Antarctica 2010 - Page 09
Monday-Thursday, January 18-21, 2010, Drake Passage, Cape Horn, and going home
Monday, January 18, 2010, Drake Passage
We sped thru the semi-rough Drake Passage. There were far fewer people who came to breakfast. Fortunately, neither Valorie nor Rich were ever seasick.
We spent most of the day listening to various presentations. We had good, but expensive ($0.40/minute) Internet access via satellite for most of the trip.
During the night the seas became much rougher with a strong wind coming from the West.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010, Cape Horn
Valorie's birthday. We approached to within 3 miles of Cape Horn. Once we turned East, the seas felt calmer because we were now traveling with the wind and current going from the Pacific towards the Atlantic. We saw numerous Albatross and other sea birds.
We turned into the Beagle Channel and at 9:00pm we docked in Ushuaia, Argentina, having completed our 2317 nautical mile journey.
Wednesday-Thursday, January 20-21, 2010, Ushuaia, disembark, Santiago to Dallas to San Jose
At 8:00am we departed the National Geographic Explorer for a visit to the Ushuaia Maritime Museum. Afterwards we wandered about town.
We were bussed to a restaurant out by the nature preserve and sat with Lois and Buzz Aldrin for lunch. Today is Buzz Aldrin's 80th Birthday! Buzz is constantly using his iPhone or Amazon Kindle to keep up with what is going on.
Afterwards we boarded our 3-1/2 hour, charter flight to Santiago, Chile.
At 11:00pm we boarded our 10-hour, overnight flight to Dallas. It was delayed an hour before taking off so we arrived at 7:00am.
We missed our 7:40am connection by 7 minutes, and were rebooked on the 9:30am, arriving at SJC at 11:30am.
