perfectly uneventfully, except for the service of some undistinguished sandwiches, some adequate biscuits and a drink that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea*.

After about three and a half hours we arrived at Ushuaia. It was clear that this was not a major international air transport hub from the baggage collection area.

A couple of minutes after we arrived by the carousel, the belt started and a quite remarkable thing happened.

My bag was first off the plane!

Looking back, I’m not quite sure why I’m rejoicing, here.  It means that I’ve used up my lifetime quota of swift baggage delivery and it will never happen again! However, it was very satisfying for a few seconds there.

As usual with Sunvil’s excellent organisation, someone was there to meet us.  She wasn’t quite up to speed with the details of our itinerary, but got us delivered to a car, which got us delivered to our hotel. The car reminded us that we had come a long way from the Big City, as its seating had seen many, many better days and it had cardboard squares as its interior mats. This latter, though, makes sense if much of the time your likely passengers are wearing heavy boots because there’s a lot of snow and ice around.

Our hotel, the Cilene del Fuego, is a modern and rather funky building

in which our “room” was more of a family suite – two bedrooms, two bathrooms (one of which featured a very modern, Japanese-style loo with a heated seat and technology to burnish one’s post-visit bottom) and a kitchen. It also had great views over downtown Ushuaia.

It was barely mid-afternoon by this point, giving us a good opportunity to spend a little more time walking round the town than we had six years previously.  So we went for a walk. Obviously.

All the way round our walk, we were struck by the similarities between here, Iceland and some of the remoter towns we’d visited in Canada – colourful constructions,

street art

quirky corners

and dodgy pavements. It was often safer to walk in the road because the pavements were chewed up by, we assume, years of freezing, thawing, snow and ice and were seriously trappy for the unwary pedestrian.

For me, it was quite strange; walking along, I was often sure I was in Reykjavik and it jarred when I saw or heard Spanish – a slightly surreal experience.

We walked along by the seafront and the port, where in places the barrier rails have been rather nicely decorated,

and where you can walk past the hulk of the tugboat St. Christopher,

which has a bizarre and incomprehensible back story. Originally HMS Justice and built in America, it is still a mystery to me as to why one would rename a sunken and abandoned hulk after the patron saint of travellers.

Given that Ushuaia considers itself the capital of Las Islas Malvinas (!), it’s also inevitable to pass references to the war of some 40 years ago.

After all that walking, we needed to find a late lunch and so we blundered about until we happened upon Kuar,

unfortunately just in the interregnum between serving lunch and starting dinner.  With only 40 minutes or so to wait until the kitchen re-opened, it seemed a good idea to just take a drink and so we did, adding a local gin, Oid Mortales, to our repertoire as seasoned, nay pickled, gin drinkers. Its name comes from the “Argentinian” National Anthem, as it happens.

We eventually got some empenadas and salads which were only slightly affected by the fact that the kitchen had run out of lettuce.  All in all, it was a genial, if slightly eccentric, experience.

As we headed back to the hotel, our final action was to aim to recreate a photo that I’d taken on our previous visit here, for comparison purposes.  Here is how they look, side by side, now (left) and then (right).

This, then, was our time in Ushuaia – slightly more than the hour or so we had to wander about six years ago, and enough, particularly added to the places we’ve been and the sights we’ve seen since, to make us look more fondly on the place.

Tomorrow sees the start of the main chunk of this trip, as we embark on M/V Hondius to explore the Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these pages about the early stages and you’ll stay with us over the next weeks. I’ll publish what I can as and when technology connects me to the internet to share our progress.

  • Hat tip to Douglas Adams, HHGG#1

Day 2 – Buenos Días

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Sunday 18 February 2024 – Jane had, inevitably, done enough planning to equip us with at least one place in Buenos Aires that we wanted to check out; and Mariana, who met us at the airport and who will be our guide on our return here in mid-March, had some useful suggestions among all the other ones she had for us. After an hour or so of relaxing at our hotel – the very charming and somewhat boutique-y Casasur Recoletas, we went out for a walk (obviously) mainly in search of sustenance, but also to start getting to grips with Buenos Aires.

Recoletas is a classy part of the city (do you think we’d stay anywhere else?), and within a few blocks of the hotel we very quickly got to understand a couple of significant architectural vibes – colonial

and classic European, with a strong French strain.

We also came across the national tree of Argentina,

the Ceiba, or Silk Floss Tree, which is obligingly in flower to celebrate our arrival.

Our objective for somewhere to eat, as recommended by Mariana, was the restaurant at the Museo Fernández Blanco, a Spanish-American art Museum. Very nice it looked, too, with an impressive portal

and an attractive little restaurant in the gardens.

Sadly, the restaurant was all full of people. They suggested that they might have a table for us in 30 minutes or so, which gave us the opportunity to explore the gardens and some of the (attractive but somewhat faded) decorative work in it.

The museum building itself is a fine thing

albeit somewhat dwarfed by the high rise buildings around it.

To while away some more time, we headed out towards a nearby park, largely dedicated to a local hero, General San Martin, who distinguished himself in battle against the British in 1807 and subsequently used this area to house his mounted grenadiers.

There’s a bit of cultural dissonance here, as the park apparently also features a monument to the fallen of the Falklands Malvinas war.  However, it also features something that  was once called the Torre de los Ingleses, as it was a gift from the city’s British community in 1916, to celebrate the centennial of the 1810 May Revolution, which was a bit of local bother in deciding who ran the country.

These days (might be something to do with the Falklands War, who’s asking?) it’s called the Torre Monumental (although apparently all the locals still call it the Tower of the English).

The stroll took us past some more classic European-influenced architecture

and a rather cute Police Box on a roundabout.

It was by this stage time to head back to the restaurant, where we found that the 30 minutes estimate was somewhat optimistic.  However, the gardens are a pleasant place to wait whilst slow eaters refuse to get on with it, clear off and vacate a table for us.  Many people wander through the gardens, which may be something to do with a building in the corner with a rather nice façade behind which we think was a loo. There were some striking fashion statements by some of the Young Things wandering through

which we wondered might be to reduce the number of mosquito bites to the lower legs. Or maybe they’re just Being Young.

We eventually got a table and had a very pleasant meal, more of a snackish persuasion than a Nice Lunch, but nonetheless very welcome. Afterwards, we headed towards one of those places that Jane had earmarked for us to check out.  It’s called Floreria Atlantico, and at first blush appears indeed to be a flower shop

although the shelves of bottles might begin to hint at a deeper purpose.  In the corner is  fridge door

which, when opened, leads down some steps

to a simply splendid cocktail bar.

with some great artwork on the walls

and bar staff who know their cocktails.  This chap not only knew what a Boulevardier was,

but also asked whether the brand of Bourbon they had was acceptable and then mixed it to perfection, as judged by Jane, who Has Standards In This Sort Of Thing.

All in all, this was an excellent finale to a short, but very engaging, expedition round the Recoletas area of Buenos Aires.  Given that we are due back to the same hotel in just over three weeks’ time, I think we’re going to have more fun exploring around here.

We have an earlyish start tomorrow to get us down to Ushuaia, whence our Antarctic adventure sails. We had a very swift walk around Ushuaia when we were last in Patagonia, some six years ago, and didn’t really get to know the place at all.  I hope tomorrow gives us a chance to put that right. Watch this space to find out!