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| Lifebuoy at the back of the Ocean Endeavour, as we head through the Drake Passage. |
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| Tables gathered around the edges of the top deck at the stern of the ship, immediately above the deck in the previous shot. Actually I suppose it's technically not the top deck, but it's the uppermost of the two large decks open at the stern. You might wonder who in their right minds would want to sit at a table outdoors in Antarctica and this is a valid question which I will answer later. |
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| Icebergs on the horizon! Can it get more exciting than this? Yes. |
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| This is a completely different lifebuoy on the deck above the previous one, obviously. |
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| Zodiacs and canoes stacked up on the deck above what I have previously and confusingly called the top deck. The zodiacs are brilliant workhorses of which I'll say more another time. |
The Drake Passage is 600 miles of some of the most perilous sea in the world. It takes a little over two days to cross and was the part of the trip that I was looking forward to the least. Anecdotally it can be an unbearable ordeal of seasickness of Mr Creosote proportions. Anecdotally it is also sometimes completely uneventful. As it turned out, our transit was the latter, at least according to experienced crew members. I gathered from this that full acquaintance with the region gives a broader remit to the concept of plain sailing. The boat certainly pitched and yawed. At night, tucked up in our beds, we tried to sleep as first our feet and then our heads were tipped up and down.
Before we set sail (figuratively - the ship had engines) we had applied scopalamine subdermal patches behind our ears. According to the internet these are the most effective means of preventing seasickness, and when has the internet ever lied to me? Apart from that time it tried to tell me the moon landings were faked. Or the time it pretended to be my bank. Or the time - oh, never mind. The patches were highly recommended. They also came with dire warnings about touching them without immediately washing your hands. To be honest without the warning I probably would have forgotten about the patch once applied, but after such a strong assertion I found it hard not to want to constantly fiddle with the thing. That aside, they apparently worked as neither of us were seasick. We may not have been seasick without the patches either. Some people of the ship were quite ill but as previously stated it was a relatively smooth passage. I stick to my pet and in no way scientifically researched theory that everyone has a frequency that gets to them and I just haven't found mine yet.
There is more to the scopalamine story, but that happens after Antarctica. Currently we haven't even got there yet. The two days crossing the Drake Passage are largely a process of becoming accustomed to life on a cruise ship. I say cruise ship, but it transpired that our home for the next fortnight started life as a Russian car ferry. That isn't to say it was unpleasant, because I came to think of it very fondly and I still do, but its history will be a tale for another day.
This was the time to settle in and prepare for our arrival in Antarctica. Each day was punctuated by communal events. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were always at the same times and were great opportunities to mingle with other passengers and crew members. The food can be a subject for another day, but I will say it was generally excellent. From the crew's point of view this transitory period was the time to make sure everyone properly understood the risks and obligations of the expedition. For this was, we were reminded, an expedition. Nature would dictate where we could go on a day-by-day basis and we would have to be prepared for conditions ranging from having the time of our lives hanging out with penguins and wondering what we spent our money on while watching the ship being whipped by wind and rain from the bar.
Much of this we had been informed of ahead of boarding. Antarctica isn't usually a place visited on a whim. It is expected that you've done your homework and have prepared sensibly, but the crew can't afford to take chances with us so this period was also an opportunity to get everyone up to snuff.
There was a presentation on how to dress for landings and how to behave once off the ship. This was light-hearted in presentation but it was made clear that we should pay attention if we didn't want to end up soaked, frozen or savaged by penguins. It was also an opportunity to get to know the crew, who we would obviously be seeing a lot of during the cruise.
Some time ahead of the cruise, we had supplied Intrepid with our coat and shoe sizes. The former was a little fraught as measurements for coats vary quite a bit. These were because in addition the clothes we were bringing, we would be supplied with boots, a puffer jacket and a huge parka. The boots and parka were on loan, whereas the jacket was ours to keep. During the Drake transit we found our storage compartments in the mud room and tried on our new clothes. There would be an opportunity to swap them if they didn't fit as the expedition carried a few spares. Everything fit well, so that was that. The boots were much like sturdy wellies and would be very useful indeed when making landings in the water. The parkas were a uniform blue, making a handy distinction from the crew's red parkas. Once everyone is all togged up including hats, sunglasses and gaiters it became hard to tell everyone apart so being able to identify the crew easily was quite useful. At one point I walked briskly to catch up with my sister for a good five minutes before realising it wasn't her.
Our own clothing was vetted during this period. The crew took contamination seriously and so anything that could come loose and get left behind would be vetoed. The violently orange neck gaiter that I bought for the bargain price of £4 was met with disapproval. It was made of very fluffy acrylic fleece and so there was concern that it might shed. Fortunately, as you may recall I had bought a more sensible one in Ushuaia. Phew! Everything else passed muster. We were all set to go.
Over the course of the journey we began to spot icebergs in the distance. This was tremendously exciting and I took lots of terrible photos with my superzoom camera. As we neared the tip of the peninsula they increased in both frequency and proximity, each one more spectacular and photo-worthy than the last until we could gradually make out the land mass of Antarctica ahead. We were through the Drake Passage, and entering a whole new world.
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