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03.03.2016: Day 20 - Half Moon Island (South Shetland Islands) and Drake Passage
During the night and the early hours of the morning the wind had been blowing at over 40 knots so we were rocking quite a bit. I was also coughing quite a lot and couldn't sleep so I got up at 1am and went to the bar to make myself hot lemon and ginger tea. At least I could get some sleep after that!
Our wake up call came at 7-15am and the forecast didn't look very good for a landing but we're still sailing towards our destination and should get there around 9am or 9-30am and the scout boat will let us know.
After breakfast the winds had already begun to decrease and, although it was a little grey and overcast, conditions were OK for a landing. Crescent-shaped Half Moon Island, just 2km long, lies in the entrance of Moon Bay on the eastern side of Livingston Island.
Once the anchor was down the zodiacs were lowered and staff went ashore at three locations around the bay in order to maximise our activity options here. We chose to do the longer hike and Ali and Ab met us at the landing and we were later joined by Christian to take a walk up to the summit.
It was a little damp and breezy on the top but the views over Half Moon Island and Livingston Island in the background were beautiful and we lingered at the top for a while enjoying the view and the Skuas that were giving us an amazing aerial display.
Half Moon Island - 360° Panorama
(move mouse over panorama and click on the arrows)
On the way down there was time for some 'butt sliding' on the snowy slopes! My waterproof trousers were definitely not made for sliding! I ended up rolling onto my stomach which worked a lot better as the penguins already know! Afterwards we went to Camara Station which is operated 'summer only' by the Argentinian navy. There was a chance to buy souvenirs, have a coffee and get passports stamped with an Antarctic/Argentinian stamp. We took the opportunity to pick up brochures on Argentina and route 40!
Half Moon Island - 360° Panorama
(move mouse over panorama and click on the arrows)
Weeks later we read in the trip log that we had a couple of intrepid Polar Swimmers who took to the water without the use of dry suits and fully experienced the near freezing sea conditions! Well, we were already quite wet from the mist and drizzle and sliding on the snow!
Day 20: Landing on Half Moon Island (South Shetland Islands)
We got a zodiac back from the station and went for showers before lunch - soup, followed by spaghetti bolognaise and orange and kiwi fruit salad. We set sail around 1-15pm and went through the MacFarland Channel for an hour and then into the open sea and the famous Drake Passage.
All the divers were busy cleaning and putting away all their gear and most people started their packing whilst the ship is calm enough to do so! Kirsten had a migraine and lay down but it was quite loud in the corridor outside our cabin as divers were hoovering and packing stuff right outside our door. I fetched her some ice from the bar and she managed to get some rest.
I went to a 1.5 hour talk by Amos, the photographer. It was the continuation of his presentation that he began many days ago until he was interrupted by Blue whales. His presentation included many fantastic photos both above and below the waves. He was only supposed to talk for 1 hour which meant that Jim's presentation was postponed until tomorrow.
As soon as we got out into the open sea the ship started rocking but it wasn't too bad to begin with. We've certainly had worse. It was also very foggy outside so there wasn't anything to see. We found out that a number of the crew will be finishing after this cruise and a lot of the passengers fly out of Ushuaia on the same day we are due to arrive. I guess the Captain wants to get us back in time for their flights and for him to get back home!
At re-cap, Ali talked about Weddell seals and Kelvin talked about Killer whales, explaining about the different 'types' which are found here in Antarctica. He said we were incredibly lucky to have such and an amazing encounter with these big black and white dolphins.
Kirsten decided to stay in bed and missed the evening meal. There were three different Chinese dumplings for starters- pork, vegetable and shrimp and I had ordered the venison without the venison for the main meal because the accompanying vegetables were parsnip mash and Brussels sprouts. Yummy! Dessert was chocolate crème brulee and I had two but had to send other offers back - I just couldn't eat it all and Kirsten wasn't there to share!
I fetched more ice and a hot drink for Kirsten and also brought her some buttered bread rolls in case she was hungry. But she didn't eat them. I chatted to Nicolette, the doctor and Carol, the historian, in the bar. Tobias and Christian had put a rope up in the bar for people to use to hold onto as the motion of the ship was becoming increasingly pronounced.
Jim came and asked Carol if she would do the wake up call tomorrow and Nicolette and I came up with some different suggestions. One of Nicolette's was the best - to shout "Wake up you mother ****ers!" Even though Kirsten wasn't feeling too good she had to laugh!
04.03.2016: Day 21 - At sea in the Drake Passage
Carol did her wake up call at 7-45am and we did Nicolette's version and laughed! Kirsten was feeling a lot better and her migraine had gone so we went to breakfast. She didn't eat the bread rolls I'd made for her last night so she was hungry this morning. Outside it was misty with a wind speed of 22 knots and a reasonable swell.
At 10am we went to a very good talk by Ali about 'Ice Maidens' - the story of women in Antarctica, from the long-suffering wives of the Heroic Age, to the intrepid female explorers of today.
Women weren't allowed on the Antarctic for a very long time as a woman's place was in the home or as man said "there's no shops or even a hairdresser so it's not suitable for women!" It was thinking that was typical of the era.
Consequently, it was a private expedition that landed the first woman on Antarctica in 1936. Women weren't allowed on ships or at bases and those that wanted to go had to jump through hoops to get there. It was a long time before women were allowed and finally by the 1990s women were being accepted and in 2012 the Antarctic got it's first female base commander. Nowadays there are around 60% men and 40% women who work on the continent.
After doing room service for Kirsten who was working on the photos, I went up to the bridge. It was a great day for the bird watchers because, in addition to the usual Cape petrels and other sea birds, there were good sightings of Grey-headed Albatross, Sooty Albatross, and not one but two different species of Diving petrels. So a number of passengers were out on the bridge wings taking photos.
I was more interested in the progress of the storm and 3rd Officer Matei Mocanu from Romania was very helpful. He told me he had studied at Naval college for 5 years and he would need another year before he could get promoted to 2nd Officer and at least another two years before he could make Captain. He has also been 3rd Officer on the sister ship Ortelius and sailed from New Zealand around the Antarctic to Ushuaia - a 32 day trip. However, he recommended that the best way is to take the trip from Ushuaia to New Zealand which is offered every two years and the next one will be in January 2017.
He also answered all my questions. We wouldn't be able to see Cape Horn because we would be sailing 70 miles to the east of it but we should get to the Beagle Channel by the following afternoon. He showed me the weather forecast on the screen and I could see the way the storm with 70 knots and more wind speed was heading towards Ushuaia! We were aiming for the port at Ushuaia by the early hours of Sunday providing they don't close it because of the storm!
Lunch was beef consommé, followed by excellent cheese and ham empanadas with salad. We also got extras! Then we had a "Vienetta" type ice cream for dessert. Kirsten went back to the cabin and decided not to go to any of the talks in the afternoon.
At 2-30pm I went to Christian's talk in German about a little-known Norwegian explorer whose idea was to get stuck in the Arctic ice around the North Pole in a specially built boat in 1897. He hoped that the ice would take the boat through the North Pole and out the other side! It didn't work of course and after 18 months of being stuck in the ice and travelling around with the ice but not going where they wanted to or thought they would go, they abandoned the plan!
At 3-30pm I went to hear Jim who presented a talk describing the inspiration for his book on Shackleton 'A life in poetry', including his discovery of the explorer's final written words: "In the darkening twilight, a lone star hovered gem-like above the bay". It's the first book he's ever written and he enjoyed it so much that he is planning to write two more - one that has a preliminary title of "Liars, madmen and millionaire's" who wanted to fly to the North Pole and another about Arctic weather stations who were used to give false information on weather forecasts to the enemy during the Second World War.
When I went back to the cabin afterwards, Kirsten was lying down because she wasn't feeling too well. She had tried to work on the computer but the ship was rocking a lot and it made her feel nauseous staring at the screen. I brought her a cup of tea along with the cake for the afternoon which was apple strudel - yummy!
Fortunately Kirsten felt better after a lie down because the highlight of the day was a Pub Quiz. We needed teams of 6 so we joined Jana, Carolin and Alex - 4 Germans and little old me! There were only 5 of us in our team but all of the others had 6. There were about 8 teams altogether.
Ali made a very good quiz master. There were 10 questions on the Falkland Islands (we got 6/10), 10 questions on South Georgia (7/10),and 10 questions on Antarctica (9.5/12) At the break the scores were added up and we hadn't even managed to make the top three! Ali, who is a school teacher, used a very common phrase and said we "could do better!"
The next 10 questions were on the Plancius and we only scored 5 out of 10 and there really wasn't much hope for us. One of the questions was which drink was the most sold in the bar. None of us are drinkers and Kirsten and I hadn't even ordered a single drink so we didn't have a clue. We just threw out the usual drinks that most people would order - whisky or wine. But Alex said it was probably "Palm" beer. We'd never heard of it but he got it right and we got a point!
The last round was a picture round. Ali showed excerpts from photos in very quick succession and we had to guess what it was. For the scoring, each photo was enlarged so we could see what bird or animal it was. We managed to get 9 out of 10 correct and zoomed up into second place!!!!
There was no prize for second though but first prize went to the team Down Under who got three points more than we did - a close race to the finish! They won a bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne! Quite a prize! There was also an award for the most inventive team name which went to the "Leaky zippers" - a free meal in the restaurant!!
It was great fun and we all had a good laugh. Then we went to dinner which was pheasant and chestnut pate, pan fried fish with rustic potato and garlic mash and mixed vegetables, followed by berry Panna Cotta. I was given two extras and then offered two more!! Oh boy, I just couldn't eat them all!
Once we'd finished, Thijs introduced all of the hotel staff from the kitchen, who we hardly ever see, our head chef, the two ladies who work in the laundry and our servers. All of them got loud applause and cheers, especially Thijs and Sava - the hotel manager and his number two who were good fun and came on land a few times with us. They had all done a superb job.
Day 21: Drake Passage. Plancius Pub Quiz. Applause for hotel staff.
After dinner Kirsten was busy downloading other peoples photos and videos and I took shots of the various maps hanging up on board and the crews biographies and staff lists that we would need for our website.
Back down in the cabin, we started to do some packing and we had to go around securing things in place because the wind was picking up and consequently the ship was rocking a lot more. We were in for a bumpy night.
05.03.2016: Day 22 - At sea in the Drake Passage and Beagle Channel - Ushuaia
Although we had a lot of rocking overnight, it hadn't been as bad as we'd expected or anywhere near as bad as it can be. Our mattresses slipped and squeaked quite a bit but, all in all, we managed to get some sleep.
Those on the upper decks in the expensive cabins would have been rocked and rolled far more, particularly the ones whose beds are positioned so they're rolled from side to side. Catherine, the diving guide, told us that if she ends up with a bunk in the side to side position, she uses her life jacket under her mattress to prevent being thrown against the wall during the night! A good tip!
After breakfast we went to a talk by Tobias on optical phenomena in the polar regions, and we learned about sun dogs and ice halos. Then we went up to the bridge because we were nearing the Beagle Channel. We got our first glimpse of dolphins and the waves calmed noticeably as we proceeded into the shelter of the surrounding islands and the entrance to the Channel.
For our last lunch of the cruise we had pea and ham soup and Sinan gag - a Filipino rice dish with vegetables, egg and pork followed by fruit salad. I filled out a questionnaire delivered to our cabin and we put tips into an envelope for the crew and staff. Then it was back onto the bridge to enjoy the last few hours of sailing.
We got great sightings of Dusky dolphins bow-riding and riding our wake at the stern, and later on sightings of blows of Sei whales. There was plenty to see in the Beagle channel.
The Pilot boat arrived at 3-35pm and we watched as it drew alongside and the Argentinian pilot jumped on board to guide us into port at Ushuaia. The dolphins were just as fascinated as we were! Then the call came for our deck to return our rubber boots to the Boot Room so I returned ours whilst Kirsten took photos of the dolphins.
At 4-30pm Jim, Christian and Ali presented some other trips on board Oceanwide ships both in the Antarctic and Arctic regions. Afterwards the divers showed us some highly entertaining footage of their underwater activities during the expedition.
We gathered for Captain's Cocktails, toasting with the Captain and the Expedition Team before heading to the dining room for the last dinner - apple and almond salad with ham, under cooked lamb chops with potatoes, followed by Black Forest gateau. I could only manage 1.5! I'm really slowing down and, despite all the food, I seem to actually be losing weight!!
We arrived in Ushuaia port at 8-15pm which was a lot earlier than on the original schedule, but at least we managed to avoid the storm and got there safely. Unfortunately, it was a real disappointment to be in Ushuaia already. We'd had such a fabulous trip and didn't want it to end. Now we were back and felt depressed!
Some people chose to go into Ushuaia for the evening but we'd already spent 6 weeks here so we stayed on the ship. It was quite a strange feeling to have our last night on board the ship that was docked at port and not out at sea. Despite feeling a bit lost we still had plenty to do - we needed email and contact information from various people and also had to finish packing because we would be disembarking at 8-30am tomorrow morning, directly after breakfast. Oh, and I finally worked out how to get decaf coffee from the coffee machine in the bar. Day 22 and I've only just worked it out!!
06.03.2016: Day 23 - Disembarking in Ushuaia
We set the alarm for 7-10am so that we could video Jim's last wake up call five minutes later. We finished our packing and put our large bags out in the corridor to be collected and taken off the ship for us. We packed the rest of our stuff into our backpack and went for breakfast.
We had our last bacon and eggs and went around swapping more emails and contact info from other passengers and arranged to meet at 8pm in Ushuaia with various people who were still going to be there.
After saying goodbye and thanks to our three excellent servers Jhonri, Paulo and Melanie, we turned our tags for one last time to say we were off the ship and walked down the gangplank onto the pier. One bus was already leaving with passengers to take them directly to the airport and all the staff were there to say goodbye. They'd had to shake hands, accept hugs and heartfelt thanks from 110 passengers!
Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to the Plancius, the ship that had taken us on a fantastic journey of a lifetime. We had travelled 4041 Nautical miles, which is 7484 km or 4,678 miles and had landed in places that not many people get to visit. It had been an incredible journey and it was hard to leave.
Then it was back to practical things - like helping Jana and Carolin carry all their bags! Kirsten was given a bag full of empty wine bottles to carry and then throw into the nearest bin! They weren't allowed to drink their own alcohol on board but couldn't afford the prices at the bar. So they'd smuggled a few bottles on board!
We took a taxi back to Winnietwo who was in one piece and had managed to survive the various storms that had no doubt hit Ushuaia in the last 23 days. It only took us 40 minutes to unpack our bags as all of our clothes went straight into a laundry bag! After going into the hotel to thank them for allowing us to leave our motor home there we drove into town to do some shopping and parked at the Yamana Bar where we could get internet to start uploading videos from the cruise for our website.
We even managed to watch our football team from Hamburg beat a team a lot higher up in the table - a much needed win after all the matches we'd missed whilst on board. We also got a reply from our insurance telling us that we wouldn't be insured for evacuation!! It's a bit late and a very good job that we're back!!
But then came the hard part - we waved goodbye to the Plancius at 6-15pm as she set sail on her next voyage which would be a 12 day trip to the Antarctic and crossing the Antarctic Circle. We had already watched the next passengers doing their emergency evacuation practice with their bright orange life jackets on. We could see it all from where we were parked.
We had seriously contemplated going back on board again but we just didn't have the money. Plus, we had had such a wonderful trip that we just couldn't repeat it. It wouldn't have been worth it. We were also very tired and needed a rest. Even so, it was still very hard to watch the ship leave without us!
Days 22-23: Dusky dolphins in the Beagle Channel. Applause for the Expedition team and the Captain. Leaving the Plancius.
We drove into town and went to the Dublin Irish Bar to meet up with others. We were the first to get there, followed by Cosmas and then Jana and Christian (one of the guides.) They'd obviously been drinking beforehand because Jana was already very tipsy! We were joined by Carolin and Tobias (another guide), then by Nick, Daniel, Christine and Tom who had been to a different restaurant to try Beaver meat. Apparently it wasn't very good!
We were a large group and the bar was packed so we had to shout a lot but we had a great time celebrating our trip together. We said final goodbyes to most of them and invited Jana, Carolin and Christine for coffee and cakes the following afternoon. We also walked Christine back to her hostel because it was in the opposite direction from where all the others were staying. We thought it was just around the corner but ended up walking up very steep roads for 20 minutes to get there. We could have driven her back!
07.-08.03.2016: Ushuaia
The next day we handed in all of our laundry, drove back to the Yamana Bar and did some cleaning. Jana, Carolin and Christine came around for coffee and cakes at 4pm and to take a look at the motor home they had heard so much about. They are all leaving the next day (Tuesday 8th March) - Christine will be getting a bus north to see more of Argentina then Peru, Galapagos Islands and Cuba and Jana and Carolin will be flying out to New Zealand for 2 to 3 months.
We all had a good time and Christine left at 7pm because her bus was leaving early. The girls stayed and Kirsten started downloading music onto their phones! It started raining so in the end we drove them back to their hostel. We will be keeping in contact with all of them.
We spent one more day in Ushuaia and worked for hours on the website but it was also time for us to say goodbye to Ushuaia and head further north.
