Our journey began with 2 days at sea sailing through the Drake Passage to Antarctica. It took us a while to get our sea legs, especially with swells of around 3m each side and chairs that swivelled round if you didn't have your feet on the floor! On the whole we didn't do too badly with seasickness, but we kept falling asleep due to the side effects of our motion sickness medication! According to the crew, the weather wasn't even that bad, only a 3 out of 10! However it was enough to knock us all sideways and made for some very interesting meal times! It was interesting to see the adaptations made for the ship, such as rubber mats on the dinner table so none of the crockery went sliding, and the table and chairs chained to the floor! The only thing that tended to go flying occasionally was me off the chair!
The ship was fantastic with 3 delicious meals a day (each at least 3 courses!), 2 bars, a library and lounge area. Andy and I had opted to stay in separate 4 bed dorms in order to save about £1000 each (!), so we had fun telling everyone that we were on a trial separation! However even these dorms were nicer than anything er had stayed in recently so we were over the moon on the ship!
Our days at sea were spent getting to know other passengers on the ship, most of whom were American, Canadian or Australian for some reason, and attending lectures about all the things we would be seeing once we arrived in Antarctica. It was very exciting knowing we were on our way to see them!
Our 3rd morning on board the ship was especially exciting - I opened the curtain to my porthole and saw icebergs!! We had arrived!
We started our day with a snowball fight on deck as it has snowed overnight. We saw some whales and penguins swimming by the boat so we were having a great time! It was pretty stormy outside though so we couldn't land immediately unfortunately, so we took a cruise on a small motorboat (Zodiac) through Paradise Bay.
In the afternoon we finally got to set foot on land! We went to a Gentoo penguin colony on one of the Antarctic Islands which was awesome! Penguins are HILARIOUS to watch! It was around the time the chicks were getting their last feed before their parents left them so the island was full of chicks chasing their parents for the food! Penguins aren't the most graceful of animals on land though so half of their time was spent falling over!
We managed to get one of the chicks to come over to Andy and start nibbling on his finger - which was fine until he tried to swallow his finger!
There was also a pretty cool whale skeleton there which was enormous!
The next day we arrived in the Iceberg Graveyard where enormous icebergs get stuck in the rock and end up eroding away there. We kayaked through them, enjoying the fact that we were literally metres away from giant icebergs of all different shades of white and blue! To add to the experience we did also get caught in a massive snow blizzard which was fun to begin with, but we were knackered and freezing by the end of it!
That afternoon we visited a Ukrainian research station called Vernadsky. Their main focus is meteorology and marine biology. The scientists stay at the base for a whole year so they were pretty happy to see some new faces! We had a quick tour around the station then our guide took us to where he knew we wanted to go - the oldest bar in Antarctica! They make their own vodka there which was actually delicious - honey, almond and lime flavoured :) As it was St Patrick's Day (and ONLY for that reason :p) we all obviously got pretty drunk... And the party carried on once we got back to the ship's bar...
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