Ushuaia

We had reached Ushuaia. The journey to Antarctica was about to begin.

Antarctica. I had been thinking about this trip for years. Long before we went, I had read that expedition berths were notoriously difficult to secure and generally needed to be booked about a year in advance. I eventually made our reservation the previous April. Why April? Because until then I had been occupied with Egypt, and the third-party tour listings I was watching continued to show availability. I assumed I could simply book after I returned.

That was when I learned how naive I had been. Of course those travel-agency listings continued to show space: they were third-party sales pages, and their inventory did not update automatically. The sites even said explicitly that customers should contact them before placing an order. If the voyage was full, an agent could simply say so. Whether I actually secured a berth was hardly the website’s problem.

I understood all of this only after spending considerable time in April researching how Antarctic travel worked. The first decision was the expedition company. Some companies operated their own ships all the way to Antarctica, which meant there was no need for another intermediary. I could not shake the feeling that adding a middleman to a trip whose least expensive berth already approached US$10,000 would only make an expensive journey cost even more.

There were still quite a few operators to compare, and the advice quickly became overwhelming. Antarctic landings involve matters such as site capacity, passengers going ashore in groups, and the scheduling of Zodiac boats. In broad terms, the larger the ship and the more passengers aboard, the more constrained landing operations tend to become. A larger vessel is generally steadier and less likely to induce seasickness, but may leave less time ashore; a smaller vessel tends toward the opposite trade-off. The staffing ratio also matters. With too few expedition staff, guides, and crew for the number of guests, service can suffer—an important consideration when the ship will be home for many days. Then came ratings for every other conceivable detail. The more I read, the less simple the choice appeared.

In the end, I trusted the recommendation in one article and chose Lindblad Expeditions. It was said to be relatively expensive, but also highly professional and known for excellent service. One factor carried disproportionate weight with me: the company had a longstanding collaboration with National Geographic, and the program was called National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions. I knew almost nothing about Antarctic expedition companies, but I knew National Geographic. That familiar name was reassuring enough.

After choosing the company, we had to choose a departure. There were many dates, roughly one each week, but the itineraries were not identical. Some voyages sailed from Argentina and returned there by ship. Others ended with a flight to Chile. Still others began and ended in Chile, using flights in both directions.

What we had heard at the time was that the Drake Passage between Argentina and Antarctica could be formidable, and was often described as one of the world’s most dangerous stretches of sea. A glance at the map helps explain its reputation. The passage lies between South America and Antarctica, along a confined ocean corridor traversed by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The high southern latitudes also experience powerful westerly winds, sweeping around Antarctica with little continental landmass to obstruct them. Strong current, persistent wind, and ocean swell combine to give the Drake its famously rough conditions.

I am severely prone to seasickness, so I would have avoided the passage if possible. By the time I booked, however, the fly-both-ways option had no availability on dates that suited us; the alternative was to wait until late February, which we ultimately decided against. A round-trip voyage by ship was two days longer than sailing south and flying back, and cost several thousand dollars more. The less expensive choice was obvious to me, and there seemed little reason to put myself through the Drake twice. We therefore chose to sail to Antarctica and fly back to Chile.

That decision meant I needed an Argentine visa. Had we flown both ways through Chile, I would have been eligible to enter Chile without a visa under the rules that applied to my circumstances at the time—a Chinese passport together with a U.S. green card.

The Argentine visa process had already provided more than enough trouble, as described in the previous entry, so I will not repeat it here.

After overcoming all of those obstacles, we finally arrived in Ushuaia. The expedition staff met us and took us to the hotel, where they promptly “took possession” of our passports. In less dramatic terms, they temporarily collected them to complete the necessary travel and expedition formalities.

At the welcome dinner that evening, our guide introduced himself with suitable ceremony: Michael Jackson. In his own words, this was not a joke; that was genuinely his name. When he was born, the singer Michael Jackson was still an infant himself, so his name clearly had nothing to do with the Michael Jackson who would later become a global star.

The next day, we visited a nearby national park. To be honest, the outing was fairly modest.

We then visited Ushuaia’s well-known Les Éclaireurs Lighthouse.

We could already see many penguins on the island, and our fellow travelers were visibly excited. None of them could have guessed that, within a couple of days, we would see what felt like dozens of times as many.

That evening, we boarded the ship that would carry us to Antarctica: the National Geographic Explorer.

The Antarctic journey had officially begun.