At Sea/Drake Passage
Imagine that your greatest wish had been granted—the only catch is that you have to wait one more day for all your dreams to come true.
What would you do for that day? Would you wait it out in a corner, tapping your foot? Would you play cards to pass the time? Do something to prepare for your big day?
Visiting Antarctica—just being in Antarctica—is a lifelong dream of mine. Yesterday I boarded the National Geographic Explorer and set sail for that dream.
This Lindblad Expedition represents the final leg of my journey all the way from National Geographic Headquarters in Washington, DC. As a contributing editor for National Geographic Traveler, I am currently on assignment—traveling all the way to Antarctica overland, primarily by bus. My epic “Bus2Antarctica” journey will be a magazine story for National Geographic Traveler, yes, but it is also a multi-media project in which I am blogging, vlogging, Twittering, and using online mapping and podcasts to share my travel experience in “real-time” with readers and followers all over the world.
I left Washington, DC on New Year’s Day riding a metro city bus due south. Forty days, forty busses and fourteen countries later, I pulled into Ushuaia, Argentina just in time to board my next ride, the great National Geographic Explorer to Antarctica. Switching from bus to boat has been a nice upgrade—especially to the luxury and comfort of this ship.
Now, on the itinerary, days like today are summed up in just two syllables: at sea. Some treat this as down time or time off—“in between time,” between leaving one place and arriving at our dream. And yet, those two syllables fail to explain all that I have done today—a day when our ship sailed the first half of the notorious Drake Passage.
Morning began with a fantastic photography class taught by bona fide National Geographic wildlife photographer Michael S. Nolan—a man who knows these animals and conditions very well. Without any exaggeration, it was the best photography instruction I have ever had. I learned more about my camera and what to do with it than I ever did reading a manual.
After lunch, I attended this incredibly informative lecture on sea birds—some of which I had just seen from the aft deck of the ship, including my very favorite of all—the great Wandering Albatross. Towards the end of the bird talk, a call came over the loudspeaker announcing a pod of killer whales swimming across the bow. Like firemen on call, all of us—passengers, staff, crew—dropped everything, suited up with coats and cameras and rushed to the front of the ship. Just like you would carefully move a sleeping child so as not to wake him, the captain very deftly maneuvered our ton ship, floating us right up to the whales. The thrill of finding killer whales in their own natural habitat—swimming past, flopping their fins in the air or flashing their white-blazed eye patches—well it was spellbinding. As all of this was happening, the whale specialist on board explained what we were seeing—she was able to identify the age and gender of each animal and explain their behavior in great detail.
After the whales went on their way and we continued on ours, I stayed out on deck to watch the sea. Honestly, I could have stayed out there looking at the water forever. We have had a very fortunate crossing of the Drake Passage—relatively calm with the expected swells but nothing too rough. It is a wonderful thing as it allowed me the chance to watch the water change from denim blue to green and gold and then back to silver and cobalt—all of it was just beautiful.
In between these lectures and another one (on the currents surrounding Antarctica), I was busy doing my job—sharing my experience with others via internet technology. For example, this afternoon I took my 2,100 Twitter followers on a virtual tour of the ship. Their comments and passionate interest reminded me how lucky I am to be on the National Geographic Explorer.
As I was writing this, we crossed 60° South—a new record for me made even more special by the fact that not long ago I was standing on the equator. We continue to move steadily southward to the great white continent and I continue to be more and more thrilled with every passing hour.
