To Antarctica - New Year's 2011

We woke up at 5, showered, then went downstairs for breakfast. At 6 we boarded one of the buses to the airport where we boarded a charter flight to Ushuaia (oo-swy-ah), the southern-most city in the world. After landing we boarded four buses and went for a tour of the Tierra Del Fuego national park. We had lunch aboard a pair of catamarans. The original plan was to sail back on the catamarans, but it was too windy and choppy, so we took the buses back instead.

At the dock we boarded the National Geographic Explorer, a 340 foot ice-class ship that was only a year old. It's fully stabilized and has 80 cabins for 148 passengers. Our cabin was in the rear starboard corner of the ship, a big room with windows on two sides, a good sized balcony, and a bathroom with a double sink; very nice! We explored the ship a bit, unpacked our gear, then had a safety drill up in the lounge. Afterwards we were given a briefing on the ship before heading up to the dining room for dinner. We chatted with several other passengers for a bit, then had a nightcap up on the top observation deck, watching the sun slowly start to set around 11pm. As we settled into bed the ship entered Drake's Passage and the open sea. The waves were around 20 feet and the ship rolled around a bit during the night.

We spent the day crossing Drake's Passage, with seas that had settled to 10-15 feet. The ship's stabilizers were doing a good job of keeping the ship stable, we only had about 7° of roll (the caption said that without the stabilizers we would have experienced 30° of roll!). We had breakfast and lunch and spent some time on the observation deck. The staff gave a talk on camera usage and we also had a mandatory Antarctic landings briefing (attendance was fairly light, apparently many of the passengers were having "issues" with the crossing). Afterwards we had dinner, then went down to the room to watch Mister Popper's Penguins (a very cute movie!) before going to sleep.