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Published: June 26th 2016
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View of Ushuaia from the hill to and random military turret we found! I have also included a panorama... A lot of people don’t realise that South America is the closest continent on the planet to Antarctica. So we figured that since South America was the 6
thcontinent that we had visited, why not round them all off with a little trip to Antarctica?
We both started and ended the cruise in Buenos Aires – the (adjusted) itinerary was as follows:
Buenos Aires>Ushauia (Arg)>Cape Horn (Chile)>Antarctica (Paradise Bay, Elephant Island)>Falkland Islands (UK)>Montevideo (Uruguay)>BA
We had to make a small adjustment and remove Puerto Madryn (Argentina) from our itinerary because the weather on the Drake Passage (crossing into Antarctica across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans) was too bad. Google this, if you’ve never heard of it – pretty rough seas as we soon discovered!
So sailing to the Antarctic is a bit of an adventure – however, we did it the posh way on a very classy cruise ship – equipped with a pool, sauna facilities, gym, restaurants and so on. So it wasn’t really particularly rough at all (aside from the Drake Passage crossings) – more luxurious if anything...
I can say for almost certain that we were the only 2 backpackers on the cruise though!
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The Beagle Chanel - famous 'end of the world' lighthouse looking back to Ushuaia (and my new desktop background!) And I think we also dragged the average age on the cruise down a bit - but it was still incredibly enjoyable!
Our first port of call was Ushuaia, at the bottom of Argentina – which calls itself the ‘southern most city on the planet’ (a place called Puerto Williams in Chile disputes this claim).
Regardless of this claim, it is a stunning place and was so amazing that it might have out-done Antarctica itself in terms of the best part of the cruise.
After docking, we decided to explore the town before jumping on a catamaran to do some wildlife viewing. We walked out of the north west of the town with no plan or map – just exploring. We stumbled upon this little hill which had an old artillery weapon on it and an unreal panoramic view of the area.
Ushuaia is settled down by the water in a valley, surrounded by mountains and we had the best view in town from this hill top (which I’m pretty sure we were the only ones to discover since we just stumbled upon it and it was on a farmers land – so we are not
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Sun rise at Cape Horn, before crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica 100% sure that it was meant to be accessible to the public).
After enjoying the view of Bay from up there, we walked back down to the water and jumped on a small catamaran. By this point, the low hanging clouds that had been around had completely cleared and the view from the water of the city was unreal.
The boat took us to see some seals and sea lions just chilling on little rock islands in the bay. We then looped round a famous old lighthouse – giving us more breathtaking views of the Bay.
But where it got really good was when we spotted some whales! This wasn’t actually meant to be part of their tour – just that a few random whales had swam into the Bay that day (you could tell it was rare because even the tour guide was excited).
We were supposed to go to another little island and walk around for half an hour – so the tour guide asked if we wanted to do that or follow the whales around (‘whale spotting’) for a while instead – to which almost every single person emphatically replied yes!
So
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Antarctic Peninsula day 1 we followed the whales around – waiting for them to come up and blow off water – before trying to keep tracking them for a bit – all in this beautiful Bay with bright blue skies surrounded by the mountains. It was as good as it sounds.
The next stop was very cool too – Cape Horn, Chile – which is the most Southern land point on the planet (outside of Antarctica). We cruised around here at sun-rise – enjoying some of the views and some commentary from nature experts that the cruise had hired for our cruise.
After this, we crossed the Drake Passage (which was rough going over but nowhere near as bad coming back!) and hit the Antarctic peninsula. This is about as far as you can go in a boat and only really in their 'summer' time (where it's below zero still of course).
Parts of the area were, unfortunately, not visible due to low cloud and fog – unfortunately when you’re visiting remote unpopulated areas of the world weather is going to be a bit more sporadic.
But when we did see parts of the Antarctic Peninsula it was pretty amazing
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Antarctic Peninsula day 2 – at times it felt like being on another planet. The only thing that stopped it really sinking in for me was just how many people there were on the cruise and the fact everyone was a walking, talking camera – this, to me, detracted from the natural, untouched, rare experience of being in Antarctica... But it was still pretty awesome!
We also saw a tonne of wildlife down there too – some penguins on icebergs from a distance, penguins swimming in the ocean, seals and even a few more whales from afar.
The Drake Passage had got worse while we were there, so we had to spend another night in Antarctica – boo-hoo life is tough (even better for us as the stop they postponed was somewhere we were going to visit later in our travels anyway!).
So we got to spend almost 3 whole days cruising around the Antarctic Peninsula, visiting various bays and areas.
After this we hit the Falkland Islands and I bought Em tickets to go visit Volunteer Point – a world famous penguin colony – for her birthday. To get there, you have to go through some bumpy, unpaved, unmarked
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Antarctic Peninsula day 3 fields in a 4-wheel drive car.
However, once you arrive, there are literally thousands of penguins all running around everywhere! Of particular note are the King Penguins, as this is one of very view places where you can see them. After the rain and howling winds of the first half hour disappeared, we walked down to the beach and even saw a few penguinos going for a dip in the sea!
After this we had a drink in the pub and chatted with our tour guide, probing her about the Falklands a bit. The Falklands are a very interesting place. When you look at the map it seems stupid that they belong to the UK – they are so close to Argentina.
However, once you go there, you see that the people are very proudly British. There are signs everywhere indicating this in fact! And the place itself is very British: driving on the left side of the road, red royal mail post boxes, everyone uses the pound, a lot of English sounding accents, bad weather (etc).
Both Argentinians and people in the Falklands still share some resentment over the islands. There is an Argentinean port
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Sun beams through the dark Antarctic sky as we left to head back north that won’t let you dock there if you dock in the Falklands on the same trip; in the Falklands our tour guide told us that there are Falkland tour guides who refuse to take Argentinians! So there is still some resentment there...
You are also still supposed to refer to it as Islas Malvinas in Argentina just to be on the safe side too 😉
After we left the Falklands, we had a couple more days at sea before stopping at Montevideo, Uruguay.
The second half of the sailing was a lot more fun – we established a pretty good group of people on the boat including Nick and Lorraine (from Glasgow - so we weren't the only Scots on the boat) and 2 American girls – Hayley and Megan. We had some dirnks, sang some karaoke and passed the time on the sailings between places...
Montevideo seems like a nice place but it was a little over-run by gringos as both our ship and another arrived the same day.
We walked around the town for quite a bit and found some really interesting sites a bit further out – this giant parliament building where
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King Penguins (and Emily) on the Falkland Islands we were not just the only gringos but the only people there. It was very cool.
Then, after getting a bit lost, we made it back to this famous market near where the boat was docked. There were definitely more locals in there – the market is famous for it’s food and drinks. We walked around for a bit and then jumped back on the boat to have some of the free food and drink on there instead!
After this it was back to BA.
And that was our Antarctic adventure in a nutshell.
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