The Drake Passage

So the day of boarding for Antarctica had finally arrived! The evening before, we had already seen another - rather small - ship docked in the harbor, but ours was still missing. However, when we looked out of our hotel room in the morning, we discovered that the M/V Ortelius had also made it to Ushuaia. The hope that the Ortelius would be larger than the other ship burst like a soap bubble... Especially compared to the cruise ship behind it, we got the impression that we would be sailing in a nutshell for the next few weeks, oh dear!

We were picked up from the hotel as planned and taken to the baggage drop-off. That was quickly taken care of, and we had over 3 hours of free time before we were allowed on the ship. We used this time to send some postcards from the 'end of the world' and browse through the souvenir shops once again (of course, not without buying a few things...).

Then we finally boarded the ship, where we could occupy a fairly large cabin with plenty of storage space. Due to some unresolved formalities, our journey started with a delay of about 4 hours towards Antarctica, initially towards the infamous Drake Passage.

The Drake Passage is the shortest connection from the other continents of the world to Antarctica. The distance from Ushuaia to the Antarctic Peninsula is only about 1000km. Our boat travels at about 10-11 knots (about 20 km/h), so it takes about 2 days to cross here.

However, the 'small' opening between the two continents also has a tiny drawback - it converges several water and wind currents, making it always very windy and wavy here. Accordingly, we had some concerns about our physical well-being on this route. But for us, it went pretty well, we had a relatively smooth crossing with wave heights of only about 5m ... enough to make the little ship sway, but with the help of motion sickness patches, we both had no problems.

However, there wasn't much to see at first. We sailed through the 'Beagle Channel' for a while from Ushuaia. But due to the mentioned delay, it was already dark, so we couldn't see Cape Horn. Other than that, there was just water all around, occasionally a storm bird or an albatross would pass by - that was it. So we had plenty of time to get the thick rubber boots, watch some presentations by the crew members, and perform safety drills (which of the two life vests in the cabin should I carry in my hand through the whole ship to which lifeboat, and how do I put on the uncomfortable thing while standing in front of the lifeboat). In addition, all items (clothes, but also backpacks, etc.) that could potentially be taken ashore were checked and, if necessary, cleaned or vacuumed. We could also thoroughly explore all the paths on the ship that we didn't know yet before we finally encountered the first iceberg and a few (Gentoo) penguins swam past us shortly before reaching the Antarctic Peninsula - in the area of the South Shetland Islands. Our ship made a stop in front of Snowy Island (one of the South Shetland Islands) to take on board helicopters, pilots, and mechanics from another ship parked there for our journey. With 3 helicopters and 6 more people, we were finally able to start the 'half-circumnavigation' of Antarctica.