December 5, 2008
Welcome to Dan and Cate's excellent adventure. As most of you know, we are travelling to Antarctica in late December. This blog will track our adventures. Rather than send mass e-mails, you can check the blog. Even at the bottom of the world we will be connected.
Why we are going.
For Cate, it has been a dream for many years and now as a photographer, the prospect is even more enticing. Cate is not intimidated by cold weather (so far). For Dan it is all about dancing with penguins. Ever since he saw Happy Feet, he has dreamed of dancing with the penguins. He has packed a tuxedo, too.
Getting ready
The problem with going somewhere not many others have been is it can be difficult to figure out what you are going, or more importantly, not going to bring. Cate and I both have a tendency to over pack. Packing for a place like Antarctica should be rather simple, right? We can eliminate an entire class of clothing right off the bat. Shorts are out, as are Hawaiian shirts, sandals, and straw hats, and possibly swim suits too. So that leaves what? Long underwear, wool socks, turtle neck sweaters, fleece pants and jackets, gloves, winter coats, hats, boots, and ski pants. And, because we'll be zooming around in open Zodiac boats, everything has to be waterproof. We can expect the temperatures to average between 20F degrees above zero to 20F degrees below zero. It will be brisk in a Zodiac to be sure. The fashion word will be layers, layers, layers.
Getting there.
We leave from Kennedy airport on Christmas day. From there we fly to Miami, Fl, then an overnight flight to Santiago, Chile. Then, it's off to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The Land of Fire, the southern most city on the planet. We will spend a day and a half in Ushuaia before boarding the boat that will take 98 other travellers and us across Drake's Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula. The passage is about 2 days over what can either be Drake's Lake or a raging, roiling sea depending on weather and other factors. We will spend 6 days exploring the Peninsula using zodiacs to get to small islands etc. Activities we will skip are taking a dip in the water at a hot spring and winter camping on one of the islands. O.K. so we are wimps.
