Recounting some of my adventures while not on the road. I traveled through Argentina on my way to Antarctica in early 2015. After crossing the Antarctic circle we were eager to get our boots on the Antarctic ground.
Wordie House & Vernadsky Station
With a taste of Antarctica from our zodiac cruises yesterday, all of us were excited for what was next. Our first stops would be in the Argentine Islands. We anchored a little away from Winter Island and Zodiaced through dense ice, arriving at our first landing. We exited our Zodiacs and trotted through snow to Wordie House, a research hut built in the 1940’s
After an hour exploring the station and island, we boarded the Zodiac for a quick ride to the neighboring Galindez Island. This is home to the Vernadsky Research Base, a Ukrainian Antarctic research station and they were happy to have visitors! They showed us around their main building, their sleeping areas and their research labs. We arrived at the “southernmost bar in the world”. The bar offers vodka that is distilled there for 3$ or if you’re female and willing to part with your undergarments, you can donate it to the wall of the bar and drink for free! I paid the three bucks! It tasted sweet and wasn’t what I expected but given the conditions, it was pretty good!
Sadly our time at Vernadsky came to an end, but on our way out, we saw one of the biggest icebergs I’d seen, easily larger than a sky scrapper! It scares me to think this is just the “top” and there is probably much more underneath.
Yalour Islands
We returned to the Ioffe for lunch as she re-positioned near the Yalour Islands. Our afternoon would be a Zodiac cruise through the Islands which had some larger penguin colonies. We also spotted some amazing Antarctic wildlife, landscapes and icebergs. It was great just to be outside, breathing in fresh air, cruising from island to island, chasing an illusive whale! (Which we never saw) and simply enjoy nature and God’s creation!
Camping in Antarctica
I ‘d been eagerly anticipating this night when I chose this itinerary. We’d be camping in Antarctica tonight. We finished dinner and quickly got into our winter gear for the Zodiac ride to shore. Here, we had to “dig our graves”, a small body sized hole in the snow. We laid a thermal mat on the ground, a bivy sack on top, and then stuffed our winter sleeping bags inside. As people finished set up, pictures were taken and fatigue setting in, our group settled into our bags for the antarctic night.
Sun doesn’t really set in Antarctica at this time, so we were going off watches and clocks to know what time it was. As I was encased in my bivy sack, I could hear the sounds of the environment around me, penguins calling, wind gusting, ice bergs caving… It was such a surreal experience to know where I was and to have the blessing of sleeping in such a place, it was truly a sense of appreciation. Sleep came soon afterwards (it had already been such a packed day). I’d like to say it was a comfortable sleep, but that’d be a lie. I’ll be sure to include some of my personal pitfalls of camping in Antarctica in the next TBT!
