Antarctica chapter one
Embarkation.
I drop my luggage off shortly after 09h. We’ve been told that all bags are to be delivered to the ship all together and that we’ll find them by our cabins when we board.
I’m surprised how cavalier it seems. There are two Albatros Expeditions ships departing today and we’ve been told to make sure our bags are tagged for the right one. I find the line for the Ocean Albatros I’m on and I’m asked my cabin number. Thankfully, I’ve printed out my embarkation letter. My cabin is 621; it’s taken on faith. I wonder if any bags will be waylaid.
I’m given a number on a lanyard (1) and told my bus will embark at 14:30 from the parking lot near the “End of the world” sign on the other side of town. I’ve already traced the route and have found the sign, nestled amongst a number of small huts selling excursions in and around Ushuaia.
I had awoken to overcast skies, and a light rain had begun to mist over Ushuaia by the time I made my way to the drop-off center. I take breakfast at a cafe not far from where I’ve left my bags, and I’m happy to have fulfilled the main task for the day. Over granola and yogurt I think back over the the past week and the anticipation I’ve felt. I’ve been waiting for almost a year, having booked passage in March of 2023. It’s probably the most I’ve planned in advance of any trip I’ve made; I had wanted to make sure to secure the time off.
•
After breakfast I walk back up the hill to my Airbnb. I had asked for a late checkout, and the host had agreed to let me stay until it was time for me to board. I pick up a sandwich for lunch from another cafe in town and busy myself re-arranging my day pack and wrapping up anything I needed to do on the internet. I’ll be without service for the next two weeks.
At 13:00 I’m done packing and repacking my things. I’ve tidied up the apartment and taken a shower, showered, and donned clean clothes. I’ve spent most of my time staring out the window at the harbor, something I’ve spent the entire week doing. I’ve watched ships arrive and depart and I can’t believe that finally I’ll be the one departing.
By 13:30, I can no longer contain myself and decide to walk to the departure point. It’s only a 15-20 min walk and I’ll be early, but I am itching for something to do. I tell myself I can try to spot fellow passengers and take photos of the ship before embarkation. The skies have cleared somewhat and the sun is out.
I walk along the main street towards the harbor. I see a few people wearing expedition parkas, having disembarked from ships this morning. There are a few tied up to the pier: the two Albatros Expedition ships nose to tail, a Quark Expeditions ship alongside, another behind.
I sit on a bench overlooking the pier and eat my sandwich. The boats look serene, tied up on the dock. In the parking lot there are various vans and minibuses waiting to take passengers on various excursions. Our buses have yet to arrive.
I wander back towards the huts and sit under a tree to wait and see if representatives will present themselves in front of the “End of the world” sign, wondering who amongst the people gathered will be fellow passengers. I start a conversation with Erica, who’s here from Santa Fe for a week. She’s booked a penguin-watching boat tour and is waiting for her departure time. She’s with her husband and her son, who runs freely around the courtyard.
As my embarkation time approaches I walk back to the parking lot. Our buses have arrived. I walk up to a man standing before bus one and hand him my lanyard. I’m the first to board.
The bus leaves promptly, driving through the lot and back around to the pier. It’s a two-minute walk but a ten-minute ride offering views of the harbor and the town around it. As we drive through the gates to the pier and round the corner we’re offered our first up-close view of the ship. It’s an X-BOW design, which helps with encountering oncoming waves (among other things); perfect for the Drake Passage. It’s reminiscent of the nose of a high-speed train engine.
I am the first to board from the bus (I’ll learn later that three passengers somehow wandered their way onto the pier and aboard the ship before me; one turns out to be one of my neighbors). I’m welcomed by the crew as I step on board and pointed to the main desk. Leo greets me in Chinese, takes my passport, and hands me a room key and an ID card. The barcode will be scanned every time I leave the ship on an excursion and again when I return to make sure I’m back on board.
I’m led to my cabin. Luggage sits in the hall in front of each of the doors. I see my backpack alongside a red roller bag that doesn’t belong to me, each tagged with my cabin number. I tell the attendant and they tell me they’ll take care of it.
Inside, I’m shown the amenities. The bathroom floor is heated. As the attendant leaves he tells me to listen for announcements. There’ll be a general safety briefing once everyone’s on board followed by an emergency drill, a welcome briefing by the expedition leader, and the hotel director’s introduction. A buffet dinner will be served at 19h.
I’m too excited to unpack. I step out onto my balcony to take in the view of the port and the ships along side of ours before setting out to explore the ship.
My cabin is on deck six to the fore. Above me on deck seven are more cabins and the bridge. To the rear of deck seven sits the spa, gym, sauna, and access to the outdoor jacuzzis, of which there are two: one each on the port and starboard aft sides. An outdoor bar/restaurant also sits on deck seven, though for our voyage it’ll be used only once: for a bbq lunch featuring a delicious roast pig. Deck eight houses a smaller hot-stone restaurant that’s reservation-only along with indoor and outdoor observation decks. The deck eight restaurant also serves an abbreviated buffet lunch.
Deck five houses the main restaurant, reception, a small library, bar, lounge area where tea is served, and the briefing room. Lunches are served buffet-style; dinners are à la carte. Beer, wine, and soft drinks are inlcuded with dinner, and are available for purchase at other times. Each day there’s a cocktail of the day for five USD.
Deck four houses more cabins and access to the mudroom and marina, which actually sit on deck three. The mudroom is where we’ll be called to suit up for our excursions. Deck three is where the doctor office is located along with other passenger and crew cabins.
On our quest for the Antarctic Circle, the Ocean Albatros will set sail with 147 passengers; about 75% of capacity. There’s a tour group of comprised of 40 mainland Chinese passengers, and a smaller group of Indian passengers. Additionally, I’ll meet guests from Germany, the Czech Republic, Sri Lanka, Brazil, the UK, Switzerland, Malaysia, Argentina, and the United States; the guides hail from Austria, Norway, Poland, Canada, Luxembourg, the UK, the United States, Argentina, and China; the staff from Nicaragua, the Philippines, South Africa, China, and Indonesia.
From the aft end of deck seven, I can see the bow of our sister ship, the Ocean Victory pointed straight at us. From the deck eight bow of our ship there are sweeping views of Ushuaia and the mountains that shelter the town. A smaller ship, the M/V Sea Spirit rests just before us.
At a small smoking area aft on deck seven I meet Vladimir, the Chief Engineer. He’s from Odessa, Ukraine and has been with the ship since it left the shipyard last year from China. (One of the reasons I chose the Ocean Albatros, aside from the fact that this voyage has no itinerary, is because it’s a new ship, having been commissioned in 2023.) We chat briefly about the ship before he has to attend to his duties. I’ll see him only once more on board.
After he leaves I run into Pierre, one of our expedition guides and a whale specialist. He asks me what I most want to see on the voyage. I tell him I’m just happy to be here, though to see orca would be something special. He tells me I should shadow Andi; she’s wild about orca and if we see them (a rare occurrence) she’ll be sure to be there.
In the library I meet Dilini. I’m looking over their collection of titles and pick up Roland Huntford’s The Last Place on Earth, an account of Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen’s quests to be the first to visit the South Pole. Having finished reading Endurance, about Ernest Shackleton’s failed attempt to traverse Antarctica and the amazing survival of his crew, it’s next on my list of Antartica reads.
She’s on a three-month trip around South America, a remembrance of her father who passed away. He had always wanted to visit Antarctica, and she’s embarked upon this trip in memory of him. After Antarctica, she’ll be heading to the Galapagos in search of sea turtles, one of her father’s favorite animals.
We make quick acquaintance, certain we’ll see each other again before continuing our own explorations of the ship. As Dilini and I part by the bar, I see a Chinese woman wandering alone who looks more like she’s from the United States than the mainland. We’ll soon meet, the three of us becoming fast friends.
•
I return to my cabin to unpack my bags. The cabin is spacious for a ship and well-appointed. I want to make sure things are out of the way before we head into the Drake Passage. I don’t want to trip on anything or have things knocking about the room in the event the seas are rough.
An annoucement in English and Chinese is made asking us to gather in the briefing room. There, we’re given a safety briefing before being told to return to our cabins to await the emergency drill. Life jackets can be found above our closets and we’re to bring them with us when we collect by the lifeboats on deck seven when we’re called. An actual emergency would be annouced by seven blasts of the ship’s horn.
I’m assigned to lifeboat one of two (it’s on my ID card) and I’m surprised to find that they each accommodate 150 passengers. “But you don’t want to be in one,” one of the guides tells me. There’d definitely be a lot of puking going on.
After the drill we’re told to return our lifejackets to our cabins and re-amass in the briefing room for Szymon—our expedition leader’s—welcome briefing.
Szymon outlines our planned itinerary, weather permitting. We’re to head to the South Shetland Islands and then make our way along the western edge of the Antarctic peninsula, with hopes of sailing south of the Antarctic Circle. It’s then that I learn that that is a goal of the voyage and I’m thrilled.
He then shows us the wind and wave forecast for the Drake. Magenta fills the passage. It’s not terrible, but it’s not not quite the Drake Lake either.
As Szymon wraps up his presentation I can feel the engines of the ship come to life. I’m excited to watch us pull out of port and ask a guide if the next briefing is mandatory. He tells me that it basically tells you how a hotel works. I thank him and head to an upper deck to watch our ship under way.
The weather has changed since we’ve been on board and a strong wind with high gusts is pushing our ship into the dock. We’re under way but the thrusters aren’t enough to push us away from the pier. Our sister ship has departed and can no longer be seen on the horizon. Most of the other ships have also departed.
Later, we’ll learn that our ship had been delayed because a passenger’s bags are not on board. They’ll find them on the Ocean Victory. An announcement had been made aboard the Ocean Victory about the passenger’s yellow North Face bag, but the passenger whose cabin it was in assumed that it belonged to his assigned roommate.
They close the port due to the wind gusts and we are further delayed. The weather is unpredictable, as is our new time of departure. I return to the briefing room to catch the last bit of the hotel briefing, after which I catch Dilini talking to Ellie at the bar.
She’s from New York City. Having quit her finance job in January, she’s on walkabout for a year, making her way through South America on an itinerary that’s almost the exact opposite of the one I’ve been on for the past two years. She’s the Chinese-American woman I had seen earlier after I had just met Dilini, and she tells us she marked us as solo travelers then but decided to let us have our moment; there’d be time enough for her to introduce herself on the voyage.
We dine together at a four-top next to a large window, falling quickly into an easy intimacy in the way New Yorkers and independent travelers can upon first meeting one another. As we work our way through the buffet I feel the ship once again shudder to life and excuse myself to take photos of our departure and video of our voyage through the Beagle channel.
The winds have died down, though the day is once again overcast. The thrusters push us away from the pier and soon leave the port behind, following another ship through the Beagle Channel towards the dreaded Drake Passage. I sit at the front of deck eight and watch our passage, excited to be at sea.
•
I find Dilini and Ellie in the lounge. They ask me where I was. I tell them that I’ve been enjoying our passage through the channel from the upper decks until a light rain chased me back inside. Ellie wishes there was something sweet to nibble on and I head to my cabin, returning with a box of chocolates I had bought the day before.
As we relax into the evening a couple appears wearing bathrobes. They’ve just come from the jacuzzi. We’d been talking about them but hadn’t realized they were already available for use. Unfortunately, it had just closed for the night. A missed opportunity.
We decide to turn in shortly after. In the early morning hours we’ll get our first taste of the Drake. 🇦🇶
18 Feburary 2024
