Ice World

I barely know where to start with this post... so I will start with the basic facts and then try to work my way toward our impressions. This morning we returned from a 12 day trip to Antarctica, which was one of the most incredible experiences either Amit or I have had in our short lifetimes! We heard about the possiblity of visiting Antarctica from Amit´s cousin Eitan and his girlfriend Maayan, who traveled there two years ago. When we first arrived in Argentina, we immediately sought out a travel agent who could sell us last-minute seats on any of the Antarctic cruises. As you already know from earlier posts, we were able to purchase two seats on the MV Polar Star, a medium sized boat that is most well-known for its itinerary that takes the ship below the Polar Circle, something that most other cruises don´t do. So on the day of our embarkation, we packed, did laundry, sent out some final emails, and then went down to the dock in Ushuaia to check in with the ship. We found our room on the ship, a small cabin with two twin beds (there are almost NO double beds on board, and the ones that exist are given to the special folks who pay FULL price) and the most beautiful sight... a private bathroom (hostel life can make you a bit sensitive about these things)! So about an hour later, we pushed off from the dock, sailed down the Beagle Channel (where we saw our first wildlife, Magellanic Penguins!), and that night, we entered the dreaded Drake Passage. Now for those of you who know Amit, you know that he traditionally doesn´t do well on boats (think: immediate green complexion when we went out on his first dive trip in 1-2 foot seas!), but he was feeling brave with his sea-sickness patch stuck behind his ear and we both did very well the first evening and first full day. We were also VERY lucky, as the Drake was much calmer than normal and we only had 4-6 waves/swells. Day 3 (the second full day) didn´t go quite as well, as the seas picked up (6-8 foot swells) and Amit didn´t get a chance to enjoy much of the delicious lunch or dinner prepared for us that night. But the end was in sight, and on the morning of Day 4, we woke up and looked out our window to see our first iceberg!!! Just a quick review of the activities on Day 1-3: there isn´t really anything to see as you cross the Drake Passage except for albatross and other sea birds flying around the ship, so during these days, we ate a lot and enjoyed lectures and films prepared by the ¨Expedition Team¨(the adventure staff, as opposed to the kitchen/operations/mechanical staff), all focused on Antarctic geology, history, and biology. On Day 4, we finally arrived at the Antarctic Peninsula, the most accessible and interesting part of the Antarctic continent. In fact, there are almost no land animals in Antarctica... all of the animals who nest or make their homes in Antarctica are aquatic (penguins, seals, sea lions, whales, various other sea birds) and the only come on land to do some of the life cycle activities, so the peninsula offers them lots of ocean access with just enough land to take care of business. So on each of the subsequent 6 days, we would cruise to a different part of the peninsula, get on our waterproof gear, and get into little black inflatable (but motorized) rafts to get to land or cruise around the icebergs. The two main focuses of the raft-based adventuring (which were called ¨landings¨) were to find and/or observe wildlife or visit current or historic research stations. The latter was less interesting to us, so we´ll mostly be showing you pictures of the incredible wildlife... and of course the scenery (icebergs, glaciers, and crazy steep mountains everywhere!). A few specific memorable events to tell you about: First, on just about every day of landings, we had extremely close encounters with penguins... hundreds of thousands of them! They were on every island or beach that we landed on, and boy do they smell bad!!! Antarctica is actually somewhat of a desert, in that it gets very little precipitation every year, so there is nothing to wash away all of the POOP that the penguins leave everywhere. So it sticks royally any time you are close to a penguin colony. We got to enjoy three specific types of penguins... Chipstrap, Adelie, and Gentoo penguins. There are only about 17 types of penguins in the world, so this was pretty special. Each of the penguin colonies we visited had tons of baby penguins running around, as you will see in our pictures, and as you will experience in our video (to be put together at a later date), the penguins also blessed us with the very LOUD and GRATING squaking! But despite the smell and the sound, we had an incredible time seeing these beautiful birds in their natural habitat, playing, eating, swimming, and interacting with their fellow penguins with very little regard for the strange red and black animals swarming their neighborhood (as you will see from our pictures, all of the passengers on our ship received red and black waterprood Polar Star jackets and it really made us look funny when we all landed in the same place at once). Okay, one more story and then I´m going to keep you in suspense by extending this post into two posts (there is just TOO much to write in one post!): The most incredible animals we saw on our trip were, of course, the whales. There are about 6 types of whales that hang out in Antarctica in the summer, and we had the priviledge of seeing two, the Humpback and the Minke. Minke whales are VERY fast and skittish, so our experiences with them were limited to just viewing them from a distance, but the Humpback whales are actually very social animals... and boy did we socialize with them! On three different occasions, once from the side of one of the inflatable rafts and twice from the deck of the ship, we had the chance to see Humpbacks VERY CLOSE (like 5-10 feet away!) and watch as they fed, danced, and played with our ship/raft. The most incredible occasion was from within the raft... the whale was swimming, twisting and playing right at the surface of the water near our raft that it was what some would consider a miracle. The whale could have easily flipped our raft but instead it was curiously checking us out or giving us some sort of show... it was absolutely amazing, and it went on for more than 20 minutes!!!!!! At some point, I just put my camera down in my lap and watched... it was so hard to capture the emotion that this type of close encounter evokes and I really just wanted to experience the moment (but don´t worry, we got plenty of pictures and video!). The second occasion was unique because for 15 minutes or so, we watched three Humpback whales feed on krill (Antarctic shrimp), bursting through the surface of the water and then diving back down - over and over! Okay... so I have to stop or this post will get completely out of hand... but I promise to write again in the next day or two with some final stories, impressions, and more PICTURES from our trip!!!!! Lots of love (and off to warmer places!), Dena & Amit

Amit faces off with a Gentoo Penguin at our first landing The close encounter with a Humpback whale from our raft (we had to zoom OUT to capture this shot) Beautiful iceberg Gorgeous scenery from our southernmost latitude (South of Antarctic Circle at 67.5 degrees South) Us admiring the landscape (small dots in background are penguins) Calm Antarctic bay Small penguin colony A few Penguin chicks "chillin" in the sun Baby penguins... need we say more? A "firesky" sunset