Antarctica 2010 - Page 01
January 7-10, 2010, San Jose to Santiago to Ushuaia and the Drake Passage
Thursday-Friday, January 7-8, 2010, Fly overnight to Santiago, Chile
As we were sitting in the San Jose airport waiting for our 12:25pm departure time, a minor 4.1 earthquake rumbled thru.
We arrived in Dallas and were taking the shuttle train to terminal 'A' when one of Valorie's students boarded. He was bound for New Orleans. He takes sports pictures, mostly Pop-Warner and grade school events, but recently was hired by the Harlem Globetrotters as their action photographer.
We boarded our plane for Santiago for a 9:10pm departure, but then sat at the gate for more than 2 hours. We got 4-5 hours of sleep on this 9-hour flight, arriving around 11:30am on our 6th Continent.
We paid our entry fee and passed thru customs and were met by the tour guide. Along with 14 others we were bussed to the Grand Hyatt and checked in.
The city tour started at 2:30pm. We stopped in front of the Presidential Palace. We went into the museum. We drove by the plaza, returning to the hotel at 5:45pm. Since this is summer, the temperature was in the mid-70s.
There was a welcoming get-together, followed by dinner. We finally got to bed around 10:00pm.
Saturday, January 9, 2010, Santiago to Ushuaia, Argentina, and embark
The alarm went off at 5:30am. After breakfast we headed to the airport, where we departed at 9:30am for the 3-hour flight to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southern most city in the world, with a population of ~65,000. The small terminal is like a ski lodge or 'A'-frame. As we processed thru Customs, the passengers from the previous expedition did "the wave" and held signs saying "Dramamine is your friend".
As our bus exited the airport and turned onto Highway 3, the very end of the Pan-America highway that runs all the way to Alaska, we saw a Rotary International sign. Unfortunately Valorie didn't have time to attend their meeting. The weather was cloudy and rainy, which is apparently typical for this time of year.
We boarded a Catamaran and sailed around 2 bays, seeing birds and sea lions. We ate lunch on the Catamaran.
At 5:30pm we boarded the 148-guest, 356 feet long, "National Geographic Explorer". We pushed off at 6:30pm, then went thru the mandatory life boat drill followed by dinner. We sailed out the Beagle Channel and into the Drake Passage.
Sunday, January 10, 2010, At Sea
The trip across the Drake Passage was quite easy. We got "Drake the Lake" rather than "Drake the Shake". The current flows from the Pacific toward the Atlantic, and is often accompanied by high winds flowing in the same West to East direction. We attended 2 lectures on photography and geology. In a third session we sat next to astronaut Buzz Aldrin and his wife Lois. Buzz was the 2nd man to walk on the moon.
At dinner we sat with the naturalist Richard White, who talked about birds and his 2 year stint (2001-2003) on Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic.
