1-7-20 - Setting sail for Antarctica!

Kyle awakes early to both drop off our luggage at the ship and return the rental car while Leanne supervises the schoolwork each teen has to complete before we are to be without Wi-Fi for eleven days.  Kyle has informed us that Wi-Fi on the ship is insanely expensive at ~$40 per 100 MB of data (which any one of us will consume in about 5 minutes) so that we need to plan on no cell, no Internet and no Wi-Fi for the entire eleven day trip.   We are soaring along getting last minute stuff done – replacing cold weather gear that has somehow gone missing since Christmas, getting haircuts (and beard trim in the case of John) and sandwiches for lunch. 

We arrive at the port for our scheduled embarkation. From past cruises, we know the onboarding process can be quite the operational nightmare as the large cruise ships need to get 3,000+ vacationers on in an efficient manner. Thank goodness those huge cruise boats don’t do Antarctica (and the tropical drink menus would be so out of place!).  With our bags already having been dropped off, we onboard faster than we got the hamburgers from the McDonalds-like Argentine fast food place on the first day in Ushuaia.  

As we onboard, the entire staff starts to give us hi-fives and a warm welcome.  It reminded us of showing up at summer camp.  Most look to be in their late twenties / early thirties with a distinctly international representation.   As we check-in, Leanne jokingly says to Kyle “where is the tropical  welcome drink and the lady with 400 flowered leis? All we got was the key to our room!” “Yeah,” says Kyle, “at least they could have given us medication to treat frost bite or something.”   

The rooms are spacious but sorting out the occupants took some effort.  Instead of the normal three room configuration of Kyle and Leanne, the three boys and two girls, Kyle was required to book one room under his name, one room under Leanne and John & Corey in the third room.  We wanted to switch the rooms back to the usual configuration but the issue was that the ship had already given us our id cards which are needed to check in and out when leaving the boat for the expeditions.  By switching rooms, everyone ends up with a card that opens their room but is not in their name.  This will require everyone to switch cards multiple times a day when leaving the boat and switch back again upon returning.  Kyle jokingly notes that the worst case scenario is that one of the kids gets left in Antarctica and we still have 4 more.  This joke doesn’t go over too well with the kids. We manage to sort it out and Ashley ends up with an ocean view desk that proves to be auspicious for our budding artist. 

As we set sail, we cross the Beagle Channel and enter the fabled Drake Passage.  The Drake Passage, named after British explorer Sir Francis Drake, is an 800 KM (500 mile) wide channel that extends from Cape Horn in the north to the South Sheltand Islands north of Antarctica where the Southeast Pacific Ocean meets the Southwest Atlantic Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean. The Drake Passage is particularly hazardous owing to large waves, strong winds, strong currents and icebergs.  The infamous Drake Passage has been dubbed the roughest waters in the world with monstrous waves that reduce even the strongest iron stomachs to bemoaning cases of sea sickness. We all apply seasickness patches to help us adjust but similar to the anti-altitude sickness medication from Tibet, Kyle informs us that the prescription patches do not guarantee against becoming seasick but are supposed to reduce the degree of how bad it is if you do get hit with it.  

The boat rocks so hard that everything in the closets roll around.  We have to grab railings at every turn to keep from being flung across the ship like rag dolls. We have two full days of this? Yikes! There are more than 100 barf bags all strategically placed an arm’s reach away so anyone can grab one any time a little of your Osco Busco decides to make a repeat appearance. 

During the initial briefing in the lounge, we end up sitting next to a family from Canada with two girls (8 and 10 years old) who are also traveling around the world for a year. They are doing a slightly different route as they are spending six months in South America.  It turns out they live on a small island off Vancouver where Leanne coincidentally has a friend who owns a vineyard.  Small world. Connect the dots again.

For dinner, we are a little slow getting to the dining room so all the bigger tables that can fit 7 are taken by other groups on the cruise together.  So the kids grab a table for five and Leanne and Kyle sit with a couple, Bill and Kathy,  at table for four.  The couple lives in Arizona where Bill is a retired urologist. Very nice couple.

With only 170 passengers, Leanne sets a mission of trying to meet everyone on the boat so we head to the lounge after dinner.  We meet another retired urologist with this one being from the Netherlands.  Kyle says that he must have missed the part about there being a convention for retired urologists on the cruise when he booked it. 

We meet a young Chinese man, on the cruise with his parents, who just graduated from college and is moving to the US to work at Facebook. We meet a couple from Netherlands which will be a common theme as there is a group of ~35 people from the Netherlands on the boat. We chat with Michael, the Hotel Manager who is in charge of everything related to the passengers inside the boat and from Austria. All told, we met about 25 passenger and staff before retiring to bed.